The one about hickeys...

Conversation that may or may not have occurred in the near or distant past...

Coworker: What's that on your neck? Is that a bruise or a hickey?
Me: Uh...
Coworker: It's a hickey, isn't it?
Me: Uh...
Coworker: It is!
Me: Uh...yes?
Coworker: (erupts into mannish giggles)
Me: I shoulda said it was a bruise.
Coworker: Yeah, then I would have said to everyone in the office, 'Hey, come look at this bruise! Doesn't it kind of look like a hickey?'


Remember, in college, when hickeys used to be kind of fun?

War wounds. Prizes. Battlescars. Marks. Tags. Notches in a bedpost. They could shock or bewilder and cause all kinds of gossip.

I had a friend who would end up with these huge, angry looking hickeys on her neck, randomly at parties, courtesy of a friend she used to date. They wouldn't be making out or anything: he would just grab her and hickefy. And we'd laugh about it- ha, ha, look at those big, vicious welts of passion. Hickeys were viewed in a similar light as the walk of shame: funny and generally harmless. A crowd of your friends would hoot n' holler at you in amused and semi-jealous tones, "Ooh, look who got some last night!" A hickey could make you a hero and sometimes a bit of a loser, but either way, you were the kid with the best story to tell.

Entra the Real World.

And you made a mistake or you had a great time and now you have a hickey. It isn't evil and bright red, like my friend's used to be, but it's there all the same: a smudge of a bruise on the curve of your neck, a leftover from the weekend.

And, it's summer. Which makes your options on hiding it extremely limited. You'd look a little foolish coming into work in a turtleneck in late May. Plus, as one of the youngest, hippest members of the office (if you do say so yourself), you're pretty sure you wouldn't be fooling anyone. They probably all wonder if you get around anyway.

Because not only do you have a hickey- you're a single girl with a hickey. Which makes you a slut with an ugly neck.

Hickeys do not belong in the workplace. They do not help with memos. They cause co-workers to stare. The best a hickey can provide in the workplace is a distraction from the general mind-numbing work: "Gah, I think my make-up is wearing off" or "Ah, I'd better try and fluff my hair over my neck again" or "Mmm...remember how I got that hickey?".

Hickeys: yet another indication of how much more fun life was in college. In college, hickeys could be proclaimed or hidden, depending on your mood. Here, there's option B or disgrace.

Not that I have a hickey or anything. I'm not a slut with an ugly neck. I just thought it would be an interesting topic to write about...


On an unrelated note: I watch way too much television. And I'm totally buying a tivo for my move to the big city.

Happy Break!

So, I've noticed my blogs have been low on the warm and fuzzy factor, lately. There's been flooded basements, rants against former co-workers, hypochondria, the tortures of a high school talent show, leaving my childhood home and little of the happy-happy-joy-joy attitude that I am so well known for in life.

So here are a few paragraphs of happiness:

I had an excellent time this weekend at Preakness. A fabulous time. But...I was a little too drunk to remember the sparkling details that make up a clever blog. And really, a girl's drunken escapades might be a little too personal to post on the world wide web. The overall lesson of Preakness is this: Always go with your instincts where men and horses are concerned. Right. The day was full of family, good friends, and the sort of adventures that flashback at you while you're driving home from work and make you smile.

I'm currently listening to John Mayer's Room for Squares in the office. As if that wasn't happiness enough in itself, this particular CD reminds me of one of my best friends in the whole wide world and the greatest road trip I've ever been on. Current happy memory flitting through my head: Prancing around the apartment with my friend, wearing ridiculous spirit scarves, and singing the Mayer into Smirnoff bottles.

I took a huge step in preparing for graduate school last night: I bought 10 Things I Hate About You on DVD. Now I will be able to write my papers in the manner to which I became accustomed in undergrad. So NYU, here I come!

I started working on my tan during Preakness. My hair is blonder, despite the strawberry blonde dye, and my skin is darker. This can only mean one thing: summer. Longer, hotter days, warm and lazy evenings, field parties, wine festivals, days at the beach, hanging out by the pool...I am so very, very happy.

And finally: In less than 3 weeks, I'll be bumming around Spain with my sister! What could be more happy-happy-joy-joy than that?

Thoughts on hypochondria while watching House...

I don't understand why the doctor characters on House just don't incubate the sick characters before they even start treating them. They're always incubating people in a hurry in the middle of a procedure.

Aw, my roommate came in and I missed why a guy shot House. My roommate is seriously hyped up on life. Good for him.

Why has everyone in the world been treated by House all of the sudden? He specializes in RARE diagnosis.

