I just had the most fantastic day today! I decided to go to Yom Kippur services at Bet Alef synagogue. I chose it because it seemed like more of a modern, spiritual synagogue, and because their services started at 10:30 am instead of 9:30 am. Good decision, because I ended up being half an hour late anyway. It was fantastic to be back in temple, and to hear all the familiar prayers and chants. I was grateful I’d decided to attend.

After the traditional service, the Rabbi led a “healing service,” which is essentially a 30-minute guided meditation. You sit in the pews directly behind the person in front of you. Everyone must be silent. Your rows are numbered even and odd, and for the first 15 minutes, the people in the even rows are guided by the Rabbi to summon the healing energy of the earth and the sky, and then they put their hands on the shoulders (and later the heads) of the people in front of them. You’re instructed to serve as a conduit for the energy and to transfer it into the person in front of you. Then you switch and repeat. I know it sounds very strange, but I had an experience I’ve never had before in meditation. I could feel an energy moving through my body, and specifically through my hands. My hands got hot, and it was almost as though there was a force pushing them back from the woman’s shoulders. I could feel something happening. Then when I was the recipient of the energy, I definitely felt something. I really felt an energy pulsing through my body, unlike anything I’ve experienced in prior guided meditations. It was incredible and very, very cool.

Afterward, I headed to the break-fast at the urban kibbutz in Ravenna, where my friend Neal lives, and it’s always a joy to see him. At the kibbutz, I met the charming and hilarious Steven Blum, who chatted with me for about 10 minutes before being like, “This is kind of embarrassing, but I read your blog and I love it. I follow you on Twitter, too. Actually, I knew you were here before you even came in because I read your tweet about not being able to find parking.” Tee hee. It was very meta. Steven had some very kind things to say about this blog, and that’s always nice to hear, because Lord knows enough people have unkind things to say. I broke the fast there with the other kibbutzim, and they were fantastic hosts. The food was delicious. “Hunger is the best sauce,” commented Neal. “No, ranch dressing is,” I corrected.

Unfortunately, I had to run out the door pretty early, because I was meeting my friend Clay for drinks. The last time I saw Clay we were in eighth grade. Clay was my academic nemesis. At our hyper-competitive prep school, Clay was always #1 and I was always #2. He always won just one more award than me, or scored just one point higher. However, he was always very humble and kind about being a total genius, and we got along well. Now, after living in China, becoming fluent in Mandarin, graduating from Harvard and completing law school at Georgetown and Beijing University (I know, I know — total underachiever), he’s joined the Coast Guard as a part of the JAG corps. Their ship pulled into Bellingham for a couple days, and he drove down to Seattle with another total underachiever to see the city. His underachieving pal, Abdul, aside from being strikingly tall and handsome, played football at Wake Forest, was North Carolina’s most eligible bachelor according to a 1998 issue of Cosmo, and then attended law school and practiced law for several years before joining the Coast Guard’s JAG. I was not at all in love. (Okay, maybe I was a little in love. If he’d been in his uniform I may have fainted.) Oh, and you wanna know the best part? Clay’s grandfather is the late Senator Claiborne Pell, the phenomenal man responsible for the Pell Grants. And Abdul? Had gone to school on a Pell Grant. He was like, “Clay’s grandfather is the reason that a poor young kid from Florida made it all the way through law school.” And although Senator Pell passed away this year, Abdul is going to meet Clay’s grandmother soon and is looking forward to the chance to thank her in person. How freakin’ cool is that? I had a little tear in my eye as he was talking about it. Anyway, Clay and I caught up without missing a beat, like we’d just seen each other last week. It was very, very cool to hear about all the amazing things he’s been up to and all the amazing things he has in his future. People like him and Abdul inspire me to keep pushing harder and exploring new opportunities. We sat there and chatted for a couple of hours, and it felt like no time at all had passed. Just a freakin’ AMAZING day all-around, one of the great days that makes the bad ones worth living through.

Oh, and, yeah, Gawker called me out today for being on JDate and being hungry. A wee bit embarrassing, yes, but mostly I’m flattered. Proud to be a twitterati!

ZOMG. I thought tonight was going to suck, but it turned out to be amazing. I had kinda-sorta plans with a guy friend to go to a “dance” (more on that later), but then he failed to return my calls and then his cell was off, so I was like, “Ugh. I’ll just stay in tonight.” Those were my plans. I was just going to watch The Green Mile on Bravo.

I texted my neighbor Danielle to see if she wanted to let the dogs have a play date on the roof, and she was like, “We’re headed to Norms, come over!” Norms is this bar/restaurant in Fremont where they allow dogs inside, so we took Leo, Danielle’s dog Cooper and our other friend Katie’s dog Lacey. Something about eating at a restaurant while your dog is beside you is so much fun. It feels like you’re breaking a rule. It’s exciting. During dinner, my friend Gillian texted me and wanted to go to the dance, so I was like, “Okay, cool, I’ll come pick you up later.”

