So, we’re off between Christmas and New Year’s. It… December 21, 2006

So, we’re off between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s unpaid and, since I’m me, I forgot to factor in that I’d be losing a paycheck this month. So, after all the holiday-related overspending I did, I’m going to have to make very little go very far and those Ramen noodles that have been sitting in the back of the cabinet? They’re about to become lunch. And dinner.

Don’t worry, it’s not all bah humbug around here. (Except when I’m walking the streets of New York because, tourists, you have pushed me to the point of no return. I have started to literally elbow you out of my way because WALKING FOUR DEEP ON THE SIDEWALK AND STOPPING SPORADICALLY TO JUST LOOK UP AND AROUND AND OHHHH NEON SIGNS AND OHHHH THERE’S THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING AND OH HEY, AN OLIVE GARDEN – TAKE A PICTURE! IT IS ALL UNACCEPTABLE.)

(You: Clink, back away from the caps lock.)

But really, I’m excited. My family does holidays right. We’re Greeks, we’re loud, we’re sarcastic, we’re good cooks and there’s about forty of us. It’s hard not to have some fun, except when attempting to dodge questions about whether the Boy has bought something sparkly and shiny and OMIGOD, WE ARE NOT GETTING ENGAGED YET, SIMMER DOWN.

Also, the Boy is going to celebrate Christmas with my family. He’s going to spend Christmas Eve at his parents’ house and then make the trek from Massachusetts to New Jersey on Christmas Day so that he can have dinner (and dodge some “so…when are you two kids going to make it official?” questions himself) with us. The selfish part of me is all the Boy! On Christmas! What could be better? The paranoid part of me is all omigod, the Boy is driving! On Christmas day! What if something happens! The sensitive-to-others part of me is all aww, I feel bad that he won’t get to spend much time with his family. And the everyone-must-like-me-at-all-times-why-am-I-such-a-Libra part of me is all, wow, his family is totally going to resent me.

There are lots of parts of me. It can get confusing.

The point (there is one, despite overwhelming lack of evidence to the contrary) of this whole ramble is, whatever you’re celebrating, I hope it’s a good one. I’ll probably find a way to post sometime over my forced vacation, in between counting the pennies to scrounge enough up for perhaps a night at the movies. (If I was the type of person who used emoticons, I would insert a winking one here because we all know I’m going to spend to my heart’s content and reap the consequences later on.)

Happy holidays, y’all.

Trust me, it would’ve been scarier if you were there. December 20, 2006

Initially, we were psyched. Since the Boy has Platinum Super Duper Awesomeness status because of how frequently he travels, we were given a hotel room that could’ve comfortably fit fifteen people, 4 horses and an SUV.

At first I pranced around the room all “we are ROCKstars!,” basking in the glow of two full bathrooms, a king sized bed, two separate living room areas, a free gift basket and a delicious view of Boston.

I turned to the Boy to say something again along the lines of us being rockstars but he had a weird look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. I just…I don’t know. It’s big. So big that it’s creepy.”

“Stick with me, kid. I’ll protect you.”

We decided to waste no time getting into that king sized bed. As the Boy was brushing his teeth in one of the bathrooms, I stripped down to my underpants in the bedroom. All of a sudden, the lamp on the desk began to flicker. There’s no other way to describe it except for that it felt intentional. Less like an electrical malfunction, more like a taunt. I peeked over at the plug, hoping that it would be halfway hanging out of the socket and then I could chide myself for being paranoid and also stupid, but it was fully plugged in.

I decided to resist my urge to scream, chalk it up to some sort of dysfunctional light bulb and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

It was in the bathroom that I heard some sort of crying. Like a whimpering dog, except not (I know, I know my descriptions are so spot on). It sent chills up my spine to the point that I, me, Queen of Peeing All the Time, resisted the urge and decided that I would not be using the bathroom for the rest of the evening, even if it resulted in a bladder explosion, so help me God.

The Boy came into the bedroom with his nose scrunched.

“I know,” I said.

“It’s just…weird.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

A few moments later, just as I was beginning to talk about how retarded we were being and for the love of all things holy we are adults and this is ridiculous and let’s just go to sleep, the toilet in the Haunted Bathroom flushed. All by itself. Not just running water but a full, press the handle and watch the water go down flush. I know that that is probably easily explainable because you know hotels and their crazy plumbing! But still. I screamed.

We couldn’t even have sex. We started, then stopped.

“It just feels like someone else is in here. I just…can’t,” I admitted.

