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JoyfulDreamer
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Country: United States
State: Texas
Birthday: 12/11/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: Whatever the kids are into...sorry to say that they are my entire life at the moment. That being the case, my hobbies include My Little Ponies and Dr. Seuss
Expertise: Kids.....ha! I wish!
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/12/2002
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| I've gotten a grand total of 41 hours of sleep in the past 9 days, and I'm here to tell you I feel fantastic. Well, maybe not fantastic, but lack of sleep has nothing to do with that. I'll get to that in a minute.
Juan and I came in second last night in Rhumba, and fifth in Two-Step, but that was out of 8 couples so it pretty much sucks. There were 17 competeing couples in the Rhumba classification though. We are smokin'.
I'm making Easter dresses for the girls (and matching ones for their dolls, of course) so my room is littered with yards of pastel silks and ribbons. It's bizarrely suffocating, so I'm sleeping in the playroom till I'm done with the sewing projects. Relegating the dresses to the playroom instead of myself was out of the question, unfortunately, because otherwise the fabric would disappear into forts or costume chests as does every other scrap of pretty cloth in this house, including -- to my dismay -- my ballroom dance gown six hours before the competition. (It was found in the knick of time.) I swear they're building a nest somewhere.
The competition last night wasn't the BIG one, though. That will be in Miami on March 12. There are no words to explain how excited I am. Juan and I dance really well together. He's very attractive, very gay, and very Latin. We kick ass. It's such a sexually charged dance, and we're so relaxed with each other that we're comfortable adding that kind of energy, but since we're really just acting we're able to avoid the sloppy footwork that we saw last night on the couples who were more genuinely courting. Abe, my partner in the only other competition I've been in, was so different. We worked and planned and set out a routine, and then we learned to dance it. Juan and I just started out dancing, and a routine just kinda evolved. Yep, we are sooooooooo hot, and we're not gonna settle for second place. We'll be taking home the East Coast Gold in Miami, mark my words!
Katie's boyfriend is trying to sell me his old Buell, so he lent it to me for a week, and I've been having a blast with it. About an hour ago, I was heading out to Providence Rd Sundries to see a local band play, but it's been raining all day with a little sleet. Who cares, though, I've got a helmet, a padded leather jacket, I'm a fairly good rider and it's not far, right? Well as I was going down a hill in our neighborhood, a car with no lights on pulled straight out of someone's driveway into me at an absurd speed. I went flying. Man was I ever scared! It's a fairly sizable motorcycle, but it and I were completely airborn for a good 8 feet. Unfortunately, my right knee took most of the impact and the Buell came down on top of me. The driver turned out to be a 16-year old boy who's had his permit for less than a week. He was scared, and I was glad. When I realized the bike and I were both more or less fine, all of the "oh-my-god-I'm-gonna-be-roadkill" fear dissipated into being really, really cross with the kid who doesn't turn on his lights and floors it to pull out of the drive. Grrr. Anyway, his dad gave me a ride home, and brought the bike in his SUV. I can't walk, or even hop because the impact hurts like hell and my nerves are shot, so the show is out of the question. I'm just sitting on the couch now, icing my various injuries.
Inventory of wounds: busted knee, possibly dislocated shoulder, gonna-be-really-freakin'-bruised hip, bloody chin, various other bruises and scrapes. In other words, it sucks for now, but I should be fine in time for the Miami competition and I've just very quickly made up my mine about buying the motorcycle. So that's settled.
I'm not even going to think about what will happen if I'm still aching two weeks from now. No! Begone from my mind, thou wicked fear!
East Coast Gold. | | |
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So. Rafik Hariri was assasinated today. Conventional wisdom is blaming Syria, of course, and pundits are saying that the idea was to reignite the Lebanese civil war. Fucking hell. What a mess. Sometimes I'm in less of a hurry to grow up. Sometimes, like now, I feel a little exhausted, like I'm already in over my head. America's immediate withdrawal of Margaret Scobey -- on zero evidence, I might add -- kinda says to me that there might be those in the west who might see weapons sales to qolboonahhh (in the hopes that they would then fight hezbollh) as a good idea. Middle Eastern relations are just all so incestuous. Syrian troops are responsible for the end of the damned war. If it wasn't for them, Lebanon would be Palestine. Of course I'm generally in favor of troops not hanging out in other people's countries, but in this case Syria seems to me to have been offering a lot of real help for the past decade. It was the Syrians who rebuilt Beruit, for crying out loud!
