update.

I miss writing.  I've hit one of those spells where my words sound hollow.  It's not so much as writer's block, because I hardly feel as though I ever suffer from that since I am forced to write daily for my job, but it's more of an emotion block.  My words feel empty.  They lack heart.  It's probably because I'm happy, and when I'm happy, I'm more likely to live and less likely to write about living.

Anyhow.  I have an obsessive personality.  I obsess over things for a small period of time, until I get what I want.  I'm fairly sure this trait of mine has enabled me to be "successful," because I can't stop thinking about things until I have them, until they're mine mine mine.  Right now, I'm obsessing over buying a house.  I was thinking about how much I like our one-bedroom apartment, especially since we spent the weekend cleaning and organizing it, but still, I want a large space that I can actually decorate without concern that I'll have to change everything back to white later on. 

Daniel says people have to save for yearssssss for a house and that I'm crazy for wanting one so soon.  He says I need to adjust my expectations and prepare for a lengthy wait.  I tell him he doesn't know me at all.

miso soup.

I love it when I come home from the gym, sweaty, and he hugs and kisses me and tells me I smell like miso soup.

sleep.

I rolled over to him and gently grabbed his shoulders, shaking them slightly.  "Wake up," I said, "please wake up."  Still very much asleep, he grumbled, "What's wrong?" "Nothing's wrong," I said, "but I just need you to hold me.  It's one of those nights.  Please hold me."  Slowly I saw my words register in his mind and he stretched out his arm, his opening move to begin his attempt to appease me.  But we didn't fit.  No matter how we tried, how we twisted and turned, what is normally easy and effortless and innate for us -- that night was impossible.  Each position was uncomfortable.  We both knew it.  Still, he kept trying.  I didn't want him to stop trying, but I knew that if either of us were to have any sleep that night, I would have to give up my request.  "It's not working," I said, "but thanks."  Then I rolled to my side of the bed.

But I didn't sleep.

More and more these days, a comfortable sleep is becoming difficult to obtain.  Some people may prefer to be apart when sleeping, but not me. I dislike it.  I hate feeling as though I am sleeping alone when I'm not.  If I wanted that, I would sleep alone.  What weighs on me more is the fact that we weren't always like this.

We used to sleep tangled in each other, a morass of twisted limbs.  I used to sleep however the hell I wanted, typically with half my legs on him, half on whatever else I wanted.  I would find myself not only breathing air, but his skin, with each inhale -- my face was so often closely pressed somewhere against his body.  It's hardly like that these days.  Our current ritual is to say good night then roll to our respective sides of the bed, backs to each other.  And when we are deep in our sleep, we start to become more like foes than friends.  The battle for the blanket ensues, my efforts to snuggle are rebuffed, and there are moments when I get so annoyed by how he sleeps that I have to elbow him (in the back, no less!) just to get his attention, to tell him to stop twitching, or to move back to his side of the bed, or to get off the blanket so that I can use it, too.  It drives me crazy.

Things have gotten worse.  Now he voluntarily sleeps on the couch some nights, and other nights, I do.  I don't even know why, not really, except sometimes it seems as though we simply can't stand to share the same air with one another.  It's uncomfortable.   Most days nowadays, the only nights that are really great are the ones where I forget that I used to prefer sleeping beside him.  

I miss him, immensely.  I miss us even more.   But I feel trapped in that terrible place where you realize that you can't turn back, but you don't know how to move forward, either.  A little bit stuck, hoping for strength, patience, and love to help you figure it out.   

Anyhow.  I'm tired.  I just want to sleep the way we used to.

Digital Perm - First Time

I thought I'd write about my experience getting a digital perm since my internet research thus far on this topic has brought up such scant results.  Actually, this is my very first perm - ever - so I don't even know what the difference is between a traditional perm and a digital perm.  My best guess is that a digital perm has the capability to heat up the rollers due to the metal rod that is in the middle of each roller.  But as for the actual chemicals used and yada yada yada - I have no idea. 

I went to a local Korean salon and my stylist - Vicky - spoke enough English to communicate with me, but not enough for us to talk about the particulars.  Since I have super-straight and fine hair that, traditionally, can't hold a curl for longer than an hour or so, I was skeptical about any perm having the capability to give me the wavy tresses I've long desired.  Rather than spending a lot of money at the more expensive salons, I opted to try Vicky out.  The digital perm was $120, plus she gave me a bottle of oil (a relaxer, perhaps?) at the end.

