Sucio.

Fuck it. I've been too busy and I'm entirely too tired to finish my recap. I'll post it this weekend. I don't care if it's late.

I'm already running late as it is... But I wanted to wish everyone a Happy and SAFE New Year.

So long, 2009!

2009

2009 has been one of my greatest years of emotional and mental growth. With that said, my quarter life crisis has been planted into my daily train of thought and it's starting to blossom into something much more than a typical crisis that comes and goes. I've learned a lot about who I am and what I stand for; I've learned what drives me and what breaks me; I've learned to take the lead when need be and when to step back and watch. I let the cards fall this year and the river has come up in my favor.

In the past year I've left behind a lot of relationships that were toxic to me and I've gained some incredible relationships with people that literally skyrocket my spirit into the clouds and far beyond planetary measurement. I've experienced the world from afar and cultured my soul forever and I'm constantly craving for more. I have focused my energy on what I love and what I need to do. Most and best of all, I finally love myself for who I am and not what other people want me to be.

Goodbye, 2009.

Welcome, 2010. :)

Nocturnal.

I'm officially nocturnal. I went to bed last night at 5 am and woke up some point before my alarm clock went off at 8:30. I stayed up for an hour or so, passed out, woke up around 11, ran errands and did some stuff, passed out agan, woke up at 4, made dinner and ran more errands, took a shower, passed out at again, woke up at 11:30 and now it's 4:15 am.

Someone please explain to me what the hell is wrong with my brain lately. It won't shut up and let me sleep. Thanks.

Recaps and Unavailability.

Writing my recap of 2009 is proving to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. I'm sort of walking on egg shells on the ex subject because I really don't want to talk about him at all in my recap, although he was around for a majority of the year. I feel like I'm completely devoid of any thoughts and memories of him yet I know he was there and greatly impacted many of my decisions I had made throughout the year. It's weird to think that I literally spent 6.5 years of my life with a person and I have no fond, strong or clear memories of him. I don't what I did but I feel as though I literally flushed everything I knew of him out of my system. All I am left with is a name, a time period and KNOWING he was there without remembering exact moments or feelings and even old pictures don't move me. My brain washed away the good times with the bad times. I suppose since the bad outweighed the majority, it was easy to lose the good memories. C'est la vie, as they say.

Lately my life has been anything but mundane. I'm juggling too many things at once and eventually I will lose sight of one of my juggling pins to only find it when it's too late and landing on my head. I've almost been living a fantasy life, and I'm constantly pinching myself to make sure the things that are happening are true. It's literally like my life changed overnight into this world of pleasure and self [good] torment. I'm not sure whether it's luck, karma or just my ability to see clearly, but something in the air, water, universe is aligning with whatever possesses me to do the things I do in a supremely fantastic way. This time a year ago I would have never considered flying as much as I have been and will continue to be flying so long as I'm temporarily satiated at the end of the journey. Like I said a couple of weeks back, I've learned not to ask questions (or at least unnecessary ones) and let go. It's been fun and I can't wait for more.

My 'secret' trip is in 8 days. I feel like I've been counting down for this for months and now it's just about a week away of seeing someone really, truly incredible and special.

Noche Buena

Tonight is our traditional Noche Buena dinner. I figured I would make a quick post about it now before I end up getting entirely too drunk to post later. Actually, that's a lie. I'll probably drunken blog later.

Pictured above is a 22 pound bone-in pork shoulder... Us Cuban folk call in lechon asado. The fat has obviously been scored and is melting beautifully into the meat and keeping it moist. The picture above was taken when it was 6 hours in. It will be in 12 hours total by the time I take it out. The entire neighborhood smells like roasted garlic and pork and I'm sorry that they can't enjoy this. I've even had a couple of neighbors comment on how the whole block smells like dinner and they asked when it would be ready.

Noche Buena is a special time for me. I get to spend this evening with my family and my closest friends and sharing my love of Cuban food with everyone. This year four of my best friends are coming and two of them bringing their parents that are like my extended family. I'm sure we will all be beyond hammered by the time we're half way done with dinner. Actually, I plan on drinking the moment I'm done frying things. Sadly, I won't be eating any fried goodies and I probably won't eat much dinner either as I plan on getting my daily caloric intake from alcohol. Hey, it's the special time of year when I can drink myself retarded and no one will care because it's what people do at these family gatherings. We drink, talk shit to each other and then drink some more.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you all spend it with the ones you love the most.

