ginseng peddling grandmother

01 When it comes to relationships, I’m constantly calculating and rationing out my affections. How much do I put into this person? Does he or she appear as interested in me as I am in them? Who is it that’s making the phone calls and initiating meet-ups? How do I stand in relation to them and our other, mutual friends? When we talk am I a sounding board for all of their problems or do they take the time to ask me how I am, in order to show that they care? In other words, am I made a priority? 

K.’s recent post resonated with me in this respect. I think we all do it to some extent. In romantic relationships I can imagine these tendencies being amplified a hundredfold; but luckily, me and B. are pretty equal in how into each other we mutually are. 

02 I talk to B. for hours every night and at lunch. He is interesting and smart and patient and liberal and devoted and so well fitted to me that it kind of deeply freaks me out. YOU DEAR, SWEET MAN, COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE REAL?

03 Still nuts for football. I want to quit my job and watch this sport forever. :(( Drunken caterwauling with Em outside and inside of sports bars need to happen when I next come to Chicago. 

04 I miss co-op life. Yeah, the vegetables rotted, the city health inspector shut down our kitchens, the fruit flies descended in nettlesome clouds, people OD’d and were put into homes, vomit was ejected onto carpets in the dining room, and did I tell you guys that one story about how some kids at Casa Zimbabwe got tipped off about an incoming police raid and packed up like 60 pounds of pot from CZ’s root-top marijuana garden into their car and drove 400 miles down to Los Angeles in order to evade capture and incarceration? No? But communal living was good for me on a lot of levels. Although I did not appreciate getting sick three-four times a semester like clockwork.

05 When I feel inadequate about writing, I try to remember that at the Eisner ceremony all the other awards recipients were doctoral candidates in literature and comp lit, and that one of whom had her poetry selected to be in the Best American Poetry Series just that past year. 

06 Things that I have inherited from my parents: an incredible, hilarious, body-gloving Asian glow. Hair that falls out after I wash it. Smelly feet. Bouts of reclusiveness. 

07 I feel much gratitude to my friends, both the ones that have stayed with me through high school and the ones that I’ve made in uni. I’m not the easiest friend to have sometimes, being secretive, unforthcoming, distracted, inflexible in my beliefs, easy to anger, and/or unemotionally unavailable, but y’all are still here! It’s amazing. Thank you guys. I love you. Some of you won’t read this but if you do, you know who you are.

08 When the author of CP pinged me to ask if I’d like to be an origfic brainstorming buddy I messaged her back all sweaty and nervous and saying stuff like “OMG I CAN’T DO IT I would have major performance anxiety ahahhahaa sorryyyyyy.” Which kind of applies to like twenty other areas of my life, bawling. Seriously though, I need to be better under pressure. 

09 David Silva is a sweetie and I want to knit him socks and wool caps because he has been exiled from sunny, edenic Spain and is now forced to live in Manchester where there are only two restaurants and everyone speaks fucking English which he doesn’t understand and it rains all the time. :(((

10 Overcoming one’s inner fear of embarrassment and and rejection is incredibly important. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone and amazing, or therapy-requiring, things will happen! I constantly remind myself.

Tagging: seeminglysweet, lyrist, moutheyes, portmanteau, sophiaxtai, nabokovian, linguaphile, braided, rowistha, falenburg. I think that’s ten.