Lowdown Panda

LDP to brain: SHUT UP!

I have my 2nd date with Apple Boy tomorrow and we text messaged tonight about what we were going to do. His messages were short and to the point after being much sweeter and random the last few days. I’m suddenly freaking out that he has lost interest. The first rule of texting should be that you can’t read too much into them.

Not only should I not pull out He’s just not that into you, but I’m the girl who almost cancelled dinner with a good friend to go hang out at another friend’s house, where unrequited crush might be. Yeah. There is probably a good reason that “single” looks so perfect on me.

Time to put on my positive game face! We are going out tomorrow and we are planning on something fun. I just like being neurotic in a public forum.

Last Friday was my first Internet date. Scratch that it was my first blind date ever. I’ve always fallen into things with guys that took a long time. There were the friendships that evolved, crushes that did and did not go somewhere and the awkward one night make out sessions at parties. This whole date concept is new to me. After he showed interest in my profile we e-mailed back and forth for about two weeks. I was getting annoyed that he didn’t ask me out, but either the boy knows his game, or I was lucky. The back and forth e-mails made meeting him a lot less awkward. We sat in the restaurant from 6:00 until 11:00 talking. Our server came back to swich out one full salt shaker for another full salt shaker. Nice subtle hint.

By the time we left the restaurant I was wacked out tired and I can’t remember if I gave him a hug, or if he reached out first. When I looked up his lips just seemed to be in my way, so I gave them a quick kiss. Then I froze. What do I do now? What is the etiquette? So sorry old bean, thanks for the evening? I’m 99.9% sure he was okay, but like I said I was tired so I fled to my car.

Next date is this Thursday. We are “playing it by ear”. This is doomed, right?

My brother is 9 years younger than I am. I left for university when he was only a 4th grader, but despite this big jump in years we are close. His grades have always been precarious because of a bad Internet gaming habit and sheer laziness, but yesterday he found out he was failing 3 classes and is in serious risk of dropping out of high school. He had a complete meltdown. When I got home my mother pulled me aside and started crying. The school had called her because my brother was crying in the counselor’s office and saying he just needed to go home. My reaction was a cold disconnected anger. It wasn’t one of my finer moments. 

I’m so angry that he is wasting his time and his future. I’m angry because he is too smart to be throwing away his life and flunking out of high school. I’m angry that he is making our parents so upset. I’m angry that I haven’t been able to do anything. I let him down somehow. He says he can’t trust anyone. He doesn’t know how to express his anger and can spend days staring at a wall when he is in a bad mood. I wish I was a better person that I could just be supportive, but I can’t deal with these shut downs. I’m a communicator. I talk through all my problems out loud. He won’t interact with me if we go beyond jokes, or video games. He is in complete denial and I want to shake him and shake him and shake him. 

Behind the anger I’m scared and I think he is too. I love him and want the best. I’ll always be there for him and I hope he knows it.

Yesterday it hit over 80 degrees. I happily dug around in my drawers looking for some cute capri pants, but then realized the weight I had gained since last summer made them all super tight. I don’t really like to accesorize with camel toe.

Some people think when you gain some weight wearing the tight clothes will motivate you to drop back down, but I’ve always found it just makes me depressed and more prone to snacking. Yeah picking up a larger size is awful after finally losing some poundage, but when I wear clothes that fit and look good, that is when I am motivated to eat better and excersize more! When I feel like my pants are a little loose it spurs me on to make them even looser until they are practically falling off. Maybe I’m just backwards?

I stopped by a few stores, but the jean capris I was wearing to shop looked better on me than anything I tried on. Not a great sign. Oh well I did what any self respecting girl does when she can’t buy pants. Of course I bought shoes. Thank you feet, you never fail me.

The last time I posted I was living in Japan. Hitting month 8 of being back in the U.S. of A. Yee haw, I have definitely gained some weight! I don’t blame this on portion sizes, mostly on going from an active teaching job to playing desk jocky at my new job.

I also entered the dark side of my twenties recently. I feel like less of a fine wine and more like leftover nabe. I get richer flavor with a day or two of sitting out, but watch out for the egg.

However, what has drawn me back into the often aborted, dark web of blogging? Confidence (and self indulgence)! I was reading this post at Big Fat Deal and it gave me the desire to change my outlook more than anything has before. I think I’m pretty confident in myself, but I’m not confident when it comes to how other people see me. There I am on my island feeling good until a crab scuttles up and I just know the crab thinks I’m fat and stupid!

Suck it crab, actually on second thought you look tasty…ahem I’m giving myself permission to ocassionally talk myself up to other people. I’m allowing myself to feel sexy. I’m letting myself not feel guilty if things are going well. My life is good. I don’t have to feel like I have to hide that, or tone it down!

I have a date next week. One of us is going to be trouble.

I was in the subway making a transfer when I noticed a little boy staring at me. I’m no newbie to Japan, I’m used to stares, but suddenly it hit me that he wasn’t staring because I was a foreigner, but because I probably reminded him of his English Teacher.
“You want a taste of me? Do you think you can handle the English? CAN YOU HANDLE IT?? ” Then I take him in a headlock and force him to conjugate verbs.

