neglect, neglect, and more neglect!

Broadway and I are leaving in about 30 minutes for the airport for a tropical vacation :) Getting up to now though has essentially been work, work, and more work with not much downtime for the past couple of weeks.

When I return in a week, I promise to report on great adventures abroad as well as complain more in excruciating detail about my coworkers, friends, frisbee, relationship(s), bridesmaids dramas, and other non-trivial things barring me from enjoying my super important life.

Most of all, I look forward to catching up on all of your blogs! I know work is bad when I don't even have time to procrastinate (read blogs).

me & my car

I got the following email from a friend today:

Hey Seine,

I’ve got a favor to ask: can you lend us your car this Saturday to go to NE Mountain? I think that right now, we are all planning to go so we can’t all fit in one car. What’d be even better is if you can come too. You said you probably can’t make it, but it sounded like you could be swayed. Haha. Let me know what you think. Bye!

-Snow Friend

He, his brother, roommate, and girlfriends are all going skiing/snowboarding this weekend. I can't go because I'm still coughing up a storm from having been sick for almost three weeks now (I first got sick on that 3-day weekend trip, got better, then sick again before I fully recovered from the first bug).

I thought this request was rather out of line, but I didn't know how to tell him no. Am I being too sensitive about my car? I am fairly protective--I'm never comfortable lending my car to anyone besides Broadway. One friend in particular has borrowed it a couple of times when he needed to buy huge quantities of groceries for a party. Both times, I was uncomfortable, but lent it to him because it was easier than saying no. The grocery store is only 5-10 minutes away, so it didn't seem to be too big of a deal.

Lending my car to Snow Friend to drive two hours to a mountain is way beyond my comfort zone, but I didn't know how to say no. I wrote back with a made-up excuse about needing to go with to the 'burbs with recently engaged friend to check out shoes and accessories for her wedding, and she doesn't have a car. That's a complete lie--I have no plans for Saturday--but I just didn't know how to say "I'm not comfortable lending you my car."

This is the third friend who's asked me to borrow my car for various reasons (two requests were for out-of-town trips). Do friends commonly share cars in cities? I feel like I wouldn't ever ask and put a friend in this position, especially not when my travel needs aren't local. That's kinda why companies like Zipcar exist.

But am I being too uptight?

what's the point?

I boycotted practice tonight for my competitive frisbee team. It is below freezing, raining, and the captains insisted that we will still practice outside as planned. Her email read "It's wet out, so make sure to bring layers and clothes to stay dry!"

No duh, it's wet out. Why are we insisting on going outside? We have indoor space reserved. Why not just go there?

One of the captains is a self-described "super-competitive" girl. She tries to play nice, but she fails miserably. She bobs her pony tail and tries to be all ditzy and cheery on the sidelines, but when she actually gets on the field or when she's running a play during practice, she is extremely cocky, impatient, and sees herself as God's gift to women's ultimate. She is good--I will give her that--but she's not THAT good.

When we left practice on Monday, she said we would be practicing outside today. I grunted because I didn't understand the rush to be outside. It's not as if it's the middle of March, the sun's out, and generally we're all itching to go get some (relatively) warm fresh air. It's freezing out, and it snowed four inches yesterday!

I am just as hardcore as the next girl over, and then some, but I don't believe in being hardcore for the sake of being hardcore. We don't HAVE to practice outside right now. There is no need to practice outside right now.

If we had a game or a tournament to play, and it's our bad luck that the weather ended up pretty much sucking--snowing, raining, hailing, even if the fields are covered in ice--I wouldn't even blink an eye. I would put on my layers, pull a hat over my head, cover my stuff on the sidelines with a trashbag, and be the first girl out there on the field playing my hardest 120%.

But there is no need for this right now. It IS just practice, after all. We don't have to be hardecore just to prove that we can be. If it weren't raining, I may have just sucked it up and gone to practice, but it's been raining all day non-stop. There is no way I am going out there.

It was probably immature of me to just boycott practice altogether. A more mature thing to do would have been to voice my opinion. But I've had such a long day today, and I don't have much patience to deal with crap maturely.

is this a joke?

Broadway's roommate found this Craigslist ad today: Lost Snake. The picture really helps to clarify things.

I can't imagine this being true ... houses in the Beacon Hill area don't have yards that size, and I can't imagine keeping a thing like that indoors. Are there not any restrictions on the size and safety of household pets?

template update

I can't put into words how much I loved my old template. The problem was that nothing in the sidebar ever rendered correctly in IE, and I could not figure out how to fix it. Because I re-fell in love with the template every time I saw it again, I tried to ignore the problem, threw up a finger at IE most days and decided that I didn't have time to deal with this.

Then yesterday, I came across this template. Surprisingly, I didn't immediately want to hurl, and I even kinda liked it. Most templates these days are way too decked out in an attempt to fit in with this "social media networking" craze.