Danielle, Katie and I were wandering around Fremont after eating, and we walked past this bar where Katie knew the bouncer, so we sat there and chatted with him. Beside him was a guy smoking a cigarette. He offered Danielle’s dog a string cheese. I was like, “Oh! String cheese! That’s Leo’s FAVORITE treat!” and the guy’s like “Really?” and then from inside his jacket he pulls out FOUR MORE PACKAGES of string cheese. I was like, “WTF? Who does that?” But then we started offering them to Leo — who always refuses to do tricks — and suddenly he was up on his hind legs, balancing there for 30 seconds, attempting a twirl, whatever. You could see his little mind whirling like “WHAT MUST I DO TO ACCESS THAT STRING CHEESE?” He was willing to try anything he thought might result in his consumption of string cheese. It was hilarious. We all laughed so hard our stomachs hurt.

When we got back to my car, I checked my phone and noticed that my friend Brett had called, texted and left me a voicemail saying he wanted to come to the dance too (it had been his idea in the first place). So I dropped my neighbors off and had Brett meet me at my apartment, we picked up Gillian, and we headed to this so-called dance.

I’m not sure exactly what we were expecting. I think we knew it would be a little lame, but we were expecting a slightly younger crowd for the lameness. When we walked in it was pretty much all folks 40 years or older, dancing to super-cheesy 80s music using super-cheesy moves. There was a DJ, and some flashing lights, but all in all it was a very lame “dance” scene. Like, my middle school did it better. I walked in and I was like, “Oh, God. We are going to sit here awkwardly for five minutes and then we are going to leave.” But Brett hit the dance floor right away, busting awesome raver moves to whichever Kool & the Gang song was playing. I couldn’t resist, and I got up there with him and started dancing. We were having so much fun, because basically whenever the next ridiculously cheesy dance track came on, we started cracking up, and then we laughed about it until the next cheesy dance track came on. And then sometimes the music would just randomly skip, and Brett would be like “REEEEEEEEEEEEMIX!” We really never stopped laughing. Eventually Brett asked the DJ if he could quit with the 80s shit and play something current, so he put on some house music, and that convinced Gillian to get on the dance floor. The older folks started filing out eventually, and then the DJ played really fun music the rest of the time and the three of us had a blast dancing our asses off. We ended up staying for an hour and a half, I think, until it was past midnight, and basically Gillian and I were dancing while a bunch of old dudes were sitting at the tables watching us, and we realized that we really shouldn’t be doing this without getting paid. Then we took our leave.

All in all, it was a very awesome night, and I feel great. It’s always the nights that you don’t really plan — nights where you’re bummed because you think you’re gonna sit at home alone — that turn out to be the most fun and memorable. (Remember Snow Day?) I like that about life. And I like my friends, and I like that when I’m with great people — people who don’t take themselves too seriously — I can have a great time almost anywhere. I am feeling very fortunate and hopeful and happy tonight.

Good day today. I feel like something’s shifted. I am lighter. Thoughts come with more clarity, with more willingness to make decisions. I’m grateful for that. I’m making decisions and I’m acting on them. And that’s huge because before I couldn’t even figure out which decisions to make. But now I can kind of start making those decisions, start seeing what’s not working and what I can do to change it.

My cousin Brigid sent me a signed copy of her book; I just got it today in the mail. Inside, she’d written the words “Here’s to the Pasulka writers overtaking the Pasulka lawyers.” (That side of the family is pretty much all lawyers, with a few doctors sprinkled in here and there.) Those words meant a lot to me. She’s a bit older than me and she’s had a lot of success as a writer. She’s had her short stories published in any number of fancy, smarty-pants publications, and now she has this brilliant debut novel that people can’t stop praising. I’m not in the least bit jealous — I’m super happy for her and I’m proud to be related to her. Her book is in the “Best New Writers” section of Barnes and Noble, and sometimes we cut through the B&N in Pacific Place to get from the movie theater out to the street, and, every time we do, I drag my friends over to that “Best New Writers” section and proudly show them Brigid’s book. “This is my cousin!” I tell them. “See? Pasulka.”

But it just makes me think even more about how I really want to write a book. I just need to figure out how and about what. I know, I know, I say this every three months or so. My dad says I need to discipline myself to just sit down for an hour every night and start writing. I keep saying I need a new project. Maybe this is my new project. I can approach it with discipline, in the same way I approached my marathon training with discipline. Maybe even put a schedule on the fridge of how many pages I’m supposed to write each night. I think I just have to start.

