See Ya Melissa

Read 'em and Weep

At the Spring Fair during my sophomore year of college, the guy I was dating thought it would be fun if I had my palm read.  I protested a lot, as I hate that stuff, and nothing good ever comes of it.  Still, he insisted, handing the woman money as he practically forced me into the chair opposite her.  The old woman (why are they always old women?) grabbed my hand, nodded her head a bunch of times, then "hmmm"-ed over my palm before looking dead into my eyes and saying, "the relationship you are in now won't last much longer."  As you've probably guessed, my boyfriend was less than happy about the proclamation.  Still, it was true, and we had broken up before the end of the summer.  From that moment on, I'd been more than happy to avoid any attempts to read my fortune.

Last weekend I was at a friend's house for a girls' night in.  She and her sister are Turkish, and treated us to a wonderful feast of native dishes.  We sat for hours around the table, eating, drinking wine, and talking about anything and everything, from what Flemish sounds like to the history of the Ottoman Empire.  While we sat drinking our Turkish coffee (which I love, by the way), my friend mentioned that her sister was a bit of a fortune teller, and could read ours from the leftover dregs of our coffees once we'd finished.  Basically, you put the saucer on top of the cup, swirl it around a few times, then flip it over.  The coffee grounds at the bottom then spill out in patterns, and you can tell your fortune from them.  Similar to reading tea leaves, probably.  Anyway, I went last.  All the other girls had happy, cheerful fortunes.  They'd be very lucky.  Love was coming, maybe not just yet, but in time.  Things like that.  So instead of refusing, as I should have, I figured, what the hell, she's probably just telling us fun things, since it's girls' night.  Alas, no.  She looked incredibly concerned from the moment the cup popped off the saucer.  Her forehead knit together, she looked at me and said, "There are black clouds all around you.  Nothing major, but little things are wearing at you, and causing stress for you.  These aren't really a problem, except that they lead to a really big black cloud.  So there's going to be a very large trouble that if you don't face it, will only cause more and more trouble for you in the future."  Yeah.  See why I don't do this stuff? 

I tried to laugh it off, and one of our other friends tried to cheer me or something by saying, "I don't see you like that.  You're always so happy."  But honestly, I do let little things bother me and stress me out.  Just ask K.  He constantly has to remind me not to get tense about things and let them go.  With him not here, there's been a build-up of tension in my life.  I've always hidden it, though, preferring to keep the not-so-happy things to myself.  A lot of people have mistaken that for composure or strength or whatever, but it's really just my coping mechanism.  It's why I have ulcers.  Anyway, since that little lapse in judgment, my friend Banannie has been asking me if everything's ok, or if I need someone to talk to.  She has nothing but good intentions but really, if I didn't lay it out before, I'm certainly not going to start now just because someone called me out on it. 

The whole thing has me on edge, though.  What is this huge problem?  How will I know it's The Problem instead of just another minor little thing that I've managed to blow out of proportion?  And why am I so doomed?  Do fortune tellers have it out for me?  I mean really, what is going on?!

Fighting Fair?

Last night, one of our neighbors was pacing in front of the house and arguing with his girlfriend (I assume) via cell phone.  We're talking yelling, frustrated growling, and my all-time-favorite line, "Nothing I do or say right now is going to make you happy, so why am I even bothering talking to you right now?"  That made me wonder about my own rationality (or irrationality) when K and I fight.  Am I inconsolable and unable to listen to his side until I've finished venting my own frustrations?  Or am I capable of making it a dialogue?  I'd like to think that I'm mature enough to keep an argument to a dialogue, allowing both of us to air our grievances and come to a solution or agreement that is fair for both of us.  I do, however, suspect that there are times when that's just not the case.  There have been times when I've been difficult because of some irrational fear that maybe he doesn't love me anymore or something stupid like that.  Then I just end up crying and being a complete mess, which I know frustrates K to no end because he can't figure out what the hell is wrong with me.  Then he throws out that line that I love so much: "Why am I even bothering with this right now?" 

