Happy New Year!!

For the last 8 days, I´ve been home. My hometown. At my mom´s house. I came here knowing I was gonna spend a whole lot of time. This year I haven´t been here for more than a few days, but this time I´m here for at least one more week. So on my second day here I was already caught on the old routine. Waking up at 9 am, hugging mom to death, having breakfast, watching tv. Then, going downstairs to my dad´s shop and spending some time with him. Then its lunch time, which can happen at home or at some random restaurant, ´cause mom´s tired of cooking and sometimes dad doesnt have company for lunch, so I go eat with him. The afternoon can go on in different ways: I either sleep a bit and watch tv or I go out with mom or dad or my aunt.

I know it sounds silly but I feel so safe and happy doing those things everyday!! Obviously, there´s a down side to it. I eat like a freaking pig. All day, everyday. Which makes me a little depressed, because I really really really need to stop eating and start getting healthy. But that´s a subject for another entry.

On Sundays me and dad like to drive around town. Last Sunday we ended up at the cemetery. Yes, a little gloomy for a fun Sunday with daddy, but well, we are gloomy folk. I insisted in going in, because my great aunt died in July and I didn´t get to go to the funeral because my mom´s car broke down, so I wanted to see her grave and all. Also, I wanted to see my grandparent´s graves and just walk around, see how the cemetery is. I hadn´t been there in a long time, maybe 10 years, but I knew where my grandma (mom´s mom) was burried. All the way up in the cemetery (the land is kinda hilly), at my family´s grave. My great grandparents, my uncle, my grandma and my great aunt are all burried there, one on top of the other. It´s pretty horrible when you think about it, but then again, it saves some space.

The grave´s got everyone´s names but my grandma´s. Mom didnt have a plate put up for her and that offended me, in a way. I was like "what??? she´s burried here and there´s no plate!!! that´s absurd!!". I freaked out a bit and I felt like crying. Obviously, mom didn´t do it because there was no time, then no money and then she just forgot. But it´s like my grandma was forgotten, like everyone who went to that grave would never know she was there, if it wasn´t anyone from our family. I said a prayer for everyone burried there, specially grandma and my great aunt and thank God I was wearing sun glasses, ´cause I cried and I didn´t want dad to see it.

We went alllll the way down again, and as we walked, dad was looking at the graves to check people´s names and I swear that, 7 out of 10 times he knew the people who were burried. He felt a bit bad, ´cause a lot of people he knows is now dead, haha. There´s usually a picture of the person on the tomb and we did what everyone does when visiting a cemetery: we calculated how old the person was when they died, and we looked at the picture. I even found an old teacher of mine, which was weird, because we were talking aboout her, for some reason, when I found her grave. Then we visited my dad´s parent´s grave, and my dad´s brother is burried there too. This grave had all the names and a cute flower vase. Again, I said a little prayer and cried under my sunglasses. Damn, it was hot that day!!! We had to leave ´cause of the sun, it was killing us!! I left thinking about all the people I visited, and how they were in life and how now they´re just confined to those small spaces, sometimes one on top of the other ... how wierd. But I also thought about how we need some sort of symbol of them, some sort of place we can go to and pray and cry like I did. I wouldn´t have done it at home, I don´t think so. I had to go to the cemetery and see their graves and know their bodies were there. Only feeling their "presence" I could really think about them and remember, pray and cry.

So, today is the last day of the year and this entry has absolutely nothing to do with it. Enjoy.

Oh, and Happy New Year!!! :-)

Monday

After a strange weekend (I slept too much, ate even more and lazed around more than usual. Damn you PMS!!!), I woke up at 10:30 this morning. Lately, it seems the more I sleep, the more I want to sleep. I had set my alarm clock for 8 am. I turned it off in my sleep. Didn´t go to the gym, was feeling nauseated and my head was about to explode. I was watching tv when I realized it was time to go to work. I was still entitled to one day off, so I decided to take it today. Called my boss, said I wasnt feeling well.

I thought I´d study some German, since I have a test tomorrow. But I was feeling a bit better so I went to the gym. Bad idea. The whole point behind me changing gyms was, besides exercising at a better place, I could force myself to meet new people and leave my comfort zone (my old gym was for women only, and I must´ve been one of the youngest people there). I was going to the new gym in the morning, at an hour when not that many people were there. Today I went in the middle of the afternoon. There were lots of people there, young, fit people and I kinda freaked. So I was on the treadmill for one hour, couldn´t bring myself to do the other exercises. Stupid!! I felt super uncomfortable. I can´t let that happen again. I have to go and just do my thing, and not care about the others there. The thing is I have a new exercise sheet and I´m still not used to the names of the exercises, so I get lost pretty easily, always have to ask someone "which exercise is that one again?" . It´s sad. I´m definetly not the gym kind of person, but I won´t give up just yet. I´ll be there again on Wednesday.

