Microwaves, dancing, stuffed pigs and other wonderful things

What a Wonderful DAY!!

^This feeling doesn't happen to me enough anymore.  But it did today and I love it.

I didn't expect to have a good day because I couldn't sleep for the life of me last night.  I just lay in bed for an hour or two and then gave up.  But that was actually the beginning of the goodness.  My mom says that even lying in bed and not sleeping is restful, but when I do that, my mind starts wandering and I either convince myself that zombies (or whatever monster is in the TV show I'm currently watching) are in my room and going to kill me, or I start thinking about things I don't want to think about and don't even come close to sending me off to sleep-land.  So I decided to distract myself with something other than my errant brain.  Luckily, there's another person who lives across the street from me, who was having similar sleep issues as I was last night.  So at 2AM we decided to go for a drive and get a midnight snack (well-- a 2AM snack).  It was lots of fun.  I got french toast, the leftovers of which I am eating right now for part of dinner (it tastes much better than it looks).  I'm trying to touch it as little as possible so I don't grease up my keyboard, so that's a nice challenge.

It was great to actually have some real social interaction because I've been somewhat isolated from the world of people my age since I came to LA.  I also realized that it had been over a month since I had even gone out that late.  There's a place in my hometown where young folk go late at night (and all the time) for some tasty food.  It's a wonderful gathering place called Dysart's.  It's a truck stop (MUCH less sketchy than it sounds) and going out late normally, at least in part, consists of a Dysart's run.  So it was nice to go to a place called Norm's here in LA and get nostalgic about Dysart's and home and spend time with a new person (although Dysart's has Norm's beat when it comes to late night food).  We got back home around 3:15ish, and I was dreading having to get up at 9:30 for work....

It's impossibly satisfying to have your alarm go off in the morning and to be up and raring to go in minutes.  That happened to me.  I'm thinking that 6 hours of sleep might be the perfect amount of sleep for me to get because my alarm this morning seems to have caught me right at the perfect moment in my sleep cycle.

I went to work for the first day at my new internship.  It was lots of fun.  The assistant who works at the office (I'll call her M) was really great and helpful.  My suspicions about working with someone a bit closer to my age were right.  Work was great.  The office is also much more comfortable than the other places I'm working.  I had to sign a confidentiality agreement, so unfortunately, I can't elaborate very much.  But trust me, it was awesome.  So I'll be working there for two days a week, which makes me happy too.  One thing I can say about my day that was specifically great is

MICROWAVE!!

Yes, that's right.  Microwave.  The woman I live with doesn't have a microwave, which is fine.  But as a college age person, I'm very fond of microwave meals and popcorn, etc.  TURNS OUT that they have an extra microwave at the office of my new internship that they don't need, so I can have it for free!!  How great is that?  So that was another piece to the puzzle that was my awesome day.

AFTER WORK: I thought my day was about to drop off into the oblivion that is a bad day.  NOT SO FAST, DAY.  My plan was to go to a zumba class at 7:15 that I found last week and really liked (I did Zumba at home, but I've been having a hard time finding a good, cheap class here in LA- found one!).  But I had to run to CVS before I went.  I didn't have time between work and Zumba to go all the way to the CVS by my house, get stuff, and then go all the way back to class (the class happens to be very close to work), so before leaving work, I looked up a CVS nearby.  I found one and set off.

NOTE:  You are reading the words of a girl with such an abysmal sense of direction that she has on more than one occasion taken over an hour to get somewhere that was 15 minutes away, and when she was 11, she walked home from school and turned the wrong way, only saved when her mom happened to be driving by and asked where she was going.


So, as you can imagine, knowing that, a quick CVS trip almost cost me a Zumba class that was literally 5 minutes from where I was.  But not worry!!  The Good Day Gods were on my side today.  Here's a drawing I made of the Good Day Gods, just so we're all on the same page.

I made it to Zumba with Time to Spare!!!  It was a wonderful class; one hour long, cardio workout, a wonderful instructor, sweat, dancing.  Ahh!!  All wonderful.  Zumba makes me feel really good about my body because, despite the fact that I have the coordination of a drunk 10-year-old, I can move my hips.  That's a lot of what Zumba's about; some of the dances we do mostly involve ab-workouts in the form of shaking our booties (it really is tiring).  There's a big mirror in the front of the dance studio so we can all see ourselves, which normally would bother me when I was contorting my body into funny, dancy poses (I have little to no dance experience besides my prior Zumba classes), but it's great, because everyone's doing the same thing and no one cares what you do.  It's all accepting and friendly and hardcore and GREAT!  (I mean, they call their classes parties...come on)  Any exercise I can get now is HUGELY important if I don't want to die when I start working on the Wanderbird.  I need to be in shape.

funny side note: my face gets really REALLY red when I exercise at all (I don't know why- it just happens) and the instructor actually stopped and asked me if I was ok in the middle of class because my face looked like it had been severely sunburnt (so RED- I'll post a picture of it sometime).  Anyway...

My day was almost over, but it didn't cease to be lovely.  Even driving home among some asshole drivers and not being able to find a place to park on my street for 10+ minutes, I felt so happy!  I would try to park somewhere, not be able to, and actually laugh out loud to myself!  How often does that happen?  I mean, parking sucks, period.  There's nothing fun or funny about it.  Well, clearly there was to me today.  I went to clean up and was just singing and dancing right there in the shower.  I couldn't stop.  It was great.

PAUSE


I've realized that this was a long, drawn-out (albeit cheerful) saga of my entire day with hardly any pictures and lots of words.  I will now try to finish the story of my excellent day in the opposite fashion: more pictures and other stuff, less words.

I'm sitting here with my stuff pig, Elliot, who is adorable and is making me feel cuddly and even happier.



I'm teaching myself more songs on my ukulele, Everett (the name similarity between it and Elliot is purely circumstantial) which is ALWAYS fun, without fail (perhaps I'll play and post a song for you sometime).



I am also listening to ragtime by Scott Joplin (I would suggest the palm leaf rag) which makes me very happy, despite that it makes me miss playing piano myself.  Hearing piano is enough (especially if I also have my ukulele as a supplement).

It also makes me feel very happy that my name is Tessa because most of the songs on this album were performed by a man named Dick Hyman.  Ouch.  Talk about unfortunate names.

This view was also what greeted me before I left for home.  Very beautiful, even with the telephone wires.


And finally, I got a postcard! Mail is so much fun.  My mom sent me a postcard from Texas, where she and my dad have been for the past week.  Now they're back home, but I have this letter now, and I love it.




I am Joyful!