the world is your acorn

On Friday afternoon when I opened my front door to go to school, an unfamiliar cat tried to nose its way past me into the house. I managed to get the door closed in time though, and headed off to school, wondering why that cat thought it should go in my house. Later that night, when Everything Guy and The Thespian came in the front door, the cat slipped its way past them into the house, and proceeded to walk around like it owned the place. We tried to shoo it out, but in the end I had to pick it up and take it through the door. For the rest of the night anytime anyone opened the front door it tried to run in. While we grilled, it played in the backyard and wound its way between our legs.

On Saturday it continued to hang out around the house, finally settling on the front porch and meowing incessantly. I tried to ignore it since we can’t take in a cat (The Little Red Haired Girl is allergic), and I hoped it would give up and go home. Finally in the late afternoon I felt bad for it, and fed it some gefilte fish. I knew that would not help it go away, but I couldn’t help it.

Needless to say it is still here today, and I am hoping to find its owner. It is super sweet and cuddly, orangey-yellow, declawed front paws, big light brown eyes, and wearing a green flea collar. Anyone belong to this cat, or know someone who might?

*ps* I live near Belmont, across Wedgewood on the Vanderbilt side.

I am lucky enough to feel at home here, even while The Little Red Haired Girl is up in New England revisiting a lot of our old haunts and seeing people who have been pivotal characters in our lives for the past few years. Tonight, after Everything Guy and I finished our paper, he, The Thespian, Mischief Man, and The Kindergarten Teacher came over with stuff to grill and cocktails to mix, and we had a fabulous time making dinner, eating, and yucking it up in general. It was fun, as it always is with them, but also a nice reminder that I do have a place here.

On Tuesday afternoon when The Little Red Haired Girl landed in Boston she left a message on my cell phone saying that she’d landed safely, and “it feels like home.” I’m not sure why, but when I heard that I just burst into tears. Not because I am unhappy here or regret leaving or anything like that. I think it just helped me suddenly remember how much I still miss it, and my friends there. But I think that part (a small part) of that emotion was also realizing that I can and have gone on now, here, and that I’ve let go of a little of the attachment I have to that old life. I will still really love going back to visit, and I still miss my friends and that life I had with them, but life does move on. I guess it is part of growing up to pass from one phase to another, and learn how to negotiate and accept those kinds of changes without conceptualizing them as loss. Maybe I’m just experiencing the transition from mourning a past life to some sort of nostalgia.

But still, I miss being there an awful lot.

Things I will do while The Little Red Haired Girl is out of town:

1. Eat Chinese breakfast
2. Watch back to back South Park and Simpsons episodes on Tivo
3. Sleep on her side of the bed
4. Buy things online
5. Cook ridiculously complicated meals way too big to eat alone
6. Blast the Rent soundtrack all over the house
7. Complain about The Little Red Haired Girl being gone
8. Wear sandals with socks on
9. Hide her stuff

Just kidding about that last one.

Well, I’ve got two more papers before the end of the semester. I’m spending the day writing my half of a design for improvement of mathematics instruction through the lens of institutional settings. Everything Guy is writing the other half, and we gave each other the deadline of 3pm today, so we’ll have time to rewrite. Once that is done I will work on my paper for my Learning and the Interaction Order class. These are two classes that I’ve really enjoyed, so I don’t really mind working on these papers. The writing part is a little less fun, but I’m definitely getting better at it.

It’s been pretty much a crazy week for both me and The Little Red Haired Girl. She has been changing over both galleries, and this morning (at 5:30!) I took her to the airport to go to a museum conference. She is going to have a fabulous time, especially since it is in Boston and she has all these plans to meet up with friends and all. I think it’s stressful for her to leave behind so much work at the museum and with our mortgage stuff still in the air though. And me, of course. Who would ever want to leave me behind? It’s too bad I have these papers to write, otherwise I’d spend the weekend doing all kinds of things that I don’t get to do when The Little Red Haired Girl is around, like playing video games, watching stupid tv, and eating junky tv dinners. Well, I may do that last bit still. But I miss her already. I wish we’d had more quality time before she left.

Ok, off to writing. I just needed to warm up my fingers with a quick post, and complain about The Little Red Haired Girl being away.

House inspection this morning, which turned out great. No major problems, and all the really important stuff seems to be in order! We took the opportunity to take some pictures. Below is the front of the house, and you can check out all the pictures here. Cute, right?

