"When you're fed up shedding too many tears...

... and your memories seem like just so many souvenirs, I will come to you to ease the pain."

-Paul McCartney

     I miss Paris.  

     I really have never wanted to miss Paris, as much as I've enjoyed my times there, but it's really hit me how much I long to be back there.  Yes, I said "long".  I long for my spartan-esque dusty bedroom in my friendly foyer.

      I miss the de-stressing catharsis sessions at the local McDo (where the patrons actually look as trendy as the ones in the commercials we see for McDonald's in the US and where they constantly play the Top 40 instead of obscure 60s tunes.).  I miss having a gigantic grocery store across the street, even though its delivery trucks would wake me up at 6am every morning.  

     I miss taking easy and convenient public transportation, mousse sold in little cups right next to the yogurt, little old ladies who would randomly initiate pleasant conversations on the street and even the creepos who wanted me to stop and bavarder with them.  I miss eating a croque aux 2 fromages.  Yes, they have vegetarian croques and they're amazing, and I want one now  (ooh I just found some recipes online!)!

     I miss browsing in any of the Gilbert stores, walking all over the place, buying cheap teenybopper clothes at Jennyfer, walking past history and fantastic architecture.  I miss going to the free contemporary art museum...

... and chilling on the Pompidou plaza. 

     Oh yeah, and easy access to the musée du Louvre was also cool.  

     Yup, it's spring again.

Lights out frustration

It's the middle of the day and in the mid-sixties, so no, a power outage does not seem completely dire at the moment.  However, I'm a bit frustrated.  I was skating at the Ice Arena at approximately 3:25pm today when the whole rink went black.  Some back-up lights soon came on, but the skate guards soon ushered us off the ice, anyway.  Thinking that this blackout was probably going to last longer than 35 minutes, when Public Skate would have ended, I packed up my bag and hauled ass (not without effort, since the wind kept blowing me gallywest (actually east) part of the way) to Walgreens, only to find that although they must have backup lights, their cash registers were off-line.  I continued down Green Street, trash swirling low around me, past all the stores with no lights on, and ended up in the Union bathroom, in which there was no light, and no one around me was speaking English (I felt like my aunt in the CSO lockeroom).

     I was pretty apathetic to the inconveniences that I'd come across since, as I said, it is a nice day and it's still during daylight hours.  But then I realized, I'm on my LAST glass of Diet Coke, and the vending machines probably don't work, nor do any stores' cash registers.  I thought, well, so what, I'm out of Diet Coke, I can always make coffee.  ENHHH.  No coffee.  That would require a coffee MACHINE powered by electricity.  But WAIT, I have some leftover coffee in the refrigerator.  Wrong again.  I can't reheat it without my microwave or my stove, both of which are electric.  It's got milk in it, which is going to go bad and make it nasty and rancid by the time I want to drink it.

     Still, I'm really having trouble getting angry.  I know everything is going to be all right, and although I may lose some groceries which I'd been trying to stock up in the name of being economical, but it's no big deal, right?

Semi-drunken life ramble

     As I lie in my dark bedroom listening to my "///////Stressless" playlist being overpowered by the noises blasting music of unidentifiable genre alternating with possibly awkward bathtub sex taking place next door to me, I ponder the fact that I am wiped at 11pm on a Saturday.  Is it because of the extra-jumpy kickboxing session I had this morning?  Possibly the overwhelming and looming stress that's been hovering above me like a dark purple cloud of doom that continues to push forward along with me?  Is it the fact that I had 3 margheritas this evening and I generally get happy after half a cerveza?  I think I'm just getting old.  Every time I look in the mirror, I'm shocked at how old I've gotten and how much it shows.  I get "pooped" (yes, I said, "pooped"!) so much earlier than used to when I was younger.  I even checked on next week's homework (gasp!) out of a hybrid mix of a feeling of responsibility and boredom.

