overcoming the long dark teatime of the soul

I typically hate Sundays. They're always the worst days of the week for me, days when I feel the most tired, the most lonely, the most bored. Maybe it's because I have high expectations for them, or maybe it's more psychological and goes back to the times when I worked Saturday nights until 6 AM and still managed to get up by 11 to go to church. I usually managed church ok, but Sunday evenings just killed me. I don't think I ever really shook that feeling. Also, I often got frustrated, years after I quit that job, when I would want to hang out with people on Sundays and they would all be napping in the afternoon when I never could nap. Maybe that made me bitter.

I'm sure most of you have heard me complain about Sundays before, and I'm sure many of you have heard this quote, which is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything and it describes my Sunday afternoons perfectly:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

I remember the day I read this. It was a Sunday, believe it or not, and I had just taken a bath (the second of the day) and decided that maybe I would just read to try to pass away the rest of the afternoon. I almost fell out of my chair when I came across this passage.

This isn't the first time I've ranted about how much I hate Sundays and it probably won't be the last. However, today was one of those rare nice Sundays. It wasn't the best Sunday I ever had, but it also wasn't the typical Sunday where all I want to do is stab my eyes out because I'm so desperately bored. Since I had been so lazy yesterday, I decided to go for a walk this morning. The sun was shining and it was such a lovely day out. I walked around my neighborhood, which isn't the most interesting place in the world, but I found a few lovely spots to stand and enjoy the sun. When I got back home I felt good and I was actually excited to go to church.

Church went well; we talked about some wonderful principles, about faith and temples, and I felt renewed and ready for my week, and I even did

an uncharacteristic thing and stuck around after the meetings to chat with people. I found out that some were going over to St. Paul's to attend a service and since I had been thinking of doing just that thing earlier today I decided I would tag along. It was quite a nice service, and the church is just utterly amazing. Even the little sermon was quite nice and made me think of Christ and my relationship to God. I love learning and feeling the spirit in other churches; it helps me appreciate my own beliefs and religious practices.

Then I came home and talked with my family, watched a little Top Gear, and skyped with my best friend. And now it's nearly time for bed and I never once fell into that horrid long dark teatime of the soul.

I honestly think that the fact that I forced myself to be a little more laid back and take my time after church to talk to people really made all the difference. I think the thing I hate most about Sundays is being alone. I feel like Sundays are meant for people, to relax and talk and enjoy the company and good conversation of friends and family. I do believe they are sacred days, but when they are spent alone, watching telly, being bored, Sundays just awful. So, I hope that Sundays like today will be characteristic of my future Sundays, and I'm going to put a little more effort into making them special like I want them to be.

if we wait until the weekend, we could miss the best things to do.

So 95% of my interactions with people yesterday were with men. Seriously, it was very weird. I talked briefly to one woman the whole day. I went out with an old friend for lunch and he and I walked around the Upper West Side for a few hours. We went to Ulysses Grant's tomb, which was very cool, then I went to my knitting class which was taught by a man. After that I went to a concert and on my way home I ran into a guy I met a few weeks ago and hung out with a few times. He wrote a book and gave me a copy and I've read and it was the weirdest run in with a person. I was getting off the train and there were only men surrounding me. I didn't see one woman, and I thought "this is really odd" and I started looking around to see if there were men behind me as well and I turned and this kid was walking right next to me. We were both a little shocked, especially since those sort of run ins don't happen often. So we took the same train home and we talked the whole way and set up a time to hang out next week. Then when I got home I talked to 2 more guys before I went to bed. Weird.

So I was thinking of blogging about today because I had another awesome day, but then I realized how boring these posts must be about me listing the stuff I do. I decided to make my perfect day into a walking tour so that if any of you find yourselves in New York you can retrace my steps and perhaps find yourself having a perfect day.

I call this The Lazy Hot Day in New York Tour:

The next time you find yourself jobless in New York City with a lot of time on your hands, a couple of nice people to hang out with and weather that is less agreeable on the temperature side (preferably 90 degrees or more) there are plenty of relaxing and low impact activities. A nice picnic in the park is the perfect way to start.

1. Take a three hour picnic in the shade in Central Park. Start at the corner of 96th Street and Central Park West entrance to the park. Walk about 20 feet into the park and find a nice shady spot on the nearby hill. It's hot out there. You don't need to be doing any trekking any further when a perfectly shady hill is available right next to the entrance. Set yourself down and talk and eat with the couple of nice people you brought with you for the next two to three to four hours.

2. After snoozing in the shade, lazily stroll down Central Park West until you find yourself a refreshing drink. If you are lucky enough to be with someone who lives in the Upper West Side you can stop by their house, use their bathroom and freshen up with some cool water from their kitchen sink (it's free!)

3. Without exerting too much effort, ramble down Amsterdam and stop in Pretty Angel Nail & Spa (between 81 and 82nd) for a $24 mani/pedi. Super cheap and they also have great massage chairs.

4. After your mani/pedi hop on the train and head down to Chinatown. On Mott St. there are a number of places to get a cold tapioca drink. I got a passion fruit with little bits of coconut jellies floating in it. So refreshing. I got it at a place that was also a bakery where I bought a 98 cent piece of chocolate torte. 98 cents!!

5. Around the corner at 68 Bayard St. is a little place called "Nice Green Bo Restaraunt". They have delicious dumplings. You can share 3 orders between 4 people and only pay $5 each to get filled up with yummy food. Across the street is the Ice Cream Factory where they have an impressive array of flavors such as avacado and red bean. I got the lychee flavor, and it was delicious. Only, be aware that you can only sample 2 flavors of ice cream.

