Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Anais' LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
1:39 pm	Regardless of what awaits me at work tomorrow, today is a good day. It's a cleaning/laundry/cooking/reading day. Two loads of laundry started, bathroom cleaned, dishes done and I'll head to the laundromat in a little bit to do the big items. Also need to re-pot some of the pepper plants and the tomato plants. I'm so excited, as we actually have little peppers starting to grow!! Hooray for container gardening! Yesterday I bought the latest issues of Mothering and Vegetarian Times magazines and read them both cover-to-cover. At Trader Joe's, we picked up some tempeh and I'm going to page through my Vegan Planet cookbook to find a new recipe to try, as I didn't see anything in vegetarian slow cooker book that would work with what's in the house right now. We're not vegans, or even completely vegetarian, but I've never been able to get over my squeamishness about handling raw meat, so vegetarian is all I make. Last week I made sloppy joe's with Morningstar crumbles and it turned out very good. I'm thinking of buying a Vitamix with some of our stimulus check. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
10:19 am	The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline the books you LOVE 4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-) 5)Annotate at will. 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Gramahe 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 PersuasionThe Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddo 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte's Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
12:00 am	Last night Dan and I went shopping for groceries. We walk into the store and get a cart, start walking through the produce section and I'm thinking out loud about what we need to get: "Bread, cheese, tea..." Dan pulls something out of his pocket and says "Let me check my list". His list consists of a 2008 Milwaukee Brewers game schedule, and he examines it carefully, which totally cracked me up. As we walked through the store, putting things into the cart, every so often I'd say "Don't forget to check your list -- are we missing anything?" at which point he would dutifully get the list out to examine again. I went to the dentist today and dutifully had my gums scraped -- ouch! Always an ordeal, even though I floss daily and use a sonic toothbrush. Today was pretty painful. But at least my dentist is cool. I also have a tumor, or rather pimple, on my face, which must be an expression of hormonal imbalance. My body's probabaly still out-of-whack. Back to work tomorrow, although it was supposed to be my day off. My boss's husband is in the hospital, and there are some V.I.Ps coming that will need to be entertained. So I suppose I should go to bed. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
9:39 pm	Portrait of an INFP - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving (Introverted Feeling with Extraverted Intuition) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Idealist As an INFP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. INFPs, more than other iNtuitive Feeling types, are focused on making the world a better place for people. Their primary goal is to find out their meaning in life. What is their purpose? How can they best serve humanity in their lives? They are idealists and perfectionists, who drive themselves hard in their quest for achieving the goals they have identified for themselves INFPs are highly intuitive about people. They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. Every encounter and every piece of knowledge gained gets sifted through the INFP's value system, and is evaluated to see if it has any potential to help the INFP define or refine their own path in life. The goal at the end of the path is always the same - the INFP is driven to help people and make the world a better place. Generally thoughtful and considerate, INFPs are good listeners and put people at ease. Although they may be reserved in expressing emotion, they have a very deep well of caring and are genuinely interested in understanding people. This sincerity is sensed by others, making the INFP a valued friend and confidante. An INFP can be quite warm with people he or she knows well. INFPs do not like conflict, and go to great lengths to avoid it. If they must face it, they will always approach it from the perspective of their feelings. In conflict situations, INFPs place little importance on who is right and who is wrong. They focus on the way that the conflict makes them feel, and indeed don't really care whether or not they're right. They don't want to feel badly. This trait sometimes makes them appear irrational and illogical in conflict situations. On the other hand, INFPs make very good mediators, and are typically good at solving other people's conflicts, because they intuitively understand people's perspectives and feelings, and genuinely want to help them. INFPs are flexible and laid-back, until one of their values is violated. In the face of their value system being threatened, INFPs can become aggressive defenders, fighting