July 1, 2007

July 1, 2007:

The people with whom you work reflect your own attitude. If you are suspicious, unfriendly and condescending, you will find these unlovely traits echoed all about you. But if you are on your best behavior, you will bring out the best in the persons with whom you are going to spend most of your waking hours.

~ Beatrice Vincent

Wow.

I haven't written a blog in forever! And there really isn't that much to write about. Sad....

Last time I wrote, Joel and I were having some angst over the cards and well, how I felt about being taken advantage of. I told him how I felt and while he was apologetic, he did point out that I needed to be the one to say no. While I was hurt and pissed at him over the whole thing, Gal, one of my smartest best friends asked me if I could put blame and anger aside to address it with two questions. The first question was would Joel ever do anything like this on purpose and the second was if the answer was no - was it that important.

Well - no. Overall they're just a bunch of fucking cards and while he might be clueless - he'd never hurt me intentionally in a million years. So... our first "fight" was over and we found a happy medium. The mass amounts of cards would stay at his house until they were manageable and then they could come here when they're ready to be eBay'd or sold on Sportlots.

His birthday was on the 16th and being our first birthday together, I wanted to make it special. Downside is that I had a HORRIBLE cold that week and was still sick on his birthday. He came over Friday night and we hung out ... and then at midnight I gave him his gift. Joel loves T-shirts. He's got hundreds of them and wears them all. So over the past few months, I found a bunch of shirts for him. I think he liked them all - he wore them over the next few days ... but then came the real gift. A nano.

Joel LOVES music. And while his taste is music is pretty different than mine, he does have quite a few amazing CDs. Over the last few months, I've been ripping his collection of 1000 CDs onto iTunes. I already had mine ripped and once I was finished, we had about 60 gigs of music. It was awesome. So I took his iPod and created an 8 gig random playlist for him so he can listen to it in his car all the time. Again, I think he liked it...

On Saturday, I pretty much told him whatever he wanted to do, I was his partner in crime. So we went to Todai and had a free Birthday sushi lunch .... Joel loves free and then walked around the mall. We ended up at his place, working on the cards again because he wanted to finish them. Hours and hours later we stopped, and we didn't finish but did get closer. It was a mellow day but it was his day... that's all that mattered to me.

Since then, his work has been crazy busy and it's really added a huge amount of stress on him. It sucks because there is nothing I can do to help either... and he broods, forgets things, gets frustrated and just is strung tight as a piano wire ... and I just have to watch. For me? That's so fucking hard to watch because I want to alleviate the pain... and I can't! And with him trying to get ready for his trip to Vegas, it just compounded into more and more stress. I tried really hard not to turn it into "me" but sometimes it really felt like it was something to do with me.

My birthday was on Thursday and Joel came over Wednesday night to mail some eBay stuff. We hung out here at my place - him working on eBay, me working on my final. He was cute and actually made me dinner because I was trying frantically to finish my paper. Later, he told me he had forgotten my gift at home. About midnight, we got in his car and drove to his house... and on the way, he wrote my card. It was odd but I tried to remember how busy he was and that it was the thought that counts. He brought me my gift, which was unwrapped ... but were 3 shadowboxes of Asian art. While he didn't exactly miss and get me something I hated, it was something that I don't know if I would have ever bought for myself. They were cool though and I didn't lie when I said they were.... but when we got home and I took them out of the bag, I noticed he left the receipt in the bag. Just a hint to anyone out there... never leave a receipt with a gift. I know I probably went overboard with his gift but it was something he wanted - and I had the money. But when you find out your gift cost a tenth of what you spent on them... well, it just leaves a bad impression. I kept repeating over and over again it was the thought that counts ... but between the card, the lack of wrapping and the cost. Well ... it wasn't the most special gift.

Since I had to work on my Birthday, I rolled into work late like always ... and tried to keep a smile on my face even though I was pretty disappointed. I could share my disappointment with Daniela, my cubemate, as she's basically a skinny British version of me. With better hair. She got me a present, which blew me away and was awesome. I love reading magazines .. and she got me one called Bitch, Bust (for women who have something to get of their chest) and Scarlet - a British women's mag. All of them were awesome. Along with the mags was this set of postcards with Catalog Men from the 70's. Fucking hysterical.

