some happenings.

it has been a bizarre past couple of days. josh is still in georgia and i’m back in seattle, and we won’t see each other until mid-august. that in itself is weird, leaving him with my parents and returning home where i’m without family and my boyfriend; i never thought i’d be in this position, and it’s strange and sad. thank goodness for skype… it’s been helping a lot with the separation discomfort.

i started working on wednesday, both nannying and housekeeping; housekeeping is pretty wretched unless i’m just working on something alone and don’t have to talk to people, and nannying is a boundary-pushing experience. it’s weird because i am really bad at interacting with children. i love kids and i want to have tons of them someday, but i really don’t know how to talk to them. i get shy and self-conscious. and awkward. i know that the key to interacting with children is engaging them, but i feel like there’s only so many questions i can ask them or observations i can make before they get bored and i end up sounding stupid. is that an issue of pride or is it just poor conversation skills? hard to say. but i’m hoping that nannying will make me more kid-friendly and more at ease around the young ones.

cute story from nannying: so i’m like a mommy’s helper in the early early mornings for this family that has three girls; marlena (almost 5), tessabell (3), and elektra (7 months). aside from their names being a source of entertainment in themselves, the girls are really funny. the family is taking a trip to chicago to visit the grandparents, and apparently there is a public pool right across the street from where their grandparents live. marlena was asking her mom if she could ride down a waterslide by herself instead of with her parents, and her mom said that they would have to check the age limit and that it might be too scary. to which marlena replied: “well maybe i could ride down the slide by myself, and if it’s too scary, then i can ride down the slide with you or dad the next time. i could try that, but only if i’m old enough to ride by myself.” so rational! just like a little adult! i was thoroughly impressed.

i’ve been working eight hour days between the two jobs, and haven’t had much time to do anything except go to bed at 9pm. but now the weekend is here, and i have weekends off, so i’m looking for things to occupy my time. there are the obvious choices (being, read and watch movies), but i want to do something a little more creative with my free time. there’s a copy of w magazine on my dining room table that i’m assuming belongs to one of my roommates, and while i was leafing through it the other night whilst eating dinner, i can across an article about artist fred tomaselli. i was totally blown away by the ornate detail of his works, and it has inspired me to create art. i need to figure out where to procure wood slats and resin, and then i want to use everything i see to make some beautiful pieces of art.

i will stick with these artistic endeavors. i will stick with these artistic endeavors. i will stick with these artistic endeavors.

this is my new mantra.

time keeps on changing; you tell it stay still, but it won’t listen.

william faulkner once said “clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” it’s so easy to think of time as a machine, that keeps producing minutes and hours and days and years at peak efficiency. when we stop imposing this mechanistic model of time onto time, and just let it hang suspended, floating, within the short duration of our lives, doesn’t it serve us better? time, as interconnected with change, is something that people like to make their enemy because it can’t be controlled or contained, but time is often such a beautiful gift, is it not?

exactly a year ago, i was in south africa. at the risk of sounding cliche, it really feels like yesterday that i was arriving in cape town, my first time off the continent, and experiencing an entirely new world. there was so much unknown at that point, so much that would happen in the following twelve months that i could never have guessed would happen: having trysts with two south africans and an american while studying abroad, returning home to an grotesquely unfamiliar life in georgia, getting over my first love that i thought i’d never be able to let go of, cultivating an entirely new circle of friends, living to see my twenty-first birthday, finding the balls to cut all of my hair off, deciding to graduate early, quitting smoking and taking up running again, finding the man i’m going to love for the rest of my life. so much has changed in the past year, and yet, i am still myself and there is so much time for me to experience that will bring even more changes that i can’t foresee. it’s frightening, but it’s also kind of freeing to not be a slave of time, but a friend of time; to let it pass unfettered and to look back on it in amazement, to appreciate what time does to people and places and ideas, and to be at peace with the fact that it is its own entity that is free of human control.

amazing.