The Boy agreed.

Now would be a good time to remind you that in our relationship, I have handily earned the title of Insane One. The Boy, on the other hand, is the Practical, Reasonable One. So for him to agree with one of my bouts of probable insanity, well, then maybe it wasn’t just all in my head. I am a pro at creeping myself out and usually he just laughs and kisses my forehead and shakes his head as if to say my crazy and kooky girlfriend, gotta love ‘er. He wasn’t doing that this time; I kind of wished he would.

I slept approximately 2 hours, on and off, that night. I kept getting a prickly feeling at the base of my neck. I refused to open my eyes for fear that I might see some sort of apparition. I clung onto the Boy and buried my face in his chest and actually uttered the phrase “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.” You know, just in case the bastard that was messing with was listening.

Weekend Recap December 19, 2006

Wow, hi.

So, I don’t really know where do begin. With the Road Trip From Hell that ultimately became the Patriots Game From Heaven? Or the fact that I might have a new job?

Decisions, decisions.

However, since just in case I don’t decide to leave I’m going to still need this job and therefore do not want to get fired for blogging about a new one, you get Clink’s Weekend, Recap Style.

So, in all of my girlfriend awesomeness, I got the Boy tickets to see the Patriots at Foxboro. And, which in hindsight was another act of Clink Brilliantness, I selected the last home game of the season, against the Houston Texans, because it was almost guaranteed to be a Patriots win. What can I say, I wanted to ensure that I would not have to endure four hours of alternately mopey and rage-filled Boy on the drive home.

We decided to leave early on Saturday morning so that we could spend Saturday afternoon and evening with the Boy’s family and friends.

Fate, it seems, had other plans.

About a half an hour into our trip, just when we thought we were home free after having escaped hellish Manhattan traffic and good lord would the tourists just GO HOME or LEARN TO CROSS AT THE RIGHT TIME, we ended up on the side of the road. In a seedy section of the Bronx. In a construction zone. With a flat.

At first the Boy was all “I am man. I fix tire.” While he was busy jacking up the car and doing whatever the hell one does when they have a flat, I was in the passenger’s seat, bawling. You see, the cars on the curve were going really fucking fast and if one of them sputtered out and hit the Boy, he would be really fucking dead.

Eventually, the Boy gave up and joined me in the car as we waited for the tow truck to arrive. “45 minutes,” we were told. An hour and a half later, we noticed a tow truck cut across four lanes of I-95 traffic and reverse towards us at such a speed that I actually screamed and braced myself for impact.

Out jumped a tow truck driver who, if not the same man, is a close cousin of the one in Adventures in Babysitting. Awesome.

We hopped into the tow truck with him and proceeded to listen to a semi-coherent rant about how he’s happy we’re skinny people because he’s been picking up fat people all day and don’t fat people know they’re the ones that cause the flat tires? Porker pigs, he called them. Lots of porker pigs on the side of the road and next time he sees a bunch of porker pigs he is just going to drive by because they need to stop eating, stupid porker pig Americans.

Like I said, awesome.

The driver dropped us off in the Bronx, on the corner of Mugged & Murdered. The “automobile repair shop” was really just a shed and a guy and about five tires on a rack.

Immediately, I had to pee. Which, of course. Because my bladder is the most inconvenient and also suckiest bladder ever and of course I would have to pee at the absolute worst time. I asked the owner of the shed if he had a bathroom. He pointed in the general direction of the interior of the shack. I made the Boy come with me and stand guard and also hold my coat and my bag because I did not want either one touching any surface.

You can see why:

Eventually, the Boy had to run to a bank to take out money (because, SHOCKINGLY, the shed did not accept credit cards) so I decided to sit in the car, with the doors locked, while I waited for him. Except, when I went to open the door, the door did not open. In fact, none of them did. In a grand finale to what was quickly turning into the Morning of Suck, we had locked the keys. In the car.

Luckily, for an extra fifty bucks, the generous shed owner would put his skills to use by picking the lock with a wire hanger.

Approximately $450, two “new” (“those don’t look new to me, Boy” “you want to start a fight with Shed Boy, Clink? They’re new. Let’s go”) tires and two very nervous, very ripped off Boy & Clink later, we were on the road again. A little worse for the wear with bruised egos (him, at having failed to change the tire himself) and nausea (me, at having had to urinate in such a facility as above), we finally made it back on the road and up to Boston without incident.

Only to spend the night in a haunted hotel room. But that’s a story for another time. I have a lot of job-related thinking to do.

