Au Revoir, Mes Amis!

I'm off to Morocco tomorrow! Bon voyage to me!

It's All Greek to Me 2

I need to meet a guy like Evan Chambers from Greek: rich, hot, totally in love with me (in this scenario, I am playing the Casey Cartwright role). Maybe my version of Evan Chambers would be fractionally less likely to show his love by bribing other guys to stay away from me, but I could probably learn to find that cute.

The (Galapagos) Tortoise and the Hare

This weekend, after some creative manipulation of vacation days for next year, I decided I could squeeze in a trip to the Galapagos Islands (#16 on my list) next Memorial Day. I realize the trip is an entire year away, but I'm already excited and debating whether a side trip to Ecuador's famed Otovalo Market is worth it.

As psycho as I am when it comes to advance vacation planning, I realized recently that I have nothing on people who take cruises. Before booking my trip, I had briefly pondered whether my family might all cruise the Galapagos Islands together for an important event in 2010. Not only did the cruise line I like already have their Galapagos dates posted for the date that interested me, but some of the classes of rooms were sold out. Damn, cruise people. I doff my cap to their advanced planning skillz and look forward to joining their ranks one day.

If everything goes according to my plans, by the end of 2009, I will have completed six of the 17 trips on my list. Very impressive. However, nothing is for sure yet, since the Galapagos trip and my trip to Egypt and Dubai are not classified as "guaranteed departures" by the tour companies I'm using. So we shall see.

All Through My Wild Days, My Mad Existence, I Kept My Promise

I booked my plane tickets and hotel to Buenos Aires (or, as I saw on the cover of one Lonely Planet guide, Buenos Aries, which must come right after Buenos Pisces) for Thanksgiving! I am so excited. I'll make the day trip to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay while I'm there, thus checking off one of the items on my list already (or preparing to anyway in November).

Seize the Days

I want to make a list of must-see travel destinations, just like my new role model, Tony Wheeler. Here is my list, on which I have included some places to which I have already arranged to travel just so I feel more encouraged when I check it off the list:

1. Egypt (pyramids)
2. Dubai
3. Jordan
4. Syria (Damascus)
5. Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda/Rwanda (safari(s))
6. Madagascar
7. India (Taj Mahal)
8. Nepal
9. Russia (Moscow/St. Petersburg)
10. Cambodia (Angkor Wat)
11. Bhutan
12. China (Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Hong Kong)
13. Macau
14. Argentina/Uruguay
15. Peru (Machu Picchu)
16. Ecuador (Galapagos Islands)
17. Antarctica

Seize the Day

I'm so excited for my trip next week! I can't wait.

I just finished reading Unlikely Destinations by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the founders of Lonely Planet. The book irritated me because I wish I had thought of their damn idea first and founded a multimillion dollar company based on my passion for travel. However, I readily acknowledge that I am unwilling to suffer the kind of uncertainty and scarcity they endured (they arrived in Sydney at the end of a cross-Asia voyage with twenty-seven cents to their names) in the hope of getting to that point, so I will content myself to live vicariously through them. I thought that reading the book might help me see how to reconcile the kind of travel I need to do to be happy (at least one passport stamp per year, preferably more) with being a mother, but it didn't exactly succeed. The Wheelers have two children who received matchless travel opportunities during their lives, but this came at the cost of lazing around on school breaks with friends and generally having more normal, sedentary childhood experiences. So much for that. But the Wheelers have gone to some undeniably cool places (or, more or less everywhere on earth), and I am jealous of them for that.

One thing Tony Wheeler mentioned that he did in his book is to make a list of "must do" trips. I think that is a brilliant idea, mostly since I have also done that and enjoy when anyone validates something I have also done. I am obviously implementing my chain of most important "must dos" next year (pyramids, Taj Mahal, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Angkor Wat), and I hope to follow up that flurry of trips with China. I'd also love to go to Damascus, the Galapagos (or South America in general) and a safari in Kenya and/or Tanzania. I think it's so important to start doing the things you really want to do and not put it off. Unfortunately for me, every time I plan to tick something off of my list, I think of something else that needs to go on it.

