Change is hard in so many ways

Change is one of the biggest things I struggle with. Some of it has to do with me just being me. Some of it has to do with me being an introvert. And a big, old chunk of it has to do with my OCD.

This week I did TWO things that required changes. They may seems like no big deal to you. That's ok. But trust me when I say they were HUGE things for me.

I downloaded Adele's new album. New music is really hard for me. Really hard. And people are all like "how is listening to new music hard??"

Main reasons:

1. I don't know all the lyrics to new music. This is huge. Number one, I really, really like to sing along with music. If I don't know the lyrics I can't sing along and that really affects my listening experience. Number two, I don't like not knowing things. Not knowing things is the bane of my existence. If I could download music into my head and know all the songs I would be way more happy and willing to listen to new things. This is a HUGE hurdle I have to overcome with every new song that comes along. It sounds so dumb -- why is it a big deal? Well you aren't me so you can't understand so just trust me on this one. It's a HUGE FUCKING DEAL. I would really be ok with not having any new music in my life ever...but that's unreasonable and dumb and would drive the people around me crazy (because they like new music as most people do), so I keep trying. But I am definitely never going to be on the cutting edge of music.

2. What if I don't like the music? Ahhhh. Just thinking about it makes my heart beat fast. Again, why such a big deal? One, if everyone else likes it and I don't, then I have to explain why I don't like it. And I'll have to do that over and over and over again to every single person who is like "OMG, don't you love the new X song?" And if I say "Uh, no, I don't" then it's like "OMG, how can you not?!?!" And then I just don't want to have that conversation again and again and again. And probably my reasons for not liking something are like "I don't like the bump bump bump beat" and people are like "WHUT?" Nevermind. You can't understand why I don't like it and I know you want to but I can't express it in a way you understand and dear god let this conversation be over. But it never is. And if I lie and say "Yeah! Love it!" a) I hate lying, especially when I feel pressured to lie because the person who I am talking to can't just accept "No, I don't like it," and b) then they might make me listen to it and I don't want to. Two, if I spent money downloading something and I don't like it...well I just wasted money. I HATE WASTING MONEY. I'm one of the cheapest people alive. Wasting money hurts. Seriously. I know you don't understand and that's ok. Again, just trust me on this.

Anyway, I actually like the new Adele album. Yay! Thank god. And that inspired me to try ANOTHER new thing. New face wash.

Now, new products I put on my body are REALLY hard for me. I have really sensitive skin and sometimes new products make me break out in a rash or do weird things to my skin. So that makes me hesitant. Another reason is because of my shark nose. I can't stand weird smells. And "weird" is a REALLY big category. Like really big. I can smell everything. And if it somehow doesn't agree with my nose, it needs to go away and die in a fire. And if my body/skin feels weird after, ugh. No. Won't use again. And then that whole waste of money thing. Use the product once or twice and then I can't use it again and it's a waste of money. Gahhhh.

Thing that go on my face and head are the hardest. Closest to my nose and my face is the most sensitive part of my body. And I'm just generally extra weird about my head and face. It's just a thing. Trust me (again).

I've used the same face wash for 4 years. Before that I used the same face wash for 5 years. When they stopped making it, I freaked out and emailed the company for discontinuing it. I got an email back with a coupon to try one of their other face washes, but I was too pissed from their betrayal. That switch actually went smoothly because I found another company who made a similar face wash I liked. But now we've found out about microbeads and how they're destroying the environment so I've been trying to find a new face wash without microbeads. Also, now I'm vegan and it turns out so many face washes have dead animals in them. Jesus christ. Like my life wasn't hard enough already. But once I know there is tallow or gelatin or some other weird dead shit in my face wash there's NO WAY I can rub it on my face. Gah. Death. Literally.

I bought two new products at Target that are vegan and microbead free. One is ok. It doesn't make my face "feel clean" though. I am using it right now, but really unsatisfied. I know, get over it. Ha, if only I could.

I bought another one. I smelled it in the store, and I thought it had a mild enough scent I could stand it. Nope, wrong. Tried it twice. Yuck. Gave it to my roomie.

