The Thirty-Third: TWO MONTHS

I have only two months left in China! This has put so much pressure on me.

1) I have so much to cover with my classes, so now I have all this prep work I need to do IMMEDIATELY. And though I had a free day today...nada.

Gonna wake up really early tomorrow to get some stuff done. Gotta work all weekend now.

2) I NEED TO GET OFF MY DUFF AND STUDY CHINESE SERIOUSLY BEFORE I GO HOME. 'TWILL BE TOTALLY PATHETIC IF I NEVER DID IT EVER.

3) I promised A that I would quit biting my nails here, and while I've been better about it, I've not quit.

But what I am the most concerned about (sadly) is now really want to come home hot. This swelling (expanding, exploding) desire has derailed all my recent mental health progress where I was happy at my weight and just wanted to be in shape.

Maybe I didn't actually make that progress.

So:

4) My skin. I have been so mean to it, and I hope serious Retin-A applications can fade the scarring lickety-split.

I've become super-disciplined about keeping up my skin care routine and not touching my skin EVER. (With the no nail-biting either, I am CONSTANTLY yanking my hands away from myself.)

5) My weight! According to the Spaniard's hotel scale and my clothing/eyes, I have not lost ANY weight since I came here, and I am no longer okay with that.

I just finally started pilates today. Will start running again tomorrow. (I'm nervous about finally confronting all the conditioning I've lost.)

Being very serious about diet. Been waking up to eat a large cafeteria breakfast, then a small lunch, then whatever fruit I want for the rest of the day. No chips, no junk. Lots of hunger. Motivation wavers hourly, because dieting totally sucks, and I'm really tired.

I wish I'd put more thought into it/could calculate the calories, but there's no time and not a lot of options in China. I can't imagine it's much less than 1200 calories, if that, so I'm sure it's fine. Two months won't kill me. Even if I am really, really tired.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.


P.S. I like this for my wedding dress:

































P.P.S. And I might like this purse:

































P.P.P.S. And, in an insane twist, I can actually afford them!

The Thirty-First

All those haikus inspired me to write this for A:

Planning our wedding
Whether you proposed or not
Empowered female!

The Twenty-Ninth

I don't have a very clear idea for this post. I just felt that enough things have happened that I ought to post. Those things are:

1) I had a fabulous morning on Friday, which put me into an insanely good mood in time for my daily lunchtime Skyping with A. My morning classes went fabulously--I explained things a little differently, and the kids GOT it. I had figured out a much better way to help Ryan (a student who asked me early in the year for extra help with her pronunciation -- we work for 20ish minutes every Friday lunchtime right after her class), so she left our session smiling very broadly (as opposed to totally disheartened, like last week). I also ran and showered before classes (something I wish I did everyday, but rarely ever do) and did a load of laundry and maybe even had proper food? I can't even remember. In any case, I felt like an extremely successful human being.

2) I had a totally horrible morning yesterday. Celebrations for the school's 100th anniversary were starting that afternoon, so the students had their minds on anything but English that morning. Teaching was like banging my head against the blackboard. My three classes painfully trudged through only a very small portion of my lesson, which means the schedules for those classes (on top of the ones that have been outright canceled because of the celebrations) are all screwy. Ordinarily, I can usually take such things in stride, but my patience was unusually short and my stress level unusually high for whatever reason.

Moreover, I was looking forward to my lunchtime chat with A because he has quite a relaxing effect on me, but it was then that my bloody (poor, ancient) computer decided its flirtation with dying (it had been having fleeting difficulties recognizing the power cord) had become a full-blown love affair. I had to trek back to the office to use the computer there and figure out how to set up Gmail video chat in effin' Chinese.

But it did eventually work, and I was aware that my evil mood was unreasonable, and talking to A did calm me down.

3) I did not run 40 minutes yesterday as I should have, because I was too tired and too scared. BUT, I did it today in the full heat of high noon in China. I. RAN. FORTY. MINUTES. That's SO many minutes! I even confirmed with A that that is significantly more minutes than either of us ever thought I'd run. Plus, plus, plus the students picked today of all days to take notice of me again (after the first flurry when I started running, they've been highly disinterested). First, one of my students hopped on the track and started running with me, but he didn't even make it a lap. I think it was partly because he didn't warm up or hit a stride, but mostly because he wasn't expecting me to turn around and run the other way mid-lap. (It was rather Bugs Bunny-esque how he went sailing on in the other direction.)

Then, when I had 15-20 minutes left, two Senior 3 boys stopped by and tried to talk to me whenever I ran past them. After a few times of waving at my headphones and saying, "I can't hear you!", they parked themselves in the shade and WATCHED me finish! And a workman and few younger students joined them!

When I did finally finish (I had a rough time at the beginning -- it was SO hot -- and again around the 25-30-minute mark, but I ran through it and finished feeling pretty good), the two Senior 3 boys came out to talk. They asked me about my shuffle

Me: My boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday.
Them [as if I'd said something MOST salacious]: OOoooh.

and how long I had just run

Me [all supercool and nonchalant]: Forty minutes.
Them: Wow, you are an athlete. How many years have you been training?

