Summertime Adventures

 

Much has happened in the last few months. I learned that my armpits are all screwy and that one perspires more than the other (the left). I learned that pelicans are able to thrive in business parks. I learned that I should not wear high wedges while walking down a steep slope. Declivity is a game reserved only for the advanced perambulator. Central Park has poison ivy. Poison ivy is disgusting--especially if you had my reaction (fluid bubbles!). Cats do not enjoy long car rides.

However, it is important to note that I have moved to Boston. You might be thinking, "didn't she do that already?" The answer is, "sort of," but this time I mean it for realz. I have officially moved to Boston. I got rid of my old studio in the North End and finally moved all of my New York things into a real grown-up apartment with my manfriend and cats.

I felt emotions. Ugh, so many stupid emotions were felt on the day I left--a gallimaufry of inner-happenings: sadness, ambivalence, happiness?, thorns, confusion, stress, warmth (super hot that day), anticipation, dread, hunger... I don't know. At first it felt like I was making a mistake. I was leaving my friends, home, neighborhood, security guard, supermarkets, beloved house-helper, restaurants, bars, subway rats, 24-hour public transit, dog crap-smeared sidewalks, crosswalks that do not require pedestrians to push stupid buttons, Harlem miniature trash tornadoes... so many things! But when we drove up to our new home, Bostonian friends were there to greet us and carry all of our heavy stuff up to the apartment. Some of the Bostonian friends did not even live in Boston but Buffalo! Nothing demonstrates love more than voluntary manual labor. Nice work, New York and Boston Teams! I love all of you too!  I felt much better.

After the moved I immediately flew to California for one of my best friend's wedding. I was a bridesmaid (and soon my cats will have shiny new vests fashioned from a dress that looked great on camera... just kidding, Monique). In addition to wedding festivities, I got to visit dear friends (HI VANS!) and hang out with fabulous cousins. Although the overall California climate disagrees with me, there is place that melts my heart--in a good way. A place where the air smells like churros, nacho cheese, and Crocs plastic. A place where a person can show off hand-crafted family-matching T-shirts. A place where animals wear clothes and do not have disgusting butt-holes. A place where nature is carefully landscaped. A place where waffles are made in the shape of rodent heads--and you can eat as much of it as you want! A place where you can buy a bucket of popcorn. A BUCKET.

Toward the end of my trip, study buddy Olivia flew in for some fun! 

We lost...

but won in quality friendship time.

When I got back to Boston it was time for another wedding, so we drove to New York to pick up three friends--Kavita, Celeste, and Marcus--and headed out to Washington D.C. On the way to D.C. we stopped in New Jersey for lunch, prom jewelry, and lady socks. Aside from my friend John and his wife, New Jersey has little to offer. Correction--not only does Jersey have little to offer it TAKES. New Jersey is the land of poor city planning (what the hell is wrong with all of the roads?), suburbs, those orange people from the TV, sneaky behavior, and thievery. While paying a visit to one of Jersey's many shopping malls, a little panda-eating fart nugget that fell out of one of Jersey's poop ducts and his mother stole one of our friends' super important camera!

To make matters worse, the imbeciles that "secure" the mall were all like "uh, whatever, our job is to eat boogers... so... your business is out of our jurisdiction or whatever... whatever... I can blow thick Jolly Ranchers spit bubbles while watching Maury at the same time! That's how I got this job. What were you looking for again?" The gormless security idiots left us with few options... so we took justice into our own hands. Unfortunately, it resulted in Celeste harassing random people with fat children.

I suppose I covered the highlights for this summer so far...

Oh, I recently turned...

Yup.

Making Better Choices: Just kidding! It just looks that way.

I have been trying to make better life decisions, so I started eating Greek yogurt. However, I stopped eating real fruits and vegetables. Whatever, there are bits of fruit at the bottom of each Chobani yogurt-thing. The situation is pretty much a solid diet of yogurt, Luna bars, cheese, meat, and pasta. My bowels are like, "seriously?" And in response, I say, "look, I drink enough coffee to make up for all the fiber I am not eating."

Fine, nutrition still needs to be tamed. Despite my poor food choices, I am still exercising! I might not go to the gym as much as I used to, but I am taking a Zumba class once a week with my friend Julian. I did not go this week though... Anyway, Julian and I are going to be Zumba masters one day. I cannot follow along with all the moves, but if I flap my arms and spin around when feeling lost I look Zumbatic enough. While humiliating 40-60% of the time, Zumba is a great deal of fun. Our instructor even plays songs that have the word "zumba" in it; just in case someone forgets why she is there (a lot of old ladies in this class, by the way).

