thought of the day

photo from here

I have a cold. I suffer from nasty bouts of coughing. The only way to stop them is not to take medicine (I've tried), but to smoke a cigarette. It works! Why???

mind grunts

Because I'm a rebel and incredibly bored at my job at the moment, I wore my Sex Pistols T-shirt to work today. A definite no-no when it comes to nuns, but I didn't care! Fine, I wore a cardigan over it. But at least I knew what I had underneath. It felt like that time when I had just started working and the nuns asked me to wear pants instead of a skirt and I did, cause they asked nicely, but to celebrate my free will and independence I chose not to put on any underwear. That showed'em.

Also a random thought from last night. While kissing my boyfriend who had just brushed his teeth I realised that I hate the taste a toothpaste in other people's mouths. But how can this kind of a problem be tackled? Obviously a person with freshly cleaned teeth is to be applauded, not scolded, so...what. So what. (By the way, the best time to kiss is after eating fruit. Mmmmmmmmmmm!) (I know you have already realised this.)

These kinds of thoughts and actions seem justified to you when you have a good job with good steady pay, although with awfully long hours, but doesn't really challenge you in ways that you would like to.

photo from here

I'd rather smell roses

photo from here

I've been on holiday. Two wonderful weeks of rest. All thoughts about work disappeared as soon as I closed the last door on Friday 22nd of December. I'm good that way. Then I proceeded to sleep twelve hour nights. We went to my boyfriend's family for a week, where I was forcefed like crazy. I bought a ukulele and started learning to play Explorers by Muse. Then we painted the new flat and moved. And all of a sudden my dream life was over. The alarm sounded again at 6 am. During the holiday I forgot 47 % of the words of all the languages I speak. My first thought after returning to work was that nuns never have bad hair days.

I need to find a job that I can do from home.

this is a love letter

photo from here

This indeed is a love letter so if you loath these things, avert your eyes. I only want to write how you don't need a near-death experience to realise that you're lucky or to appreciate the little things in life. Accept the cliche for it is worth it.

I try to live small. To enjoy every day of my life, to take them as a gift. Often it's not easy and I find myself hoping that time (that I spend working) would go past faster so that I would get to the point when I would be more happy (weekend/holidays). But I honestly appreciate the small details, even during hard days. Like coffee, pastries, pop corn, the first bite of an apple, raw carrots...and on a non-food-related note, sunshine, my boyfriends beard, his eyes, the way he laughs and moves his hands when he talks. And now you might ask, does my life consist only on food and my man? And the answer is, for the past eight months, oh. yes.

I have been unavailable to my friends and family, distracted at work and I've been strangely kind to strangers (especially on the morning bus), because my brain has been soaked in the happy hormone. This is the period of my life I will remember forever. I give a conscious thanks to the universe every morning, day and night that I've been gifted with this experience. And I 've (thought I've) been in love before, you know. Suffered for it too, because I've (though I've) been so in love. After my last big(gish) love finished, I still managed to rise above all the stupidities that you face when a relationship ends, by being thankful that after all there were good times and that I had been capable of loving another person (not easy, you know).

But meeting the current man has taught me that all the previous experiences and feelings were only trial runs for the real thing. That it's really possible to have a connection like this with another person and that you have matching body parts that work well together. That even during moments he annoys the hell out of you, you're still able to feel the love between you.

I feel this strongly because I realise tomorrow this might be over. Because I might get run over by a bus. Or he might realise that I'm actually really boring and spend too much time on the computer and can only make one dish well (this one). Or I might decide I want to change countries and he doesn't. There might be a strange murder-suicide combo, who knows. Life is a mystery. But no matter how things go awry, I hope to maintain my good memories, to always be happy that we have shared this period of time together, we've appreciated each others company, had orgasms out of this world and that we have loved. Because the most important thing in this world is the ability to love. No shit, no cliche.

(And if there is going to be another love bigger than this one, what the hell is my brain going to do?!)

the happy loneliness of being alone

Because we live on planet earth and we are humans, and hence a little dim, we are constantly dealing with each other. We're too many in the world and we like living in the same crowded places. No big revelations here. You also realise already that we don't always get to hang out with the people we choose. In the morning we're glued to other poor tired souls in the bus/tram/train/carpool/air plane, at work there's the odd bunch of colleagues (they even might be nuns and nevertheless odd. or odder.) and clients/students/patients, whatever your line of work is. The flow of people continues on the street, supermarket, where ever you go. If you're lucky you get to go home to an empty house and have a moment's rest. But most of us have roommates, partners, kids, parents, animals greeting us at the door, and you have to deal with them.

I know, callous, horrible what I just wrote! "You HAVE to DEAL with them"? There is so much loneliness in the world, people who need, no, yearn for company and don't have it. We should be happy to be surrounded with people, especially at home! How nice, you have someone to talk to, someone who (maybe) listens to you, if you slip in the shower and bang your head, that someone would (eventually) find you and (maybe) help you. Yes, I agree. I'm pro-company. Most times. Not on Wednesdays though. Too many people of various ages who all want something from me on Wednesdays. On every Wednesday I want to call in sick. 