Like magic. December 14, 2006

I felt like myself last night, for the first time in a long time. It was me, the real me, not some angsty, bitter, borderline depressed imposter, who sat across a table at a restaurant with an old friend, who watched Top Chef and flipped through magazines with my roommate, who laid in bed talking with the Boy until 2am.

I was laughing for real. In the midst of everything going wrong (financially, professionally and health-related), that constitutes a whole lot of progress in my book.

In other, semi-related, good news, yesterday I ran into a former co-worker on the way to work. We walked a few blocks together and, knowing that she’s a yoga teacher and a huge proponent of holistic medicine, I mentioned the pain in my lower back.

“You’ve been worried about money, haven’t you?” were the first words out of her mouth.

“Well…yeah. I mean, it’s almost Christmas and my rent doubled a few months ago. I think it’s safe to say that it has definitely been on my mind. A lot.”

“Clink, you need to acknowledge that you’re scared about money and then release the fear and the stress. Otherwise you’re going to be plagued by back problems. Your lower back is your support, and when you feel like you’re not supported financially, it tends to give out.”

Later on, I decided that, however hokey and new-agey it was, it couldn’t hurt to at least try what she recommended. So I acknowledged that yes, I’m worried about my finances and yes, I’m worried about losing my job and yes, working with a blade over my head for the past few months has caused me stress.

When the Boy asked me how my back was, later on in the evening, I realized I hadn’t even thought about it. Because it was no longer hurting. Sure, there was, and still is, a slight pull that hasn’t completely disappeared but I am no longer hobbling around, moaning at the pain caused by the slightest shift.

Coincidence, perhaps. But I chose to believe otherwise.

Looking California, feeling Minnesota December 13, 2006

I was in rare form last night.

I made a beeline for the Boy’s bed the minute I entered his apartment and didn’t move from it (except to go to the bathroom because I am drinking gallons of water y’all) until 9 o’clock this morning. Most of that time was spent moaning and groaning, and not in a good way. I felt like a seventy five year old who had just completed the New York City marathon, except with more aching muscles and less of a feeling of accomplishment.

I was a disaster, stripped down to my underwear and a ratty “[Redacted] University Freshman Orientation 1999!” tee-shirt (an extra small, as those were the gloriously naïve pre-freshman fifteen days). My hair stuck out in a mess of unflattering (and gravity-defying) directions and I somehow lost one of my beloved gold leaf earrings somewhere between Manhattan and Queens and was too lazy to take off the other one.

A mess.

The thing about my boyfriend is that he thinks that Mess Me is just the cutest, hottest thing ever. Which works out quite well, actually, as Mess Me has been making frequent appearances as of late.

As I moaned and groaned my way into an upright position for a trip to the bathroom, he looked me up and down and said, as if it were a simple fact and not wildly sensational bullshit, “You’re so sexy.”

I laughed. (And then grabbed my back because the simple act of laughing created the feeling of being stabbed with fifty swords by a sadistic, maniacal samurai.)

“No really, Clink. You look hot. You may be feeling Minnesota, but you look California.”

Which I thought was a genius statement until he told me it was a line from a song and while he’s a pretty smart fella, he’s not that clever and “omigod, you were like ELEVEN YEARS OLD when that song came out, no wonder it went over your head.”

Lots of props (and an authentic 90’s flannel shirt!) to whoever can guess which song from which band he paraphrased.

(But really? Isn’t my boyfriend awesome? He’s so awesome. He makes me feel sexy when I’m feeling seventy five years old and what more could I really ask from a significant other than that?)

Evil Kidney. December 12, 2006

In today’s edition of Why Life as a Freelancer Without Health Insurance Sucks, I think I have a kidney infection.

I’ll probably never know if I truly do have a kidney infection. I’ll probably just try and pass it off as “lower back pain! Happens to everyone! My grandma gets it all the time! Nothing to worry about!” until the pain goes away. And/or I die.

In addition to living a life without health insurance, I am also living a life without common sense. Despite the fact that I woke up in excruciating pain, despite the fact that just last night I could barely bend over far enough to shave my legs because OMIGOD OUCH WHAT THE FUCK, I decided to take a class at the gym this morning. Not just any class but the class that has me doing 32 squats with a ten pound barbell placed across my thighs, amongst other quite-stressful-to-the-back things.

My kidney? It was not happy. In fact, during the class, it was all “what the hell are you doing to me woman? This is not going to help. In fact, I’m going to make it almost impossible for you to walk the six blocks home from the gym after this shit is over because mwahahahaha I am an evil, pissed off kidney!”

