sorry about the depressing entry. i partied it up and sort of had a drama-filled week but am not as depressed as i was a couple days ago. i do, however, have to work all weekend. i felt bad calling a first year into the office yesterday and asking him and another associate to look at, like, 20,000 pages of docs by monday. :/ i'm also super tired because after getting NO sleep on thursday i went out for A drink yesterday but then ended up closing out the bar even though i was, like, nauseous tired (but we danced, it was fun) and then woke up at 8 today and couldn't go back to sleep. grrr.
i am getting an 80-min deep tissue massage today with my sister, though. we are going to the torrance burke williams and i'm pretty excited. i am going to pass out on the massage table -- i haven't had one in, like, over a year, and i am always SO groggy and unable to think or process afterward because of all the toxins that come out. yay massage!
i have been in a funk today. it's been a while since i've felt really down, but we're coming up on some bad anniversaries -- this friday is the day last year that i was sitting in my office and got a call from my sister, saying "i'm with mom in the ER -- you have to come." the weeks (and months) that unfolded after that day were by far the most terrible i have ever experienced -- it's all one big nightmare that is both foggy and horrible but crystal clear.
i know that i should be (and am) grateful for the time that we've had this year -- the majority of people whose loved ones have pancreatic cancer do not even get this long, and hopefully we will still have more time. but coming on this time of year has had me thinking about how much our lives changed that day -- december 29, 2005. i've gone through a lot of stages and varying levels of depression/denial, but overall, on that day my life shifted into two modes: 1) trying to be strong and there for my mom, and making sure that i spend enough time with her, and 2) keeping super super busy to keep my head above water and keep from drowning in emotionality.
i mean, don't get me wrong, i think i've done pretty well this year -- certainly as best and as healthily as i could have. and it's not like the every moment of the year was miserable. and we definitely have taken advantage of all the family time we could. but it's been a long year -- i feel like i have aged so much.
i don't know. i know that passage of this friday doesn't really change anything. but i just want to get past it so i don't keep thinking about that stupid fucking date. i think after that there isn't another scary date until january 23. anyway. i don't have anything uplifting to end with. sorry.
brian gave ayumi a wii for christmas. i wasn't really sure what a wii was, but i went over tonight, and we made dinner and then played with the wii. it's fucking cool! we played bowling and tennis and boxing and baseball, and then played some monkey smashball. sooooo cool...
i'm tired. i haven't been sleeping very much. but, we had a nice christmas with the babies, and i've been drinking and hanging out and dancing and playing poker (doubled my $10 to $20.50 -- woohoo! since i can't play online poker anymore, this is what i've got). it was a nice holiday weekend.
i'm making yogurt leather now. my coworker gave me three more trays for fruit leather, so i got some peach, and strawberry, and strawberry-banana, and blueberry. mmm!
anyway. i'm very tired. i need to stop staying up so goddamn late. and on that note, i'm going to bed. bye! merry christmas!
i went to the grove yesterday after work. while i was waiting for //k to get there, i headed to banana republic. i bought a pair of pants and a shirt -- i was very excited about both, and they were on sale! then //k showed up, we got some food for her, we walked around a bit, we got a pretzel for me, we walked to the bookstore... and then i fucking realized that i wasn't carrying my banana republic bag with me anymore. i left it on a bench by the goddamn pretzel stand.
fuck! fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
i ran back to the bench, but, of course, it was already gone. FUCK. ARGH. UGH! DAMMIT!
i checked with lost and found. of course they were not there. some little punk got a banana republic windfall yesterday. i am so stupid. i need to not shop and walk around when i am so tired. :(
i don't know what happened to me this holiday season, but i didn't take care of anything. anything. i just... didn't. (so, if you're reading this, you should understand that if you get a holiday card, it will be very, very late.
tomorrow is the last day i can give something to my secretary, because she is taking friday off. i decided weeks ago to get her a $100 gift card to ticketmaster, because she LOVES concerts. goes to TONS of concerts. so, i looked on the ticketmaster website, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be just to go to a ticketmaster outlet and pick the gift card up. i couldn't do it monday, i couldn't do it last night, so i figured i would just swing by after work today and get one.
i looked up ticketmaster outlets, found a wherehouse off la cienega, and called to make sure that they have ticketmaster gift cards. they did. what time do they close? 10pm. no sweat, right?
i leave work around 6:45 and head out to ticketmaster. i'm driving up la cienega while on the phone, i'm stuck in traffic, i'm going really slowly, and i just keep not seeing centinela and not seeing centinela. i finally ask my friend about it and she helpfully points out that centinela is south of where i'm going. oh. how i didn't realize that when i was looking at google maps, i don't know. i turn around and go south. and go south. and go south. i call them. they are further south. turns out that the outlet i thought was kind of close to my home is sort of by the airport. whoops.
i finally get to the wherehouse. i ask for a gift card. "sure, no problem." oh wait, i meant a ticketmaster gift card. "oh, we don't have those." wait, what?! "we don't have those." but i called! "oh, hmm... maybe you should check back tomorrow." what? "you can probably get them here, but it would have to be through the ticketmaster system, and they close at 7." WHAT?!
ACH!!!! IT'S THE DAY BEFORE I HAVE TO GIVE MY SECRETARY A GIFT AND I DON'T HAVE ONE!!!! OH NO!!!!!
CRAP! CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP!
i'm going to have to take off in the middle of the day tomorrow to head to a different ticketmaster outlet and get her a gift card. then i will have to give her her gift late in the afternoon. classy. nice. oy.
at least i have some minor bonus points working in my favor because i organized the associate staff gift this year. every year we gather money from the associates and get something small for each of the staff people who work in our office (it's roughly a 1:2 ratio). we handed them out today because i, er, didn't remember it until friday, and it takes a little bit to organize. it's a little scary to me that, as a third year, i'm the institutional knowledge -- had i forgotten, it wouldn't have happened this year. after i sent an e-mail out about it, one of my coworkers said, yeah, i was wondering about that. i was like, uh, would have been nice if you said something! anyway. i and the first year who volunteered to help me (the only one of the six people i e-mailed -- very nice) walked around today and distributed them. that's always one of my favorite things to do in the office.
okay. that's enough boring holiday/work talk for you, i'm sure. for me, too.
happy holidays!
i am dehydrating fruit. my favorite are still the pears, but i wanted to try some new stuff so last week i tried yogurt leather. it's like fruit leather only it's dehydrated yogurt. i tried peach first, but forgot to coat the trays, so it stuck and was kind of plasticky (i think i over-dried it, too). but- still good. well, i liked it, and my coworker liked it, and ayumi liked it, but brian said that i removed all the good properties of yogurt and accentuated the bad. you can't win 'em all.
a few days later i tried strawberry yogurt leather -- i coated the trays and made it slightly thicker. it was delicious. then last night i tried asian pears. those are not, um, meant to be dehydrated. like watermelon. nasty. i knew it was a bad idea when i tried it, but i just felt like it needed to be done. and now i will never do it again.
that's all. fascinating, i know. yesterday i made kiwi and banana chips (along with the terrible asian pears), and tonight i've put in pears (regular ones), apples, mango, pineapple and strawberries (i LOVE that i have so many trays now -- i even have one left over that i'm not using!!). i'm sure that after this obsessive fruit-drying stint i will not touch the damn thing for months.
hmm... not much else is new. i have been hanging with the lesbians and drinking and bowling and doing various other things. i have switched real estate agents and am excited to start looking again this weekend. and i've been watching the babies, who are so damn cute.
okay. goodnight!