“If they like ya, they’ll make room for ya.”

My dad said this to me the other day, when I said I really wanted to work for the A’s if I was able to be in a real sales position.

I later realized that this statement applies far beyond the walls of work. Last night I went to an old friend’s new apartment, and it was like nothing had ever changed. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, my eyeliner ran, and I texted, “when can we hang out again!?” before I’d even pulled in my driveway. His response was instant, “as soon as possible, Smelly G!”  During our Senior year we didn’t have the time, the planning ability, or the energy to try to coordinate plans. Now that we are settled and out of college, I’m starting to see the pieces coming together again for our friendship.

A few months ago, I was worried that I was a college graduate without any friends from my college. Now, I realize that how I define “friends” has become more realistic, and changed in a way where I do see that I have lots of friends from college. Maybe I didn’t graduate with a girl to deem as my best friend, but I’m almost thankful for that. If a best friend is someone who tells others your secrets, is only there for you half the time, and cannot be fully trusted, then I think I’d rather drop the best title and keep the acquaintance title, happily unaffected by those character traits.

In the past few months, I’ve reconnected with people from my past- some who are eerily similar in disposition and humor to myself, showing time and space have not distanced us in the least. I have other friends who have become completely new versions of their former selves, but this hasn’t made me feel any less comfortable around them- it’s ok to have friends who don’t drink, who do believe in God, who I only see twice a year. A friend should be categorized by how they treat you and make you feel.

While this may sound like obvious statements and sentiments taken from Hallmark cards, I’ve come to realize that some people do not understand how to be a good friend. Holding it against a friend that they have a boyfriend, not enjoying time with the person but just putting time in, missing important events in one’s life, not reciprocating generosity, thoughtfulness, or empathy are not the marks of a good friend. If someone is a real friend, they will be the same person in their friendship, despite what external factors enter the equation.

I’ve learned that if someone likes ya, they’ll make room for ya.

I’m able now, to take a step back and see who is making room for me in their lives. Who purposely does not include me in theirs, who does not want to take part in mine, who ignores my efforts, who doesn’t make efforts of their own it is all so clear to me now. And just like in sales, life is about forming relationships so that you hold some value to someone. If I want to be a good girlfriend, I’ll form relationships with my boyfriend’s family and friends, but most importantly, with him. If I want to be a good sales girl, I’ll form relationships with my boss, and my peers, but most importantly, with who I call on. If I want to be the best friend I can be, I’ll form a relationship with my friend in which I am honest, reliable, and present. A friend is someone who should automatically feel comfortable with you; not someone you have to constantly worry about being comfortable, create the perfect setting every time for them to be comfortable in, or someone who you feel uncomfortable sharing your life with.

I’m not perfect, no one is. But I’m self-aware enough to know what it takes to be a good friend and to give it my all to be that friend. Life happens day by day, and day in and day out, I’m seeing the true colors of my friends.

August 31- September 2

The 31st was not a fun day. Aunt Ellen’s coworkers came up to me and told me they knew me from stories. That got me all worked up.

The 1st was ok. Spent the day with Dew until work. I hate that feeling, going back into work after being out a few days. Uncomfortable, a bit out of place. Got there two hours early on accident. Stayed from 3 to 10. And all of the sudden I feel right back at home.

Today we said goodbye to Ellen at sea. I thought it might be tacky.. I didn’t know what to expect really.. But it was beautiful.. I’ll never forget that feeling.

Tomorrow’s…

Will

• Enjoy the day off work tomorrow
• Go to Lenscrafters tomorrow alone and not feel awkward
• Go to the gym in the morning
• Get soy milk when mom forgets to
• Be an observer rather than try to make plans
• Start the new book Dew’s mom gave me

Will Not

• Stress about things out of my control
• Worry about unfinished business… What am I signing at work tomorrow…How can I get all the clothes I don’t wear out of my room soon enough.. Should I get a calendar or would that make me stress more about time..