Yay, medical dramas! Now that Veronica Mars has graduated for the season, I can watch House again. I love my medical dramas (though House is no Grey's Anatomy). I do not, however, blame them for my late onsetting hypochondria.

While I've always been heavy on the ibuprofen (it's a family trait), it wasn't until my late college years that I started displaying these subtle signs of hypochondria. When I'm sick (headaches, sniffles, stomach pain) or exhibiting any slightly strange physical characteristics (eye twitching is always a big one with me), I always suspect the worst (for instance, did you know that eye twitching is a sign of a brain tumor?). The internet is a horrible enabler.

So hypochondria. Hypochondria's not so bad, right?

Except I'm not a hypochondriac. I don't chronicle my symptoms. There isn't always something wrong with me- it's just that, when there is, it's the worst thing imagineable. Hypochondria is just a symptom of the bigger problem. I'm obsessed with extremes. If a light comes on in my car, it's about to blow up. If I'm a day late for my period, I'm pregnant (whether it is physically possible or not). If my finger is swollen and puffy, it's broken.

And my mind doesn't just dwell on the idea of sickness or loss- it builds an entire story around what happens when the extreme comes true.

Minor hypochondria is just another symptom of my drama queen-ness.

Now that I've solved another personality quirk, I'm retuning to House. Then I can take an evening cocktail of sudafed, ibuprofen, and one-a-day vitamin before going to sleep.

Notes from a high school talent show...

Why do I find myself sitting in a hard backed auditorium chair for two hours, watching, among other things, a girl in a leopard print blouse and pastel striped pants juggling glow in the dark sticks to "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night"? Why?

Honorable Mention in the 'Why God Why' category: Watching a jewish girl and the whitest white girl ever sing 'A Boy Like That' from West Side Story in horrific fake Puerto Rican accents.

The Rain in Spain stays mainly all over my room...

I was going to use today's blog to wax poetic about my love for the new Mac commercials. During Thursday night Must See TV, I found myself looking forward to the Mac commercials more than the shows (except for The Office: aw, Pam and Jim...you're in trouble now!). I think it is a brilliant ad campaign, and every time one of the commericals comes on, I want to dump my Dell laptop into the nearest ditch, rush to the store, buy a Mac, and date it.

But this blog will no longer be about my love for the scruffily beautiful Mac guy.

Instead, I must relate the horrors of my night. A night that began in rain and ended in pain.

Yesterday afternoon, as I don't need to remind you Maryland residents, it started to pour. This reprehensible weather behavior continued through the night and well past midnight. After eight, I was safe and dry in my house, watching television and eating- what else?- Indian takeout. I didn't head down to my room until about eleven. My basement room.

I'd been worried all night about tornadoes. There was a little tornado watch sign on the bottom right corner of the screen. I'd called my Mom so she could assure me I wasn't going to die and then calmly continued watching television. I did freak out a bit when the cable when out for ten minutes...I've watched a lot of Twister, and I know that the television going out is a bad sign.

I wish it had been a twister.

Instead, the trouble was in the basement. I noticed it smelled kind of funny. Then I noticed the carpet was a little damp. Then I noticed parts of the carpet were soaked. Then I noticed the puddles of water pooling all over my belongings.

My landlord/roommate assured me there was nothing to be done that night. So he went upstairs and went to bed. And I took every towel I could find (many of them his, which gave me some sort of sick satisfaction) and began mopping up the mess. Then I moved as many of my belongings as possible to higher ground (stairs, first floor) or to the dry side of the room. Then I climbed into the island that is my bed and went to sleep.

I set my alarm for two so I could wake up and check on the flooding. Luckily, the rain had stopped by then.

Still, this morning things are squishy and damp and I worry about mildew and I'm running on very little sleep. This evening, instead of going out, I will be manipulating air circulation with a fan borrowed from my mother and worrying more about mildew.

I understand that this is nonexistent on the scale of natural disasters, but Why Can't Mother Nature Leave Me Alone?

I'm tired.

Unrelated Question of the Day: Am I a poor excuse for a human being because I want to see Lindsay Lohan's Just My Luck?

Just Call me Oddjob...

Ah, this is the life.

I've upped my hours at the office to cover the phones while the receptionist recovers from surgery. I'm still doing my marketing work. I've picked up an SAT tutoring gig ($45 an hour). I have a big old check in my purse from my freelance work at the Baltimore Opera company. This weekend, I will get paid for handing out flyers and bartending.

If I could only stop ordering Indian food, I might be able to break even...some day...

Probably not.

But the point is, I love doing this: having my hand in many different pies, or whatever the expression is. I think this is why I'm so suited for life as a permanent student: as long as I'm taking a couple different courses, I feel fulfilled. When I'm just doing one thing- one type of job, for instance- I get terribly bored. I need my life made up of as many little different pieces as possible.