Must go study now. See ya all laters :-)

I forgot to put a damn tittle

I realized my last posts have been huge, obviously because I post once every 4 months, but okay. Inspired by some blogs I´ve been reading and also due to my dinner break at work, I´ve decided to post something. I thought about writing something in Portuguese, maybe then I´d be less frustrated when I´m done with the post, since I can´t express myself properly in English, damn it!! But I gave that up, yes.

As always, I was late for German class today. It is the only thing that excites me lately, that helps me go through the week. Learning is great and German, even though is hard as hell, is a lovely language. I do hope someday I can express myself in German at least as poorly as I do in English. We had to write a tiny composition in class today, it was our first time ever. I was so proud of myself! Of course, the teacher gave us an example first, and I used it as a guideline, but I put in some different verbs and that´s what matters!! I should´ve bought a German Dictionary back in the beginning of the year, when the dollar wasnt so ridiculously high ... now I think I´ll pay way more for the damn thing. Damn you, world crisis!!! I´m really starting to need a dictionary, I get really nervous in class sometimes, not knowing what some words mean. The teacher will tell me, of course, but sometimes I´m embarassed to ask, hehe. Silly me.

Anyway, I gotta get ready for another exhausting weekend. Have classes again tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, for my MBA thing. Filtration systems. One of the subjects I hated the most back in Uni is coming back to haunt me, and now in detail. Let´s just hope I don´t fall asleep in class ...

Tchüss

my weekend

This was the first "free" weekend I had in weeks. By "free" I mean I was home and there were no guests here or anything. But it wasnt exactly a free weekend.

Last weekend I had classes. Those classes kill me! They´re on Friday, from 6 pm till 11 pm. Then on Saturday, from 8 am till 6 pm and then on Sunday from 8 am till 1 pm. Which basically killed my weekend, I got home and I just couldnt move.

The weekend before that, my sister was visiting. She´s been doing that a lot lately and, when she´s around she demands a certain ammount of attention. And when she´s here, all i want to do is go out with her, see her friends (which are awesome people and whom I see only when I´m with her). So I only came home to sleep. No rest at all.

The weekend before that, I was in São Paulo, on a last minute trip with my mom and my sister to visit the Star Wars Exposition. It was fantastic. Of course, it was a crazy trip, I mean I spent a whole lot of money to go from here to São Paulo to see a few miniatures and some awesome drawings and Chewbacca and oooohh Darth Vadder .... and the actual guns they used on the movies!!!!! Ah, it was amazing. I was broke after the trip, but it was worth it. So, also, no rest that weekend.

Okay, a three-week flashback is good enough! This weekend, I had nothing to do! Except for showing up at work on Saturday morning (me and my big mouth...the boss said she needed someone to go in, and I told her I could. Yeah, I´m stupid like that.) . Was there from 9 till half past noon. Then I came home and ooohhhh yaaaaay! I had to clean, yes, but the house was all mine agian! So I ate, took a 2 and half hour nap, woke up and came online!! I was on msn for 3 whole hours!! Havent done that in such a long time... I missed doing that.

Today I woke up and things didnt go as planned. Instead of starting the cleaning immediatly, I started watching some cheesy movie about Camilla and Prince Charles. And I had to see the end of that. I live by myself and can´t afford a maid, so I do aaaaaalll the work myself. I cleaned and cooked lunch. Ate and finished cleaning (I was never so keen on cleaning. Dunno what happened to me. Maybe I felt like the house needed a good cleaning, I dunno). And now I´m free, at the computer again. On weekdays, I dont even touch the computer. There´s either no time to do it, or I dont fell like sitting here at all.

So, it was good to finally have a normal weekend again. Things are starting to get tricky again at work and I might have to go in again next weekend. Oh well.

no way

This week was hectic. Went to the doctor on Tuesday and went back home in a lot of pain, cos she stuck needles on my legs for the vein-problem-thingie Im having. Then on Wednesday, there I was at work, when my friend called me, she sounded worried and completely shocked. She told me my friend´s sister had just died. Car accident. Just like that. I barely knew her, but we had met a few times and she was a sweet and kind girl. And she was young too, got married last year and was leading a happy life. When my friend told me that, I was shocked too, and I couldnt help but cry because of my friend and his sister, and his family. So I skipped my German class and went to the cemitery where her body was and people went by to see her. Till that point, I still couldnt believe she was dead, I kept on thinking about ways that that information could be wrong.

