Comfort

Books.

I like people. I love my family and friends. Those relationships mean the world to me and I will never not need them.

But there’s something about books that brings me comfort. Finding the deepest corner of some small book store and listening to the silence, the pages being turned, or the quiet conversations of the other wanderers around me.  I don’t honestly even have to be reading them. Brushing the pages against each other, smelling them, running my fingers across the spines of a hundred different stories. I can forget about reality for an hour and get lost in the made-up worlds described on book jackets and back covers. Books aren’t complicated or unpredictable. They don’t have feelings or reactions or advice or sympathetic looks to give; I can feel whatever I feel and not have to explain it to anyone, yet tucked away in an aisle of a quiet library I don’t feel alone. There is something about a roomful of books that is comforting in a way I can’t fully describe, yet I am drawn in by perpetually.

I haven’t posted this week, mainly because I’ve been sick. Sick and sad.

Realizing that that thing you’ve wanted for a really long time isn’t going to happen is like being sucker-punched in the gut, every morning. There’s that bliss of 30 or so seconds when you wake up and don’t remember anything except for the remnants of a blurry dream in which you tossed and turned your way through, before you get the feeling you’re forgetting something important. All it takes is that half a second for the memory to cut through your fogginess and bring you back into reality.

I wish those 30 seconds lasted a little bit longer. I’d like to think that eventually they will become 60 seconds, a couple of minutes, a few hours. Several days. That the sadness doesn’t always loom over everything and settle into my bones until I feel like I weigh 500 pounds. That going to bed doesn’t mean staring at the ceiling and replaying conversations in my head until I can’t remember what is real and what I imagined.

For now, I find solace in dusty bookshelves and the musty smell of an old bookstore. In words and pictures and simply just being around the written word of a thousand different authors. In being by myself, but not being alone.

Whole30 Day 16: Having a social life is hard

Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It’s just hard to make plans with people that involve food and not be slightly limited. My conversations thus far:

Them: Let’s hang out! Let’s go out to eat!
Me: Yeah, let’s!
Them: Let’s go to [insert food that I really want to eat].
Me: Ugh, I can’t eat that right now.
Them: Let’s go to [another place that serves food I really want to eat right now]. 
Me: ……

I feel like I must have had less of a social life last time I tried a Whole30, because I only ate out once during the entire month… Tonight will be my 4th or 5th time trying to go out eating with such a strict diet. Buhh.

Because I know everyone’s curious, I did make it to the writing workshop today. It was… interesting. I got there a few minutes late because I couldn’t find the coffee shop, which was a little embarrassing. But when I did arrive the only group of people there who looked like they were working on anything writing-related was a table of older men. So I did the awkward thing where I sidled up to the table and was all “Oh, is this the workshop?” Gratefully, they knew I was coming so they kind of knew who I was. But, as I said, it was bunch of older men–not one of them was younger than 40. In addition to clearly being the baby of the group I was also the lone female. There was a nice older man, the oldest of the bunch, who kept making slightly sexist remarks in my direction and I think it was for both of those reasons. He also assumed I was still in college when he asked me what I was doing with my life. But he was pretty nice, so I smiled and nodded.
It wasn’t as awkward as I anticipate it would be, to be honest. The initial meeting was definitely stressful, but once I sat down I actually felt pretty comfortable with talking about the pieces I read and giving feedback. It was almost like being back in college, sitting in the weird room at the bottom of the English and Modern Foreign Languages building that had faux brick on one side and being understood as a writer because I was surrounded by other people who wrote.
Much cheese. Such corny. Wow.
But it was true. And one of the guys there writes poetry, so it was really cool to have someone there who understood my genre.
Overall, it was a good experience. I intend to return next month with some new stuff.

The Menu
Breakfast: Actually… work was so crazy this morning, I didn’t get a chance to eat my breakfast. Or sit down for 7 hours. Bleh.
Lunch: my awesome leftover from last night’s dinner
Dinner: I think we’re going to Surin? Should be interesting. I think I’m going to try one of the stir-frys sans the sauce.

Whole30 Day 9: Counting is hard

Every time I write a new post I have to think wayyy too hard about what day I’m on. Oftentimes I look at the previous day’s post to make sure I’m not counting the same number again… and even then I feel paranoid that I am. Like I’m feeling right now, despite the fact that I checked which day before I began this post. Life is hard.

Listen, you need to watch this video. It is the cutest thing I have seen all day (possibly all week) and I laugh every time at the end when the baby tries to put the top of the bottle in their mouth (I think it’s a girl, but am not 100% sure so I’m going to keep using gender-ambigious pronouns). And at the baby’s expression as they watch the dad before chewing on the bottle themselves. SO CUTE.

The weather outside today was absolutely beautiful! I mean, springtime beautiful. It seems as though we went straight from cool to hot in a matter of weeks at the beginning of the month, and it was unbearable muggy for a hot minute (see what I did there?). That’s the one thing I dislike most about Alabama weather–how quickly it jumps from one season to the next, often skipping the milder ones like spring or fall. So after a week or two of heat and humidity, we’ve had a couple of relatively mild days this week that have been sunny and inviting. So naturally, after I got off work today I made the trek to one of the parks by my house to sit in the sun and read a book.

I’ve been trying to finish The Book Thief by Markus Zusak for an embarrassingly long time now. It’s by no means a complex or dense read, so I should have finished it weeks ago. It’s finished, finally, as I flipped the last few pages when I was soaking up rays in the park. Overall, an excellent book. World War 2 fascinates me, so any book that has to do with that time period and subject matter captures my attention quite keenly. I loved the way Zusak narrated the book, and found it highly interesting that the story is told from the perspective of a young girl living in Germany which is quite firmly under the dictatorship of the Führer (Hitler). It’s interesting to see how he painted the characters and how they struggled to accept Nazism and all the issues that came with it, such as the oppression of the Jews living in their town.
I know they made a movie out of the book some time ago, so I will have to check it out and see if it’s any good. I’m usually disappointed by those because I’m a die-hard “let’s not change any major plot points” kind of person and it seems like they do that a lot when they transition books to the big screen. Oy.

I feel like I’m letting the interwebs down lately because I have had a severe lack of good work stories to tell. For reals. Today is Saturday, my usual crazy story day, and I got nothing. Apparently all the crazy customers came in when I was either on break or not wearing my headset for a moment. Or maybe they’re all out of town for the holiday weekend. Lucky them.

The “bad-food” cravings aren’t as bad today. It’s been a stressful week for me, personally, on top of work so I think that has been a major contributor to the cravings, but I actually made it through work this morning without wanting to steal pastries out of customer’s bag, so that’s progress. I still really want something sweet, but I’m starting to settle into my routine with this Whole30 so I think I’m going to be OK for the next little bit here.
I say that, and now I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow with the biggest junk-food craving ever. Le sigh.

The Menu
Breakfast: Breakfast bowl
Lunch: Leftover brussels sprouts w/ mayo and leftover green chicken.
Dinner: This shrimp stir fry w/ asparagus. Yum. My sauce didn’t thicken as well as her recipe says, but it’s possible I didn’t let it simmer long enough.