A Guide to Appreciating Life

Step 1: Think of something you appreciate that you had a role in getting for yourself.

Step 2:Think of something you appreciate that you had no role in getting for yourself.

Step 3: Think of something in your immediate surroundings, that deserves appreciation and that you haven’t appreciated yet

Step 4: Smile. If you’re having trouble smiling, click here.

Step 5: Breathe in….Breathe Out

Instant happiness

Random Facts from My Life

This Week
Turkey Dinners Devoured:2
Pounds Gained: -3
Books Read: 1 (Ester & Ruzya by Masha Gessen - it’s incredible, you must not hesitate to read it)

Due in the Next Two Weeks:
- Presentation for Women in Russian Lit & Culture (12/1)
- Final Exam for Senior Topics (12/3)
- Research Proposal (12/8)
- PCIP Review (12/10)
- Final Paper for Women in Russian Lit & Culture (12/13 by 5pm)

Next up on the reading list: Reviewing Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind for a paper/presentation I’m doing comparing various women’s memoirs of Stalinist Russia before and after WWII.

Course registration tomorrow 8:30am

To Do:
- Make doctor appointment
- Yell at UPS for not delivering the penises promptly (you’ll understand it when you see it).
- Clean room
- Christmas/Hanukah shopping
- Call insurance company about continuing back problems from car accident
- Mani/Pedi
- Winter formal tix
- Book airline tickets
- Get thesis letter in the mail
- Apply for student loans
- Call photographer to see why Andy’s b-day present is almost a month late

Gratitude

According to positive psychology maven David G. Meyers, one way to enhance your happiness and sense of general wellbeing is to remember what you’re thankful for - and this being the Thanksgiving season, I thought I might as well go over some really important things.

For example, how my little sister, who will be 7 on January 13 (seen above cuddling with an insanely cute puppy) is the most adorable little flaxen-haired camera darling. I am grateful that I can influence her to greater acheivements of evil and pranksterhood - such as suggesting over the phone that she put silly putty in my father’s underpants, or sic a new lizard on our brother (age 9). I am grateful that both of my brothers are such fantastic kids.

I have also been blessed with some amazing girlfriends. Karlie, who is my best friend, cousin, big sister, bad influence, and maid of honor. Debbie, who drives me to the airport to pick up my boyfriend at the last minute after I remember that my car has bald tires and an empty gas tank; and who puts up with my incredibly nasty, stinky farts along the way. Julia, who makes fun of me for just about everything, and yet still loves me enough to get crazy at parties. My fabulous roomate Susanne, who doesn’t mind my mooching off of her all the time and being a general pain in the ass. Michelle & Nissa, who I never get to hang out with, but who seem to understand and always pick up where we left off. My homegirls Ashley and Mihak - with whom I can connect instantly no matter when or where. And of course, my fabulous “sister in law” Susan - who was badass enough to do this - and is one of the coolest people I know.

Most of all though, I am blessed with an incredible man who loves me enough to put on a party hat with princesses on it and go to Julia’s birthday party - yet who doesn’t put up with my shit and calls me on being a crazy bitch (and I’ll wear that slipper when it fits).

I know that this is getting mushy, so I’ll cut it off before it starts to sound like an Oscar speech (mmmk…I know it’s too late for that, but bear with me). I just think it’s really important in the grand scheme of things, to remember all the blessings.

Debbie *heart*s shoes

Oh Debbie, how I love thee!

Soldier on, Partin

I was looking through some photos by LA Times photographer Luis Sinco, who was imbedded with the 8th Marine Regiment in Fallouja. As I looked through the photos, I saw my childhood friend, Elliot Partin.

He’s the white guy with glasses in the second photo in the display.

You get used to seeing anonymous faces, and then boom there’s someone you know, wearing the USMC uniform and carrying an M-16. It’s good to see him, even if he is in the line of fire.

Happy he’s ok so far, worried about the fighting there. Praying…lots of praying.

Going home tonight to the family.

“I am morally opposed to

“I am morally opposed to shoes. They are the shackles of our repressive society” - Andy

Understanding the Wisdom of Lao Tzu

I think get what Lao Tzu truly meant when he said, “being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, loving someone deeply gives you courage.” It’s not just some little homily plugging love as the source of all strength and courage in the universe. I figured this out when I came across a definition that resonated with me.

~~~
valor - n. the ability to willfully direct attention and effort toward worthy ends that are not certain of attainment.
~~~

It’s often been said that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s slugging on even when you’re scared shitless, but that doesn’t really capture the truth of it. It’s not just slugging on in the presence of fear, it’s slugging on in the presence of uncertainty, which is a lot worse than fear. We are afraid when we have even an inkling that something wicked this way comes. We are uncertain when we have absolutely no idea what’s around the bend.

