I had a glowing morning, but I feel terrified now. I am going to die alone- it feels inevitable. Life goes by so fast, I am so happily single, I can very easily see this continuing on for a while until one day I retire and realize, "oh my goodness. I have nothing to do. I've done nothing. I have no one." I know I am so young, but I will still be young tomorrow, right? And the day after? Yes, if you are my mother saying it, if you are older friends saying it, then I am young, but only because you are older! The fact is, I am not getting younger. Time isn't what I need. I need quality, I need change, I need to understand why the fuck it is that I was such a horrible partner to every single person I'd ever been involved with except one. I need to find out why that kindness and happiness and generosity and LOVE was able to dry up so easily. I need to find out if it's really gone. I've reverted back to my old ways of being a mean, asshole girlfriend. I can't do it anymore. I can't be regressing already. In this instance, yes, I agree, I am young- too young to be moving backwards!

I am really afraid and really sad.

http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes/033-astrid

she started it.


And he continued it:
as soon as I saw this picture, I started crying and said to my self "oh my god, Paul Newman is dead and I'm going to die too."

-Camille

FIRST OFF, I just ate the most fantastic grapefruit of my life. I bought 6 today (because they were on sale! Hooray!) and I am contemplating going back tomorrow and getting 6 more. This is probably a bad idea because:
I will only eat one a day, max.
I don't know how long the sale is going on: it might be going on for another day, or another 5 days.
This might leave me stuck with 11 rotting grapefruits and lots of tears.
But I feel like I've really got to hoard these babies, they are so amazing.

SECOND, it makes me sad how bad I am with words. There are things that I want to tell people that are so emotionally-packed that, when I visualize the words in my head, I see me delivering to them this bloody, dripping, huge heart on a plate with this dense, violet, foggy aura swirling around it. That's how I want it to be delivered.
But usually, it's me understating things, them saying thank you and smiling, and me walking away KNOWING that I won't have another chance to do it, and that they don't get it.
Today I had one of those conversations. Puh.

THIRD, last night I walked towards my door, where I keep my shoes, and I was disgusted to see this:
IS THIS HOW I TAKE MY SHOES OFF? LIKE A DUCK?
Eww.

-Camille

Some of my favorite students decided today to shower me with gifts. I thought you might enjoy them. These are front and back and I don't think she realizes how funny they are.
Also today, my International Politics professor had us sing Happy Birthday to his niece who is turning six. She lives in Germany, speaks no English, and he couldn't call her because of the time difference and her little-girl curfew. It was really adorable just to see how important it was to him that he send her a birthday message, which he prefaced with some rapid German.

-Karen

I think I was a pretty decent looking baby.
That sort of makes up for the fact that I was the ugliest motherfucking preteen you've ever seen in your whole entire life. Jesus.
But anyway, yes

The Miracle-Worker baby:

the baby with a really attractive father:

I am no longer a baby here (I was ~2), but look how shiny my hair was!

-Camille

It's true! I was a weird, Frankenstein-looking baby with a square head. There exist no pictures of me from before I was four years old except my passport picture, which depicts said Frankenstein face. I must have looked so strange that no one wanted to document the evidence. Also according to my mom, everyone thought I was a boy at first.

-Karen

Not every baby is cute. I daresay that most (or at least a good, strong 50%) are not cute at all.

-Camille

KITTENS!!!!!!!!!!!!

My cat had kittens!!!

-Karen

I feel like I'm in love! Every now and then I'll be sitting quietly--reading, or just thinking--and a physical feeling of delight and excitement will come over me and I know that it's love. I felt it with Marco, although this is much, much, much less delight-filled; much, much, much mess frequent; and much, much, much less strong (in terms of being able to control my mood for the rest of the day/week/month, etc). But it's definitely love, and it's definitely not for anyone in particular. I'll try to convince myself, when I barely think about it and for a few fleeting seconds, that these feelings should transfer over for one person in particular who you know I used to really, really want to be with, but then as soon as I really, consciously think about it, I know that they're not for him.

I got together with an old roommate last week and she said "Camilla! You are so happy! Are you in love?" and without even a second of thought I said "no" and she said "oh, but you're in love with yourself! That's the best kind!"
and after I puked all over her and rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of their sockets, I realized she might be right on. I hope this lasts. I do tend to get this way in the height of spring, but this somehow does not feel like the enthusiasm/bubbliness/confidence/excitement I usually experience.

