peace out 2009, it's been real

It's hard to believe this past year has actually come to an end. I remember this time one year ago, thinking on my future and wondering where I might be in a year. It was a strange time in my life. I had just come out of a long, hard relationship, suffered a scathing rejection from the first boy I had dated in 4 years, dragged my mother out of the depths of a dark depression and into a brand new condo, which I was living in with her at the time, oh, and I was working a job that I absolutely hated but wasn't quite ready to admit that to myself yet.

In the midst of all this bleakness, I found a ray of hope to latch onto. My horoscopes for the year, every single one, were unanimously predicting that 2009 would be the year that I would find true love. I know what you're thinking "don't all horoscopes say that all the time?" or "why would you put that much faith in astrology?" There are a few different explanations. One is that I am hopelessly obsessed with my horoscope, as you may or not know from past posts. But the other is far more personal, and I'd imagine, easier to relate to as well. I believed that this was true because I wanted it to be true.

I wanted to fall in love with a vengeance unlike any other I had ever experienced. My life was in shambles. There was no easy solution. The best circumstances I could imagine at the time involved a charming man on a white horse (or similarly symbolic mode of transportation) swooping in to pull me out of the dark depths to which my life had sank and into a safe, happy bubble of blissful romance.

But in 2009 I did not fall in love. I went on a few dates (but, to my surprise, promptly pulled away as soon as things started to get even a bit emotional). I spent an inordinate amount of time with my ex, who despite his multitude of wonderful qualities, is decidedly not the one for me. But nowhere, at no point, in no way did I, in 2009, fall in love.

Now to some, this may seem a bit depressing. It may reek of loneliness and desperation and cold nights spent at home with no one but my cat to keep me company. But the fact that I did not fall in love this year is, in retrospect, the best thing that's ever happened to me (and I swear I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better).

In January of 2009, I hopped on a plane, for the first time in five years, to visit my dad in California, at the time, a further distance than I had ever traveled. And this seemingly small, inconsequential action set off a chain reaction that consumed and ignited and took charge of my life for the entire rest of the year. This week-long vacation set in motion a chain of events which pulled and compelled me towards bigger and greater and more outrageous outcomes than I had previously ever dreamed myself capable of.

Shortly after this trip, I was asked to leave the job that I would not allow myself to admit that I hated. I then, spent the money from my settlement check on a vacation to puerto rico, supplementing my income with a job that was neither serious, nor enduring. I left that job just in time to take advantage of a new opportunity, which ultimately led me on a cross-country adventure to a new home in a new place that one year ago today, I had never even visited.

In the past year, I have more than made up for the five years in which I did not fly. I've been back and forth and all around this country so many times it makes me dizzy to think about it. I've seen things in person that I had previously only imagined. I've seen things in myself that I had previously only imagined; a newfound sense of independence, bravery, determination. I've created a home for myself in a brand new place, complete with friends and pets and a job, rather than letting my home and my friends and my job create me. And I like myself a million times better because of it.
No, this year was not ecstatic every single second. It was no easy ride down the side of a rainbow. It was hard. It was fucking terrifying. It was heartbreaking. But in the end, it was so worth it I cannot even explain.
So, I'm happy to report, now that it's all said and done, 2009 was NOT the year that I found true love. Instead, I found something better. I found myself. And as for my love life...there's always 2010.

love always

i live here now

so i think it pretty much goes without saying that since i made it to LA, i am now in my final destination: sf bay area. i feel like i ought to apologize for not updating in a while, but if you can possibly imagine moving 3000 miles away from the only place you've ever lived......
it's been complete madness.
i've been living here for about a month and a half now and it still does not feel like home. i'm not really sure if it ever will. i am homesick a large portion of the time. i miss my family, my friends, the corners and smells and flavors of the place i'm from. at the same time, i feel like i can't really go back, at least not yet. it's kinda like i'm trapped in some strange purgatorial no-man's-land and i'm not quite sure how to get out of it and into that place where i live somehwere again.

as much as i thought, upon making the decision to come out here, that the bay area was all rainbows and sunshine and crunchy, granola-y goodness, i've realized that like any other place, it has it's dark side too. I'm living in oakland, in an amazing beautiful house that was once featured in a magazine, on a tree lined street in what looks to be a charming little neighborhood, but just last week as my downstairs neighbor's friend was walking to her car, she had a gun pointed in her face and was forced to hand over her keys to some random stranger who couldn't even figure out how to start her car and ended up just running away, but still, that shit is pretty scary.

i have had two terrible nightmares since i got here and both of them sperately were some of the most unsettling i can ever remember having in the entirety of my life. sometimes the combined forces of working every single day at a job that seems like it will never be finished, plus getting lost all the time and not knowing where things are, and just the unfathomable weight of being totally and completely alone out here makes me think i might be lossing my shit for real this time.

