Apologies and regrets

I'd like to apologise to those few faithful visitors for not writing anything for almost a month now. You keep coming back (don't ask me how I know... ok fine, I'll just tell you that I have a fancy-shmancy hit counter hidden on this page) and there is nothing new here to help you waste time online. So sorry. I've been in Torrance for a week now and I'll be here until Jan.6th, so if anyone wants to hang out, please call!

I never really gave too much thought to death until my grandma passed away earlier this year. It wasn't necessarily her death that struck me the most, it was what it did to my mom. I had a terrible flash forward to when it is time for me to be in her shoes, and that feeling hasn't really gone away. I'm home and at certain moments I feel extremely guilty for not still living here, and for only seeing my mom once a month, if that. It's a dangerous path to be on, but it's difficult to steer yourself off of it. Every day I realise just how much of my life has been shaped by my mom. My teenage and college years were largely the inverse of her suggestions, and now I attempt to distill the useful lessons from her opinions and use them to shape the decisions I make as an adult.

it-it hurts with every heartbeat

I have yet to decide whether I love or loathe facebook. There are some things that should just be left in the past. In the absence of internet networking, the natural progression of modern human relationships allows us to leave our puppy loves, our one night stands, our unpleasant ex-boyfriends, the annoying popular girl from high school in the past. Not so with facebook and MySpace. In our Web2.0 world I take those puppy loves and those one (or two, or more) night stands and I send them friend requests. God knows why.

Anyhow, this is what I've been to on repeat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB9vqCIviMk&feature=related
I wish all dance music was this good.

I was alone in the teacher's lounge today making copies and I heard this in my head from the one time that I heard it on the radio and I felt my heart swell from desire to dance or move or do... something! I must go dancing this weekend. It's strange that I almost get the sensation of being in love (or limerence?) when I think about it. I can't decide whether that lifts up dancing, or puts down love in my specter of feelings. I felt that at my Irish dance class on Tuesday too, that inability to contain your feelings. I get these tense inner tremors, my heart rate goes up and my mouth spreads into a manic smile. The more restrictions I have in my environment at that moment (such as being at work and not being able to move freely to release this pent up energy in some way) the harder it is for me to compose my face and mannerisms. This is why listening to music in the deceptive privacy of my car is probably one of my favorite places to be in the world.

Let your body move to the music, hey hey hey

I'm going through another fashionista phase. Ill timed, seeing as how I have absolutely no money to spare on something so unnecessary. More often than not it's the status-quo inside my head, but when I'm going through one of these phases I make attempts at putting this state of mind into action. I start to spend more time standing in front of my closet in heels and underwear, and less time watching TV in a sweatshirt. Two nights ago I cut off short bangs for myself. I should style my hair and put a picture up here to display them in their full punk-pop glory. I also spent about an hour and a half at Salvation Army with my mom, finally emerging with a crisp white ruffled tuxedo shirt and the softest grey 3/4 sleeve cashmere turtleneck.

There is a pair of incredibly comfortable clogs at Shoe Pavillion that I should buy. I need them. What I want is a pair of high heeled wingtip oxfords.

On a more intellectual note, I finished Atonement by Ian McEwan at 4am on Tuesday morning. There just came a point of no return. Afterwards I ate ice cream by myself in the kitchen because I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep right away. Reading him I felt like I've discovered a painting by a modern day Diego Velazquez with every jewel, every hair carefully painted and not an ounce of meaning or subtlety lost in the details. There is no reason to forgo technique in order to express a feeling, or make a statement. It's a lousy excuse and too many artists, writers and poets today are using it. Or perhaps it's not an excuse, but a fabricated trend fed to the audience as a cover up for lack of talent, and an abundance of insecurity. The same goes for fashion. I think that's another reason why I'm falling for it this autumn. Menswear is in, and that trend often coincides with a return to quality fabrics, nicely stitched leather and tailored cuts.

By the way, the holiday Vogue cover is gorgeous!!!

vanity?

I talked to my mom today and she chose to tell me that I have no personal life, and that my personal life right now is Timi's personal life. Yes, I do spend a lot of time with Timi and Nate, and I'm sure it has not been the greatest thing for their relationship, but I'm being weened off slowly and surely. It also doesn't help that Timi doesn't want me gone; I only feel the responsibility to distance myself from them so that later I won't have to carry the burden of their breakup on my shoulders.

After a long conversation with Timi I was again convinced of what started guessing some time ago. I feel like a more complete person than most others that I've met.  I think that this is why the famous Jerry Maguire quote, "You complete me", never struck any chords with me. When I watched it I was surprised that it had such an effect on people. It made me realize that this is what most people look for - to be completed. Well, what am I to do if I feel complete already? My answer has been that I need a person to complement me, not complete me. After a while I started wondering what would that complement of a person be like. More and more I am convinced that my perfect mate would be the following. Me, but with slightly different hobbies and interests to provide for some variety.

Now, I know the simple analysis of that is - well, she's just a narcissist. I don't think that's it though. I'm very aware that I am flawed, and like any person I can be very difficult to deal with because of them, but I think that I have the capacity to deal with those flaws if I found them in another person. I think that I would understand where another person like me was coming from. I'd understand their random, inexplicable shyness. I'd wait around for the occasional temper tantrum to pass.  I could deal with a complete absence of punctuality and low motivation. I would understand the irrationality of staying up until 3am when you have to get up for work or class at 7. I would commiserate with them when they woke up to find themselves with piling credit card debt yet again. I would forgive the overdraft fees and understand his desire to hide them from me, if I ever found a bank receipt in a jacket pocket. We could dream of being great writers together while not writing anything worthwhile, if anything at all. We would drive irresponsibly fast on empty highways at night and NOT sing along to songs blasting on the radio in each other's presence because after all, we're not alone, and the pleasure of screaming lyrics at the top of your lungs is never as exquisite as it is when you're savoring it by yourself. I would understand him and he would understand me.

I guess if there is a cheesy phrase for what I want in love, and it's that I want to be understood. And no one understands me better than I do.

the awful truth

I am racist.

I look at these kids and I see black kids. When I look at Asian or Hispanic kids, I just see kids, just as I see white kids. For some deeply ingrained reason unknown to me, I have a difficult time looking at black kids the same way. Even in kindergarten they have the accent, they have the dance moves, they have the lingo down and I see little black people whom I immediately associate with bad neighborhoods, gangs, major attitude from the girls and general rudeness from the boys. I work at a private Catholic K-8 school where most of the kids (about 90% of whom are black) get picked up by their (obviously also black) parents in Mercedes-Benz's and Beemers. Most likely they have stable homes and loving families who read to them every night and help them with their homework. They don't have the same behavior and motivation problems that I saw in the charter public schools I've subbed for over the past few weeks. They don't, never did and probably never will know street life, and most of them will go to college when they grow up. The fact that I still have to train myself to change the way I view them tells me that affirmative action is the right thing to do. Income based affirmative action should be the main social factor in college admissions, but race still matters. Too much.

The Fox

I think I have a new animal obsession. You know how pop culture gets obsessed with random critters? For example, in high school we saw a lot of monkeys on t-shirts. At least I did. Then recently there was the penguin craze fueled by March of the Penguins and then Happy Feet. Well, I started that trend back in middle school when I picked meerkats to be the the most awesome animal in the entire world. Not a choice entirely independent of pop culture (The Lion King came out a few months prior to this), but a personal one nevertheless. A few months ago I decided on owls, but then Urban Outfitters stole that one from me and started producing numerous owl-shaped household items such as lamps, as well as articles of clothing with owl prints. So that one was out. I think I've now found an original. Foxes! They're great. In storybooks they're always the smartest ones. My conviction of fox coolness was further cemented by the realization that in french, "fox" is "renard". Rena. Renard. Ha!

The point that I'm struggling to get at is that I was recently picking a YouTube account name, since so far I've only been a visiting consumer of the site and I decided on Renard. But it couldn't be Le Renard, it had to La Renard and I wasn't sure that such bold gender-bending was allowed in the french language. To check this, I Googled "La Renard" and this is what I got.
http://reynoldsben.blogspot.com/2006/08/la-renard.html
I started looking through the blog and the guy is so friggin' good! Why isn't he at Disney? Oh right, Disney decided to forgo all hand-drawn animation in favor of computerized ones. Also, click on his brother's blog
http://reynoldsjoel.blogspot.com/
He's an AMAZING photographer! The swings shot is great. Check it out!
Them and their third brother Adam are in a band together and I guess they're semi-successful, though it was a bit too Beach Boy-ey without actually being The Beach Boys, who happen to be great. Enjoy!

I'm cool! Finally!

