Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be

I'm engaged! *confetti*

A friend I've had since high school has always been unfailingly enthusiastic about his life. He's had more jobs than I can count and took far longer than normal to finish college, but he always threw himself 100% into whatever venture he was embarking upon. He would speak so convincingly about each and every new life path (each with its own 5-year plan) that despite the fact this life plan was different every 4 months, I believed him every single time that This Was It and it was going to be Awesome.

That sort of optimism is alien to me. I hold on to doubts and fears and when I look five years into the future for any given thing, I see a thousand paths of disaster lying in wait. I try to be optimistic that, well, my life's been pretty good so far, so the chance of a flash flood washing away all my belongings and ruining my newly painted apartment walls with mold is really quite slim; yet I still have that little voice going "yeah...but it could happen, so don't get too excited".

Being with The Boy is my greatest example of that. To be fair to my psyche, my tendency to doubt our future had concrete evidence (see: him breaking up with me for a month in 2010), but ever since we got back together things were wonderful. Amazing. Completely different than the previous five years. I could tell he was just as invested in our relationship as I was and I would tell myself that is was real, this was It, finally. I was 99% sure of us, and our 5-year (10-year, 80-year) plan. 99% is easy to round up to 100%, and it was easy to tell myself that the part of me that was holding on to the 1% possibility that something could go awry was just being silly and pragmatic, that I was only doubting because it'd be illogical not to. Because honestly, who's 100% sure of anything? Fools, that's who. Right?

But then it snowed.

The first snowfall of the season finally came, and The Boy was uncharacteristically eager about going downtown Naperville to walk around and look at the snow. It snowed, and with just the soft rustling of snowflakes filling my ears, he asked me if I wanted to marry him.

I unromantically asked him if he was sure, and his eager/terrified nodding persuaded me that he had, in fact, thought this through and he was, indeed, sure. We put a simple and beautiful ring on the fourth finger of my left hand, hugged really tight, and smiled like goons. While the world around us was freezing over and turning a beautiful and brilliant shade of white, the 1% left inside me melted away. And let me tell you, 100% is absolutely nothing like 99%.

Don't get me wrong, I know things could still go wrong. People change, life happens, and the possibility of Forever is not a guarantee. But right now, in this moment of time and this stage of our life, I'm 100% sure that this is what we both want, that we're 100% in this together, and 100% going to promise to try our best to make it happen.

Can Finally Rename The Bookmarks Folder From "Unmentionables" to "Marriage Stuff",
Cathi

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements

According to Blogger's wonderful ability to save drafts of entries the following are topics which have been on my mind but left abandoned due to lack of time or follow-through (in chronological order):

-Gunshots, more specifically how I heard them one night and did nothing about it, despite fancying myself to be the type of person who would call for help if she saw or heard something amiss.

-How much I truly resent having poor eyesight, illustrated by my blind, shuffling walk home from the hipster eye doctor one bright, sunny afternoon after my eyes were dilated.

-The appalling sexism evident in the re-opening of public examination of Chris Brown's assault of Rihanna after "S&M" was released, re: "Did you hear that song? She obviously liked being beaten up, Chris did nothing wrong, poor maligned thing!" (read as: raaaaaaaaaaaaage)

-Work ethic and a sense of responsibility, and how I have it, despite evidence that neither are requirements or even expectations at Erie St TGIF.

-My increasing itch to do better for myself when it comes to my employment because despite being happy in the moment, I'm quite frankly disappointed with how I think my job reflects upon me as a person.

-The great internal conflict I had to face when confronted with Alex's application for a job back in Kentucky, whether or not I was willing to uproot myself if he got the job and what it would say about me whichever way I chose.

-The sadness, ambivalence, and guilt that came along when my friend from high school, Kristen, passed away.

-City life, what I've learned, how I've changed, if I'm ready to leave.

