I wish I could get angry with people to their face. Or heck, to even confront anyone about anything. I know I lack the courage, but let's just pretend I'm well-behaved.
I had a really lovely birthday yesterday, which is a pleasant surprise. I have a history of having bad birthdays, particularly milestones (I celebrated my sweet sixteen and eighteenth at the doctor's office). I didn't expect this one to be particularly noteworthy because nearly all of my friends are out of town. I haven't had a birthday party in seven years and thought it might be nice for a change. However, a few people really went out of their way to make my birthday special, and I really appreciated it.
I woke up showered with all sorts of little, cutesy birthday things. My sister wrote on the bathroom mirror and gave me a tiara and balloon ("Feliz Cumpleaños!"). My mother left out a giant muffin with a candle in it on a Happy Birthday plate for my breakfast and brought me home a Camembert. My grandparents had flowers delivered. While I'm thankful for the expensive presents I received Sunday at my family get-together, I love the cliché cards, flowers and balloons.
One of my friends who is completing an internship back East this summer called to send her birthday regards and spent two hours on the phone talking to me. Not only was I ecstatic to talk to her, but I appreciate that she remembered my birthday since I know she had no way of being reminded by a social networking site or mutual acquaintance. My two favorite birthday things are cards and phone calls. Cards show the person actually remembered my birthday in advance, and phone calls show that they are willing to devote a part of their busy day to me.
My day concluded with a lovely dinner out with my friend who is in town for the summer. She was patient and an excellent listener, letting me spew out verbal diarrhea for hours. Our server was genuinely friendly, chatting with us for a solid five or ten minutes at the beginning of the meal, and the whole restaurant sang happy birthday to me. Heck, even people on the bus wished me a happy birthday.
I've been getting a lot better about birthdays lately. I sent cards for about 75% of birthdays in the last year and have made phone calls when I've been in the US. This year has reminded me how important it is for me to nail everybody's birthday in the coming year.
When I was thinking about how to celebrate my 21st, I felt like it needed to be about big presents and wild parties, but I was really happy just to have a few quality social interactions and be acknowledged. Perhaps I'm actually becoming an adult.
Video: Share your favourite small-budget movie of 2007.
Submitted by ciathegreat.
This looks to be a good summer for independent and foreign movies. Tomorrow, I'm off to see Paris, Je T'Aime which I just barely missed in Paris. After that, I'm on to tracking down The Namesake, Once, The Lives of Others and The Wind That Shakes The Barley.
An old man just eased himself out of his chair at this coffee shop and hobbled over to the door, leaning on the trash bin as he tossed out his coffee cup. Earlier, he’d just been sitting, one leg extended, one leg bent under his chair legs, staring straightforward. Before that, he skimmed the paper, lingering over the Funerals, Memorials and Obituaries page. I don’t think he found anyone he knew because he finished the rest of the paper, but I can’t imagine the point in my life at which that will become routine.
I almost went over to talk to him. There was an empty chair, and he looked lonely. But what is there to say? “Anything interesting in the paper today?” “What kind of coffee do you like?” “Hi, we’ve never met, but I’m lonely too.”
The other day, I passed up an excellent chance to talk to a stranger. I went to the movies alone. With my knitting in my lap, I watched the banners of embassies contributing to the film festival flash across the screen. A tall, middle-aged woman with long, dark, curly hair sat down two chairs away from me, and seconds later got up and sat right down next to me. She never looked at me, and I didn’t glance over until the house lights had dimmed. It would have been so easy after the film--“So did you like the film?”--but I said nothing because I thought I was late for my bus and didn’t want to start something I’d have to abandon. I should’ve just taken the next bus.
Sadness is looking at the 10-day weather forecast and realising that you won't be around for over half of it.
I just got out of the shower and I survived! Bathing may not excite most of you on a daily basis, but it seems like quite an accomplishment for this week.
Monday night, standing in our shower that does not properly drain, I reached down and picked up my shampoo bottle sitting on the shower floor. Without my glasses on, life is a little fuzzy, and I was confused to see a darkish blob which I thought was my razor head. After bending down for further inspection, I leaped out of the shower, throwing myself against our moldy shower curtain because the blob was indeed the largest spider I have seen in Ireland. It's body was easily the size and shape of a Nutter Butter cookie. Even the Able-Bodied Boy I made dispose of the creature agreed that it was awfully large. Thankfully, my eight-legged friend had drowned in the shower before we had the chance to meet, otherwise I might very well have been sitting naked on my porch, waiting for my flatmates to return.
Therefore, when it finally came time to bath again last night (hygiene loses importance in the face of finals), I decided perhaps a bath was more up my alley. A particularly warm bath, in fact, one so warm that I originally could not even dip my toes in the water.
