Riotous Lioness’ Writings Lie In Wait

The Cure sing “It’s Friday I’m in Love.” What are you “in” on this particular fall Friday?

Mental chaos, I think.

Also, yoga pants and slippers.  Helps with the mental chaos.

My boyfriend and I split up last night.  It was kind, gentle and so painful.  He's a very good man that I care for so much, but we had one deal-breaker that we haven't been able to work out the entire time we've been together.  In the end, it was time to let it go.

Unsurprisingly, I've spent much of the last evening and morning crying.  And crying some more.  And a bit more for good measure.

I didn't eat dinner last night.  Not on purpose, just because I never felt hungry.  Even my "normal" of emotional eating was stunted a bit, I only had a couple of ice cream bites.  I wasn't hungry this morning either, but artgeek reminded me both last night and this morning that I needed to eat.  I spent most of the morning on a couple more ice cream bites, and eventually told myself to just take artgeek's advice and go find breakfast.

I will be back to Chicago come fall, but I am rather suddenly spending my summer back in New Mexico.  So when I needed to find breakfast, there was nothing more natural that finding the best breakfast burrito I could.

Recently, in another online haunt, I'd been trying to explain that there's this perfect union of food in a breakfast burrito, and couldn't convey it.  I am definitely a chocoholic, and I tend to have a sweet tooth of insanity, but a green chile breakfast burrito is still better.  I don't think I managed to explain it, but I tried.

However, this morning's experience really confirmed for me the truth of that statement.  I'd had a couple of ice cream bites (vanilla ice cream on top of a cookie thing, dipped in dark chocolate), and they tasted good and all, but it wasn't anything special.

Walking into the restaurant and seeing the wait made me smile a bit.  It's not the true definition of a hole in the wall, having it's own building, but it's tiny and unassuming.  I'd lived in this town in the past for years as a child, driven past it even more as an adult and never noticed it was anything until a friend took me almost a week ago.  Then I regretted missing it for so many years.

This time in, I noticed they had a small bar off to the side, in case you didn't insist on a table.  I wasn't hungry enough to care that much, but I'm bad at waiting, so the bar it was.  I read the menu, despite knowing what I wanted, then managed to drop it behind the bar.  I felt better when another person did the exact same failed maneuver later.

I ordered a one egg breakfast burrito, with bacon and green chile on the side.  It came smothered with cheese and with their special potatoes on the side.

One bite in, and I realized it was perfect.  There's something amazing about the combination of eggs and green chile anyway, and no I don't know what it is.  But when the green chile is made just right, and the eggs are mixed with bacon and wrapped in a flour tortilla covered in cheese?  That's comfort food.

Suddenly I really needed to eat, even though my body had still not told me I was hungry.  Cutting off big bite-sized pieces of burrito and dunking it in the chile.  Feeling my throat sting just a hair.  Devouring every bit of burrito on the plate (and no small number of potatoes with green chile as well).  Walking out afterward with my lips still tingling.

It doesn't cure the pain of losing someone so important to me.  But for a moment, it sure made me happy.  And right now, I'll take those moments.  Sure I still nearly lost it in the restaurant when my wallet fell open to his picture.  The radio still had the power to make me cry on my drive home.

But for a moment all that mattered was that I was home, with all the unique pieces that come with it.  Like lips that tingle even without a kiss.

It's been over two months since I last posted anything, and far longer than that since I've posted anything substantial.  It's not that I haven't had things to say, it's that I've allowed myself to get swamped, I've gotten confused, and my priorities are all in a jumble right now.

Not entirely.  Graduate school, my research, those continue to be my highest priorities, even as I've had to set them aside for a couple of months.

I can't focus, though, because my personal life priorities just seem to be confused.  And I don't know what to say about them.  A friend of mine often writes in her blog about how she sometimes has it all going on in her head, and can't put it down in writing.  I'm having that issue myself right now.

I'm living in New Mexico right now, just for a couple of months.  After that, it's back to graduate school (well, actually starting my PhD program), and that will help some, I think.

I do not know how to make structure for myself when I have little to none.  Even in my masters program, I'd manage to get to all my classes, and on time, but I couldn't schedule my other time to best do my research or grade papers or just have fun.  Or focus on my out-of-class writing and photography.

