I suspect that my genuine & sincere interest & eagerness in getting involved & helping out, be it professionally (by jumping right into new projects or offering entirely unsolicited ideas on projects with which I have no formal involvement) or personally (by completely over-identifying with others and assuming that all the stooooopid stuff I’ve battled is somehow related to the their battles), might give some the impression that I think I know everything.

Which is totally lame.

Cuz I really don’t feel like I have all the answers.  I just get excited by the process of discovering them, and I want to share in that journey of discovery with, like, everybunny.

But perhaps this makes people feel like I am trying to be the boss of them.  And that’s not cool!

Note to everyone:   I am not the boss of you! 

Consider me the rambunctious and excitable dork with my hand raised in the back of class.  I’m just trying to help.  I don’t mean to piss you off.

I just wanna give a shout out to another person I love who, in partnership with her baby daddy, just gave the universe another human to love.

Congratulations to Priscilla & Joe!  Now, the question remains:  whatever shall you name the puppy?

Now, for those moms who read my blog:

1. What’s the best piece of advice you were given before &/or when you became a brand new mom?
2. What advice would you give yourself on the day you became a mom (you know, assuming that whole time travel / alternate universe thing could be jiggered with)?

I love you, P!  You’re a fantastic mother already.

But I do kinda wish I’d gotten the breast pump in honor of D-Tittle.

(And I just found the card you gave me with the red Hello Kitty wallet.  I will never forget that act of kindness. xoxoxo)

It’s practically a counterpoint to how I was feeling seven weeks ago, but I’ve been feeling extraordinarily love-y as of late. Perhaps it’s that newfangled dangle of real-deal affection that I have for myself (Whitney! Where you at, you crazy crackhead? Singin’ ’bout the greatest love and all dat?), maybe it’s this A+ global warming (go team!), maybe it’s nice to not be surrounded by cardboard boxes all day. Dunno. But I am feeling strong in my core, strong enough to stand up tall, flex my abdominals (different from simply sucking in the gut, ya know), throw my arms out and give big hugs. Virtual or otherwise.

Big Hug #1 goes to my dear friend Christopher.

Tall, dark, handsome, and often misunderstood, Chris is at once enigmatic and boringly obvo. I am sure that if he had the time to pause and reflect on his life & motivations, he’d be surprised and perplexed by what he finds. I know that over the past ten-plus years that I have been fortunate enough to have him in my life, I too have been surprised and perplexed — and delighted — as I get to know this man more deeply.

And, oh! What a wonderful man he is. I love him like a brother, tell it to him straight when he’s pissing me off or acting like a child, and take it straight-up from him when he’s returning the favor. His heart is thorny, messy, and complicated, with razor edges that, if you can navigate safely past, give way to a warmth and a kind sincerity that is hopeful and optimistic about all people.

Also. He’s funny as shit and has gotten me filthy drunk more often than I can count. Just being in his company can make me high on giggles.

But it’s his moments of somber quietude that I love most. Looking up from my hotel bed and seeing his 6′5″ frame bundled in a puffy white comforter, haloed by the bright dawn, while he’s focused on the online game of euchre glowing before him on his laptop. Getting up from the floor of a Vermont cabin and seeing him hunched over a glass, in his eyes the look of a man who’s battling a falter into his mind’s endless hallway of sadness, four empty handles of liquor in the background destined for a recycling bin, as he declares, “I’m never drinking again.” Sitting on my Brooklyn couch, having just dispensed solicited advice regarding his brand new suits and unsolicited advice about his love life, and having him quietly reply, “ANP, you’re going to make someone a really good partner someday.”

He was here just before my summer job brought me to my knees.  Or maybe, his presence reminded me how joy feels, reminded me that I don’t need to endure that which brings me sadness.

Our man in Berlin comes back to the US and A.  Click here to see the pictures.

I love you, Chris, and I continue to be so proud of you. xoxoxo

Imagine my surprise when I found the Grant kid I secretly liked best on Facebook.

When I ran the program, I designed a driving tour of New Haven for new teachers to actually roll through and see the actual homes of our kids. I had this student’s house on the trip. I hadn’t seen her enrollment form for the summer yet, so when I drove by and saw her mom on the stoop I pulled the Storm over and asked her what’s up.

“You a social worker?”

“Uh, no, I’m ANP from U.S. Grant. I was ———’s math teacher last summer.”

“Oh. Well I haven’t seen ——— in about six weeks. She ran away.”

“Oh.”

I could barely make it back to my car, the tears were coming so fast. I was so angry. Angry at ———’s mom for being so blase about it, angry about the extreme poverty in ———’s neighborhood, angry at being powerless to fix any of it. I tried to wrap all these feelings inside as I returned to the driver’s seat (there were three other teachers crammed into the car with me) but they unraveled a few blocks away. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t hide the fact that I gave a shit. I’ve never been good at hiding that. As much as I try to play all Mr. Tuff Guy my heart is on my sleeve.

Well, I’m about to cry again. But it’s a whole different, been-waiting-over-a-decade-for-news-like-this kinda cry.

I am doing good. Yeah ten years ago I was going through a faze and Im glad i came up out of it quickly.lol. I am great though. I just married recently, still no children, trying to finish up school and get a couple of degrees, working in the human services field. How are you is the question? We always had a pretty good connection with eachother and I always knew I was your favorite!LMAO But I thought about you every day for a long time and i hoped that you were okay. Its amazing how technology and sights like this reunite people. Its actually almost scary.

I know I talk about Grant quite a bit and I can’t explain it. I can’t explain how deeply those kids reached into me. I can’t explain how much I loved teaching. It just is.

