A day of thanks.

Today is Thanksgiving. While I have spent Thanksgiving away from my family before, I have always spent the day with a family - if not my own then with another's whom I am close to. This Thanksgiving, however, was not usual in that sense. Today I spent with friends, and with friends of friends, trying to communicate across languages that no one spoke very well and coming up with/explaining strange English idioms. Today I needed to phone two numbers to speak with my parents, one of which I had never dialed before. Today I woke to an empty house, and watched the Macy's parade alone with my eggs and my tea. It was not a bad day. I had a lovely time, and shared many laughs, and only now have lost my voice. (I have been quite sick over the past couple of days.) I do not regret the day, nor the circumstances that have brought me here - quite the opposite. But there were several points along the way in which the strangeness struck me. I've never woken alone before. There was always someone waiting to greet me to say hello and "happy day!" There was always someone else in the car on the way to wherever we were going. I never had to call twice. It is a poignant reminder of my choices, and the situation in which I have placed myself. And in the end, I'm glad of it. I had a wonderful day, I don't mean to say that I haven't, really. I'm happy with where I am in my life, and proud of the decisions I've made. But when you have a big, loud, at times overly-affectionate family, spending the holidays in a certain amount of solitude strikes a chord that is at once both a pleasant change of pace, strikingly unfamiliar, and just strange. You are both glad to get a break but confused at the scenery change, and almost more confused by how much you miss them. An interesting paradox.

Also, I got Rick-rolled this morning by the Foster's Imaginary Friends float at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. How blissfully uncool.

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna turn around and desert you...

Trust falls.

It was mentioned to me recently that I have strange definitions of the word trust. Or, more precisely, the people who I choose to trust are not necessarily the most obvious choices to the world. This got me thinking about who I trust, why I trust them, and what are the qualities I find most important in someone I allow myself to get close to. The answer, I have found after much digging, comes in three parts - which actually makes a lot of sense if you know me and my history. The three qualities are as follows: emotional stability, honesty and respect. I need you to have your shit together. Not 100% of the time, because that would just be unreasonable. And you don't need to be completely void of demons, because we all do and that just means that you've lived some. You just need to be able to handle what life throws at you without sweeping everyone around you into the shit storm. Emotionally stable and capable and strong. It's a good thing.

The other big thing is honesty. I value knowledge and truth, and appreciate where I stand with people in their lives. I'm a pretty shy person overall, and so I want to know what level we're playing on. I find that this way I am much more capable of interacting with people at a much more sophisticated level, instead of pussy-footing around on eggshells trying like crazy to figure someone out as is sometimes wont to happen.

Respect is a weird one, because I expect in a very specific way. You don't have to be generally nice for my gender - you can still be a womanizer and gain my trust. You also don't have to put me on some kind of pedestal - because damn, that's creepy. I just want to feel like if I say something, you will take it seriously. If I say I don't want to do something, it's not forced upon me. If I take offense to something in the conversation, we can move on and change topics. If I give an opinion, we can have a discussion about the difference, but I'm not automatically wrong just because I express what's on my mind. Really, just more about common courtesy and capable social interactions.

I've also realized that it takes a while for someone to lose my trust once it is given. I'm not the kind of gal who takes forever to give it to someone and then will take it away with the slightest offense. Quite the opposite. What this means, however, is that once my trust in someone is lost, it is quite difficult to get it back, generally because I have given many chances that were taken advantage of, so that once it is gone, I am so emotionally spent from dealing with the person involved that I want very little to do with them at all.

I'm not quite sure why I decided to write all this out. I just got to thinking and when I finally came to some conclusions, thought I should share them. Trust is a funny thing, and in my case, given only to a rare few, and even fewer in full. I find it an interesting philosophical concept. The online dictionary defines it as the "firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; something committed into the care of another." It speaks to me, as I find this definition to ring true, but also to different levels of degree. There are some to who I have a firm reliance on their integrity, ability or character. There are many fewer to whom I would commit myself into the care of. Maybe I should work harder on that. Maybe I should fall. Maybe, though, I'm doing just fine.

Over the river and through the graves.

As previously stated, I work near the Charles River Reservation. Not previously stated, because before yesterday was not known, is that also near the Charles River Reservation is a cemetery. A really big cemetery. I looked out across the river yesterday on my lunch hour walk, expecting to see some meadow across the way, and some geese and ducks playing on the water. There were geese and ducks. There was also one of the biggest cemeteries I've seen, hiding apparently behind the cover of the leaves that have only now fallen enough to catch a glimpse. It was one of those "Huh. Wasn't expecting that one" moments.

And now I understand why the area is called Purgatory Cove. No lie. This is the name.

Awesome.

Obnoxious v. precocious.

Let me start out by stating that I am all about the children. I'm used to them, like being around them, and want them in my future. (Distant future, but it's a definite desire with me versus a "maybe someday with the right person" kind of attitude.) I say this because I want you to understand exactly how much it takes for me to call a child pure obnoxion. (No, it is not technically a word. No, I don't care.)