Still operating under the delusion that I can pass this off as lower back pain, I’ve been sitting here at work with a heat wrap strapped around my waist. Unfortunately, the heat wrap is not emitting much heat. Also, when the back of my sweater rides up a bit, I look like I’m wearing granny panties. (Co-workers: I do not own granny panties. Seriously! You are all invited to my underwear drawer where you will find a beautiful, colorful, lacey assortment of thongs and boy shorts and NO GRANNY PANTIES WHATSOEVER.)

Because I’m crazy, I’m already thinking about what sexual positions will hurt the least tonight. Because HA I am going to SHOW THAT KIDNEY WHO’S BOSS! Also, again because I am crazy, I am about to drink copious amounts of red wine on the job during the office building’s holiday party. Because I am apparently full of bright ideas and also denial.

The good news is that apparently, according to the word on the street, you can live with just one kidney! So, since I can’t afford a doctor’s visit right now, if my kidney just decides to give up, rot and die, I’ll just rely on the other one. Awesome.

Update: After doing some research (read: scouring internet sites and talking to my uncle, the plastic surgeon and my co-worker’s friend, the kidney infection expert), this may just be lower back pain after all. I don’t have any of the other symptoms associated with a kidney infection (hope you’re not eating: nausea, vomiting, fever and/or cloudy/bloody urine). I’m going to monitor the pain for the next day or so. And if it still hasn’t disappeared then I will ask my parents for a doctor’s appointment for Christmas. Promise.

AC December 12, 2006

It has been decided. We’re spending New Year’s Eve in Atlantic City.

It’s all courtesy of my grandfather, a longtime high roller who was invited for a free two-night stay, New Year’s Eve gala dinner, New Year’s Day brunch and $2,200 in free chips from a casino that he frequents.

My grandmother has forbidden him to go. Bad for him, great for the Boy & me.

I’m looking forward to it more than anyone should reasonably look forward to a trip to Atlantic City. Sure, we’re going to be the youngest people there by approximately 30 years, but that just means I’ll be the most fabulously dressed twentysomething at the party (and also, the only twentysomething). I can live with that.

When we were originally throwing around ideas for New Year’s Eve (“Want to watch the ball drop from your roof?” “Dinner? At Dylan Prime?” “A party downtown?”), nothing felt right. It’s like when you’re dying for a chocolate chip cookie from Subway (don’t judge until you’ve tried) but you’re trying to be healthy so you eat some melon from the deli instead, only the melon doesn’t satisfy you at all so you end up at Subway, ordering 3 cookies and eating them all before you even make it back up to your apartment. Kind of like that.

When my grandfather passed us the hot pink and black invitation that you literally have to “unzip” to open (and after some slight awkwardness because, well, my grandfather had just handed us an invitation you have to “unzip”), the Boy and I looked at each other with wide eyes and just sort of started nodding in unison.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then?” My grandfather noted. He then read aloud from the invitation, loud enough for my grandmother in the next room to hear, “the invitee must register at the casino between the hours of 1pm and 4pm on Saturday, December 30th. Huh. LOOKS LIKE I’M GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A TRIP TO AC TO GET THE KIDS SITUATED!”

“Not a chance, Pete,” my grandmother shot back.

So, I know what I’m going to wear. I know what I’m going to pack. I know who I’m going to kiss at midnight. I know what I’m going to drink.

The only unknown is…what the hell am I going to do with $2,200 worth of chips?

Cramming. December 11, 2006

Balancing everything is just so fucking hard sometimes.

Yesterday was the first day I had off all week. So, I crammed. I crammed in time with the Boy (breakfast and the paper), I crammed in time for writing holiday cards (all 50 of ‘em), I crammed in a millisecond of relaxation (watching the Giants win - !!! - while writing out the cards), I crammed in time with my family (driving out to Jersey to have dinner with them), I crammed in time for my sanity (cleaning and organizing my bedroom, doing laundry).

By 10:30pm I was exhausted, asleep on the Boy’s shoulder as he watched New Orleans clobber Dallas. This morning, I laughed at my alarm when it went off at 7:45. The gym? Was not happening. Hell, showering was not happening.

A friend of mine, a former best friend who has sort of faded, over time and shift in priorities, into just a friend, emailed me. She attacked me for being self-centered and distant, uninterested in her life and removed from our circle of friends.

To that I say: no fucking shit.