I bought three different vegan face washes from the vegan co-op. A month ago. I've been too afraid to try them. They've just been sitting in the cabinet.

Sigh.

Adele went well. Maybe facewash will go well. I put the "unscented" one in the shower. "Unscented" is such a bullshit lie. It is not unscented. It is intentionally not scented like anything in particular, but it is NOT unscented. Not to the shark nose.

I had coffee with my OCD friend who knows how hard the face wash is for me. We talked about it. And Adele. And after she left I decided I was going to try it.

I tried it. The smell was not intolerable...I don't think anyway. When the face wash got wet it got very foamy and weird and it scared me and then I was gagging the entire time I was trying to get it off my face so the smell took a back seat to the surprising texture. My face feels fine now so that's a good sign. Maybe I'll be brave enough to try it again tonight during my nightly shower (yeah, I shower twice a day -- OCD people). We'll see.

Gagging. Yeah. That's a thing. A BIG, HUGE thing. I have an intense gag reflex. It's very sensitive. It's very annoying. Weird tastes, weird smells, weird textures activate it. Sometimes compulsive thoughts about germs or weird things activate it. I feel like I spend a quarter of my life gagging. It's way fucking annoying. And I have no control over it. People always think I'm being "so dramatic" when I gag. Right, because gagging is such a lovely feeling. And sometimes I can't stop gagging and I actually throw up. That's even more fun. Every time someone says "You're so dramatic" or "You're ridiculous" I kind of want to throw up ON them. It took Andrea a long time to get used to it and realize how horrifying it is for me. And to not just laugh when it's happening. We can laugh later, but at the moment, if someone laughs, not only am I gagging at something that is horrifying my brain but now I am horrified and mortified that someone is witnessing and laughing at this whole thing. So please don't laugh. Not until I laugh about it. Then you can laugh. Because sometimes OCD just makes me laugh. It's either that or cry. And it makes me cry enough. So when I laugh at some ridiculous way OCD impacts me, then you can laugh. But not before, ok? Because then you're an unsafe person and I don't trust you to hold the weirdness that is me and my OCD. So then there is a wall between us. Very few people get to see and hear all my OCD tics live and in the flesh. And maybe that's ok -- but just know, that's a barrier between us. I've been called dramatic my whole life. It feels like crap and makes me realize you don't "get it" and that you're not trying "to get it" and then I can't be vulnerable around you and then if I'm not vulnerable around you, you don't know the real me. So you can either know the real me, all of me, or you can know the sanitized version of me. I don't particularly care either way -- the choice is yours. I'm just trying to protect myself in a world that isn't soft and comfy for me. Self preservation is the bottom line and I'll do whatever it takes to preserve myself.

Anyway, that took a bit of a dark twist. I didn't mean for it to. I really just wanted to say YAY! I TRIED TWO NEW THINGS THIS WEEK! Go me!

Getting Crafty

I have never considered myself a crafty person. Actually, I actively avoided anything craft-like for a very, very long time. I would rather someone else craft something for me or buy something rather than embark on the painful, frustrating process of crafting something.

However, last Christmas I was dating someone who valued handmade gifts above anything else. I decided to embark on a project for her because I knew it would be meaningful, not only because it was handmade, but because it would be the first crafted thing I'd done in about a century. Through talking with Jen I realized the root cause of my craft aversion...

Growing up with a fantastically talented artist mother I saw examples of stunning art all around me. Our house was mostly filled with her artwork and the woman is talented beyond measure (take a peek here). In addition to being an artist she's also the most talented handiworker, crafter, DIYer, project creator ever. Check out her blog. As someone not at all confident in her artistic or crafting skills and as a ruthless perfectionist who was raised to excel in all things attempted, I long ago decided that I was never going to be anywhere close to as good as her at doing any sort of handiwork so I decided why bother? In my mind I'd have an image of what my finished project should look like (something my mom could easily do) and when I got done it would look like a blind orangutan had completed it and the defeat was always crushing. So crafting became my enemy, and like all enemies of mine it ceased to exist in my mind.

