Since the start of the new year, and the over 2 weeks since my last post, I have been thinking and contemplating that overly deep resolutions post. And every time there was a crazy moment to write about, something else would top it…and soon my brain was full and my ability to write was fading. So to jump start my mind and my thoughts, the current thoughts of my life in random order.
Graduate School: This has been the world’s largest struggle for me. Everyone else seems to know what they want with their big dreams and large plans of life. And every time I thought I had it figured out, something would come along and I’d realize how wrong I was, it became a problem. But then I was talking to the HD one day, who has always been an awesome educational compass for me, and in a moment of full honesty said that finding a job after grad school was going to be tough no matter what but wouldn’t it be so much better to work hard for something I loved. He, of course, was right. So I mentally went back to my loves of history, government, and food to think through what I could do, and presented to me was the Master’s in Food Studies at NYU. If a love affair can be had with a graduate program from afar, this was that moment and despite my desire to not move, I began to realize I would do anything for this opportunity. So the cogs have been turning, timelines are being laid within my mind, and the processing of through all of the post-degree options make me fantastically giddy. To study food through the lens of history, sociology, anthropology, hands on cooking, business, trade, and environmental policies is pretty much a dream at the moment. And it’s something that I’m both hopeful for and excited to attempt to reach.
Life: In a moment to shock everyone who knows my hated of doctors, I have been forced into weekly contact with the medical profession. About a month ago I ran after my bus, injured my foot/leg, went to the doctor, hated the doctor, ignored the doctor and then went on vacation. It was awesome. But then I came back from LA and it still hurt. So piggybacking off an appointment I already had, I asked my orthopedic to check it out (for anyone in the D.C. area, I can refer you to a sports medicine focused doctor with a hot resident). ‘Lo and behold, my years of clutziness have come back to haunt me and a leg injury that should require a boot is in fact not getting a boot because years of knee damage won’t allow it. And thus I am now in physical therapy twice a week, contemplating why I’m allowing individuals to dig their fingers into my joint, tendons and muscles to get a reaction. Pretty much summed up, I whimpered…during PT…it was almost the most pathetic moment of my year thus far.
All in all…life is hysterical, it’s full of ups and downs, and I’m really never sure what is going on around me or what I’m really doing. But the start of the year has brought some easy decisions, some hard decisions, things I want desperately and things that I miss more then I ever knew I would, and well, it also has included just some fantastic comical moments.
Happy 2010!
So, I forgot that in LA you can buy alcohol anywhere, and whoa do I mean anywhere.
Thus, imagine my shock to walk into Costco and there before me is a ginormous bottle of tequila. I laughed, I stared in shock and then a thought hit of, that could really help get me through the holidays. :)
It was a great thought that I can’t actually follow through on.
In high school I was a happy, peppy, never depressed person. A far cry from the deeply introspective person that I have become. But I remember in high school when someone said I had a twinkle in my eye, it sounded like something that would be in a novel and I loved it.
College came and while the peppy, quirky nature stayed the twinkle faded. It was a sad realization, and it made me feel a little like I had lost a part of me.
But this weekend brought a compliment that really made me feel a little more whole. And it started with the simple line,
You and your brother have the same eyes.
It made me laugh and question what in the world that means, because in my mind I think it refers to the giant bags under our eyes. But no, they were coined “smiley and wonderful.” And further explained as, your dad has large, super dark eyes…your mom has smaller eyes that sparkle and you and your brother have these large, dark eyes with a happy sparkle.”
Now the day I can get a boy to say something like that, well that is when we’ll know that I’ve made the big time.
As I listen to Glee: Volume 1 and Glee: Volume 2, I am convinced they are channeling my life into a TV soundtrack. Current obesssion of the moment (off of volume one), Rachel’s cover of Celine Dion’s Taking Chances.
Why, cause the chorus screams a mantra from college…Just Say Jump:
What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there’s solid ground below
Or hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?
“Taking Chances,” Glee: Volume 1
“So it’s just…all it is is a hip hop Hanukkah song written by the senior senator from Utah. That’s all it is.” Anything that begins this way can only be described as one thing…EPIC (oh, and a gift to me from the NY Times and Tablet Magazine).
The final day of NaBloMoPo is today!
It’s been an insane month and as I read back on the last month I feel like I’m reading through an insane person’s rantings, either that or it’s great for my future memoirs. And with this I think about that memoir is going to rock, especially when I can bring up stories and thoughts that I could never write about for reasons that, well, I wouldn’t actually blog about.
And to wrap up the month….a montage of food photos from the last month:
Last but not least, there was a lemonade stand run by a little boy (who was about three) and his dad. It was the most adorable thing ever, and someone had given the little boy a one-million dollar bill and whoa was he proud of it. So needless to say, I needed to stop and take a picture of the darling lemonade stand on an amazing November day.
Dear Blogosphere-
The past five days was a little crazy, which isn’t to shocking when it involves a debate on how long to cook a turkey, a Greek great-aunt who is kinda like the grandmother on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and discovering a trait that is loathable.
In addition to those things there were disco balls, sword-fighting, and a children’s book on Barak Obama that was thoughly mocked by all around.
Saturday included a jaunt into town and completely by accident, stumbling across the end of the farmer’s market and something else wonderful: TACOS!
In case people didn’t already realize this, I just way the heck excited about a taco, especially one that comes on a homemade CORN tortilla (none of this flour tortilla nonsense). It smelled wonderful and thus, there was a required tasting. While it wasn’t like the ones I grew up with, the taco was pretty awesome and a great continuation to a weekend of absurdity and gluttony.
Maybe more fun recap photos when I’m awake enough to actually look at them.
xoxo, Taco Girl
There is a small part of me that can’t wait to get home tomorrow. To the calm, to the having 3 seconds to sit down and hit the import button on my computer for the photos I’ve taken, and to having more then 30 seconds to churn out a “what’s going on with life” blog post.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Until that time…I’m totally falling asleep.
I’m not quite sure what is more insane:
- having 4 family members staying in my house that I hadn’t met before yesterday
- the arrival of the greek/british cousins (2 of them)
- a surprise visit from my late grandfather’s 72 year old sister, who by the way…only speaks greek
This is where we note that I still haven’t gotten the much needed nap, and that the count in the house is up to eleven.