I brought some pictures in with me to show Vicky what I wanted, but something tells me that no matter what I showed her, she was going to give me the same old digital perm she gives everyone else.  I suppose that's the problem with going to a more mom and pop type salon -- they lack a degree of polish and customer attentiveness that I'm accustomed to.  But, I didn't really care too much.  I didn't really have high expectations; rather, I was just praying that I wouldn't leave with a frizzy, pubic-looking, mess on my head.  Wish granted.  :)

I don't really recall the exact steps Vicky took, but I do remember being shuffled back and forth between the chair and the room with glowing red lights. . . I presume that room contained heat that would activate the chemicals in my hair.  Vicky seemed to use the same sized rollers across my head, but perhaps that was because my hair is only one length with no layers.  After she was done putting my hair in rollers, she pulled this archaic and somewhat alienesque-looking machine with a bunch of cords attached to it - each cord, of course, attached to a roller on my head.  The next thing I knew, I looked like this, felt heat, and saw steam coming from my head.  Scary!

And then I just did a whole lot of sitting.  The whole process probably took between 2-3 hours, and I wasn't attached to the digital machine for very long at all.  After my hair was washed, the only thing Vicky did was show me how to blow-dry it: twist small strands in my hands as I blow dry and always scrunch the tips of my strands in a ball, pushing them upwards, to keep the curls bouncy.

You can compare the final result with my super-straight hair, shown here:

It has only been a few days, which means I don't know how this will look in a week or two.   But as of right now, I like it just fine.  I don't love it because it wasn't quite what I wanted, but I'm okay with the results.  My one piece of advice is that for anyone who has heavily color-treated hair, or bleached hair, to not bother with a digital perm.  I have three panels in my hair that were previously bleached and those turned out horribly!  They didn't curl, were tangled, brittle, and mostly resembled crumpled hay.  Vicky ended up thinning out those sections of my hair considerably because they looked so hideous.

As for upkeep - because I do my best to be low maintenance (aka I am super lazy) - all I've done thus far is purchase some shampoo and conditioner designed for curly and/or permed hair, and a mousse with leave-in conditioner.  I wash my hair, rub the oil Vicky gave me, blow dry in her recommended manner, and then run the mousse throughout my hair.  All of my products came from Target and I bought the cheapest products I could find because most fancy beauty products I've purchased in the past have all sucked.   Now my hair always looks slightly messy,  but hopefully not unruly, and even though there's product in my hair - it is still soft, bouncy, and never crispy looking, feeling, or sounding.  Amen to that.

Here's to having curly hair!  At least for a month or two.  :)

P.S.  Photos taken with the iPad 2, which has a crappy camera.  Apple could've done better, I know it, but they probably intentionally made it crappy.  Grr.

The meeting.

We made plans to meet later on in the day.  He had plans he needed to attend to and I wasn't in the mood to accompany him.  The day was pretty and there was a park nearby full of trees offering shade to protect me against the sun.  I went to the park with the intention of sitting underneath the cool of a tree to read my book, and yet, I opted to sit next to a large iron gate instead, thereby exposing myself fully to the sun.  I didn't mind though; sometimes I like the heat.

I noticed him a little bit later, searching for me amongst the trees.  He didn't see me, of course, never anticipating that I would select my station near the gate with my seat the hot concrete instead of the cool grass.  And then I noticed my sudden sense of immobility.  There was no desire to meet him, no desire to get up and greet him.  "I'm supposed to want to, aren't I?," I thought.  "We barely even see each other," I thought.  But I recognized that feeling - that sense of deadness.  I've felt it before.  The onset of my paralysis occurred because, at that exact moment, my mind finally acknowledged what my heart had already known: the feelings I once felt for him no longer existed.

I never quite know when I have crossed that imaginary line between caring and not caring.  It happens so silently, stealthily, completely undetectable.  I can't even be sure if there is ever a cause - a catalyst - or if occurs because I am fickle and cold.  I don't even know how to determine the point of origin or when it happened or why it happened because by the time the realization that I've moved on becomes imperceptibly clear to me, I also lose the desire to fumble through the fogginess of my mind to help piece the puzzle together.  What's the point?  If it didn't make a fuss to begin with, I shouldn't make a fuss now.

