Mugs Are In Danger Around Me

(Note: Written the night before)

So. This week I think I may have turned a corner. At the beginning of the month I started drinking soda again after a month of giving it up. Every time I do this, I feel fine but then miss the sweet taste of Coke or root beer or whatever, and then every time I drink it again, the joy is incredibly short lived as they taste more and more like the chemicals they are. This week I bought a Cherry Coke and a Cherry Pepsi. I finished the Coke but didn’t enjoy it like I had hoped. But the Cherry Pepsi I just couldn’t do. For some reasons my body just was not getting any sweet, sugary happiness from it and I dumped the last half of it into my roommate’s flower pot.

Maybe it is time to just throw in the towel.

On the topic of beverages, earlier this evening I went to a teahouse, my new favorite haunt in Austin, to translate a document for an organization I volunteer for. I made the mistake of ordering a tea that not only was disappointing in flavor, but also had such a high caffeine content I about jumped through the roof. At one point my hands were jittering so bad I nearly spilled my glass. Had I succeeded in spilling and breaking the cup it would have been the second time within the space of a week I’ve knocked over and destroyed a drinking vessel. However, in the case of the first one it was a mug in the shape of a mason jar that I knocked over with my hands. I was in my room and thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, which in fact turned out to be nothing. But in the process of moving, my flailing hands hit my plastic mug and sent it flying of the desk and smashing across the floor.

This would be the second time I’ve broken this model of jar, so now I'm on my third mason jar mug. I guess if I were a drinking device, I would not want to be around me this week.

There were very few pieces to clean up, but it only drove home the point that I really do need to clean my room, as it looks like a tornado hit, and then crashed on the couch for a week. So that will be my task for tomorrow before I go home to Nebraska for Christmas.

The weather has finally started to pick up temperature-wise, which is good news for my sissy reptilian-esque core body thermostat. Also, Operation Meet People has been going well too, after seeming like it dropped off earlier this…well I about said winter but in fact it would be late fall when the weather decided to become treacherous, and my mood became reclusive.

My roommate asked me if I was excited to go home. I told her I wasn’t really, but that in fact I rarely get excited about anything. This is something I’ve never understood, but it’s never been a problem in my life. I suspect it’s a bit like my inclination towards introversion: for most of my life I thought something was wrong or missing from me, that I was somehow mis-constructed or lacking, when in fact I just liked being on my own. There’s no quicker cure for what’s wrong with you than discovering that there is, in fact, nothing wrong with you, despite what others might say.

So when I tried to think about what I do get excited about: seeing a movie or reading a book I’ve been looking forward to, or seeing a friend I’ve missed for years, I guess there is more of that. But when it comes to my family, there is something different. Maybe it’s just a matter of becoming more independent.

It does not mean that I am not happy to go home, nor does it mean I don’t look forward to it. It just means that I see it as something that is coming, and accept it as such. I felt the same when I went to the Peace Corps or to Germany or to teach English in Prague. There were moments of excitement, and a general happy anticipation, but mostly just a contemplative curiosity or acceptance.

I have made no New Year’s resolutions this year. I didn’t last year and I did admirably, so this year I expect an equal amount of resounding success. But I am keeping not only a list of books that I’ve read, as usual, but this year I also started keeping track of movies I’ve watched, so you can expect to see that. I have stopped caring so much about what the Acadamy Awards thinks, so I am going to include what I think were the best movies, at least out of what I saw, and I have yet to see all of the Academy Awards movies of the past year, but as a general rule I avoid musicals anyway.

So I’ve spoken my piece tonight. Nothing terribly profound I would gather. Unless you consider smashing dishes poetic, I would hazard this hasn’t been my most moving work yet. But I’ve written it and I had a half-way decent timing doing so, and now that my caffeine buzz is fading into ether, maybe I shall, too, for the evening.