Monday, August 27, 2012

left and leaving

Site Meter And then there are times like this, where I get hit with a wall of missing-you that knocks the wind out of me and sends me under.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Is the nest half-full or half-empty?

It's a brand new semester, and I'm at the end of the first week of classes. A lot of new things to get used to: Nick has a new job and different work hours, Thing 1 doesn't live at home anymore, and I have new PIs at work. This is me most mornings, just rolled out of bed and super thrilled about getting up at 5:30am on the days I have class after work:

And by "super thrilled," I mean "ZZZZZgzhkzzzz...wait, wha...fughh."

KU's quickly becoming our second home. Nick and I grab lunch and coffee a few times a week, and Thing 1 stops by the Union to talk to Nick nearly every day. Rather anti-climactic, for as life-upending a transition as this was supposed to be. It's super quiet around the house, too, now that we just have one kiddo living at home. No fights! This means I'm able to do some of my assigned reading at home instead of having to find a quiet corner in some downtown coffee shop. With classes starting at 4:00pm, I'm not able to grab coffee on the way out of town anymore, but I also get home a little earlier so it's not as necessary. I still find it's less distracting to work on actual assignments somewhere else, so staking out a corner and testing my caffiene receptors' load capacity is still totally necessary:


"Bitch, sit in that chair and I will cut you, so help me Jesus. PERSONAL BUBBLE."


Thing 2 still struggles with Thing 1 being gone. I remember going through the same thing when my older brother left home. I was heartbroken, and couldn't understand why he didn't seem to miss me as much as I missed him. I tried to explain to Thing 2 that his older brother is really excited to live on his own and go to school, and to not take it personally if he doesn't call. He'll come around eventually.

My classes are awesome, once again. Other than the terrible Am Lit I debacle of last spring, I've been lucky to have excellent teachers and fascinating course material. This semester, I'm taking a couple of English classes and a Sociology class about death rituals across various cultures. I have trouble not reading ahead, no matter what I've been assigned. I'm back with one of my favorite English professors, and the sheer oddity of the topics and random quips in class make me want to live-Tweet the entire thing, MST3K-style.

Other than that, it's been kind of a weird week. The temps dipped down 20 degrees or so as soon as PK left, and it's been cloudy and rainy for the past few days. Buskerfest is happening downtown this weekend, and all of the students are back, so the sidewalks are crowded and the atmosphere is generally obnoxious. I'm hiding out, putting away laundry and getting ready to make raspberry waffles for dinner while Nick's at a KJHK meeting. The one downside of Nick working a "normal" schedule is that household chores had to be shoved over to the weekends. I'm trying to pitch in and help with dinner on the nights I don't have to be at class. So, yeah...woohoo. Trying to work out a care package exchange with PK, since he keeps raving about the local wine.

Okay. Time for waffles.website statistics

Saturday, August 18, 2012

I know I promised letters but I probably won't send them

I had big plans of attending Sean's birthday party tonight, but I went to brush my teeth and started throwing up. And there's your dose of TMI for the day. Oh, no...wait...there's more.

Last Saturday night, Nick and I went out ONE LAST TIME (for the love of god, I know right?) with PK. It was the very last of the very last going-aways. I've been attending these for months, it seems. I did okay, right up until it came time for him to hug me, say he loved me and would see me in December, and walk out the door of the Pig. I fucking shook and sobbed like a little kid. Nick and Travis took turns hugging me and rubbing my back until I calmed down. It took a while. You'd think he walked off to be shot by the Gestapo. It's embarrassing.

And that, my dears, is why I'm slow to make friends. It's not that I don't feel enough. I feel too much. I can't walk around handing out that much emotion to just everybody.

Sunday morning, I woke up with a resolve to make the most of this week. So much happening: Nick starting his new job with KJHK, me getting ready for classes to start, getting plans together for a work conference in November, moving Thing 1 into McCollum, and setting up appointments while I still had time during the day. I took Thursday and Friday off ahead of time, and it was the smartest thing I could have done.