He saw me then, at that exact moment.  I slapped on a fake smile.  I had no choice.  The only half-way decent thing to do was to allow this feeling of emptiness the chance to persist, to grow, in order to test it a bit.  If it stayed, then it must be real.  If it suddenly disappeared, then, well, perhaps it was the hours of sitting under the sun that caused it.  Either way,  I had to put on a show, pretend that I was just as happy to see him as he was to see me.  He deserved at least that; he deserved at least confirmation of my distance. 

But when I saw his face, I could also feel my resolve to conceal my true feelings falter.  Falter because I am a terrible liar and falter because the weight of knowing that I was here yet again, at this place where I have been with other men, is more disheartening than I would ever allow myself to accept.  I didn't want to look at him further.  And then, thankfully, I woke up.

Dreams - they can be so real at times, can't they?  Perhaps not in scenery and sight, but at times, certainly in sensation and feeling.  The doom from that dream transferred from my dream state and stayed with me to my waking state.  I felt the sadness of it all over again. This time, this time though, it was real.  Noticeable.  But when I looked to my left, I was so pleased to see Daniel's face.  Grateful, truthfully, because he was not the man in the dream.

On a train from Milan to Verona, Italy.

I brought with me my stack of unread W magazines to keep me company on the many train rides we planned on taking throughout Europe.  Sadly, the magazines are from 2009.  Yes, they're about two years old because I've never truly had the opportunity to read them until now.  

Although a bit outdated, the magazines are still great.  I love W.  It's one of my favorite publications because while it is always fresh and forward-thinking, it's also classic, somehow.  The photos are consistently gorgeous and the stories, where most other magazines tend to fall short, are also typically well-written and worth the read.  Almost every issue has an article featuring some unknown yet amazing individual - a person who has lived a life most mere mortals can only dream of.  I always read those articles even though I have never heard of the individual before because their lives are always beyond fascinating.  W features articles about models, muses, playboys, royalty, artists, criminals, crazies, and beyond -- an entire gamut of personalities.

As a result, after reading each issue, I find myself coveting a life of glitz and glam (but not necessarily fame) that is depicted in the stories I read.  Each person is too magnificent and I want to be magnificent, too.  And this is why, I suspect, no matter how happy I am or how pleased I am with the current state of my life, there is always a part of me that is perpetually dissatisfied because I am forced to acknowledge that destiny does not have in store for me an existence other than that of the ordinary.  I am ordinary.  This saddens me.  And it's no surprise to me that the stories that resonate the most are the ones of the women who have shunned obtaining what I consider today's measure of success:  a good career, a loving husband, adorable children.  These are all items I covet, but as I read stories about women who have found and defined  their passion for love in an atypical manner, with different, ever-changing, beds and fleeting, powerful, relationships -- I wonder why it is I am so common and have only sought such common goals.

And then I look to my left and see an old Italian couple getting ready to depart the train.  I wonder how many years they have been married as they stand up and the wife helps her husband with his coat, pulling his shirt down neatly around his pants because it rose as he tried to put on his coat.  Next, she assists him with sliding on his small red backpack, gingerly guiding his arms through the loops.  There is a sincerity and commitment in their interaction that is silent, but profound, and I couldn't help but notice it, couldn't help but adore them.  With this simple image, I am reminded of why it is that most days I am common and only during fleeting moments do I have the desire to be magnificent.   Because common people are smart:  having a love like that must be good for the soul and everyone wants it 'cause it's bloody hard to achieve. 

Life.

Trying to write this on an iPhone.  Not sure how it looks but oh well.  It has been hard keeping up with the news while on the road.  Everything is in a foreign language.  But Daniel and I were talking about those who survived the tsunami and how they must have a newfound lust for life.   I wonder what that must feel like, to survive a tragedy, how that might affect my perspective on life.  He said he almost died at gunpoint due to an attempted car robbery.  


"Do you have a lust for life then?" I asked. 
"Yes," he replied. 
I scoffed. "How come I haven't seen it?" 
"Because you are it."

Smooth talkers sometime win, I'll admit to that.