I'm glad he bothers, though.  In a sick, twisted, awful way, it shows that he cares about me.  That he wants me to be happy and that he's happy with me.  Because he's such a good guy, K lives with these ridiculous moments of insecurity, brought on by nothing.  He knows they'll pass just as quickly, and that a few months later the same thing will happen all over again.  He's gotten used to the crazy.

Curiosity Killed the Cat, but Gave Me Some Satisfaction

I met Jay during my junior year in college.  He was beautiful, brilliant, amazing.  He was probably the first man I really ever loved.  We got serious (god I hate that phrase) really quickly, talking about children and marriage after a few months.  I really thought he was the elusive One.  After all, his sister had my name, so we knew it would sound good with his last name, we had the same birthday, he had family in my hometown.  When people saw us together, they would smile and say, "you two are perfect together."  He used to call me his princess.  And I thought I had it all.  Then came the horrible, drawn-out end. 

Jay and I had one of those breakups that wasn't really a breakup.  We couldn't stay away from each other.  He, however, also couldn't stay away from other women as well, and I was too convinced that we were meant to be to let go.  The one thing I can say, though, was that when we were together, it was as if none of the other girls existed.  He was attentive, gentle, and genuinely caring.  And because of that, I couldn't stop loving him.  But the final end came in a spectacular, heart-breaking fashion after the last week of our senior year.  Jay was my date for my sorority's spring formal, and I could not have asked for a more perfect night.  There were declarations of love and promises of never letting each other go.  I was content, convinced he'd come to his senses, and that we had a future.  Our senior formal was a week later, and Jay and I had planned to go with friends, and meet up there.  Imagine my surprise when he showed up with another girl.  It took all the strength I had, plus that of my dear friends, to keep me from breaking down into hysterical sobbing as soon as I saw them.  And that was that. 

Now it's 7 years later, and though I'm incredibly happy with K and my life now, I've always been curious about what happened to Jay.  I know he went to medical school, but other than that, I never knew what became of the man I thought I would marry.  So I did what any rational *ahem* girl would do: I googled him.  And I found him.  After the Horrible End (so horrible, in fact, that I never told my mother what happened), I assumed he'd end up married by the time he was 25.  He had so much going for him that it was impossible to imagine him without a girlfriend.  My *ahem* research, however, has shown that he is, indeed, single.  It may sound smug and vindictive, and yeah, ok, bitter, but that little bit of news actually made my day.

For Once, I'm NOT the One Freaking Out

You know how I had that interview in Houston?  Well, guess what?  I got the job!  Yay!  With the job, though, comes a lot of stress.  We're talking about some serious life changes here, and not just for me.  K, of course, was the first person I called, and he seemed really happy for me.  Not too keen on moving to Houston, but happy for me nonetheless.  So imagine my surprise when yesterday morning, while I was talking about how nice it would be to finally have a kitchen and a nice big bathroom, he tells me that he doesn't want to move.  Uh, what?  I had always been under the impression that we were planning on living together in the same city once we got jobs.  That's not an unreasonable request, right?  And then he said he just wasn't ready to take our relationship to the next level.  I had no idea what he meant by that, but I was surprised, and not a little hurt by it. 

For the rest of the day, I was off in a bunch of group meetings for upcoming projects.  But that didn't keep me from thinking about what K had said, and wondering what in the world was going on.  There were lots of tears, and great unhappiness on my part, and total silence on his.  Not one text or IM for the rest of the day.  Nothing.  That, of course, led to more tears and misery on my part, and a call to my sister and her husband to cry and cry and cry about it.  Talking to them didn't make me feel any better though - from the way they were talking, it sounded like we were breaking up.

When I woke up today, I was determined not to be the first to initiate contact.  I wasn't talking to him, even if he didn't realize it.  Not that it was a hard thing to do - I spent the morning in a meeting (there will be another post in the ridicularity of my groups) and then had class.  When I got home, though, K IMed me, asking how my day was going.  I admit it was childish, but I pulled a him and gave him nothing but one word answers.  He asked why my day wasn't so great, and I said I was stressed from my projects and other things.  He asked what other things, and I said him and me.  And that triggered a phone call.  A very, very long phone call. 