Dear, Ms. Rena
Thank you for being our sub. It would meen alot to us and Mrs. Tucker. I think God would be very happy with you. We are so proud you are teacher. And doing this for are real teacher. We wish you have a great time in Saint paul school
love,
3rd Grade

You are verey nice and cool. That's wiy I love you. I hope we get you agen. Your the best subtitout. Thank you for bing or techer.
Ashley

Hello Ms. Rena!
My name is Asha! I am glad you are our substitute teacher! Have a nice day!
Love,
Asha

Dear Ms. Rene,
You have been so nice to me and my class. Ms. Rena you've been so cool and fun. It would be rilly cool if you can stay with me and my class for a little bit. YOU ARE SO COOL!


Now, obviously these kids don't know what the deal is with me and god, but if they think he/she would be happy with me, I suppose that's cool. After all these years I now get to be popular in 3rd grade! Yessssss!
But seriously, all sarcasm aside, they're really cute.

Stupefy!

The NPR shop now sells a canvas tote bag called "The Nina Toten' Bag". How campy and NPR is that? I love it.

Today I subbed for the Oakland Military Institute for 7th and 8th grades. It's a public charter school that has nothing to do with the actual military, it's not ROTC or anything like that, but they claim to have adopted the organizational structure of the military to make kids succeed in the classroom. From what I saw, it's not working. They make their kids wear this ridiculous blue running suit uniform with a picture ID name tag clipped to the collar. Seems less like army and more prison if you ask me, but they seem to think it's working. Lining up in front of the door does not help the students concentrate and there is absolutely no parallel between the behavior in that line and their behavior in the classroom.

The most important factor it seems is the committment of the permanent teacher. Students only react to a substitute when they know that they'll still be accountable to their teacher. What was that Harry Potter silencing spell again?

Rena - 3 :: The World - 1

Apparently when it rains, it pours. And it did in fact rain this morning. I drove all the way to Richmond to the high school where I was supposed to substitute teach and was turned away by a lively bunch of 20-something teachers telling me that there was a power outage and that they were sending the kids home. Angry, I drove back through now accumulated morning traffic listening to Morning Edition and fantasized about yet another life path where I'm a full-time inner city high school teacher, rushing to work, finding a power outage and standing around chatting with my coworkers about my homeroom class. We huddle around in our hipster coats and plastic frame glasses, clutching travel coffeemugs. That's what they looked like, and I definitely felt a bit sad as I was drove back out of the parking lot. I started reading a blog (see Blogs I Read on the right) of an inner city school teacher and of course it's really about a million times harder than my fantasy, but after my day at the Oakland high school last week I felt like I might be up to the challenge. I checked out the Oakland School District program for teaching fellows, but they only accept people in the summer.
I found out that I'm still being considered for the position at the non-profit I interviewed with last week. I also got a call from Kelly-fucking-Services about a full-time position as a teacher's aide for a 2nd grade class. I feel like I'd almost rather work with middle or high school students though. At this point though, I'll take what I can get.
I was still angry all day though. I suppose angry is better than the feeling of utter defeat that I've had for the past two days. I'm almost completely broke right now. I was telling Katie (my housemate) that if I don't find a steady job by next week I'm going to consider moving back home and she said, "Nooo! You can't!" That made me feel pretty good. I love my housemates and my house, and I can't stand the thought of losing it all.

Laurel East Love

I was unpacking yet again this morning and I found a silly poem I wrote last year while riding the bus up to campus. Inspired by actual events, here it is, (almost) unedited and unabridged...

Laurel East Love

Math Homework Boy,
You look good to me now
Your hipster belt
And your Chris Martin smile
Armed with you Papermate pen
And your calculus book
You can do it Math Homework Boy!
On the bus, on your way to class
Five minutes before it is due
WIth your TI-83
Nothing can stop you now
So this is the story of my Laurel East love
I shall tell my children the woeful tale
Of the Math Homework Boy I once loved
For 15 minutes on the bus.
Our unspoken love came to an end.
I had my meeting, he had his class.
But in those minutes our love would not cease
And in my heart it shall always remain.
I love you random stranger on the bus.
I love you Math Homework Boy.

Summer reading list update

- Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility (done... and annoyed at the Hollywood Jane Austen revival... I do believe she is turning over in her grave)
- Albert Camus - The Plague (STILL in progress... don't really know why)
- Isabel Allende - La Casa de los Espiritus (in progress)
- Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down (done... hilarious and easy to read)
- Philip Roth - Everyman (nope)
- Al Gore - The Assault on Reason (tried and got bored... sorry Al)
- Arianna Huffington - On Becoming Fearless... (skimming it regularly for inspiration)
- Jane Austen - Mansfield Park (nope)
- Stephen Kinzer- All the Shah's Men (done! please read this book if you want to understand the Middle East a little better. It reads like a thriller, I promise)
- Louis Menand - The Metaphysical Club (nope...)
- whatever I haven't sold from my Marx class in college (haven't even unpacked them yet)

I did also read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Satisfying as always. Last week I finished The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time by Mark Haddon, which was really different and great. Think, the first half of Flowers for Algernon with some shocking developments and a good realistic ending. I'm also reading Skinny Legs and All, but it's such an overwhelming feast of words I can only take a little bit at a time.

Last weekend when I was home, I read two great articles in Vogue, which doesn't happen too often. One was by Joyce Maynard who at 18 was a quasi-popular young writer and J.D. Salinger's lover. Salinger was 53 at the time and broke her heart after a year. She's still a well known writer and the article was wonderful, so now I want to read up on her a little more, as well as Salinger. I only read Catcher In The Rye the summer after my Junior year of college, and while I was as confused as any 16 year old, I would not call myself brooding. While I could definitely see what the hype was about, it didn't strike any chords with me. I want to try his other writing, maybe something that's less directed at a specific demographic.

While subbing yesterday, I attempted to start Where I Was From by Joan Didion, but I only got through 2 pages and I wouldn't be able to tell you what they were about right now. Maybe I'll save it for a more peaceful time like a sunny Saturday in the backyard.

Writing all this made me think that some of you might think I'm bragging about how much I'm reading, but the truth is that I'm really not reading that much at all, I don't think. I had a whole summer to read those books and I only got to half of them. I also want to know what everyone else is reading, or what they thought of the books I'm on now.

gaaahhhh!

Please people, please google "tobacco lobby, schip"!

Maybe I shouldn't do law... some things just make my blood boil!

huh?

I'm afraid that writing every day hasn't been working out as well as I had hoped. I had this idea that forcing myself to write was going to make it flow better and now as I'm typing this, I'm starting to think that I was right after all. I'm pushing four other sentences that I wrote just a few minutes ago with this blinking cursor, to make way for others streaming out onto the screen. I don't know if this system is working but I'll just keep typing and see what happens. I have said this many times before, and I am absolutely not unique in this, but I come up with new careers for myself every day. Yesterday it was grant writer. I always write "write" with a "gh" first, even though I know perfectly well that there is no "gh" in the word. I guess the brain sometimes short circuits in places. Today I began to think about philosophy again. I got my Intro to Logic book that I bought on Amazon.com recently, but I still haven't looked at it really. The idea of it excites me and I imagine myself doing logic exercises on the BART on my way to work in the city, but then I look over at the computer screen and start reading another interview on HuffPo. A few months ago I had just discovered that juicy website and I became quite obsessed. I suppose I was a bit late to the party, but better late than never. The obsession has died down, but I still like to guess what the headline is going to be about after reading the news for the day. I know that I want to do a concurrent JD with an MA later, but I don't know what I want the MA to be. Perhaps it could be an MBA, but that might be a little to intense for me. Non-profit management perhaps? I also thought of a business I could open. It would have three parts. A used bookstore called Dog Ear Books. They already have a couple with the same name across the U.S. but that's ok. Dog Ear Books would be on the left and it wouldn't accept any huge bestsellers, but I would make an exception for John Grisham for nostalgia's sake. He even went out of genre one time with that cheesy Christmas book that got turned into a horrible movie with Tim Allen and Jamie Curtis. So then on the right there would be a yarn store called Little Kitten Knittery. At first I thought the name was cute, but now it's starting to sound a little dumb to me. Then in the middle there would be a separate door and there we'd have a cafe with comfy couches and chairs to read or knit at, IKEA tables like this and absolutely no free wifi. After a few years we'd get a beer and wine license too. Naturally, there would be a dog (a hunting breed like a spaniel or a setter) living at Dog Ear Books and a calico cat at the Knittery. Maybe it could be Calico Knittery? I think that this is what they call a stream of consciousness except unlike Joyce, mine is not only boring and senseless, it's also mundane and absolutely unremarkable. Are you ready now for the four sentences that I have been pushing along this whole time? Here they are... I have been writing little things here and there, but I'm too embarrassed to put them on here. I'm still a little confused about why I am in the Bay Area. There are many reasons, but there isn't really a cause. I am not in school, I'm not working in my dream job, I am simply enjoying my life and meeting new people.