I'm babysitting for my little cousins today, aged 5 and 3, pretty good kids about 90% of the time. No biggie. Quite fun. I taught the elder that she could, and should, defy the gender binary and that it really was OK to be both a knight and a princess at the same time. I showed the younger that I could sing Aladdin's part in "A Whole New World" and no one was going to stone me. Good times. I also got a new crayon drawing for my office wall. Sweet. I love art.

A friend of D's came around in the afternoon. Rang the doorbell. Nice and polite. Comes in to the house. "You're really short." Thanks, kid, hadn't noticed. I hadn't realized that the reason I have a flippin step stool in my kitchen was so I could reach the mugs on the top shelf of the cabinet. Didn't know that my grandmother and mother had the same in theirs for the same reason. Thanks for the epiphany. Later, same pea pod asks me how old I am. "I am 22 years old." "Wow, you're really old." Really? Like your mom isn't 10 - 15 years older? I'm not exactly ailing over here. Then the best part. She starts walking away from this explanation of how terrifyingly near the grave I am, and then backpedals to add, "you're really short for your age." Yeah, well 5 year old D here has a higher reading level that your noxious 8 year old self, so why don't we cut reiterating the obvious and refocus our energy on phonetics so you can finally get past "Hop on Pop." I mean, what the deuce?

I appreciate precociousness. There's a level of wit and a smattering of intelligence that accompanies such behavior that can be endearing and valued in a young child. But this moved way past precocious. This kid was obnoxious, pure state-the-obvious-in-case-we-all-didn't-get-it-the-first-time-and-not-even-in-a-tactful-manner honky. There were other instances which prove this, and I'm really not going to detail them all out, but goodness...

And I bet her parents think she's cute.........

There and back again... in 39 hours.

[Written at 4:48 CST/5:48 EST]

The past couple days have marked my first experience in the world of business travel. The company I worked for thought it would be good for my general knowledge of the company to go on a tour of the facility where we complete most of the production of one of our primary products. A facility which is located just outside of Dayton, Ohio. And since the tour is the only reason myself and a few other of my co-workers were going, we would go one day and come right back home the next. Wednesday to Thursday. No problem. Ugh…

Wednesday morning I woke myself up way before the ass-crack of dawn – 4:45AM. Since I had stayed up to watch the election results and Obama’s subsequent acceptance speech, I didn’t actually head off to bed until about 4 hours previous. Needless to say, I was a little droopy-eyed. Met up with the right people, got on the plane, spent about an hour in NYC, and the headed off to Ohio, where we quickly checked in and I quickly crawled in bed to take a nap. My room was pretty great – decent sized bathroom, couch, desk, TV with cable. And a king-sized bed. All to myself. I loved it. If I had the money – and, you know, the space – I would buy one. Pure heaven. I could have shared it and never even known. I spread myself out and didn’t kick the wall, I turned over and was able to look at the pure vastness next to me – I would say that I slept like a baby except that my little cousin used to get her feet stuck in the slats of the crib and wake up everyone up screaming. Let’s just I slept quite well, thank you. Almost as good were the paintings in the room. Great whimsical landscapes of rolling hills that seemed nostalgic of the times when Ohio used to have geographically diverse terrain – you know, before the great tectonic shift.

After the nap, it was time for dinner. We went to a very good chain Italian restaurant called Bravo’s where I had the most delicious pesto tortelloni I’d ever eaten and listened to some repeated melody playing over the loud speaker that was part Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” part theme song from Super Mario Brothers and part Wes Electronica DJ on acid. Bizarre. After dinner and some pretty great tiramisu, it was back to the King (as I was now calling my bed) and a pretty terrific night’s sleep.

Morning. Breakfast. Starbucks. Presentation and tour. Awesome machines. The complete geek in me that is in love with robotic technology had about half a dozen joygasms during the 45 minute tour. Pure brilliance. Beneath the silent squee’s were also musings about how the building would work as a BDSM dungeon. I mean, come on. The machine that spins so that plastic wrap can wrap itself around whatever’s on the metal circle on the floor? The place where our coupons are kept – called “the cage” – where only one person is mandated to manage? How could it not?

Airport. Lunch. Plane ride to Chicago. Pretty uneventful, all things told, except when I got in I learned that my flight back to Boston was delayed by more than an hour, and that just sucks. The airport itself, on the other hand, is amazing. Passing from Concourse C to B, I had to go through this hallway where they had those walking ramps where you walk at your normal speed but actually are going about 10 miles an hour faster, and so it feels weird to get off because you feel like you should still be being propelled forward. Adding to the psychedelic ambiance were walls with soft pastel lights shining behind the frosted glass blocks, and neon string lights on the ceiling being lit up in wave pattern going back and forth and forth and back. Music played on overhead that it reminded me of the last time I was in a planetarium, or some slow information ride at Disney World’s Land of Tomorrow. And so now I sit in Chicago, waiting for my delayed flight to finally start boarding, listening to the balding guy in his tweed suit across the way from me talk and the phone and am surprised to find out how much he sounds like Russell Brand, and eating the most delicious caramel apple I’ve ever had in my life. Caramel base, dipped in confectioner’s sugar and rolled in brown sugar and cinnamon. My mouth hasn’t been this happy to have something in it in way too long. And so, with any luck, I’ll be in Boston before 10PM. With more luck, I’ll be home before 11PM. If not, I may be going to work pretty late tomorrow.