As it turns out, he thought that when I was saying "come move to Houston with me," what I was really saying was "Let's get married."  Apparently the 'next step' is getting engaged or married or whatever, and to be honest, nothing could have been further from the truth.  Sure, someday I'd like to get married, but that's not for another 3-5 years maybe, if then.  And then after a lot of back and forth involving whether or not he wanted to break up right now, are we going to give a relationship outside the school world a real shot, and was I wasting my time, some of the underlying issues started to come out.  I don't think he even realized what they were, and I still don't think he knows what they are.  But they fall into 2 categories: the 2-year-itch, and leaving the familiar.  He's pretty much hit that point in the relationship where the influences of his single life are starting to nag at him, and make him wonder if being single would be better.  I told him that if he decides to find out, when he realizes it isn't, I  won't be around anymore.  In the other category, he said that things would be different if I were moving to Atlanta because if something bad happened he could just move out.  Hello?!  You can do that in Houston too, you just wouldn't have the comfort of having everyone you know there.  So he was, in fact, just freaking out.  Which makes me feel so much better. 

Airing both of our concerns about the situation was actually really helpful.  It clarified for him that I'm not pushing to get married, and it helped me understand what the hell was going through his mind.  We are staying together and trying to make this work.  And I will not ask him to move again.  If he does, it's because he wants to, not because I asked him to.

Out With the Old

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a cliche, but you know what? Bite me.
It's winter break for me (yay grad school!), so I'm back in the 'burgh hanging out with my parents.  In the 10-ish years that I've lived away from home, their house has become something of a storage unit for my siblings and me. It's not that we just dump stuff there on purpose.  It's more of an "I don't have a place for this right now, but some day I might" leaving of things. After I moved to PHX, I sold my house to pay for school, so pretty much everything I've ever owned is now in boxes and in the basement.  And since I've been moving random crap around with me since my freshman year in college, it's a lot of crap, figuratively and literally.  I mean, really, am I ever going to fit into the size 0, no-waist, dirty wash Abercrombie & Fitch jeans ever again?  Doubtful.  Then why do I keep carting them around? 
Anyway, my parents have been amazing patient about the piles of boxes slowly taking over their home, but they'd been dropping some hints, both subtle and not so much, that maybe it was time I got my shit out o' the house.  So this past weekend, I dug in and tried to make a dent.  "Tried" is the operative word here. I have a lot of stuff.

Read on the Web

I complained that there wasn't anything interesting to share, so this week the internet gods have given me quite a few tidbits to chew over.  So here we go:

Archaeologists found a tattooed mummy in Peru that they think is a female warrior.  How cool is that?  The picture is kind of gross, and doesn't show any tattoos, but the body is amazingly well preserved.  Am I the only one who geeks out about this stuff?

When you've been dating someone for awhile, the date-dates tend to be non-existant.  Or kind of hum-drum, dinner and a movie.  Not that I'm against hum-drum, dinner and a movie dates.  I like them.  But sometimes you want to do something different.  MSN came up with a list of great non-dinner dates that actually are pretty great.  A lot of these lists suck.  This one doesn't. 

In a surprising twist, Americans aren't the "rudest, most boring people on earth"; the French are!  And here we thought we were the only ones France hated.  My favorite line comes from Jerome Touze, the founder of Where Are You Now (WAYN), who conducted the survey:

"I think our romantic 'moodiness' is misunderstood..."

HA!  Romantic moodiness!  That's like saying my PMS-fueled rampage is misunderstood!  hee hee!  why do I get so much glee out of this?  We'll never know, I guess.

Also in humorous news, Tommy Hilfiger and Axl Rose got into a little tiff.  Can you believe this shit?  Axl whines about being smacked in the arm by Tommy Hilfiger.  Jesus Axl, aren't you supposed to be tough?