Today started out kind of rough. I got up really late — something that I absolutely must stop doing — and hung out around the house until my appointment with Wiggles at 2. But, ya know, as much as I think talk therapy is ridiculously expensive and as annoyed as I get about having to see a therapist every damn week, it really helps. I don’t know if it makes me feel better, necessarily, but it always helps me to see things in a new perspective. And I like Wiggles because he doesn’t give the traditional advice I’m used to hearing. He’s willing to think outside “traditional” wisdom, and he helps me to be clearer and more confident about my decisions, my desires, my disappointments. After our session, I headed over to the apartment of this guy I’ve been seeing on and off for awhile. I haven’t written anything about it or him on here, but it’s been really difficult for me, because he’s not in a place to be in a relationship right now, and that’s what I want from him, and he can’t give it. He’s been honest with me about that, I’ve just had a hard time accepting it. And, realistically, it’s probably not the right relationship for me anyway. (And no, before you guys start, it’s not the guy with the kid in Germany.) It’s hard because we run in the same circle of friends and I have to see him all the time, so just as soon as I’m starting to get over him and swear him off forever, he pops up again in my life and I melt. So we talked. I basically told him we need to split up our lives, at least until 2010. We talked and we split up the events: He can go to this and I won’t, and I can go to that and he won’t. He wasn’t especially happy about it — he wanted to know why I couldn’t find a middle ground — but in the end he agreed, and he did so kindly, and I appreciated that. We’re just going to agree to avoid each other until the end of the year. It still kind of stings, but I feel a lot better about the whole thing now. I feel like I can start to move on.

I’m trying to think of fun new things I can do to stay busy and expand my social circle. Someone randomly suggested in the comments a couple weeks ago that I should try ballet, and I loved the idea, so I’m looking at beginner adult ballet classes. I think that would be super fun! I also found a couple of social groups in Seattle that look great, like Seattle Anti-Freeze and Space City Mixer. I’m going to try to get a couple of girlfriends together and go to some of those events. I also thought it might be fun to join a volunteering organization like the Junior League, but they only do registration in June, so I’m trying to find other similar groups.

Tonight was awesome because I had volleyball, which is always awesome, but it was extra awesome tonight because we needed a sub and my friend Staci came with. She KICKS ASS at volleyball, and the whole team played better because of her. It’s crazy how having someone new and talented there helps raise the quality of everyone’s game. I was very impressed with how well we played. Our teammate Phil is kind of an astronomy geek (his words, not mine), and he told us that at 7:35 we’d be able to see the international space station. So we ran outside after the game finished and, sure enough, we saw a really bright spot in the sky that Phil assured us was the space station. We stood in the parking lot and watched it cross the sky. “It’s moving fast,” I said. Phil explained that the space station is not moving — rather, Earth is. This of course bowled everyone over. “Our planet is moving that fast?” I mean, I know the Earth rotates, but it’s weird to stare up at a stationary object in near space and use it as a guide to how fast the planet is rotating. That thing was moving quick. It was gone within a couple minutes, having moved all the way across the sky. Then Phil showed us Jupiter, which was visible tonight as well. And then we made a bunch of Uranus jokes and laughed ourselves silly. I came home feeling relaxed and so much better about everything. I feel hopeful for the first time in awhile. And it occurs to me tonight for the first time how important it is to feel hopeful. For me, it’s pretty much the entire difference between happy and sad. When I’m hopeful, I’m happy. When I’m sad and depressed, it’s because I feel hopeless. Must. Stay. Hopeful.

Alexis: Hey I’m on my new iPod touch

me: oooh look at you!
do you call it “Ippy”?

Alexis: Yeh I’m cool
No
It doesn’t have a name

me: Oh it needs a name
You could call it “touchy”

Alexis: What’s yours?

me: “Killer”

I just totally made the mistake of putting lotion on my face again. INTENSE, BURNING pain. I have no idea why they said this lotion would “soothe.” Also painful today: makeup. Applying foundation hurt like a motherfucker. The good news is that I think the peeling is almost done. It’s very weird watching an entire layer of your face peel off. The pieces just come off in these big flakes and they dry up and harden really fast and it’s like, “Woah, that’s what my face is made of?” The bad news about the peeling being almost done is that it leaves beneath it a lot of raw, red, uber-sensitive skin that REALLY HURTS a lot of the time. It hurts to move it at all — to talk or to smile. But nothing hurts as bad as that damned lotion. It’s hard to tell if I’m going to like the final results or not because right now my face just looks like it has the worst sunburn ever. But now that the peeling’s done it’s easy to cover the redness up with makeup — well, easy except for the SCORCHING PAIN. But, ya know, I should be able to go into work tomorrow without frightening any of my coworkers. I’m hoping my skin will heal some overnight and makeup will be less painful in the morning.

Anyhoo, I had a very lazy day today, got some work done and met up with some girlfriends to watch the Emmy red carpet. Oh, and I went grocery shopping! For probably the first time in a month or so. Every night I’m like, “Damn, why don’t I have any food in the house?” and then the other day it occurred to me that if I went grocery shopping maybe I wouldn’t have to wonder about that anymore. So now I have food in the house and I feel very mature and responsible and domesticated.