But once I got there, and saw my friend and his parents and grandma by the coffin, looking simply shocked and hopeless, I realized it was for real. I´m no good with consoling people in moments like those, so all I did was hug them and stay there a while. The place was crowded, it was way too hot in there. I shouldnt have looked inside the coffin though. ´Cause she looked too different from what she actually was, and that image is still in my head. When I got there, seeing my friend and his family in pain, it all seemed so absurd to me! You know those dreams you have that when you wake up you go: "wow, that was absurd. it was cleary a bad dream" ? That´s how it felt like to me once I got there. I couldn´t get over that. And everytime I think about it, that absurdness feeling comes back.

When I got home I called my sister, and I couldnt stop crying, thinking what I would do if it that had happened with my sister *knocks hard on wood* . We talked for a while and it calmed me down. Then I called mom and the crying began again. I know it sounds erm, whats the word ... inappropriate (?) for me to cry over a person I barely knew, as if I was pushing it, exaggerating. But that´s not the point. I cried thinking about the family, and about how painful that must be. I don´t know how they were able to take that.

Since that day, I´ve been feeling strange. Whenever I try to plain my week, or even plan the next day, I think can´t. I think I´d better not plan ahead, ´cause I never know what may happen. It´s a horrible thought and I just want it to go way.

March in a nutshell

This is my first free weekend in a whole month. Classes happened and my sister visiting and then Easter. And here I was this week, home alone, but at a super messy and dusty home! A nice clean was necessary, but I was soooo tired from my week.... Anyways, I did it. It is all shinny and clean now!

They decided to have 2 shifts at the lab, and since my co-worker has a very smal baby to take care of, I offered to work on the second shift because, yes, I´m just nice like that. For now, it´s just going to be me and this other pharmacist plus a technician. I´ll still be working my normal day hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, because I have German classes at 7 pm. Next semester, I´ll change my classes to 9 am, so I can work at night the whole week. I think it´s better this way, easier to get used to my new hours. My first day working nights was horrible. I got super sleepy around 8 pm, and I just wanted to run away from there screaming for my bed. Then it wasnt so bad.

The only stressfull moment is when the shift ends, because I HAVE to be at the bus stop no later than 9:35 pm or I´ll miss my bus. So, around 9:25 I´m already turning off the compies and rushing to the bathroom (I dont want to pee in my pants at the bus stop or anything) and to the lockeroom to change my clothes. On Friday, I almost missed the bus. Lucky me, it was 2 minutes late.

Oh, yeah, the Interpol concert .... just wonderful. When the oppening band started playing, the venue was pretty empty, and I was all worried "Oh my God, what if no one shows up?? Then people will think concerts like this dont pay off and they´ll never bring cool bands here again!! Gaaaaah!!" . The oppening band was lovely, I really like Pato Fu and they played with all the lights in the venue on, due to some disagreement with Interpol´s crew. More people started showing up and next thing I knew, the venue was quite full!

Interpol came in on time, all really well dressed and Paul Banks was .... gorgeous. Me and my sister were in the 3rd row I guess, a little to the right, near the bass player, Carlos Dengler. And oh, was he a sight! The most bizarre guy I´ve seen, but charming too. Funny, actually, ´cause he had a grey locket on his hair, quite Adams Family style, or maybe Cruela Devil, I dont know. They played just the right songs, the crowd sang every single line of every single song ( I was actually embarrassed, haha, ´cause I only really knew the lyrics to half the set list) ... it was wonderful. And the band appreciated it a whole lot too. I was happy.

This weekend I got to talk on msn to my ex-roommate and best friend! It was really fun and we laughed a lot. I hope to meet her again soon *crosses fingers* .

Things have been quite weird at work. On Friday, the technicians were erm, how can I put it...about to rebel? Something like that. And Im not cut out for telling them what to do, I´m so not a good boss, I hate it.

That was it for this entry.

Cheers

em português

Assistindo Quatro Casamentos e Um Funeral pela milésima vez, pensei:

* quem escolheu o figurino desse filme? Tudo bem, é nos anos 90, mas quem teve a infeliz idéia de fazer o Hugh Grant sair na rua só de samba canção, meia cinza e camisa de bicheiro? E as roupas da Andie McDowell??? Camisa xadrez e calça gigantesca ... ai ai, até estraga as cenas. As outras roupas, até que tudo bem por causa da época, acho que era início dos anos 90. Então tava todo mundo usando muita coisa com estampa de florzinha e tal. Mas daí a esquecerem as calças do Hugh, já é demais.