passionately for their cause. When an INFP has adopted a project or job which they're interested in, it usually becomes a "cause" for them. Although they are not detail-oriented individuals, they will cover every possible detail with determination and vigor when working for their "cause". When it comes to the mundane details of life maintenance, INFPs are typically completely unaware of such things. They might go for long periods without noticing a stain on the carpet, but carefully and meticulously brush a speck of dust off of their project booklet. INFPs do not like to deal with hard facts and logic. Their focus on their feelings and the Human Condition makes it difficult for them to deal with impersonal judgment. They don't understand or believe in the validity of impersonal judgment, which makes them naturally rather ineffective at using it. Most INFPs will avoid impersonal analysis, although some have developed this ability and are able to be quite logical. Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst. INFPs have very high standards and are perfectionists. Consequently, they are usually hard on themselves, and don't give themselves enough credit. INFPs may have problems working on a project in a group, because their standards are likely to be higher than other members' of the group. In group situations, they may have a "control" problem. The INFP needs to work on balancing their high ideals with the requirements of every day living. Without resolving this conflict, they will never be happy with themselves, and they may become confused and paralyzed about what to do with their lives. INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they're feeling on paper. INFPs also appear frequently in social service professions, such as counselling or teaching. They are at their best in situations where they're working towards the public good, and in which they don't need to use hard logic. INFPs who function in their well-developed sides can accomplish great and wonderful things, which they will rarely give themselves credit for. Some of the great, humanistic catalysts in the world have been INFPs. Jungian functional preference ordering: Dominant: Introverted Feeling Auxiliary: Extraverted Intuition Tertiary: Introverted Sensing Inferior: Extraverted Thinking Portrait of an INFP - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving (Introverted Feeling with Extraverted Intuition) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 30th, 2007
11:41 pm	I love my husband lots but he snores so loudly! I'm debating whether or not I should just bunk down on the couch tonight...I can hear him in the other room :) Yesterday I went to the library and one of the books I checked-out is called Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda. Well, I started reading it and quickly decided that I wanted my own copy, as it is a book I plan to reference for years to come. I'm going to try to read every book he mentions in, shall we say, the next five years? The strangest thing happened when I went into work this afternoon: I came in for my shift and my co-worker Renee was sitting at the breakroom table reading the very same book! I said (very enthusiastically) "Get out! I just got that book from the library and I'm going to buy it!" She seemed amused. Renee and I have similar tastes in books. We both like historical fiction, and generally have a similar appreciation -- some might say obsession -- with books in general. janeausten and I used to go to a monthly book club with her, but we stopped going and I can't remember why. Guilty pleasure # 514: Michael Jackson songs: Billie Jean, Thriller, Beat It, Bad, Smooth Criminal, etc. etc. (Comment on this)
12:17 am	We watched the Doctor Who Christmas episode last night and it was a lot of fun (our copy came in yesterday's mail). Yay Kylie Minogue! I stopped at the health food store before work to buy a neti pot, but they were all out. Apparently, Oprah talked about them (and we all know what happens when Oprah promotes something). I'm going to stop at another store tomorrow. I'm recovering from a head cold and I do not want to get the dreaded Sinus Infection that I so often end up with. Anyone know of some good holistic ways to prevent a sinus infection? (Comment on this)
Monday, November 5th, 2007
11:04 pm	I'm going to be making most of my entires-- both new and past ones -- friends only. Please send me an email if you'd like to be added. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 27th, 2006
8:31 pm	Went to the funeral tonight. Saw a lot of people, a lot of kids just out of high school...as I said to the person next to me in line, it felt surreal. Many of us decided not to stay for the memorial service. Because what can be said? What can be done? We can talk about what a wonderful person he was (there wasn't a mean bone in his entire body). We can talk about how tragic it is. But we can't bring him back, and that's all anybody wants to do. I hope that wherever he is, he's at peace. I hope that something good can come out of this...somehow. I feel so lucky to be alive, to be able to drink Earl Grey tea with sugar and milk and watch The Simpsons on t.v., and spend a day at the library reading magazines and finding a stack of books to check out. Lucky to be in love with my husband and have a family who loves me and friends and co-workers...I try to end each day by thanking God for me blessings, even on those not-so-good days, and tonight, I feel so extraordinarily blessed. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