Last Sunday I had tickets to a promising afternoon of kyogen（狂言）. Kyogen was originally the farmer/peasant interludes inbetween the angsty slow shuffle of a Noh performance. It has further developed into an independent creature maintaining tonal/movement links to Noh, but improving and broadining story lines and humor. That’s right, graceful movement and voice modulating tradtional Japanese theater actually meant to be funny! Each play lasts on average 20 to 30mins and employs minimalist props and a bare stage.

Not for the faint of heart, out of the 3 plays I saw the majority of the time is spent doing a slow buildup for one big payoff joke at the end.

Alright cutting to the chase. I love Japanese traditional arts and all, but the main draw for kyogen came down to one man: Nomura Mansai. He of the sardonic grin, the sarcastic eyebrow, and sensuous cheekbones. I first saw him in the Onmyoji movies and then in the short segments on にほんごであそぼ kids show. He was in the 2nd play on the program and just oozed charisma even as his voice ricocheted from falsetto to low yowl and he skipped around the stage.

My Japanese was defintely touch and go by the 3rd play and I instead had lots and lots of indecent thoughts about Nomura Mansai’s sexy eyebrows after….well after.

Kyogen is an interesting cultural experience. Nomura Mansai is actually working on bringing it to a much wider audience (and perhaps even in English!) For those with the chance to see kyogen I recommend it and for those with the chance to see him make sure to invite me too.

What do you do with guilt spam? I have two e-mail addresses devoted to tasty unsolicited e-mails.

One e-mail gets all the sexy spam like “PenisXXXXXXL” “Katrina wants you to see her vagina NOW!” “Be a stud not a dud: BIG DICK”. You would think I was signing up for porn websites all the time and sending away for condom samples, but that e-mail had been on my public website before I knew what spam bots were.

My other e-mail is the one that I use to sign up for everything, so it’s more organized spam. Enter the guilt. I get several e-mails a month from Save the Children, World Wildlife Federation, “My Congressman Pete Stark”, etc. I can’t just unsubscribe to these e-mails though or hit the “mark as spam” button. What if a child really needs me? What if the blue whales decide to do a freedom peace march? What is my congressman needs money because he got caught smoking some weed?

One guilt spam seems to lead to another as I now get random e-mail from conservation groups, democratic fundraisers, and Nigerian Princes who need my help (ok so that last one I’m slightly wary about)

Guilt vs. another 15min spent cleaning out my inbox. I guess there never really was a contest.

With the advent of wordpress and some available server space I’m back at blogging. This time I don’t have a specific theme and I’m hoping that will keep me writing. I added a few entries from my old Japan blog to get things rolling.

I’ll write as if I have an audience and be happy whether I have one or not.

Not the thrilling heart stopping first entry, but I’m off to bed. My roommate will kill me when she finds I’m still awake. Oops!

This doesn’t really have anything to do with Japan, but it’s been on my mind the last few days. Partway into my junior year of college I became friends with a guy in my Japanese class. Justy was a broad-framed geeky gamer with a streak of proud Scottish heritage. We both got to Japanese class early and struck up a friendship. He had a great sarcastic streak and could keep almost any conversation topic going. It used to be fun to get bubble tea after classes and hang out playing jenga and chatting. At first I had a growing crush on him, but never seriously considered a relationship.

He dated disasters. Every one of his ex-girlfriend stories were filled with crazies. All of them except for his current girlfriend, soon to be fiancée. I didn’t know about her the first few months we were talking. Sometimes I don’t know if I ever seriously wanted to date Justy. He could get on my nerves. I always seem to be attracted to and repelled by guys who will use straight conventional logic to undermine my more fanciful theories. Just let me rationalize and make up facts every once in awhile, yeesh! However, I do know that we had a good friendship and I felt comfortable talking to him about almost anything. I don’t find this with guys very often.

When I saw a picture of his girlfriend the first time I got that sharp pang of jealousy and started comparing myself to her. I was prettier than she was, I was smarter, more ambitious, more fashionable, had more things in common with him, etc. I had all these terrible thoughts. He didn’t help the situation at all by constantly saying things like “if I hadn’t met my girlfriend you and I might have dated”, or “you’re my type”. After all the crazies he dated though maybe that last one isn’t a compliment. One day he sent me a link to take the match.com personality test and our results were eerily similar. He again made a point of saying we would have been a good match if only he wasn’t so in love with his fiancée. I mean what the hell is up with that? Was he trying to keep me on a back burner in case things with her failed? Was he just too honest for his own good? Clueless? Was he teasing me? Trying to boost his ego?

By the time I met his girlfriend she must have heard enough about me that she was suspicious and hovered around him, while simultaneously giving me “back away from my boy” looks. I decided I didn’t need any of this and was more than happy to appear as uninterested as possible. Eventually she calmed down enough to stop imprinting her fingerprints into his arm every time I showed up. She’s really a good person. I like her well enough and think they make a cute couple. Two almost three years ago Justy and I both graduated from college. I moved to Japan. He and his girlfriend got married soon after and we haven’t talked much since. It’s partly the time difference. We have very different responsibilities now. We are both lazy bastards. I still have his wedding gift sitting on the floor of my office. I’ll send it out one of these days.

I miss talking to him regularly. It’s as ridiculously simple as writing an e-mail. Why does it feel all sorts of complicated?