The first few days back at work felt a little rough. I'll have to get used to working with a different research assistant now that PK's gone, and to be perfectly honest, it was a little difficult to walk into certain hallways and rooms without expecting to see him. I felt better knowing Nick was on campus, though. I stopped by his office in the Union after work on Tuesday, and we got to walk home together.

Thursday, Thing 1 had orientation at KU, so I treated myself to a day of wandering downtown before I picked up my textbooks for the semester. Friday around noon, I took him up to McCollum and helped him carry his clothes and bedding to his dorm room. It took all of ten minutes to move him in, it was over before I knew it.

I waved goodbye and walked down the stairs with a lump in my throat. A flurry of emotions came and went: scared for him, happy for him, accepting that I can't help him get through this, relief that it's not on my shoulders to do so, relief that he made it to this point, pride that he made it to this point. And it was the pride that made me cry. Site Meter website statistics

Friday, August 10, 2012

So this poopface is leaving today...

...and leaving for Seattle on Sunday. Last night, I gave him a haircut and pizza, not to mention that Nick and I also gave him a book that's all about the secret of happiness (okay, it hides a flask) and a shirt from the Bourgeois Pig. Now all that's left is to dive back into work and school. I don't think any more of my friends are leaving any time soon. Please don't, or if you do, break it to me the night before you leave. I don't think my heart could take it, otherwise. I'm not good at goodbyes, and I've known this day was coming for the last six months.



Me & PKwebsite statistics Site Meter

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Up too late. Can't sleep. The usual. I had fun tonight, but it sounds like Nick is starting to get sick. At least there's ice cream in the refrigerator for when he wakes up, so he can't nominate me for Worst Wife of Ever just yet. But maybe he can because I hung out with Sean, Chelsea, Patrice, Megan and Roni until damn near 11pm or something and he probably wanted that ice cream a little closer to 7pm. After I got back to Lawrence, I walked around and ended up at the Taproom, talking to Nick Ray and Joe Noh. I had a Ginger Smash, which is fresh ginger, syrup, and a shitload of fuck-you-up. Then I went to 6th St Dillon's to fulfill my domestic duties, marveled at the caliber of crazy townies in LFK, realized I may be counted as one myself, and drove home with a sneaking suspicion that insomnia would hit before I unlocked the back door. And I was right.

Things I realized this evening:

1) Whether I'm 16 or 36, my heart twinges when I walk or drive past someone's recently-moved-from apartment/house, but only if they totally move out of town. It's like the dwelling is now an emptied husk, and if it doesn't house our friendship anymore, then where does our friendship live? Are you there, god? It's me, Margaret. Right?

I wrote a poem about it once, that I'm too intelligent to post here, but the ache that made me write that literary turd still raises its ugly head when I'm dealing with transition and loss. I'm nostalgic to a fault, at times, even in towns I'm just visiting. I get choked up in house museums and random streets in Chicago. Yeah, it's like that. If I still lived in Belvidere, I'd most likely be prostrate with grief. So many bad memories in that town, and so many dead friends and friends who moved away. Don't ever let me visit Boston, I'll probably die of crying-induced dehydration after visiting some random 400-year-old wooden house. I think I may have some abandonment issues.

2) I can have female friends, it just takes a very specific type of female.

3) Pretty much anyone Chelsea chooses to hang out with is friendship material. In fact, sometimes I can't believe she likes me, because she only likes cool people.

4) I may never be able to shake the resentment that wells up whenever I have to deal with pretty, rich people who've had a relatively easy life. There is shit that they just do not get and probably never will. I don't know whether to work on my reaction or work on their frame of reference. Their conflict and self-loathing seem just as genuine of emotions as I might have, even when I'm seething over whatever boneheaded nonsense they've dished out. I don't know. Someone always has it worse. Site Meter website statistics Site Meter

Friday, August 03, 2012

Site Meter"You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful - and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick; but then there's other people. And you meet them and you think, 'Not bad, they're okay,' and when you get to know them ... their face just, sort of, becomes them, like their personality's written all over it, and they just - they turn into something so beautiful." - from "The Girl Who Waited"