Post vegetarian meal, I feel so fat.

How is it that I attended a University Vegetarians meeting at a veggie-friendly restaurant and walked out feeling like I’d eaten ten steaks? 

Oh, textured protein, you invisible enemy, you. My stomach and thee are thus quarrelling.

An afternoon of Chai, friends and smoked cheddar.

John and Chelsie introduced me to a wonderful East Austin coffeehouse today called Bennu. Click here for a map and review. It’s got low lighting, old mismatched coffee cups and armchairs that look like they’ve accommodated folks for well over fifty years. 

This place is chill. We chatted for an hour or so over Chai - maybe less, but who was keeping time? The drinks were expensive, mine $4.75 for about eight ounces worth of tea, but it was pretty damn tasty. I would wager a guess to say you’re paying for your atmosphere and bandwidth. The place was swarming with people on laptops. It felt like every blogger in the zipcode decided to come out for a cuppa. 

ALSO - the most important lovely thing at Bennu - they have specialty coffees named after literary figures or novels. You can get a Pride and Prejudice tea or a Don Quixote Mexican cocoa. It tickled my English-major bone. Does that sound remotely sexual? Apologies. 

Anyway, then we went to Wheatsville, one of my new Austin loves. We went with a mission - to buy my hair dye - but left with savory smoked cheddar, dark chocolate, a baguette and assorted dried fruit. Too tasty to leave behind. 

I’m not going to lie, I’m quite excited about the possibility of having fabulous teal hair tonight. Be prepared; it’s going to be ten thousand kinds of awesome. 

We passed this home on our way back to my place, and I terrified this little kid skateboarding in the front yard when we stopped to take a picture. The architecture was just so cool! But I really think I scared him a lot. I kept reassuring him that I just like the house, that I wasn’t stopping the car to hurt him… I don’t think it helped my case at all.  

First photograph featured courtesy of the Downtown Austin Blog.

Late-ish plans for this Labor Day.

Today I’m meeting John and Chelsie for coffee and I’ll probably beg them to go to Wheatsville with me where I’m picking up some hair dye. Pictures later, I promise. 

Sometime today I’ve got to work on homework. There’s a ton. I also really want to start my new project that I’ve yet to blog about. Once I get everything together, I’ll write about it extensively… probably even add a link to it. Yes, it is that big. 

Also, the University Vegetarians are having a “No-Meat and Greet” tonight at Veggie Heaven on the Drag. I think Jonfin might be going with me, but I’m not sure on that. 

Ho-hum. This Labor Day is taxing in ways I did not expect. 

Learning to be incredibly selfish; in short, the discovery of oneself.

This break that Cameron and I are having - the hardest part of which is yet to come, since our would-be five-year anniversary is on the thirteenth of this month - is supposed to cultivate learning about ourselves. 

After all, we’ve been together since I was fourteen. I’m certainly a different girl now than I was then. 

It’s been a hard weekend. My insides are all confused, because I’m “over-thinking all of this,” according to Cameron. It’s just a separation. 

But I don’t feel separated. I feel - broken; like a record that’s been sitting in the sunlight and heat in an attic until it’s warped and can’t play, or the vinyl cracks under the stress of time. This is hard. 

And that is why! That is why I have to be selfish. If this thing is fashioned to allow me space to discover who I am, then I better run with the opportunity.

But what is selfish? Is it entirely bad? It has largely negative connotations. A selfish person doesn’t think of others, never considers anyone but themselves, and won’t share. That is all bad. But what if selfish could mean something different? What if it related more to the self than the disregard for everyone else; if it instead meant “focus on oneself.” I’m about to take a soul vacation where I’m in search for myself - the girl I want to be, and the girl I’m becoming, and all of that scary deep philosophical shit we’re confronted with late at night when we can’t sleep. That’s pretty selfish. 

It’s funny how I reacted when confronted with this thought; my immediate reaction was to go get another tattoo, to dye my hair blue and pierce my nose. This is my subconscious fighting back. I’ve programmed myself to believe that the Kayla I was last week with Cameron can’t be the same girl typing this blog entry. I’m trying to make someone new, to re-invent myself.

But is that true? It can’t be! I am who I am because of all sorts of experiences. Cameron is not the sculptor that shaped me; my soul and spirit is the culmination of a life’s worth of work and love. 