The rest of the group was great and they bought me a couple cakes, which was funny and Jim distracted me while they all met in the conference room. I was totally clueless, I thought Jim wanted to talk. But overall, it was a nice warm fuzzy feeling from my coworkers ... something I totally needed.

Sadly, I had class that night - finals to be exact and so I headed to class after work. My paper was pretty much done, it looked great - even if it was a work of fiction. I think if I did turn it in, I would have gotten the grant I applied for because it was pretty well done. Class ended up short and when I left, Joel was trying to figure out the evening and Friday night ... and was totally stressed. When he found out I was done with class, I think it threw a wrench into his plans because he had "stuff to do." When I talked to him, he told me all these things he had to do and while I wanted to do something ... anything with him ... I just told him to do what he needed to, I'd just be hanging out at home. I know I should have told him that my birthday was important to me and he should be hanging with me instead of doing stupid shit like making a list of cards he needs and playing Sims Online ... well, I just couldn't. I couldn't open my mouth and say those words.

That bothered me a lot ... along with the fact that cards and a video game were more important than being with me ... and I just sat and pondered WTF. He surprised me when he walked in my door and when he saw I was kinda flustered, he finally got it out of me what was going on in my head. After we talked, I think it just became apparent we're on two different planes right now - talking above each other. Between his stress and lack of focus and the inability to communicate - everything was just so off. He was leaving on Saturday for Vegas for ten days too ... and with so much to do, he really wasn't himself. While I was still hurt ... I tried to think about Gal's words of wisdom and yet again, I just wrote it off as not that important.

Friday ended up the same - not enough time for him and so I decided I wasn't going to sit around waiting. I went out shopping since I had some birthday coupons from stores. I hit the jackpot at DSW and paid $72 for about $500 worth of shoes. Everything was 80% off and I had $25 in coupons too. Six pairs of shoes later ... I went to Lane Bryant. While I didn't have amazing savings there, I did get quite a bit of stuff for about $200. It feels good to be in the smallest size of Lane Bryant ... but I'd rather not be shopping there at all and at a regular sized store. I hit Bare Essentials for makeup - even though I don't wear that much of it and picked up some awesome eye shadows and a mineral veil compact. After blowing all that money ... I figured it was a good time to go home.

When I got home and started playing with my newly acquired treasures, Joel shocked me again by popping in. He packaged some more actions and we walked to the post office, like normal. Since he was leaving in the morning, I wanted some loving ... and well, to make an insulting short ... he fell asleep before we even got started. Sigh. The next morning, when he realized what happened, he tried to make it up but again, with all the stress and shit going on - it just didn't happen. I was off as well and well - it was just a disaster. Double sigh.

He left for Vegas and I just am wondering if these ten days are going to be ten days of missing me or ten days with the ultimate realization he's not that into me. I guess the same goes for me too. I miss him terribly but man, how many foobars do you have to go through? I suppose I need to prepare myself for both ... such an unfun position.

Saturday, Rui and I were throwing a birthday party for ourselves and in the morning, Rui informed me I had a flat. Sure enough - I had a huge flat. Thank God for AAA though. They came, towed my SUV and brought it to the shop. The guys were almost off, so between the three of them - they fixed it in like 10 minutes. It was awesome. All that for $20.

After they fixed my tire, I headed out to get all the crap I needed for mojitos and food for the party. When I got back, I spent the next few hours cleaning and getting ready for the party. After the party started, I drank some but realized how much of a drinker I am not anymore ... and spent most of the time making sure the food was plentiful and hanging in the kitchen. Either I'm getting old or my priorities have changed. It was good to chat with some of Rui's friends ... I forgot how nice Morgan was and really funny some of his friends were. It was a fun night ... a much needed time after the last week.

Summer session starts on Monday - I'm taking Journalism and swimming classes. I figured it was time to overcome my fear of water - that and I want to learn so I can use swimming as an exercise. The next six weeks will be a test - I want to see how much weight I lose with swimming two times a week for 2 hours a night. We'll see!

But there is your long ass update... hopefully I won't go that long next time.