2018

Not sure what to say. I don't have a neat way to wrap it up, nor do I really have the desire to do so. We moved. We struggled. We laughed and loved. I guess that about covers it.

Jenner, 2016

Stolen from Facebook, put on the blog

1. Favorite smell - Your mom
2. Last time I cried - A week or so ago, waxing nostalgic about the old place
3. Favorite pizza - Chicago or NYC style. Give me Zachary's or give me death.
4. Favorite Flower - Your mom.
5. Favorite dog breed - The ones with paws.
7. Roller Coaster - Oh, hell yes.
8. Favorite ice cream - Peanut butter and chocolate from John's Dollar, pumpkin from Trader Joe's, but Adam hates pumpkin, so I rarely get it because he hates me too
9. Pet peeve - Boring peeps. Like your mom.
10. Shorts or jeans- These days, skirts.
12. Color of your vehicles - "Happy Red! Tomato Red!" as a friend said last night.
13 Color of eyes - Hazel
14. Favorite food - Italian. Your mom. Am I annoying you yet?
15. Favorite Holiday- Thanksgiving
16. Night owl or morning : Both. I don't sleep a lot.
17. Favorite day of the week - Each and every one, dude.
18. Do you have a nick name? Farmer Bitch. Igles when I was younger, and now when I'm tortured.
19. Favorite music - Kooky shit.
20. Tattoos - None ... yet.

A turn in perspective

Happiness is a choice. Starting now, I plan to make it.

Perfection

I say I don't want to be perfect, but I think at heart everyone does to some degree. Perfect meaning perfect in one's own definition. And when I slip past that definition, or below it, I get so pissed at myself.

In other news, I walked out of the house today. No regrets.

Negativity can leave out the back door

In fact, it's not allowed in any more.

My Book Passage class: March 30!

All the 411 here!

The Mission

The boys

Not putting up with passive aggressive

While I'm not using details because this is a public forum and it's a private argument, all I'm going to say here is that friends who pull a guilt trip on you because you won't compromise your boundaries to give them what they want are not friends at all. I feel good coming to that conclusion.

It makes me think of this Thought Catalog article. In part:

Stop having hard conversations with people who don’t want to change. Stop showing up for people who are indifferent about your presence. Stop prioritizing people who make you an option. Stop loving people who aren’t ready to love you.

I know that your instinct is to do whatever you can to earn the good graces of everyone you can, but that is also the impulse that will rob you of your time, your energy and your sanity.

When you start showing up to your life wholly and completely, with joy and interest and commitment, not everyone is going to be ready to meet you there.

My beauty, I will always love you

North Berkeley Library

Don't ever want to be like this

Man and woman walk into a cafe. Man holds door. Woman walks through. No response. Nothing.

Rumination

When I was a kid, I read a Rona Jaffe book, Class Reunion. In it one of the main characters talks her boyfriend out of traveling the world for a year. What she doesn't realize then -- but learns later in spades -- is that you can only sit on someone for so long.

Discussed this with Adam today

I find this article about Esther Perel interesting.

Today's writing

At first I didn’t buy it, the way I had trouble swallowing any type of good news. There was no way he could mean it, no way he was actually going to go through with the adoption on the strength of a single walk. Worst of all, I feared that the adoption wouldn’t work out and that Romeo would be right back where he started – and back on the euthanasia list.

I also wondered why Romeo hadn’t been made Rescue-Only based on behavior. Was there a miscalculation that I’d need to worry about? Was he really suitable for adoption? I couldn’t exactly get too deep into a relationship with Paul if the dog I’d gotten him to take on wound up ripping his throat out.

We stood on that corner, blinking in the sunlight. It had been foggy when we left and neither of us thought to bring sunglasses. He seemed as surprised as me, and then he knelt down and petted Romeo. “I know it seems like kind of a quick decision,” he said, “but you know, I’m that kind of dude.”

Well, that did explain something. He’d been quick to take to me, quick to take to the dog he was now nuzzling and who was gently nuzzling back. Had I called it? Were these two an item?

Life was spinning, happening so fast, changes seeming to tumble from the sky like frogs in biblical times. The good, the bad, the what in the hell all drifted around my shoulders like confetti, falling in my eyes, blinding me. 

Today's writing

Part of me hoped that Paul would open his arms and pull me to him. Instead he just kind of sat there with a blank, tired look in his eyes. It took him a minute to say anything. In that time we just watched each other in that half-caring, half-suspicious way of people who are sizing each other up double time.

“Well,” he finally said, “that’s a lot.”

Dismissive. Over it. Over me, already. How did that happen so fast? And yet this is what the other part of me had wanted: someone who saw me as clearly as he apparently did to step away, fast and furious, leaving no tracks, creating no trail.

Leave, then. Leave, and be done with it. Done with me.

“I mean,” he said, “You’ve got a lot going on, Meredith. I guess what I’m wondering if there’s any room for me.”

Well, there you had it. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay. He wanted to stand by me. Just what I’d always wanted, right?

“I’m not sure,” I said, and then fought the urge to slap myself.

There weren’t really words for the look that crossed his face. You could say it was one part fury mixed with two parts resignation. In any event, it was a cocktail too strong for me to drink.

31k into the revise

This needs to be the last version. I'm more than halfway through now. Lordy, hold my hand.