helikedmyshoes

Even though it's now 2010, I know I'm going to write '09 for the next month. I am slow on the uptake sometimes.

So. New Year. New Decade. Lots of newness all around. I've been thinking about my end of the year post for the last few days and it finally came to me at work today.

I don't really have anything flowery to say about this year. It was a year. There were good times and bad. Mostly nothing changed. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Probably a little of both.

But since I'm older now, and can actually think in terms of decades, that's what I'm going to do. Things That Have Happened To Me in the Last Decade.

Ready?

+ graduated high school
+ graduated college
+ took my first vacations without my parents
+ lived in, and traveled through, Europe
+ moved across the country all by myself
+ lived in LA for a year
+ moved halfway back across the country
+ made amazing friends in college whom I love and adore
+ fell in love
+ paid my own bills
+ lived by myself in my own apartment with my own things
+ got a tattoo
+ started poledancing!
+ grew the fuck up

I've learned so much about myself. There are things that I love and things that I hate and I'm trying to balance them in my personality. I think everything in my life comes back to balance. I am constantly striving for it in my life. It's a work in progress.

I don't really believe in resolutions. Well that's not entirely true: I don't believe in tangible resolutions. I don't buy the "I'm going to go to the gym 3 times a week!" and "I'm going to stop eating so badly" etc resolutions. I do, however, believe in more - spiritual? I guess that's as good a work as I'll find - spiritual resolutions. I made one once to slow down, my thoughts, my motions, everything. I carried that with me, and I still carry it to this day. I have to step back, take a breath, and let the moment wash over me for a minute. It's hard because I am always so go go go, but it's something that I am conscious of and am trying to work on changing.

This past year, I think it was grace. I have such a hard time with grace. Graceful, gracious. It's not something I'm good at, but I'm trying. My uncle said last year his was clarity. I like that, though I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it means. Maybe being able to look at things objectively? Taking a step back and surveying before plunging in? I'll get back to you, I guess.

So. I'm kinda disappointed with this post, in my head it was much more eloquent. I blame fatigue. I guess I just wanted something to commemorate this day, this year, this decade. This year...close friends started getting married. This is a trend that picks up steam next year. / I was severely anemic and had to get a blood transfusion. / I got my heart broken a few times. / I started poledancing, fulfilling a dream I've had since I was a little girl (yep I'm weird, whatever) and getting a chance to morph my years of dance training into something that is really me. / I'm still lost and it's still okay. / I made it over the hill of my early twenties and landed on the plateau that is 26. I feel like there are decisions that have to be made somewhere off the horizon, but I'm not there yet so I'm not going to worry about them. At least not tonight.

I don't know what tomorrow brings, let alone this coming year, especially not this coming decade. All I know is tonight, I'm in a good place, in my heart and in my mind.

I guess that's all anyone can really ask for: being okay in this moment.

Grace. Clarity.

My feet smell like feet.

+

drove up to hillside manor
sometime after 2am
and talked a little while about the year
i guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower
makes you talk a little lower
about the things you could not show her

it's been alongdecember and there's reasontobelieve
maybe this year will. be. better. than. the last.

Just put my (fake) Christmas tree up. I hardly decorated last year and it was sad, so I stole Adam's fake tree cuz Ted likes to get a real one. It's big, and awesome, and I have colorful decorations and it is going to look awesome when it's done. Alas, I need more lights, so I can't put the bulbs on until I can hit Target again.

Here's hoping the cats don't destroy it.

The best part of my tree is that I have Yoda at the top as my guardian angel!! Oh yes. He even has a light saber that lights up. I win at Christmas.

I bought Tori's Christmas album, Midwinter Graces, but haven't given it a listen yet. Except for Pink and Glitter, which rules. I saw 2012 on Monday and it was AWESOME. I love disaster movies. I also bought Star Trek on blu ray because it is also awesome. I had some nice days off, doing some thinking. My head is a weird place right now.

Almost time to head to the doc to find out what we do about my fibroids. Cross your fingers that that's all it is!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and all that jazz!

I hope you are all surrounded by love and joy and peace on this day. And family. Mine is in another time zone today, but I am spending the holiday the family I have made here and I'm happy and healthy and I made a kick ass lasagna. The sun is shining and everything is merry and bright. As long as I don't listen to Tori's version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, I'll be okay. That song makes me cry when I listen to it, whether it's at Christmas or in the middle of the summer.

Love to you all!

The entire right side of my chest from throat to beneath my ribcage is KILLING ME, every time I inhale and exhale it feels like someone is shoving a knife in and splitting me open. It almost feels as though something is lodged in it, like when you get a hard candy stuck in the back of your throat. I have no health insurance - I can't go to the doctor. This has never happened before, I have no idea what could be causing it. I was crying when Adam woke up, out of pain and exhaustion and frustration.