My body is not the only thing getting into awesome shape. My brain is doing okay as well. Olivia and I have been throwing a lot of ratchet parties... Yes, it is true. She and I party almost every single weekend. Sometimes we party during the week. We will often party for hours... like seven. Seven hours of partying sometimes. "What kind of parties?" you ask.

Study Parties!!! Olivia, who is obviously French from the accurate picture above, is a terrific study party buddy. We like to sit across from each other and work. We also like to sit across from each other and eat lunch in between morning work and afternoon work. For extra fun, we like to go to the movies and watch films that you probably have never heard of before because these films do not believe in advertising. Seriously, why don't any of these producers believe in posters? Still, they are usually majorly super nice and magical. I know that if left to my own devices I would only watch romantic comedies and romantic comedies in 3D.

Sometimes we need more than great friends, exercise, study parties, and yogurt. I needed to take care of my "spiritual self". My spiritual self was just screaming for a serious make-over. Just kidding, I really did not know that I had a "spiritual self" until James and I made a pilgrimage seventy blocks south to Radio City where Oprah is kept. Yes, James and I consulted Oprah for some life advice and a self-esteem boost.

Seriously, I went to go see Oprah. She told me that I needed to feed my spiritual self and not just my hungry self. Oprah said a lot of things that day. I know she was speaking English, but I was pretty much lost for all 2.5 hours. Many of these things just ended up jumbling together--"transcendence", "energy", "karma", "meditation", something about the past and the future and how neither is now, "judgement", etc. Regardless of how little I learned about my spiritual self that day, there was one thing I did gain...

Oprah Friendship. Oprah and I are best friends now. She learned how cool I was and wanted to read my autobiography. I didn't have a copy on me that day, so she was all like, "yeah, no worries, maybe I can pick it up from you one day when we go shopping together and do girl stuff together, like facials and whatever. I will put your book on the book club reading list and you will become famous and I will scream your name like, Caaaattthhhhheeeeerrrrrinnnnnnnneeeee!" Yes, I am awesome... Eh, well, not really. Oprah and I are not really friends. I mean, in my heart she is my friend, but that is not a real place because two people cannot sit down inside my heart and have tea. These people would have to kill me first or something, but if I am one of the people then it really is impossible. So, yeah, Oprah is not really my friend. I did not get to hold her hand as depicted in the image above. No one is allowed to touch Oprah anyway. She is made of Phoenix feathers, angel nail clippings, and that warm feeling you get when you step into Saks--mortals cannot handle that kind of tactile experience.

Before I end this post, I have one more thing to share. Here is a fun game...

Guess!

Guess!

Guess!

I might be getting...

Eh, whatever.

The past few months have been tumultuous. Things were okay and then they were not okay and then they went back to being sort of okay, followed by a brief bit of not okay, and then okay. Being an adult is super majorly difficult at times but not always though sometimes usually. Eh, at least I have my health, right? But because I am a paranoid person I am getting my annual check up three months early just to make sure that "at least I have my health". Even though when I said "at least I have my health" I knocked on wood to prevent jinxes, I still think a blood test is more assuring. Well, since the last post all this happened:

Yes, a lot of stuff went down. These visual representations might seem confusing, but hopefully you will be able to interpret them correctly:

"Was she stabbed by a centipede-dragon? If she is so scared of centipedes turning on her why would she leave swords around the house?  Is that a turd? Gross. Was her tooth really anthropomorphized? Why is it so sad? Does she have an indifferent phaseolus lunatus with a face and arms? If so, shouldn't that be in a Ripley's museum for the rest of the world to enjoy? Did she throw-up turtle? God, this girl has digestion issues. If she has stomach problems she really shouldn't have gotten that cotton candy machine."

Yes! Yes to all of it! As for the why questions: "Eh."

Despite all of my really awesome and questionable adventures with violent ten feet tall centipedes, turtle vomit, and legumes these past few months, the greatest one of all is probably grad school (shut up, I am not lame). I seriously love graduate school and my new friends. Look, we even go out together now:

Just look at how my face is contorted to express happiness! In addition to all of these wonderful people, I befriended my neighbor. Prior to the big centipede incident all I knew was that she and I both replace real people with TV after work/school. As you can guess, that is not enough material to build a friendship. Real friends have more stuff in common. Real friends watch TV together. Well, one day I had an emergency. I came home to find that a centipede had broken into my apartment. When I heard her keys jangling I threw open my door and screamed for help. My heroic neighbor valiantly marched over with a bottle of bleach and destroyed the monster. At that moment we went from being adjacent TV murmurs to face-to-face people friends. Actually, I have not seen her since the centipede incident but I am sure that if I ever wanted to I can ask her to join me for dinner. I can defrost fish sticks and personal pizzas like nobody's business.