Christmas presents...

For the sake of someone's sanity, I blurred out his name but thought I'd post this anyway. My friend left a present on my car because he's seriously awesome. I got excited thinking it was a book I wanted to read and had mentioned or whatever. I mean, being its obvious shape and weight I figured it was something along that line.

As it turns out, he just wanted to tell me how he felt about me. hahaha. AWESOME!


btw... it's a journal. :)

Sleep is for the dead.

The problem with having a really terrible sleeping disorder is when I DO fall asleep - a deep sleep - it tends to be at some sporadic, completely unnecessary hour that gets in the way of living like a decent human being.

For the past month or so I've been sans caffeine. I've made a conscious effort to really rid myself of caffeine in another attempt to cure my sleeping disorders. As it turns out, I stay up even LATER without the caffeine, which in turn means I sleep less. Somehow I've been making it through my work days without caffeine in my system and I'm not fucking up things as badly as I thought I would have. However, because I don't have that immediate caffeine high in the morning that pretty much sets the pace for my day, I just get stuck in this repetitive cycle of not making my brain tired enough to sleep. See, although I work out regularly, it only makes my body tired. I can lay in my bed sore and tired but working out doesn't stimulate my brain enough. Caffeine, on the other hand, stimulates my brain to the point where I often times overexert myself, thus leading to some sort of mini-anxiety attack. At least by the time I wind down, my brain wants to nap. For now and without caffeine, I'll try to read something boring then my nerdiness kicks in I get entirely too involved in what I'm reading and I find myself up until who knows what ungodly hour and then I have to force myself to try to rest so I can wake up just a few hours later.

For example, last night I was unable to fall asleep until almost 5 am. No particular reason why. I was just up being a creep like usual. When I finally fell asleep, I woke up around 7:30 thinking I was late for work. I had an additional hour to sleep in, so I closed my eyes and took myself to sleepy land. An hour and 10 minutes later, I almost had to take a spatula and peel myself off my frying pan of a bed. I walked into work 5 minutes later than I should have this morning. I proceeded to walk about like a vagabond all day, lost in the mundane world of law and lack of reasoning. The good thing about having a cloud for a brain when I'm in this state is that I can transport myself to this quixotic state of mind. I now have the ability to listen to music all day at my desk, and with the aid of Saralee, I banished my brain to Finland while I worked on some powerpoint project that made me want to stab my eyes out. After I came home, I made myself a very delicious dinner of sushi-grade tuna with
cucumber, avocado, red onions and pickled ginger. I made one for my mom as well and not my dad because he hates fish. He then proceeded to complain about how I didn't make him dinner so I made him a roll of sushi - he ate a few pieces and grossed out of the thought of eating raw fish. He makes absolutely zero sense to me. We often call my dad a bear but a bear would happily eat raw fish. My dad's like Yogi Bear and only eats crap from picnic baskets. My mom and I made fun of him purely based on that he thought tuna was too strong of a flavor and that he'd prefer to go to McDonalds. My poor dad, he has absolutely no palate. Getting back to my point, after dinner I went to my room to change and later take care of a few things I needed to take care of. I later woke up around 11 pm, with two dogs in my bed and I still had my shoes on. I don't remember falling asleep and I vaguely remember laying down. I guess when brain shuts down, it shuts down for the night and I have zero control over it.

Once again, I'm up at some ungodly hour when a majority of the people on Pacific time are asleep and are only a couple hours short of waking up. Bad sleeping habits are going to be the death of me, but hopefully not until I'm a million years old and completely out of my mind. For now, I'm just partially out of my mind. I will leave you with my ugly mug at 4:00 am. Adios.

Trash Day.

I've gotten a few messages from readers saying, "WHAT THE HELL MAN, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE!? WHAT'S WITH THE SECRETS?!?"

Okay, so I've been secretive. I'll admit it. Shit, I admitted it two posts ago that I'm being secretive.

