I Stop Somewhere Waiting For You

Alternate title: "Another Irritating Spring Post" -- feel free to ignore should you be in the midst of snowdrifts or should you simply hate the hopeless optimism of a girl in the spring.

It's always this time of year that I start to fall in love with my city. Two weeks now, two weeks in October -- this city owns all of my heart. Even just now, listening to a back episode of This American Life, where Ira was talking about the Mediocrity Principle, the idea that no particular place is more special than any other. The idea that each city, each planet, each universe is equivalent -- I shook my head. This city, small and frustrating as it may be, has a piece of me tied up in its giant humid pocket. There's no time when it's more apparent than now, on the cusp of tourist season, right before it gets hot and busy. It's already so busy that we didn't want to wait for the unexpected line at our favorite dessert place, but not so busy that we couldn't cross the street to the ice cream shop, get blueberry cream pie milkshakes and walk the mile back to Rob's. There is a tenuous balance here that won't be around for much longer. We're about to hit the tipping point, and I'll start to fall back out of love...but until then, I'll sit smitten, smirking, ready to walk away at a moment's notice.

***

A list of things that I've professed my love for in recent days: the weather, french fries cooked in duck fat, attending step aerobics class with my favorite ladies for the first time in two months and nailing the combos, the weather, the incredible headbands that Anna made me several months ago, the Kindle the Fire In Your Chest mixtape, mixtapes in general and my brother's amazing girlfriend for sending them to me, Starbucks Cocoa Cappucino, Easter hymns, Eppendorf 10 uL pipets, the new Comedy Central show Workaholics, the pen I nicked from a colleague who got it at a conference, and the science of uncertainty.

***

Work has been hard, lately, in a really weird way. I'm getting to a point in my project where I'm really excited about the future, but I'm at a point where I get frustrated with the tedium of things, all the waiting that has to happen. And it's so gorgeous outside, and I'm trapped in a room with poor climate control, and I am distracted, limbs flailing and eyes darting around my computer screen. I have to slow myself down, breathe.

A few weeks ago, both of my bosses were out of the lab for the day, so the boys and I left the lab to get calzones and ended up drinking 10 pitchers of beer, leaving all of the things in the lab behind. At the end, I stood up from the table, toppled immediately backwards and hit my head on a chair. The next day, I had a bruise at the base of my skull and a vague memory of laughing on the floor of the pizza place. All day, I pieced together evidence of my drunkenness, text and Facebook messages I'd sent, pictures I'd taken. It was irresponsible. I'm not particularly proud of it. But I think it happened for a reason, this indescribable feeling we all had about that day, about this work.

I think it's all a symptom of this time of year, the perpetually-tripping-over-myself I described not that long ago. But I'm looking forward to the summer, to having long stretches of the day to do work without distractions when everything else -- classes, journal club, seminar -- in the department slows down, when it's too hot outside to want to be there anyway. I'm looking forward to that schedule, to buckling down on a marathon training schedule, to moving to a new place. Until then, limbs flailing, brain racing, I'll make do. Watch my bosses when they talk about science, with a true smile on their face that comes from making a discovery or going to a talk that they didn't think would be as good as it ended up being. Keep working until it works out. Open the door and run out into the gorgeous weather until I sweat bullets and can't think about anything. That's what I'll do. Just that.

***

Life gets weird, sometimes, like two weekends ago when I saw a friend I hadn't seen forever, on purpose. I felt like I was standing in a weird spot, like that place in a domed room where you can hear the whispers of someone across the way. I couldn't look her in the eye for the first fifteen minutes; there was a chasm between us, and that chasm was filled with the idea that she doesn't know any of the people I know now, that she doesn't know what I do on a day-to-day basis, that she doesn't know anything about the lab or my psychiatrist or step aerobics. I had a lot of feelings about that position -- some of them sad, and some of them mean, and some of them ok. And then at the end, some of them happy. I was glad I got to see her. It felt good in a way I almost hadn't expected.

And then I walked away, back into my life, leaving the tiniest crack in the door behind me.

***

I have 1 month and 6 days left of 25. I keep falling head over heels for the boy who makes me laugh. We are about to get our first set of produce from our CSA, and the farmer's market is back in full swing. Recently, the whole lab went to support our coworker who is in a fantasy rock band that dresses like wizards. Against all odds, our IMAX downtown didn't close. I still get to work out with my team from the fitness program, and we keep running up stairs and doing laps like it's our job. I get to see all of my siblings this weekend. The boy and I are working our way through The Wire while eating ice cream. My life is never dull, always kicks me right in the shins, begging me to chase after it. So I do.

The weather is gorgeous, and I'm in love.