I'm not feeling creative right now.  I'm feeling mostly out of whack.  I had a poem start in my head one night, and instead of sitting up and writing down what I "heard", I figured I'd remember in the morning.  That was less than brilliant, and I think I knew that.  I just think I didn't want to focus on the feelings causing that poem.

I'm going to try to get it all back in order.  But at the moment, I feel very built on a foundation of sand, and it's slowly eroding.  There's some bedrock under there, I'm certain, but I can't find it right now.

Anyway, that's me surfacing briefly.  Ironically, I'm relatively certain almost no one is going to see it.  That's okay.  It's good, I think, to put it up here anyway.

So, random tidbit for anyone who's reading.  Not a long entry.

The song "What Would Happen?" by Merril Bainbridge just came on.  There's a couple of lines that are extra clear in her singing:

What would happen if we kissed?
Would your tongue slip past my lips?

And today it got me thinking (very briefly, as it's not a profound thought).

The older I get, the more I dislike French Kissing.  I have no idea why this is true, but it is.

So there.  :P

How do you think having siblings (or not having siblings) affects who you are as a person?

I can only say that I know it does, but I don't know how.  I was only an only child for four years of my life - not enough time to really know.  I was worried and happy and everything all at once when she called me to announce her pregnancy.  I could never understand some of her choices.  I've always wanted to support her in every way she needed.

I am the older sister.  I look out for her, as best I can.  Like a parent, there are times when it's hard to let go and let her make her own decisions.  Unlike a parent, I come to that conclusion sooner.  Or possibly just with more a more complete data set, since she confides in me a bit more than she confides in them.

We don't talk much.  When we do talk, it's easy and open, though I doubt she tells me everything.  I certainly don't tell her everything.

We wouldn't be friends if we weren't siblings, but woe betide the person who messes with one or the other.

Mom usually updates us on each other, and I know she speaks to Mom more often than I do.  However, I think that more a result of physical proximity than emotional closeness.  Either way, it's good to know I won't be much out of the loop for how little we talk.  However, since I can count on her to not tell Mom half of what's going on in certain situations, sometimes I have to follow a branch all the way to the root.  I don't really mind this.

There's two of us.  We're totally different, and we're way too similar.  My own grandmother tells us she never saw the family resemblance between the two of us until one day when she and I were both adults.  It took me even longer to see it, and then one day her angry frustrations were staring at me from the bathroom mirror.  It was so freaky; I completely lost whatever was bothering me.  And I've never been able to replicate that vision.

How does it affect me as a person?  Simplicity itself.  It's one of the many things that define me.

Are you a go-getter or do you wait for good things to happen to you?
Submitted by sleepybear.

I used to think I was a go-getter, and I used to think I was a risk-taker.  Then, many years ago, I woke up and realized I was wrong.  I dreamed of all the risky things I'd do with myself (like take the Hill road at 100+mph), but there were always reasons I wouldn't do such a thing (completely unfair to do that without the road somehow being blocked off for me and me alone, because the chances of not wiping out, and thus potentially killing many people, were practically zero).  Eventually I came to accept that I was a dreamer, but had very little action in my soul.  Even after having done some pretty active things, like raising the money to go to Kenya for a study abroad in three month's time.  And, frankly, despite what everyone told me, I didn't believe going to Kenya was that much of a risk.  It certainly didn't occur to me that I was going out and getting what I wanted in raising the money to get there - I was too busy doing it to think about it.

So, I continued to feel passive, though there was an oddly dull ache in feeling that way.  I'd be curious to find out how artgeek perceived me, in terms of this question, once we'd gotten to know each other a bit.  When we'd met, I'd dragged myself and my now ex-husband across the country for graduate school.  But I was already admitted, and I knew what would be happening and so on.  Furthermore, not only was it the only school I'd been admitted too, it was the only one I'd applied for.  I felt I'd done a pretty half-assed job about looking for school, but I wasn't sure how to go about getting what I wanted.  Knowing that I was pretty much fumbling in the dark added to the feeling that I'm the type of person who waits for good things to come, because surely a "go-getter" would find a way to turn on the light.

As I implied, I didn't enjoy feeling of being cautious, but I couldn't shake it.  So I just accepted it (and, truthfully, the fact that I often accept things when I should perhaps continue to push only adds to that feeling, even now).  I chewed on it.  I may have gone so far as to mentally define myself that way.

