dear future husband*:

i was feeling especially domestic this afternoon so i made the cutest autumn lunch--a mixed green salad with homemade pomegranate raspberry dressing, butternut squash soup, garlic toast, and a huge 36-cookie batch of pumpkin chocolate chip oat cookies. oh, and warm lemon water to drink. and you would be so proud because i did everything from scratch and though this meal is quite simple, nothing was burnt and everything was pretty. and i don't expect you to be vegetarian but every now and then i won't cook meat for you and instead we will have healthy little meals like this. as i cooked, i listened to phoenix and then Christmas music because i am so excited for the holidays. and we will be haughty and trite and watch an inconvenient truth (because i watched that too) while eating our lovely vegetarian meal.

can't wait to meet you,

aub

* preferably long long long term boyfriend, seeing as i don't want to be married.

thankfully i have this blog

I love holidays. I live for the moment it becomes seasonally appropriate to listen to Christmas music (I was blaring “Sleigh Ride” in my car this past August) and love buying chocolate in bulk on Valentine’s Day. I whole-heartedly embrace the celebratory attributes of every holiday, whether historically important or a just a sappy Hallmark creation, and despite the whole “hard, cynical, and emotionally avoidant” caricature I seem to have drawn regarding various subjects, holidays change everything. I am the first to get warm and fuzzy at cheesy rom-coms, particularly ones that intertwine Christmas spirit in the plotline. Love Actually is my second Favorite Movie of All Time, and The Holiday pretty much melts my heart (although that might just be the significant screen time spent panning on and off Jude’s spectacular jaw line). And that weird shiver you get when your heart can’t handle all of the circumferential joy and happiness it’s taking in and you have to, like, awkwardly shift your body in the general flow of movement as to not appear at all affected? I own those.
That being said, Thanksgiving is today and there are a lot of things not just to bethankful for, but that I am thankful for. Things I may have only registered as a blip on my conscious last year because my situation was so different.
Today, in general: Was spent with family, being completely ridiculous and irresponsible with food, and with the company of two good friends. The celebration/condemnation of our high school humiliation was acknowledged with a night break in to our high school and a pack of cigarettes. Disregard turkey, French fries from Del Taco at 9pm never tasted better.
Friends, aka my lovelies, the Parisians, and Best Friend: I love and am completely thankful for the friendship Best Friend and I have (but really the relationships I have will all of the Parisians.) No matter the distance and the total impersonal attitude our texts usually garner, we easily fall into place, connect, and bond as if nothing has changed from five years ago. Our lives are going a million miles per second in every which direction but at the end of the day, none of that really matters. I love these people more than I could ever express and am so thankful to have an environment in which I can be myself and feel safe and loved regardless.
Family: I could talk up my family for hours and probably do speak too much of them. Unconditional love at its finest, even my brother's snippy comments roll off my back now that my visits home rarely break the 72-hour mark. Thankful for just the fact that I am in the house with all of them as I type this and how we had family nap time earlier as soon as we got home from dinner. I associate them with comfort and a support system I don't have to worry about, and for that I am thankful, whether I am with them or not.
Warmth: Warm clothes, warm cookies, warm personalities, warm beverages, warm houses. If there's anything that provokes coziness and contentment, this is it. I'm thankful that, on a day like today, each of these has made an appearance. And I hope the same for you.
Health: It's cliche but not really when you think about it. I'm thankful that I am still standing after this week, when my total hours of sleep barely scrapped the 20 hour mark. I am thankful that my body tolerates this abuse but moreover, I'm very lucky to be alive in general. Thank you heart for being strong because I couldn't ask for more than this.
Having a major that allows me to idolize Hillary Clinton, read the Economist and the New Yorker, and plot the supply and demand of sex: Sometimes I worry I'm not a legitimate nineteen year old because I watch the news every free chance I get, am never seen without a newspaper, could tell you Syria's current GDP per capita, and the WSJ is my most frequently received tweet. But I'm a nerd and a partial loser and I just love politics and studying China's economy is really fun for me. And if I am considered a boring old person for that, then bring on the apple sauce.

And so I hope you find much to be thankful for today. The world is a lovely place to be.
xoxo, aub

what's eating gilbert grape

okay, so a quick list of things that are bothering me this week:
-people keep staring at me lately. not like the normal glances you take at people as you pass them by, no, people are full on staring. if it's just me then i accept being awkward but if there is snot on my face or something as equally tragic, please let me know. thanks.
-all the music i listen to reminds me of you and it's partially annoying because we have really good taste in music (obviously) but the problem is, you're not here to enjoy it with me.

-my econ professor is being ridiculous and my bias toward her makes me want to hate her class but i can't because i really really love it.