beware of possible cheese

Autumn is slowly painting the Bay over with its pigments. Tempted as I may be to describe those "pigments" in excessively romantic prose, they really are the usual, if only annual, suspects - orange, brown, yellow and the occasional purple. The air isn't cold enough to scare me away from sipping tea in the backyard just yet. I am neither at peace, nor anxious. Everything around me is so perfectly calm and balanced, so completely unassuming in its beauty that I can't find any justification for not feeling the same, and yet I am here, observing and recording. It is nature that has grown within its man-made bounds of brick walls, stone paths and perimeter fencing, but I don't find any signs of oppression or resistance. It grows around and over, through and under these obstacles without fatigue. How does one fight the non-resisting? How does one force change on the pliable? How does one subjugate the willing? These words of attack lose their meaning when you try to spring them into action upon nature. It does not allow, for in allowance there is an implied choice. It makes no choices, for it is not a participant in our plans. It does not plan, for in a plan there is a goal, and a goal is a concept known only to the human mind.
I don't want this privilege of third party observation. In moments like these it is only a burden that results in this mild anxiety.
But what a beautiful word, autumn.

hip hip...

hooray! For finding the comfy dive-but-not-really bar in Berkeley-but-not-really-actually-more-like-Albany. For finding roommates that are awesome and have cool friends. For finding out that you're a bit of a hustler baby (I just want you to know), at least when it comes to billiards. For finding out that "Good shot!" in Spanish is "Buen tira!", finding out that if you want to play any quality pool, you want to top it at 3 drinks max, and that you CAN get guys to buy you drinks and no, you don't have to do anything for it... just stand there and look pretty... thaaat's it...

For reminiscing about the good ol' library days with all the library folk in Santa Cruz the night before. For finding autumn catch you by surprise as you're driving home. Yes, home. As in, Oakland. For feeling good and feeling free. For not lacking anything, really. For promising to write in your blog every day. Yes, I said EVERY DAY.
For being a bit drunk and very tired.

Peace out folks!

Rena

la fromage de la belle france

Something trivially negative happened to me today while I was on my way to a volunteer to replant some native species to the Bay Area. I haven't started working and I'm bored out of my mind, ok? Back to my negative triviality. At the time I thought I was gonna die, as is the normal reaction to most incidents in urban areas of Oakland, but looking back at it I can squeeze out a nervous chuckle. If my coping skills are what I think they are, later tonight I will be laughing at the whole thing. Scared out of my wits, crying and hyperventilating I cancelled the plant reintroduction, drove home and stuffed myself with every comfort carbohydrate that I could find in my fridge and pantry, and those were:
1) bread with oil and balsamic vinegar
2) bread with brie cheese
3) quesadilla
4) tea

I consumed a good amount of these in about 30 minutes and read "best of craigslist" and now I feel better. I can see now how sad people can become obese...

17 high

I've picked my favorite freeway stretch to drive and it's Highway 17 between Santa Cruz and San Jose. Yes, other drives are prettier, but in those cases I like being the passenger and not the driver. When I'm present and active, I like a challenge and the 17 is exactly that. The interesting thing about it for me is that the challenge isn't in driving fast or maneuvering and annoying everyone else on the road. The challenge is in driving it well. Brake in anticipation, then coooooaaaast through the curve. Brake lightly enough and coast at just the right speed and it's driving perfection and it takes a few times on that highway to get the hang of it. Add to that a Daft Punk mix to pump you up and focus, and it's an amazing high.

P.S. I honestly can't believe it's been almost 6 weeks since my last post. This month has been insanely unstable. But for the few of you that read this and are interested, I just moved into an amazing house in North Oakland and should be starting work in 2 weeks.

Follow-up

So I promised you I'd write more on why Mike Bloomberg is awesome. I'm entirely too sleepy to do that myself now, so I'm going to ask you to read this article because it pretty much sums up his awesomeness.

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/files/Contribute.BloombergReprint.pdf

There is controversy because apparently there was an incident during which Mike told a co-worker, "I'd do her", in reference to a female employee.
If I had a penny for each time I've said that about a male co-worker... well, I could possibly even buy a few minutes in a UCSC parking meter.

And I'm actually happy that this man isn't running for president.
And I wish he had a son. I'd do him.

Just the smell of the summer can make me fall in lo-o-ove...

I've recently gotten into the habit of feeding my internet addiction out on my balcony at night, douzed in Off!Skintastic bug spray. It really is skintastic. I don't know what that means, but it keeps mosquitos off. The smell of the summer night is so sweet when there are lots of plants and things around.
Oh Saturday night I sat around with two good friends, drank Jager and Red Bull, played guitar, and talked about sex, drugs and rock 'n roll til 5:30am. A quiet voice in my head started wishing that I wasn't moving up to Bay Area and instead staying around LA for a few more months. I love and at the same time despise moments when I feel like Alice, kneeling down, looking through a tiny door and contemplating whether or not I should drink from the bottle labled "Drink me". Beyond that tiny door lies a beautiful garden of novelties, distractions and lessons that I want to learn. I don't feel as if I'm missing out on a great phase of life, I only feel that I'm missing out on that great phase of life. In reality I'm standing in front of two doors, both of which, no doubt lead to wonderful places and both of which eventually lead to Spain.
I'm definitely going to miss the warm nights of Southeren California.

Music: Modest Mouse

take that Obamagirl!

Since I gave notice of leaving at work (see July 4th entry), I've been waiting for this moment to come and now it is here. This is the moment when fear sets in. As of July 27th I will no longer have a job. Still no word from AmeriCorps IRC, but I'm starting to think they don't want me. Oh, but I want them badly, even with 10k a year and food stamps.

I had this silly idea that I was going to write insightful things on my blog and attract lots of people to it and make money that way. Terribly pretentious and capitalistic, I know... More than anything it's terribly pathetic since at this point I can't even get Google to search for this damn thing in the first place. It's like this blog doesn't exist. Anyone care to help me with this? I don't have robots in my html and I got it verified by Google. Why isn't it listing me??? I want attention!!! Waaaa...

In other news, I got one of my impacted wisdom teeth extracted two days ago. Not fun. After many ice packs and consecutive doses of ibuprofen really meant for a horse, I'm still alive and kicking... and looking like a lopsided chipmunk (it was only one tooth). It's strange how dentists are the nicest doctors to me. I guess they have to compensate for all the suffering they cause.

Is it wrong to stop and consider my options when a conservative friend offers to donate money to my presidential candidate of choice in exchange for a menage a trois with him? When did politics get so hot? I guess anything that gets people passionate can turn into sexual tension. There's always that pause at the end of an argument when you're both quiet and fuming. Glaring at the other person you think, "I cannot believe this idiot still thinks No Child Left Behind actually works for inner city schoolchildren!" and then there is a spark.
It's sick, really.

?

Last night as the lights went on a little before 2am at an overpriced Hollywood club on Ivar Ave., a nice, though unattractive black man took my hand, asked for my name and told me that he's been watching me dance all night and that I dance like a black woman.
"Uhm... thanks?"
Why does race always have to come into it? Why couldn't he just give me a straight compliment? I don't understand.

How To Quit Your Job - A Guide by Ms. Rena Ragimov

Step 1: Fuck up something important.
Step 2: Get into mildly serious trouble with your boss and fail to explain your actions well.
Step 3: Talk to your boss the next day because you want to explain your actions (or lack thereof) better than the day before.
Step 4: Be asked by your boss if you think you are a deadline oriented person.
Step 5: Reply, "....uhm... I can be?..." Wrong answer.
Step 6: Be told that perhaps you should think whether or not this environment is right for you.
Step 7: Stay silent in answer.
Step 8: After a few moments of silence reply that you aren't ready to make that judgement just yet.
Step 9: Keep a dead silence for a few more moments.
Step 10 (this one is crucial): Start crying for no reason in your boss' office.
Step 11: Feel like a complete idiot who cannot control herself and will therefore never be a successful lawyer, or anything of that matter.
Step 12: Proceed to tell her that in fact you are not happy there at all. You dislike the job very much and have been looking into other things. Your have a couple of interviews up in the Bay Area and if I were to get the jobs I would be giving my notice in a couple of week... but perhaps this is a better time now, whether or not I get the jobs.
Step 13: Be thanked for you honesty and be told that you should feel proud of yourself for making this decision.
Step 14: Be told that if I would be accomodated whenever I decided to leave, and that I would get all of my vacation pay. (Think to yourself, "Sweet!")
Step 15: Compose yourself and go back to work for the remaining 2 hours.
Step 16: Be ridiculously happy about it all.

As I drove into Santa Cruz last night the marquee of the Food Bin & Herb Room said "Don't Look Back". That marquee never lies.

2008?

So, um, Michael Bloomberg rocks.
More on this later.

Today on Rena's hate list...

I fucking HATE hearing about Paris and her jail time! I'm not even trying, and this useless information is leaking into my brain from the TV in the other room. I don't care!!! And neither should anyone else, except for her family and friends. How did this get so big? I don't understand.

Somehow, somewhere, sometime over the past few months this fire got lit up inside of me. There is this itch to help somehow. I hope it never goes away. Where the hell are my LSAT books? I wanna start studying already! Waaaaa...