but there are good days too. red velvet cake is pretty trendy out here. i've seen it in a few different incarnations, as cupcakes, sheetcakes, etc. it's all good with me and it makes it kinda hard to stay despondent for too long. the mocha's here are infinitely better than in ct. almost everyone eats their veggies. berkeley bowl trumps whole foods by like, a landslide. one day i managed to run all my errands without the assistance of my gps and i felt really proud and accomplished.

i live with two of the sweetest, most congenial people one could ever hope to meet and also the most adorably goofy yet well-trained boxer in the world. sometimes i get angsty and spend too much time in my room and forget to take advantage of them. i also have the privilege of working with the downest chick that ever lived and she has taken me on some fun adventures to haunted houses and fancy ice-cream shops. the other day we went to ikea and then ate hot dogs, which was really fun. she likes to make fun of twilight as much as i do, which when i really think about it makes all this moving shit almost worth it. her roommates are really rad too.

what i haven't been doing is taking pictures or documenting. i mean, i can barely remember how to breathe sometimes, but even though this is all kind of confusing and uncomfortable, i have a feeling that when it's all said and done, i'll still want to remember it.

love always

road trip, day five: LA

i know, i know, i'm supposed to be writing about LA. I've been working on it, believe me. I've started this entry i don't know how many times, only to abandon it after a few sentences. i guess i just feel like LA is a big deal. I mean, I spent a large chunk of my adolescence reading FLB and fantasizing about living there. I jut don't feel like anything i could say would really do it justice.

Actually, I really don't feel like the time I spent in LA did it justice even. It was towards the end of our trip, so I was tired and cranky. I was feeling all twisted up and conflicted and emotional about the fact that I finally made it to California. Half of me wanted to turn around and speed back the other way towards home. I was burdened with the terrible knowledge that my traveling companion and soulmate would be leaving me soon. I was weird. And confused. And slightly psychotic.

On top of that, LA was fucking intense. Our hotel was like a fucking hipster circus.The fact that our bathroom wall was glass made me really uncomfortable because like, what if I had to take a shit? I mean jon and I are close, but not that close.

Hollywood was even more intense.

At a certain point I think I just shut down and went all numb and apathetic about the whole thing. It was just too much for an angtsy, overtired girl to handle, you know?

The one thing I do remember about Los Angeles with perfect, crystal clarity is the fucking meal that we had there.Pedro took us out for bbq in koreatown, and it was seriously the best, most hauntingly satisfying meal I have ever had.
I have not stopped craving that shit since. (Although I hear there's some pretty good korean bbq in oakland as well).We also drank this weird korean booze that tasted like poison but worked like a charm on my hopelessly frazzled nerves.

Later that night we totally were gonna hit up the rooftop bar at our swanky hotel, but when we saw how busy it was and how under-dressed we were compared to the glammed-out barbies and kens that were swarming all over the place, we decided to just retire to our room and watch harry potter instead.

the next morning we had a really overpriced breakfast that consisted of amazing, fresh squeezed juice and the grossest, runniest eggs I have ever paid $20 for.our waiter looked unnervingly like jon circa 2005.

Oh, LA, I'm sorry we didn't really have a chance to bond. Maybe I'll visit again once I've recovered from this whole ordeal and we'll hit it off smashingly like I always imagined we would.

love always

p.s. on the way to LA we totally stopped at In-N-Out burger and that shit was bangin.sorry y'all, i just couldn't help myself.

road trip, day four: NM, AZ

i've totally put off writing about this day, because i will always remember it as the day we got stuck in the most horrendously awful traffic of my life. to say the least, it was truly bad.


it didn't start off that way though. we woke up on old route 66 in New Mexico in the king suite of the super 8 motel. what can i say? i'm a classy broad.

for anyone who's ever seen cars, route 66 really does look like radiator springs.
we stopped at the KIX on 66 diner and ate some really yummy huevos ranchero for breakfast.
when we got on the highway, we saw a sign for like, the most amazing, coolest rest stop ever that's totally worth waiting 70 more exits for or something like that, so even though i really had to pee, we decided to hold out. it's a damn good thing we did too, otherwise we would've missed out on the largest selection of fake-ass native american touristy shit known to man. including such gems as this
and this
i really shouldn't talk too much shite because we totally did buy a pair of baby mocassins for adonis. they were too cute to resist!

after the tourist trap, my camera battery died, which is really kind of a mini-tragedy because New Mexico and Arizona were some of the coolest looking states we drove through.


at one point, we were in the dead center of this mountain range in Arizona, coming down through the mountains as the sun was setting. it was so beautiful it felt surreal.
then, about ten minutes later is when we hit the traffic. we were still coming down the mountain and up ahead the only thing visible was a spiral of breaklights. all the exits had creepy, foreboding names like bloody basin and dead man's ditch and when we called laura, she assured us that no, there was no point trying to get off and go another way. we were indeed, stuck there.

now, i'm gonna try not to go into too much whiney detail, but can you imagine, after four straight days of driving, stiff neck, no sleep, miles from home, we sat in traffic for two whole hours and moved only ten miles. it was heartwrenching.
eventually, we did make it to laura's house, where she and kevin were kind enough to feed us the best tacos ever and let us sleep in their guest bed, which, after three nights of hotels, really was the nicest thing anyone could've done for me.

