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New post over here.

Les' screenname: what ya doin today
Mine: uh, being a crazy person, but in a subdued way
Mine: i took a shower, so there's accomplishment
Mine: i am halfway dressed, just missing the pants
Mine: i might wash some bras
Les' screenname: woo hooo
Mine: isn't that exciting
Les' screenname: that's fun
Mine: that reads way more exciting
Mine: way more
Mine: ha
Les' screenname: waay

I have been watching a lot of movies since coming here. Last night, I saw Half Nelson. I don't know if it's in wide release yet or if it never will be, but if it's out where you are, see it! It's not super cheery, but not super uncheery. You can handle it. And it's got such good performances. Especially especially Mr. Ryan Gosling. I'd heard he was good, for years, but I never got around to seeing anything he's been in. I think I lost some interest when he was in The Notebook (though I much prefer "Bad Love of Old People Movie," Cam's alternate title when she couldn't recall the real one). But yeah, he's a great actor to watch, very charismatic, just awesome. And, I looked him up on imdb today---he is going to be in a movie with Tom Waits! So that does it. New celebrity crush.


I don't feel like I have much to say, lately. I am a little in disarray. Maybe I will try harder to fix that, today. I find out what region I teach in today, so then I will probably take the new apartment in Park Slope, for October through January. That will mean staying here awhile. At least 6 months. Unless I absolutely have to freak out, in which case anything goes. But yeah, that's something to get used to, the idea of staying here. Yikesaroo.

There is a post here.

On my way out to get lunch today, feeling weird in my neighborhood as I routinely do, some young girl said to her companions, "Oh, I seriously thought that was Frodo! No really!"
Sigh.

I find it pretty difficult to find things near me, and finding things near enough to me is hard too. Google Maps doesn't take into account one's inability to drive, and thus its estimation of relative proximity is for shit, and my own knowledge of subway stops etc is not what it could be, and so I end up just picking whatever place google maps shows me first, and saying to myself OK FINE LET'S GO THERE. So I ended up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, this afternoon. I have never been that south in Brooklyn, so I was a little nervous what I'd find when surfacing from the subway pit at 86th Street. It was actually not too bad at all, though. Not where I'd want to live, but not scary. And I even had a nice little milkshake, at a place Zagat's deigned to notice, where the old lady at the cash register had some kind of funny accent (British? a long-standing faux British accent?) and called everyone, even me, darling. Then I went to find a Staples to buy a print cartridge, out where I thought it would be nice, because it seemed relatively close to Prospect Park on the map. Ohhhh, it was not nice. I saw a dead cat. And there were other ways it was not nice.

And now I am in my apartment, my printer cartridge refuses to work and I can't figure out why, my back is killing me from I don't know what, apparently I tense every muscle I have in my neck/shoulders. I still very badly want to go home.
I have this plan now to move by September to some nice brownstone, but that sounds like a hard plan. Tomorrow seems hard, too, because I have to leave early to find a fax and copy place, and I have to go to a placement fair in the afternoon where I will try to talk to a lot of people but not get hired. It all has gotten to be such a mess. And it doesn't straighten out at all. I was thinking mornings here are pretty bad, but afternoons and evenings are too.

I try to figure out what is so wrong about here, but I suppose the real question to me is how do people like it here? There's money, yes, that helps, you can get a lot of things here with that but then also...I don't know. There's the idea that this is the most important, or one of the most important, places in the world. People want to be in the middle of that. People are determined to stick it out here, to "make it" whatever that means. To show they're important and have a place? They have a place because they fought really hard for it? I am babbling now probably, and really I hate reading any of my blog entries anymore, but there's nothing else in me to write right now.
Anyway, I don't feel like I need to get my sense of self-worth from where I am. Except that that's ridiculous, because that's what we do. But I just want where I live to not stink as much, and to not be as difficult. New York is so difficult. I struggle and struggle and I don't even know what I'm aiming at here. I guess what I'd wanted was to feel like a woman who can take care of herself wherever, and make the most of things...and the idea of city life, with the nice places to go and the culture, that's a neat idea, but I guess I don't think there's any center to the idea...you can find that city life here because people believe in it and fight hard to maintain/achieve it, but culture? You can find that anywhere and make it anywhere. There is a lot here, I know, but not all of everything and so I feel I've been oversold.
I don't think New York sucks, but every time I'm here I'm really disturbed about its...ego or something, really disturbed by everyone's insistence on the realness of the New York myth, the greatness, because that widespread insistence seems like all that makes it at all real....but then, it is real, right? Not if you aren't one of the people insisting on it, maybe? So, that's good and babbley. I really ought to quit now.

I saw Bebe Neuwirth (sp?) I am pretty sure, at the R stop somewhere in Manhattan today. Yes, I was in Bay Ridge, AND Manhattan. I saw Bebe Neuwirth AND a dead cat. Quite a time. She looked very pale, stylish, but kind of old. She looked uncomfortable. To be fair, subway stations are uncomfortable.

This blog is over a year old.

It doesn't really matter to me, except that it makes me think about time going fast.

