Day 3: Retail Therapy

I ended up having a rather nice day, once I forced myself to get out of the apartment. It was filled with retail therapy.

I went back to Compatto to return some unused yarn I had and ended up spending way too much money on these beautiful skeins.

The five ruby colored skeins are Rowan Lima for this cowl/shawl I might make while the multicolored one is Misty Alpaca in colorway "Red Rover." I need bright, cheery colors to keep me happy these days.

After a late BBQ lunch, I headed over to the Michael's in Santa Monica to pick up some stamp making materials, to try out this online tutorial.

 I'm really excited to try it out-- if my test stamps work out well, I'll go back to Michael's later this week to pick up some large carving blocks.

I then headed over to Barnes and Noble to kill time before going over to the Culver City crafters. While I went there looking for Euphamania, I found Walking LA, instead.

I'm excited to try out the different routes in this book! I'm going to do my best to try a different route each week--hoping to go through all of them by the end of the year. We'll see how far I get.

Finally, I met up with my friend, Josh, and we wandered into Bird Pick Tea & Herb Shop. There, we met Jennifer who walked us through the ins and outs of dozens of different teas. She was lovely and super helpful! We both went a bit crazy with our tea purchases and we couldn't be happier about it!

Here's hoping that tomorrow goes as nicely.

Day 2

I woke up feeling lousy today. Possibly because I've barely eaten the past couple of days, possibly because I slept for 9 hours straight. Whatever the reason, I knew I had to do something to snap out of it immediately.

I decided that it was finally time to finish unpacking from New Jersey. I started unpacking my room a few months ago, going through about 4 shipped boxes and 1 suitcase. But I still had two suitcases lying around, two full boxes, and several garbage bags filled with various things from back East. So, I put my clothes away, rearranged the items in my bookshelf, and started putting attaching things to the wall. I'm not fully done decorating, but I'm almost there.

I also managed to get some more knitting done, too. The rows are starting to take a while to get through, even though the ball of yarn doesn't seem to be shrinking very much.

Breakups are awful. I really thought I had met the boy I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Have kids with. Grow old with. Last week I was telling him that in forty years from now, I'm still going to want to be cuddling with him! Ha! Now it just feels like I'm left with a big pile of garbage.

Day 1

I feel like my relationship ended because of this:

I've been trying to keep myself busy by knitting this:

And enjoying a thoughtful gift from my best friend:

Starting Now...

Nick and I broke up. He doesn't want to take the CA Bar Exam. I don't blame him for that, but I also don't want to continue to be in a long distance relationship with no end in sight. I also don't want to give up a great relationship with my family to move back to NJ to be with a boy who is willing to let me go because he doesn't want to study for 2 months and sit through a 3 day test, even though it would open up a lot of job opportunities for him, in addition to bringing us one step closer to getting to spend our lives together.

People move cross country for love all the time.

People do much harder things than study and take licensing exams.

I guess he doesn't think a life with me is worth it. That... sucks. It really truly sucks but what more am I supposed to do? He knew from the first time we met that I would be moving to CA. He's the one who talked me into staying for the summer. He's the one who talked me into staying together after my move and working to make long-distance work.

I've done everything I can to be a great girlfriend. I call, I send random care packages for him and his family, I participated in his fantasy football league (I hate football -_- ). I knit personal gifts for him and everyone in his immediate family, all 16 of them. I make and send cookies, I made him a journal, sent pictures. I was also super laid back and wouldn't get upset at him if we didn't talk for a few days. I never took him away from his friends. I would listen to him complain about work and his life and all that. I would read over his writing for his script. I showed him a great time in LA back in January. I showered him with affection and love.

I really genuinely thought he was different. That I had found my partner.

I feel like an idiot for loving him. For putting so much work and effort into making him feel special. For trusting him with my feelings.

Brief Recap

It's been over two months since my last blog post. I've been busy.

First, my college friend, Nance, came to visit and stay with me for a few days in early December. We had a blast vegging, catching up, trying different restaurants, and yarn shopping (my favorite was/is Unwind in Burbank).

She even helped me finish all my Christmas knitting and baking so I could ship everything out to NJ before the holidays.

A few weeks later, my wonderful boyfriend came to visit me in Los Angeles. He arrived on New Year's Eve and stayed until the 9th-- officially the best start to a year I've ever had. We did a fair amount of site-seeing (Hollywood, Santa Monica, driving through Beverly Hills, The Grove/Farmer's Market, Universal Studios, the Getty Center), but the best parts of the trip for me were when we read out loud to each other (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen) and watched movies together (Blue Valentine and Black Swan at theaters, Going the Distance at the apartment).