While talking with Jen about this she pointed out that really the only person this was impairing was me, and maybe I ought to try DIY-ing some stuff for myself and with low expectations. I was skeptical but decided I would try it.

I decided to tackle home made snow globes in Vos water bottles. I saw the idea in a book at Barnes & Noble (can't remember which one...some photography DIY book). I also can't find any pics of my finished projects and rather than delay this post I found this person posted a blog post about them and a couple pictures. Mine were a bit different though. I decided to put pictures inside rather than random snowflakes or some other winter scene. I gave myself several weeks of time to complete the project because I knew there would be bumps and snafus along the way and I know myself well enough to know that I would get frustrated and pissed off plenty along the way and adding a time crunch would only serve to be defeating. I ended up working on the project nearly every day for 2-3 weeks! I had to make several revisions along the way as my idea translated into reality and I realized certain things wouldn't work. What I ended up doing was creating 6 snow globes. Five for my closest friends in Chico and one for Jen. I wanted to practice on my friends' globes before I attempted the most important one. The final product consisted of three pictures of the friend and I which I digitally stitched together into a long strip and some sort of friendship quote/image that I glued to the back of the strip of pictures. They turned out really nice and even though they weren't the original idea I had pictured, I was very pleased with the projects AND the experience. I got a little boost of confidence back in my skills...

But naturally, life gets busy. I didn't craft anything all spring as I was just trying to work and manage a chaotic personal life. But this summer I decided to try something new! My good friend Nandi is an amazing tie-dyer. I asked her to teach me how to tie-dye. I can vaguely remember tie-dying a shirt or two as a kid, but hadn't attempted anything else since then. For the past month I have been working on improving my skills and loving EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE. of it. I found something I could enjoy and am pretty good at it. I think one of the things I like best is that tie-dying leaves a lot of room for errors. You never exactly know what something is going to look like when it's done; it's just the nature of working withe tie-dye. I still get annoyed if I accidentally drip a dark color spot on some place it wasn't supposed to go, but I'm working on not being all fatalistic about it. It's life; move on.

This past week my mom came to visit and wanted to learn how to tie-dye. I was really nervous about teaching her. If Picasso asked you to teach him something crafty you might also feel a bit of pressure ;) To my relief it went not only well, but it was a lot of fun! She was a great student who was very attentive and asked a lot of questions and made me feel like I knew what I was doing! Whew! I'm not ready to be all gung-ho Martha Stewart, but I also don't feel like I want to slap small children when someone asks me if I want to craft something! Progress!

Some of my lovely tie-dying:

My very first tie-dye piece completed!

A onesie I made for my nephew!

Some groovy capri yoga pants I made for my sister

Awards

So many people

Working together for change

Proud to call them friends :)

Exhaustion

Laughter, friends, good times

Beautiful house with a view

Happy Birthday Lana

Calgon, Take Me Away!

Wild woman weekend

Here we come Bodega Bay

Celebrate with friends

Thankful for Acupuncture & Awesome Friends!

Today I'm thankful for the many friends I've made in Chico, but most especially to Michelle Faucher who is an amazing acupuncturist & owns the Pinwheel Community Acupuncture Project! I've had some random icky cyst on my finger since mid-summer and when I asked my doctor about it he said it looked like a ganglion cyst and I'd have to have a surgeon remove it. ICK! Luckily I mentioned in front of Michelle one night at dinner and like a dope I never thought about utilizing her services. She popped some needles in that night and asked me to come back to the clinic the next day. I did and already the cyst has shrunk in half (if not more!). A couple more treatments and it should be all gone! No expensive, long healing or icky surgery needed!

In addition going to her clinic for treatment, it's also a nice forced break from reality. Since it's a community style clinic, everyone receives treatment in the same room. That means I have to be quiet! It gives me a forced 30+ minutes to power down and focus on myself. So far I've been too on edge to really kick back and zonk out and have instead read emails and articles that I've meant to read but never had time to until I had nothing else I needed to be doing (or could be doing).