There is this ad on some subways, I forget which, from the MTA themselves, inquiring if you have lost something? And there are all these terrible drawings, of the things one might lose on the subway. What first caught my eye was the prosthetic limb; I tell you, if you are losing your prosthetic limb, you have more than one serious problem. How would this even happen? "It was there a minute ago..."

Envisioning that scenario was enough to amuse me the first few times I saw the ad, but then I started noticing the other items. Did you lose your boomerang? it wants to know. Maybe you lost your giant cupcake? I say, you lose your giant cupcake, you had best leave it lost. Maybe you have lost your giant swimmy toy? Your inflatable serpent? We might have it! Oh, I remember the other thing I thought was funny: dentures. Again, much like the giant cupcake: don't look back, I say.

Subway ads are stupid.

this and that. i'll try to not be boring some other time.

I gave myself permission, the other day, to leave New York in November if I was stuck in reserve and still felt even half as miserable as I do now. But, after doing that, November seemed like as long as I could possibly stand. I started wondering, what if I did get a classroom? If I did, would I then be trapped into not being able to leave until June? Could I even handle a first year of real teaching, when I'm having such a hard time simply living here?

So now I'm avoiding setting up interviews; I'm telling myself: going to the next placement fair and filling out the form there, saying who all I talk to, that will be their only evidence of my effort. If I look like I'm trying there, that's good enough.

I am telling myself, let's just sub. reserve all the way. And home to Portland in November.
I've never even really lived in Portland.

I can't tell what I'm doing anymore, what decisions I'm making are at all ok.

I've been wearing this ring a lot lately, I've had it for years. It's what they call Black Hills Gold, which often is tinted pink and green, often shaped into a rose or several, and yeah what I've got is a little rose, with two little leaves. I like it on my hand because the colors kind of blend with my skin, or something. I was wearing it in Portland, my last few days there, and I guess when I wore it to the Rose Garden that permanently affixed Portland to it for me. So I keep wearing it, here. I think one day I did not wear it. I don't know if it's stupid or what that I cling to Oregon and everything there. I don't know if it's right for me there and now I know it, or if I am just a wimp. I'm kind of thinking, both.

this entry is dumb

I have a terrible headache, it's very late, and I really ought to change the time stamp on these entries now but I don't want to deal with that. I thought I would just do a little update. I don't know why, because I talk to most of you other ways more frequently than I blog anymore, but WHATEVER. I guess I feel like I'm in danger of falling off the blogging edge completely, never to be heard from again.

ANYWAY. I am in New York; this is the conclusion of Day 2. First day: got in from a 12:30 am flight; on the 2 flights I took total, there were AT LEAST 3 vomiters. Perhaps 4. I did not investigate this suspicion. Some of you already know about the vomiters. You lucky kids, to hear that tale. Then there was the weird lack of water, turns out it was due to hydrants being opened everywhere because of the heat, then there was my phone blacking out BUT OH MY GOD WHAT IF IT IS BROKEN INSTEAD I thought, weeping over my lost contact with the world because my roommate hadn't come back yet to help me set up internet. THIS IS SO BORING. Anyhow, there were annoyances, also my carpet smells like dog pee, and there's the weirdness with my job, and I don't know what I'm doing here.

I went to a concert tonight, one of Sleater-Kinney's last, the last I will see unless they reunite sometime....and what if I never see those women again? Why would I? UNLESS I LIVED IN PORTLAND AND SAW THEM EVERY NOW AND THEN AT THE COOL PLACES. I don't need to stalk them, to be their best friend, but jeez. To never see Carrie again? As if it wasn't hard enough leaving this pretty thing behind. I mean, shoot. Portland's got everything.


So ok, I miss Portland, I miss my pretty boyfriend, I miss Carrie Brownstein even though I just saw her tonight (oh she is the awesomest), I hate not being able to find anything, like cheese, and I wish I lived somewhere gentrified with nice cafes and stupid ritzy grocery stores and maybe even a real drug store and oh, maybe some boutiques or a boutique thrift store! I don't feel comfortable in my neighborhood because it's very un-white and I feel like I am annoying for being white. Isn't that white of me? So lame and white. But there you have it; Kristi in a nutshell. HA

I need to stock my shelves. I need to do a lot of things. I am trying to think of this time in New York, now, as a sort of year abroad. Like, I'll just absorb the culture here, and it will be weird, and I will probably want to leave as soon as it's over, this year, but I will make it through. I will make it through and then I'll know just how wrong for me the place is or isn't. AND I WILL HAVE GROWN. OH, like the flowers.
For the next few months, at the least, it is going to be very very wrong for me here. It is just how I am I guess. I am not a person who should move a lot; yet I keep doing it. And why did I think I could do city living? Because I like Woody Allen? Because I enjoy museums and movies and...parks? That is not city living. Actually, I am pretty sure I would like rich person's city living. I would not feel too bad at all in a nice brownstone with furniture I like and no dog pee and not having to use a key to go the bathroom at night. And cafes and boutiques, and maybe groceries SENT TO ME. That is what rich people can have. Bastards. Yeah, that would not be too bad.

I am nearly always lonely here, so feel free to distract me when you're in the mood.