     Aging scares me, as it always has.  I worry that I won't "be" anyone when I'm older, that I'll just have a boring job and no one will know who I am.  I worry that I am missing some calling that's been trying to buzz me for years, except I'm in the underground part of the "L" and I don't have US Cellular.  I see comfortable middle-aged people sipping on their beers and seeming content with their lives.  These people are not famous.  They have greying hair, are overeducated, and have anonymous professions with which they are satisfied.  I don't understand this.  I've tried to think that way, or at least to imitate that way of thinking.  I've tried to believe that I can be content being anonymous, having a "normal" life, getting married and having 2.5 children and barbecuing Boca burgers every 4th of July.  Maybe I'd grown up for a while, but I can't fool myself into contentedness anymore.  Yes, I am happy in my life, and I feel so blessed to have been given all these opportunities and to have all these wonderful people in my life.  But I cannot just accept existence at "face value".  I can't ignore all the questions I have about life and whether I have a predestined journey.  I can't accept my situation in apathy.  But that's just what I've been doing.  I stay away from controversial topics and am often too lazy to work on the things that interest me (I haven't been in a practice room since last semester, for example).  I've been floating through my classes without caring about grades very much and barely freaking out (at least on a conscious level) about the massive quantities of work I have.  I've shut down, and I don't know how to restart.  I don't even know if I should restart; sometimes I think I'm happier when I just let go of everything.  But when I start thinking about what I should really be doing, whether I am just tricking myself into thinking that I am happy with my current situation, I realize that I am truly not trying my best.  I lie around thinking about doing things without actually doing them.  Sometimes I'd rather take a nap than do anything else in the world.  I want to "find myself" but it seems so hard!  When I look back on the way I used to be, the girl who dressed up every day for whom singing was her whole life, who drew pictures and mimicked British accents, who looked disdainfully upon drinking, who dreamed of being famous is virtually gone.  I fell into French because I was too shy to try out for music school and I happened to do well in French classes.  I took an introductory linguistics course and fell in love with the subject.  Now I can't imagine having majored in anything other than French, but I don't know why.  I wonder if I am really the same person I used to be, because I just don't recognize myself anymore.  I feel like a more "worldly" person, a wiser person, but the girl I used to be seems like a distant shadow.  I don't want to be her anymore, but I fear that I'm leading a fake existence sometimes.  

     So my project henceforth (actually the project I've been working on since about the age of 9) is to figure out who I truly am.  Maybe it is "the journey that counts", and perhaps I'll figure that out along the way.  I just hope I have the courage to follow my dreams instead of clinging to a path that just might be "easy" for me.  However, that is the question.  Are we to follow the path that is easiest, and the most comfortable for us?  Would that not be following "fate", if such a thing exists?  Or are we supposed to follow crazy dreams that are uncertain and may not lead to prosperity?  Maybe personality plays a part.  Maybe my timidity is what has caused me to follow this path, which is perhaps indeed the path of my fate.  But maybe I am supposed to overcome my timidity and challenge myself (waaay more than I am now!).  I suppose I should figure out what I really "want" in life, as a first step, and, unfortunately, this is going to take some effort.

Good things sometimes come in stay-fresh packages

     Delicious things, even!  As you may know, I've been trying to cook more lately, which includes introducing more variety to my meals.  I figure I'll document my progress, in case one day I actually learn how to make more complicated, creative dishes.

     Last night I made homemade pizza, which turned out to be great (I'm so modest, haha), to my surprise, since it was probably the most easy/lazy pizza to make:

(Meijer 7-inch crust, Bertolli's five cheese sauce into which I mixed a little pesto, Kraft finely shredded mozzarella cheese, tomato and onion)

     I also made confetti Angel food cake (from a box) and topped it with vanilla frozen yogurt and chocolate syrup for dessert:

     Unfortunately, I ran out of plastic wrap and my refrigerator smells like onion, so the cake is getting a bit dry :(