STAR CHART

While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn’t want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, “Does the sun rise in the north?”
When another person jumped in and explained that the sun rises in the east (and has for some time), she shook her head and said, “Oh, I don’t keep up with that stuff.”

So my colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria when we overheard one of the admin assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the shore. She drove down in a convertible, but “didn’t think she’d get sunburned because the car was moving.”

I was hanging out with a conservative friend of mine when we saw a woman walk by us with a nose ring attached to an earring by a chain. My friend said, “Wouldn’t the chain rip out every time she turned her head?” I had to explain to her that a person’s nose and ear remain the same distance apart no matter which way the head is turned.

I couldn’t find my luggage at the airport baggage area. So I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because they were trained professionals and I was in good hands. “Now,” she asked me, “has your plane arrived yet?”

After a meal at a nice restaurant, an Induhvidual, rubbing his stomach, said, “I don’t know about you guys but I’m flabbergasted.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of black sheep in my closet.”

“Call me back at your least convenience.”

“I’ve been running around like a chicken with my legs cut off.”

“Like water through a duck’s ass.”

“Knock it off before I beat you with a dead horse!!!”

“I’ve just got my feet in too many pies right now.”

“You can argue until your eyeteeth turn blue in the face.”

“I swear on my dog’s breakfast!”

“This library attracts deaf patrons like a siren’s song!”

“Don’t bite the mouth that feeds you.”

“I keep telling you these things, but you keep turning a blind cheek to it.”

“I hope I haven’t used a sledgehammer to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.”

“She was born with a silver spoon up her ass.”

“I beat it like a red-headed mule!!”

I need a vacation so badly. I hope I get to be anywhere near the sea…I don’t care if all I can do is smell it. Dude, I need some seafood. That’s kind of like smelling the sea…

My schedule is much the same next week as this. Sunday through Thursday, morning to five or six. I’m glad of that for a change…maybe I’ll get to be on a human sleep schedule by the time we’re on vacation…that would be handy. So why am I propped up at the computer at 2:15 a.m.? Because it’s my only alone time…

I really really enjoyed work today. I got to learn how to do all this stuff I’d never done before, and it was really fun. I love learning new stuff. Yay.

Mmmm…Rachael brought in some jicama…I’d had some before at parties when they had it mixed in on the vegetable tray. (If you don’t know what it is, it’s a root vegetable with the texture of water chestnuts, and a very mildly sweet flavor.) She was cutting it into pieces and told me to try it the way she has it…you squeeze a lime on the pieces and dip them in sugar. Oh my GOD. *drool* I was in heaven. It tasted just like a mojito! *drool*drool*drool* I can’t wait to buy some lime and jicama so I can have a whole bunch!!!

I really need to be off to bed. I don’t have to be to work until 10 tomorrow…eleven the next day. Friday and Saturday are free! Well for the most part…except for all of the responsibilities of life…like grocery shopping, planning menus, making food, cleaning house, doing laundry… blechh! But I don’t mind so much. I feel really energetic today.

I was thinking about the people at work…I’ve really been stressing about making friends lately. There are some people I just haven’t clicked with yet, but I really like them and want to click, and I just don’t…or haven’t yet.

Then I was thinking about Alli, who is a totally sweet girl at work I’ve been getting close to…I noticed that now I’m finally feeling close to someone at work…I’m getting nervous and wanting to “hide”. Yet focus on making more friends instead…I was talking to Naomi tonight and was all excited about making another new friend…and then I thought about my dear Aquarius and I’ve been best friends with her forever and we rarely do anything together.

I seem to be suffering from a feeling of friendship scarcity, and simultaneously, fear of intimacy. As if I’m too afraid to get close to the friends I already have, and feel lonely because of it, so I think that making more and more friends will somehow fill that lack. If I spread myself thinly, no one will get to know me *too* well…as if I’m afraid of someone finding out the “truth” about me, whatever that is, and not want to be my friend anymore.

Fear of rejection and abandonment is understandable after the whole JW debacle last year, but this has been an ongoing problem for me. I just never noticed before because I already knew so many people…it was easy to be spread thin so I wasn’t really lonely, except for romantically. Now that I don’t know very many people, it’s really staring to be noticable to me.

