what lies ahead

I'm just inside Target, hunting for a red plastic basket that doesn't have gum stuck to the bottom, when my phone buzzes. It buzzes a lot these days.

"Want to know why alcohol is ridiculous?" He's at happy hour somewhere, a few beers deep.

Yes, I answer.

"It made me just now -- after all our conversations -- come to face the fact that I'm losing you."

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Remember that guy who asked me out the right way and had opinions on John Irving? He is, in fact, the only guy I've been seeing since September. And he is, in fact, my boyfriend. That's strange to type. But here we are.

There's just one little catch. The other thing I haven't told you is that I've been applying to graduate schools. Most of them are far away. And he's been applying to jobs. Working in athletics, as he does, he could end up nearly anywhere in the country. But there's not a lot of overlap between our likely destinations, and chances that we'll be in the same city four months from today are slim to none.

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"Noooooo, no, no," I text back immediately. "This isn't the week for that problem. You focus on getting the job. Then we'll deal with you and me."

I mean it. He knows I'm a) sincere and b) right. But oh, man.

Heartbreak is crouching right around that corner. And standing there by the Dollar Wall, with only my chintzy little basket for a shield, I can already feel how bad this is going to be.

¡andale!

Sometimes I draft posts and then forget to go ahead and publish them -- usually because I have been distracted by something shiny. Actually, it's better if you just assume that nothing in this blog is in chronological order. There are lots of shiny things where I am.

Yesterday afternoon was bad. The end of Charles, finally, in what has been a very indefinite and lingering end. It wasn't frank and amicable, like it might have been; instead it was garbled and dismissive and conducted via text message. (Text message!  Let me assure you, gentle reader, that this wasn't my idea.) The kind of end that leaves you furious and gagging on all the things you still want to say.

So I had to shut my office door and put my face in my hands for a while. Take a lot of deep breaths. Unload to Nick, who really deserves a medal for listening to me as much as he does. Violently staple things that didn't need to be stapled.

But then, more by accident than design, I made a few good decisions. It started when I tied my ass to my chair and finished the proposal I needed to write, without making any more excuses. Then my sister called, and I didn't yammer about my own problems because her day was definitely worse than mine. Then I went to a volunteer job and did some good work for some good people, in the company of some more good people. Then I came home and talked to my roommate, who also happens to be good people (although she'd object to the phrase). Then I looked through my high school yearbooks and laughed, and emailed a friend who is half a world away to talk about a good memory. And then a very handsome guy told me that he liked my prose and he'd like to read more of it. By the time I went to bed, I felt about a million times lighter and at least half as homicidal.

Which is all to say -- when you're sad, you have to do something. Do anything. You can't just sit around. (Which is what I did on Saturday, and let me tell you, it was bad.) Get yourself to where there are some people to talk to. Get some shit done. Get to work, Clare, get to work.

why your 20s are disconcerting

Morgan:  Does it ever freak you out a little bit that [girl who we 

         lived with in college] is....a doctor?

         I mean, this is the girl who not once, not twice, but 

         three times forgot she left her cell phone in her pants, 
         and put them in the washing machine.

Me:      It would freak me out less if [this girl] was the only 

         person I knew who made me think, "....seriously?  They're 
         letting you be a doctor/lawyer/CPA/other relatively 
         responsible person?"

Morgan:  TESTIFY.

can't trust that day

From the ankles down, I look like Barbie.  Some mornings, the only thing that's going to get you out your front door is a pair of 4-inch peeptoes in hot pink patent leather.

(I may or may not have bought these as a birthday present for my best friend a couple of years ago...and then kind of accidentally kept them.  The moral of the story:  Always make friends with women who share your shoe size.)

From the ankles up, I look more or less like a homeless person.  Aside from the shoes, I got dressed this morning entirely in items that were lying on my bedroom floor.  I also ate Trader Joe's Cheese Crunchies for breakfast, and then spent at least an hour peering diligently but uselessly at the statements for my retirement account, which might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense I was able to make of them.

Now, at 6 o'clock, the course of my day is easily traceable by the items strewn all over my desk.  They include:  A dried-up bottle of Elmer's glue; a dead plant; three empty Diet Coke cans (One of our partners frequently stops by my door, shakes his head, and intones, "Aspartame, Clare!" before shuffling off down the hallway); many tiny Post-its full of illegible but undoubtedly important scribblings; one plush monkey that shrieks when you squeeze it in the middle; about two dozen red pens; and a rotating emergency light, of the type you might find on top of a very small toy ambulance, if the ambulance was purple.  Don't ask me; I don't know either.

I have a date in two hours.  It's going to include an "It's not you, it's your cigarettes" speech, and that is going to be uncomfortable.

Oh, it's such a Monday-ish Monday.