I tried to write something yesterday but I was just too busy. I feel busy for no reason at all right now. Well, I do start the new job next week, which transition process has become extraordinarily complicated considering that I’m really just moving down the hall. But still. I spent the weekend generally vegging out and feeling some sun guilt…it was beautiful and sunny and I mentioned this to friend on Sunday and he told me that it’s because the Puget Sound is headed for another drought and we’d better hope it rains a lot this spring or it’s going to be very bad for everyone. Hmm.
Anyway, the last couple of days have been comprised of sitting around, reading, driving around, shopping for things I sort of needed, neglecting to shop for things I really needed, sitting around some more, going to friends’ houses, getting really excited that Carl’s reality show finally aired on the Discovery Channel and then somehow not understanding the concept of time zones and therefore missing it because I didn’t understand what time it was going to be on, doing eight thousand dishes, not vacuuming, and bellydancing. I’m going to be dancing at MedFest again this summer, if none of the remaining four weddings remaining out of my Summer of Five interfere.
This class, with my beloved and soon-to-be-moving-to-LA teacher Ruby, is as hysterical as it usually is with her. It’s an hour and a half class and it’s twenty minutes of Pilates and yoga, about forty minutes of learning the choreography, and then eight hundred hours of discussions about whether we should have the arm at waist level or at hip level, and whether, when we stamp our feet, should we really stamp or just stamp a little? And when we turn, do we go right-left-right or right-left-pause-left? And how far should we open our arms when we turn around? And which way do our necks go when we turn? And on and on and on. Ruby is very serious about this sort of thing and so every interruptions (“Ruby, where’s my hip supposed to be?”) is met with much consideration. It drives me ever so slightly crazy. I think it’s a good class anyway though so it works out fine.
I leave for France in a month. I have bought many many items for this trip and need to buy only a couple more before I go, I think. This is good because I am feeling pretty broke before my raise goes into effect, not the least because next week it’s not going to be cool to come to work in jeans anymore so I am having to venture most trepidatiously in to the world of business casual and let me tell you, it’s not pretty. Pants never fit me and I look ridiculous in collared shirts. I have one pair of black ankle boots I got in 2000 that have kept me afloat when I couldn’t wear trail runners, but they’re not going to cut it five days a week. I still carry a backpack as if I’m on my way to intro psych class. I mean, thank heaven that I’m still in academia, not a milieu known, necessarily, for its dedication to style, and that probably these problems can be solved with a trip to Old Navy or something (that will almost inevitably end up with tears on my parts). But still. I want to be saving up all my money for baguettes and gelato and I have to buy trousers? Uncool.
I’m going back and forth between being totally excited about the trip (just a month away!) and cursing the timing of the new job because it’s not very convenient. I know, cry you a river, like I get to go to Europe and start a new job? Poor me. There’s been a little stress though about getting everything to fall into place the way I want it to, though, and I’m kind of going crazy trying to keep everything afloat right now. And Carl comes home on Friday, and we’re going straight from the airport to the opera house (really) and I haven’t seen a movie in the theater for pretty much ever and I’m not getting my five servings of vegetables a day like I’m supposed to and I need a new mattress and I cut my finger with a knife on Sunday when I was chopping an onion for seriously the grossest lasagna ever concocted.
I did, though, manage to get stamps on Friday. Two books, just so I don’t run out anytime soon. You were worried, weren’t you?