By the way, everyone should read/see Freedom Writers. It is very good and very true and Erin Gruwell is my hero.

who's on first?

It's amazing the things that start coming into view the more you pay attention to politics. I'm going to liken it to my love for dried cranberries. Dried cranberries probably make up approximately .5% of the blood that's being pumped through my body, I eat them so often. The same can be said for havarti cheese, and the same also could've been said about Pepsi back in middle school. But let us concentrate on dried cranberries. When you eat or drink something enough, your tastebuds get a feel for minute differences between batches. No two bags of dried cranberries are the same, and there are bags that are too sweet, too oily, too dry, too clumped, too raw, too crystallized, etc. Then there are the bags that are just right, and you know it at first taste.
When I started paying attention to the news and to politics, I mean, really paying attention about two months ago, at first it was all so new, like I never looked at the news before. I think that I was only pretending to myself before. I started making connections between news stories, searching for a second opinion, clarifying vague quotes and ambiguous references, looking up individual names, their voting record and past quotes. Not all of this stays in my mind of course, but as time goes by I feel that it's becoming easier and easier too keep track of all these things to myself.
One realization I came to recently is that I have no idea who's running the world. On one hand, there is the idea of these invisible webs of money and corruption that are spun all around the world, and no normal person can ever see them or really know what's going on. The whole Big Brother idea. But then, I listen to the news and it's as if the supervisors at McHenry library got together and decided to attack Iraq, or resolve the Darfur crisis, or set up missile defense systems in Azerbaijan. They have all these fancy gadgets but no one really knows what they do exactly and the experts have communication issues with the governement, and the people who are supposed to be making these decisions aren't even reading the official reports because, oh I don't know, they spilled their morning coffee all over them and their assistant who has the second copy is off sick. And besides, even if they did read it who's really gonna understand all that scientific mumbo-jumbo, right? After all, they are humans and they think about death just like the rest of us do, and when they do die, they will rot, like the rest of us, and they know that. When your human courage is tested so many times as you climb your way to the top of the chain of command, few in the history of mankind, would be strong enough to not slip up at least once.

Summer reading list

- Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility (in progress)
- Albert Camus - The Plague (in progress)
- Isabel Allende - La Casa de los Espiritus (in progress)
- Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down
- Philip Roth - Everyman
- Al Gore - The Assault on Reason
- Arianna Huffington - On Becoming Fearless...
- Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
- Stephen Kinzer- All the Shah's Men
- Louis Menand - The Metaphysical Club
- whatever I haven't sold from my Marx class in college

The irony of that last one might just be too much to bear. Tee. Hee.

I just thought that if I wrote it down in public, I would have something to be accontable to for my progress on this list. I'll report back at the end of the summer on how I did.

Law school - round 4

I thought about it in high school. I thought about it freshman year. I thought about it senior year. Now I'm thinking about it again, and I think that this time I might be serious. No guarantees though. With an arsenal of PowerScore books, I'm gonna study through the summer, hopefully volunteer at one of LA's legal aid centers, attempt the September LSAT and apply by early November.

(2 hours later)

But if I keep wasting time online trying to find out exactly how much of a whore Jessica Cutler is, while sipping on a beer, I'm not getting anywhere...

the place I call work

I think about work and I have this nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's not what I do, it's who I work with.
I've been getting into these ill-informed political debates with a guy at work (let's call him Ben) and he has over 10 years on me in being interested in politics, so he has his points of view rehearsed and is more settled in his viewpoints than I am. I've been so spoiled by Santa Cruz that I find myself unable to defend my viewpoints because in college people would agree with me half-sentence since practically everyone was of the same mind. No so in corporate America. I feel so naive for thinking that there might be diversity of opinion at my office. How wrong I was. I don't know this for a fact, but pretty much everyone is conservative. I was in the middle of a saying something about health care in America to the earlier mentioned guy, as another two walk by and one of them makes a joke about how full of college zeal and passion I am, or something to that extent. Ben, I suspect, has positive feelings towards me. He thinks I'm decently intelligent, well read (that's not as true as I'd like it to be), yet naive and unrealistic. He now knows that I have a mild attraction to women, from which he probably figures that I'm adventurous and would be good in bed. All these things compile a positive and simultaneously condescending attitude towards me. In that moment, all those feelings get the best of him and he makes an attempt to boost my waning self-confidence,

"There go two bald guys... you know what Churchill said? He said..."
"Yeah, yeah... if you're not conservative when you're old, you don't have a brain..."

I've been in a weird state of mind all day today. Actually all of the past 2 months or so. I was watching CSPAN and it seems that the Democrats and the Republicans get together in their camps and preach to the choir. First I watched about 5 Democrats talk at each other about the budget and how they had to "cut some programs" to make others happen, meaning not provide any money for Iraq at all which is completely unrealistic. Then I watched about 4 Republicans in a room talk at each other about how evil the immigration reform bill is, making a sad face and stressing the word "minority" whenever talking about Congress in general. Oh and let's not forget the inspiring stories of their mothers and fathers who came to this country legally and all the hardships they had to endure. Anyways, the point is, I hate the environment at my job. And they all think they're doing such noble work too, that's what sickening.

The NPR West office is in Culver City. I applied to volunteer there and they contacted me today. It's too bad that they only have spots during weekdays right now, but I guess I'm on their list for after-hours and weekends. On extreme days I think I'd rather be scrubbing their floors than processing another six figure mutual fund purchase for a client at Waddell & Reed. Yes, that was a sentence full of college zeal and passion. Now go fuck yourself.

mini-rant

I'm really sick of bloggers, both conservative and liberal, who dismiss Ann Coulter as a "court jester" and an equivalent of Bill Maher for the conservatives. While Bill was hanging out on the set of Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle of Death (I'm not making up this movie title), Ann was starting law school, fresh from her undergrad cum laude degree from Cornell, so when she calls John Edwards a faggot, forgive me if I get a little more concerned than when Maher starts off a flashy speech at the end of Real Time with saying that Jerry Falwell's death isn't necessarily a bad thing. He's supposed to be a comedian, she - a seasoned political commentator. He's doing his job, she's being an idiot.

My grandma passed away a few hours ago in Moscow, almost at the same time as my mom was getting on the plane to fly there. My mom is in the air right now and though completely ready for it, I'm sure is still expecting to see her mom alive at least one last time. Alive, though most would disagree, is a flexible term. When someone is delusional from pain, when most of their organs are working at about 5%, and when they can't even recognize you anymore, are they really alive and are they really the same person?
I didn't really cry when I heard the news, but if let myself, I would - not for my grandma, but for my mom. She now doesn't have her parents. Either of them. My living situation has greatly increased my attachment to my family and I cannot... no, I actually almost can imagine the sense of disorientation that losing my parents would bring. I know that it's different when you're 55 and your parents are 80-something. I'm sure they live every day prepared for it, at least in a small way. And yet, I've heard my mom say that sometimes, she just needs her mom. Simple as that. So many times I'll come up to my mom and just put my head on her shoulder because I need my mom, and one day I'm not going to have that for the rest of my life from that point on. Cherish it while you can.
Happy Mother's Day.

more useless info about my life

I have been completely obsessed with Cecilia Bartoli as of late. I'm listening to her right now and it's making me want to cry. Her CD Opera Proibita is just magic. I'm not being very eloquent right now, but there really are no words, you just have to listen to it. It's an album of sacred music from the 1700s when opera was prohibited by the church, so all of these amazing composers concentrated on sacred music. The songs are amazing and her voice makes them go straight through your body. I'm a very secure atheist, but the things that religion brings out in people are so inspired that I would never want to take that away because it doesn't make scientific sense. When I listen to some of these songs I get the same feeling as I do when I walk into gothic cathedrals. I start to understand religion and this drive for something higher and unearthly, some sort of escape. I feel my soul, I guess. I don't believe in a soul, but in moments like this I get as close as I probably ever will.
I haven't really listened to mainstream music in probably a month. The exceptions to that are when I make myself turn on the radio in the car just for a change, or if someone else is in my car and I feel like they probably don't want to be listening to opera or some symphony orchestra. Cecilia was the turning point of it. My sister bought a DVD of a documentary they did on her when she was younger and was just starting to get famous. I listened to her sing and it did something that no other opera singer or classical piece has ever done. I honestly don't feel a desire to listen to other "normal" music. I don't mind it, it's fine, but since then, mainstream just doesn't do it for me. I'm sure I'll slowly get back to it, at least to some things, especially when my environment changes.
It's been a very calm couple of months and I truly hope that it will be a calm couple of years. I don't want a boyfriend, I don't want emotional turmoil. I'm too concentrated on other, truly personal parts of my life right now, and it feels nice. Whenever I have been with someone I've found that it's hard for me to decipher which feelings are coming from within me and which ones are caused, at least in part, by my significant other. I never liked that feeling of confusion and I think that it was caused by constant insecurity. Whether it was insecurity with the other person, or uncertainty in the quality or quantity of my own feelings, it felt completely disorienting. Now, when I'm feeling down, I own the feeling, totally and completely. I'm not even sure if I've written about this before, and I'm sorry if I have, but the idea has been on my mind a lot lately. I don't know when I'll be ready to really share my life with someone, but it will probably be sometime after I'm out of LA. I've given myself the deadline of January 2009 to quit my job and know what I'm doing next. Whether it's back to Spain, up to San Francisco or maybe the East Coast, I am, as Shakespeare would say, blowing this taco stand by 01/09.