12:09 am	A co-worker of mine committed suicide earlier this week. I found out today. He was eighteen years old and a freshman in college. He hanged himself in the closet of his dorm room and his roommate found him. People are saying that he'd been depressed since breaking-up with his girlfriend. I last saw him over the winter holidays, and I can't believe he won't be coming back this summer. As someone who's been suicidal and depressed -- and gotten help and gotten better -- I know that he was probably feeling so much pain that death seemed like the only way to stop the pain. You don't think clearly in that condition. I keep thinking about all the things he'll never do...ten years from now, we'll all be older and will have experienced a lot of things, but he'll never be more than the sum of his eighteen years. He could have been more. He could have gotten through this darkness and found that there is joy after depression. He could have continued to stumble, as we all do, through life, and contributed something great to the world. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
10:26 am	An amazing thing happened yesterday. It's happened before, but I'm still amazed, because I always forget how different I feel when I open myself up to the Divine: quit making excuses about why I've been so selfish, quit the rationalizations about why my religion is flawed, quit the endless questioning...just turn my face toward God like a flower turned toward the sun. God, Goddess....I struggle so much with the sexism of Catholocism and Christianity, but when I'm able to put that aside and say "It's not about me, it's about You" I feel completely different, and I know the people around me see it, too. I came into work feeling better than I've felt in a long while. D got low around 4:30 this morning. I woke up and he was staring at me with one eye closed, skin flushed and sweating. I knew immediately his blood sugar must have dropped, but I'm never sure how much, and he was not in any condition to help me test. He kept pulling his finger away and falling back to sleep. It took some coaxing, but I got him to drink some Powerade, which is what we keep onhand now instead of juice since he's trying to keep his potassium intake low. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
11:55 am	Time for tea. I don't have to go into work for a few hours, so I've put Persuasion in the DVD player, folded the laundry and put the kettle on. I received a book I ordered in the mail yesterday from the Amazon.com marketplace...an out-of-print title Women's Rites by Beverly Byrne. I found it on a list of books about women's spirituality at some website or another. From reading the back, I think it'll be right up my alley (once I get past the fact that a character's name is "Barbie"): In the Boston suburb of Revere in the 1960's, they are high school "best friends." Barbie Korman, beautiful, insecure, and Jewish, becomes a model after graduation. Maria Trapetti, intense, brilliant, and molded by her Italian Catholic heritage, enters a convent. But the overwhleming force in both their lives is the legacy of another woman, a woman who lived centuries before, a woman represented by an exquisitely carved figurine from the tiny island of Lanzarote, known simply as "the lady." As the years pass Barbie finds herself in a passionate love affair with Joe Dianni, a Catholic priest. Maria years for the secular world and works with archeologist Hank Rolles. Both women search for their places in the world and, as more years pass, experience life's many rich possibilities. But always they -- and the men in their lives -- are drawn to "the lady" of Lanzarote..... Sounds good to me. It says in the book that the author lives on Lanzarote, a Spanish island just off the coast of Africa. So she chose tho use it as a setting for the book. Interesting. I've been in a depressed mood the past four or five days...feeling unmotivated at work and unsure of what to do with myself at home. Yesterday I went to the denist, then cleaned, watched a movie on Lifetime -- they suck you in those dammn Lifetime movies! -- exercised, and thought I was doing well until D came home from work and I turned into a bit of a bitch. What set me off? I kept alternately apologizing and then criticizing him. He's had a medical bill in collections for months now, and hasn't called them, even though they call almost every day. How are we going to qualify for a loan with that on our credit report? Sometimes I'm struck at how bad we are for each other...I enable him and he enables me. Is it love or codependency? What's the difference? And what should I do? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