Then because I was going to stretch, they asked me to show them how. So I did that quickly (hilarious) and went inside to shower and crow to A.

The Eighteenth

In an email, I wrote:

Subject: I love my baby today. As I did yesterday. And the day before yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and...

And I'm going to love him tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...

[And then I posted a bunch of links to lolcats pictures and a pair of sneakers I'm considering.]



And he replied:

all those lolcats are funny. Because he is respecting my wishes that he reply to my efforts, even if I only send links.
those are MEN'S shoes. what's up with that? Because he is too by-the-book to overlook such a thing. and they are meh Because he is honest.

http://pbh2.blogspot.com/2009/04/chimp-makes-friends-with-white-tiger.html Because he always sends me links to cute, fuzzy things.

i was reading 11 Predictions That Back to the Future Part II Got Right. the whole list is probably won't be interesting to you (i freaking love that movie! Because sometimes his enthusiasm makes him so boyish.) but check this one out:

Video conferencing. Why were people in the past always been so obsessed with video conferencing? It's in every science fiction movie and book and on every future predictions list. Video conferencing has to be the number one thing science fiction begged for... we got... and then we all instantly got over.

We have free video chat capability now and we don't really use it. And you know why? Most of the time, we humans look like shit. It happens to all of us the first time we video chat -- we turn on Skype, connect with our friend, turn on our laptop's built-in camera... and recoil in horror at ourselves. The lighting is bad and the angle the camera shoots you is somehow worse. It's hard to focus on a conversation when all you can do is remember how much work it takes you on a day-to-day basis to be presentable to society.

So, yes, "Back to the Future Part II"... it's 2009 and we humans can Skype video chat whenever we want. But we don't. And for those who do... at least 90 percent of those video chats are primarily about one person trying to convince the other person to get nude.

made me lol and think of us.

dan and i went to bj's for lunch (it's a nice place, you and i should go there for lunch or dinner Because he knows I love to go out with him.). got a couple of beers, came back to the office and haven't done [anything] since so a nice relaxing friday.

see you soon, love you. Because he immediately and consistently stopped using "u" instead of "you" for me because he knew how strongly I felt about it (however silly that is).




And then he replied again:

by the way

And I'm going to love him tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that..

that's a hell of a promise. i hope you are right about that for both of us. i miss you a lot

Because he is perfect.

The Seventeenth: Going to Bed

I'm pretty happy here in ole China these days. The only true thorn in my side is a wildly off-kilter sleeping schedule that's been mucking things up. I don't know what my issue with going to bed is, but it's been around since childhood, and it always flares to magnificent proportions when I have a varied daily schedule, as I did in college and do now.

Going to bed is just so unappealing. Either I can continue to get things done or to relax with various fun forms of entertainment, or I can abruptly stop what I'm doing, lie down, and do...nothing.

I'll only do it at whatever time I actively start falling asleep, which is always later and later into the night. And now I'm going to bed at 4am and waking up today at 1:37pm.

When I'm home, in addition to his many other fine qualities, A is especially wonderful because he always goes to bed at the same time every night (between 10 and 11pm), and he always drags me with him. And when A is there, it's so fun to go to bed! He's warm and nice, and we get to talk without the TV, and he spoons me (cheesy, I know, but he's really good at it, so shhhh) until I fall asleep.

And then suddenly I'm regularly getting plenty of sleep at the correct time, and that really makes the rest of life so eeeaasy.

And, you know, who wouldn't want to climb into bed with this?

The Twelfth: "So you're coming home soon, right?"

A has this resigned little way of saying that, and it just breaks my heart. My being here has been very hard on him. It's difficult for me, and I miss him too, but it's definitely harder on him.
I asked him if he'd prefer that I came home for July/August and traveled September/November instead of coming home for August and traveling in July and September.

A: Hi baby. About your idea: of course it would be wonderful if you were home in just over 3 months. Of course it’d be great if you were here in July and August. But the idea of watching you leave again for another 2 months is so freaking depressing that don’t know what’s better. So you decide.

Today I asked him to tell me two nice things. This a habit I've developed because it's a way to insist that he tells me about the parts of his daily life that meant something to him but that he resists mentioning because he thinks they are too boring (and because it helps keep our conversations more positive and fun).

A: 1) i love you 2) i love you A LOT
me: Two nice things that have nothing to do with me. :)
A: all positive events in my life are related to you

A is a very direct, baldly honest person. He is extremely matter-of-fact about everything. So these incredibly sweet things he says? They're not meant to be flattering. They're not delivered with cheeky winks. He has looked at the situation, weighed all the facts, and reasoned that, in fact, (with the exception of getting progress reports on the readying of his new car) all the positive events in his life really are related to me. I'm sure, had he spoken thees words, they would have been delivered with the same feeling that you or I would use to say, "There are pencils on the desk."

Which makes the sentiment all the more powerful. He really, really means it. I am so lucky to have such a sweet boy to whom I matter SO much.

And I am the worst girlfriend in the world to put him through this.

The Eighth

Poor A. I totally would muzzle all over him while he was feeling gross and sick and suffering the indignity of The Cone.