It's official

There are no single men left in my age group.  I was busy going to graduate school, getting my professional license, and starting a career while everyone else was pairing off.  Now I've lost my career, I'm drowning in debt from school, and I'm all alone without a hope in the world of finding an appropriate partner.  I went on two dates last year.  TWO.  Which was actually better than the year before, and the year before that.  And in the last ten years, I've had three relationships.  The longest was four months.  It was with a guy who was wrong for me in every possible way, but I was so scared of ending up alone, I didn't care.  And now that I've decided to only date guys who are right for me, it turns out that they're all gone.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone.  But I also don't want to spend it hoping that I might meet someone someday and being constantly let down.  It's very depressing.

Mondays. Sigh.

The most important thing I learned at work today is that I'm not just another cog in the machine, I'm the least important cog in the machine.  I don't matter at all.

Hopefully I'll feel better after running this afternoon.  I remembered my MP3 player today (yay!) so I'll have something to occupy myself with while I run.

This new year of being a perfect person isn't going so well.  The house is much messier than I would like, although the bills are getting paid and I'm doing a good job sticking to my eating plan.  I haven't weighed myself since Thursday, when I'd lost a half pound after a week of dieting.  I'm supposed to have lost at least one pound by today.  I hope that's the case.

Feeling kind of sorry for myself

So I have had an interesting time recently. It seems like I almost never meet anyone who I’m interested in dating, and I certainly never meet anyone who’s interested in dating me (unless, of course, they are completely and totally wrong for me in every possible way, as well as being entirely unattractive). And on the rare occasions that I DO meet someone I’m interested, they’re either

a) already taken
b) not in my age range (which is steadily getting bigger in both directions)
c) not at all interested 
d) all of the above

Usually it’s d. And it’s absolutely always c. ALWAYS. I was driving to work yesterday, listening to NPR as usual. Now, I was already in a bad mood because I had tried to bike to work, got about a quarter of the way there, realized the bike trail was under several feet of water, and had to rush back to my house, repack all of my stuff, and then drive to work. Which meant I got stuck in traffic since I was leaving kind of late at that point. But anyway, there I was, trying to keep my cursing to a minimum, when The Perspective came on. It was a woman talking about how her family has pizza Fridays, and all the things her kids and husband do etc, etc. And how when she was younger (and I’m assuming by that, she meant younger than I am now, because I’m not really a spring chicken anymore), she never thought that she would be happy sitting around at home on a Friday night making pizza, but it was the only place in the world she wanted to be. I almost started crying.


Now, it’s not that I want that picture of domestic bliss. I’m not really sure that I want kids at all. But I do want to have some family. I feel rather adrift in the world. And what I would love more than anything is a partner to share it all with. I just read another bog, where a woman was describing how she got to where she was. There was a lot of talk about how she just started a relationship here, and started another one there. As if starting a relationship is just something you decide to do one day, and you set out and just do it, just like going to the grocery store or making your bed. To me, starting a relationship is like climbing Everest. The attempts are few and far between, they take a ridiculous amount of work and luck to get off the ground, and then most of them fail.

And it’s not even that I necessarily want the perfect American dream life.  But I’ve pretty much destroyed all of my other options by going to grad school.  I’m up to my eyeballs in unsecured debt, and the only way to get rid of it is to pay it off (which I’m in no position to do) or to die (which isn’t my first choice).  It wouldn’t be so bad if I had the career of my dreams and was happy in it, but I’m not even USING my education.  It was all a waste.  And now I can’t run off to volunteer in third-world countries, or teach English abroad, or be a ski bum and work seasonal jobs in amazing places, or anything else of the sort.  Nope, I’m settled down in a quasi-suburban area, with my little house, and I go to a job every day that I don’t really care for, just so I can spend the next 20 years paying off this debt so I can be FREE.  And the only option left to me in my quest to be happy is to try to find someone to be happy with, although, like everything else, I seem to be failing at that too.

Yesterday, as I was running on the treadmill at the gym (because I have this somewhat insane belief that if only I was a size 6 instead of a size 8, then I would be able to start relationships as easily as everyone else seems to be able to), a song came on. “I thought love was only true in fairy-tales, made for someone else but not for me.” After all of these years, I still think that.

Not very grateful, aka the winter blues

I feel like I should write a gratefulness post, but I have to admit I haven’t been feeling particularly grateful lately. So I’m thinking I might write a post about the things that usually make me grateful, and expound upon why they’re not making me grateful right now, and hope that pushes me back towards gratefulness again. Looking back at July’s post about it, I’m a little surprised at how naïve I was.



1. My house. Right now, it’s feeling like a dead weight just sitting on me. It’s always a mess, things are always breaking, it’s incredibly disorganized, and it’s cold. And dark. And I’m thinking about doing something different with my life, and having a house to deal with is kind of a pain.

2. My job. Yes, I have a job. Getting a paycheck is awesome. But I don’t have a career, somehow I still don’t make enough money to pay for my lifestyle (which I’m slowly paring back), and I haven’t quite figured out what the point is of getting a paycheck if every month I’m just paying off debt, and that’s all I’ll be doing for the next 20 years. Seriously, what’s the point?

