all you can do is grit your teeth.

[subjective]

i got home from florida yesterday. it is such a relief to be back in boston. a lot of uncomfortable things happened & i felt isolated a lot, but i did have a couple of fairly straightforward conversations with my dad, which felt good. he drove my sister & me around back roads for a few hours & i was profoundly disappointed to not have a camera with me, to take pictures of my granddaddy's old farm, the tide going out in cedar key, my great grandma's old fishing camp (now sold), the signs for a baptist church in fowler's bluff that say "_______ church: fisher of men." my sister promised that when i'm there next, we will go on a photography expedition.

veganism continues to be a fascinating topic for my family, by which i mean they are astonished that i would choose this diet, & apparently disgusted by the thought of eating anything not seasoned with meat. my grandma, to whom i am sincerely grateful for making me separate portions of everything with no meat seasonings, repeatedly warned everyone else away from these separate dishes: "now those are without meat, you don't want those." she's impressed that i eat greens now, since i hated them when i was younger, & made sure to cook turnip greens for dinner. but i realized why i hated them until i moved away: the southern method of cooking them is to boil them beyond recognition. sick.

old name x843198.

this is the first year my family has not bought me clothes, & instead i came home with useful items such as non-stick skillets & new bath towels. my sister gave me hair clippers. she rules.

i regret not buying a package of green peanuts for boiling. stupid.

today i washed linens, swept the apartment, finally cleaned off my kitchen table & bought groceries for two new recipes. i need to revamp my personal statement for the harvard application, to mail on monday morning. i'm tired of doing applications. i'm really scared about making decisions about the next 5-7 years of my life in a few months. no, really. a lot.

at my mom's house i read an unquiet mind, memoirs by a well-known psychiatrist about her history with manic-depression, & black like me which i've been meaning to read as (in my opinion) a counterpart to nickel & dimed. i also read half of how sex changed: a history of transsexuality in the u.s. on the plane. i listened to a lot of fleetwood mac because it was one thing my mom & i could agree on. we watched you can count on me, which was quite good, & auntie mame which is a holiday tradition.

ps. southern accents are so loaded with emotions for me. geez.

Comments

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

i need to revamp my personal statement for the harvard application, to mail on monday morning. i'm tired of doing applications. i'm really scared about making decisions about the next 5-7 years of my life in a few months. no, really. a lot.

Gawd, I'm feeling exactly the same way about my grad apps. Monday is my day to mail stuff out, too, as I'm leaving on another trip next week. The personal statement and the writing samples are the part I'm most fretting about, since they're so subjective and can "make or break" your app and all that, even if all your other stuff (GRE scores, GPA, etc) are really strong. If I don't nail them, that's a lot of money wasted on application fees, transcript fees, etc. And yeah, 5-7 years riding on a couple months of paperwork and decision making.

Good luck with all that.