5:18 pm	One year I had a lunar calendar and I decided to get one again this year, because I think keeping track of the moon helps me understand my own waxing and waning energies. This week the moon is waning, and I feel myself flirting with the edges of darkness. I could never turn my back on those shadows, but its been a while since I've done any shadow work. Last night and today I feel bold and strong with an awareness of the darkness that's within (and without). My voice is loud and doesn't hesitate when I speak. I think of Inanna and her sister Eriskegal who rules the Underworld. I think of Hecate and Persephone. What should I do to honor Her? (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 14th, 2006
2:49 pm	I've been thinking about why I've been dreaming about a certain seventeen-year-old co-worker, and as I discussed with janeausten I think it has to do with envying the place he is at in his life: young and still discovering the person he'll be, beginning to make decisons about his future...anything to convince myself I'm not a pedophile, okay? We saw Pride & Prejudice the other day and it was very good. I liked this new production even more than the A&E version, especailly the Chopin-esq soundtrack. Sometimes being married is hard. As I read somewhere, relationships reflect back the worst parts of yourself, and being married, that shit is reflected back a lot faster and more often that with someone who doesn't know you as well. D and I fight about cleaning, because we're both pretty messy, and the long and short of it is, I'm not an easy person to live with. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 6th, 2006
2:21 pm	I would like to announce to the world that we have a new sofa... ...and it totally rocks. Totally rocks. I'm sure its wrong to be so happy about getting a sofa, but I am very, very pleased. On the downside, I heard something in the walls yesterday, and I'm rather cetain it's a rodent. Also, I keep having dreams about having to move. This morning, I dreamed that the neighbors were using an ax on the door to try to get in and rob us. I don't look foward to moving again, but it is inevitable. This wonderful new sofa was a bitch to get in, and will be a bitch to get out. Such is life :) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
11:34 pm	One day off is like a sigh in the midst on being winded from Too Much Work. I met D for lunch. I went to Ashley Furniture and purchased a new sofa with some of the money we received from Christmas -- we're really excited about that. It was time for a new sofa when the television remote disappeared for three days and D finally found it a hole underneath the cushions, cushions that contastly require re-adjusting to keep one from sitting on the frame. We checked out a few places last night and decided that Ashley was the best and most affordable. The new sofa is large and comfortable and will be great for taking naps. It's scheduled to arrive a week from Friday. I did two loads of laundry and made it to Family Dinner Night. I finished reading Children of God by Mary Russell, the sequel to The Sparrow a fantastic book which I literally couldn't put down and stayed up until roughly 2 a.m. the other night to finish. I have so much to read and not enough time to do it in. D bought me a sewing machine for Christmas and I plan on making sewing my new project. There is a particular dress I own that I believe will be relatively simple to reproduce, and I've wanted to try my hand at making a white nightgown ever since watching Franco Zeforelli's 1968 version of Romeo & Juliet -- I fell in love with the movie and also the white gown worn during a particular scene. If only there were a bit more room in this cozy, one-bedroom apartment which we already have overstuffed with books and bookselves, wedding gifts and who-knows-what-else. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 16th, 2005
1:02 pm	This time of year really is a strain for those of us who work in retail. Oddly enough, sometime late yesterday as I sat working overtime on a personal shedule, a sense of well-being came over me, that I'm pleased to say I still feel today. I feel a heightened appreciation for little things: the sound of my feet crunching on new-fallen snow; delight in the titles and subject matter reflected on my bookshelves, and a keeness to read them all again...joy in just being alive. What gets lost is time to play. I go to work and function there. I come home and function here. Where is the time to play? Even adults need playtime. I suspect the well-being may be hormonal, but who knows? I'm going to drink several cups of herbal tea, get ready for work, and spend some quiet time reading before I have to leave. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 2nd, 2005
11:12 am	I thought about writing a poem last night...sometimes when I'm lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, I start composing these things. Usually I'm not motivated to get up and write them down and then in the morning, they're gone. It wasn't really a happy poem. The jist of it was how I felt like a field after a swarm of locusts has been through, and all their tiny jaws have eaten away the grain. On the up side, there are several men at work I enjoy flirting with :) I'm a Libra, and flirting makes me happy. I live a great deal in my imagination, which is a necessary escape from the day-to-day grind. My current reading about D.H. Lawrence (now I'm a reading a bio of his wife, Frieda and isn't it interesting) got me thinking about the artist's motivation for making art. When the world doesn't make sense (and let's face it, that's fairly often) the artist re-creates it to make sense to him/her: the painting, the poem, the novel, the song. The Metaphor. It's what separates us from the beasts. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 9th, 2005
