I don’t know WHAT it is about February, but it seems to be my favorite month in which to get bad-idea crushes.  Trying to reason with myself this afternoon.  It fucking suuuuuuuucks.

Straight up, here’s what life has been like these last few weeks: one minute feeling like there’s a balloon in my chest because it’s sunny and gorgeous outside, or that boy I like called me a sweetheart, or I’m amped up on coffee, and a scant few hours later, sobbing on my bed because I’m alone.  It was like this in September, when I had first moved here; it was like walking through a dark, unfamiliar house, never sure if you’re about to trip or run into a wall or get murdered.  Everything changeable.  But that feeling went away by October, and life was rhythmic and peaceful, if a little dull.  I have no idea why it’s back now.  But for the past…two weeks-ish, I keep getting fleeting feelings of loneliness.  Or, like Wednesday night, motherfucking throat-punching ATTACKS of it.  I probably need more sun and exercise, and less time holed up in my apartment.  I know I need more people time.  So what I’ve been doing is a thing which I’ve done in the past when I get this fitful, itchy, unhappy feeling of lonesomeness: say yes to everything.  A friend wants to go shopping?  I volunteer to drive.  A professor e-mails looking for research study participants?  Sign me up!  A neighbor asks me to come to the bars with her and the guy she’s been talking to online and is meeting for the first time tonight?  Let me throw on some tights and a sweater dress, I’ll be there.  It works, a lot of the time.  And, better than that, it yields a lot of stories.  Why else do you think my February 2011 was so adventuresome?

Life On The Ground Floor

One of the caveats of living on the ground floor of an apartment building is that if you ever have your blinds open, things with people outside can get awkward, and fast.  I’m just sitting innocently and pantslessly at my computer right now, eating chocolate and putting together a presentation, and there’s an older dude in a Xerox vehicle sitting directly outside my window, talking on his CAR PHONE, ok, and I feel like I’m engaged in a game of hide and seek or something.  Does he see me?  Without my pants on?  What if I move?  What if I need more water and have to get up?  What if we make awkward eye contact?  I mean, he is right outside my window.  I could throw up the sash and hit his car.  I should not be this stressed out about the situation, but there you have it.  Life on the ground floor.

Today’s Little Thing

I can hear my upstairs neighbor singing loudly and passionately through my ceiling and it is making the memory of my shitstorm of an afternoon disappear, and for that, I am much obliged.