Serious Dental Problems

Good thing: My landlady took me on the morning walk/jog of my LIFE yesterday.

Bad thing: And now my legs are sore.

Good thing: But at least I didn't feel as bad stuffing my face at Passover dinner last night.

Bad thing: I stuffed my face at Passover dinner last night.

Good thing: I stuffed my face full of matzoh balls and charoset at Passover dinner last night.

Charoset, I said.

Monday was a great evening filled with ooey-Jewy fun. At least, as fun as family dinners can get-- and in particular ones that involve everyone reading a book before dinner. Fortunately I come from a long line of people who mask their boredom and hunger-impatience with really painful jokes.

Part the Red Sea? More like clear the room.

Since you're probably not Jewish I won't bore you with the details of Passover, but I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I am now allowed to sit at the adults table, where I drink irresponsible amounts of my uncle's vintage wine when he isn't looking. To make an extremely inside Jew-joke: I am The Wicked Child.

Moving on to less Semitic topics, I'd like to give the latest weekend update. On Sunday I attended the LA Times Festival of Books which is held annually on the USC campus.

It offers no surprises. The end.

One cool thing is that the wonderful people from my old work had a booth set up there and I got to swing by to say hello-- I even got a free copy of my former boss's book! At a glance it seems to involve samurais and/or ninjas. I'm sure it's at least partly autobiographical.

So on the hour-long drive home this evening, a song came on that I very fondly associate with this past summer. Thinking about the summer made me think about now, and thinking about now made  me freak out a little bit since I just realized it's been nearly 11 months since I graduated college. Please excuse me while I wander into one of my mini existential  ponderings and reflect on the fact that I've been an adult for almost a year. Specifically, this kind of adult:

But with more teeth, hair, and baby fat.

We associate certain feelings and dispositions with certain periods of our life, and hearing this one song made me feel like May-August 2013. In trying to pin down exactly what that feeling was, it was like consensual free-falling. I felt so lost and detached from the heaviness of being one-who-makes-a-living, and it felt truly stupendous. I had finally slayed senior year, and although I knew something even more challenging and horrific was coming up in the future, I had so little grasp of what that might be that I just couldn't bring myself to fret over it. Or, I did every now and then, but usually only when I spoke to relatives on the phone or paid more than $7 for a meal. Generally speaking, I was blissful. Incredibly blissful. I didn't know you could experience that kind of peace and happiness beyond the age of eight (1999 was a great year to be me).

So where are we now?

Not San Diego.

This will be difficult to explain, and even more difficult to explain when we reach the official "Where The Ever-Living Fuck Was Jessica One Year Ago?" post (coming soon to a free blog hosting site near YOU!). But if I could be brief (too late), I've reached a sort of stability for the time being. One thing I'll say for stability is that it's pretty damn boring. Not to suggest I feel like I'm in a rut-- far from it. But the little Change-and-Wonderment sprites haven't been sprinkling their little glitter buckets over things as often. Work, for instance, has long since been a new and interesting thing. It went from being exciting (I'm working in the industry! I'm paying for designer coffee! I've developed a phone voice!), to excruciating (I'm doing everything wrong! I'm tired! I have money but no time to buy groceries!), to somewhere in between (I'm working in the industry!). Right now it sort of feels like I've been going to the dentist everyday for the past four months. It still hurts when they poke my gums with those little metal hooks but at this point I'm used to it, and I've developed a legitimate taste for fluoride tooth cleaner. You know the kind.

What I'm more or less trying to say with my very innocuous metaphor is that whole notion of "settling" into a way of life has, unsurprisingly, settled upon me unconsciously. I sense a definite routine, and yet I still feel like I'm stumbling from one day to the next. It's not good or bad, though I do a pretty great job of wording it in the most negative way possible. I just wonder at what age you stop feeling like a life-n00b.

Anyway, I think to wrap things up, routine is a never-ending dentist appointment, or something like that.

Take it away, Steve!