Today if I had to choose living alone or with my boyfriend...well, the answer is clear (if you had read my previous posts, that is). But ten years ago I may have made another choice, because I LOVE being alone. Always have. Oh the beauty of it! You get to do stuff, alone, people, a-l-o-n-e! No one asks you questions, criticises what you are doing, sits in your vicinity, makes unnecessary sounds, breathes. It's just you. And maybe your computer (mine often makes unnecessary sounds, but I'll allow that because I simply cannot live without it). I seem to feel everything more when I'm alone. The colours are brighter, I breathe deeper, the coffee tastes stronger, my ideas are flowing because no one is interrupting me all the time. I think it has something to do with energies, auras, something, I don't know, but sometimes the space around you needs to be cleared.

The funny thing is that although I enjoy the walking around naked in the house, eating ice cream for dinner, singing all the corny songs I can remember (loud), trying on clothes that I know won't exactly fit me, but you want to see how much it would take for them to fit (and then proceed to put them back in the closet and do nothing in order to fit into them) (more about this here), making a mess everywhere, plus all the things I do when no one is watching that you don't need to know of, there comes a point when I start talking to myself. It doesn't bother me, it's perfectly normal (because I'm not crazy, really!) (REALLY!). I start commenting on the things I'm doing or simply voicing out what I'm doing. I also have conversations with the people I know and not one of them disagrees with me. This is particularly enjoyable when there's a person in my life who I'm rumbling with. When having arguments with them and they are not actually present, I'm always more articulate and clearer, and of course end up winning the fight. Perfect. Delusional too, yes I do realise that, thank you.

The point is, these silly moments I need regularly. And after a while, after too many lonely conversations, I'm ready to go back into the world. I put on my patient face, interested face, encouraging face, stern face (needed for the rumbles). Thanks to all the sweet people in my life - and obviously coffee - the happy, content face comes on naturally.

I ran into this outside the flat of my boyfriend. Seems just and appropriate.

first stone!

Today I caught one of the nuns b-i-t-c-h-i-n-g about another nun. Well! I tell you I wanted to tap her in the shoulder and go 'ahem! ahem! a little unholy don't you think!'.

But instead I just cursed for again not having my camera (read: phone) with me.

and of course one finds a stock photo of this!

wee hours

I'm currently trying to get used to a normal rhythm for normal people. Going on two months now and I still have problems. It's the having to wake up at 6.30 a.m. that bothers me the most. I love the night time. My mind is like a hyperactive 3-year-old on a sugar rush when most people are sleeping. But when you know you have to be chirpy when the sun rises (I envy you guys who might have to go to work early but who can go with a sulk or nurse a hangover for the most of the day, you lucky whatchamacallits), three hours of sleep is not enough. So I groan and moan and sometimes even cry (theatrically) five times every week when the alarm sounds. After ten or twenty minutes of messy thoughts, half sleeping, hoping to die, I get up and try to find something positive about why I had to maneuver myself out of bed. This is especially hard when you have a boyfriend who gets to stay in bed and has just held you tightly and told you not to go. Yes. I know. I can't believe my luck. How is it possible to meet a person like this? All through the relationship I've written down all the sweet things he's said and done, in fear of forgetting them later. By now it's already a big book. Pardon for the schmaltz, but come on! (We do fight, well no, spat, sometimes. Rarely.)

If I wake up at my place, which happens rarely nowadays, I might be able to have breakfast and take a minute to decide what to wear, instead of choosing the first clean things I find, but mostly I get ready in 15 minutes and rush to the bus. Then I proceed to take two or three different modes of transportation to reach my work. I tend to annoy other passengers in all these crowded vehicles by eating breakfast while I travel (saves time, what's the problem). In this city you don't carry coffee with you. But because I'm a little rebel and my fuel is coffee, I revel in the glow of disapproving looks. I always smile back at them, which is a stretch since it's SO EARLY.

photo from here

When I get to where I'm going I start. At the door I have a final passing thought about calling in sick or just simply running away, but I never do. I greet the nuns with their soul-scanning glance as politely as I can, but also a little defensively (what did I tell you about being a rebel). After all because of them I can't wear mini skirts at work. Hateful. My mood improves a little bit when upstairs I'm welcomed with a wave of hellos and good mornings and hugs and kisses. Joy. Even if five minutes later someone might bite you in the knee because you told them not to try to bite you in the knee.

And now I wonder what is the point of this post? Ummm. Maybe just to voice my desperation about the early hours of the day. The city is filled with tired faces all going somewhere, all unhappy to be out of their beds, but understanding too that this is what we have to do to survive.

But I have plans. I'm working on them. They don't involve getting up before nine.