i miss christmas

sniff.

it's my favorite holiday, and i'm going through withdrawal. especially when i remember it's going to be a whole year until i get the tree out again. well, 10 1/2 months, but still.

picture cheekily borrowed from fine little day, a new favorite blog of mine

another one bites the dust

i was going to write this post about guilt - specifically spending too-much-money guilt, as christmas/pre-christmas chicago trip where i bought shoes that were way too expensive (more on that later, as they are beautiful) totally kicked my bank account's ass - but i have another kind of guilt today to confess. the jealous-of-those-i-love guilt.

this is a new year's thing i'm trying to do - get these bad feelings out into the blogging world, which will somehow make me feel better, because maybe-just-maybe one of you is feeling how i feel. comrodary in numbers, or whatever. you know, one of the 10 or so people that reads this blog.

another friend is married. she's amazingly hilarious and the tallest girl i know. she used to get me my milk at the sorority house and once came over to my house senior year of college to rescue me when i "thought i heard something." it turned out to be the oven. i shared cookies with her in humble gratitude. but she's engaged, and i'll be honest, i thought i would go first. of course that's what i said about the last friend, and the friend before that. there are still a few people holding out, but i swear if they beat me...

see, this is the problem, that gnawing jealousy that makes me think i should be growing up, too. i'm going to be 25 in a few days. it's a scary age, mostly because i can't say "early 20s anymore." it's "mid-20s" now. mid-20s. i'm complaining about being in my TWENTIES. that is the level of sad desperation this jealousy causes me to fall to.

from what i hear, 30s are better. 40s are supposedly fun, too. it would be nice to not feel like such a fuck-up all the time, to actually not only know what i'm doing, but not care if i don't, feelings that i've also heard come with age. and i am so, so happy for my friend, who is lovely and kind and deserves a beautiful future, which i'm sure she has in front of her.

i am. seriously.

my future gay boyfriend

i watched a lot of tv over break, most of it thanks to my awesome dvr. i am a creature of habit and rarely venture away from six or seven shows, but a few weeks ago, i made a new friend. his name is gok wan, and i am in love.

gok is the host of the british version of "how to look good naked," which lifetime has so kindly started airing in the u.s. i never watched carson kressley's version of "naked," but i was hooked the first time i saw gok with a very uncomfortable woman who looked to be about my size. they were standing in front of a full-length mirror; the woman was in her bra and panties and was practically crying, she was so uncomfortable. gok looked at her and said, very emphatically, "you are beautiful. you have nothing to be ashamed of."

gok's message is one of loving thy body sans plastic surgery, gimmick diets or conformity to unrealistic beauty expectations. he takes normal-sized english women and turns their attitudes completely around by pampering, styling and lots of love and encouragement. women who literally cry seeing themselves (almost) naked are stripping down for a nude photoshoot and strutting a catwalk in cute underwear by the end of the show. and lest you be pessimistic and think the good juju disappears after the cameras are off, gok goes back to visit some of his ladies a year later in some episodes. they're all doing wonderfully - one lady had decided to chase her acting dream and signed up as a plus-sized model!

as a girl who would be considered plus-sized by the fashion world, i get very upset when i go to a store (hello, j. crew) and all the sizes are xs or s. i get mad at myself for looking at magazines or even people i know and hating myself for how i look. it's ridiculous that i should feel bad for the way my body is. gok's message is one of complete acceptance and love, and it's infectious. my bangers and pins are beautiful just the way they are, fashion world be damned.

new year, new look

2010. it sounds so nice, doesn't it, especially if you're ocd like me. i like nice, even numbers, and it's nice to start out the year organized already.

my birthday is this month (the 14th, and if you need present ideas, bingo). my mom thought i needed a gym membership pass as a birthday gift. i don't know if she's trying to tell me something, but i could definitely learn to be more healthy. the laziness has gotten to a new level, and it's not that i want to lose weight, but that i know i need to trim down a bit, considering the health problems from my family. so i signed up for a fitness class two days a week that's in my employer's office building just a block away.

oh, and i bought really nice nike shoes that i probably can't afford. but dammit if i have to work out, i might as well like my shoes. happy birthday to me.

stop worrying and enjoy your life

so i'm a hoosier, living in a state dominated by big trucks, country music, guns - and churches. they're everywhere, on every corner. if it's not a church, it's a billboard with some bible verse on it. i'm surrounded by it, this notion that there's one idea, one way of life, and anything else isn't just wrong - it's evil. when something gets shoved down your throat, it's no wonder you vomit it up and refuse to eat it again.

i am not condemned, in trouble, evil, bad, second-rate or any other negative adjective because i don't pray or go to church. it is a personal decision based on a personal belief to have god or jesus or allah or zeus or whoever in one's life. i have thoughts on organized religion that i won't go into here (see the movie "religulous" and you'll understand how i feel), but to lecture someone on why what she believes is the wrong of life is offensive to me.

there was a bus campaign done in london by an atheist group that used a motto to sum it up better than i can: there probably is no god. so stop worrying and enjoy your life.

i am a crap writer

i have had one dream ever since i was little, shining like a beacon that i held in front of me - i want to be a writer.

not just a writer, because in my mind that's not enough, but a published writer. and perhaps a critically-acclaimed published writer whom jhumpa lahiri really, really enjoys, but "just" a published writer would be good, too. in fact, that wold be great. that would be a dream come true.

i'm doing nanowrimo this year, that crazy thing people do every november. the idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. basically it's 30 days of hell, because writing is 20% actually writing and 80% overcoming the constant self-assessment that you are the very worst writer that ever lived, ever breathed, ever existed.

writing is not for the faint of heart. or the lacker of self-esteem. it's basically a cesspool for sadists. or masochists. or both.

and here's why - it's because i care so much that i hate everything i write. those papers in high school and college, the ones that i got a good grade on simply because i could string a sentence together, were no reflection of my writing ability. they were simple showcases of my talent for vomiting bullshit on a computer screen. and believe me, i was proud of them, especially after i had friends who spent hours on papers, only to get Cs and Ds. but those papers weren't anything to be really happy with, not on a writer's level. i didn't care about those papers about crappy books i hated or homoerotic, metaphysical feelings between two random Shakespeare characters. i cared about the short story i wrote for samrat that he absolutely massacred - and about the second draft that he praised. because for two seconds, just a wisp of time, i felt like i wasn't the very worst writer that ever walked the earth. i felt like my moments of talent could possibly come together to create something that some literary agent would connect with, and then beg and plea some publisher to publish. and it all might come true, this dream of me of opening up a box and seeing a book with my name on it and smelling that truly wonderful smell of fresh book - possibility, hope, pages and pages of words that are all mine.

so i keep writing this crappy story i'm working on, keep churning out words that sometimes remind me of the bullshit vomit, keep going, hoping the next sentence will be better, or the next, or the next one after that. it has to be. what i lack in self-esteem, i make up in determination. i can do this. i have to do this.

just one more word.

работа

Я журналист. Моя работа хорошо.

тетя

я дбадцать четыри. я не девочка. я женщина!!!

мой дом

Мой дом оранжевый. Эта мой!

Мой собака, Хамлет, черный.

Сегодня суббота.

моя русский

я изучаю русский язык. я плохо гавараю па-русский. Эта не хорошо! Сегодня пятницу! Я женшина.

aka - i've joined livemocha.com. reallly cool site where you can do lessons and interact with other people learning languages. hopefully this will help me improve my russian and at least be conversant in the language. lifelong goal, here i come.