Since we're talking about celebrities, Mischa Barton says she was happy about being killed off on the O.C.  So were we Mischa, so were we.  I liked Marissa for all of 4 episodes, way back in Season 1.  Then she just got annoying.  And then more annoying, if that's possible.  Oh, and I love that she's all, maybe I'll take a course in acting.  Yes, Mischa, do, because you really need it.  (Man, I am bitchy today!)

And finally, some fun!  I don't know where all this stuff comes from, but Google Reader provides me with all sorts of goodness.  Including this birthday calculator.  It's not just a lame, "You were born on a Thursday and are an Aries" thing either.  It tells you the date of various holidays that year, and even how old you are in dog years.  Pretty cool, good for 5 minutes of procrastination.

And that's what I have for you today.  Enjoy!

Week One: Living Together is Fun!

As of this evening, K has been here for 1 week.  So far, so good.  He's still not entirely over his jet lag, but I challenge anyone to get over a 12-hour time difference in a day.  Sure, he gets really sleepy around 9:30, but that's ok.  It's dark out then, and it means he's up when I'm up in the morning.  The perks of that?  He makes me coffee while I'm in the shower =)

I was off from work all last week (2 holidays, and then 3 days of vacation), so we spent Wednesday through Sunday exploring Yerevan and being kinda lazy.  We popped into a bunch of cafes, climbed the stairs at The Cascade, went to the National Gallery (the History part of it), and even had a few hours of pampering at the Marriott spa.  Saturday we went to the Vernissage to see if we could find something for our mothers for Mothers' Day.  K stopped to look at some bracelets (similar to the friendship bracelets my friends and I used to make in high school) an older woman was selling.  She had a bunch that were in the colors of the Armenian flag, and he decided to get one.  The woman had other ideas though.  She tied the one K picked on his wrist, saying something to the heavens as she knotted the threads together.  She then picked up a smaller version of the same bracelet, and invoking the heavens again, tied it onto my wrist.  We figured she either 'married' us, or called upon God to grant our wishes.  Or cursed us, but I doubt that last one.  K found a few Soviet-era pocket watches he liked, but didn't get one. 

Having him here is totally spoiling me - he makes me coffee while I'm in the shower, and breakfast if I want it.  He also makes me lunch, and dinner most nights.  I haven't been this well-fed since I left my parents' house to go to college!  This morning, he called me at work b/c he couldn't get the washing machine to work (it's finicky, he's not retarded).  I told him I'd take a look at it when I came home for lunch, but about 5 minutes later, he called back saying he'd managed to get it to work.  He cooks and does laundry - what more can I ask for?  Living with him is so much fun.  I like coming home to him.  I like that we can be quiet together and it doesn't feel awkward.  I like that I get to fall asleep on his shoulder, and wake up drooling on his wrist.  And I like that he likes all that stuff too.

Read on the Web

Ok ok, so I've been a little remiss on this lately.  But in my defense, there's been quite a bit going on, and there weren't many things I'd read I'd felt compelled to share.  It's taken me a few weeks to collect all this, so let's dive in, shall we?

First up is "India's Forrest Gump" - a 4-year-old who ran 40 miles in 7 hours and 2 minutes.  I don't know that I'd want to be compared to Forrest Gump.  Basically, they're comparing the kid to a mentally-challenged fictional character.  Why not call him a phenom or something?  He's a toddler (4 year olds are still toddlers, right?) who pretty much ran 2 marathons consecutively.  That's amazing.  Is that Nike sponsorship I smell?

And now onto something a bit more serious.  Reports say that racism in Russia is "out of control".  Racism pains me.  Why can't everyone get along?  The fact that authorities aren't doing much to fight it makes it that much worse too.  We're all people.  So what if we don't look the same.  If we were all supposed to look the same, we would. 

That leads us into the story about a guide aimed at Americans doing business overseas.  You know, a lot of the advice it is said to give is pretty much 'duh' in my book.  During orientation for my program, we were given a brief presentation on cross-cultural communication, and being culturally sensitive.  We even have an entire course on it at my grad school.  Still though, this stuff is obvious.  Be respectful, don't be a slob.  Aren't those basic business skills anyway? 