Fora isso, o filme é ótimo. Adoro sotaques :)

stuff I remembered

Today, during the long bus ride, I started getting some flashes. And I remembered a great number of random events, some related to the places I was passing by, others completely out of the blue. Here are some of them:

* as today is saturday, I remembered what we girls used to do on saturdays, back when I lived downtown with my sister and Amanda (my best friend). We used to clean the flat in the morning, take a shower (not together, obviously) and then go out to lunch at a lovely restaurant.

* as I entered the bus, I remembered the one time I wanted to go to a Hanson concert so so so bad I almost cried, haha. I was in the same bus I rode today, with Amanda, and I saw the outdoor for the concert. I knew no one would go with me and I didnt have $$$ to pay for that, so I cried on the inside. Whoever says I actually cried is a lying bastard.

* as I thought about concerts, I remembered the Silverchair concert I went to in 2003. Amanda (boy, is she in a lot of my memories or what?) said she´d go with me so I wouldnt go alone (my sister laughed at my request for her to join me, still dunno why... :p) and then she backed down. Since I´m so crappy at expressing how I feel, I just couldn´t say ot her: "look, if you didnt want to go, you could´ve said so, now Im upset at you", so I starting to talk to her less and less. She obviously noticed it, and since she´s more skilled at expressing what she feels, she approached me with the issue one fine saturday, during our lunch at the lovley restaurant. Till this day I can´t sit at the table we sat on that day without remembering the ackward moment we had. I call it "the fight table" cos that´s where we had a pretty nasty argument. I ended up crying but I said my bit, about her not keeping her promisses. Later that day she told she´d go with me to the concert, and we bought the tickets soon after that. It was a great concert, but I couldnt sing ´cause I was sooooooo excited about hearing my favorite band. What a dork.

* as I thought about being overhwelmed at a concert, I rememberd the arctic monkeys + bjork+ killers concerts I saw last october. I should´ve made a whole entry about it, because they were 3 of the nicest concerst I´ve been to. As far behind as I was and as limp as my legs felt after standing up for 12 hours...it was SO worth it. I still get the butterflies in my stomach when I listen to one of the songs on the radio or my mp3 player, songs that I sang along with (eventually , I managed to sing) or songs they sang a bit differently from the orginal, stupid little things that I´ll always remember ´cause I have such a good memory.

* as I thought about limp legs, I remembered how scared I was at the hospital after my surgery. Shit, I got out ouf bed (barely managed to do it) and blood started dripping from the bandages on my legs. Mom freaked out and I tried to remain calm, ´cause the doctor said that was normal. But oh, it was a scary moment. Then there was the swelling, the pain, the lack of mobility. Thank God I´m well today.

*as I thought about God, I remembered how I´ve always felt somehow supported by the idea that He exists and is always there for us. I was raised catholic, but stopped going to church a long long time ago. Last time I was in church was in 2006, for my graduation. But I´m sure I´m more connected to God than lots of people. I´m proud of my faith. I´m not the nicest person on Earth, but I try and respect everyone, love and care for my family, be responsible at work. I think that´s what counts.

* as I thought about love and care and family, I thought about them. I miss them loads. And I worry so much about my parents getting old and alone back home. Gah. Mom and dad are getting closer together now, I think dad doesnt want to be alone anymore, since he split up with his "girlfriend". Mom even gave him the keys to her house, hehe. It makes me really sad to think about the years they wasted, and how lately they´ve been talking about death and getting old and useless. Gah again.

* as I started getting depressing feelings, the bus reached the point I wanted. I wanted to buy my ticket to go see Interpol on march 15th, but they had the biggest line I´ve ever seen. So I just stayed on the bus and decided to try and buy the ticket at the mall. When I got there, they had tickets alright, but they charged me a 10% fee for the service. Damn you ticketmaster.

* since I was at the mall, I browsed for some clothes and bought a very cute blouse. Dark purple, my favorite. Shopped for food (bouthg fruit today, yay!) and came back home. My sister says she doesnt know how I do that. Going to places alone, she means. ´Cause most people like to go to the mall with friends and such, and so do I, but my friends have been too hard to find lately, so I just go by myself. Its weird, to spend 4 whole hours without speaking, and that´s when my mind works the most, and I think about tons of shit. Sometimes it´s plesant, sometimes it´s not.

Oh, and yesterday, I finally registered at my German course. I´ll star next saturday and I´m so so so excited about it!!! It´s been ages since I last had a langauge class, and I miss it so much. I defiently need some culture in my life, ´cause as much as I like my work, it can be quite narrowminding (is that a word?) sometimes.

I never know how to end an entry properly. So, this is the end.