3. My physical abilities. Yes, I can run 12.7 miles! Yay! Unfortunately, I was in such extreme pain for days afterwards, that it made me realize how much I’m aging and how much less I’m able to do than other athletic people my age (and even older). I have YEARS of bodily neglect to undo, and it’s a daunting task. And, quite frankly, I’m tired.

4. My bike. I still love my bike. But it’s cold and rainy, and I haven’t had time for bike maintenance. And someone was attacked on the bike trail near my gym, which makes me awfully nervous. And now the bike trail near my house is flooded, so I pretty much can’t get anywhere for a while.

5. I wish I could say that I'm grateful for my snowboard, and really, I am.  But it's getting really old, and it's starting to get really banged up and I'm not sure what to do about it.  On top of that, my boots have gotten packed out and are no longer fitting properly, which is a serious safety issue.  If only I was independently wealthy!


I wish I didn’t feel so negative right now.

A not-so-quick update

I’ve had a satisfying couple of days, although I didn’t think it would turn out that way.

I had Thursday off, and my original plan was to take my brother-in-law’s cousin up to the mountains, as she’s visiting from Europe and hasn’t been able to get out much. Unfortunately, I got a text message late Wednesday night, saying that she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t think she’d be able to go. So I canceled my plans for Thursday and headed out to my mom’s house to have lunch with her and get some chores done. And I even managed to finish organizing my desk, so I finally felt like I accomplished something!

Friday was another day at work (very weird after having Thursday off) and after work I headed straight to Davis to meet up with some friends who were in town. I had a delicious vegetarian Chinese meal with a group of women (and it always feels weird to say that, even though we’re pretty much all over 30 now) and learned that one of them just became the executive director of Tree Davis, a non-profit tree-planting organization in town. I’ve been considering joining the Peace Corps, and was told by the recruiter to spend some time volunteering in preparation for applying, and to also concentrate on activities that I’m interested in. Because I’m an avid gardener and I enjoy being outdoors, I decided to look into volunteering opportunities with farms or other related groups. I was getting a bit discouraged by some of the groups out there, who won’t be having any volunteer activities for at least 6 months, so when I found out what my friend’s new job was, it seemed like a stroke of luck! I’ve already signed up for my first volunteer day, and I’m hoping to add a bunch more soon. I love volunteering and I love getting outside and I love planting things, so I think this will be a great new activity for me.

Saturday was the beginning of my girls’ weekend, although when I think about it, it really started Friday night. But I got up Saturday morning (over an hour later than I expected to get up) and went for an 8-mile run. I didn’t start to hurt until about 5.5 miles into it, so that was good, but still, I’m running 12.7 miles in a few weeks, so this whole “I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, pulled a bunch of muscles, and now can’t run very far” thing is really making training hard. I stumbled back to the house around 11:20, and then spent 40 minutes cleaning myself up and lying on the couch giving myself a pep talk before dragging myself to the “Christmas Around the World” that occurs every year at the local Greek Orthodox church. Now, when they say Christmas Around the World, what they really mean is “Christmas in North-East Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Russia” which isn’t too bad of a selection, I suppose, but is leaving several entire continents out. I loaded myself up with potato pierogies, cheese pies, spinach pies, herb pies, tiropita, and a hearty plate of Ethiopian food and headed back to my house to get ready for the descending hordes. Or really, the few people who had said they were probably coming at some point, but didn’t know when. Planning these big events is turning out to be a pain. But then everyone started trickling in, and bottles of wine were opened, and food was set out, and everyone pulled out their old clothes for the clothing swap, and it was great! Lots of fun, lots of good food and drink, and lots of new-to-you clothing.

We headed out after that for the Second Saturday art walk, which was strangely quiet this month. It was a somewhat disappointing evening out, but we managed to stay out awfully late in spite of that. Sunday morning was nice and lazy. I made a beautiful frittata with eggs from my friend’s chickens, we threw in some country potatoes and coffee cake, and lazed about before heading to the farmer’s market, which was also strangely uncrowded. I’m usually dodging people left and right as I work my way around the stalls, but this time was a breeze. Maybe the holiday weekend meant a lot of people were out of town. I picked up some sweet potatoes to make sweet potato gnocchi, a bunch of nice mushrooms, grapes, and corn. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with the mushrooms pretty soon, though.

I had to nap for a bit in the afternoon, and then I felt awfully groggy, but I FINALLY managed to pull out the quilt I started for my niece months and months ago and finished piecing together most of the top! Yay!!!! I’m hoping to have the quilt substantially done by this weekend, so that I can get started on the next quilt around Thanksgiving and have them both done by Christmas. That might be a bit optimistic, but I think if I set my sights high, I can get a lot done in a short time.