6. After dessert walk east down Canal Street (towards the East River) where you might just be lucky enough to run into some sister missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who sit outside the high school with big signs in Chinese offering free Book of Mormons and English lessons and try to talk to passers by. They're adorable girls and speak excellent Chinese, and if you crowd around them people will get interested and actually come up and talk to them.

7. Continue down Canal Street until you get to Allen Street. Cross the street and turn right. Just before you reach Division Street is a genuine Bansky painting on a wall. It's been tagged with silver paint, but what can you expect? Stand there and admire the piece of art which, if it had been done on a canvas would be worth thousands of dollars.

8. Walk down Allen Street towards the river until you pass under the Manhattan Bridge and actually get to the East River. The best time to go is at evening with a full moon when it's still 90 degrees and a cool breeze blows off of the river. You get a spectacular view of the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges and of Brooklyn and the Financial District.

9. Now if you're doing this walking tour right you'll be with someone who actually lives in a high rise luxury apartment in the Financial District. If you don't, well then you can't really finish the tour, so enjoy the view and then go home to your crumby little room that isn't actually a room at all in Harlem. Otherwise walk along the river towards the Financial District, try to navigate its charming crooked streets until you get to Two Gold St, advertised as "Downtown Manhattan's most amenity rich luxury resident rental". Take the elevator to the roof and enjoy the view of the river and of downtown Manhattan, or you can hang out in the club house with several private lounge areas and pool tables, or you can go for a swim in the pool or do laundry in one of the TWO on site laundry facilities. Two. On site. Not down the street, but in the same building. Unheard of. Or you could just hang out in a sweet apartment and watch tv on the giant flat screen.

This is where your adventure ends, but you'll find an A train near by that will take you to your (still 90 degree hot) room that isn't really a room in Harlem. From Central Park to the Upper West Side to China Town to the Financial District, you've seen a lot today and you deserve a nice cool shower.

On Friday my mom came and picked me up and we went to my grandparents' house in Tabiona. That's two hours North-East of Provo. It was a nice time, but weird. My grandma has Alzheimer's and its in its early stages, so she's still quite lucid. The sad thing was that she was not herself. The even sadder thing was that I liked her better. All my life she scared me a little. She had control of every person and every situation and she would manipulate the room to her liking. She would manipulate lives to her liking as well, and I blame many of my mom's and uncles' problems on her. Now she's just a sweet little old lady. She's kind of like a child, which is hard, but she's always happy. I'm sad that Patsy is gone, because I always saw a bit of her in me and even though she made me uncomfortable I was never really scared of her like I think other people were. I wouldn't let her manipulate me. My sister and I loved to be mean to her. We used to lock her in the outhouse when we lived on the ranch. It was all good fun, and I was certain that she would some day get back at us in a very evil way. I don't know if she has, and I don't know if she can now.

Patsy's gone. On the other hand I have a nice, happy, funny little grandma that I enjoyed being around. And who knows how long that will last?

happy go lucky...

On the train today on the way home from Salt Lake songs kept coming up on my ipod that reminded me of experiences I have had in my life that have left me hurt or embarrassed. I kept thinking about people who I liked more than they liked me, people who ended up hating me for whatever reason, and people who I always ended making a fool of myself around. One thing I hate more than anything is when I don't have a good rapport with somebody, when they simply don't like me, or when I let them down or they find me annoying. I try to be pleasant, I try to get along with most people, and I try to do good things for others and be thoughtful and mindful of them and their feelings. And so when someone doesn't like me or when I make a mistake and people are mad at me, it kills me. Nothing feels worse.

I watched a movie tonight (that lacked a plot but had a pretty intense moment towards the end) called Happy-go-lucky about this girl who is always optimistic, who is always kind to people, who can't help but laugh all the time at stupid little things. She is a woman who is happy with her life, who has good friends and who teaches and helps little kids. She decides to take driving lessons, and she is just herself, but the driving instructor is a little nuts and her eccentric and constantly happy behavior unhinges him. He ends up being really violent with her and tells her that all she wants is to be the center of attention and just to play with people's feelings. But this is not true at all. There are a couple of scenes after this one where we see her sitting, obviously thinking about what had just happened, and you wonder if maybe he is right, if she is not actually such a genuinely good and happy person. But it comes to the point where she and the audience realizes that he is wrong, that she is who she is and he read is wrong. She wasn't trying to lead him on, she was just being herself. She was just being kind to him because she's kind to everyone. She shouldn't change who she is because one person didn't like her.

And so it should be with me. There have been people who have hated me. There was one girl that offered for me to go visit her in Portland, and I took her up on it because I always wanted to go. But, we had only worked together and weren't good friends and while I thought we got along, it turned out that we didn't at all. And I was there for 5 days, and it just got worse and worse. I know I could have made it better, I know I was immature. There was one moment when I asked her where her dad was (because her mom was remarried) and I said it in not the kindest tone. She said he was dead. And then there was awkward silence and then we didn't talk much for the rest of the trip. The plan was for us to drive back to Utah from Portland and her mom decided to come along instead of just the two of us. Neither of them talked to me the entire trip, I got out of the car and they said goodbye and I have never ever seen or talked to that girl since. And it bothers me because I know she didn't like me, and I did try to be pleasant. I don't think it is fair. She was in such a bad mood the whole time and it felt like I could never do or say anything right. That was 3 years ago and it still bothers me.

But it shouldn't. I wasn't a horrible person to her; I'm not a horrible person in general. Some people won't like me, but there are plenty of people who like me a lot. I can't please everyone, and something I've learned in the last few years is that I do have the power to change and to be better but there is something essential about who I am, about my personality, that won't change and that doesn't need to change to please anybody. And people will like me or they won't and someone may someday love me, but I really need to stop worrying about it either way.

I'm all right, you're all right, can't we all just get along?