Everything was fabulous at dinner. The Thespian made spaghetti and meat sauce and brownies for dessert, Everything Guy made garlic bread with tomato and melted cheese, The Little Red Haired Girl made her caesar salad. I tried to make mojitos, but then realized that I don’t actually know how, and I don’t remember ever having one before, so I’m not sure what they are supposed to taste like. Anyway after the first round we were out of mint from their herb garden, so we switched to wine. They shared the bottle from Napa Cellars that we gave them, which was really nice.

We sat and talked forever. It was really nice. We discovered that The Thespian has the same birthday as The Little Red Haired Girl. It’ll be fun when we are neighbors.
The end.

The Little Red Haired Girl had to work today, since they are changing over another show at the museum. I trying to figure out what to do with myself. I’m making some rice with thoughts of rolling some sushi or something later. I have school work to do, especially since Distant Cousin is going to be in town on Monday evening for a Tuesday business meeting. I’ll probably put it off until tonght though, and play tekken 4 or cook all day. I’m learning that it’s just as important to take time off and do stuff to make myself feel good as it is to work hard, and this morning might have to be one of those feel good times, so that I can actually be productive later.

Rugby game today. I played less than a half. Not sure why. Either I really suck a lot more than I know or something about me is unsavory to whoever makes those decisions. The sucky thing is that I’ll probably never find out why because my self esteem is too low to ask, and no one seems to be interested in letting me know of their own accord.

The good news is that The Little Red Haired Girl is wonderful to me, I had a silly text message conversation with Lady E earlier, and we are going to Everything Guy and The Thespian’s place for dinner tonight. At least I will end the day feeling competent as a human being.

Another project that Lady E and I undertook while she was here was to dye my hair. I figure that this is as good a time as any in my life to do it, since I’ll be a student for a few years and I can get away with it. So we spent last Friday bleaching streaks of my hair until it was light enough for the dye to show up. Then on Saturday we spent the afternoon putting blue dye in. We should have spent a little more time doing that, it seems, since the blue is mostly fading to a sickly shade of green. When we have more time maybe I’ll have The Little Red Haired Girl touch it up for me. Anyway, we got a picture post-bleach, but have yet to take one post-dye.

The first Passover Seder I ever attended was at The Little Red Haired Girl’s parents’ house three years ago. It was the second time I’d ever met her family (parents, sisters, and others), and I was very nervous. Plus I wasn’t sure how I felt about participating in someone else’s religious ritual. It turned out to be a relatively fun evening, except when I found the Afikomen by accident (I tried to discreetly point it out to The Little Red Haired Girl, who promptly announced that I’d found it) and they made me bargain with dad for money. That part I did not enjoy, so now I insist on being the one to hide the Afikomen. Anyway.

The menu consisted of matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, salad, brisket, tsimmus, matzah stuffing, and fruit slices. The Little Red Haired Girl did all the cooking, starting Sunday morning, and everything went off without a hitch. It was pretty torturous to have brisket aroma floating around the house for 36 hours before we were allowed to eat it. The whole meal was delicious, which is lucky since we have leftovers for the month. We also have two open 1.5 liter bottles of red wine leftover, which is or isn’t lucky, depending on how you look at it.

Of the eight of us who were there, I think only three or four of us had ever been to Passover Seder, and only one of us is actually Jewish (The Little Red Haired Girl, of course). Everyone else there (except for me) is some sort of Christian, which I thought was interesting, since Passover is also in the Christian tradition. I think that everyone got into reading the service, and Everything Guy mentioned to me later that he felt it was pretty spiritual.

The disappointing part of the evening came when it was time to find the Afikomen. I had hidden it in the kitchen in an oven mitt, not thinking that people were going to be traipsing in and out of there during the whole meal. Which meant that, by the time people were looking for it, Mischief Man had already noticed it and he retrieved it right away. Poop.

Now that Passover is done, the house is still coated in a thin layer of Matzah dust, and I am still eating gefilte fish for lunch. Wednesday night The Little Red Haired Girl picked me up from rugby practice jonesing for something breaded and fried. I think that next year we should try and do it on a weekend, so people can stay later. Plus, I am going to hide the Afikomen at Everything Guy’s house, since we’ll be neighbors by then.