Monday Spark

J and I have been traveling a lot lately which means I have gotten behind on a lot of things. Aside from work, which piled up like omfg, the one I regret the most has been my diet/exercise routine. I had a pretty good thing going about a month ago, and I even lost some weight. Sure, most of my weight loss was directly involved with swine flu related loss of appetite, but I'll take the help where I can get it.

from Articulate Matter

In the past three weeks, I have dropped yoga, entirely, and my back, hips and asthma have not thanked me for it. I haven't taken a class in about two years, now, so all of my yoga has recently been done either with help from free internet videos, or the Basic Yoga Book which is a decent guide for beginners and people who, like me, have a hard time coming up with sequences on their own.

This morning, I did Yoga Today's Happy Hips and Hamstrings video. By the end I had my heels on the floor during a downward facing dog, which is not something I have been able to accomplish since I was taking yoga at MIT during my undergrad years. So here's to yoga and its amazing ability to make me feel like I've accomplished something even though I have barely started my day.

Wierd Dream Week

For some reason my dreams have been much more vivid (and strange) this week, so here's another one for the vault:

I was lying in bed, which I tend to do after J leaves for work, because both of us would wake up a little later when he was in school, and damn if I'm going to break that habit just because his commute changed.

His iPhone rang, and I wasn't sure if it was an alarm or a text message, so I picked it up, and it started freaking out on me and suddenly I was in his google reader. I saw that there was porn in his reader (do porn sites have rss feeds?), and not just a little bit of porn. We're talking massive amounts of porn. I just kept scrolling down because I couldn't help myself. And I kept seeing more and more porn.

This one I knew was a dream, but let's face it - a little too close to reality for comfort, brain (I was in my bed, with my own covers, sheets, bedroom - every detail exactly as it would be in life). I'm a realist, and I know porn exists. I even know my boyfriend looks at porn, although I have no idea when or how often (and I like it that way. Even though technically I don't disapprove of looking at porn, it's not something you want to walk in on your S.O. doing). But on his iPhone?! That's the part that was gross.

Did You See My Pajamas? That's Because I LIVE HERE.

One of the perils of city living is that I occasionally frequently have to kick people off of our stoop. Usually it's some drunk or drugged up homeless person who is yelling at passersby or has passed out on our stoop so suddenly that they bang the doorway on their way down. Part of me has intense yuppie guilt about asking them to move it, then telling them to move it, then telling them that I'm phoning the police. The majority of my other parts have a short fuse, though, and would like to be able to step onto our threshold without also having to step on a vagrant person, so I end up calling the police about 70% of the time (I call often enough that I am heeded from time to time by the regulars). Occasionally, though, it's not a homeless person. Sometimes it's people in business suits. Or small families with noisy children. And for some stupid reason, it takes me longer to deal with them than it takes me to deal with the homeless people.

Tonight, as I was sitting at my desk trying to think of a good blog entry, I was debating whether or not to ask a woman who was having a cell phone conversation on our stoop to move it along.

Tonight, I finally reasoned that I kick bums off my stoop without a second thought, so why not someone who is clearly on the phone with work or their family, who might be on their way to a nice dinner, or a warm home? They have equally no right to loiter on the property I rent and bother me. Maybe there are quiet persons chilling out there more often than I know, and to them I say chill away - I only use my door a handful of times during the day, anyway, so rock on, because you're not bothering me at all.

This woman, however, was bothering me. So why was I sitting at my desk trying to enjoy a glass of wine instead of kicking her off my stoop so I could actually enjoy it? She was breaking both of the rules I use to determine whether to call the freakin' cops about the homeless people (being noisy and being relentless about being noisy), so why on earth wasn't I telling her to leave?

And now I segue to honestly ask: what the hell is wrong with people? I don't go and stand on her front porch and have loud, chatty conversations. There is nothing really so different about an urban stoop. I don't know how to describe why it's not okay to people not in this situation, except to tell you that it's private property (and that there are noise ordinances). I get that for some inane reason it probably seems okay to you, to stand "innocently" on my stoop and talk loudly (I'm sorry, at your natural volume? Really?), I really do. However, as a first floor urban apartment dweller I am here to tell you, world - it is not okay. It is not okay for you to be on someone else's stoop doing anything. Ever. Especially if you're doing it loudly!

In the end, I didn't even kick her off my stoop because she was that annoying - I did it because of the principle of the matter. These poor homeless people have nowhere to go, but they drive me bonkers, so I ask the police to help me deal with them. This woman was wearing her "I'm an entitled cunt" business suit and having a chatty cell phone conversation on my front porch even though the weather outside is beautiful (i.e. no rain or snow she was taking shelter from). Let's take a moment to reflect on that. Poor homeless person. Noisy entitled asshole.

The only question I still have for myself is why did it take me so long to open my door and stare at her with a deadpan face, holding a glass of wine in my pajamas, until she got the hint?

The Naked Dream

I had that dream last night, the one where you're naked in impossibly uncomfortable situations.

I was shopping at a Payless with my mother, sister and grandmother, and for some reason didn't have clothing on most of the time (at one point, I put my ipod into my pocket, so why I couldn't keep that skirt on the entire time is beyond me). I was actually fine with it (I've been working out, lately), until I noticed someone from my former job was there, also. As it sunk in, and I started panicking and feeling very self conscious, I noticed large pockets of people from my former job milling around, for some reason taking a tour of the building (why a typical modern Payless in El Paso would be architecturally significant to a firm in Boston is beyond me).

I jumped behind a clothing rack, fully expecting to be able to throw a dress over myself and have them ring it up as I walked out, but in between me and the women's clothing section was a group of people my age being dominated by someone I particularly dislike, and she was coming my way, talking loudly about herself, as usual. I pretended to be casually browsing the toddler's clothing in my birthday suit while she kept creeping up around the corner, and I was willing myself to become invisible or sink into the floor, somehow.

Fortunately, this is when my alarm clock rescued me.

Maybe on a related note, I start my first class at MassArt tonight.