No one seems to get just how much I work, or how hard. I am not claiming the title of World’s Busiest and Most Overworked Woman but, compared with my friends, I work much longer hours under much tighter deadlines. As a result, I have become a bit angry, depressed and unsociable which has, inevitably, led to me be self-centered, distant and uninterested in anything except for wine and bemoaning my existence.

I’ll come around, eventually. Either with a new job, a new perspective on life or a prescription for mood enhancers. It’s not fun being me right now and I’ve even resisted writing posts because who wants a heaping serving of WOE IS CLINK five times a week, without fail? I’m working at getting back to myself. I’m working at not being so resentful of how much time I put in here, in relation to how much time I have left to put into more important aspects of my life. I’m working on all of it. I’m not there yet.

And if that means that I’m a bit self-centered, a bit distant and a bit uninterested in the minutiae of anyone else’s life, so be it. I’m truly too exhausted to care.

Fingers Crossed. December 8, 2006

Friday isn’t really Friday when there’s work on Saturday. So while I’m excited for the weekend, I’m not excited. And that italic is really all the difference.

I’m also tired (not just tired), and that leads to overthinking and overanalyzing and overworrying and overeverything.

I’ve sense a slight shift between the Boy and me. Something that cannot be detected by the naked eye but, when put under a very tight microscope (like my overanalytical brain), reveals a distortion.

We’re us but we’re not us. It’s impossible to describe and, even if I attempted to put it into a string of coherent paragraphs, I would most likely come across as oversensitive at best and nonsensical at worst.

So I’m just putting it out there. If he breaks up with me tomorrow, next week, next month I can point to this post and say “see! Guys! I fucking predicted it! I knew something was wrong and even though I didn’t specify what was wrong, I knew something was wrong. See, I was right! And now I’m heartbroken. Please pass the Kleenex. And the tub of Ben and Jerry’s.”

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully it’s just me. The problem with me is that I can’t trust my gut instincts. They are unreliable because my gut instincts pass through my brain and my brain distorts everything, even gut instincts, transforming them into Worst Case Scenarios and therefore what I feel is actually the worst thing I could possibly imagine being passed off as a gut instinct.

Whew. Sorry. That probably only makes sense in my (very, very unreliable) head.

Hopefully things will seem familiar once I start my weekend, at 6pm tomorrow evening. For a day and some change maybe I will again feel like my bubbly, giddy, fun-loving self and if I feel like myself, maybe my relationship will feel like my relationship.

Fingers crossed.

What sucks about me. December 7, 2006

In the absence of anything interesting to write about (work sucks! I haven’t gotten any Christmas shopping done! I’m eating too much! I’m tired all the time!), I give you this. Because I refuse to neglect my blog, even if I have absolutely nothing to say.

So, my Libra-ness.

I am all of the above, especially absolutely fabulous. It’s eerie, actually. The Boy rolls his eyes every time I send him his horoscope along with a quick note about how “omigod, how ACCURATE IS IT! SCARY, BABY!” (or, at least, I imagine him rolling his eyes as I am not actually there when he opens the email). However, I buy into this shit. Possibly because I am gullible but mainly because anything that recognizes that I am charming, stylish and creative is clearly very legit in my book.

In general, I am proud to be a Libra. Though I doubt it’s a picnic for anyone close to us to deal with our chronic indecisiveness, luckily we compensate for it by being awesome. However, there is also a flip side:

I am also, sadly, all of the above. Especially:

Flighty: I will stop, mid-sentence, having completely forgotten my entire point. Often. Also, don’t ask me where any of my important documents are – I know I put them someplace very secure and also very easy to remember but now I have FORGOTTEN, AGAIN, and hey, have you seen my keys? I seem to have misplaced those too.

Sulky: Just ask the Boy. Lately, he has gotten a crash course in Clink Being Sulky 101.

Gullible: You know that trick, the ‘hey what’s that? HA! MADE YOU LOOK!’ trick? Yeah, I fall for that every time. Also, see the above reference to buying into astrology.

Impatient: I will let you know you are moving too slow on the sidewalk/taking too long to order at Starbucks/in general being a pain in the ass or a TOURIST DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON by huffing and puffing and rolling my eyes and tapping my foot and sending you my patent pending Evil Greek Glare.

Extravagant: Already, the Boy’s Christmas list is 15 items long. FIFTEEN. ITEMS. LONG. And one of those items is a $278 cashmere sweater from Thomas Pink.

Intolerant of criticism: Hear that, anonymous commenters? Love me or shut up.