Something I’ve realized recently is that my inability to process the concept of time, and the amount of stress that causes me is worse than I thought. It’s not just how much does something cost, what time do I have to be somewhere and what time should I leave to get there- It’s also, what is my timeline for life. Not in the sense of marriage, kids, yadda yadda all that stuff that doesn’t warrant a timeline. More like, how long am I comfortable living at home (seeing as I’m already uncomfortable), how long does it take to get that financial comfort, how far out should I book trying to meet up with someone to hang out (since I only have two people to hang out with) or should I book a lesson once a month.. It’s all a jumble to me and I don’t know the answer to any of it. 

Quote

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

I need to look for a book all about Einstein as well as the long standing rivalry between Inter Milan and Juventus..

Excited to look for new glasses tomorrow.. I’m sure that I won’t be able to find a good pair, but it’ll be fun to look.

I’ve noticed that the last few times I’ve eaten fish I’ve felt like shit. I wonder if that means the Alkaline diet is working so well that I need to eat it more regularly (fish) so that my body does not feel so bad when I do occasionally. Being healthy is so difficult at home sometimes. My parents are getting a lot better about incorporating healthy food into the cupboards, but it still makes me day dream of the day I get to stock the foods that myself and my future room mate love. And to live in a space that is decked out in decor I favor. And to get a sense of comfort rather than anxiety from being “home.” Alright enough of my petty complaints. 

 

August 30th (still)

I know I’m supposed to be going to bed soon, it was one of the will do’s of my earlier blog today.. But I can’t help still being awake and caught up in thought.

Funerals are such an interesting concept to me. Not because I grew up playing Oregon Trail and was taught at an early age that it was ok to make it an optional process in life, but just because of the timing of it all.. In America, the funeral process happens as soon as the person passes.. All of the work begins and it hardly seems like any time for you to process because you’re just in preparations mode.. Why can’t someone else do all the work for it? Why can’t it come like a month after the passing, when you’ve had time to process it all and accept the person is gone? It’s interesting also how people become so curious as to who will show up to it..

I wonder about the days before social networking, phones, and newspapers… When you lost someone, you just lost them. You took a deep breath and swallowed the news, heard the silence around you and processed the information with the people around you or else with yourself. Now it seems that there is an obligation for people to take notice, to respond, to interject, to become a part of the process. There is an unspoken responsibility of people to try to edge back into someone’s life because they have a way of communicating with them and reconnecting with them.

Not even in the sense of just funerals.. If you lose a friend, for whatever reason- say for the reason I lost my best friend from college (because she preferred another girl’s friendship to my own and felt she had to choose between the two of us)- it’s impossible to just accept right away that that person is no longer a part of your life. When you have an email address, skype address, phone number, and facebook account, it seems like an act of immaturity to not reach out and try to make things right again. Stumbling on quotes saying, “don’t let a small problem ruin a great friendship” or “before you burn a bridge build a ship” or “a true friend walks in when all the others walk out” it seems like the universe is constantly sending subliminal messages to right a wrong situation and I feel a guilt because I know I have the means but I no longer have the will. I wish those ties didn’t exist so I could feel completely confident in my ability to just move on and move forward, not looking back.

Instead I find myself constantly turning my head back and forth, looking for a way around the guilt of not trying to make the friendship exist again. It doesn’t seem fair.. To play myself the smallest violin in the world for a second- I was the one who spent the last two months of school reaching out, asking my two friends to spend some time with me. I handled their practical joke with poise and never once showed them how much it angered me- I expressed I was hurt, but I showed no resentment about the fact that the pain got permanently peeled from my car. I made every effort to finish finals early to be available to hang out, to spend time quietly sitting in the room while she did homework or paperwork to go abroad, I asked for her to come to my graduation party, to take pictures with me at graduation, to finish the year out like a real best friend found at college does.. I gave it my all and it wasn’t reciprocated. So why am I the one sitting here feeling like I repel people? Like I must have done something I can’t think of wrong and that is why I was ditched? Was it because I wasn’t into clubbing? Because I gave her advice when she asked for it?

I don’t understand it but it makes my stomach turn to think of things like College Reunions or a random run-in one day, or seeing more shit posted about me on a social network. Makes me wonder if one of these old friends turned strangers will be showing up at my funeral one day. The whole idea gives me the creeps.

August 28th, 29th, and 30th Entry

It’s been a busy few days, but busy is good. When I’m busy I don’t have to think about what to do next, I just go into action.

