Tucson Bound

I’m leaving for Tucson Thursday evening, and I am SO SO SO excited. It’s just me going, and the week away from Feller will be pretty terrible, but I am so looking forward to uninterrupted time to visit and reconnect with my friends.

Am I in any way prepared for this trip? NOPE. I am pondering what I will pack, which means debating HOW MUCH I’ll pack. Like, Imma be gone for a week, maybe I should check a bag? But I don’t WANNNNNNNNA check a bag! But how much makeup and shoes can you fit into your carryon? I think it’ll just take some creative finagling of the “overhead compartment bag, under the seat bag and purse” rule. But, SERIOUSLY? You gonna make all your shit fit into what the flight attendants will allow you to carry onto the plane? Like, REALLY?

And that’s where I start downsizing the amount of makeup and shoes I would normally pack for a week long trip that involves going to church on Sunday, an occasion for which I like to dress up. I think Imma leave my heels at home this time. I will take two pairs of jeans, because, really? I’ll be gone a week; I need to at least PRETEND to wear more than one pair of pants ever. (Feller was SHOCKED and SCANDALIZED that I would pack three pairs of jeans for our six week trip to Cape Town and the UK. “But … you can just WASH them!”)

I might need to pack before I pack just to make sure I can actually fit everything I want into my various bags. Also, I should determine whether I can carry more stuff easily in my GIANT laptop traveling bag or if I should borrow Feller’s backpack. And what purse do I want to bring? The heavy one that holds a lot of stuff? Or the one that doesn’t weigh five pounds when empty?

And HOW THE HECK am I getting to the airport? My flight leaves at 4 pm, so Feller can’t take me because his job is PRETTY STRICT about 9-5, and fuck if I’m paying for my car to sit five minutes from our house for a week. I’m thinking bus, but again, HOW MUCH SHIT AM I TAKING?! Because lugging all that on public transit doesn’t sound fun to me. But I might be too cheap to take a cab. DILEMMAS.

Oh, and is my present for BFF’s baby shower ready? NOPE. I mean, I guess I have until Sunday afternoon, but let’s not wait until the LAST POSSIBLE second, shall we?

There’s just so much to do in the next few days, and I’d like to hit the gym before I go, hopefully for my 3 times a week goal, but that depends on when the TV delivery guys get here, I think. Sometime between 1-6. Wonderful. And guess who’s been fighting a cold the past three days and, thus, utterly useless for anything that isn’t NAPPING? ME. That would be me. Doesn’t my immune system know that I have BETTER things to do?

I guess now, while waiting for the TV, would be a good time to be productive.

Being More Awesome: Finances and Friendships

I haven’t really talked about Being More Awesome for awhile here, mostly because things have been going pretty great. I’ve been traveling and trying new things and learning to live with a partner and share equally and be completely transparent with him about many things for which transparency is really difficult for me, like money stuff.

Money stuff talk ALWAYS stresses me out and having to rely on Feller for money stuff REALLY REALLY REALLY stresses me out, but I’m learning to deal with that and react calmly when it comes. I’m learning to share all of my finances with him, and I’m not hiding NOTHING. If I’m gonna spend more than $5 on something, I let him know about it because I want him to know that it’s important to me to be completely 100% transparent with how I spend my money. Since most of what I make (all of what I make, if we’re being TOTALLY honest) should go to bills and other necessities, I like to make sure he knows I’m not spending money frivolously, so that “I spent too much money” will never be an argument we have (much like the “PUT AWAY YOUR FUCKING LAUNDRY” argument we never have).

ANYWAYS, one of the habits I’ve noticed myself getting into is saying frequently “I have no friends”, which might be true, but certainly isn’t the kind of attitude that helps me make new friends. I have lots of friends in Tucson, whom I love and who I could never ever replace, but that’s no reason not to make NEW friends here.

As I was doing my daily writing exercise (it involves a lot of babbling and things I would NEVER let another human being read) a few days ago, it hit me like a thunderbolt that continually living with the mentality of “I have no friends (because I’m a lonely sad loser)” is ACTUALLY NOT the way to make new friends! And I realized that I need to STOP putting that negative shit out in the universe are start espousing a more positive outlook. SURE, I don’t have many close friends here, location wise or level of trust wise, but that’s only because I haven’t MADE them yet!

And SERIOUSLY, since I realized that and changed my thinking, I’ve gone out with some girls from a store at which I’ve been covering shifts, and I made a Girl Date with one of the girls from my store. I’ve put myself out there to people I don’t really know that well, but who I might like to get to know better. And as lame as this sounds, I’ve made my intentions clear. I’ve ACTUALLY TOLD PEOPLE “I wanna be your friend” because really? I’ve spent enough time NOT having friends, thankyouverymuch.

In conclusion, I’m Being More Awesome.

Cape Town Shenanigans

We did a lot of awesome things while we were in Cape Town, but a lot of it was just the regular chill type of stuff that you do when you go back home. I know when I go back to Tucson, I chill with all my BFF’s and eat at my favorite restaurants and drink at my favorite bars, specifically The Meet Rack. DELIGHTFUL.

