Gillian's Eve

With only an hour left in my thirties, here are a few thoughts:

DYKWIL: Depositing cheques with my phone. Technology FTW!

YKGOML: I miss landlines, because sometimes someone other than the person you were trying to reach answered, and you'd have a chance to catch up with your friend's spouse/lover/parent/child/cat.

Ultra Fine Advice: Friends are more important than money, but paying attention to your finances is more important than paying attention to Facebook. Mint.com is my new spending conscience (and go-to distraction).

(Aside: Mint should let you send thank-you emails when someone buys you drinks or dinner, like, "Hey [insert name here], thanks! You helped Gillian stay in her Restaurants budget for June. Save on! Love, Mint.com")

Finally and definitely most importantly, a big UFF shout-out to my amazing 10-yr-old godson Griffin, who saw the book I sent to his mom and said, "Why be perfect when you can be awesome!"

That, friends. That.

Unpacking and Packing

"Moving is the worst. You have to touch everything you own, and make a decision about it." - my (very wise) friend Doreen

A friend of mine recently shared with me that she underwent her own crisis several years ago. She said up until then, she thought that her stuff - her baggage, her issues, whatever you want to call it - were all packed up in boxes and locked neatly in a room somewhere. Then she had this crisis, and realized that no, these boxes were actually stacked high on a palette and she was dragging that palette behind her. She went to therapy and one by one, unpacked as many of those boxes as she could.

As I write this, I'm procrastinating the final stages of packing a house's worth of stuff to move to a different country and into a fourth-floor walkup. That last part is key: The thought of carrying everything you own up four narrow flights of stairs is great incentive to own less stuff.

To that end, last Monday I had six full garbage bags and three overflowing recycling bins on the curb for pickup. This morning, a thrift store came to pick up about about six boxes of donation items, plus a bunch of furniture (assorted chairs and tables) (why did we even have "assorted chairs and tables"?). There are at least two more garbage bags going out tonight, and one of the recycling bins is already full.

At the same time I'm doing this physical packing, I'm trying to unpack a bunch of psychic boxes. Normally unpacking is way more fun than packing, but this kind of unpacking is *hard*. It turns out that I didn't make conscious decisions about what to put in these psychic boxes, and now as I unpack them, I have to decide what I really want.

The thing I'm realizing is, there will always be a box labeled Misc., and the only way to find out what's in it will be to unpack it and make decisions about what to do with the stuff. Some of it will probably end up back in the same box, or in another box named Misc. with some other stuff, and in that context maybe it will look different, and the next time I look at it maybe I'll make a different decision about what to do with it. And while it's inevitable that I'll keep adding stuff to these boxes, hopefully I'll do it more deliberately, and eventually I'll end up with fewer of the Misc. boxes.

It might help if I start to think of life as a fourth-floor walkup.

In other news, I'm reworking my last post (the one about relationships that's no longer here, but Google can probably still find it somewhere). It didn't make sense. I wrote it as a response to a conversation, not really deliberately, and if any of you actually understood any of it, you were probably like, um, yeah, no duh (because it was about projecting and is in every relationship book ever written).

The real point of that post was meant to be this. My friend D has a chalkboard in her kitchen, with a TODO list on it. I noticed the other day that under "haircut" is written "rel'ship". I asked her what that was about, and she said, "Oh, that's to remind us us to work on our relationship."

"That's amazing!" I said. "I love that you're conscious about it."

She laughed. "Well, yeah, but it's under 'haircut'."

Fair enough. Getting a haircut is easy.



(Misc. box photo compliments of Mike; box may or may not contain: a shower curtain, one shoe, a fork, half a bottle of wine, his peewee hockey championship jacket, some computer parts, a pillow, and his car keys.)

Reset

I stopped.

After we moved back from Argentina, and settled in the ‘burbs, I stopped.

I stopped writing.

I stopped publishing.

I stopped connecting.

And sometimes, I stopped living, as fully and completely as I could have.

Even at the (previous) lowest points of my life, I was writing here. I told you, Internet, about my separation. I told you about my divorce, and my starting anew, and Beginnings and all of that.

I fell madly in love with an amazing human being. We shacked up then packed up and moved to South America and had crazy awesome adventures, some that even included naked-lady towels.

Then we settled.

My advice to you? Don’t ever settle.

It was fine, for a while. I had a job. We had a nice house with a lawn and a garage and a washer and dryer in the basement. We bought a hammock and I built some benches.

But still: We settled.

Seven years ago, almost to the day, I wrote this blog post. It’s still here, on the internets, for everyone to see. And my, how I wish I’d read it monthly – even annually – for the past seven years.

I didn’t, though, and in that seven years, I forgot some of the lessons I should have learned.

But now, in the immortal words of Britney, I’m back, bitches. I'm back with more honesty, more late night blogging and more blood, sweat, and most definitely tears. I’ve got them all in spades, and as of tomorrow morning, I might even have a new bachelorette pad here in the BK.

If that doesn’t work out, I might be looking to sleep on your couch. I’ll bring the bourbon and the Kleenex.

And you guys, please: Read on. Write on. And most importantly: Love on.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sprink Pinkles, originally uploaded by Kitty LaRoux.