That reminds me. I think that Kofi Annan is being crucified with this Oil-For-Food bs. I won't be floored if Colin Powell is offered the position in '07. Of course, the next sg is supposed to be from Asia but come on -- who would that be? Surakiart Sathirathai? Don't make me laugh.
*SIGH*
So yeah, sometimes I'm damn glad that I'm still in school. I'm glad that it's ok for me to just sit here and read about it all in the WSJ and shake my head over things that are currently --when it comes right down to it -- not my problem. Hell, I'm free to toss the paper across the room and go play tennis with Kelly. The most serious think I'm going to think about tonight will be my backhand.
Goodnight, world. | | |
| Matt D stopped by the other night (he's moving to Florida), and boy was he ever a sight for sore eyes! We had a fantastic time. We went over to Providence Road Sundries and had a wonderful conversation -- the kind that makes you feel inside the same way as a good workout makes you feel outside -- listened to indie rock and played pool. I love playing pool, even though I'm no good at it. The best part was that he's no good at it, either, so we were evenly matched even though the games took 40 min each. He wasn't here for long enough, and I was really sad to see him go but he's gonna get us tickets to the Taledega (spelling?), which is a three-day-long Nascar race. We get to camp out, which is really the motivator for me, truth be told. But he gets so excited when he talks about car racing, and I love things that people get excited about, so I'm gonna give it a go. I've been expanding my interests a lot, actually. I went to two Panthers games this season, and was genuinely disappointed when they lost. I watched the Superbowl and actually made an effort to follow it. It was a great game!
Anyway, I've entered with this guy Juan that I met at the dance studio in another ballroom dance competition, only the second of my whole life. We'll be doing the two-step and the rhumba. Very exciting.
I've volunteered to teach ESL at the International House, and I have my first student tonight. She's from Iran, only been here for three weeks, so it'll be a challenge to concentrate on teaching her Enhlish, and refrain from switching it around to have her teach me Farsi. Although I don't see why we can't do both. | | |
| We finally moved into the new house! That means that we have all those wonderful things we missed like a phone line and a bed. Yay!
Today's Maya's birthday, and Kelly's having a huge party. In theory I'll be heading over there in about an hour, but frankly I don't really feel like being social. I really just want to curl up on the sofa (furniture!) and finish my paper on democray in Latin America. I'm just kinda writing it for fun. It was born out of a conversation that Malena and I had. Another essay I wrote on the distinctions between preemption and prevention and their respective roles in foreign policy is going to be published in the Nation! Very excited about that.
AND I had a telephone interview today with a woman from the US Agency for International Development, and on Tuesday I'm driving to Raleigh to meet in person with one of their people. This is for a job, not an internship, which I'm a little wary of. On the one hand, I'd love to go ahead and get my hands in, but on the other I need my BA and preferably my masters'. Although I've never exactly been the picture of modesty, even I'm not brazen enough to try to succeed in this kind of field without a little more schooling. It's flattering as heck, though. You see, the State Department can't send me to the middle east as an intern, but if I were an agent, they could. I was damn well qualified for that intern position!
What'd I tell ya? Charmed life! | | |
| All things considered, I lead a charmed life. In addition to the fact that I'm better off in every material way than most of the world's population, things generally work out for me. I have adventures, sure, and things seem like they're going badly, but in the nick of time something extraordinary happens to save the day. I really do lead a charmed life.
So here I am, patiently explaining this to myself as my heart is breaking. Sounds like hyperbole? It's not. Because here beside me is a short, polite letter on state department letterhead telling me that I wasn't chosen for a summer internship. To put it mildly, I'm crushed. In fact, this has just surpassed Cambridge as the greatest rejection of my life. I'm good, but not good enough. And the really terrifying part is that, unlike with Cambridge I can't say anything along the lines of "well, if I had done such and such it might have gone differently." There was nothing else I could do. I put absolutely all of me into this. Everything I have, everything I am. I've never worked so hard at anything in all my life. I NEED that internship. That internship is the next step in my fucking LIFE.
What the hell am I supposed to do if I'm not good enough for my life? | | |
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