I think today I have enough for a relatively lively entry. Well, relatively lively in that I’m going to talk about my intimate relationships, which I always find quite a bit more interesting than anything else I discuss on a regular basis. Anyway, here goes.
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It’s always strange when a numerical identifier of your existence changes and you have to resolve in your mind that it no longer applies to you. I’m one of those people who has trouble remembering what year to write on checks after January 1st. And now I am no longer a “first year,” nor are many of my friends. We can no longer refer to ourselves collectively as “the first years” and it’s strange for me. Now there are new first years. We are now the second years. A year has passed so quickly by. I’ve met so many people, formed so many incredible connections, and made friends that I can tell will last a lifetime. Yet one year ago I could hardly imagine leaving my previous friend pool behind and ever finding any place so warm and inviting as Columbia. I suppose I am one of those lucky adaptable people who underestimates her own ability to rally people around her into a friend-family, regardless of location. We see movies, we have dinners, we party, we SPEND TIME TOGETHER, and perhaps that is the ease of it all. The familiarity that is born from proximity and duration is hard to avoid. Even those you would originally never interact with become more agreeable as you get to know them. You think that no one will ever be like those who have come before them, but deep down all humans possess many of the same characteristics. Only the minor details change from person to person and contribute to what psychologists refer to as “personality” or the like. Ah, but I’m rambling about things I don’t really have the expertise to discuss. My point is that I love the people I’ve met here and I’m so happy that I chose this place above others. While I’ll never know how happy I would have been somewhere else, I am happy enough here that I have no interest in knowing in the first place.
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P90X is going swimmingly. My husband and I are now into his 5th week and my 7th week of the program. My entire body is muscular. It’s actually rather terrifying at times as I have developed the urge to get mugged to test my ability to combine the strength I have acquired with P90X and the agility I have practiced through martial arts. Well, I guess I don’t necessarily want to get mugged, but I want to be thrown into a situation where I can use my full strength to try and accomplish a goal. My husband is even more intense. Having been very skinny to begin with, his muscles show almost as soon as he builds them. His physique has changed so much! We are both, however, reeling with dietary difficulties: i.e. we are both overeating. I have gotten back on Weight Watchers (not going to meetings, but using the point system from back in 2008 or so) and have encouraged him to do so as well. We’ve agreed to reduce the amount of junk food we buy, especially since he currently eats about half a box of Oreos a day. Besides the health benefits, snack stuff is really expensive and not buying it with no other changes to our grocery list dropped the weekly cost of food by almost $30 (Yeah, I know we spend a lot on food, but it’s the one thing I won’t compromise on even though we’re poor. I like my fresh veggies, meat, and restaurant visits.). So anyway, in concerns with overall health, this particular married couple is actually getting sexier rather than fattening up. And in several more weeks I and the P90Xers of my department are all going up to Chicago to buy new clothing that actually fits, so I’ll get even sexier in public! No mom jeans for me, no sir. I feel better about my body than I probably ever have in my entire life. :3
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Lately my husband has been doing a terrible job of coordinating his sleep schedule to any of those expected of a socialized existence. The downsides to this are many: he is rarely awake at the right time to pick me up from work and consequently I have to take the suddenly unreliable buses home or be forced to walk home, he doesn’t do anything during the day because he is sleeping so all the chores are still undone when I get home, I don’t get to eat lunch with him anymore, we don’t share the bed much because I am sleeping while he is awake, etc. It definitely gets on my nerves. Today especially, I came home in a bad mood (after having to walk home) to a sink full of dishes, an unswept floor (even though I asked him to sweep several days ago), and all the laundry still dirty… However, I discovered one upside: when I am drunk at someone else’s house at 3 AM he is awake to come and pick me up so that I don’t have to spend the night.
Speaking of which, recently I had a ladies’ night with some of my best female friends from the first second year crowd and a girl I met on OkCupid, after which is when the hubs had to pick me up. It was absolutely fantastic! I can honestly say I’ve never enjoyed the company of several females more in my whole life. We had a pregame at the domicile of three of the girls during which they helped me get fancied up for the evening ahead. One girl borrowed me a dress and some pantyhose and did my makeup, another offered a pair of shoes, the last showed me how to put on mascara. After they were done I looked better than I ever thought possible. The only reason for anyone to not proposition me in that get up was because they were too intimidated by my incredibly good looks. In addition to myself, these three girls also made up another of our companions who (like me) doesn’t often give attention to her own looks. She looked A-MAZING. More on this in a moment.