On Tuesday, the 28th, my day started out with my goal of waking up early to work out in mind. I woke up, remembered to add the inserts to the scrapbook for David, and sat on the edge of my bed to try once again to finish the book. I sat up for an hour and a half the previous night, attempting to silence the mocking words of the instruction label that read out a three-step process to adding more pages to your scrapbook, “scrapbook made easy with our effortless screws that untwist with a screwdriver or a coin, just unscrew, insert, and screw on again!”

Screw the scrapbook, literally.

The top screw went without a hitch, I used a dime and it took all of two minutes for it to casually flop off of its original placing. I moved down to the lower screw and that is when I became unhinged. 90 minutes of my life, a Law & Order episode and a half, and not dime, not flathead, not Philips, not alcoholic screw driver would let loose the devil screw, and I tried them all. Exhausted, tipsy, and ready to raise hell at Beverly’s, I glanced down at my phone and realized David would be calling shortly to say goodnight. I resigned myself to try again in the morning.

I woke up at 7 am, overslept by an hour, and tried for another ten minutes to not punt the scrapbook in frustration. Beverly’s opened at 9 am, so I decided to treat the book like a car and take it in to get checked out as soon as they opened shop. In the interim, I had now diminished the little time I had in the morning to get in a workout, shower, and get ready to go from Beverly’s, to the doctors, to San Jose. Time deficient and stressed, I decided to not do an ab work out or utilize my remaining time to make my workout goal work. I went to Safeway, grabbed a hair dye kit, and spent 25 minutes mousing my hair up while Tank ran away from the sounds of the bath tub and I made lists upon lists of strategies for the day.

The final list concluded as such:

1. Pack up car while dye sits in hair, double-check you have everything you need for the night
2. Go to Beverly’s from 9-9:30am. Leave no later than that or will be late to Dr.
3. Go to Doctor appointment, reschedule exams that will take too long.
4. Put on makeup in parking lot of Dr. Office and then leave for SJ.

At 8:58am I knocked on Beverly’s door. The helpful clerk promptly dropped the scrapbook as soon as I handed it to her, pages scattering, their clear binding becoming muddled with Beverly’s floor crud, sliding under registers and surfing along the tile floors in sleek laminated ecstasy. The one screw I had managed to get off, neatly packaged in a see-through sandwich bag bounced to the floor and then disappeared, it’s last bounce echoing like a mini gong had just been hit. She smiled up to me and uttered a breathy, “whoopsie.” Whoopsie? My blood pressure spiked.

After a very tense 25 minutes of instructing Ms. Whoopsie to find another goddamn screw, of myself putting the pages back together and hailing two other very confused and unwilling employees to assist, the four of us managed to assemble the scrapbook. They practically danced me out of the store, ready to call it a day after 30 minutes of officially being open, thanks to the Italian that should have never started scrapbooking.

I plan on purchasing a much simpler, pages-ready kind of scrapbook for any future endeavors in this nerd world.

Arrived at the doctors at 9:50am. My anxiety over being late had me driving like Frogger, weaving stealthily in and out of lines to get that few second jump to arrive that much sooner. I fed the meter, went inside the wrong building, came back out to the meter and fed it more (still nervous because I can’t tell time), and then went into the right building. Waited 45 minutes in a tie-around robe, shivering on a waiting table as I looked at a beautiful photograph of a vineyard in South Cape, Africa. The ambiance was lovely but the temperature was all wrong. The doctor entered the room, chipper and ready for the exam. I responded a with the same coolness I’d been feeling on my back for the past 45 minutes, “Hi, nice to meet you, I’ll need to leave in 35 minutes to feed the meter outside. It only allowed enough time for two hours and I’ve already been here for one.” I really need to learn how to tell time.

She laughed and responded in an accent that sounds like someone in middle school trying to sound British, “Oh dear, it will only take us 30 minutes! We’ll start with your paps smear..” I immediately rescheduled it. “Oh, well in that case you will be out even sooner!” Yes, that was the point. I answered her questions, was told I am funny (I was not joking about yoga at the gym raising my blood pressure..but thanks for calling me funny), and rescheduled for the other exams. Finished my makeup in the bathroom, had a Jason Bourne moment between the hair dying and the creepy putting on of makeup in a public place, and then was on my way to San Jose.