I'm going to be changing the address of this blog to something else in a week or so, so all readers (all, like, 5 of you) beware. I will post the new address in a note on Facebook.

alma oppressa

I've had weird metaphors of this promotion running through my head over the past two days while observing people at work. Ever since everyone saw me come out of that meeting with the two advisors I'll be working for, they've been giving me these knowing looks along with a small, but sly smile. I feel so dirty, as if I'm prostituting myself. We had a nice chat, they felt me out to see if I'm able and reliable, figured out where they'll put me up (in a cubicle in the back of the office...), like a whore in some dingy apartment outside the city. There I will await them as they put a thick stack of business into my inbox every day before lunch. Graphic enough for you yet? This has nothing to do with how they're treating me, in any sexual harassment sense. It's all in my head and all completely metaphorical, yet I feel dirty and exposed. Prostitution is business, plain and simple. And business is prostitution. Besides that everyone's been super-nice. Yes, super.
There is an administrative position open at the LA opera and I was going to apply for it today, but didn't end up doing it. I don't even know if I want to anymore. It might be more interesting, but it absolutly will be more time consuming with the commute. I don't think that I'm willing to give up the things that fill up the hours between work and sleep for a mildly engaging job that will probably pay less, have worse benefits, etc. The LA Opera is not going anywhere and this isn't he last administrative position that they'll have open. Once I move away from the front desk, I think life will be calmer and definitely Linda-less at the office and I might just learn a thing or two about retirement planning and mutual funds.
I keep feeling like I'm running out of time, like in a year I'll be 45 and wondering where my life went. No. In a year I'll be 24 and I'll be able to think about where else I can and/or want to go in life. It's my job that's doing it to me. I'm becoming more and more certain that I don't want to live in the US unless extreme circumstance calls for it, which is why I don't want to attach myself to anyone here, unless they either have a very strong desire to move to Europe as well, or are from there and have EU citizenship.

yay?

So, I went and got myself promoted after 2 months. I was lucky too, but I definitely can't say that I don't deserve it. There is no pay increase for now, but at least I won't be making coffee anymore and I definitely won't be hearing Trudy cackle every 5 minutes. I have extremely mixed feelings about this because on one hand, I will be getting paid more (in a few months) and therefore can be free of student loans much faster, and on the other I'm starting a more personal/business relationship with two advisors which means giving a 2 weeks notice is not going to be as easy as, well, giving a 2 weeks notice. Given that I only started 2 months ago, I'm going to try and assume that I've been looking for a job this whole time and then this came along, because if that really was what happened I wouldn't think of it as a personal committment and even if I was, that wouldn't stop me from taking it. Make any sense? Didn't think so. In short, I'm now married to the job and I'll probably be here for the next two years... So, probably no Spain for me right now... and no SF either. Of course this all can change in a week, but I think 2 years isn't too bad. Plus it gives me enought time to figure out if my other plans will come to pass or not. Right now I can, but won't say what those plans are, but time will tell.
In other office news, the hot guy got hired. =)
Here comes trouble.

Oh yes! And I bought a piano! An electronic one but it still sounds pretty amazing.

La-la-la

This past weekend I flew up to Portland to visit Timi and fell in love with it again. I'm having a hard time separating the feelings I have for Portland as a city, the feelings I have for Timi as a friend, my dislike of having an unstimulating 9-5 job and how the combination of the three is affecting my memories of the past weekend.
So, about Portland. The only thing lacking from that city is a decent museum, but if I were to be honest, I would say that that's mostly my sister talking. Though I like having a museum nearby, I don't remember the last time that I've gone to LACMA or the Getty. That needs to be remedied soon. So, uh, back to Portland. I think I was lucky to be there on an incredible weekend because the whole city was in bloom and the contrast between that and ugly, strip-mall infested Torrance was a bit shocking. Also, Portland residents seem more normal than self-conscious LA types. I'm certainly no authority on that since I barely leave my house to even look at LA people.
About Timi. I've been getting these day-mares where I think that something might've happened to her, like an accident of some sort and I get horrified at the prospect of a life without her. I've been getting those day-mares about my family also, but I feel like I expect to see my parents die one day, but I don't really think about losing someone my age so it's more shocking when I lose myself in these terrible thoughts.
About my job. Well, what about my job? I honestly can't even say that I hate it. It lacks any sort of a despicable angle to hate, so even when I try, I can't to direct these feelings at a specific point. Linda, my cackling co-worker, is pretty annoying, but she provides me with some small amusement as I safely roll my eyes behind the perfectly positioned computer screen.

Do I want to move and change jobs? Oh yes, but right now this is too convenient and fresh to give up. I don't want to look like I skip and jump between jobs, so I'll stay at dear Waddell & Reed for a few more months. I've been thinking that maybe a good strategy for finding what I want to do with my life is to take note of activities that keep my attention in the few hours between work and sleep. Over the past month that has been music. Classical music to be exact. We'll see if this is a fad or something that will last. I was trying to think of why I've turned to classical lately, and I think that being at work makes me feel so dead inside, so ordinary, that when I come home I want something different, something that's not earthly, and classical music is just that. When I listen to pop/rock, I listen with my head, but classical, especially vocal and opera I hear somewhere inside my chest. It's like I can feel it resonating throughout my body. So I'm thinking that I might want to work with creative people. Some sort of managing of artists and venues. I'm thinking of volunteering at the LA Opera in the evenings to get some experience, but I'm scared to take the first step because I feel like I will get disillusioned quickly and it will just be a burden that I don't need.
On top of that I have all these small things to do that I'm not doing. Make doctors appointments, call people that I want to talk to but keep forgetting to physically dial, nail a hook to the wall by my closet, clean off my desk, organize my mp3s, sell stuff on craigslist...
As Brooke would say, "Oh life...". Oh, ordinary, mundane, boring life.

hmm

It seems like my last post gave off an "I hate being home" vibe (at least to one person). I'm not sure how that happened, but I guess it could be subconscious and I'm just not realising that I hate being home, I don't know. What I do know is that I don't really hate being home at all. When I first got back, I went through a social-phobia stage where I just didn't want to leave my house and its comforts. Then I moved on to being freaked out that I seem to have no social life and tried hard to hang out with people. I feel like now I'm in a more balanced phase where I don't mind hanging out with people, but I have a great time at home doing stuff and just hanging out with my family. I guess for me, fun used to equal going out, and slowly it's changing. Going out is fun in any case, but I think that a capability to have fun while at home, with family or by yourself is an important one to develop, especially for me, because if I do end up without a partner later in life, and if I happen to choose not to have children (that one is improbable though) it will be nice not to have to panic at the prospect of spending many nights at home. This isn't some scheme to reduce panic in the future, I'm simply saying, I'm happy where I am now.

In other news, Larkin is/was in LA and didn't call me. The truth is I would've liked to see him, and I feel like it wouldn't necessarily have been hostile, though it absolutely would've been awkward. I guess the question then is, why would I want to put myself in an awkward situation like that? I think that something positive could've come out of it, such as talking terms, though I don't know if there's even any point. I'd like to know how he is, where he got into, see how he's changed, etc. and it would be nice to know these things from talking to him in person and not just reading his blog every few days. This is a very self-conscious paragraph since I'm fairly certain he will read it.
So, uh, hi.

Taking the long way around.

It's Saturday night and instead of trying desperately to find someone to go out with, I took another singing lesson from my sister. Last night I also sang, and played the piano for over an hour. Being at that goddamned office stresses me out so much for absolutely no reason, it healing to sit down at the piano and count out the measures, reading the same sonata that used to come so easy to me 11 years ago (can I just say, I'm fucking OLD? thanks...). Right now, it's the best meditation that I've found for myself. Guitar doesn't give one the same sense of discipline as the piano, at least it didn't to me. This was perfect for college of course, because discipline was exactly what I wanted to avoid and I achieved great success at that, though my grades suffered accordingly.

With singing, it's very grounding to feel organs in your own body that you never even knew could be physically sensed. I can feel air traveling from my lungs, through my wind tunnel and hitting my soft palate to create the correct sound (or at least as correct as I can make it at the moment).

I've been flossing my teeth every night for the past 2 weeks. It's the longest I've ever gone and on the first day that I did it I decided to treat flossing my teeth like a reverse AA meeting. Hello, my name is Rena and I never floss. Today is my 14th night flossing my teeth. It could all crash down tomorrow, I don't know, but I'm taking it day by day.