This all, more or less, encompasses my last few months. My last day at Erie St. was Sunday which was almost disappointingly anticlimactic after eleven days of constant, busy shifts. I took a week off so I can slowly pack, and just enjoy my remaining time here on the Northside. Thus far I've been to the beach three times, slept in until I just felt like getting up, painted my nails, spent good time at good bars with some good friends I'm sad to be leaving behind, and less frivolously packed my dvds and books and swept up the living room. After the absolute nightmare that was my move into this apartment, I'm hoping to make the move out of it as pain free as possible.

Lots of Future Things are looming in my sights and tying my tummy up in knots, but I have faith things will settle down soon enough.

Born This Way

One of the biggest factors in my decision not to pursue even higher education is the fact that my least favorite part of educating myself was doing the research. No amount of scintillating class discussions, speech and debate trophies as tall as I am, or waived tuition  can convince me that I want to spend any more time on doing research; which is, you know, 100% of what you have to do to create theses or dissertations. I can read the hell out of anything you give me, and even draw my own conclusions when reading articles and studies in conjunction with each other but the process of tracking down information is to me what picking socks up off the floor and making the bed is to an 8 year old. I don't wanna, and you can't make me.

I just finished watching the documentary "Fat Head", comic/author Tom Naughton's response to Morgan Spurlock's "SuperSize Me". The premise is that he found SuperSize Me to be over-the-top and laughable, and set out to possibly prove Spurlock wrong. Naughton's tone the entire time was one of ironic superiority, causing me to wonder if Spurlock gave Naughton a swirlie during an intermission at Sundance in the past, though I did find myself liking Naughton and the cut of his jib. I also recall enjoying SuperSize Me and liking Morgan Spurlock as well. Troubling. Now I (as well as most people, I would hope) approach media of all sorts, especially documentaries, with a healthy dose of skepticism. I'm not as stupid or gullible as advertisers and promoters wish we all were. Fat Head made a lot of questionable claims, but it's difficult to argue with Naughton's main conclusion: this is a free country and people are different. They make different choices, they have different values, and they have different preferences (though he does deliver this with a meaningful glance over his glasses after accusing I, the watcher, of choosing to sit on a couch eating Rice Crispy Treats instead of taking up volleyball).

All in all, I've drawn the shocking and controversial conclusion that Eating is Tricky and Bodies are Weird. Last year when I was doing my personal training and struggling with a high protein, low carb diet I lost around seven pounds (the goal was fifteen), lowered my body fat percentage, and was pleased with how flat my stomach looked. Unwilling to keep up all that hard work, I reverted back to my old habits with a vengeance and as predicted by statistics gained the weight back and watched my tummy flub return. Thanks to the fancy scale Seester got me for Christmas last year I am in possession of the knowledge that today, I am ten pounds lighter than I was two months ago and a full three pounds lighter than I was when I was doing with three months of intense (for me) diet and exercise last year.

I certainly didn't do it on purpose. Armed with the basic knowledge that in order to get less flabby I'd have to eat better and exercise more I settled instead for trying to love my body the way it was. My kitchen manager tried to fight me about the fact that I had lost weight when, after he admiringly asked if I had, I responded that I didn't know, I hadn't been trying. He insisted that I must have changed something (drinking less? stopped eating at night?), so I suggested it was because I stopped eating Friday's food since we weren't allowed to hang out at the bar anymore. He looked a bit wounded. He IS in charge of that food, after all. Alls I know is that I eat a lot of fried and carbohydrate'd crap, usually in one large sitting before I go to work, drink more beer than I probably should, and avoid anything that resembles exercise like it'll give me cancer on the spot. How I've lost weight is beyond me.

What bugs me, and what was highlighted after watching Fat Head, is that I will probably never know what it is that has caused my body to become slightly healthier. It clearly varies from person to person, and diet, exercise, and health are all extremely relative. This means that in order to figure out what my ideal mixture is I will have to do, you guessed it, research--all KINDS of research, since there is literally an opinion backed by a study or PhD or MD to support every single version of diet (or lack thereof), exercise (or lack thereof), and standard of health. I am way, way too lazy to bother with that nonsense.