The pain woke me up at around 5:30, after I'd fallen asleep at 4 following a night at work that got progressively worse as it unfolded, climaxing rather spectacularly with two of my three tables not leaving me a penny and a girl getting hit by a car outside the club. And now I can't breathe, and I am supposed to go in to the new bar I hope to start working in today at 4 to work the Rose Bowl game. I am running on an hour and a half of sleep, can't breathe, and am going to have words with my boss later today about what happened last night.

Happy effin New Year.

(I really hope it gets better from here.)

As for 2006, I will first do what I do every year and quote Tori:

they say you were something in those formative years
hold onto nothing as fast as you can!-

well.
still.
pretty good year.

2006 had a lot of heights and a lot of lows that balanced each other out pretty perfectly. There was my nightmarish 2 job no sleep no happiness months which led to lots of vacations and seeing the people I love as mch as I could. There was LA that taught me so much, including that it's okay to change your mind and that changing your mind doesn't mean giving up, which led to Chicago and being 23 which is older than 22 but makes me feel younger and freer. There was work work work for nine months straight, six of those nine working 80 hours a week, which led to not working at all for three months straight and feeling younger and freer.

That's how I would catalog 2006 - the year of balance, of misery and happiness, of figuring out how to be an adult and a kid at the same time, of standing up for myself and saying "this is what I'm doing now and I don't care if you don't like it." I started out living this year for other people and ended it living for me, on my own terms, and I am very proud of myself. I feel older and wiser and a little more peaceful.

There really is something about misery that motivates me, and the levels I can endure go deeper than what my love life has put me through, in a different way; a place where there's not just one person to blame, which makes it a place that I can claw my way out of by making changes and not having to rely on someone else to decide the fate of my world. I think that is a very important lesson - there are things in the world bigger than love. That's one of the most important things LA taught me: things that can hurt me don't always involve the boys I love. My view can get awfully narrow sometimes, and I am thankful for this new persepctive.

2006 was a good year despite, or maybe because of, all that. But that's the way it goes, isn't it? You can't truly appreciate something until you've been without it.

I will never regret moving to LA and am thankful for all it taught me. But man. It's good to be out.

So long, 2006. And thanks for all the fish.

The apartment, that is. We went to IKEA on Monday and spent almost three hours picking out furniture. We ended up with a TV stand, two end tables, a coffee table, a chair and an ottoman, a desk, a table that gets bolted to the wall and can be put down to make extra room, a stool, some posters, two large pillows, a bunch of candles, and a couple other odds and ends.

We assembled all night and then spent yesterday and today rearranging, reorganizing and cleaning the place from top to bottom. It looks GREAT. It's a totally different apartment! I actually want to spend time in here! We moved Adam's large desk and book shelf into Peter's room and now have ourselves a study and a hell of a lot more room in the bedroom. Everything is organized and put away now, and we got holiday decorations today that we have to put up. Lights, garland, stockings, Christmas ornaments...now we just need a tree!

I will take pictures, probably tomorrow in the light.

We went out last night and I got TRASHED. Well, I got trashed at Anna's (too much vodka!) and then we went out and I don't really remember being at the bar, just having Anna get me a cab home and then having the cab driver hit on me and try to hold my hand and say we should hang out. CREEPED ME OUT!!! I had him let me out about 5 blocks from the apartment, I couldn't stay in that cab with him! He kept saying I didn't have to pay but I threw $10 at him and got out real quick. I vaguely remember texting Adam and Anna as I stumbled home, telling them about it. Took me three blocks just to make sure all the spelling was correct. I got home, pulled out the futon in the living room because there was crap on the bed, and fell asleep with the TV on. Adam came home later and made sure I was okay, I was still so out of it! I perked up when he hooked up my computer to the TV, though...porn on the big screen is AWESOME. Especially when it's starring the one and only Jenna Jameson. Y'know how I roll.

I had another meeting at work today. The opening has been pushed back a week as the place isn't close to being done. Over the past few days I've been really super nervous about the job, I even had a nightmare about it the other day! But this morning I woke up and felt good, felt excited about it. I think it was actually admitting it to someone, I told Anna how I was feeling scared and as soon as I did I felt better. We all introduced ourselves, even though most everyone already knows each other, and I think that helped even more. Hopefully this is going to work out!!

Speaking of nightmares, I had one the other night that I was still in LA and this whole time in Chicago had been a dream! Or I ended up back in LA, somehow, it was fuzzy, but I remember thinking that Adam was going to be mad because I was going to make him come out and get me again. I was freaking out until I woke up and realized it was all just a horrible dream. Yuck.

I'm going home in three and a half weeks!! It's so weird, I haven't been there in almost 6 months...the last time I saw my sister was last January!!! I'm ready, it'll be great to go back and see everyone, spend time with the fam, see what new things my parents have done to the house in my absense. When I left, they turned my room into a closet. When my sister left, they turned hers into a Japanese-style meditation room. wtf?

I have so many dishes to do, it's unreal.