Shoes Are Like Friends ... You Can't Have Too Many

Those are my mishloach manot. The bag says, "Shoes are like friends ... you can never have too many." (Sorry for the bad photo quality. I don't think it's my phone so much as the fact that I haven't figured out how to use said phone yet.) Inside are shoe-shaped cookies and plastic champagne glasses filled with jelly beans—sufficiently girly?

But really, this post is about how I have super-amazing friends. My roommate situation has lately had me doubting whether I am a good friend, a good roommate, and a good person. But I am pretty sure I wouldn't have such fantastic friends if I were really that sucky of a person. (And, yes, I did just use the word sucky.)

I have friends who keep me stocked in seasonal Popems since you can't buy them in this ridiculous city. (I have a box of St. Patrick's Day ones open in front of me as we speak, and the friend who sent them is my hero.) Friends who come visit and ones who send me things like a high-heel cookie cutter and an entire box of gifts to open in different situations and balloons on my birthday and a season of Gilmore Girls and homemade cookies and a Coffee Bean gift card and cards and NYC postcards and lots of flip-flop and coffee paraphernalia. I am sure I am missing lots of things because, well, my friends are just that fantastic and have been keeping the postal service busy (which is good because it's not doing so well).

Anyhow, you know who you are, and I love you. And writing about you is oh-so-much more fun than writing my paper proposal.

What Doesn't Kill You ...

Today, the source of much of my current anxiety, stress, and frustration told me that my anxiety is going to give me cancer.

Most Awkward Text Message Conversation Ever

This couple (who is enough older than I am that we're not peers—I really like them and respect them; we're just not quite peers) who I have been to for a bunch of Shabbos meals invited me for a meal this Shabbos. I happily responded that I was coming. A guy I am friendly with asked if he could tag along. Not being the type who typically hangs out with guys, I felt a little uncomfortable but this guy has helped me find Shabbos meals a bunch of times and is a nice guy, so I said OK and text messaged to ask if he could join the meal. The answer was: "Yes, he can come, but can I be personal and ask how good of a friend he is." At which point, I had to craft a text-message response to answer the unasked question about whether I was dating said guy (which I am not).

New modes of communication. Same awkwardness.

Deep Thoughts: The Bad Day Edition

"It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that. Even in Australia."

• Having friends visit is amazing. But when they leave and you can deflate the air mattress that may or may not have been half under your desk for a week, it's sad.
• I broke one of my cardinal rules last week. I bought makeup even though it didn't come with a free gift just so I could get parking validation. That means something profound about me, I am sure, but I am too tired to figure out what.
  
• My new phone is much, much smarter than I am, and now I can check my e-mail from anywhere. Considering how addicted I already am to my e-mail, I am not sure how good that is.
  
• Stress baking isn't really effective when your kitchen stresses you out.
• Confusion is not a state of mind I like.
• When you have a really bad day, it's really good to have a friend with whom you can take a walk—and then drink coffee.
  

Your Daily Dose of Shoe Lust

"It's really hard to walk in a single woman's shoes—that's why you sometimes need really special shoes."

I want.

What's the Point in All This Screaming? No One's Listening Anyway

"I don't need to pay a therapist to give me crap. I have a roommate that does it for free."

I am not a particularly hard person to live with. I get loud sometimes when I am on the phone, but I don't throw wild parties or blast my music at 3 a.m. (or ever). I am clean and I clean up after myself, but I am not ridiculously anal retentive about cleanliness (which my past roommates can attest to for better or for worse and which is remarkable considering how many things I am anal retentive about). I am relatively tolerant of others, and I am unlikely to tell someone that something they are doing bothers me unless it really bothers me because I recognize that living with other people means making compromises.

I know this because I have lived with lots of people. I have had fantastic roommates (all of my former roommates who read this blog fall into that category) and less fantastic roommates. But none of them ever blew up and yelled at me. And I never yelled at any of them (snapped once or twice, yes, but never yelled). And here's the thing: I don't yell at people. I cannot remember the last time I yelled at someone who I wasn't related to (and family is its own can of worms) before I lived here.

