Jen, the Week of 4/10

It's been hectic, and I haven't been writing much. But it feels wrong not to keep you posted @ least occasionally on my life and times. Here is the readers digest version of my life this week, at least as it appears to me:

I'm ONCE AGAIN procrastinating the packing. I'm leaving work around 11 tomorrow and heading to Philly. I've possibly NEVER been as excited to go home as I am this trip. First of all, not that you particularly care about my plans for the weekend, but they're pretty all-inclusive. First, stopping by our Philadelphia office to hang out with some co-workers. Then it's off to TT's, down to South Street, going to see some former clients/friends who I haven't seen in a long time. Buying a few drinks for TT whose wedding is in FIVE weeks...my God.

Then Saturday, we'll be @ the shore all day, meeting with the bakery about her cake, doing a trial run of everyone's hair for the wedding, and well...just being at the shore. Isn't that enough?!

Sunday I get to pick up my bridesmaid dress for TREE'S wedding (five months away now) and onto Easter dinner @ TT's paren'ts house. I'm going to be dragging myself home on Sunday night, more exhausted than I am right now. Which is a price I am perfectly willing to pay.

Hanging out with the coworkers is the one tricky spot. I'm incredibly excited to see them. But it's going to bring back some troublesome memories of people I used to know there. Luckily, the office is in a different place than last time I saw it...so the remnants of the people who left there are probably mostly gone too. I hope.

Here are a few other things I've been cooking up this week....

1) I'm becoming obsessed with 9/11. It's disconcerting for my friends who lived here when it happened, and have already dealt with it and moved on. They think I'm crazy. I'm not sure why the sudden preoccupation with the whole thing... I think it has mostly to do with the fact that when it happened, I was so bent on NOT reacting, because I felt I didn't have a right too. Now that I'm here (and I think, secondarily, as a result of having to read about the Zacaris Moussoui trial EVERY single day in the paper...reading the transcripts from the cockpit recorder on flight 93, and from the 911 calls placed from the WTC...) it's kind of bombarding my psyche. I can't help but react now.

I was at my GBF's apartment the other night (gay boyfriend) and I was forcing him to show me the documentary "Seven Days in September" which he has permanently Tivo'd. And as I watched, I noticed how VERY MANY of the shots were taken right outside of his building that morning. (He lives just two blocks from ground zero.) In one scene, a handful of men walked out of the front door of the apartment across the street from him, and into what looked like the middle of the night...dark and cloudy and covered with filth and fog. The time reading on the bottom of the screen was 1145am, Tuesday Sept 11. In another scene, clouds of smoke poured down the street as the South Tower collapsed, people ran for their lives. All you could hear was metal crashing, shouting, and a frightening whoosh...which came at the camera along with the wall of smoke it accompanied. In the corner of the frame, I saw Trinity Church. I turned to the window, and leaned over the back of the couch, looking the 25 stories to the ground. There, sat Trinity Church. Unscathed. You would never know what happened there, two blocks away, five years ago.

"That's where you get on the subway to go home," he said.

"I know." I replied. But I can't believe it's the same. I can't believe I've walked past ground zero a hundred times and not really bothered to understand what happened there. I think now, I'm doing some overcompensating.

2) I'm back in another bad situation with a guy...and it's lead me to believe that the healthier part of me is weak and stupid compared to the conscience-free morally devoid part of me who just wants to drink martinis and sleep late and buy shit I can't afford. What can I say... I'm weak.

3) I'm obsessed with the RENT soundtrack. My new morning ritual consists of the following: plopping down @ my desk, chugging my iced hazlenut coffee from the cart guy outside my office, downloading my morning reports and listening to Seasons of Love three times in a row. My coworkers hate me.

4) People change. Pepople who tell you that "people don't change" only say so because they are afraid of changing themselves. Be cautious of someone who claims to have never changed, or to have disbelieved that others around them have done the same. This is why it's imperitive to forgive. I see occasionally, remnants of the person I'm growing out of... and I barely even recognize her. And I'm sorry, sometimes, for the things she did and the way she acted. My solace then, is in the fact that I am no longer her. Because I have learned her lessons. And they have been the things that changed me. Better or worse. People do change. And thank god for that.

5) I'm feeling morally conflicted about downloading music. I haven't done it in a long time. But I want to. There, I said it.

Now I'm tired...and I STILL haven't packed. Or done my nails, or showered, or done laundry or run the dishwasher or cleaned my room.... you understand.

Have a great weekend. Happy Easter, and Shalom!!