Seid bereit, immer bereit

I often mention my uneasy relationship with emotions. As I continue to grow, experience, and change, I'm learning more about my relationship with my feelings and, um, my feelings about my feelings. I've learned that as a human being I deserve to experience the highs and the lows that come with life, and I'm learning to take ownership of whims both sad and joyful that can't be explained away by logic or circumstance

I read a blog entry fairly recently, and when describing her process of coming to terms with a life event the woman writing the post said "I wasn't ready, and then I was." I've had this tucked away in my head ever since I read it because it was at the same time succinct and profound, and it applies to anything that is scaring you (erm, me) about the future. It gave me permission to not be ready for some things, and it made me feel better about being 25 years old and not having achieved what I've internalized as a standard of success. I know that eventually, I will be ready. That moment just hasn't happened yet for some things.

I had a moment a couple days ago, though. It was a combination of things that had happened throughout the day which culminated in one quiet moment in my car where I actually exclaimed out loud "Oh my God, I think I'm ready." I immediately doubted myself because I'm not really a believer in Lightning Bolt From Heaven moments and this revelation would certainly qualify. Because I walk a careful line between psychosis and rationality I rigorously interrogated myself as I made my way to my destination, saying some things out loud to see how the words tasted in my mouth and how they felt coming back into my ears. I was skeptical of the fact that everything felt right and wonderful when verbalizing my revelation, so I've given myself a couple weeks to see if it sticks.

It's been a few days and neither nausea nor cold sweats have appeared but, other than this none-too-subtle blog entry (I often over-estimate my cleverness and under-estimate your, Blog Reader's, powers of inference), I'm sticking to my two-week gag order. I need time to construct lists and say things out loud a few more times to rationalize an unanticipated aligning of my internal clockwork. In the meantime, I'm stepping up my search for one-bedroom apartments back in my home 'hood and beginning a countdown to my first day back at The 'Brook TGIF.

Found myself today singing out your name

One thing that was often lacking in Blog.1 (This being Blog.2, you see) was, in a word, transparency. I tended to wait to write entries until I felt I had something more significant than "some fat lady was all up in my grill on the bus and I was wigging out about it, so I tried to imagine that her stupid butt that was bumping into my shoulder was just a pillow, a nice, soft pillow, which worked great until she finally moved and I realized I'd been crop dusted." After telling this story and being rewarded with uproarious laughter (instead of the polite chuckles I usually get after botching a story) I've decided that maybe my everyday life might be worth sharing.

Another stumbling block when it comes to my ruminating about the thoughts tumbling around my head is the fact that I am blessed with many relationships and therefore my daily ruminations often center around the people in my life. Since the dawn of my blogging years, yes, even back in the self-centered days of my freshmen year in high school I was intimately aware of the fact that the words I was producing were going out into a public realm far more vast than I could possibly anticipate. Strangers might deduce my location and kidnap me after school! People who wished to do me social ill in the hallways might read this! I was giving the link to all of my friends, so they'd definitely read all the salacious details about them that I'd penned. MY MOM MIGHT READ THIS. As I've matured a bit, the concern that my employers could access this has occasionally crossed my mind.

So despite being an angst-ridden teenager, I still knew that I had a responsibility to protect not only myself, but also the people in my life from the ills of the Internet. This transformed from the fear driven into me by Oprah and the Naperville Police Department from "being abducted by creepy men in trenchcoats" to "I really shouldn't talk about my friends' and family's lives without their permission". This manifested itself most keenly when it came to the relationship I've been in for the last five years. A large part of it was my fear that if I spewed sappy/wobbly word-vomit out into the universe that if/when he decided he wanted out of the relationship everyone would know what a fool I'd been, but part of it was also wanting to respect his emotional privacy by keeping things like "he threatened to kill half a dozen people today when we were stuck in traffic, and I nearly believed him" to myself. I've held firm to the belief that by protecting and censoring my own thoughts, opinions, and ruminations about the actions of people I love, or my feelings about the state of things that I was protecting them. Really, I was just shielding myself from disappointment.


