Back and Forth February 27, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a comment“when i worked here,” nicky told me as we were in barnes & noble dropping off my application for summer employment, “people used to come in and scream about our political book displays. they’d accuse us of having too left-leaning book displays. my manager would sometimes go over and show them ‘here’s a liberal book, here’s a conservative book’ to prove that we were being fair.”
“i would have just told them that it isn’t barnes & noble’s fault that liberals read.” i told her.
i went home this past weekend to drop off applications, sleep, recharge. i accomplished… turning in my applications. oh dear. i still haven’t made it to health and counseling to get blood work done. i don’t even remember what running on 100% feels like. i don’t remember the last time i did it. i’m trying to drink more juice and sleep more normally.
i saw most of my family this weekend — the lavelles — and it was really great. seth, nicky’s baby, is the cutest chubby little baby. when we were at brunch, he just kept eating and eating. when he was finished, he pointed to the buffet, as if to say, “more!” it was absolutely precious. lisa, nicky’s sister, has a little girl named mazzie who only eats from an extremely limited selection of food — cheese, bread, peanut butter, milk — and she refused to eat a waffle that had syrup on it instead of peanut butter. i shoveled down cheese blintzes covered in too-sweet strawberry topping.
we had an oscar party, which involved snack food and mimosas and many mentions of james garner (what do you mean he’s not jennifer garner’s dad?) it was pretty delightful despite the fact that the ceremony itself was lackluster.
i came back in a flurry of general confusion and irritation — delayed flights, cab drivers who don’t know where pratt is, only having got 2 hours of sleep the night before — and still plugged through my day. i missed everyone so much, it was absurd. just seeing the faces of my friends here, it makes me feel better.
matt is coming in six days. i cannot explain how excited i am. he has been my one constant from this summer to this school year. it’s so amazing to be able to have someone like that in your life. we are going to nintendo world (for the pokemon center, obviously) and to see spamalot. he gets to come see me read at adrian and robert’s reading series. it will be great to have someone be able to experience what i do here. what i’m doing here, the change i am creating, the dynamic.
Haggard February 19, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commenti have spent the past few days [weeks, months, years] wandering around in a fog. i sleep 10 hours and take a nap in the middle of the day, i’m just that tired & lethargic. i’m getting the old sort of angry again, where i’d very much like to just stab the people who irritate me. i’m hoping there’s something wrong with me at this point, if only for the hope that it can be fixed. i’m hoping it’s something.
to be honest, i can’t even remember what all happened this past week, since i gave you guys a real update. valentine’s day happened. i’ve never exchanged cards with my friends. it was weird to have people pushing them in my face, all smiles. it felt awkward to me.
it’s weird to have most of my friends here exclusively. at home, i have a bunch of people who ditched me when i got depressed, who harassed me for being such a downer. by contrast, today at lunch we brainstormed what could be making me so sick/tired/angry/depressed. there is support, here. at home, there is very little, if any at all.
matt is coming to see me in less than two weeks: matt, who has been one of my friends since i moved to michigan, matt who’s always there to listen. i’ve missed him terribly. it’s strange how distance can change your relationships with people in ways you would suspect. scott told me that i marginalized myself by moving so far away. by contrast, matt and i, who were never by any means anything but kind to each other, now usually talk at least once a day. it’s refreshing to have someone with such a parallel mindset to yours to talk to. we want to liveblog something eventually. in lolcat speak, of course.
tomorrow, i am going to health and counseling to get myself some help. bloodwork, medication, Something. i need to know what’s wrong so i can fix it. and then i have to trek to go to my bank. i love making those little trips, actually, when i have energy.
thursday night, i am going back to pittsburgh to spend a weekend begging for employment. best case scenario, i get two jobs. maybe even three, if both barnes and nobles, for whatever reason, hire me. worst case scenario, zero. but i can’t let zero happen, that is for sure.
i am just exhausted.
The Right Place February 8, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commentyou know you’re in the right place when you feel so confident that you can get up on stage and karaoke to kanye west and have your friends all around you and you just feel good.
“girl,” a woman said to me as i climbed the stage and the dj announced my song, “you better do this right.”
“oh, trust me,” i said, “i know it like the back of my hand.”
i love it here. and i wouldn’t trade anything for this place.