***

Arrived at San Jose without hitting too much traffic, just under an hour of driving. I gave David his presents and the scrapbook and we ate BBQ chicken pizza, chicken removed off of mine, and then had the perfect lunch of frozen yogurt.. We drove to San Francisco, ready to celebrate our year and a half anniversary, deciding to make it a tradition to give the scrapbook at the year and a half mark, and also deciding to cancel the wine David reserved for us at our dinner and go get drinks at a bar instead. Had a kamikaze each, a Blue Moon each, and then walked a bit tilted to our dinner at Ristorante Ideale. We ordered wine, finished a basket of bread, his pizza (again, yes), and my pasta and then floated home.

Woke up at 2am for some lemonade in his kitchen, sang as much as we remembered of the song 2am by Slightly Stoopid (Two in the morning ba da ba bee be ba rata ta ta ta hm mm bing bob) and then went back to bed, laughing and heads still spinning a bit. Woke up to find him looking at the scrapbook as he leaned over to kiss me good morning. Life’s never been better.

We went to Crepevine with his mom, and I highly recommend it to anyone- huge portions that make you feel like you’re dining at Hogwarts, no matter how much you eat, your plate stays full. The Safari Cooler was a colorful drink that masks carrot juice with ginger and honey. Watched some Friday Night Lights after walking home and felt the glow of familiarity from the TV screen as we cuddled on the couch. I remembered that feeling the whole hour and 15 minute drive home back to Clayton.

Fell asleep shortly after and woke up this morning ready to make a list to post on the blog, back to everyday reality.

***

August 30 Entry

Lifetime goal

•  Take a surf lesson in Figi one day.

Will

• Workout today
• Clean room – Buffalo Exchange pile
• Figure out what Nana exactly wants me to do for Aunt Ellens Funeral tomorrow
• Go to sleep early
• Pick up the picture board from Liz tonight

Will Not

• Get nervous about reading the psalms at mass tomorrow, or let my apathy to the words show to the assembly
• Get into any trouble with the family tomorrow
• Get emotional tomorrow as I see my family members do so. Channel your inner Nono.

Tomorrow

• Go to mass, do as much as you can, and then go to the reception and have a drink
• Spend the night watching FNL with David and forgetting about all the stress of the day

Quote

• “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know jealousy or evil or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring- it was peace.” – Milan Kundera

August 27th (Late Entry)

Today’s lifetime goal

Drink water from a real coconut (most ideally in Brazil)

Will Not

• Focus on the clock at work
• Let myself get down as I think of the possibilities of ever actually going to Brazil
• Take the taffy samples out of my boss’s candy jar..remind self how awkward it was last time I did..

Will

• Go through all my clothes on the 30th, taking unwanted items to Buffalo Exchange in near future
• make my new wardrobe consist of only jerseys, dresses, work clothes, and comfortable oversized sweaters/beach acceptable garbs. Accepting the fact that my life is now a division of work and “play” (recover, collapse, continue). Adios old college “party threads”..
• try hot yoga again in near future… September 1?
• take Hope up on her offer for surf lessons

Tomorrow

• I will do something active in the am

Quote

• “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Emerson

Day One: August 26

Quote

• “Happiness is when what you say, what you think, and what you do are in harmony” -Mahatma Ghandi

Will Not

• Gripe about Dad’s reaction to my question
• Feel sorry for myself about not having time to join a team
• Worry about what work tomorrow will bring
• Be jealous of my brother and his living situation
• Let other’s attitudes towards me affect my own

Will

• Use this Blog as a new outlet
• Cuddle with Tank tonight while I tell David how much I love him
• Be helpful to Mom
• Spend time outside
• Be hopeful of tomorrow

Tomorrow

• I will go to work and work hard
• I will exercise and feel good about myself
• I will go to Beverly’s for those supplies
• I will possibly go to Danny’s softball game
• I will print out quotes at work

Last Night’s Dream

• No dream. Drank a few beers at Tiki Tom’s before bed.