Lately, I've been working on selecting some of next year's little pieces; I've been picking out my schedule for my first semester at NYU. In college, schedule time was awesome. The day our course booklets came in the mail was kind of like Christmas. This might be partially due to the fact that I was (and still am, let's face it) an Honors Kid.

My friends and I would take our course books and gather in someone's common room. Probably a rerun of The West Wing was on. And we'd sit there for hours, exclaiming over our choices and planning and planning.

Registration for NYU has been a little more frantic. The already enrolled students got to start registering on April 17th. So yesterday, when I got my registration info, I took about half an hour to read over my choices and then I just started clicking on courses. Currently I'm registered for two: my mandatory MA seminar and a class on the American Renassiance, which I'm pretty sure I don't want to take. I'm waitlisted for The Novel and the Culture of War (started as number eight on the list, and I'm already down to number six!) and I'm in an email discussion with a professor about whether I should take a class on Seduction in the Age of Revolution that generally only Phd students are allowed to take.

Absolutely no one is interested in all those courses except me (and the people ahead of me on the wait list), so if you are still reading, I'm impressed.

I shall reward you with a little song.

What do you do with a B.A. in English?
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge
Have earned me this useless degree.
I can't pay the bills yet,
Cuz I've got no skills yet.
The world is a big scary place...
But somehow I can't shake
The feeling I might make
A difference to the human race!

~ Avenue Q

And I'll be even more useless with an MA in English!

Live from New York...

I'm here!

Last night, I kept wandering- and wondering- around (downtown and in the West Village), saying: "I'm going to live here! I'm going to live here!"

And this place is BIG. You don't realize how big when you're just coming up to visit a friend or see a show. Last night we drove all around the city (bad directions) and landed, as planned, in The Bronx. I took a cab to 53rd and 2nd. Then the subway to the Village. Then to Brooklyn. I was ALL OVER.

I'm going to live here.

And today I'll wander even more: to Astoria and NYU and Times Square and Brooklyn where, if I can, I'm catching a friend's bachlorette party.

I'm going to live in this big, crazy, loud, smelly place.

Eek.

The Past is Now Another Land...

(or, one of many posts about transition)

Is anyone else shocked that it's May already?

This summer is going to be one of finality. My parents are selling our ancestral home, the only home I've ever known. I've lived other places, on my own: college dorms, college apartments, and my current residence. That's the right word. There have been other residences in my life but only ever one home. As a little girl, I sometimes wished I lived in a neighborhood, so that there were more children around. As a teenager, I sometimes wished I lived somewhere- anywhere!- where there was more to do (shopping malls, movie theaters, whatever teenagers do). But I never doubted that I was incredibly lucky to live in our big, rambling country house.

I am trying very hard to be supportive of my parents, which is a funny flip. I've been helping out on weekends: painting and prying up floorboards so we can cut home out of my life. I know it's very hard for both of them, my mother especially. And their decision makes a lot of sense: they don't have the time or the energy to take care of an old house anymore, plus with my middle sister going to college next year, there's just going to be three people, wherever the live.

I guess I'm about to learn that it's people that create home, not rooms. I hope. But the cozy kitchen of that house is sort of the physical center of my universe. I'm going to have to do some shifting.

And it's a time in my life for shifting. Afterall, this August I'm shifting my world up the coast, to NYC. I'm going to visit my new school and my new apartment this weekend, armed with a tape measurer and money to buy some piece of clothing that says NYU on it. Yes, I'm that girl.

This is probably the last summer I'll spend in this area. The last summer I'll hang out at the neighborhood pool, throw field parties with my cousins, join in crazy rambonxious games of neighborhood volleyball, drive around to the local wine festivals. I feel like I'm just learning how to really utilize the area in the summer. And now I'm leaving.

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited. New York City...it smells funny, but it's bustling with life and it's going to be my new life. I've led such a quiet, country-girl existence. It's a total change. It's a vastly different future.

Last night I spent some time reading over my college journals, mostly because I filled out a survey on my college experiences and had trouble remembering sophomore year. It was very interesting, but didn't inspire too many good feelings. There's a lot of angst penned into those journals. And while I can safely say I'm not the same girl who's much larger handwriting filled the lines freshman year, I am the same girl who scribbled her heart out senior year. Two years out of college hasn't changed that. NYC might, a bit. A bit.

I'm ready for this next step. I'm eager for it. It would just be so much easier if the foundation on which I've built my life wasn't about to be altered forever. I'm about to become the girl who can't go home.



"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."

~ Anais Nin