So on Day One of November I'm thankful to have a friend who creates a wonderful caring space for our community and for the assistance in getting my cyst to disappear without surgery (or beating my hand with a bible)!

365: Exhausted but Satisfied

So pretty much Ange and I have been "partying" for 36 hours straight (and I use partying very loosely). One of my bffs came into town for about 24 hours and then we decided to go to the winery this weekend without actually checking to see if the winery was open (it wasn't; oops!) so we ended up hosting a little impromptu afternoon winery party of sorts at our house. After all that hosting and socializing I am BEAT! But I wouldn't have changed a thing. Such an awesome weekend. Now I have to bust some ass on grading and make it through finals and we're off to the Gambia!

365: Ice Cream Buddies!

After the fundraising dinner at Woodstock's we decided to hit up a new Hispanic ice cream parlor with two of our newest and favoritest people in Chico: Danny & Caitlin! They are also our soon to be surrogate (?) parents to our fur babies!

We had so much fun!!! From Danny's decision to try ALL the green ice creams in the case, to laughing about BEEFHAWKS, and apparently getting on the owner's nerves with our boisterous laughing, it was clear we were the only people in the place having a GAY old time! So glad we met these two :)

365: Cinco de Mayo

Tonight Ange had an end of the year Geography Department social to attend, and although she invited me I didn't really want to be a 3rd wheel (or 61st as it turns out) to a party where everyone has a common bond and feel like the odd one out. Plus, so far in Chico we mostly have joint friends. One of us may be more friendly or familiar with someone(s) but we're generally friends with the same people. It's nice and healthy to have separate friends too so I thought this would be a nice way for Ange to further develop her friendships without having to worry about me being or feeling awkward. But of course I wasn't going to sit at home twiddling my thumbs so I made plans with another friend.

So coincidentally it was Cinco de Mayo. But as we don't really plan our days around mostly drinking holidays I didn't realize this until my friend mentioned it. All I knew is that I was NOT up for a big party so that limited our choices of what to do. We finally decided to grab some drinks and appetizers at a place close to her house (and far from the wild downtown area where there were sure to be lots of drunken students) and have a long relaxing evening on the patio. After a few hours we packed it in and went back to her house for some hot tubbing! Yes! Finally a friend that owns a hot tub! I told her ANY time she needed a hot tub buddy to call me up! Ahhhh, relaxing enjoyable evening!

365: Spyder & Scarlett

These were our get-ups for the white trash party (yes we know that's classist and not pc--it wasn't our party and we just rolled with it). Ange was also known as Spyder & I went by Scarlett. We carried ketchup and mustard bottles for our beverage containers. All together we spent about $25 putting our outfits together. It's ok to be jealous. We know we're hot.

365: Go Big or Go Home

One of my/our good friends texted me this morning to see if Ange and I wanted to have drinks this evening. Well drinks turned into more drinks turned into dinner and long (hilarious) conversations. We' finished our second pitcher of margaritas but had more stories to tell and since I wasn't driving I got one final drink. Grande margarita! Good times with a good friend. Olé!

365: Amazeballs

So first, a small rant. I get REALLY sick of hearing about how social media and Facebook in particular is causing the world to be more superficial and weakening "real friendships." These articles and comments in my experience come from two places:

1. Older people who don't actually understand technology all that well or are for some reason stuck in the "good old days" mentality (that doesn't actually exist) pre-technology. Basically, natural-born Luddites who resist innovation "cuz it's soooo scurry."

2. Hipsters who like to eschew technology because it's the cool anti-conformist thing to do. Basically, Luddites by choice because "I'm so much better than you because I don't participate in social media."

To which I call BULLSHIT.

I have several Facebook friends that I have become BETTER friends with (by many measures) because of Facebook. People that I know from various places in my past but if not for Facebook would be a distant memory because I'm probably not going to pick up the phone and chat with them or make plans to go see them. But because of Facebook they are people that I actually think about in more than a reminiscing way because we've built a connection via the web that wouldn't have been there without it.

And occasionally these people do astounding things that both amazes me AND fuels my disgust for the articles and comments that I mentioned above.