I was sad when he had to go back to NJ but fortunately I have wonderful family here to keep me distracted, along with studying for the Bar Exam, of course.

That last picture is from my typical study space at the Pepperdine Law Library in Malibu. I guess I shouldn't really complain when I have that to look at whenever I lift my head from books.

The bar exam is in 10 days. I better kick its butt this time. -_-

12 Books in 12 Months

As I was browsing through some new blogs this morning, I came across this post by The Latter Day Bohemian. Since I have dozens of books on my shelves I have yet to read, I love the idea of tackling them one dozen at a time.

I know that in the next few weeks, I'll reflect on changes I want to make in 2011. Reading more frequently will certainly be one of them. To help with that, here's my reading list for the next 12 months:

1. The Portrait of the Young Man As an Artist by James Joyce. I bought this book 

from an English bookstore in Madrid, during the first week of my semester abroad, in September of 2005. As I sat in the cafe/bar portion of the bookstore, the cutest English boy I have ever met joined a conversation I had been thrust into by a half-Iranian girl being hit on by a very drunk Spaniard. After the Iranian girl left, the English boy, Edward, convinced me to go with him to another bar that was quieter so we could keep talking. As I was packing to leave with him, Gabe, a boy from my program, called and invited himself over to where I was going. The conversation was so brief that I didn't even realize what had happened. Gabe, my first real love and the boy I would date for nearly two years, tagged along on my first date with Ed, the man I dated through nearly the remainder of my time in Madrid. I was too busy with Ed(uardo Blanco) to pick it up the rest of the time I was there, and though it has followed me through... 5 moves since then, I've still never finished it.

2. The Flaneur by Edmund White. I picked up this book over the summer while browsing The Strand with Nick. I loved the time I had spent in Paris with Gabe during the summer of 2008 and always dream of going back. Next time with fewer tears, I hope.

3. The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson. I bought this book of poetry from my favorite used bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Raven. Before my good friend Ross moved to Portland this spring, he threw a giant goodbye house party at his house in Upton. Nick and I went for a night and day and then headed to Boston for a few days of exploring. When I found this book, I read several of the poems and fell in love. We spent a great part of the rest of the day reading the poems to each other while sitting next to the lake at the Public Gardens. It was one of the first times we read together and to each other and made him that much more special to me. We always planned to go back and finish reading it together but then the summer started with all of our bar review, then packing my apartment, then only a few short weeks before I had to move to California. By that point, we were looking for more positive, uplifting literature rather than reading the beautiful collapse of a romantic relationship. I would very much like to finish reading it, though, before the winter gets too cold and my disposition regarding relationships gets too hopeless. I get awfully sad during the winter time when I'm away from my loved one. 

4. Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World by Niloufar Talebi. My very thoughtful friend, Mike, bought this book of poetry for me back in 2009 for my 24th birthday. He said that he had taken the train into the city (he lived in Newark at the time) without a clear idea of what he had wanted to get. After searching for a half hour, he gave up feeling defeated and just sat down on the ground in the middle of an aisle. He looked up and saw this book staring back at him. He knew it would be perfect and he was right. I've often picked up this book and thumbed through it but have never devoted any substantial amount of time to it. I can't wait to do that now!

5. A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield. My dear friend Molly suggested this book to me, nearly three summers ago, after she read this as part of her yoga teacher training in San Francisco. I immediately bought it but never actually found the time to read it with my busy school schedule. I'm sure it would have helped me immensely then but I think I'm more ready to listen to its messages now.







6. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and 7. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. My favorite book of all time is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Had I never been fortunate enough to read High Fidelity, then my favorite book of all time would have been The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway. I became obsessed with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck back in high school and devoured nothing else for months. A few books did fall through the cracks, however, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and This Side of Paradise. 

 For the record, The Sun Also Rises would have only remained at the top spot in my "Top Five Favorite Books of All Time " list until I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

Also for the record, my Top Five list looks like this:
(1) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
(2) East of Eden by John Steinbeck
(3) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
(4) Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
(5) Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

8. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. James had me read The Crying of Lot 49 a few years ago and I loved it. I picked this one up soon after, believing Pynchon to be a genius. After reading a few pages though, I realized I wasn't quite in the mood for this genre of literature. I still think Pynchon's a genius and still very much want to read this book, though.  

 


9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. This book is a classic. Everyone knows it. I know it.  It's not that I haven't tried to read this book  before. I have. Several times! I don't know why but I  just can't seem to get into it. I know I need to just suck it up and get it over with. Maybe I'll be blown away, maybe I won't be but at least I can finally get people off my back about it. =P


 10. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Again, this is another book I know to be a classic. I've read and loved  both Slaughterhouse Five and Galapagos. I read about half of Breakfast of Champions but it did not blow me away like either of the other Vonnegut books I'd read. I promised to give Cat's Cradle a chance, though, and I will sometime in 2011.