Exemplifying ugly-American-ness is Joey Porter, of my beloved Steelers. Oh Joey, shut the fuck up.  I forbid you to speak to the prez when you can't even use correct grammar.  Might be funny though.  Scrap that.  It would definitely be funny.  I sense some wiretapping in Pittsburgh...

And finally, "Bears eat monkey, visitors shocked".  CNN's headline says it all.

Surprise!

In the last few days, I've had a few surprises.  Some good, some bad, but all a little surprising. 

My first surprise came on Saturday while I was grocery shopping.  I went to a small store near my house that I tend to go to when I don't need a lot of things.  Like in most stores, the people there tend to ignore me, which is fine.  There is one woman, who I assume is the boss, I have interacted with a few times, mostly through miming and her saying things in Armenian that I don't understand.  So there I was, standing at their little deli counter, trying to figure out which cheese I wanted, when The Boss Lady came up to me and said, in perfect English, "do you want some cheese?"  I almost did one of those TV head-shake-with-eyes-closed things.  For the last 2 and a half months, she's spoken to me only in Armenian (if at all) and then all of a sudden, bam! Perfect English.  I almost fell over.

When I got to the office on Tuesday morning, I was talking to one of my co-workers, who was telling me she had so much to do before she left to go to a training program.  "I have so much work to do!" she said, adding "and the holiday on Monday is not helping!"  Holiday on Monday?  What?  We just had a holiday!  Turns out we get May Day (1 May) off.  Oh and you know what else?  9 May is Victory and Peace Day.  You guessed it - another holiday off.  That's 3 holidays in 3 weeks.  Yep, good surprise.

And lastly, bugs in Armenia do not die.  They don't.  I had a bug in my shower which I tried to drown, but it wouldn't go down the drain.  So I figured I'd shut the shower door and let it dry out so I could squish it.  When I opened the door a few hours later, there was the bug, on its back, looking quite dead.  "Good," I thought to myself.  "This is much easier."  In I reached with a tissue to take out Mr. Bug.  But it had different ideas.  As soon as the tissue touched it, the bug starting kicking his legs around wildly, trying to right itself.  Ok, what happened to the dead bug?  This is not Night of the Living Dead Bug!  Freaked out, I dropped the tissue over the bug, hoping it would decide to go back to dead.  That night, I went back to check on it.  Still kicking.  I knew I had to get it out of the shower so I could use it, so I tried to squish it.  Sucker ran out from under my squishing!  On the 4th try, I think I finally got it, but I can't be sure because it didn't seem like anything squished, but when I picked up the tissues, there was no bug to be seen, in the shower or anywhere else.  Not being one to question it, I threw it all into the toilet and quickly flushed.  So either I finally won, or there is one pissed off, immortal bug running around my apartment.

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Read on the Web

Ok, I admit it, I should be working.  But you know what?  I don't care, so let's jump in, shall we?

I'm not one to generally read product reviews, but this one is hysterical. Who knew a mattress pad could inspire so much?  I will admit though, it sounds like a great product.  My favorite line:

"Also, while this review is only me writing, I would love to rustle up some ex-girlfriends who could also attest to how wonderful this product is."

Apparently, the review was longer, as there's an edit right after that line.  Made my day.

And in a completely different tone, from Yahoo! News comes a story about a Japanese soldier who sort of disappeared during WW II turning up in Ukraine.  What happened to him to make him abandon his family in Japan and start a new life in Ukraine without telling them?  Kind of makes you wonder...

Ok, wow, this post is all over the place.  We're back to fun, with a story about a guy who
bartered his way from a red paper clip to a year of free housing in Phoenix (so far).  His ultimate goal is his own house.  How cool is that?  I wonder how many copycats this will inspire.

And lastly, a tribute to my underlying geekiness: the PocketMod. Make your own little mini-organizer-type-thing out of one sheet of paper.  Works best with American Letter-sized paper, but I made one using A4, and it still turned out ok.  Just cut off the extra before you cut along the dotted lines.