But I have been trying. I have been trying so hard. I have not blogged any rants about the roommates lately because I made a conscious decision that it is really hard to try to get along with people while you complain about them publicly (even if my public is quite small). I can count on one hand the number of comments I have made to my roommates in the recent past about things that bother me in the apartment. I have cleaned up disgusting messes that did not belong to me rather than ask the messer-upper to clean them up because I consciously decided that shalom bayit was worth those things.

Oh, I complained to friends more than I should have, and I am sure I did things that were annoying to my roommates that I didn't even realize. But I have been trying. I have been trying with all my might to make the best of a bad situation. Trying. Trying. Trying. And I am done.

Five Years Old and Never Been Kissed By ...

My blog is five years old today. I started blogging as a sophomore in college, five years later, I live in a different state. I am in a different university, studying a different academic subject, far away from the city I call home and the people who make it feel like home. Still, my passions and my beliefs have not changed, nor the fact that I will do anything for the people I love. My heels are still ridiculously high. My room is still color-themed (even if the colors have changed). My obsession with seasonal candy has not waned. Five years later, I have grown, but I am, at heart, the same person.

Happy birthday. And many more.

Happy Day After Valentine's

My sentiments exactly.

It's Like Living in the Heights

First awkward Shabbos meal in L.A. with a guy I dated! (Truth be told, it really wasn't bad at all. Maybe I'm growing up or something.) Just in case I missed the Heights too much.

In Which I Could Have Worked for Nissan

Me: Hi, I'd like to apply this discount to a new Sprint plan.
Radio Shack guy: OK... Hmm. It's not showing up for as much as it should. But I can just give you a different discount.
Me: What do you mean?
Radio Shack guy: I'll just say you work at Nissan and give you their employee discount.
[Note: I do not work for Nissan.]
Me: Umm. I don't feel comfortable with that.
Radio Shack guy: Well, I don't know what to tell you. It's up to you to do the right thing.

I did not get the new phone plan, which means I am still currently on a cell phone plan with virtually no service, but, um, isn't it up to the Radio Shack guy to do the right thing, too?

Dispatch From the Ph.D. Dungeon

Note to self: Napping at one's desk while wearing a cable-knit sweater means one might wake up with the cable-knit pattern imprinted on one's forehead. I am currently trying to avoid calling any attention to myself until said pattern disappears. It's at least slightly better than when I fall asleep on top of my ring (one of those Kotel rings with my name on it) and then end up with my name upside down and backward on my forehead.

It might be worth getting more sleep so as to avoid this.

Homesick

"It is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal. Its politics are used to frighten children. Its traffic is madness. Its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no other place is good enough."

I've been missing New York a lot lately. My standard answer when people ask how I like L.A. is, "It's not New York." And that's really the best I can do because it's not New York. Because I miss New York. Really, though, I miss my friends. I miss being there for the good and the bad (both of which I missed last week). I miss having a shoulder to cry on and offering a shoulder to others. And L.A.? The weather's nice, but this is no city.

Did You Fail the Third Grade?

Overheard: "Is it really cheaper to make your own coffee instead of buying it?"

Did you ever hear of multiplication? Why don't you try it out and see if you can answer that question for yourself?

Overheard: "Wait, so Manhattan is different than New York City, right? And Manhattan is in Massachusetts, right?"

This from someone who has been to Manhattan but so far as I know has not been to Massachusetts.

Sorry—I get cranky when I sleep too much on Shabbos or something, but it's a good thing I have a blog. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to actually respond appropriately to these inane comments.

Mazal Tov

"Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without."

In honor of a very special couple that got engaged tonight.

Dating, Explained

From now on, any time I need to attempt an explanation of Orthodox dating to anyone, I am just sending them to this article and calling it a day. It's close enough to the truth and way easier on me.

(Click for larger image.)

That Would Make Me a Junkie

In a class discussion about what to use as a focus-group topic:

Classmate1: Performance-enhancing drugs.
Classmate2: Performance-enhancing drugs in academia.
Classmate3: Like coffee?