Then one day, after my marriage had disintegrated, I decided to move half-way across the country.  I didn't have a job lined up.  I wasn't in graduate school again.  I'd only visited the city once, and had no friends there.  However, I had a dream, rooted in my Kenya trip, and the only way to give that dream a fighting chance was to move.  I wanted to be in graduate school again, and I knew who I wanted to work with and what I wanted to study.  The problem was that the people I wanted to work with were not based at a university, and therefore the only way to get into one or both of the universities I'd applied to was to move to the city my hoped-for adviser was in and start convincing professors they wanted to take me on as a student.

It wasn't easy.  Aside from the previously mentioned difficulties, I had to move out of an apartment I very much enjoyed and put my cat in a foster home.  I had to get rid of over half my stuff.  The sacrifices I had to make to follow my dream, even before moving, were myriad.  And then I had to move, all by myself (in a snowstorm no less, but if I add that my audience will probably start hearing "uphill both ways - and we liked it!).

It worked.  I've been admitted to one of the two universities, and I start this August.  I'm already attending lab meetings and thinking about pieces of dissertation projects.  I know I'm already making a mark in my lab meetings, because I refuse to hide out and be quiet - I demand of myself that I contribute, and this week I was thanked for those contributions in the most recent meeting.

This isn't to say that the move was the hardest part.  I'm unemployed at the moment, and despite my volley of applications, that doesn't seem to be changing.  I'm in a state of mental agony because for all that I want to start my research right this second, I don't have the money to do so without a job, and with a job I probably won't have time.  I haven't figured out how to get this latest, greatest good thing.

And that's how I know I can finally say that I'm a go-getter.  I got myself to Kenya.  I got myself into two graduate programs, at different times as I needed them.  I moved with very little safety net just to further my goals.  And now I'm frustrated because I'm suddenly stymied on how to get something I truly want.  I'm not sure that's ever happened before.  Yes, I've not gotten things I kind of want (a job at this exact moment comes to mind), but I've come to realize that I have never failed to get something I desperately want, and am willing to work for.

I'm a go-getter, but I think me I'm reaching my limits.  Alas.

I grew up eating my steaks done to medium.  I remember going to a certain steakhouse with my family fairly often, maybe as often as twice a month, because my father loved steak and he knew either the manager or the owner.  Honestly, I was so young and I cannot remember which.  But I have a very clear memory of the steaks coming out of the kitchen with these little plastic tabs that stated how cooked each steak was.  Medium was always a dark blue tab, and that’s what dad always got.  By default, so did I.

Steak was my favorite food for a very long time.  Every year we would each get to ask my mother to make whatever we wanted for dinner on our birthday.  My sister would inevitably ask for something new and interesting (and I can’t remember a single meal she requested).  My father often asked for things that were off the wall (green eggs and ham, I kid you not – my mother managed it).  I always asked for steak, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.  In winter.  My mother might be a saint (or the long suffering abbess, from so many movies).  And, as always, the steaks were cooked between medium and well done.

Well, eventually we all grow up, and our tastes change, as my mother always says.  However, I find it interesting when we can pinpoint those exact moments when our tastes change.  For me and steak, it came in the form of a boyfriend.

T was a mistake, pure and simple.  Looking back, I’m shocked at the sheer idiocy of dating this man.  He wasn’t a pleasant person, he had significant self-esteem problems which he then took out on my own self-esteem problems, and I suspect he had significant mental health problems to boot.  His outward demeanor was that of a strong-willed, stoic man who knew a lot about his chosen interests.  In truth, he was a complete popinjay with his opinions and need to keep up certain appearances.  A terrifying parody of the man he wanted to be and the apogee of my poor high school choices.

All of that said, I can’t deny I learned a lot from that relationship, and one of the more mundane things I learned was that beef is better rare.  I remember going out to a steakhouse with him and a few other people once and him saying, in his “tough guy” voice, “Fire, meet meat.  Meat, meet fire.  This meeting is now over.”  This was how he described to his friends why he’d ordered his filet “as rare as possible”.  In truth, he was right.  I had some of his dinner that night, having ordered my own medium filet (a thin line of pink in the middle), and probably would have devoured it all given half a chance.  Between this, and his introducing me to sushi (and that meeting lasted quite a long and luscious time), I can’t help but look back and be thankful for having dated him.  Sometimes that teenage girl bone-headed need to please her boyfriend leads to something good.  On occasion.  I don’t think I’d have tried “raw fish” for anyone else.  Knowing his obsession with Japanese culture and wanting to keep him happy lead to another wonderful food experience.