Now, I'm not saying all of this to toot some sort of a horn for being such a great and responsible person. Though I am. But you all know that already. Hah. But really, lately I've been feeling the weight of life more and more, the finality of it all and the inevitable fatality of myself and wanting to make the best of it. I feel my body becoming less resilient to minor illnesses, scars, bruises and I'm only 23 and it scares me. I watch my grandmother lying at the nursing home not even being able to keep her back straight when she sits up and I don't want that for myself. I hear my mom talk about my other grandmother's body just slowly giving up in her Moscow apartment. I know she's dying and my mom knows it too, and I see this mixture of pain and fear on my mom's face when she thinks about the pain that her mother is going through every day and the pain that is possibly in the future for her since my mom not at all in great health. I want to take care of myself now, before it's too late, and if I die in pain, at least I won't be thinking that I didn't do simple things that may have prevented it, I'll know that it is something that I couldn't prevent. I am more afraid of physical pain than anything else. I guess that's a pretty obvious statement, which is why torture techniques are so effective, but I'm pretty sure that when we were talking about the Spanish Inquisition in history class in Cordoba, I was the only person in the class with her hands actually over her mouth, eyes wide open in horror as Antonio told us about the different torture methods they used before finally killing some supposed heretic. Here I go veering off towards Spain again. So, back to health. I know flossing isn't going to prevent me from dying in pain, but I see it as a first step towards general health and wellbeing. I love Radiohead, but the song Fitter Happier has always bothered me in some ways. Yes, it points out some qualities of that stable life that I don't ever want to encounter in my own life, but is it really so wrong not to eat microwave dinners and saturated fats anymore? or get regular exercise and not drink too much? "No chance of escape", says Thom, but isn't it so much better to escape and be ready for it completely, body and soul? Oh right, it's better to be depressed and unhealthy, that's how your really achieve freedom from this mundane life. But yes, I'd still like to be in love when I'm older, not be powerless, be ok with crying in public, do more than just kiss with saliva, and I never ever want to be too comfortable. Maybe I'm not understanding something in this song, but I wish the lyrics were a bit different. As if there aren't enough better examples of a robotic life than just eating well.


Music: Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way

Personajes

There is a guy at work named, let's just call him Ben. Ben is friendlier to me than others, and earlier today when I gave him joke-attitude he said, "Getting feisty already, huh?" He was joking of course, but by now I can read into jokes enough to distinguish one sort of joke from another. This was another sort of joke, I'm sure. The tone of voice, the eyes. He's in his mid-thirties and not attractive to me, but the attention made me giddy. It also made me feel like I was in a movie or a book. Timi and I have talked about this particular feeling several times. I also feel like that when I'm checking the day's business paperwork, answering the phone and paperclipping things together as I cradle the phone between my smooth jawline and my slender, 20-something shoulder. I feel like a character in one of those "single girl in the city" books with the pink covers, badly written by Jewish American Princesses with connections in the publishing world. This tiny action sends waves of pleasure through my brain, but almost immediately logical though takes over and convinces me of my utter stupidity.
There is another guy who actually is getting hired as an advisor and this guy really is hot. I immediately started having fantasies of going out to Hermosa Beach with "the Waddell & Reed crew" that doesn't actually exist. We go out, we take shots of tequila, there's some dancing going on, but I don't remember any details. Before 3am, we're making out on his car and he tells me that he lives alone. Perfect. Again, movie perfect. I don't think about the actual sex, because it would most likely be disappointing and only ruin the movie. Is my life a movie trailer? It lures you in, but when you see the actual thing it doesn't quite live up to the promise.
And then there are these thoughs. If I ever complain about nothing being new in my life, please remind me that this dreadful feeling is quite new. Maybe I should buy some St. John's Wort to lift me up a bit and get me though this period until things get settled down and I really do find myself a part of some "crew" or another and stop feeling this boulder deep inside my chest.

office space

So I am at the office right now. It's Friday and I CANNOT wait to get out, especially knowing that I'll see a bunch of people from Cordoba in Irvine tonight. Most of the people left for the day so I get to sit here, update my blog and do nothing of importance. Like I ever do anything of importance here. I tried to crash a Spanish class at El Camino (the community college), but the class is cancelled for the semester which made me pretty sad. Now I have to motivate myself to study on my own, which shouldn't be too hard since I don't have much else to do. I need to start socializing more. It's not even as if I don't have peope to socialize with, it's just that they all live at least a half hour's drive away and some of them are what I would call "convenience friendships", meaning that it's a lot easier to keep them up when they're 5 minutes away. But I'll try. Tonight should be fun. We'll see how Tinto de Verano tastes when made with 2-buck Chuck and American Fanta (read, corn syrup sweetened, not sugar sweetened).

Gracias a dios, es viernes!
(Thank god it's Friday!)

equipaje

I really know how to lose myself in my thoughts if I really try. I know everyone does, but I don't know how many people get to my extreme. I'm not saying I'm unique, I just honestly don't know how many people that I know experience this. Sometimes I sit there and I imagine being raped. I imagine walking down a dark path home, my mp3 player on a great song, walking a regular path, cause you know, that's mostly when these things happen. And then through the melody in my head, I hear faint footsteps behind me, then a hand over my mouth. A van drives by, and just like that I'm gone and experiencing perhaps the worst moment of my life. Now, normally I do these daymare fantasies by myself, but if someone looks at my face as I'm in them they'll see an expression of horror. If really let myself get lost in it, I can start crying. Now that's just an example, there are many more, and they're not always bad. Sometimes I imagine perfect sex or a perfect experience of love and in this case a third party would see my mouth stretch out into a blissful smile.
Sometimes, instead of getting lost in my imagination, I get lost in my actual memories. If, again, I let myself get lost in them I reexperience happiness, love, heartbreak, sadness, etc. almost all over again. Sometimes I get so lost in them that I feel like I need to have it back again, or if it's bad, I want to avoid experiencing it at all costs. Concerning friends I normally experience happiness, for example thinking back to mine, Timi's and Korin's roadtrip. That one week was only filled with good memories to me, I don't think I'd take a minute of it back. Sometimes it's sadness and regret, like when I think about not making it down to LA for Timi's birthday one year. As far as relationships go, sometimes I use a bit of imagination to spruce up those memories. Like in Terry's case. I imagine us being somehow connected and meeting somewhere when I'm 30 and realizing we're perfect for each other. Of course the one and only reason I can do this is because I don't know him very well, so I'm free to pin any and all personality traits onto him. Of course I omit the fact that he cheated on his ex-fiance, works on oil-rigs in Alberta and never finished college... you know, minor details. With Larkin I don't have to use my imagination. I use my memories and recreate the mood of a situation in my head, whether it's pain or happiness or disappointment that I'm experiencing, it seems so real and I almost feel it all over again. This is where I start thinking that there is no way that I can have so much history with someone and just let it go like that, and this is also when I realize that I am 23, and I have relationship baggage, and it's never leaving me. I think that this is what my mom meant when she told me that I'd regret "my lifestyle", meaning not being too conservative in my sex life. Some people take up huges spaces in this baggage, while some almost none, but they're still there, and they will follow me around as long as I live, so I better get used to its presence.

I woke up today feeling better, but I was coughing my lungs out, so I decided not to go to work. I left a message on my boss's cell phone, and I called into the main office where the girl said that it was ok, but I still haven't heard back from my boss. Here's hoping that I'm not fired. If I am, then all the better.

I'm in bed listening to The Fray and Snow Patrol and being sad. I'm being so well looked after by my mom that it makes me scared of getting older, getting weaker and more vulnerable and not having stable support like that. I know I can deal with things like sickness on my own. If I could live through a terrible kidney infection completely on my own, I think I can live through a cold. It's just so much nicer to have people around. Am I lonely? Yes. Do I wish I was in a relationship? Right now, yes, but only if it's perfect. No relationship is perfect, therefore I don't want to be in a "real" relationship. When Larkin and I first started dating he had doubts about wanting to be with me because it wasn't perfect and ideal and that's what he was looking for, in a way. I tried to convince him (and I guess eventually I succeeded) that perfection doesn't exist and that we're good and that's good enough, etc., but I feel like I've slowly been changing my mind. Maybe finding a perfect relationship is kind of like finding a mathematical limit that doesn't exist. You never quite get there, but it's so close that you can still write your findings down on paper. The limit does not exist, but there is an infinity of close values, and I'll try to find one of them. For right now though, while I'm in Torrance, I will systematically avoid relationships like a plague.