 11. She Loves Me by Peter Esterhazy. This was one of about two dozen books I had to read in my Eastern and Central European Literature course during my sophomore year of college. I was obsessed with the Cold War and took almost nothing but history and political science classes about it that year. This was one of only two non history/political science courses I took (the other being Spanish since my parents used the promise of allowing me to study abroad as an incentive to study that rather than Arabic or Russian which I had been planning to take). I'm so glad I took this course because it ended up being the best course I have ever taken. I read so many amazing books in that class (The Street of Crocodiles, The Khajar Dictionary, Closely Watched Trains, The Notebook/The Proof/The Third Lie, etc...). I didn't really understand the amazingness of this book at the time, however, especially in comparison to some of the other books we read. I'm hoping to get more out of it.

And finally, 12. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I first started reading this book in the fall semester of 2006, my last at NYU. It was the very first book on the reading list for my Modern Latin America history course. I spent many afternoons at Esperanto Cafe (now sadly closed) savoring each of the first 100-150 pages of the book before the semester started and I became swamped with more scholarly reading and writing assignments. I always planned to go back and finish it but I never could quite get myself to do so. Maybe it's because I stopped reading while everything was still pleasant, before the colonialism I knew was coming. I think it will be bittersweet to re-read since I know the place where I fell in love with this book is no longer the same and because the boy I was falling so deeply in love with at the time later broke my heart. That boy was Gabe, btw, the boy who interrupted my first date in Madrid. And who I later dated for almost two years.

That all having been said, I live in a beautiful city now where it seems to be perpetually a mix of spring and autumn, am closer to my family than I  ever even thought possible, and am dating the best person I have ever met. There are certainly no complaints here about the change in my current circumstances. Except for living so far away from my love. We'll work that out, though. And in the meantime, we'll visit when we can, talk on the phone everyday, and read books with each other over Skype several times a week.

December 1 - Self-Imposed Holiday Knitting Deadline

I didn't quite meet my self-imposed December 1st Holiday Knitting Deadline but I did get darn close to it! The problem is that Nick's family is so huge that despite knitting relatively consistently since mid-September, I still have gifts to knit for two 3-year-olds and a 4-year-old. Also for his brother and brother-in-law, if I have the time (which I should). Also, for him.

I *did* manage to complete gifts for his mother (the long, white "Falling Leaves" scarf), his father (the greyish "Antler Scarf"), his oldest sister (the blue "Summerflies Shawl"), his older sister (the orange "Cable-O" fingerless gloves), his younger sister (the light blue "Fetching" fingerless gloves), his twin nieces (the matching "Baby's First Cables" in purple and pink [in slightly different sizes since they're fraternal twins and one is definitely larger than the other]), his baby nephew (the blue and turquoise "Sailor Rib Beanie"), and his oldest nephew (the larger blue "Sailor Rib Beanie").

Above, are some close-ups of the hats...

 ...and below, of the fingerless gloves.

I've been looking through patterns on Ravelry for ideas on what to make the remaining niece and nephews. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make this for his 3-year old niece, in the same shade of purpose as the larger "Baby's First Cable" hat but with some darker green for the leaves.

I'm thinking about making this for his 3 and 4 year old nephews. Maybe one for him, too.

I'll probably make adult versions of whichever hats I end up knitting for his remaining nephews for his brother and brother-in-law.

If I have the time and enthusiasm, I would really like to make some journals, too. Apparently both Nick's mom and younger sister loved the journal I made and sent along to him a few weeks ago in my Halloween care package. Since I had originally planned to give one away to Nick's oldest sister (see below), I would only feel comfortable doing that if I could do the same for his younger sister, as well. I don't want to play favorites.

Each journal takes about four hours to make, though, so I want to make sure I finish all the holiday knitting first, before I go about making additional gifts. If I do make one for his little sister (she likes spirals!), then I will give this one to his mom:

...unless I decide to knit her this hat to match her scarf. We'll see.

I would love to knit things for my own family, too, but they're not really into knitted clothing. It's a shame, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm hoping to finish all the knitting by mid-December so I can wrap everything up and ship it out to New Jersey with plenty of time for it to get there by Christmas. That should happen since my friend Nance is coming to stay with me for about a week, starting on December 6th. She's an amazing knitter and I'm sure we'll spend most of our days knitting and chatting away!

Welcome December.