-this week is kind of going really slow. please hurry up.

-i haven't gotten to hang out with bart all week really. but when he tells me i look fancy, it turns a bad day into a good one.

-i can't watch project runway tonight and i'm overwhelmed with thursday meeting and i maybe sort of broke down and cried on the curb today.

that's all.

text message of the day:
"ahhhh, you and your awkwardness. the masochist in you shows." [the context behind this is a lot more interesting than the text itself, but ya know.]

i forgot to mention that justin timberlake was paged for his flight to burbank while i was at the airport yesterday.
and also i drank five different types of lattes from five different coffee shops. some sort of record, i'm sure.

if you were coming in the fall

a couple reasons why i love berkeley:
-Best Friend is there, we fall into old habits and i feel home again.
-my lovelies are there, we talk forever, sleep on futons, and always always eat good food.
-favorite bookstore ever, Mo's; coffee at Peet's
-i get to steal the Oakland Tribune off the stoop
-i pretend to be a student and go to Tamil class
-i get to wear sweaters and leggings and not sweat to death
-it's beautiful
everyone comes home in more or less nine days. first time we'll all be together since july!

A Letter to an Asshole, part two:

Maybe it's because I'm in Berkeley, surrounded by what we did and saw together, and surrounded by the people we both call our friends but I couldn't help but think of you, and probably miss you even.
A lot has happened since my last blog letter to you; I loved you again (go figure, old habits die hard) and you were a jerk again (go figure, old habits die hard). But I went to the Mission district tonight and thought about you the entire time. There were guys in skinny cords with cigarettes all over the neighborhood and I couldn't help but think of you and think how cute we would be walking the streets, browsing vintage shops and bookstores together. I ate a quesadilla and then remembered how you ate one for me once even though you don't like them. Knowing that you would have disapproved made it taste even better and let me tell you, it was pretty damn good to begin with. Anyway, I saw you a couple weeks ago at my favorite place in the world and had no choice but to leave because seeing you is like falling into a giant bush of poison ivy. I know I will probably be seeing you in two weeks and my friends will probably warn me against it but you know what? I'm not going to listen because I can't stop loving you.
love,
aubrey

holding me together.

This week I struggled with the concept of goodness and perception and endurance.
I don’t always understand what other people see, how they see it, and why they see it. My entire life I have been told that I am good, that I am a gentle soul, a kindred spirit, always sweet, patient, accepting , friendly. And I want to know where this comes from, how individuals are able to sense this inherent goodness because I don’t always feel like that and I especially think I don’t always act like that. (Sometimes I think bad thoughts, especially when I am driving or walking behind someone really slow.) But I seek out the best in others and in situations and I love everyone and if this reflects back to my own character, then I can only give a million thanks to the lovely individuals who fill my being.
They are the people who will suggest good movies that cause me to stay up too late procrastinating my studies; they are the ones who answer my telephone calls on Tuesdays at 3am when I am having panic attacks about small things, or worse, nothing at all. They are the people with whom I have Thursday night slumber parties and stay up until 6:30 in the morning talking about everything and laughing, always laughing.; they are the people who help satisfy my French fry obsession and order in bad Spanish accents. They are the people who let me go with them to a class I’m not even in because I’m weird and like sitting in on lectures. They are the people who have silent coffee dates with me and understand when I don’t want to talk about it; they are the people who let me sleep in their bed, mess up the sheets, hog the covers and take a walk of shame in the morning without saying goodbye. They are the people who don’t get upset with me when I wake up early and make noise accidentally; they are the ones who laugh at my lame jokes, feel sorry for my bruised leg when I fall out of the shower, and get concerned when I say that I can feel my blood surging after drinking too much coffee. They are the people who take me swing dancing and salad eating, kiss my cheek, and hold me close when I am freezing from only wearing half of a sweater.
This week I have never been more challenged. Everyday I want to scream, cry, and runaway. I want to give up. I’m not sure if it’s some divine intervention or the fact that I have the strongest support system I could ever imagine, but I won’t give up. I know at the end of this fiasco I will be a much better person.
And though I take pleasure in always being busy, stressed out, frazzled and on a permanent coffee binge, I am looking forward to a weekend without obligations. I want to do homework because I want to and not because I need to finish before service. I want to hang out and relax with people on my own terms, not because I need fellowship. I want to lay in my bed all day long, eating mochi, drinking tea and watching Sex and the City.
But until then I am counting down the hours until Berkeley and counting minutes until I can be with my loves, my bests. Because not being able to understand a voice because of a crappy cell connection is never as good as not being able to understand a voice in person because you’re laughing too hard. And text emotio-cons are never as good as real life angry-winky-smiley-licky tongue faces.