Enter the Confessional #3: But I've got a really good personality!

Wow. So I'm doing really well with that 'keeping to a weekly schedule' thing, huh?

It would be easy to blame my extended fail on a long list of recent events, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Some of them are easy to discuss in a public forum: Thanksgiving, moving house, busy time at work, lead-up to Christmas, etc. etc. etc. Others are more complicated and more personal, and have involved an intense mix of joy and pain (and sunshine and rain, sing it all god's children...) and fear and triggering and triggering and triggering. I'm dating a couple of girls, one of whom is awesome and good to me, and the other of whom I actually like - and you all know me well enough to know what that means. I'm settling into a life here that after only a handful of months is already uncomfortably rife with overlaps and I'm making decisions that aren't always good. I'm broke, of course. And I'm going to rot my teeth out with candy canes if I don't slow my roll.

Returning to the topic of moving, it's been... hard. The physical move itself wasn't too bad, but this was the first time in many years that I've packed up my room in my parents' house and not been taking it all to Sydney. I've been dreaming of home a lot lately and I know it's just my brain trying to sort through things and move on, but it's exhausting and it's starting to wear me down. I never thought I'd be living in an apartment in Boston. It's a great apartment, and I have a great new flattie named Karen, and it's in an area that I don't know so it feels new. All good. But I can't help but think back to this time last year, when my life finally felt like it was coming together again after far too long - job I liked, house I liked, friends I loved, new prospects on the horizon - and then how quickly it all got pulled out from under me, and how much I lost in the process. And that's happened too many times in the last few years, that thing of going, '...finally.' right before having my whole life go tits-up, for me to be able to even begin to believe that good things may be on the horizon. Which is all apart from the fact that I still struggle to see Boston itself as a good thing. It was the right thing, I know that, but it doesn't feel like a good thing. So there's that to contend with.

On a less fraught note, my bed is cursed. I'm not sure what the hell is behind this, but it's one damn thing after another: first, the queen-size mattress and boxspring arrived as scheduled, but the boxspring didn't fit up the stairs. They took it back and advised me to order a split queen, which I did... but no one told me I had to order two of them, because for some reason they sell the halves individually at Sears (Flattie Karen said she was going to go by there and ask for one leg of pants), and none of the three people I discussed my order with saw fit to clarify it with me. And so a week later - this past Saturday - the delivery men arrived with one half of a boxspring. And when I called Sears to give them a piece of my mind, they put me on hold for 20 minutes and then asked me to call back later because their systems were down. No, really.

At this point I decided to just get a cheaper set from the furniture place downstairs, and that arrived yesterday without incident. And having the boxspring meant that the bed was high enough off the ground for me to put my brand-new, custom-designed, hand-painted doona cover on without it dangling onto the floor. So I did, only to discover that the lovely cherry-blossom detail that was meant to have bright red flowers instead had anaemic red-pink ones, which is... not what I wanted. And kind of icky. And has prompted Flattie Karen to start calling me 'Salmon'. So now I'm trying to organize a return on a custom item, which is always a joy. I also still have a stray half-boxspring lying around my room because I'm trying to arrange the return of that to Sears, but they seem unwilling to get in touch with me about it. Oh, and my actual bed frame, which I thought was being delivered at the end of this week, won't be here until sometime next week, or possibly after due to the holidays.

[Sigh.]

I mean, all I can do at this point is laugh, but it's beyond ridiculous. The rest of the move has gone pretty smoothly, and I do have furniture (and credit card debt) thanks to the proud Scandinavian meatball merchants at Ikea, but the fact that the main feature of my room is unlikely to be sorted within the first month of my living here is starting to bug me. I will say that the mattress is amazingly comfortable, though, so I'm lucky there. And half expecting it to spontaneously combust in the night, or possibly be harboring Julian Assange without my knowledge.

In better news, the dancing's going well. It's been a busy few weeks, but now I've got two shows down and only one more to go - but the remaining one is the biggest and scariest one. I'm doing a fusion number with a dagger; it's to a song called 'Dr Sin' by Chasing Shadows (highly recommended), and my character is an assassin. It's a bit martial-artsy and a bit tribal and entirely fueled by my latent rage issues, but it seems to be going over pretty well so far, apart from how I almost took out an audience member a couple of weeks ago when my dagger slipped from my hand and went shooting out into the audience. First time I've ever dropped it, let alone flung it, and of course it happened at a show. Luckily no one was hurt, but the event has already passed into legend and my teacher is never ever going to let me live it down, not that I can blame her for that.

So that's me. For now. I won't do anything so stupid as to promise another post between now and February, but I'll see what I can do.

XOXO

Masa = love.

Omigod, you guys.

Caitlin took me to Masa for brunch today, and it was THE AWESOMER. The food, the drinks, the service, the everything. All of it, just beyond.

I started with a Citrus Mojito, which, if there's a better way to start a Sunday than with rum and lime, I sure as hell can't think of it. Caitlin had the Latin Bellini, which was so sparkly and light - mango! guava! champers! - that we each had two more of those before the meal was done. Somebody get on the phone to Anise and tell them to start serving liquor, y'all, you don't even know what you've been missing all this time. These were accompanied by fresh, warm cornbread with a selection of sweet and savoury jams and what I think was a maple-walnut-flavoured butter (slightly sweet, slightly salty, altogether perfect).

For an appetizer, I had the Southwestern Spring Roll, which was lovely and cheese-y with a beautiful clean chilli heat to it. (Went really well with the mojito too!) Caitlin had the Breakfast Tacos, which I coveted mightily until I had a taste of my own app and did a Happy Food Dance in my chair.

For my entrée, I had the Santa Fe-style Eggs Benedict (no avocado), which were pushed beyond the usual level of Hollandaise greatness by the use of biscuits (American biscuits, not British/Australian biscuits), which maintained their crunch much better than the standard English muffin. The home fries were a bit bland and not crunchy like I like them, but everything else on the plate - including a transcendent fresh red salsa - was so good that I simply did not care. Caitlin had the chocolate-chip pancakes, and judging by the look on her face she was quite happy with her choice.

Sadly, I'm going to miss out on another Work of Culinary (TM Oscar and Versical) this evening: the Mission Hill Massive's Sunday Dinner is on, and it's the annual St. Patrick's Day Boiled Dinner edition - whether there's a reason it's only done once a year is your call. Unfortunately, I've come over all wicked tired and I feel like the cold I've been fighting off for the last few days is settling in, so I'm going to give this week a miss and stay home with my 'Stupid Stupid Man' DVDs, even though it means skipping my Mom's amazing Irish bread - and no, there wasn't one made for our house. But I need the rest more than the baked goods, I think.

Also, while we're on the topic of 'Stupid Stupid Man': how the bloody hell is Matthew Newton so hot? I *know* he's an asshole. He's even playing an asshole, so it's not like I'm deluding myself about the character. I just... gah. I'm a broken human, and a bad, bad lesbian.

XOXO

Link du jour: Caitlin's photo blog. Go check out what things look like where we live.