A really bad weekend followed by an even worse morning

Well, that didn’t last very long. What a horrible weekend. It started badly, with a phone call from the surgery center where I’ll be having surgery tomorrow. The person on the phone informed me that the money I’ve already paid to the doctor only covered the doctor’s services, and I’d be expected to pay quite a bit more for the surgery center’s services as well as the anesthesiologist. It was kind of a devastating realization. The medical bills keep piling up, and I don’t know what to do about it.

On Friday, I had some people over to play games in the afternoon, and then in the evening my roommate and I made dinner for friends of ours who just had a baby a month ago. My sister was going out that evening, and said to call her when dinner was over so I could meet her for drinks/music, so I called, and texted, and although she kept telling me that they weren’t done with dinner yet, she never called me back. I felt so alone in the world. After having no one to spend Friday night with, and finding out about even more medical bills, I spent the entire day Saturday in bed. I spent most of the morning crying in bed, and the entire afternoon and evening watching tv and movies, working on amigurumi projects for my neice and nephew, and sneezing uncontrollably, because the first rain of the season actually made my allergies worse instead of better. I only got out of bed to go to the bathroom, get some food (which I ate in bed), and get a beer from the fridge (which I drank in bed). The only thing that really made me feel better was watching the new Star Trek movie. Again. That always cheers me up.

Sunday was a bit better. I spent the day at my sister’s house, having a nice pancake brunch and carving pumpkins. The part of the day that sucked was running around in the pumpkin patch in the rain (by myself, of course) trying to find some decent carving pumpkins from what was left, and especially trying to find some that weren’t too big, because I assumed that they were sold by weight. Alas, they were $2.99 each, and I should have just bought three giant ones from the small pile that was under the overhang, where I wouldn’t have gotten soaked.

And then this morning just takes the cake. My alarm didn’t go off for whatever reason (unless I managed to turn it off in my sleep), but luckily my roommate woke me up somehow by making noise outside. Then I found all my Tupperware from last week in my bike bag, which I apparently forgot to clean out over the weekend. Oops. So I hurried to throw some food together and completely forgot to eat breakfast. I left for work extremely late because I took the time to put my new headlight on my bike, but the beam was so weak that I might as well not have even had it. As I was pedaling as quickly as I could to work, my stomach started growling loudly, reminding me that I had forgotten breakfast. Then, while waiting at a stop sign for a bunch of cars to go by, most of whom were turning and not using their turn signals, I decided to go for it during a break in traffic. I stood up on my pedal to push and BAM my foot slipped off and I landed partly on the seat and partly on the top tube. Boy did that hurt. I did the best I could to get to work as quickly as possible when I discovered that I didn’t have my badge with me and I had absolutely no idea where it even was. So I had to lock my bike outside because my badge is what gets me into the bike cage, which meant I had to take the headlight off anyway. So much for using my time efficiently. Hopefully the rest of the day will go better, but I’m not expecting much at this point.

Something's finally going right!

Well, I had a splendid night last night, thanks to my good friends who live less than half a mile from me. But first, some backstory. I’ll keep it short and sweet. Basically, about two weeks ago, my kitchen faucet, which had been acting funny for a while, finally broke completely, forcing my roommate and I to turn on the water using a pair of pliers. I finally got around to buying a new faucet last weekend, only to discover the next day when I tried to install it that there were several pieces missing. The weekend also proved to be disheartening. After spending an evening on the town Saturday night, we discovered that our bike lights had been stolen, and the next morning I woke up with a hangover to my roommate informing me that the toilet in her bathroom had started leaking all over. I was exhausted and not feeling well, and it seemed like everything was going wrong.

OK, back to the original story and why last night ended up so well. First, my roommate and I managed to take the toilet apart, replace the wax ring, and put it all back together in record time, with no accidents and almost no cursing. I decided to wait another day to exchange the faucet and buy new lights for my bike, so I made a quick dinner and settled down to eat. Just as I was finishing, my friends showed up. They’re a wonderful couple who are expecting a baby next month, and they came over to pick up some baby supplies my sister had given me to give to them. The husband, Mike, noticed the faucet sitting on my kitchen table, opened the box, found the one missing part that I actually needed (the other two were for an optional installation that wasn’t necessary for my countertop/sink type) and then proceeded to change out the faucet for me! While I’m sure I could have done it on my own, it was soooo nice to have something get fixed and not have to be the person to spend hours trying to figure it out and cursing a lot. Being independent and able to do everything for myself is nice, but it’s also really overrated. Sometimes it’s nice just to have someone around to fix things when they break. I feel like a huge load has been lifted off my shoulders. Tonight, I can go to happy hour with another friend and not worry that I’ve left my roommate without a working toilet or kitchen sink. Yay!

Oh, and a short update on the bathroom: Everything is done except the baseboards. The floor is uneven, but it’s not horrible, and the tile and colors and towel bars look awesome. My roommate did an amazing job decorating it, and it looks like a designer bathroom, and I absolutely love it. I’d like to get the baseboards in before the beginning of December so that I can have a combination Hanukkah dinner/bathroom grand opening. I’m just hoping to find the energy to redo my own bathroom next...