After getting out of the bath and chatting with my flatmate while wrapped with a towel, I began to feel weak and nauseous. As I headed to the toilet, I apparently buckled in half and fell to the ground. My flatmate caught me, lessening the impact of my fall, but I still hit my head on the sink and was apparently unconscious for about thirty seconds. When I came to half-naked (if you are going to faint, do so fully-clothed---it's embarrassing to have to ask for underwear), I felt a little shaky and my head understandably hurt, but I am fine now.
It was the first time I've ever fainted, and as horrible as it probably is to say, it was actually pretty cool. When I was unconscious, I just felt very content. I do not remember seeing anything, but I do remember hearing "Beauty in the Breakdown" by The Scene Aesthetic, a band I'd been listening to all day since I'd discovered them in a New York Times article and realized I played in jazz band with the lead singer. (Also, speaking of bands I went to school with, listen to the quite groovy "Party Foul" from Danger:Radio.) It mostly felt like a static, peaceful dream, just a general pleasant state.
My flatmate saved the day by getting the RA on duty, calling a medical hot line and making me tea (an Irish solution if there ever was one). My flatmates have been quite excellent this week, particularly on the righteously indigent on my behalf. When I came home from my French final Tuesday to discover that despite the class being taught in English and the assignments written in English, the exam was in French and I was the only student without a dictionary, they offered to threaten my professor with high-heeled shoes. When I regaled them with tales of my failed dress shopping expedition this afternoon (no dress would zip over the "expanse" of my chest), they both spewed forth confusion and consoling comments concerning my physique. I am very lucky to come home to these people.
You know how occasionally something will happen that you just can't get over, no matter how rationally you examine the situation?
In March, someone broke into our flat while we were asleep. I rolled over in bed because I felt a gust of cold air and saw hands reaching in through my opened window. I shouted and the intruder ran away, but for the next week, I had difficulties falling asleep at night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his pale hands reaching in from the night.
People have told me just to brush it off, that it was likely just a drunk fooling around. Gun control in Ireland is very strict. I have even tried to climb through my window myself and discovered that it is impossible thanks to a stop mechanism that prevents it from opening too far. None of that keeps me from jumping sky-high and quaking with fear for hours every time I hear a noise at night, particularly if I'm alone. I feel immature for being unable to convince myself that this was an isolated event, highly unlikely to reoccur.
I'm a little concerned that the paranoia hasn't subsided two months later. I should not still be creeping around my flat with my heart racing and my thumb poised to dial campus security every time I hear a loud noise. Some nights, it keeps me from falling asleep quickly because I lay awake in bed, focused on listening to even the slightest sounds two stories up. Also, I'm worried that it will interfere with being an RA in the fall. How can I deal with something serious if I can't even sleep in my own bed every night?
I just want to feel safe again.
On the evening of May 9th, I'm slated to land at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, ready to spend the next four days exploring an incredible city and seeing one of my very best friends that I haven't seen in nearly a year. During the afternoon of May 9th, the Turkish parliament will very likely be voting in a candidate with Islamist leanings as the next President of the secular republic.
I've been following the Turkish elections in the news, first as an attempt to learn a little about the country I will be visiting, but now with a little more concern. Hundreds of thousands of Turks rallied this to protest the new government. However, the rally was non-violent. On Friday, the Turkish army issued a warning saying it would intervene if religion began to play too large of a role in politics, and the last coup in Turkey was only ten years ago. At the same time, a military action would severely harm Turkey's campaign for EU membership.
I still really want to visit Turkey, but at this point, I can't help but allow a few doubts to creep into my mind. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive because I've been listening to my parents lambaste me for the past month about my choice of destination, or maybe it's the influence of having just read Snow, a story of a coup in Eastern Turkey. Turkey hasn't been placed on the US Travel Advisory Watch List, or anything of that nature, yet I have to ask myself, at what point should I cancel the trip? Do I wait until there are rioters in the streets, throwing stones and breaking windows? My flight to Istanbul leaves early in the morning, long before the election will occur, so I won't be able to gauge the aftermath myself.
It would not be the end of the world if I was unable to go. Nic could fly out here and we could travel some more around Ireland, admiring the piles of old stone surrounded by sheep that make up a vast majority of the daytime tourist attractions offered by this fine isle. I don't want to end up trapped on the continent, unable to return for my final exams, or anything worse... But I really, really want to see Istanbul. I want to be wowed by the beauty of the Blue Mosque and overwhelmed by the animation of the Grand Bazaar. I want to ride boats down the Bosphorus and watch Turkish-style belly dancing. I really want to go.