This weekend I saw you. It was fantastisch.
And then later that night I went to babysit a girl who reminded me, incessantly, tormentingly, that she is in her "terrible twos." It's very good that I'm watching her, because I love babies and she reminds me that oh, yeah, I hate kids.
I took a picture of myself immediately after I put her to bed. If I had been feeling melancholy, the lighting would have captured my mood perfectly. But I was actually feeling great. I had eaten a bunch of dried dates beforehand, and I was thinking about how wonderful it would be to be in a relationship with my thesis adviser. Truthfully, I'm thinking it would not be so great at all, since there's no sexual chemistry (and if there was, that'd get me expelled and him fired) and because he is so unbelievably intelligent/witty/established and I am a little swiss-cheese head. But that did not stop me from imagining the little nice things I'd do for him and the wonderful lunch-time conversations we'd have and the magically educational trips to the forest/beach he'd lead our children on and the eye-gazing that would take place which he'd quickly learn to love.
That was Friday.

Saturday, Nina came over and we were drunk at 5pm. And we saw Ghostface Killah. Fun show.
Later we moshed at an Of Montreal concert and you know what? It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. The music was good- it was a VERY GREAT experience. I wouldn't listen to their music while cooking or on the train--it's not my thing--but I would definitely, definitely see them live again (if the tickets were <$15).And a few bottles of wine later, we were still drunk at 3am, which is when she left and I passed out while looking at the "Grossest Food Porn!" thread on the PPK forums.
And I love being young because I woke up at 9am feeling fresh and lovely!

-Camille

"we are not putting this on the internet, but it does lend itself well to ship building."

Some stills.




Some of my favorite lines:
"maybe she keeps the chocolate covered pennies around so she can fake having a stroke or a heart attack."

"those are cheap-ass grandpa mugs... If you don't love your grandpa."

"never-doing-laundry bitch"

"I'm not going to attract mountain alpine farmers"

"it's funny because they are opposites!"

"she seems like she can't help it. She's Greek right?
Her body just seems like it lends itself to shipbuilding"


P.S. I think we look damn good. <3 I love you!

-Karen

I had to take these kind of quickly because there were a lot of people around, but the building reminds me of the orphanage in Madeline. P.S. Today someone on the Food Network said "phenomenal" and I thought he said "Om nom nom." I didn't question it.

-Karen

You are so charming! I swelled with delight when I read that, and I love orchids a lot.

And you are right about the insight on Asians in that the other half of my being especially critical of them, I can also readily discern super sultry Asians. Although, does that mean you don't agree? If you think I'm beautiful, I think the models are stunning, especially the first couple.

Yesterday I turned on NBC and Martha Stewart was on, except some college girl was 'teaching' her to make a "rainbow cake," which was basically just a lot of food coloring on thin layers of cake, with little icing. Martha would ask her questions about her process of baking and she would say, "umm, I don't know, I just spray it with some Pam."
I just want to know whose idea it was to have this bitch pretend like she had anything to teach Martha Stewart about baking. Step off, bitch.

-Karen

If you were a flower, you'd be an orchid. You are kind of hard to take care of and disarmingly beautiful.

I spotted these teeny baby buds (below) popping up on a bush outside one of the buildings this afternoon. I was delighted by how observant I was, at least for 5 minutes out of the day. I tend to go through my day with horse-blinders on, which I really hate but won't deny. It was a real problem when I was learning how to drive.

-Camille

Uh, perhaps you are more subtle and classy when it comes to sexuality than I am. You say "sexy" and I think sex. But none was to be found in that video. I kept waiting and waiting but it just got longer and boringer and more full of this tension that I didn't want to be a part of because there was no sex in it! Not that I necessarily think that way... but a lot of the time I do think that way.
It is also crossing my mind that you thought it was sexy because they are asian and you are asian and you can pick up on each other's sultriness better than I can.
Don't hit me for saying that.