Those days are over, my friends. Not that I'm going to begin revealing secrets my loved ones have trusted to me, but the simple fact is my life IS the people around me. Without my family, The Boy, Poncho and Boy-Poncho, and the less-frequent though equally important friends who bless me with their presence I would have very little to talk about.


Unless you care to hear about my frustrations with LOST, in which case I have lots to talk about.

Check my vital signs

Know I'm still alive, and I walk alone.

I make a lot of noise in this here weblog noting how a) I'm a notorious robot, b) sometimes that's not true, and c) marvel at how well/poorly I'm handling human emotions. I've gotten sick of it, so I'm sure that you have too, Interested Party.

So let's get this straight: Clearly, I'm not really a robot. If anything, I'm a robot impostor. I look at my even-keel and calm waters and ascribe it to Roboticism because that sounds a lot cooler being being boring and/or apathetic. As I'm maturing and experiencing a wider variety of things I'm consequently encountering emotions further out on the spectrum than usual. This really shouldn't be so baffling or fascinating to me. I think I just like to make a big deal out of the "Cathi's having an emotion!" event because, due to a lack of practice in dealing with them, I think it makes a good preemptive excuse in the likely event that I don't handle myself well.

Right now I'm experiencing a depth of emotion that, at this point in time, I don't recall ever feeling before. Even looking back on my teenage angst I'm not convinced I was ever quite this sad. It's an overwhelming sort of thing where I can still feel its tingling undercurrent below whatever activity I've immersed myself in. The BFF informed me that it's going to be an uphill battle that will oftentimes be taking it breath by shuddering breath, rather than day by day. I'm lucky in that I have some major life changes coming up that will help distract me and provide activities to occupy my mind, but I know that this is still going to be very, very difficult.

I miss him already. I'm heartbroken. I don't know how well I'm going to handle this pervasive sadness. I do know, however, that I've got it in me to be okay. So far, I've avoided crying in public which in my book is a small victory. Seester and the BFF have been beyond kind to me in the last day or so, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

Letting go of hopes,
Cathi

Know Your Name and Go Your Own Way

If you're shocked, it's just the fault of faulty manufacturing

Lately I've been feeling a vague tug somewhere around my heart/lung area, which I'm attributing to a sense of Wanderlust, and not, say, the plague. Between my 3-ish jobs I'm working more than full-time and getting less than satisfactory sleep, but I've got this nagging feeling that I'm not doing much. My life consists of my path beween NCC, the condo, Friday's, and the radio station. Every so often I'll drive the other way on 55 and spend a few hours staring at The Boy, or mosey a couple miles to the west to see my dad, but all in all I'm on a very narrow wheelbarrow path.

I want to get out and experience life outside of my Naperbubble. I want to move away. Just get up and go. Start my grown-up life in a place where I'll be forced to make new friends, learn new roads, adjust to a new climate, shop at a new grocery store, find new parks to walk in and movie theaters to frequent and bars to loiter in. I want a new view out my window where, for a while, every day feels strange and fresh, and perhaps even a bit lonely. I'm getting clasutrophobic surrounded by all this familiarity.

In the meantime, I'm making a pledge to myself to simply experience life. I'm going to read the newspaper and actually figure out, as best as I can, what's happening to our economy outside the scope of dwindling restaurant business and lackluster tips. I'm going to start conversations with people who are passionate about this election, one way or the other, and find out what makes us tick. Come election day, I want to be in a crowded room with other people delirious with hope, so we can be lifted up or crushed together. I'm going to take more walks where the air actually moves around me and the temperature changes from shadow to sun instead of sitting in my climate controlled hive watching crime dramas. I'm going to laugh more, think more, and attempt to feel more, so that when I do feel a minor twinge of emotion it's because it's something genuine and true, and not just a random misfiring of my robot heart.