I used to look back at that relationship (and others, of course) and think about how much better my life would have been if I’d never dated him. We all have these moments in life, where we wish we’d done something different, but I think we almost all eventually come back to owning those choices and saying, “Forget that.  It may have been a stupid choice, but it was MY choice, and it helped forge me into who I am today.”  Perhaps, though, that is dependent on our liking ourselves.

This is also an attitude I tried to convey to my friend J awhile back, when we were discussing her grandfather’s death, and how he’d told her he had a life of no regrets, and she wished she could say the same.  I love J dearly, and I wish she could look at her “regrets” and see that they helped her be the woman all her friends find so wonderful.  Or at least understand that perhaps all her grandfather was saying was that, looking back on the entirety of his life, if he’d made other, “smarter” choices, he would quite possibly not be viewing the picture he had made by the end – and that he loved this picture and wouldn’t have it any other way.  I not only failed to convey this to J, but had my friend A trying to tell me the same thing I was trying to tell J when I shared this conversation with her.  Clearly, my communication skills need some work.

This doesn’t mean I believe “everything happens for a reason”, because that’s not the case.  I don’t find it credible that I was guided into dating a psycho SOB just to learn to like sushi and rare steak.  If there is a guiding force in this universe, I’d think it would find a better way to teach such mundane lessons.  I just think perhaps that when I look at the knots in the rope I’ve climbed to become this person I am – this person that I rather like – they’re more like a curlicue design and there is something to learn in both the hardship and the good.

And there was plenty of good that could become hardship, or things that seemed to be hardship that ended up being exactly as I wanted them to be later.  I certainly can’t help but wonder what might have been when I look back at certain parts of my life.  If that’s not basic human nature, I don’t know what is.  And I am not so free of desire that I don’t wonder.  But I no longer listen to Calliope’s siren song of what might have been, and write whole new lives based on her ethereal words.

Or, at least I don’t listen to her when she speaks to me of what might have been.  She’s still got my attention when she talks to me of what could be.  I just suspect that what lies ahead never seems so epic compared with what lies behind, so she has less to say.  Let’s face it, my life could be changed if I wear that risqué shirt or manage to otherwise change my apparel in an aesthetically pleasing way, but mostly what will change will be that I’m feeling better about my clothing choices.  The Odyssey, this is not.

I guess the journey I did have came in the form figuring out how to accept what happened without overly dwelling on those things I sometimes wish I could change.  Because when I think about what I could change, it’s so easy to think about it all coming together the way I want it to.  When I take the time to look back and see how I could change it and how the change would realistically change my life, it’s almost never a more appealing life than the one I have now.  The things that would make my life more appealing are often not within my control.  Woe is me.

Oh, and for the record, my mother probably wishes I’d never dated T.  Not only did she see what a loon he was from the beginning, but she is disgusted when I get my steaks rare.  But she likes the person I am too, so she accepts me – rare steaks, psycho exes and all.

My mother really is a saint.

This is reposted after reading it on the lovely and talented artgeek's page.

1. I've come to realize that my butt:  Feels smaller in the palm of my own hand or someone else's than it looks in the mirror.  I'll take the feeling over the look

2. I've come to realize that when I talk:  I'm probably trying to get my brain in gear - for good or for ill.

3. I've come to realize that, if I love someone (not family):  I haven't figured out love or family yet, so if I say I've realized something here, I'd be lying.

4. I've come to realize that I need:  A great deal less than I thought I did in terms of stuff, and a lot more than I realized in terms of people and life.  It may be too much to ask.

5. I've come to realize that I've lost:  A very small amount in comparison to what's at stake.  The stakes are still high, and I'm still going to bet.

6. I've come to realize that I hate it when:  My mind chews on subjects it can't actually deal with anymore.

7. I've come to realize that if I'm drunk:  I'm having experiences most of my peers had many, many years ago, but it's okay to have done it on my time frame.  Also that being drunk one time may feel nothing like being drunk another, but sometimes it's similar.