I am in a room in the library surrounded by three middle-aged ugly-ass nerds and one is sucking down this huge huge iced coffee from Starbucks and making eyes at me but you know what? I am not into coffee drinkers. I know that cuts me off from approximately 98% of the population, but I don't care. I'll certainly date a coffee drinker, but don't shove your coffee addiction in my face before I've even gotten past the fact that you are a NERD with a nerd haircut, nerd glasses, and a nerd polo shirt.
And not like a Bill Nye nerd either. Not the kind of nerd that you can envision going on hikes with and having two children and a border collie and a nice house in Amherst, MA with. Just middle aged guys who would be in NYC for grad school, who probably ate an arugula, goat cheese, and cranberry salad for lunch, and who think it's more fun to argue about Kant and Obama than it is to play badminton and get sweaty and stinky while climbing mountains and looking at rocks.
Uhh, I think I just wrote a personal ad.
"SWF looking for a partner: Must be willing to play badminton and get sweaty and stinky while climbing mountains and looking at rocks. Must NOT eat goat cheese/cranberry salads. Must not talk about Kant or Obama unless I bring it up first. Must not be a nerd. Must want a border collie at some point in the future."

-Camille

Old New York in my apartment.



I wish we still used these mailboxes. They make me think of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Although just to be clear, you cannot fit shit in there. The space is the size of a pencil case.

-Karen

First Spring by Yang Fudong for Prada

Such a sexy ad for Prada. I don't know how to widen the borders so some of the clip is cut off, but you can follow the link to YouTube.


-Karen

In my chemistry recitation:

"If you understand the calculus behind #19 then feel free to zone out and look out the window because, when the weather gets nice, apparently Columbia turns into this sexy beach college which I didn't know about, so... hey."

Also, there is a man sitting across from me in the library (the backs of our laptops are touching. We are really close) and he is slurping his coffee and chewing with his mouth open, making the most disgusting food-noises I've heard all year.
There is a man sitting across from me in the library who is about to get his throat stomped on. Should I warn him before I do it?

I'd rather be here:

It's where I spent most of the end of last summer
and it is perfect.

-Camille

I am absolutely positive that if I weren't vegan, I would have given myself food poisoning a hundred times by now from undercooked meat. I have got some serious skills when it comes to timing my vegetables perfectly- I've got those down. Baked goods, I always overcook because
a. I can't tell the difference
b. I hate baking, and
c. I'd rather have something burnt/dry than pudding-ish in the middle.
I was thinking the other day about how I wish fish weren't an animal, because everyone is always going on about how healthy it is. Then I thought, "jeeze louise, I would have no clue how to cook that thing."
I went vegetarian the night after the first time I ever cooked meat all on my own. I made chicken tandoori and it was delicious, but I couldn't touch it while cooking. I had to marinate the chicken and touching the meat with my hands gave me chills. The pores (where they'd been plucked?) were horrifying. I realized I was handling (and would be consuming) a corpse, something that once had (a horrible) life and something that deserved life as much as I do.
This isn't about veganism or anything. I'm just saying, if I tried to cook meat for anyone, they would get very sick.
Also, once my roommate asked me to get a tuna-steak out of the freezer so it could defrost. I couldn't tell for the life of me what was meat and what was fish, forget about what TUNA STEAK was (I knew that it sort of looked like a redder guava jelly, but that didn't get me terribly far). I ended up walking around my floor with three freezerbags full of meat, asking the people I could find which one was a tuna steak. It turns out one of them was a regular-ass steak and another one was salmon. Uhhhhh, yes. I am good at calculus. Not things that you were supposed to learn by the time you entered kindergarten. SPEAKING OF WHICH! I love this picture. It's from one of Richard Scarry's books- I used to adore them.The pigs were the butchers in the town. Even when I was that young I remember thinking "hm. That's funny..." in a "curiouser and curiouser" sort of way. Not a ha-ha joke sort.

Today in the park a buncha nerds were playing quidditch. It was more for the sake of "playing quidditch" than playing a sport, but the rules were obviously very thought out, the uniforms were appropriate, and they looked like they were having a lot of fun.

this is a bad picture, but it's the only one in which you can see the 3 hoops setup:

-Camille

Isn't this thing crazy? It used to be a tiny stump a few summers ago, but now this person grows Chinese squash-type vegetables that are easily as tall as I am.


I went to pick up some duck and a new cutting board today, and this is just a random sample of some of the wares from the typical Chinese supermarket. This is really just a tiny portion of what's available. Every time I go grocery shopping I get really excited because everything is so colorful and ridiculous.