23 candles

Today is the day on which I commemorate my birth, which occured on February 15, 1984. Today was (though it's not over yet, so who knows what may come) probably the worst birthday of my life. I honestly don't remember a birthday on which I woke up and my first though wasn't "It's my birthday!!!". Since I'm horribly sick (thank you Timi), I woke up with a stuffed nose and an awful taste in my mouth, walked over the my kitchen, was served breakfast by my mom since I could barely move and my whole body ached. Then I took a shower and went to work. About two mind numbing hours later I heard my coworker comment that yesterday was Valentine's Day and suddenly it hits me - my birthday is the day after Valentine's Day. Hmm, well that's today, so I guess today is my birthday. I did think about it yesterday, but those were sort of blurry, pre-birthday thoughts that were the creation of a snot-filled brain.Then I proceeded to write the date of my birth on about 40 different documents which needed to be dated. In college or high school I remember decorating the date on the upper right corner of my notes for the day. I'd draw silly designs and flowers and be happy. Today I just wanted it to be over. And I don't think that the flowers would go over too well with my boss. I went home for lunch and broke down crying because I felt so sick and sad and depressed because my job could easily be done by a chimp and instead it's done by me. CRYING! On my fucking birthday! So yes, please don't write any notes of pity, it is what it is, and it sucks, but at least my mom made me my cake, and once again, I'll take what I can get, and that happens to be pretty delicious.

women

I just watched Moonlight and Valentino which is a "chick flick". It's a chick flick both in the sense that its target audience is women, and in that it is completely about women, and that's the kind I like. I'm not as big of a fan of the romantic comedy, but I really like movies about women's friendship. I think that if I were a budding psychologist, I'd research the causes and mental processes that go on in female friendship and also the reasons why men have such a hard time forming similar ones with other men. And also individuality and how it's lost in a relationship.

Puta de la oficina

That's office bitch to you. And that is what I officially will become, starting next Wednesday. It's so sad because I found out for sure today, the lady called me, and I felt like crying all day long. I don't know what about it is getting to me so much. I also just started my period, so that could be a contributing factor. Here, take a look at the website of the jokers I'm gonna be working for: www.waddell.com
Yeah, it's a stuffy office complete with cheap faux cherrywood desks and Thomas Kinkade on the walls. I'm not kidding about the Kinkade. The Painter of Light is all over the fucking place. BUT, it's literally 6 blocks away from my house, so I'll probably be walking to work. I get a steady stream of money ending up with almost 28k a year before taxes, which means I'll pay all 25k of my student loans and credit cards in less than 2 years and I'll be on my way to wherever I want to go after that. The people are actually nice and it's a clean job. I knew what I was getting into when the craigslist ad said "looking for a 'Director of First Impressions'" so I can't complain. Oh yes and did I mention healthcare and dental starting the first day of work? Of course all these things would be FREE if I lived in Europe, but whaddayagonnado. Oh, I know what. Give away a year or two of my life to get a chance to do just that.
So that I don't grow continuously dumber by the 8 hour day, I'm taking Spanish at El Camino, the community college in Torrance. We'll see how that goes.
As far as living at home, it's been surprisingly good. Peace, calm and friendship. Things I never thought I'd find with my mom, but little by little it's happening. Since the first week that I was back we haven't fought once, and I think we both deserve kudos for that. She definitely treats me differently and I think that after Spain I've gotten a lot less irritable and maybe (just maybe) a bit more responsible. My sister still annoys the crap out of me sometimes, but now it's mostly by things she does in general, not things she does to me.
This weekend I'm going up to Santa Cruz to wrap up graduation paperwork, see people and accompany Timi to her Berkeley interview and of course party it up in San Francisco. Then Wednesday morning will probably be one of the more depressing morning afters I've had. 8am bright and early at Waddell & Reed Financial Planning! The cynicism must end here.

ooh, another entry... how exciting

I guess I really should've been posting this much while I was still in exciting places, doing exciting things, but alas, I'm home and I'm bored, so I'm going to post a lot. (I really need to get a job, and soon). I've been so bitter at my friends who are now with guys. Timi is really happy and I'm happy for her, and I even like her boyfriend, but I can't help but hear this voice in my head that says, "She's gonna leave you soon. In fact, she already may have in a way. Soon she'll get married and have babies, and be too busy and you'll be all alone". And that would be good and well, because in a way I've always expected her to do that at some point. I've been preparing myself for it for some time now. Now there's Korin who is possibly moving in with her boyfriend temporarily or permanently. She poses a whole new problem because I always felt like she was my "partner in crime" or something. Like we'll go around the world making trouble for ourselves and everyone else and have a great time doing it. I know I'm being a complete hypocrite of course, because only a few months ago I was in their situation. I guess the fact that I gave that up to do what I really want to do with my life (Yes, at the moment that consists of living with my parents in Torrance, but I have plans... oh yes, I do), makes me feel like they should too, which is absolutely dumb, I know. What they have is better than what I had, and "living my own life" wasn't the only reason for me ending my relationship, but nevertheless, I'm bitter and I want all of my girlfriends to leave their boyfriends, move in with me, acquire several cats and live happily ever after. Hah, wait, maybe I'm a lesbian? A polygamous one, no less. Well, if I ever wanted to give my mother a heart attack, this would be the winner. Or am I just lonely? I think that I am, but not for a relationship. I know a relationship would fill that gap, and it's sad that many people do choose that route. I just don't understand why I can't fill it with what I really want, which is close friends who aren't distracted by their own hole fillers a.k.a. boyfriends. Here I am being cynical again. Of course they're not just hole fillers, they're nice friends who you can have sex with too. Except that they're more than just that. They're possessive and they need constant attention, the way that friends don't. But wait, have I just come full circle and am I the "boyfriend" that I don't approve of? Am I annoyed at the boyfriends because I am "the boyfriend"? This is all terrible, and terribly confusing. I'm going to bed. Good night!

about my writing

As requested by Timea Farkas, I will be changing all of my "me and Name" sentences to "Name and I" sentences to make my writing more grammatically correct. =)
But seriously, the previously mentioned person complemented my writing some weeks ago and it made me a bit self-conscious. I feel like it's been showing in my latest entries, partly* because I'm afraid to write badly, and partly because I've been trying harder to make them quality pieces of work... or something like that. I know I'm not a bad writer, but I also know I'm not at all an excellent one... yet. I think that if I work on it and practice more, it could become quite decent. I'd say I'm at about a 5 out of 10 of my writing potential. Of course I got this number using my precise writing goodness calculator. (That one was a huge Rena-cliche by the way). Being in this in-between stage makes me nervously satisfied with some phrases and paragraphs because while they look good to me, stylistically, structurally and grammatically, I feel that any critisizm would hurt badly. What I'm trying to say here is that I am trying to write well and that I can only hope that from time to time I succeed.

Now I've only made myself more self-conscious. Go me.

*Actually, this one I had to look up: partially, partly - partially is of degree, eg, partially deaf; partly is of extension, eg, partly under water

...might never live those days gone by, but we can try...

Yesterday, January 26th was the two year anniversary of the death of my cousin Mourad. He was in the Marines and he died in an helicopter crash in Iraq. If anyone used to read my LiveJournal I wrote about this when it happened. I was pretty upset and I didn't know why. I didn't even know what sort of a person my cousin was at the time of his death. My clearest memories of him are of both of us being around 5 years old and me making him a tea party when he came over to our house one time, and also playing with him at their former San Luis Obispo home when I first came to California at around 11 years old. I remebered today as it happened two years ago, and I remembered sitting on the roof of my King St. house crying into my cup of tea while smoking my first non-drunk cigarette. I remember telling Larkin about it and him consoling me and how his dining room looked blurry over his shoulder.
As strange as this sounds I haven't seen him or my uncle Rufat(my dad's brother) or the rest of their family in probably four or more years, even though they live in San Diego. Our families have never been that close, but I think that's mostly because my mom and their mom aren't that close and my mom is normally the initiator of family gatherings and if she's not motivated, no one is. I didn't go to the funeral because I was up in Santa Cruz in the middle of midterms, and I also didn't go to the one year anniversary for the same reason. This time I couldn't "escape" this family gathering, and headed down to San Diego yesterday afternoon with my dad. A group of about 10-15 people went to the cemetary to set down some flowers and then we went to a local Christian orthodox church (my aunt is pseudo-Christian I think) where a priest performed a special service just for our group. The whole time I felt pretty awkward because first of all, I no longer felt actual sadness at this point, and also because I couldn't really relate to my cousin (his sister) Shayla and their friends because I felt like they had this bond that I've missed out on during high school and college. Last time I saw her, she was a skinny 13 year old and now she's almost 18, graduating high school, has awesome individual taste in clothes and music and is way ahead of where I was at 18 in terms of alcohol tolerance. There was also a whole lot of Russian family friends' children at whom I used to scoff at as "those super-Russian kids", who now happen to all speak in English to each other. It was very odd because these kids are around my age (18-24), they're Russian and/or Azeri, Jewish, Armenian, Georgian, but also as perfectly intergrated into California life, accent, etc. as I am. I've been passively looking for this combination all through college and it's been right inside my family this whole time.
After getting well-buzzed with my "little" cousin and her friends, exchanging emails and promises to keep in touch more (time will only tell if we fulfill them), I left a previously dreaded, awkward engagement with a huge smile on my face, good food in my stomach, good feelings flowing through my still slightly reeling head and memories of 5 year old Mourad drinking imaginary tea from a tiny teacup. I suppose I'll take what I can get.