I don’t have a solution or anything right now, just wanted to air it out there. Hmmm. How to maintain friends…never been my strong point. I’m afraid of intimacy because…

I spent a lot of years as a kid without friends. I had a best friend in my grade school years, Kathy, who was three years older than me. We were friends through the church…my school friends were mean to me and I wasn’t really allowed to spend time with them apart from school too much anyway…I had neighbor friends that I would play with after school, actually.

But when I hit my teen years, my parents didn’t let me hang out with non-JW kids anymore, because of fear of me succombing to peer pressure, my best friend Kathy had stopped hanging out with me once she hit 13 and I was only 10…so I didn’t really have any close friends between the ages of 10 and 14. I was never very good at picking friends either…my whole life, all my friends were the sort who liked hanging out with me because they could boss me around and pick on me and take things out on me because I would never complain about anything or stand up for myself in any way. So I always attracted sadistic kids…I think my first really good close friend was … Tammy. Amy, too. They kind of came along at the same time. That was when I was 20.

I spent a lot of time with each of them before I felt comfortable enough to trust either of them, though. And the nature of being a JW forces you to spend time with people, so that kind of facilitated things. It facilitates things at work, too.

I just need to be more patient with myself. Remember that it takes a long time for me to really feel comfortable enough around someone to feel close to them.

We’re going to watch Words and Music tomorrow night. Dammit. I forgot to buy tickets. Maybe Dan will read this tomorrow and get them while I’m at work? I’m sorry sweetie!

Anyway, Words and Music is the local singer/songwriters all performing together. They do so every six months, and when we went in the Spring, we were astounded at their awesomeness. So I’m really excited about going. Yay!

I need to go to bed. Last night I was really tired, and actually went to bed before Dan! Which is saying a lot, because usually I like to stay up later so I can meditate. But I couldn’t wait…I crashed at 11:30 and fell asleep almost immediately…and slept until 12:30 the next day. Wow…thirteen hours! And I am very proud to say that I finally don’t have a sore throat today. Yay!

Has every paragraph ended with yay?

I’m so looking forward to Dan’s four day business trip…I’d better not have to work all of those days!! I just really want that feeling of no responsibilities…I worry too much when he’s around. I don’t know how to stop myself. I’m working on it, but it’s a slow process. Anyway, I’m going to eat oysters. Oyster stew. And watch movies all day and ignore the house and let it get messy. (Sheesh…as if I haven’t been doing that already!)

I’m being unfair to myself though. Whether or not I let the house get messy isn’t the point. The point is whether I worry about it. If I’m not seeking to impress or please anyone, then I won’t have to worry about it. Unless I don’t have a chance to clean it up before he gets back…in which case I’ll feel miserable about it. Bleh..I don’t want to worry about that before it happens though! I just want to stay inside and not talk to anybody … just read and watch movies and eat. Be noisy in the middle of the night. Yay. It’s not for a month and a half though…

I just can’t shake this general feeling of ickiness. I really feel like I need a vacation. I can’t wait to get out of town…oooh…what if I got to see the sea?? *ache* If there were a group of people with me, I would have to go off by myself so I could feel the connection.

Her friends seem really nice…this one guy, Josh, was AWESOME. We clicked, like, almost immediately. It rocked. (I think he’s an ENFP…most of the others there seemed to be NFs or NTs.) He was super nice and funny…it was cool because I didn’t really feel left out of any conversation; they all made an effort to include me and even explained inside jokes and the like. They were really cool people. Awesome. Yeah…. I just felt really awesome and happy and glowy when I left. And we were all united in our dislike of the band TOOL. Ha! They don’t like Pink Floyd though.

It’s hard to wind down after that. I have a funny feeling inside, too. I don’t know what it is…I can’t figure it out. It’s like, every once in a while, I suddenly feel this sharp aching feeling in my heart. (Emotional ache, not physical) Like, a really sharp pang of loss or sorrow or grief or something. I can’t figure out what it’s coming from or why it keeps … doing that. I don’t know. It’s weird. It happens really suddenly, and it goes away before I can collect myself enough to figure its source. I’m just sort of confused about that. Hum.