Who wants to come with me?
Thrine

Congratulations, Class of 2008

I've got a plan: we walk out the door

Despite being rather insistant than I'd rather be shot in the face than have to sit through graduation, I realized tonight that missing it is robbing me of something I've overlooked: the goodbyes.

While sitting in the June sun, watching 500 people I don't know walk up and shake a drunk collge president's hand while wearing the most absurd clothing known to modern man is clearly not a situation I'd gladly sign myself up for, I'd forgotten that the formal ceremony would be not only my last chance to see some people who were a big part of the latest chapter of my life, but also an excuse to let myself cry a little.

I'm not the sentimental type, not really, but it struck me rather hard tonight that I will probably never see some of my college acquaintences and friends ever again. I went to the bar, as per usual on a Thursday night, with the usual crowd, but when I left, I knew it was for the last time, for real.

I will miss college and I will miss the people who I now realize I took for granted. My buddy Nicky D, who somehow always managed to earn the title of "friend" despite the fact that we only really hung out a handful of times during the last four years. The wily Bug, whose molestations weren't necessarily welcome, but always made me feel included. Monk, who was always around, always friendly, and always hilarious. Even Paige, who I never particularly liked due to one of my first encounters with her, but was a part of my life nevertheless. These are people who made up the landscape of my college experience, who I will not necessarily attempt to stay in contact with, and will assumedly never see again except for the odd reunion-esque get together.

There were no false promises of staying in touch. I told Nick it was a pleasue mostly being friends, gave some hugs, and waved rather casually, and that was that. We're all going on to a wide variety of things, all of which can be deemed "the real world". We will get jobs, have families or new groups of friends who seem like a family, get old, break hips, and eventually die. For most of the people I knew at NCC, all of this will happen without my notice and right now, not being afforded a formal, official goodbye, is weighing rather heavily on my heart.

The end of an era is scariest, I think, when you see it coming.

And so, my friends at NCC, I will miss you. Thank you for being a part of the last 3 years of my life. Thank you for making me feel like I belonged. Thank you for laughing with me, gossiping with me, and learning alongside me. I wish you the best, really.

Class of 2008,
Catherine

ramblebramble

Haven't you heard that I'm the new cancer?
Never looked better, and you can't stand it.

At times I find it impossible to understand why people do the things they do, and at others I find I understand them perfectly.

All rants begin with an observation. "Haven't you noticed?" Every conversation we have is based upon universal connections. We have a mutual understanding of human nature, of love or tragedy, of frustration or simple joys. I understand as well that these words, spit out from frantic fingertips in a fishbowl, have no effect on you, the reader whom I cater to whether or not you actually exist unless you have a general idea of what I'm trying to convey.

Today the theme is connection. Or not. Perhaps the theme is chaos, but letting you in on that secret would ruin the impact of the confusion that would set in halfway through this entry when I begin to ramble about meanacing squirrels and Cubs wins (an irrational number). I think I'm just going a little crazy, but honestly, who isn't? I guess we could hope that the Germans remain sane at all times. Look out, Austria.

Yep, looks like chaos is on the ticket. Isn't it facinating how so many random things result in the sum of our lives? Playing the "what if" game can be fun, at times. What if Linda had been aborted due to a tumor that posed as a dead baby? What if I concentrated on school more? What if I never applied to work at Dairy Queen? What if I never joined speech team? So many questions, never any right answers.

I'm hungry. Taco Bell will fix this in the short term, but I think I'll need an adrenaline shot to the heart of "work ethic" to fix it for long term. I have a lot of dreams, Berlin, radio, Chicago, family, travel, concerts, but it will be very difficult for these things to come to pass if I never buckle down and do a homework assignment or two.

Ramble ramble. Three cookies to whomever made sense of this. Let me know, so I can actually bake the cookies, or at least buy them in convenient Keebler form with the money I peddle from upper middle class tools.

Panic! At the Cathi,
'Thrine.