So! This means this girl is going to be very selfish for a time - learning, loving, and relishing in myself. If that means dying my hair teal and getting another tattoo, that’s fabulous. If that means re-learning how to spend time with myself, that’s fine, too. 

Cameron, if that means I can’t talk to you for a few days, please understand. 

I don’t care what obstacles come my way: I am going to change for the better. I’ll learn to self-sustain. Perhaps when I’m done learning, Cameron will still be there. All I can do is hope, and in the meantime, be incredibly selfish. 

godboyslife asked: Where are you!? Haha....
Not really a question...more just saying I miss you posting.
:)

I’m sorry, I know I’m a bad weekend blogger. On weekends when I work, I’m going from seven in the morning until seven or eight at night, and I’m absolutely exhausted when I get home. Sometimes I just crash in bed in my scrubs. It’s dorky, I know. 

Thanks for missing me, though. It makes me feel all sorts of special. 

Rainy bus nonsense got me all sorts of soaked.

This morning was one masquerading as an autumn or winter day; rain came down in sheets, putting all the students on busses - except this particular student. Two busses passed me by, waving me off because they were too full. The end result was me walking to class in the rain and being fifteen minutes late. This was after I took a cold shower (no hot water left) and scrambling to make breakfast.

Did I mention that I had to walk in the rain?

It really wasn’t so bad; on my way home, I saw some friends and was able to catch up. That’s always the best feeling. I treasure the connections I’ve made at school. I’ll see people from high school and not care in the least, but my friends that I’ve made - I’ll walk across the street to catch them on the way to class.

Just one little thing that makes me happy.  

A brief and wrenching thought.

When I talk to Cam, it’s bizarre not to end our conversations with any sort of special sentiment. Before all of this, we’d talk and hang up - he’d always tell me he loved me; I wasn’t so persistent about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t care or feel the same way, sometimes it just didn’t occur to me to vocalize my emotions. 

Now when we hang up, I find myself cursing every single time I didn’t relish one of his I love you’s. Again, always the regret. 

Success and such things for me, me, me.

Even though I didn’t want to, I just finished working out downstairs with another half hour on the elliptical machine. Some people probably think this is no biggie, but I am completely proud of myself for going. 

Ha! And I probably worked off at least a good half of my dinner, always a reassuring thought. My current goals include strength and happiness, a healthy departure from my omnipresent desire to lose weight. 

Not that I would mind, or that it’s off my mind (most certainly not) but when I’m sweating and wanting to get into my pajamas, I just think about - don’t laugh - gazelles.

Something that really, truly infuriates me.

As I was trolling the blogosphere on a homework break, I ran across a blog written by a young girl trying to lose weight. Great! Good for her. Oh, no. You wouldn’t believe the atrocities she’s promoting. 

The girl started out around one hundred and thirty pounds, a weight I’m all too familiar with, although she’s five inches taller than me, putting her at nearly six foot tall. Go figure. She wants to get down to just under one hundred and ten pounds, and she’s doing it through “unhealthy methods she does not advocate.” 

Oh, the irony! This girl has a severe eating disorder perpetuated by the photographs of waifs she posts on her blog! The only thing she’s eating up are the comments from her readers which span from guys telling her she’s beautiful to similar anorexics asking for advice. 

This makes me want to go postal. 

When I was younger, I too suffered from a weird eating thing, never something tangible enough to classify as a “real disorder,” but I definitely was a waif for a short while. It felt amazing - at least in terms of self-confidence. But physically? My panic attacks were at an all-time high and I was absolutely emotionally unstable. 

Now I’ve got a good bit of squishiness on me that I’m working on, but God! Never like this girl! She went as far as posting her calorie count for one day - 430 calories. What the actual fuck. Your body needs at least eleven hundred to keep itself from shutting down. 

It wouldn’t make me so angry if she was doing it privately. It is her life, after all. But opening up other innocent youth to the world of secretly purging and fasting? Fuck no. That’s selfish and ignorant. 

Apologies for the rant, but on this issue I can hardly contain myself. It’s just one of those things. 

A short couple of lines to celebrate this evening’s rain.

Warm lamplight, sweet coffee, soft and worn-in shoes; 
these are my puddle-walk comforts.
Outside the sky is wringing the clouds out like dish rags,
Inside I’m reading and writing and the like.

Cloves and cinnamon, wetness and leaf-smell;
these are my puddle-walk comforts.
They’ll attack me like old friends, swallow me up,
And I will completely allow it, because I love it so.