The reality is, after going through a break up with someone after being with that person nearly daily for 6.5 years, it's hard to want to talk about your personal life via the internets so soon. It's not that I'm ashamed of anything, oh God no, it's that I feel like I need to have some personal space from people that potentially read this. I feel as though that the 'space & time thing' hasn't been long enough. It's not like what I write would fall on deaf ears - or blind eyes in this case. I just need some space for now. It's really that simple. :)

But readers - just know that I'm happy. Happiness is a great thing. I'm not being fake with myself by occupying time with nonsense, nor am I being codependent on anyone to mask any emotions or fill my head with stupidity. I'm not on a bullshit soul search and pretending to be someone that I'm not. I'm genuinely happy - all on my own. I've dedicated a good amount of time to myself. To read, to write, to think and just BE. I haven't been this happy with myself or in general in who knows how many years and it's the best feeling I could ask for. I think this is a well deserved good feeling. Don't get me wrong, I've had an incredible support system of family and friends and I would probably still be lost without them. However, I have learned to give myself ME time, something I haven't done in years.

When I write my 2009 recap (like I said, I'll be waiting until after Christmas to write it), I promise it will be personal and completely open. I actually started to draft it the other night, and slowly but surely I am adding more and more to it. I'm not even entirely sure how to cover the entire year, but I'll figure it out one way or another. I swear.

I know this post wasn't typically me, and neither have the past few posts, but I felt like I needed to explain a little. Are we friends again, readers?

So, in the "in other news" news - aside from my much needed vacation in january - I'm getting a baby grand piano again. Not that I've ever posted this - but I am a piano player. Like, a real one. I'm one of those that can actually play the piano but I get nervous and awkward playing in front of people so I play a couple of notes and fuck them up purposely. When I'm alone, I jam. I was classically trained since I was a baby. My grandma (the one I don't care for) played all over Europe and that was essentially her saving grace in WWII. After she came to the US, she opened up a piano bar in NYC and has had a successful recording career with piano. I suppose the piano playing runs in the family. Because of my rocky relationship with her, I abandoned formal lessons with her and had a piano professor for many, many years. I think 10 in total with Rosie (my professor) and who knows how many years with my grandma. After high school my parents bought me a beautiful Yamaha baby grand piano. Well, the ungrateful brat that I am, I wanted them to sell it and buy me a horse because I wanted to be in the horse world. So, they did. I ended up wasting nearly a million dollars (or so it seems) on horses and ignored my piano playing. Well, now that I'm horseless and haven't played piano in a while, I miss it. I miss being able to sit and just play for hours. The other day I went with my mom to look at baby grands again. I went looking for my old Yamaha... But instead, I decided to fall in love with something much better... A beautiful 5'1" baby grand Steinway. It's beautiful beyond words. it's love - true love. I get her after I come back from my trip. :)

Distance makes the heart grow fonder...

2 weeks and 6 days. I've never wanted to get on a plane so badly in my life. <3

E-Tickets.

I keep opening my e-mail just to look at my e-ticket. I keep pinching myself to make sure I'm really going on vacation in 3 weeks and 3 days. I feel like I'm being secretive, and in a way I am. I just don't want to jinx anything... But I guess you can't jinx what's already perfection.

Photographic Evidence.

In my old age, I've learned two things: The ability to handle my liquor and to not ask any questions.

Fortune Cookies.

Sometimes it just so happens that you end up at a restaurant with a friend, sitting at a bar, minding your own business and having a good time. Suddenly, you end up getting drunk, spending several hours talking to someone really delicious, playing fortune cookie wars with said person and suddenly have fortunes that match, especially when you end the fortune with "in bed."

I guess I'll just stop there.

Who needs sleep when disgust is running through your veins?

Earlier this evening I wrote this sappy poem that I decided not to publish because I didn't want to be portrayed as a sap, although I am one.

Well, I had a 5 hour phone conversation with someone that literally stopped me in my sap-tracks. Literally - stopped me while I was going a million miles an hour. She even threw me in reverse. She flipped the switch on my train tracks so fast that I just pulled into Normalsville Station.

All I know now is that I haven't slept because I'm thoroughly disgusted in everything I heard. Not disgusted in the sense of hurt, anger or anything else... Disgusted in the sense of, I feel like I need to take a cheese grater to my skin or dip myself in boiling water and hope that kills the heebeejeebees I have. It's like a have a million bugs eating away at my flesh. I'm SO disgusted that the only thing I can think of is how absolutely grossed out I am.

Well, in good news, after I finally sleep - I will be back to my normal, crazy self.

Also, T-minus 4 weeks and 6 days until I'm on a really amazing vacation that I don't want to jinx.