10:02 am	It's been a while since I've updated. So what's been going on? Our wedding is getting closer, and I've finally gotten a dress, met the deacon several times, and had a bridal shower where people gave us all kinds of presents, etc., etc. I've said to several people, including my psychiatrist, that I've "gone off the deep end" with religion. He just smiled and didn't seem concerned. My focus has changed. God is more often central in my thoughts. I feel drawn more and more into "the mystery". It's kinda weird :) But also, wonderful. I think about my confirmation day about a year ago. It was probably the best day of my life so far, because I felt so happy and peaceful. There's so much suffering in the world. And everywhere, everywhere, I see how quickly we make our hearts hard toward God and toward each other. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 19th, 2005
11:57 am	I'm not very into memes, but here's one from the journal of realdartagnan: Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs. Blowing bubbles -- summer, winter, anytime. Exercise. Prayer, especially the Rosary. Reading a good book or reading through a pile of good magazines. I love magazines :) Taking a nap. Taking a hot bath with some lavender or rose oil. **** The last few nights I've gotten some good, quality sleep and had very healing dreams. Last night, in particular, my dreams were intense, but they're fading very quickly. There were elements of my family, my body, work, and being in a different period of history. Lots of baby imagery again, too. I told D we need to plan a weekend to go to the Dells. The first or second year we were dating, there was a summer when we drove up there several times. I remember having so much fun...and the Dells have always been a special place for me, ever since I vacationed there with my family. D and I made it a point to visit some of the attraction sites we'd never been to before: the Wonder Spot, Ripley's Believe It Or Not Musuem, the boat tours...neither of us had a lot of money. In fact, I remember we brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so we wouldn't have to pay for food, but we managed to do everything we wanted. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 9th, 2005
6:32 pm	My brother had an extra ticket to Wicked and I got to go see it yesterday!! The friend he was supposed to go with unexpectedly had to work, and I was able to trade shifts with another manager to get the day off. We made the commute to Chicago listening to the Wicked CD and Peter Gabriel songs, arriving with just enough time to eat lunch at a downtown restarauntbar called "Mondays" before heading to the Ford Theater, where crowds of people were pouring off of buses and lining up to get their seats. It was an afternoon show, but just as crowded as a Saturday night would be. Wicked was every bit as good as I had anticipated. A production like that leaves me full of wonder and awe. Not just the music, but the lights, the staging, the costumes, etc. And thanks to janeausten, I get to see it again in a few months!!! Chicago is also amazing, with skyscrapers and color and people. I enjoy people-watching, and if there had been time, I could have spent the entire day just doing that. A lot of people walking around downtown wear earphones or the trademark-white ipod earbuds. Strange that all those people want to tune out of what's going on around them. My brother and I talked about what it would be like to live there, and we both agreed it wasn't for us. Then again, I think a person can adapt to almost anything, and it's more a matter of what he and I are both used to. We grew up in a quiet suburb and now live in a metro-Milwaukee area that, while busy with traffic and businesses, doesn't come close to the activity of Chicago. I am enjoying being on my own this week. I'm not doing anything particularly exciting, just going to work, coming home and watching movies, sleeping, reading, etc. but I find that I'm not as lonely as I thought I would be. I like having the time and the space to focus and to center. In a little bit, I'm going to have a workout. I spent so much time alone gowing up. After I turned eight and my family moved to Wisconsin, I had a hard time making friends. I was not the the "odd girl out" or anything, but I did freqently prefer the company of books to people. As I got older, I always had one or two close friends, but even so, I spent a lot of time on my own. I made it so, because if I tried to do too much, tired to spend too much time with other people, I felt off-kilter. I felt drained. I still do, when I don't have enough time by myself. Often, my own inner world is more important to me than the outer world is. (3 Comments |Comment on this)