I’ve got you stuck in my head 31 March 2009

Yesterday was one of those days in which I could understand those who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I know some folks pooh-pooh the entire idea of a depression caused by lack of sunlight, but it can really happen.  I don’t know what my deal was yesterday.  Everything was setting me off, I was getting annoyed at the drop of a hat, but somehow I was also a millimeter away from tears of sadness for most of the day.  The sun came out for just a few moments in the afternoon, long enough to tease me with its light.  It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later that it was pouring, so hard that our back windows were covered in rain.

Days like yesterday make me so thankful that I’ve got Grace signed up for several things.  I have to get out of the house every day; I have to talk to people and be social.  It’s too easy for me to hibernate, and this really forces me to get out and get over it.  It really helps.

Today, however, was completely the opposite:

Now that is more like it!  I find it utterly impossible to be dour and depressed when there is sun like that in my backyard.  I’ve been feeling good all day, and it didn’t hurt that Kurt was able to take an earlier lunch so we could go to brunch together.

Why are toasted plain bagels with real butter so good??  Why???  I had a spinach and havarti omelette at our new favorite diner, and it came with a bagel and some homefries.  I schmeared one half of the bagel with cream cheese, and one half with butter, and let me tell you, the butter side was so, so delicious.  Next time I go with all butter.  Nom.

Also, why do people eat non-toasted bagels?  That’s a huge pet peeve of mine, to order a sandwich on a bagel and not have it toasted.  There is something about toasting a bagel that makes it far easier to eat.  Without toasting, all the fillings slide right out, and you end up tearing the bagel with your teeth instead of biting into it.  Not my idea of a delicious time, that’s for sure.

My absolute favorite thing to eat on a toasted bagel is egg salad.  Oh, my heavens.  It doesn’t get any more delicious than that!

Speaking of food, we have started Mary Ellen on rice cereal, as I have mentioned.  For the last few weeks, it’s been somewhat of a trial because she’s got the whole tongue-thrust thing still.  It’s quite frustrating to feed her.  If you can manage to shove the spoon past her protruding tongue, she ends up spitting most of the spoon’s contents right back out again as her tongue thrusts outward.  Yeah, not fun.  Somehow Kurt has taught her that it works much better when she actually swallows the food.  I was able to feed her a good amount of rice cereal for lunch this afternoon with few complications.  Yay!  Now I just have to start making up some veggies for her to try.  Mmmm sweet potato….

I am now the proud owner of my very own copy of Slumdog Millionaire.  I saw it a few weeks ago at the old-skool theatre downtown, so old-skool, in fact, there is an organ in the theatre.  And there’s only one screen too.  The film was really amazing.  It can be hard to watch in spots, especially since that’s the sort of life my brother faced if he had stayed in Guatemala, but it’s so moving and well-done.  I just wish I hadn’t heard that the child actors were returned to the state of poverty that was portrayed in the film.

And now it’s off to watch the movie.  As soon as Grace is in bed, that is…

Our friends are all aboard 29 March 2009

The only tiny problem with doing 7Days over on Flickr, in which one takes a self-portrait every day for seven days, is the commenting.  It’s definitely encouraged to leave comments on many people’s photos, and I’m the type of person to comment on almost everything.  I don’t always leave anything meaningful, but the photos are so creative and great that I have to say something.

Today we went on a field trip!  Not a photo field trip this time.  Funnily enough, we’d been watching “Intervention” one night, and the woman involved lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  That was also the setting for one of Kurt’s favorite movies, The Perfect Storm.  He wanted to head up there and check it out.

We decided to go today so that my friend Angela and her boyfriend could meet us there.  We probably should have chosen another day.  Today was grey and cold and rainy, and everything was closed because it’s not yet the summer season.  All we could do was wander around and poke into antique shops.

I’ve grown up in several tourist-heavy areas, and we always beat the crowds by visiting the attractions in the wintertime.  The one exception was the Folklike Festival in DC, since that is always held in the summertime.  (The last time I went, it was about 85º with high humidity, and I was seven months pregnant with Grace.  Not the best of ideas, probably, but I had on my Birkenstocks.  I can do almost anything if only I’m wearing my Birks.)

I’m not good with crowds, so I would much rather go when the weather isn’t the best.  But there are so few people willing to visit the attractions here in New England during the winter that everything simply shuts down after Labor Day.  And Gloucester is no different.  There’s a museum on the fishing industry that Kurt was interested in, but it won’t open till after Memorial Day.

I guess we’ll have to head up there again come summertime.  It’s only a couple of hours away.

Driving around Massachusetts, especially places that have been around since before we were a nation, is really thought-provoking.  The landscape can be so forbidding, hilly and rocky.  It’s amazing that the settlers were able to wrest any kind of existence from the soil and the sea before you could head to your local Stop N’ Shop for provisions.