I don't want my blog taken over by ads, and likewise, I don't want a template whose main purpose is to accommodate all of those ads.

After checking that this template indeed works in IE, the decision was made to do the changeover. A few hours later ... voila!

I like the additional column ... it saves a whole bunch of scrolling to get to Labels and the Blogroll. I don't like that this look isn't as fitting for me, my personality, and my blog, but maybe I just need some time to get used to everything. I also think that it may be too busy.

Your thoughts?

race in the primaries

I was over at Broadway's place Tuesday night watching CNN reporting on the results of Super Tuesday. It seemed that the whole night was spent first and foremost deciphering the overload of graphics on the screen, and then waiting for the polls to close in California. Along the way, there were plenty of filler dialogue about California from the 548 announcers and analysts when they manage to peel themselves away from their laptops ...

At one point, a couple of analysts compared the race (skin color) of Obama supporters versus Clinton supporters. Briefly, some 80% of black voters in California support Obama, and about 55% of white voters also support Obama.

"So why then, could Clinton have ever been ahead in the California polls?" the announcer asked.

We then see graphs showing that Hispanics support Clinton 2 to 1 (66% of hispanics would vote for Clinton, as opposed to ~30% for Obama). Last but not least, the announcer brought up the "race that we don't often see polled separately, but which has a huge voice in California": Asians.

73% of Asians support Hillary, whereas 25% support Obama.

At this point, the girlfriend of one of Broadway's roommates said, "Well, I guess Asians are pretty racist, so that makes sense."

WHAT????

I'm not usually one to be sensitive about race, mine or anyone else's (I wasn't even all that bothered by the Abercrombie & Fitch tshirts from a few years back), but I really resented this comment that she made. I voted Clinton, but not because I am racist against a (half) black man becoming the next US President. I didn't think twice about Obama's race, just as Clinton's gender was not a factor for me. I think Asians have had a good relationship with the Clintons through the 90s, and some of that carries through to wanting to support Hillary.

When I was home for Christmas, I talked to my dad some about who he would vote for. He was Hillary without question, and at no point in our conversation did he even mention race and gender. He is not supporting Hillary because he is uncomfortable with Obama's race.

My parents and their same-generation asian friends like Hillary because she is the safe vote. Additionally, at least for my parents, they are still a bit awestruck by the charm of the Clintons from Bill's adminstration.

Of course I wouldn't project my dad's reasons across every Asian-American as to why we tend to support Hillary over Obama, but for this girl to have so flippantly cited racism as the reason Asians don't vote for Obama was completely out of line.

no news is good news

Isn't that how the saying goes?

By the end of the weekend, Broadway decided that things can be okay. He looked me in the eye and said, "You are still the same person. You're still beautiful. I still love you."

He said he needed some time for things to be perfect again, but in the meantime, things will be okay.

I'm sory for not posting earlier. Thanks to everyone for hanging on to your seats :) I have gone back to all of your wonderful support so many times these past few days, and they have made the days more bearable.

i told him

I told him everything.

He said he was really uncomfortable last year when he found out I was going to a conference that the Doctor would also be at, but he didn't say anything at the time. His friend told him that he was a fool to let me go, to trust me, and still he said nothing to me because he wanted to trust me 100%.

We were in the local burger joint tonight for dinner. While ordering, I made a pact with myself that I would tell him after our appetizer dip comes out, that I wouldn't wait for the burgers. I had practiced what I would say already over and over and over again. Over hot creamy spinach and artichoke, brushing the salt of the chips from my fingers, I took a deep breath and blurted out that I wanted to talk to him about something.

"Remember when you were really sick last year?" He nodded.

"Remember when you thought that I would break up with you then?" He rolled his eyes, and nodded again. It's a sore point.

"Well, I did want to break up with you, but I didn't want to do it while you were sick, so I waited. When you got better, I still didn't break up with you, and looking back, I am really really glad because things got better. Lately, I've thought a lot about how much I love you and how I know I want to be with you forever."

He pressed his lips together, turned up a corner and smiled, nodded, and reached his hand over the table to stroke my face.

"Because I want to be with you forever, I have to tell you something," I continued.

"Remember when I went to that conference while you were sick?" He nodded.

"Well, while I was there, I slept with my ex-boyfriend."

His facial expression was exactly as I imagined it would be. It was the look of needing to get away, not from anger, not from hurt, not really from any particular emotion. It was the look of just needing to not be here, or there. He squeezed his face with both of his hands, squeezing through the tip of his nose, put his arm on the back of the chair next to him, took it down, didn't know where to put his arm, looked away ... He finally got up and said he needed to go outside for some fresh air.

I didn't think he would come back. He did, just a few minutes later. He asked for all our food to be packed up. I asked if I could go with him, and he nodded. We got into his car, and he started driving aimlessly.