I don't care if Hallmark did invent this holiday to sell more cards. I hope Valentine's Day is just one of many this year that are filled with chocolate, kisses, and pink sprinkles.

I love you guys.

UFF Loves xkcd

How To Win My Heart

When I arrive home from work with a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk and announce that it's dinner: Heat a mug of water in the microwave so that I can warm my spoon, facilitating ice cream consumption.

I will swoon.

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Perrier

Dear UFF Readership,

It's been a while, eh? I was sitting around tonight waiting for delivery of the Poang chair I bought from someone on Craigslist, eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking Perrier, and mentally composing this missive as I've missed you all terribly.

So much is new since we last spoke! On Saturday I had my debut performance at the Upright Citizens Brigade. I think it went well - my class was supremely amazing and I'm kind of in awe of their skills. I'm going to take 201 after my photography class (which starts next week!) is done. (I'm also trying to kick this overcommitting habit I've developed.) Speaking of activities, this morning I had the first of 16 sessions with a personal trainer named Gaby. Gaby is legit, guys. She also makes jokes about Riverdance when I'm doing high-knee kicks.

The new job is going swimmingly. We get lunch EVERY DAY, catered. It's so different from my last job, where you might wander into the kitchen at 11 a.m. on the day of a sales meeting and consider yourself lucky to find a paper-doily-lined tray with a tub of cream cheese and a few loose grapes. I've also gained 5 pounds (ref: chocolate chip cookies; Gaby).

And finally, GBNAA, while no longer Brand New, is still Awesome. We're thisclose to being unpacked (I swear!), and I'm counting down the days to late-Spring and early-Summer evenings in the backyard. The cat is a huge fan of the boyfriend (to an almost ridiculous extent - she will walk across my lap to sit on his), and I think he kind of likes her, too (except when she's waking us up at 6 a.m., which, OK, is pretty much every day).

So yeah, things are good. Sorry I haven't kept in better touch! At least with this photography course starting there will be some pretty pictures for you to look at.

Love,
Gillian

People I Love: Lisa

I interviewed Lisa in Fall '06 as a co-op student for the team I manage. I hired her because during the interview, she didn't know an answer to a question I asked and said as much, and when I explained what the answer was, she said, "Oh, cool, yeah, I didn't think of that," so incredibly sincerely that I kind of loved her.

That first semester I didn't spend a lot of time with her, but she always showed up for events (even dressed up as a Happy Camper [at left, with Giselle aka Joan] for our Hallowe'en party - although I admit it hurt a little when I told Lisa that I was going to an 80s party as Cyndi Lauper and she asked, "Who's that?") and had just wonderful spirit. I saw her once during Winter term when I was in Waterloo to do interviews - she and her sister Laura came out for drinks with Sirrah!'s husband and me, and when Greg and I returned to the very pregnant Sirrah! Greg announced that he was sorry but he was in love with someone else. That's how charming this girl is.

Lisa came back to NY to work for a different team this summer, and ended up in a sublet about 6 doors down from the BP. We had regular Monday night movies (including "Josie and the Pussycats," "Charlie's Angels," and most recently, "Adventures in Babysitting") and shared countless pints of i.c.e.c.r.e.a.m. (she spells it every time she says it, and now I do too). I beat her once at Settlers of Catan (it was totally an upset - even MY money was on her). She taught me about improv and biters and Teen Girl Squad and reminded me that persistence works. And even though she's an athlete and an engineer and a writer and a sister, she is totally uncategorizable.

Lisa, if I could write and cast the role of Gillian's Little Sister (GLS), it would be all you. Thanks for being an amazing friend this summer. I love you (metric) tonnes.

P.S. This post is totally biting Lisa's People I Like series.

Love Me Do

Once every few months, when I find myself even more in love with the world than usual, I have a little exercise that I do when I ride the subway. I choose a person at random and imagine that I'm someone who just adores that person, and I list all the reasons that I love him or her. I think of it as a love letter to that person. Sometimes the reasons are things that I can observe, like particularly delicate wrists, or a quickness with the crossword puzzle, or a gentleness with an old person or a child. Sometimes I make things up completely, like how sweet she looks first thing in the morning, or how kind he is to my kids. It's easy once I get started, and I find myself noticing (and creating) wonderful things about complete strangers - not a bad way to start (or end) one's day!

I recently started to think about what I'd want someone to think or say if I were the subject of this exercise. That struck me as kind of a neat thing to wonder about, and I'm kind of surprised that I haven't wondered about it before - that is, for what reasons do I want to be loved? And, how do I want to be loved?

Every so often a friend will do something or even tell me something about him- or herself and I'll think, wow, I love you for that. I love you because you can't stand having your hands get wet when you run. I love you because you smell your shampoo every morning, even though it's the same shampoo you've been using for months and months. I love you because you use the same expressions my parents used when I was growing up. I love you because you act out stories as you tell them. I love you because you use regular expressions in IM.

I haven't come up with definitive answers for the questions of why and how I want to be loved, but I think that the more I can love the people around me, the clearer those will become. For now, I'll just keep practicing.