love always

road trip, day three: MO, OK, TX, NM

the third day of our trip took us out of missouri and into oklahoma, but first we had to stop at the waffle housefor us northerners, it's a bit of a novelty but i get the feeling that waffle house is like a southern version of denny's.
siting there that morning, looking out the window at a completely unfamiliar
scene, I had this overwhelming sense of freedom, like I could spend the rest of my life driving around and eating in crappy diners and be totally happy and content.

in oklahoma we saw lots of cows and hay.
In texas, the landscape started to shift with little hills popping up in random placesthe road we were driving seemed to go on forever

when the sun set, there was not a cloud in the sky and it was almost painful, hot and blinding.

we stopped in amarillo to eat good, old-fashioned texas barbecueour meals came with coleslaw, potato salad, onion rings, apricots, beans and texas toast. it was quite the setup. but the best part by far, was the decor!

love always

road trip, day two: OH, IN, IL, MO

after the panic-inducing first day of our trip, things got decidedly better. jon insisted on starting out the day by watching bolt on his ipod with the volume on full blast through my speakers, which made me tearfully homesick for my baby kitty, but around the time the movie was finished, we crossed over into Indiana, which was the first place we saw that looked truly different from the northeast.Indiana, at least the part that we drove through, is pretty much cornfields for as far as the eye can see.
Indianapolis reminded me of hartford, but mostly because of the way the highway looked approaching it.
Illinois was more cornfields.
St. Louis looked like a pretty sweet city. Of course, we didn't stop. We were determined to just keep on pushing through.
In Missouri we saw one of those amazing western sunsets that are impossible to take a decent picture of.


when we got hungry, we started scanning the signs off the highway looking for something promising. we came across a billboard for a place called the missouri hick, which served barbecue and we decided to go for it. we took the exit as the billboard instructed, and found ourselves literally, in the middle of nowhere. when i attempted to turn around in someone's driveway, at least ten pitbulls came running from their yard at our car. the driveway that i finally managed to pull into did not have pitbulls, but rather hens and chickens everywhere, just roaming around as if they owned the place. it was slightly terrifying.
when we finally hit civilizationa again, we stumbled onto this place called matt's steakhouse .
seriously, if you are ever in missouri, go to this place. i promise you will not be disappointed. The decor is all cheesy 90's faux-upscale, with a waterfall in the middle and booths the size of a bed. And the steak....the steak completely redefined my idea about what a steak is supposed to taste like. we ordered the KC strip, which made the entire idea of a NY strip seem like a feeble joke. Also, they had these amazing breadsticks that bore an uncanny resemblance to fried dough.

After our amazing meal, we splurged and got a decent hotel to make up for the previous night's disaster. It was small and unremarkable, but we reveled in every detail, from the clean towels to the multitude of pillows. when you're far away from home, it's the little things like that make a difference.

love always

road trip, day one: CT, NY, PA, OH

yes, I have arrived safe and sound, in my new home on the west coast. yes, it was a long, arduous, exciting, painful, exhilarating, gut-wrenching, liberating, action-packed adventure of a journey to get here. and yes, of course, I plan on at least attempting to tell you every juicy, little detail about it.
To start off, let me just say that the experience of leaving, actually getting in the car and driving away, was unlike any other. I mean, physically, it really, truly felt like my heart was being pulled in two different directions. I don't think it helped that our first day took us through new york and across pennsylvania, which was boring, cold, rainy and loooong.

When we finally stopped that day, it was in Ohio at a motel 6 that was so disgusting it completely redefined my understanding of the word skeevy. Aside from the bed, and the tv, the only furniture in the room was a small folding table with a chair in front of it that could not have possibly served any other purpose than as a surface for crushing and inhaling drugs. The sheets had cigarette burns in them. I woke up in the middle of the night, sat straight up in the rock-hard bed and cried. It was one of those nights I wasn't sure if I'd even make it through.

There was however, a ray of sunshine in the midst of all this doom and gloom. Somewhere in the middle of pennsylvania, we stopped at this adorable place called the twilight diner and ordered these:buffalo-style beer-battered jack and blue cheese sticks. yes, i'm fucking serious.

the whole place was like something out of a movie about where you'd wanna eat on a road trip.
and the food was so good that i'd almost consider doing it all again just to eat there.

love always

my heart will always live here

this past week has been exactly everything i could've asked for when leaving the place i grew up. it was like all the things i love about being here happened in rapid succession, like the finale at the fireworks display. i will try my best to show you:
rose-petal-lychee-tini and cucumber martini at koji

tavern classic and truffle fries at plan b

mmm, cherries....

chicken tacos

vietnamese iced coffee

the durham fair, a ct classic

trade shows every two seconds

and of course every hug, every sad goodbye, every last second i got to spend with all the folks i love. see you all at xmas!

love always