What a Year

I'm sitting on an Amtrak train en route to Washington DC to celebrate the new decade in our nation's capitol with some wonderful Villanova friends, and it is suddenly occurring to me that today is the last day of 2009.. which, when I think about it, was a really eventful year of my life.

What happened in 09?
I made a movie
I graduated college
I played a big part in my final VSMT show
I lived in LA
I had some identity crises
I studied at Stella Adler, Mike Lemon, & Kathy Wickline
I made a daring career choice
I lived at the beach
I spent a whole lot of time in New York City
I committed to my girlfriend
I came out to my extended family
I lost 15 pounds
I rented a car
I started a blog
I went on a cruise
I discovered an interest in international cinema
I read books and listened to audiobooks
I started cooking meals
I cleaned out my room and all my boxes
I ate interesting foods at nice restaurants
I went to a lot of parties
I skiied, cycled, jogged, did pilates and yoga
I ran 2 miles without stopping for the first time in my life
I saw Nova make it to the Final Four (and even cared about it)
I saw gay rights get rejected from too many places, but accepted into a few
I saw a black president come into office - something I really never thought would happen so early on in my life
I made a ton of new friends from many different groups
I realized which friends will probably stick with me for life
I rode cars, buses, trains, planes, and ships
I interned for a famous person, a big company, and a small company
I lived in 3 different apartments and 2 different houses in 4 different states

2009 was a huge, life-changing year for me, if I really think about it. I don't think I could really sum it up as the "Year of ____", as many try to... well, maybe a year of -- as most years are -- growing up.



- Posted from my iPhone

Multitasking at its Best; or, Something I'd Like to See Invented

I may be a huge weirdo, but I read books in the shower.  Yes, they get wet.  But they do dry back out afterwards, albeit with some ripply looking pages.  Small sacrifice.  I also often read in the hot tub, as well as whenever I get around to taking a bath, both of which tend to get books a bit damp as well, though not as much as the shower.  I have found this task a bit easier while showering in Europe - Italy, and France, in places where you use a handheld showerhead and turn it off whenever you’re between rinsings to save H2O (Europeans as a whole are much more environmentally conscious than we wasteful Americans).  

Why do I want to read while showering, you may ask.  Well, my own modern American upbringing has so bombarded me with media from all directions at all times that I can’t seem to bear not to multitask most of the time, and I find myself rather bored doing just one activity at once.  My sophomore year roommate once took a picture of me brushing my teeth with one leg up on the sink to stretch it and a large textbook sitting on my leg, with a highlighter in my other hand.  Somehow I’ve been trained to see any single task as strangely unproductive, and, well, boring.  As Harriet the Spy’s Ole Golly told me recently in an audiobook I was listening to while driving, you might as well play checkers while you watch TV, because both are boring to do alone but provide enough entertainment when done together.  

So after wondering just how to keep my books relatively dry during a particularly wet-booked shower just now, I decided to search the internet to see if anyone had actually come up with any sort of invention yet that allows you to read in the shower.  Here’s what I found: 

• Durabooks, a company that makes waterproof books with pages made out of a nontoxic, synthetic glue-paper material.  I highly approve of this, but they seem to have only six titles available: a few short story collections, as well as two erotic story compilations (they know where our minds are in the shower).  A good idea (and I might purchase one at some point), but not exactly what I’m looking for.  I want to be able to take whatever book I’m currently in the middle of reading right into the shower with me.  
• Another interesting find: waterproof notebooks.  These could definitely be useful at some point, I should think.  

If any of you are budding inventors out there, invent me some sort of casing or covering I can place on top of my book that can be easily put on or removed that keeps the water from getting to it and somehow allows you to still turn the pages.  Or just put one of those waterproof TV screens in my shower for me.

My Perspective on Sleep

People often ask why I tend to get so little sleep. (or rather, nag me that I don’t get enough)

Well, I’ll tell you: the sooner you fall asleep, the sooner you have to wake up.  

Now, I know that this isn’t actually the case, but it might as well be.  For all your conscious mind knows, the second you fall asleep, it’s morning and you’re being forced out of the comfort of your covers and into the routine day.  (As much as I’m known for being one who doesn’t like change, I don’t really like routine much either.)  So I’d rather stay awake and cherish the part of my day that’s filled with unobligated me time.  I hate when I’m looking forward to my nighttime, trying to decide how I should use my time - read, watch TV shows, write, hot tub, etc. - and really all I end up doing is falling asleep rather on the early side.  It's really a battle, now that I think about it, of mind versus body, of will versus nature.  
My mother has insomnia, but I seem to be quite opposite of that: I fall asleep perhaps a little too easily - in any lighting at all, on any cushiony-type sitting place.. People bug me about that too, though I don't mind sleeping that way.  
I think it's also that I fear the realm of dreams just a little bit, just enough to make me un-eager to arrive there.. The subconscious mind is a peculiar thing.  I think I’ll go watch some TV Christmas specials online now, and hope I don't drift into slumberland too soon.

Struggle

I seriously hate that I keep writing about food issues.

Filling in the empty spaces

“And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for...”

I try to find it everywhere, every time I’m alone.  I just don’t know what it is....

  Lately I’ve turned to food, with late-at-night eating, stress eating, boredom eating being my problem currently in the forefront.  I’ve had a hard time diagnosing my natural sweet tooth as truly being a case of stress eating, until this weekend when I and my other half were stressfully searching a succession of city stores in search of ridiculous, un-find-able things like punch bowls and gingerbread men and guava juice concentrate, and I found my gaze focusing in on the Sour Patch Kids and felt strongly compelled to buy & eat these in a way that I knew would directly fix my comfort with the situation. (Thankfully, in realizing this, I didn’t buy them.)