I got a quick Facebook message the other day from a Facebook friend that she'd popped a package in mail that contained some donation items that I could take with us on our upcoming African trip. Out of the blue. This person is a former grad student friend of mine, that again, I enjoy her and always thought she was great while in grad school, but we were never BFFs and OMG I'm going to miss you so much let's get matching tattoos! But through Facebook we have gotten to be much better friends than we have ever been "in real life."

Now this is NOT a diss to my "real life friends" (e.g. the people I do call on the phone on occasion, I do hang out with, people I do visit on vacay) because they are awesome and amazing as well, but how many of them have ever sent me a care package of donations without any prompting whatsoever? How can someone say that Natalie isn't a "real friend?" Get out of here with that nonsense. Friends come in a variety of formats and don't give me any speech about the quality of your friendships. Cause ALL of my friends rock. No matter how little I see them or how we conduct our friendship.

Rant aside, how cute is their return address stamp??? I love it!

And seriously, Natalie sent me BBQ Kettle Chips! Swoon! (We've had a mutual asynchronous conversation going on about the amazingness of Kettle chips for the past couple of weeks--that little package right there should be a major indicator of friendship status right there).

Anyway, longest 365 post yet right? But I just needed to put that out there. You're the bomb Natalie (& Tyler!) and you are definitely someone I count as a friend.

365: Balance

One latte & one bottomless mimosa. Good start to my morning with my peeps. However I was not informed about the impromptu hike after breakfast. If I would have known I might have ordered differently. Hopefully I don't fall off the trail into more poison oak.

365: My Peeps!

I'm in Denver at the Forum on Education Abroad to do a panel presentation with two of my favorite peeps in the whole world: Kati Csoman & Emil Nagengast. It's a shame that Ange had to stay back, but based on our hours of work tonight she probably would have been bored to death. We did, however, make time for dinner, drinks and socializing. Of course we did. Cause that's what we do! Up and at 'em early in the morning to wow the Forum. We got this.

365: Remnants of a Good Time

We're sticking to our couple's New Year's resolution and having more people out to the house/hanging out more often. This one snuck up on us--Ange's friend Melissa came to visit from San Francisco (and is now my friend!) and one of my friend's texted me to see what we were doing for the evening so I invited her over. Then Ange remembered one of her friends' partner was out of town so she invited her! We ended up having dinner and cracking up until after 1 am! Definitely a great night. Yay for impromptu gatherings!

365: Funsies!

Wine and games? I'll take it!

365: Interfaith Friends

We had a whirlwind day visiting various friends and family members. Spent the last part of the evening with two grad school friends. While we were at ARoth's house we lit the final candle on her menorah. Which was in front of a Christmas tree-like decoration. That's how she rolls yo. Good times.

365: Random Outing

We had lunch with some Indy friends and Jen suggested we stop by Crown Hill Cemetery (3rd largest in US!) and check out the sites. Surprisingly Ange and I have never explored Crown Hill do we thought this was a GREAT idea. We saw James Whitcomb Riley's grave (which is apparently the highest point in Indy), went Geocaching (where I tripped and fell--smooth), and then spent a ridic amount of time finding Dillinger's grave. But it was worth it. Lots of giggles were had. Yay for vacation breaks and friends!

365: Game Night!!!

Now that we've been settled in Chico for 5 months we're finally starting to make a lot more friends and surprisingly we've found some serious game fanatics amongst our new pals. We had another couple over this evening and had a TON of fun. Played lots of games, laughed, ate tons of food and generally enjoyed ourselves. Hopefully we'll be doing this a lot more in the months to come!

365: Social

Ange and I are trying to be more social. We don't have too many close friends here -- a few but we don't want to burden the few we have so we feel the need to branch out. Partially it's due to the fact we live out in the sticks and partially we just haven't made enough effort. We've resolved to fix that! So far it's mainly consisted of us being our charming selves and not turning down invitations but we're gradually working up to inviting people to do things ourselves! Tonight we went to the LGBT Faculty & Staff Dinner and it was awesome. More positive reinforcement to not be lame!