Some of the mushrooms
Bitter melons. Every time my grandma eats these, her face bunches up and her lips purse together. It is friggin adorable.


These are tiny little packets of candy by the register. If I weren't twenty years old I would be all over these.I did, however, have to buy thisbecause I needed a place to put my coins and on top of his head there is a small slot for just that purpose. Also he is really really cute. And this coffee because I love the packaging, and I try to get different coffee each month. I also felt like no one else was going to buy French coffee from the Chinese market. I had to rescue it.

-Karen

I just got a piece of junk mail from Gerber. Even though there was not a picture of a baby anywhere in the email, it still made my heart melt.
My biological clock is made out of sponges, flower petals, and dirty pennies. As in, at very random times, it is so, so broken.
The baby I've been watching for the past year and a half (since she was a few months old) is learning how to speak like her extremely musically-voiced jewish grandmother (whom I adore, by the way, and I'll talk about this later). When I babysat her last month, I slept over her house and we did her little morning routine together. She was eating her breakfast and suddenly said "oh no there is something on my tush!"
I said, "oh, what is it?"
"It is my dress."
And while sitting in her little chair she pulled the back of her dress so it came up like a hood over the back of her head and continued to eat, very content that the problem was now solved. I died.

-Camille

Today I took a walk with Nina. We went to Riverside Park for a bit and walked underneath the trees. It reminded me so much of what it was like being in my grandfather's garden in spring- with all the flowers blooming and the cherry blossom branches so lush that you could stand by the trunk of a tree and be nearly completely hidden from the rest of the world. That's what we practiced today: hiding, climbing trees, and giggling at passerbys.


Also practiced today (solo):
- watching every episode of Posh Nosh (they're only 9min each, though)
- being unenthusiastic about partner activities in my German class (as expressed through my saying, "oh my god enough with the partner activities I hate this shit." to my partner and him saying, "same here." It's okay- I started it :) ).
- getting stomach aches
- smelling the flowers
- dressing like a slob and feeling really, really pretty while looking really, really rough

I love you.

-Camille

this adorable green apartment is nestled between a small sushi restaurant and a gentleman's club.

-Karen

I just realized that I never answered you:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hands-down one of my favorite things. There is a man in my bartending class who I'm pretty sweet on because he looks like Charlie Day (Charlie from the show). I mean, that's not the only reason I'm sweet on him, but it is a big reason.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. My love for that show is unwavering.

-Camille

-Karen

Today was a terrible day because of work. I thought it would be a nice day, because my first class was cancelled and that means extra sleep and I was so happy! But then I went to work today, after talking to Cyndy last night about how stressful my job could be sometimes and how I was considering getting a different job for the fall.
So within 15 minutes of being outside with the kids, two girls were playing tag and collided with one another, resulting in one of them getting a cut on her knee, and me having to take her to the nurse. Then, a boy was pushed off the jungle gym and broke his arm. He was sobbing and saying his arm was broken and I assumed he was overreacting, until the nurse asked him to stick his arms straight out, and one was straight, and the other looked like a noodle.
She later said that my face was so impressive that she was also worried about me. THEN after his dad came to take him to St. Luke's along with the paramedics, and I had to fill out an incident report, the students were doing homework and a table with a really loose bolt, fell on a student's leg, and we had to send her home. Another incident report. HORRIBLE TERRIBLE UGH.
So then I came home, made myself a sweet potato, showered while that was being steamed, put on my pajamas, took my vitamins and now I am here.
I don't think you needed to get his information. A bad vibe is a bad vibe. And I can completely relate to your dream problem. When I don't feel that I've sufficiently terrorized someone in my dream, whether it's a villain, faceless monster, or horrible childhood nemesis, I wake up angrier than ever, and I can't fix it because I can't go back. I don't know what to make of my dreams about people I wish I could beat up, but it will probably manifest itself in a stage mom way, where I encourage my children to live out the dreams of hustling the playground because I couldn't. But then there are also the lucid dreams, where such crazy shit happens to me and I'm absolutely terrified that I'll never wake up, and forever be trapped in my dreamworld, like the movie Cell.
By the way, Charm City Cakes has merchandise including aprons. They're plain but I still kind of want one.

-Karen