Oh, don’t tell me I already packed my Kleenex.

I’m not tryin’ to hate on Renee Zellwegger as Bridget Jones, but you don’t have to be a juicy blonde of average intelligence with a secretarial job to have a big heart. And yet I fear that being well-educated, tall, and on my good days kinda cute actually makes me less desirable than a Bridget Jones, thus putting my big big heart at high risk for underutilization.

I actually had a good day today. Great meeting in the morning with my big sib from JE, who started a company with her hubby that neatly dovetails with my career and thus I anticipate will be an important connection for me moving forward. (I hope she has kindly forgotten what a weird, weird kid I was at that age; yikes!)

Soon as I left the coffee shop, got a call from the guy that’s preparing my apartment for my arrival. I walked through my new place, and heavens it was a relief to see that it was actually going to be mine. The windows in the living room are bigger than I remember (sure, they overlook a playground and a parking lot respectively, but there’s also unfettered visual access to sky, which is more than I can say for my current view) and the previous tenant left a brand new unused crock pot (not to mention saw, which may or may not come in handy).

Granted, it looks smaller than I remember, but spaces always appear smaller when not filled with stuff (up to a point; somebody fetch me a line graph studying this!). And the flooring in the kitchen the druthered version of me would replace, but I’m already replacing the range and buying a portable dishwasher. I also decided that I could not live with a ceiling fan — the whirling blades are far too bird-like and they hurt my eyes — and bought a chandelier instead for my kitchen.

And then I got a call from the painter, who thinks I might need more paint. “I like to do good job, yes, and will need two coats. So, I call you tomorrow, let you know, how much more.”

Finally, upon Priscilla’s recommendation, and the fact that I was ignored by the Padded Wagon, a dude from Moishe’s came by my place to quote me a moving price of $2,000. To which I say, screw it. (And thus, to my bank account: drain it!)

Cherry on top: a nice drink with a good human at a nice place in Brooklyn, where I ran into a classmate that I’d never spoken to but knew the name of (likely freaking her out).

Feeling a little more human today, but admittedly looking forward to nesting in my new shell.  Looking at these packed up boxes is making me far too reminiscy.  Gotta get outta my own head …

Today I learned:

• Even after forking over $1,500 in repairs for my baby, I still love her
• My women friends rarely, if ever, disappoint me
  • The opposite seems true for men (including my buddies)
• Just when I least need it, my upstairs neighbors will throw a house-warming party
  • And all their crappy Pratt undergrad guests in fashionable eyeglasses will smoke on my front stoop, thus ruining how I smell* instantly and prompting me to verbally mock them as I force my way through their general nastiness

I just want to move to Manhattan already so I can putter around and re-arrange all the junk I’ve collected from my travels into neat little triads.  Insert ANP raising a fist to the universe!

Text message to universe:  grr! 

Now I crank the white noise machine to eleven and fume for a while.

(Memo to smokers: without exception, I find you disgusting. That includes you, ANP-when-drunk-and-only-once-every-six-to-eight-months.)

* Viktor Rolf, Flowerbomb, which I learned today contains freesia, perhaps explaining why I love it so

To purge from my brain the slightly frustrating conference call with India that I was just on, I’ve uploaded the final pics from my brother Dan’s visit to NYC a couple of months ago. Naturally he tried to get out of seeing his sisters by having a seizure (or seven) just before the planned trip, but it all went off without a hitch.

Of course, since then boy’s done gotten engaged, and to a lady I rather like to boot!

Now I’m off to eat nuked yellow cake over peaches soaked in a buncha cold 2% milk.

(Eating the remnants of my pantry has resulted in some interesting food choices as of late.)

Yesterday, it was gloomy and gray and dark and I furiously worked until 6 a.m. and never left the house.

But, today! Today?!

Things are looking up.  Sunshine and blue sky and puffy white happy clouds and hope.

(Thank you to all my angels, especially my Angie.  xo)

If you don’t mind.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of being a turtle.

I think that one of my greatest strengths is my compassion. Despite the bad-ass persona I like to flaunt like so many high, well-rounded, firm half-Asian ass-cheeks, the reality is I’m a fuckin’ squishy bear. That’s right, I modified squishy bear with the f-bomb. When I see people being treated unfairly, or when I smell unkindness afoot, protecto-ANP arrives on the scene, if only to calm the searing painful heat that rises within me.

Maybe I see a projection of the ANP as a young girl in those that I perceive to be receiving the short end of some stick. Maybe my desire to help, to put my man-hands over the hearts of those around me, is really me trying to reach back through time to heal the wounds of that little girl I used to be.

(Was this why, when I felt a shift inside of me during the Reiki healing energy circle I went to a few months ago, I had a distinct vision of the “main thoroughfare” (!) of my hometown in Indiana?)

On the flip side, though, is that this feely thing I got goin’ on is also my greatest weakness. I cannot not give a shit. Things matter to me. Life matters. When I bring the ANP, I bring the ANP. The love. The pain. (Wu Tang, what!) I cannot tell my y-axis to chill it out and keep the sine wave dampened. It’s gonna be bold and big and it’s gonna sparkle with benevolent brisance.

I cannot shrink wrap my self. In love, in life, in work. I need to be allowed — no, no, encouraged – to put it in H. I mean, seven. I’m a high octane girl. I need to seek those spaces, those kindred spirits, that celebrate that about me.

I will not diminish the whole of me simply because my presence invokes the insecurities of others.

I will be me, all seven speeds, volume cranked to eleven, without apology.

I just wish it didn’t hurt me so much to have to make these kinds of decisions. I wish I didn’t have to cut dead weight.