I got this rather unsettled feeling in Gloucester today.  Maybe it was the grey, drizzly day.  But maybe it was the inscription I read on the plaque at the Gloucester Fishermen’s Memorial: “The first settlers came from England in 1623 to harvest the ocean’s bounty… During the 1800s, immigrants from many lands joined in the perilous work… These intrepid men established an industry that has yielded countless millions of pounds of fish. Their legacy came at a tremendous cost: the loss of over 5300 men. Some were overtaken by the howling winds and mountainous seas of a catastrophic northeaster. Some met their fate in the solitude of a small dory gone astray from the schooner that brought them to the banks. Some ships collided in storms and tragically sank. Others were run down by steamers in shipping lanes.”

Then a list was made of the statistics relating to the lost fishermen. Of the 1000 ships lost at sea, 265 were lost with all hands.  And in a period of 46 years, between 1860 and 1906, 660 ships sank, taking almost 3900 fishermen with them.  The most sobering statistic of all was this: “A single storm in 1862 claimed 16 schooners and 120 men, while another devastating storm in 1879 took the lives of 159 men.”

It really brings home how dangerous being a fisherman is, and still is today, if you’ve ever seen “The Deadliest Catch.”  And all just to fill the bellies of a growing nation.

Speaking of growing, I cannot believe how humongous Mary Ellen is getting.  She’s laying on the couch next to me, and she takes up an entire couch cushion!  I know she’s over 18 lbs and now 27″ long, but she looks even larger than that.  I don’t know where my teeny baby went!  She’s been gobbled up by this delectably chubby infant with dimples in her knees and rolls on her arms.

I love it.

Movin’ on up 27 March 2009

Another lunch date today.  Don’t worry — this isn’t lasting long.  Restaurant Week is almost over, and I’ve spent quite enough in just these two lunches.  But it’s worth it.  Yesterday it was the experience of going to a swanky restaurant I wouldn’t go to normally, today it was just delicious food and wonderful conversation with a good friend.  Neither of us could decide what we wanted, so we opted to each get a different entree and just split them down the middle.  Which is how I ended up with both an amazing burger served on a bolo levedo, as well as an oyster po’boy.  A bolo levedo, if you didn’t know, is the Portuguese version of an English muffin, except made with a sweet dough.  It’s the perfect foil to salty and savory sandwiches.  My favorite thing to get at my local diner is a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a bolo levedo.  Yum!

In keeping with my aim of dressing more nicely, especially knowing that my friend is a Very Sharp Dresser, I wore my dark rinse blue jeans, my red fancy shirt with the white polka dots and the puffed sleeves, and a white tank underneath.  On my feet were my awesome gold velvet flats with the bling.  I thought I looked rather stylin’, till my friend showed up.  She was wearing a skirt with knee-high boots and looked amazing.  But then she always does.  If I could borrow a sense of style, I think I would steal hers.  She always looks amazing, and only wears things that really flatter her.

You know, I think I try too hard with people, honestly.  I’m trying to step back a bit and let them come to me, instead of me always bugging them.  But I know how I feel when I don’t hear from someone, and I don’t want to cause that person the same feeling.  At the same time, when I don’t try to initiate things, nothing ever happens.  It’s a delicate balance, and one I am trying to cultivate.

It’s a difficult thing, though.  I’m not very good at interpersonal relationships.  My parents are kind of loners, which isn’t a bad thing.  It’s just the way they are.  And while I am somewhat the same way and perfectly content to spend most of my time on my own, I can also crave some sort of social life.  I don’t need one, but I enjoy knowing that it’s there if I just reach out a bit.

When I first moved here, we were only one of four families on the street.  There are now twice that, and I’m friends with almost all the new people on the block.  But the folks I knew beforehand, they were hard to read.  Ms Cheez-It, who made us feel really welcome when we first moved in, has quietly absented herself from just about all interaction with me.  I saw her a month or two ago, waiting on the maintenance people, so I figured I’d stop by and say hi.  We had a lovely little chat in which I suggested getting together for another pizza night, but I never did hear from her.  I used to stop by and say hi at the cafe where she works, but after a while it felt like a one-sided relationship.

The last thing I want to do is force myself on somebody.  I feel it happening sometimes, so I try to let them go.  It’s just not a skill I have, I don’t think, knowing when to keep going and when to let go.

There should be a class one can take, a class on how to make and develop friendships and the proper way to maintain them.

Or maybe I should just realize that if it’s this much work to maintain a friendship, that it’s not worth keeping it up.  Friendships should be easy to maintain and develop, not a lot of work.  Most of the friends I have, we may not talk every day or email every week, even, but when we see each other, even after an absence of months or even years, it’s like we saw each other just yesterday.  That’s the sort of friendship that I enjoy, one that’s easy to develop and maintain, one that just happens naturally.

I think I need to realize that I shouldn’t have a million friends.  I am somewhat of a loner, and I’d rather have a small circle of really good friends than a huge group of acquaintances.  And I need to realize that not everyone will even want to be my friend.  I so want to please people and have people like me, but it just isn’t possible.

I guess that’s just part of getting older and maturing, figuring all this hard stuff out.  Eventually I’ll get there.  It just takes me longer than everyone else.