Sunning February 7, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a comment
the pratt cats came back out for one day this week. they seemed to be mia for what felt like a month due to the crappy weather, but this week was nice and warm. it was 50 and sunny one day, and they all came out to sun themselves on the benches. then the next day it rained and they all scurried back to the engine room where it was nice and warm and dry.
tonight, i am apparently going out to celebrate chinese new year, the lunar new year. new years are good for new beginnings. let’s take some time to refresh ourselves. sun. relax.
Coincidences February 5, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commentmy life recently has been marked with this series of silly, coincidental events. many are not even events: i just so happen to run into someone in the caf, and we get food together. not a fluke by any means. but i had one that, in my cold-medicine-addled brain, was nothing short of a miracle.
i went to get my laptop fixed at the apple store in soho. to do this, i had to catch the c train to spring street, and then walk a few blocks. i got lost wandering for a bit, finally made my way there. and of course, my laptop would not make the same mistake it had made to warrant my taking it. i was disheartened, it was raining a bit, i was generally surly. i left apple vowing to kill my campus’ internet (which i am now convinced is what’s wrong with my baby laptop) and meandered back to the train station.
i hopped on the c, which was crowded as could be. of course, this, while i am carrying my damn laptop on my hip. i fixated on keeping it close to my body. all i kept thinking was “i don’t even Like the c train! why can’t the a come to this station too?” the train kept going.
and then, he got on the train. you know when you’ve just had a shitty day, and someone attractive shows up on the train and you’re just like “that’s what i needed. thank you for standing there, sir.”? that’s what this guy was for me. i wanted to actually thank him right then, but a man pushed behind me (? even though i was half a body-width away from the doors) and i went into laptop-safety mode.
this guy was carrying a book, something with a black and white cover and i swear i came near close to breaking my neck trying to simultaneously read what the cover said and keep my laptop close to me. i wanted to be more confident in that moment, ask him what book it was, would he recommend it, would it give me bonus points at pretentious art school? the train stopped again and he had to move closer to accommodate more people, and i still couldn’t read the title.
alas, i said nothing. i vowed to approach him at hoyt-schermerhorn, aka “catch the g train here and try not to hate your life because you have to do so” and ask him the book title. alas, my insatiable book-curiousity was Crushed when he got off the train at jay street, one stop away from hoyt. i seriously sighed aloud when the doors closed behind him.
i got on the g and pulled out my notebook, scribbled a few lines of description as to what he looked like. i ended up with the most base details known to man. “brown hair. 6 ft maybe. messenger bag. book w/ complicated cover. multicolored nikes (?) w/ neutral tones, maybe orange?” i got off at clinton-washington. of course it was raining. i ran to the pi shop, got myself a coffee. sat down.
i logged on to craigslist. “missed connections” seemed relevant. i ended up with
C to Jay St tonight 7pm – w4m
i just wanted to thank you for being on the train. you were tall, brown hair, messenger bag, some book in your hand whose cover i couldn’t read. you were very attractive, and i just wanted to thank you for being on the train — you were a sight for sore eyes.
“okay,” i thought, “there, it’s off my chest.” i posted it, with hopes that he might stumble across it, and maybe it would make him smile, like he made me smile on the c. with such a vague description, half of manhattan could have said “aww, how nice of someone to write about me!” (sidenote: okay i seriously sound like such a total TOOL in this post. but bear with me, maybe.)
i got two emails that were stupid right off the bat. an “irishman” wanted to have dinner with me. i myspace’d his email: he was 38. not quite, buddy. what makes this story even funnier is that another guy emailed me: a guy who was standing two people away from me on the train. i almost called the coincidence-happening a day. it was just a nice craigslist posting, right?
well, not quite. sunday night, at the height of my sickness, when i was hopped up on cold medicine, i got an email regarding my posting.
i opened it and scanned the text. “could the sight for sore eyes in question have been me?” “points for sentence structure!” my brain said. he had attached a picture. i glanced down.
It Was Him.
i ended up sending him back a really toolish email (cold medicine, i’m telling you people) and he ended up being very cordial, considering that i was, essentially, telling him that he was hot stuff in a very awkward way.
given all of these hilarious coincidental happenings (what if my repair had actually happened? what if an earlier c had come? what if i had had to fill up my metrocard?), i have but one lesson to impart to you all: just talk to them! don’t rely on coincidence! and if a bunch of coincidences collide, well… you never know.
god, you guys, that was anticlimactic. i hate colds and cold medicine. i’m done.
oh, and ps: if you don’t already, you need to listen to more wilco. i’m on a wilco-binge and it’s fantastic. maybe i will see jeff tweedy on the subway…