  It used to be alcohol, but now somehow that doesn’t pleasure me the way it once did - a bit unhealthily.  I used to be able to forget my desires for desserts with the promise of alcohol that night.. of practically any kind... Ah, to be underage and have this off-limits substance be one of the more exciting things I could get my hands on.... My mom easily turns down prospects of dessert for her nightly glass(es) of chardonnay instead.. but wine just doesn’t turn me on that way. (If anything, it gives me reflux.)  My parents say if my brother has inherited my grandfather’s temper, then I have inherited my grandmother’s endless sweet tooth (oh joy).

  Even my writing is my (more productive) way of trying to.... fill in the gaps in between life.. to combat the boredom of daily working.. or perhaps to fill in for the lack of the other incredibly comforting human body that’s sorrowfully missing from my bed during the weeknights.. hard to say.  

When I first fell in love as hard as I did more than two years ago, it was so hard that I couldn’t focus on anything, and I couldn’t stand to ever be without her.. it was to the point where I actually couldn’t bear to be alone.  I thought, though, that since then I’ve really overcome that. Faced all the issues that were underlying my perhaps over-dependency... Is it really the case that I can’t be alone now, again?  I don’t really think so..... But “something’s missing, and I don’t know how to fix it,” I guess you could say, (if you were John Mayer).. and I really don’t know what I’m looking for right now... Maybe I will stop comfort eating whenever the heck I figure it out.

Ho Ho Ho, and a bottle of Grey Goose

Do you remember when you stopped believing?

I remember that I tried to hold on for as long as I possibly could, and that I still tried to believe long after I really didn’t quite anymore.  Even after I started picking up on hints from TV sitcom and cartoon parents who said things about not wanting the kids to find out Santa isn’t real (come on TV writers, why must you spoil it for your younger audiences?), even after my cousins and I started catching on that the guy in the Santa suit at our Christmas Eve parties bore a striking resemblance to our Uncle Scott, who always happened to be conveniently in the other room washing dishes when Santa visited (though one year they had our grandmom wear the suit instead just to throw us off!), even after Jacqueline & her sister from our swim team told my brother & me one summer about how they had spied on their parents wrapping presents and putting them under the tree the previous Christmas Eve (this was pretty hard evidence to refute) - I refused to stop believing.  I had such a faith in this magic that just had to exist in the world that I did not want to let go.

But some time around the age of 9 I guess I let the building evidence get to me.  The last straw was, funny enough, my presents on Christmas morning -- brand name presents.  I remember thinking, “Why would Santa bring me colored pencils that say The Gap on them instead of making them himself in his workshop?”  And then a few packages later I received a cassette tape with a price tag LEFT RIGHT ON IT from The Wall -- why would Santa outsource to The Wall?  Apparently “Santa” was a little overtired and got a little sloppy that year.  It never occurred to me that I had picked out many of my gifts every year in catalogues and commercials before I received them, and that they were obviously brands too - Mattel, Barbie, Fisher Price.... But this year, somehow even more than the price tag, those Gap colored pencils (of all things) did it to me, and my last stitches of faith didn’t immediately drop and smash like a rock but sort of feather-glided away from me in the air.  

Still, even after my true belief was gone, I kept it up anyway.  I didn’t admit my not believing to my parents until a couple years later.  And I continued to play my favorite December game, where I pretended to be a toy-making elf named Sterra (I am sharing some pretty private details here) with my friends, my brother, or by myself.  And even after I was a little too old to keep that up, I held onto my Christmas spirit.  Whenever that time of year rolled around, a big part of me turned into an excited little kid again.. even when the religious aspects of Christmas didn’t mean as much to me anymore... and I couldn’t wait to experience all of our adorably lame family traditions like singing Christmas carols while Aunt Jeanne plays piano (and almost no one can carry a tune).

So where did it go?  I mean my real, true Christmas spirit somehow just hasn’t been there the past few years like it was for so many years before.  And it has something to do with my comfortability with my family.. My spirit took a low blow that first year the Crane cousins decided that instead of being all excited about singing carols, it would be more fun to play drinking games - even though every other day of the year drinking games would have sounded great to me, something about adding this to our Christmas Eve party felt wrong somehow.. And then as I started having to hide my personal life from my extended family (on both sides), I started sort of dreading the family events I’d once been impatient waiting for.. instead I was anxious awaiting the inevitable “So, what boys are you dating?” and the “Good for you, you’re single!” talk that followed, as I sadly watched my cousins with their boyfriends & girlfriends and missed my own.  So I dropped a little more cheer and picked up a little more martini.  And grew up a little more, finally, after fighting it all these years.

And this year, everything will be different.

Graffiti

I just found 3 shirts from various Graffiti Parties from over the years.. you know, the kind of party where you wear a white t-shirt and everyone writes all over each other with colored Sharpies (good times).  I have one very sloppy one from Novafest of sophomore year, one from a Fame cast party of junior year when Suzy and I very stylishly made mens' undershirts into dresses, and (my favorite) one from a Bye Bye Birdie cast party of senior year..... I read them over, looked at the drawings on them, etc. (I love reminiscing), and the main thing I have taken away from this experience is that people really liked my boobs in college.