Encuentra la felicidad en el trabajo o no serás feliz.

Find happiness in work and you will not be happy. So said Christopher Columbus. Should I commit to a job that will most likely make me miserable for 8 hours of my day, 5 days a week for 2 years but will pay off all of my student loans? First off, let me say that this opportunity isn't knocking on my door, not even close. I have to go out and try for it, but I suppose I have an "in" at this bank and hopefully this time I won't mention any plans of studying abroad at the interview, which is what guaranteed me such a swift rejection last time. I consoled myself by saying that I don't want to be tied down my senior year in college and it made sense at the time. I was relatively happy at the library and saw no reason to leave except better pay. But I was unwilling to give up my life for better pay. Times have changed, I've gone to study abroad and right now I need money to intensely pay off my loans and be a free woman in 2 years time. But that's 2 years out of my 20s. I see these craigslists ads for writing interns, light editing positions, internet magazine contributors... jobs that in a way seem completely out of my sphere of interest (and perhaps reach), but at the same time, jobs that would excite or challenge me in some way. Excite me more than offering yet another credit card with a low interest rate to the next customer.
I find that being home limits me as well. I can feel this unspoken and invisible pressure to go for the bank jobs as opposed to the creative jobs. There's also a certain unfavorable disposition towards the shit, temporary jobs that would give me immediate cash, such as the graveyard shift as an LAX shuttle dispatcher (ha!). Not that I'm really striving for those jobs, but the fact is that I would consider them more seriously if I didn't have my mother's disapproving aura permeating through my brain. On my own I'm a bit less picky, a bit less "clean" and a bit more idealistic. I feel myself quickly sinking into the quicksand of my mom's household and to escape it I need some sort of privacy, my own space to talk on the phone to any employer that I want, any friends that I want, at any hour of the day. There's no actual restriction on my life in this house, but there are disapproving glances and those glances will slowly kill my individual self if I don't do something about it quickly. The rooms are getting separated tonight and I'm getting my own bedroom back. Decorated the way I want, arranged the way I want and containing my now grown-up life.

I'm back!

I was reading over my last post and I thought that people who read it probably figured that I stopped writing because I've killed my sister and went to some Venetian tourist jail. Au contraire! I went to Paris, and me and my sister actually got along quite well there (for most of it). She's still a huge pain in the ass, but she's my sister and I love her, and she makes me laugh... sometimes with her, and sometimes at her, but nevertheless we had a good time in Paris except for the problem of my insane relative. The relative whose apartment we stayed at in Paris is my grandpa's cousin. She's married to a very rich French man, and has a little yappy dog of the Papillon breed (look it up on Google images to get a greater understanding of my aunt). Thank god she decided to stay at her husband's Parisian suburb house instead of the apartment with us because if she hadn't she would've ruined our Paris experience completely. I won't even go into the details of what hell she put me and my sister through by introducing us to her friend Elizabeth who is as crazy as my aunt-person, and a huge bitch on top of that too, but in the end we somehow got blamed for breaking an antique statue that my aunt had in her apartment, attempting to steal her camera, and also me having several men at the apartment when Elizabeth came over to pick up the key before I left. All of these things are not even close to what could possibly be the truth. Nothing got broken or stolen, and no men were ever invited by me to my aunt's house (though one sicko did prank call me when I was all alone there to say "You fucking bitch, I'm gonna getcha..." which was actually kinda scary and worrying at the time). Please... do NOT ask, unless I see you in person and you want to hear all of the horrific but hilaroius details of that ordeal. Oddly enough, between all this complete and utter insanity, I managed to fall in love with Paris. I can't begin to explain how incredible the city is, how many things there are to do and see and how it makes you feel just walking around, going into random tiny shops, bookstores and boutiques, peoplewatching while eating your Nutella crepe at Place de Vosges, getting lost in the Louvre... I can't say the same about Parisians though. When I go back, I'm definitely taking an arsenal of at least basic French because from the get go those people are just not very nice at all. Such a change from Spain. Sure, there are some bitchy Madrileno store clerks, but I found the general Spanish atmosphere to be a lot more friendly and welcoming, even before I could speak any Spanish.

From France I went back to Ireland, which I didn't end up seeing at all because I wanted to spend as much time as possible in Paris, so I only went back to Shannon to sleep there my last night in Europe and fly back home. The last day in Paris I finally understood all of my Cordoba classmates in their lamentations about wanting to go back home. I was in beautiful Paris, and really, all I wanted is to be in ugly little Torrance with my family. This was one of the oddest things about this trip. I actually truly missed my family. Not Timi, not Korin, not Larkin, not anyone. Just my mom and my dad and my cat (I saw my sister just two days before that), and our little apartment. It felt odd but nice, and the funny thing is that it hasn't gone away yet. I'm still as happy to be home as I was 4 days ago. I still haven't fought with my mom (though I know it's bound to happen sooner or later), I still haven't gotten that sick, suffocating feeling I usually get on about the second night of being home, and I still haven't gotten the extreme urge to hang out with friends or go out. Now, I'm not even suggesting that it's not gonna happen, I guess I just feel like something is different. I don't feel completely awful about living at home, especially since I've realized that I do have a bunch of friends in LA, some that I knew were here, and some that pleasantly surprised me. So I guess I won't be stuck watching Russian TV with my family when I get home, though for the next few days, that might suit me just fine. =)

Socorro!!!

That means "Help!" in Spanish. I'm in Venice, Italy and while I'm supposed to be loving it because it is an amazing city, I'm being driven up the wall by my sister. She's a great artist, but I think the one thing that she's better at than art is driving me insane. Oh yes, she has that art down to a T. I won't go into detail about exactly what she does to drive me insane, but let's just say that any sort of fun or intersting activity that doesn't involve looking at paintings is out of the question. I honestly wish that I hadn't come to Venice. I know I will later, and I know I'll have such a better time, so why am I here now? Because I was decieved by my own optimistic mind once again. I thought that we were family and things are going to work out ok. Things are not ok, and when she acts like they are it drives me even more insane. Larkin was right, I will be miserable at home, so for that exact reason I will make just enough money to afford moving out, and then get out of there as soon as I can. Thank god that I'm pretty sure I have a temporary job lined up as soon as I get to LA, or else I'd panic.
We are leaving for Paris tomorrow and I can't wait, because there I will really be able to get out on my own and do whatever the hell I want. In Venice and in Antwerp we were stuck together because we had the same host and I felt strange just breaking off of them, though I wanted to so badly (and probably should've). There is absolutely no way that I'm paying her back for these RyanAir tickets. On top of everything, she has the nerve to tell me that if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't get to see Venice or Belgium. Excuse my French, but fuck that! I'd rather not be here at all and not almost ruin my first impression of there amazing places than be here like this. I'd rather be spending extra time in Paris and in Ireland by myself than being driven insane by her "company". Traveling alone was sooo much better! At least I met normal people at hostels.

End of rant.

NYE and Antwerp

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

(I also posted pics on my previous posts, so go back and look at them... now)

My New Years Eve turned out a lot tamer than I expected it to be, mainly because I didn't want to spend €30 on a couple of hours in a discoteca (which I now think was a mistake) and because after ringing in the new year at Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona with 6 portuguese speakers, we couldn't get into any of the bars, so I decided on going to the airport earlier than expected. After a flight to Paris and a 1st class train to Antwerp (they didn't have anything cheaper than a youth priced first class ticket, which actually wasn't even that expensive... 1st class is nice though), I was met by my sister an her non-axemurderer internet friend named Steven. After about 10 minutes of "Oh how nice, it's my sister!" I began to want to strangle her once again. Ah the good old days. She's not only driving me crazy, she's driving Steven crazy, which proves to me that I don't have these feelings just because she's my sister. Steven actually is really nice and interesting. He works at the library in Antwerp and he loves his job and he's almost making me want to go to library school. If the translation thing doesn't pan out, that's probably what I'll do. It's a bit too static of a job for me though. I dunno, maybe I'll save being a librarian until I'm older and more settled down and have actually chosen a place to live in this world.
Antwerp is beautiful. The central area is so alive and there is a great museum (in which I spent too much time because my sister would not leave), gorgeous buildings of all different eras, and I have to say, the best shopping I've seen anywhere. That includes Paris. I guess Antwerp is considered very stylish and there is a fashion institute, a fashion museum and people in general are very stylish. Overall, I love it, and I have the nicest host to show me around. As long as I pretend that my sister isn't whining and complaining every 5 minutes. Yesterday we went to Bruges, which was really beautiful as well, but a bit too touristy, and tomorrow we're going to Brussels. Should be exciting. My sister is cooking right now... let's just hope that after this dinner I live to see Brussels. Ciao!