What a Difference a Year Makes

As you may have noticed from my blatant absence from this blog, school has started up again. The library is filled with people and my days are filled with classes, meetings, and other such goings-on.

Per usual, I am busy and a bit tired, but other than that this year is so drastically different than last year.

First off, I'm 12 pounds lighter than I was last year. I honestly don't know what happened to the last 4 pounds...I haven't been very diligent keeping track of my points, but I still eat like I am (e.g., eating half a sandwich, ordering a side salad instead of fries, getting the cinnamon raisin bagel instead of the plain). And I continue to run as often as I can. I'm telling you that keeps me sane like nothing else.

Secondly, I'm at peace with my level of intelligence. I am a smart cookie and I'm firmer in knowing that than I was last year, even as I learn things everyday that blow my mind and make me question it all.

Thirdly, I'm taking an advanced quantitative methods course when this time last year the thought of stats made me cry. I'm going to be a teaching assistant for a stats course in the spring, for goodness' sake!

Fourthly, I am officially all right regarding the break-up with TM. With the support and straight-up bullying of friends to make the right decisions...for which I am eternally grateful...along with my own new found maturity, I have healed from that loss. I am so proud of myself for that.

Fifthly, I have found true friends here. Granted, they have issues up the wazoo, but so do I, and we're all crazy at Harvard together.

Sixthly, I'm spending a lot more time with Ella and that's nothing but goodness.

All in all, I like my life. It's far from perfect and even farther than where I want it to be, but it's doing just fine.

My New Bed

So I got a new bed this week...not really, though. It's actually a memory foam mattress topper for the bed I already have, but it's really like having a new bed.

The fact that I got this "new" bed is really TM's fault. When we lived together, he bought a 4-inch memory foam and it transformed our sleeping experience. It was the most comfortable thing ever! But when we broke up, he took it with him. I thought I could live without it, but I soon discovered that I couldn't. So I ordered a 2-inch one that came with two pillows. It's not as amazing as the 4-inch one, but it's still pretty damn cool. I do believe that I'm sleeping better than I did before.

I believe the world would be a better place if more people had memory foam mattress toppers.

I Miss NYC Today

I don't really miss living in NYC. I don't like Boston very much at all, but I am glad I left New York. It was making me too hard and cynical and impatient.

Except for today. Because no one in the city I live in now gets it. When I tell people in Boston I was living in New York on 9/11, I get the appropriate wide-eyed glances and "wows," but no one really gets it. In fact, hardly anyone has brought it up today at all.

No one who was living in Boston knows how New York smelled that day and for days after; how the smoke and dust seemed to cover the entire city; how everyone walked around in shock for weeks; how it felt to watch those barges haul the mountains of debris up the Hudson; how it felt to scan the photos in the paper and in the news for potential friends, family, classmates. No one in Boston truly understands how scared we all were. New York...for a New York minute...became a scary place to live.

Today I wish I was living in New York. Because I'm sure life went on there as well, but at least I would feel like I was surrounded by people who truly understood.

Single and Fabulous?

Remember that "Sex and the City" episode?

I have to get something out of my head and heart before it eats away at me. I am a single woman; that is my reality. I wish I wasn't, however I know I am moving on and I am proud of myself for it.

Except...when I get a Facebook message from a very old friend who assumes that someone in a photo is my husband. And then I read the Weddings/Celebrations section of the New York Times. Why shouldn't my friend make that assumption? Everyone else we know from our circle of friends is married by now; I am in my mid-30s now...it's fair.

After that happens, I stop feeling proud. Instead, a surge of loneliness and failure that is so intense it stings my eyes comes over me. There is nothing for me to do in those moments except feel the feeling without judgment and with the knowledge that this, too, shall pass.

Eerie

Okay, I know that Sarah Palin's youngest, Trig, has special needs and all...why don't people just say he has Down's Syndrome?, but am I the only one that thinks it's strange that her son hasn't even stirred? That kid was passed from Cindy McCain to Todd Palin to Piper without a peep. Piper is spit-shining Trig's hair, curling his eyelashes, messing with her brother like he's a ragdoll. And isn't it funny that no one passed Trig to Bristol? Let's not give Americans that image, eh?

It's eerie, I tell you.