this is not my cat, just to be clear

today has been a pathetic day

work was fine. it usually is.

home kind of sucks. i don't know how obvious this is, but it usually does. my roommate moved out, and the other two roommates touted some high standards for who they wanted to move in but none of those people worked out so it was left to me to troll craigslist to try and find someone relatively sane. i came up with the perfect gentleman, a young man from shreveport, louisiana with the most darling accent you ever heard and a manner like a cool glass of lemonade in the summer. also a large collection of southern hip-hop and a wide-eyed wonder for the amusements of portland. i immediately grew attached to him, cleaned the house for his visit, and agitated for his primacy as a candidate. as soon as things looked like they were going to go my way, a faraway (sacramento) roommate came down from on high to say that his girlfriend, or maybe a former roommate of hers, was maybe going to take the room, so he would handle this month's rent and we would figure it out. i don't dislike his girlfriend, or her former roommate. when i had been clutching at straws two days ago i would have been ecstatic to hear they wanted to move in. but now that i've found my own person, a good person and a potential friend, i'm overwrought and being pretty melodramatic about it. part of it is that i like him, and if i have to turn him away we'll never be friends. the other part is that i have been feeling pretty pathetic lately, what with my almost complete inability to connect with any of the friends i had considered "real" (besides the inimitable jordan pierce, who i consistently fall short of believing has actually conceded to being my friend). the opportunity to make a real friend, not just one that i go to a movie with because i know her and she is a girl, made me really excited. but, aside from my temporary delusion that i should just tell him to move in anyway and no one will be mad, that opportunity is pretty much gone. it's pretty pathetic that i can feel so terrible over the failure of a friendship that hadn't even happened yet.

also, i had a flat tire and when i brought it in they said i needed new tires. that sucked.

ack

they're still all good stories

there's this idea floating around, that new wives or new mothers are prone to crazy, lonely adventures, like ceasing to sleep entirely and using this time to read anna karenina over and over again or packing the kid and a flask of gin in the car and driving as far as she can by noon and telling the kid they're going to the zoo. i used to think that is was an idea that male authors had about women that they thought stayed home all day with nothing to do or who they suspected were suffering from postpartem depression, but i'm starting to think it's kind of real. i always thought that if i married rich, i would stay home with the baby and take fistfuls of antidepressants and spend a lot of time telling the baby that it's ok that i haven't put pants on yet, and then when the father came home i would say "oh, we went to the park." real stay-at-home moms take care of kids all day and do chores and really take them to the zoo. at least, on law & order they're always well put together and pushing a stroller at the park. but i'm not even close to being married, or having too much time on my hands, and i'm still starting to get weird ideas, like shoplifting or picking people up from the bus stop and taking them to their houses or going to the zoo by myself during a storm. i'm also becoming sort of a hypochondriac. sometimes it's just a fake cold or a stomachache. this week it's the beginning symptoms of scurvy, so i bought myself eight bottles of orange juice and dared myself to drink them all tonight. it doesn't have anything to do with jake, i don't think. i don't want to cheat on him at all. just all of a sudden these ideas come into my head and i really want to do them. maybe i'm going insane.

new year's eve

this year, i spent it at home losing really, really badly at monopoly and being kind of a brat about it. it wasn't the killer party, but it was pretty fun and i had a good time. it was pretty much exactly what i wanted, except partway through i realized that i also wanted a bunch of my friends to call me and tell me what their wacky schemes for fun were and ask me to join them, invitations i would politely, although not self-righteously, decline. i just really did not feel like doing the same thing i do every year, which is drink a bunch of champagne and see what amber young is doing and maybe get some donuts, which is all fine but slightly disappointing when you've spent days trying to come up with some kind of grand plan that will make everyone as happy and excited as possible. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of these grand plans or the inevitable disappointment this year. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of the hooting and hollering that goes on when two girls kiss at midnight, or someone throws up their burger downtown after the fireworks. i just didn't feel like it this year, so i stayed home, and none of my friends called. some friends who were in different time zones texted me some pretty funny versions of "happy new year" two to three hours early, but that was it. i don't know, maybe i told everyone i was staying home and not to bug me and then completely forgot about it; maybe everyone else had the same idea. either way, this year i was left out of everyone's plans. this sort of suits me just fine, but it makes me kind of worried that i severed a bunch of ties and will never see these people again. when i first went to college, i was terrified that this would happen - that all the friends i had made would forget about me, or that none of us would ever talk to each other again. obviously, that didn't happen, but it does sort of feel like we all started to not care about each other that much. i mean, can i really call someone my best friend if i only see them twice a year? of course i care about these people, but i sort of feel like we've all started to be less inclined to do favors for each other, or less inclined to call each other if the other one didn't call first. then again, every time i hang out with them, i have a terrific time, way more fun than with most other people, and it's really comforting to be around people who have known me for so long. maybe everyone was just busy and we are all still awesome.