Despite my ability to sound convinced when I say, “oh yeah, I’m living with Andy on the Upper West Side next year, in a brownstone on the corner of West 83rd and Amsterdam. I’m going to work in advertising,” I really have no idea what the next year will bring. I may get a job back in Seattle, I may wind up travelling for a year. I might be rich, I might be poor. A lot is in the air.

Staying in a relationship in the midst of all that uncertainty might seem like a foolhardy course of action to some. Some people might say that you need all your options open, but I think that Lao Tzu would disagree. He knew that loving someone deeply only gives you courage because it requires valor. It requires the ability to direct your attention and effort toward something that has no guarantees of succeeding, simply because the ends are worthy. And I can think of nothing more worthy than the love I share with Andy.

Random Facts From the Week

- Novels Read: 2 (I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, and Siddhartha: The New Translation by Herman Hesse)
- Assignments skipped due to slacking: 1
- Times Puked due to drunkeness: 1
- Items purchased while on shopping sprees: more than 10

Books to Read:
-Esther and Ruzya: How my Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace by Masha Gessen
-What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
- The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell
- The Plot Against America: A Novel by Phillip Roth
- Runaway: Stories by Alice Munro
- Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

If anyone loves me and wants to get me any of these books for the holidays, well, you know where the bookstore is.

update 11/21 - bought Ester & Ruzya and Runaway.

Black Swedish Virgins

….never, ever drink even one on an empty stomach. If Andy hadn’t been there to take care of me last night, I don’t know what I would have done. Puke-a-licious!

New pictures! New pictures!

ALBUMS
-Halloween!
-Susanne’s 21st!

look what i found of deboo….

Let the River Run

GOD I LOVE HERMAN HESSE! Anyone who hasn’t experienced the new translation of his Siddhartha should do so immediately. I got it off the iTunes store to fill the long lonely hours of freeway driving that come with my LA internship (3 hours to go 45 miles is DISGRACEFUL).

All I can say is, i am getting out of this city next year!

Pomona’s Administration….OY!!!

Can I just bitch and moan a little more about how annoying it is that it’s OK in the administration’s opinion to grafitti on people’s SUV’s, but yet they send out e-mails condemning someone writing “I hate fags” on a wall at Pitzer.

Of course, writing “I hate fags” is condemnable, but so is grafittiing on people’s cars! Goddamn it!

What I really want to know is if anything is being done to condemn the asshole who put a brick through some poor girl’s car window because she dared to have a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker.

THE HYPOCRACY IS KILLING ME!!!!!

I need a massage

That would feel so good right now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JULES THE SEX GODDESS!!!!

This School Annoys Me in So Many Ways, and Yet I Love it So Much

…first of all, let me just say that Honnold Mudd library sucks my ever-lovin’ NUTSACK. I returned their stupid Tuck Everlasting two fucking years ago, and they still haven’t fucking expunged my goddamn record because I refuse to pay $150 in fines for a book I returned ON TIME. (Yes I know I’m speaking the “fuck patois” that Tom Wolfe criticizes us college students for using too much of, but right now I just don’t give a fuck.) This means that I can’t take out books, not even course reserve books from the library - which means that I have to rely on the kindness of my classsmates to get my goddamn reading done for class! AAARGH!!

And then we turn to the matter of the SUV defacement. Some idiot professor actually thought it was a good idea to let her students scrawl all over other people’s SUVs in supposedly washable paint (not so washable, actually) to make a statement about how wasteful SUVs are. Well I agree that SUVs are wasteful and they generally suck, but some people don’t have too much of a choice about what they drive. Their parents hand them the oldest family car, SUV or otherwise, and they drive it or they don’t drive anything at all. On top of it, the stupid administration isn’t even going to punish the students or the professor for what they did! WHAT. THE. FUCK!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

I say the school should at least pay for all the cleanup of the mess their precious students and professor made, or else someone needs to step up and haul their asses to court.

Caustic Bitches from Hell

It is just me, or does everyone Google themselves sometimes?

Well, anyway, I Googled myself (”Teresa Valdez Klein”) the other day (results)

some of the things I found weren’t pretty:

- girls talking shit about my singing, my hymen, my sexuality, and the teachers i had crushes on
- girls talking shit about my graduation party

now, i know that when people get made fun of by kids at their school, their mothers usually tell them that the other kids are jealous. apparently, this is supposedly a lame excuse, but one look at the vitriol spilling onto the internet from these lame little girls to know that really, they were just jealous, which is pretty damn pathetic.

So I guess I’m just calling you out: Emily Pfeifer and Rose Emerson (the rest of you, who I couldn’t identify by name alone, probably because you were so insigificant in my life that I didn’t really notice you…hmm, how telling). Put up or shut up. Demonstrate to me how cool you are that you can attempt to rain down shit upon me. I don’t think you even come close.