We had many a braai with friends of Feller, people who love him and went out of their way to have us over to their homes. Good conversation, alcohol, excessive amounts of Savannah Cider (and Strongbow in the UK), fun people, nerding out, role playing, laughing, missing out on cultural references since since all my pop cultural comes from the US. Oh, there was many a time in South Africa AND the UK where I didn’t get a joke because it was unique to the location. And I kept joking that I had no idea Feller knew so many people who liked him so much; I mean, people FLEW IN from out of town to see him!, but he’s wonderful, so I’m not actually surprised. Plus I got to spend some time with a friend and her knitting group, which was a lovely way to spend an afternoon, and I bought some really lovely sock yarn that I can’t wait to work with

This trip really was FASCINATING because I’ve never spent so much time in foreign countries, and the fact that they were fairly close to what I’m used to seeing in the US made the differences that much more glaring. You know what the weirdest, most random difference was for me? All the toilet flusher handles are on the wrong side of the tank. Think about it! When you go to flush a toilet, you reach for the left side, but in both SA and the UK, the handles are on the right, if they’re not in the center of the tank. Either way, WEIRD.

Anyways, we spent a lot of time hanging out with some awesome people and Feller’s parents (who were also awesome). His mom took us to Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, and it was beautiful.

Mum’s a tour guide there, so we got a wonderful (free!) tour of the gardens, with history and plant information. It was a beautiful day and so pleasant to spend that time getting to know Mum a little bit more.

We really hoped to go back again while we were there; they had an AMAZING sculpture exhibit that we wanted to see more of, but ALAS, life and vacation and SLEEP got in the way of our plans, and we never made it back.

We also took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain and had dinner at Waterfront and drank excessively and watched TV with the Parents and went to Cederberg for a long weekend and some light hiking.

Overall, this vacation was exactly what we were hoping for when we left. It was beautiful and relaxing and GLORIOUS. I’m TOTES looking forward to going back and spending more time with some awesome people.

(More pictures at Flickr, obviously. Click any of the pics to check the rest out.)

Happy Holidays

So, quickly, check out my 2010 Book List! Eventually, I’ll get down to doing a Top Five of 2010, but it might be a couple of weeks. You know how I am about follow through.

ANYWAYS. The feller and I went home for Christmas and New Year’s. Well, my home. Arizona. We stayed a few days with my mom, until we decided that we needed some Grown Up Time and got a motel, which was AWESOME. OMG. Awesome. And then we were down in Tucson for about 5 days staying with my BFF and her hubby. And, fuck. It was SO NICE. We didn’t have a plan or an agenda or shit that we had to do. No wedding dress shopping or bridal showers or weddings or birthdays or preplanned bbq’s. All those things were fun, and I enjoyed doing them, but there’s something to be said for the freedom to chill and hang and do whatever you feel like doing.

We had dinner with friends and played with fireworks (they’re legal in AZ now!) (except bottle rockets; you still can’t have those) (how long before someone burns down his neighborhood, I wonder?) and made Christmas candy with Mariam and I got a new tattoo and we went shopping and drinking and just had a relaxing good time. It was EXACTLY what I was hoping for on this trip, and even though it wasn’t how my feller wanted to spend his Christmas break, he was wonderful and went along with everything I suggested.

The only bad thing is that I’m homesick like crazy now (though I suppose I will admit that the INTENSITY of my feelings are in part due to menstrual hormones). If I weren’t in a happy, loving and committed relationship, I’d pack up my stuff tomorrow and go home. And it’s not even that I don’t LIKE the Bay Area; I like it FINE, but it’s not my home. It’s not where my support system, all the people I love, is, and I just don’t know if I could ever feel about here the way I feel about there. Because it’s about more than just the people and relationships that I have there that I don’t have here; I LOVE Tucson. I love the desert and the mountains and the heat and the summer storms, and, I don’t know, I feel at home there. I have since the first day I moved down there. But for now, I just hope and pray that my path leads me home someday.

ANYWAYS. Tucson was awesome. Family was awesome. Friends were awesome. And everyone really liked the feller. All in all, it was a successful trip. And we came home to find our house-sitter was a secret cleaning freak (or maybe not so secret; I don’t know her life), and she left us a list of the things she had cleaned, which basically was ALL THE THINGS. NO JOKE, she DUSTED OUR CEILING, y’all. I don’t think I’ve EVER dusted a ceiling in my LIFE. AND she thought my kitties were adorable! Even Bandito, who’s kind of a shithead! So that was a pleasant surprise at 3 am when we got home.

So, good trip, good holidays and now it’s back to the same old same old for now. But I do believe change is a comin’ this year. I’m ready, I am.

Hot Town

It seems I always have a nostalgic post all geared up for when I get back from a trip to Tucson. Just being in that place with all those memories and all those people I love is such a positive experience that even some bullshit drama can’t derail the joy I have being home. And even though it was hot this weekend, so hot that a party at midnight left me with sweat dripping down my sides, I am a child of that heat, and I will never not enjoy the sun on my face and shoulders.

This weekend was all I could have hoped for, and even though it was hard to leave, as always, it didn’t break my heart to say goodbye to my bestest at the airport like it did the last time. We got some amazing quality time together, and some amazing memories were created. And while I wouldn’t trade laughing until I was crying while playing Things (I just do not understand why my friends expected me to have come up with all the dirty responses), or wondering why dudes were getting nekkid at the Meet Rack (as far as I could tell the answer was “Why not?”) or dishing about our relationships with my girlfriends, I was ready to come back to my new home and wake up next to my feller.

I think this is like growth or progress or some shit.