8. I've come to realize that money:  May just be a means to an end, but it's a pretty fucking vital means.

9. I've come to realize that:  I'm more of a risk taker than I give myself credit for, and less of one than I'd like to be.

10. I've come to realize that I'll always be:  wondering why someone presumes they will always be something.

11. I've come to realize that I have a crush on:  my own personal houdini, but he, I and his darling beloved are all aware of that, and know nothing will come of it (most likely, as per the above).

12. I've come to realize that the last time I cried was:  this morning or last night, I'm not sure which.

13. I've come to realize that my cell phone is:  desperately in need of a new battery, or an overall upgrade.

14. I've come to realize that when I wake up in the morning:  I miss being the person I was in high school - hated mornings but was always up five minutes before the alarm, and out of bed as soon as she woke up.

15. I've come to realize that before I go to sleep at night I:  need to unwind more, and haven't figured out how.

16. I've come to realize that right now I am thinking about:  my stressful job and wondering why it's so much harder to find a good one.

18. I've come to realize that when I get on Facebook:  I will be highly confused as I have nothing to do with it.

19. I've come to realize that today I will:  make a new friend who will probably be transfered away from my city within the next month.

20. I've come to realize that tonight I will:  not make excuses, and do something for TAD, even if it's just this meme.

21. I've come to realize that tomorrow I will:  try very hard to tackle TAD better, and not freeze my patukis off.

22. I've come to realize that I really want to:  achieve that thing I didn't even realize was a possibility a month ago.

23. I've come to realize that the person who is most likely to repost this is:  unknown, as my neighborhood is so small, and the person I got it from is the person I'd expect to repost if she hadn't already done so.  Perhaps stefieayn will do so, but I won't hold it against her if she won't.

24. I've come to realize relationships:  are wonderful and amazing things, but don't get the credit they deserve for that, and thus often don't get the work they need to survive.

25. I've come to realize love:  isn't always enough to make something work.

26. I've come to realize my best guy friend(s):  would do anything for me, and always have my back.  They will also get me drunk when I'm not paying attention, and then blame it on their girlfriends.

27. I've come to realize my best girl friend(s):  are much harder to quantify, but are just as valuable as my guy friends.  I just wish someone had told my younger self this.

28. I've come to realize food:  doesn't need to be as complicated as I make it, and yet somehow continues to be that confusing.  I do hope I get it, though.

29. I've come to realize, when I'm a girlfriend I:  haven't figured out the meaning of the word yet.

30. I've come to realize women and men:  aren't really that different, when spread out over the whole of the human race, and are from completely different worlds when spread over individuals.

31. I've come to realize over the summer:  that it's okay to go for exactly what you want, and sometimes it's okay to disregard the advice of those who love you dearly.  Sometimes they are wrong.

32. I've come to realize heartbreak: happens.

 We’ve probably only spoken of hot chocolate twice.

Both times you expressed a deep delight in it.

The second time, though I had only the written word,

I could see the joy on your face and the glee in your eyes.

“I love hot chocolate.”

I’m more a hot tea person

But something about the winter calls for hot chocolate.

I guess it’s the richer feeling in the mouth

The thicker taste

It fills the belly better too.

I’d have to drink an ocean of tea for the same effect.

A bit uncomfortable.

I’ve been complaining about the weather a lot recently,

And expressing amazement when I don’t feel that need.

I can’t help but wonder if I make you laugh with all my bitching.

After all, no one can control the weather

And railing about it, albeit in glorious fashion, doesn’t change that.

The snow is here, and with it a lot of memories.

I appreciate it that you’ve listened

To the making of memories

Especially when the forging hurt,

Because I was making memories when rudely awakened from a long-time dream.

This snowy year has been the hardest one in terms of weather

Which I bitch about.

But it’s been a far easier winter than so many of recent times.

Used to be that the weather determined the severity of winter

Now it’s too complex for mere meteorologists to explain.

But I’m enjoying the puppy in the snow.

She, of course, capers about

Snowy playing in inverse proportion to how much I want to be outside.

It’s a toy, a jungle gym, fluffy, and food all in one

What’s not to love?

I admit, I have no answer.  What's not to love, indeed.

There’s no shadow on this year’s snow.

Or under the eyes in the looking-glass

Winter’s harsher than before, but much more happy.

Plus, there’s a lot more hot chocolate

And I leave no cup unfinished.

Miss you.