In the car, I explained more, that it doesn't make what I did any less wrong, but I thought we would break up when I was at the conference, that the Doctor insisted and insisted and insisted. I repeated how sorry I was, and that I know what I did was absolutely wrong. There are no justifications and no excuses. Both of our eyes were filled with tears.

At some point, we got on the highway and started driving north, got off the highway and started driving south, drove all around some back roads, and somehow or other ended up at his childhood home in the deep suburbs. I had never been there before, and had bugged him for a while for having never shown me where he grew up.

Sitting there, parked at the bottom of the driveway, next to the woods, he told me about the apple tree he planted when he was little. He pointed out the direction of the creek that he had told me about a few times before (it was too dark/foggy/rainy to see anything). I asked him if his parents built the house, and he said no, but he does remember having tarp everywhere around the house when he was such a little kid because his parents had to fix up just about everything in the old house that they bought ...

He told me about the time he was about 10, and his dad drove with him to his mother's pottery studio some couple of towns over because his dad had somehow been tipped off that she was there having an affair. The guy's car sped off just as he and his dad got there. He told me there were several others after that guy. Always with his mother. His dad never did anything. Nothing that betrayed his mother, and nothing about his mother's betrayals.

He said that he wanted to kill the Doctor. I said that I have hated the Doctor ever since.

We talked about some random things, some not so random things. The rain picked up, pounding relentlessly on the roof of the car. The rain ebbed, and he tried to show me the city skyline from the top of a hill he used to sled down as a kid. It was still too foggy to see anything. Eventually we came back to the city and drove up to the front of my building. He left the car running, but we kept talking.

I didn't want to leave the car.

He said that it is human nature to forgive, but you can never forget. He blamed himself, for taking me for granted when he was sick, so early in our relationship, taking it for granted that I would stick around no matter what. He blamed himself for being an idiot in so many ways. I told him that he shouldn't blame himself, that what I did was wrong no matter what the circumstances were, that I did way more wrong than he ever could have by taking me for granted.

He said that it wasn't a competition, that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and he did wrong because right and wrong are black and white.

He said that he doesn't know what to do with all this. I told him what I wanted him to do: to forgive me and to trust me still, that while I can't expect him to do that, and while I would understand if he couldn't accept that, I still had to ask, just in case. I added that, as silly and fake as it sounds, what happened would never ever happen again.

He said that he had no doubt I meant what I said, but that the stars align to make the same situation in different ways, that the real answer is that it WILL happen again. The real question is whether or not he can take that risk, and whether or not he will be strong enough to face it again.

I didn't want to leave the car, but finally got up the strength to gather up my things and opened the door. There were a great many other things we said, but there was no conclusion. He said that he just needed some time to think, and that we will start from the top again tomorrow.

no change

I haven't told Broadway anything. I haven't been able to bring myself to. The timing's not right, or I'm too tired, or I don't want to say anything when he's still got work to do. I meant to bring it up last night, but he came over around 10:30pm to spend some time with me before having to go back to his office to finish up work. I didn't want to bring anything up in the short time that we had.

I've only averaged about 3-4 hours of sleep a night this week, so I went to bed pretty soon after he left. I told him to wake me up when he gets back, but I don't think he did. I woke up this morning and groggedly asked him when he got to bed, and he said around 2am.

I don't want to bring it up when there's a clear time frame for conversation: like when I have a meeting in one hour or when he has to go back to work in 30 minutes. I don't want us to be rushed to wrap things up because of external schedule obligations. I don't think that's healthy (or maybe it is? maybe a clear end to the conversation forces us to not drag out the conversation and lets him have the individual time he needs to think over things?).

I want us to have all the time in the world to talk about it, but he's been working such late nights that we just haven't had that infinitely un-ending time I envisioned in the evenings before bed.

A great big part of me wants to talk to him, mainly so that I no longer have to live in limbo of his not knowing, and my not knowing what he will do once he knows. That's been the hardest part for me, to know that everything I value right now about him and my future with him is unclear, and that it will remain unclear until I tell him. If he decides to leave, then so be it. If that's the reality that I must deal with, I will accept it and try to move on.

But right now, I don't have a reality to work with.

I'm calmer now than I was a couple of days ago, so calm that sometimes the situation seems surreal, that it's all actually in a dream somehow. I'm not THAT girl. This is not me. What I did isn't who I am, isn't something I thought I would ever do, isn't something I would ever do in the future. Yet I know that I did it.

I think this disconnect made it easier to brush everything aside for 6 months and almost pretend that it never happened. I've slipped back into that mental state during a couple of brief moments in the last couple of days, wishing everything away, delusional that if I don't think about it, then I don't have to face up to it having ever happened.

I'll see what the weekend brings.