After we were all prettied up and ready to go, I and two of the other girls took several shots of rum each prior to heading out. Almost immediately I was very tipsy as I’m rather a light weight when it comes to alcohol. By the time we got to the local gay bar I was completely smashed and having a bit of trouble standing up. I could feel myself wavering, but it was still really fun. I danced until I couldn’t stand up anymore at which time I realized the other girl who had been made over was holding her ears. I stumbled over to her and asked if she wanted to go to the less noisy part of the bar and sit down. I shambled over to a table and slumped myself in a chair, where I stayed until we left for Walmart. One would think that siting around at a bar when dancing was a possibility would be less than ideal, but spending time just talking to people while drunk is really enjoyable to me. All the things I normally wouldn’t say come spilling out of my mouth, and since I don’t have a lot of worrisome secrets it’s quite liberating. Once the other girls had joined us, we all started talking about our own sex lives and it was extremely interesting. It was honestly probably my favorite part of the evening, owing to the fact that I love talking about sex and related topics. On the drive to Walmart I passed out for a few minutes, but woke up again when we were nearing our destination. We bought a bunch of frozen pizzas and chips and stuff and did cartwheels even though we had skirts on. We ended the evening with more chatting and eating all the food we bought at Walmart. Once I had sobered up a bit I realized my husband could pick me up because he was almost certainly awake and called him, subsequently crashing after a good shower.
So all that is well and good. I had a wonderful night with good friends and learned a lot about people they probably wouldn’t have shared sober (one of the great things about being drunk in my opinion). HOWEVER, the more important point I want to make about the night was that it solidified that I had fallen for her. Over the past couple of weeks I had noticed a slight infatuation with the girl I mentioned sharing my fate as someone who had to be revamped prior to clubbing. Let’s call her “Rose” for the sake of concise sentences. I found myself becoming more and more interested in spending time with her and I got butterflies whenever we were alone together. I passed it off as an increase in familiarity leading to fleeting feelings of infatuation, but when the feelings didn’t fade I began to wonder. We share so many interests and her personality is one of the few types that makes a human viable for spending extended periods of time with. Then I had a dream, thus the reason I give her the name Rose, in which I was the Doctor (from Dr. Who, a fandom she is quite involved in) and I sought her out as a companion in more ways than one. Yes, a sex dream. Now, I’m not one to deny that I have a lot of sex dreams. In fact, I have a huge number of them! However, very few include real people and most are actually about either video game characters or fake people my mind just makes up (insert random anonymous hawt chick), so I was taken aback. I woke up confused and a little nervous. It’s a feeling you don’t get courting people online. When someone is online on a site like OkCupid looking for a relationship and displaying their sexual orientation for all to see, it takes a lot of mystery and fear out of the whole ordeal. Probably one of the main reasons eHarmony is so successful. But when you begin to fall for someone you know in real life, who is a friend, and who has unspecified desires concerning romantic entanglements…it gets a bazillion times more frightening.
And then came the moment when I saw Rose in all the clubbing splendor that the girls had picked out for her and she tenderly pushed her glasses a bit farther up her nose as she asked what I thought of the dress she was wearing. I melted. I’m surprised I pulled together the composure not to fall to my knees and tell her I had fallen madly in love with her and that she looked more beautiful than any woman I had laid eyes upon before. Instead I blurted out that it was fabulous and that she should tuck in her socks. I’m so suave. *eye roll* Even more surprising is that as the night progressed and I became inebriated, I didn’t spill the beans. She gently stroked my hair as I lay my head on my arm at the table. She got me water and took a sip from it after me. She watched over me carefully the entire evening. And as I handed her my keys so that she could move my car for me because I was too drunk, I whispered, “I trust you,” and she nodded, probably having no idea the gravity of what I had just uttered. That night I dreamed of her, and only her, and I knew that this wasn’t some short lived crush.
I mulled it over in my mind the next day and I couldn’t come to a consensus on what to do about the situation. I felt I needed input from someone else and called another one of the girls I deemed trustworthy with sensitive information of this type. While she had little advice, she did give me her own insights into the situation and vowed to invite me on a hike with herself and Rose so that I could spend some peaceful time with her feeling out everything before taking any irreversible steps. That will be this Saturday and I’m ecstatic for the sun to rise on that day, as well as very grateful to have chosen just the right person to share my problem with.
Since the realization that I have strong feelings for Rose, it seems like every day she gives me new reason to believe she cares for me as well, the foremost of them being her offer to be my “designated skater who can just skate around majestically with me frantically clinging to their arm” as quoted from my e-mail. But I don’t want to get too hopeful. She knows everything about me and my husband and our desire to have a mutual girlfriend. It would be some kind of incredible, beautiful, awesome miracle if she were interested in such a thing…and I don’t believe in miracles.
And I’ll leave it at that. More to come in the next few days I am sure. I usually don’t last too long with my own secrets, even if I can keep other people’s for years.