So, I ask you: At what point would you, if you were two 20 year old American girls, decide to cancel your trip? What item read in the news would it take to push you over from going to not going?
Share a story about your sibling(s) or a family member from when you were a kid.
Submitted by Jenny Marie.
I suppose I ought to answer my own QotD, even if I'm a few days late. My own sister inspired me to suggest this because she's been writing an adorable series of vignettes of her own childhood and I've been lucky enough to read them. I know my sister is a really quirky kid, and I figured I'd have endless tales to tell.
Except I don't. When I actually sat down and tried to think of amusing anecdotes from when we were both prepubescent, I came up empty. Sure, I can remember parading around our kitchen behind our mother singing "Solidarity Forever" at the top of our lungs, Diana making a beak with her mouth on command and crawling around on the floor of our living room with a blanket covering her, pretending to be Secret Agent Kathmandu. But what were the first things that popped into my mind? Chasing my sister down the hall because she'd stolen my security blanket. My first grade birthday party where my entire class ganged up against her. Having to hide my trombone mouth piece from her in my room and showing up to play without it in my case. Rolling on the floor fighting and getting angry when she bit me and drew blood. Being angry when I'd have to order an Orange Julius for her at the mall because she was too shy to speak for herself.
It's so strange to think that there were times before Pook and Bird's Grand Adventures, that there were times before we actually became friends. We didn't really get close until my junior year of high school, and I know that it was my own fault for being jealous and selfish. Now, I consider my sister to be one of my closest companions. It takes self-control to keep from calling her every day just to say hello and chat about nothing in the babyish dialect we sometimes slip into. But, I do have a good Pook and Bird Moment from before we had quite become bosom buddies.
The summer I turned sixteen, I worked at our church camp. I was the youngest staff member---I literally only met the age qualification by days---and so I felt that I needed to act a little more mature to fit in. However, I caved in for the talent show, and we had our fifteen seconds of glory doing impressions together. Impressions of... inanimate objects. First, Diana does an impression of a rock. Then I join her her as a mushroom on the side of a rock, and then we roll around the floor as a mushroom on the side of a rock in the wind. Next up, we are both bracelets, then bracelets on the arm of a conductor, then bracelets on the arm of a conductor... in the wind. We did the same shtick for spotlights as well. I'm not really sure that I'm able to properly articulate the content of our act, but we'd be more than willing to do it for you in person if you ask.
And tonight, my sister called and we spent half an hour telling bad knock-knock jokes and having a sing-a-long despite the horrible lag. It makes me happy to know that when we are old and our teenage years will seem young that we will have lots of stories to tell.
This evening, I laid on the recently mopped floor of our kitchen and concocted ridiculous plans and enjoyed comfortable silences with people I only met months ago. We reminisced about how it was only a few weeks ago that we all went to pubs together for the first time and now all we can talk of is going home. And then with a head in my lap, I watched Love Actually and stroked hair and wondered why the end of every semester must always be the same.
Yet, despite the fact that I have finally found companions, there is still no one to talk to. I had an epiphany last week, of the dropping everything, changing my major, changing the course of my future kind, and yet there's no one with whom I can really discuss it. I've tried talking to people here, but without three years of background knowledge, they really can't do more than smile sympathetically. Talking on the phone with friends and family from home is equally as frustrating because they aren't here in my presence, and perhaps also because it reminds me that the professional resources I ought to consult in the US are no longer available to me. It seems ridiculous to be changing my major for my last year of university; I should have figured out what I wanted before now. I don't even know if my decision is anything more than a whim that will subside in a few weeks, and yet I have to make up my mind soon as to what to do before I am locked into my old path. My future is like a game of Tetris, where more and more oddly-shaped pieces keep falling into reach and I have to figure out how to fit them all in to the master plan without creating any holes. And I have to do it all by myself.
Speaking of passing fancies, I'm contemplating taking a day trip to Edinburgh during my final exam period. It just seems like a ridiculous and perfectly appropriate thing to do in my last few jet-setting moments abroad. I can arrive in Scotland before 8 in the morning and leave after 10 at night, and the return ticket is only 20 euro. I'm not at all concerned about the time crunch of traveling during exams, but I am nervous about the finances. I still have most of the expenses for my excursions to Istanbul and the Aran Islands, left to cover, plus a few day trips, and I still have to feed myself for the next five weeks. I'm going to crunch some numbers in a bit, and I think it'd be possible for me to go to Edinburgh, but I'd literally be left with only a hundred dollars to my name when I show up Stateside. At the same time, are an extra 50 euros really going to make that much of a difference either way? Do I even really need to go to Edinburgh?