Dr. Feelgood

I am getting more and more excited about my upcoming trip, but what I am not excited about is the plane ride. I'm not too afraid of flying, but after I flew from Florida to Australia for my high school graduation trip, it lost its allure to me. It's boring and it takes too long, and I'm really disappointed that we don't seem to have developed the technology to beam places like on Star Trek (this would also be great for the environment). I wanted to get some sleeping pills to tranquilize myself into submission on the flight over, but I doubted my ability to do it. I tried to wheedle medicine out of Cindy Kim, but he deflected. I hinted around to my dermatologist, but she was too distracted by how ugly my head is to notice. As a last resort, I called my primary care provider's office and just told the truth -- that I'm flying to Morocco and want something to put me to sleep on the plane. My doctor wrote me a prescription for 10 sleeping pills with no further inquiry! I can't believe it!

Why Don't You Come With Me, Little Girl, On a Magic Carpet Ride

I'm leaving for my trip to Morocco in about a week and a half, and I am really starting to get excited! One of the (very few) drawbacks to planning things so far in advance is that it's hard to sustain a level of giddy excitement for months without causing lasting physical damage. Plus, Morocco has been somewhat overshadowed, unfairly, by my plans for other trips. (I have three other trips definitely planned with an additional three in the lightly sketched phases. I booked my hotel for Dubai today.) But now that it's almost here, I'm curious to find out what it will be like and to meet my travel companions, and I am very excited to see the country and visit Africa for the first time. Obviously, I also intend to buy as many souvenirs as I can possibly carry home, particularly in the leather goods sector.

Passage to India

I'm researching my trip to India, and I have to say...it is one big mothereffing country. And it's not a big mothereffing country like, say Australia, which is mostly empty in the middle except for a big rock in the middle of the Outback. It is a big mothereffing country packed full of people and shit to see. The more I research, the more paralyzed I feel about making a decision as to where I want to go and precisely what I want to see because the more I realize there is to see. I actually was much more certain about what I wanted to see before I knew what the fuck was over there other than the Taj Mahal.

I have become more aware lately, in a negative sense, of my need to be in control and be perfect all the time. I went out last night to celebrate passing my big test recently, and I drank two glasses of beer and one shot, and I got a tiny bit silly because of my ridiculously low tolerance. I felt a little bit ashamed this morning, wondering if I said or did anything stupid, and then I thought to myself, "What the fuck is your problem, [Known Associate]? People drink all the time in much greater quantities. They get trashed and act stupid, and then everybody takes some Advil and has a good laugh." I mean, for real. Why do I assume that everyone is parsing my every slightly inebriated action or judging me for enjoying myself? I don't expect everyone else to be perfect all the time. Putting aside my expectations of myself, I don't think I should assume that anyone else expects me to be perfect. So, I think I need to put the focus more on having fun and less on apologizing for, like, living.

Back to India. My desire to craft the perfect vacation, an outgrowth of my desire to be perfect all the time, has stymied my ability to actually plan the damn trip. If there is any country in which I should embrace the idea of going with the flow, it is India. India frustrates all travelers, even the ones it delights. It is also, as mentioned, a big mothereffing country packed full of shit to see, so I need to wrap my mind around the idea right now that I'm not going to see everything in one trip or probably one lifetime. (Thank goodness India is also a big fan of the idea that you have multiple lifetimes.)

I've already decided to let southern India wait for a second trip in the future, but I'd love to do something that involves Mumbai onto Goa and then maybe ending up down in Sri Lanka. But I still have to grapple with the question of northern India, and that is more than enough for one trip. Obviously, I have to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, since that is the entire motivation for going on the trip in the first place. Most northern Indian trips -- in fact, all the ones I've seen -- start in Delhi, so that's also not negotiable, even though I don't really care that much about seeing Delhi. The other prong (aside from Delhi and Agra) in India's tourist-luring Golden Triangle is the Pink City of Jaipur, which sounds pretty and features the opportunity to buy a lot of cool Rajasthani crafts. It's hard for me to resist good shopping locales. I'd also like to go to Varanasi, a very holy city for Hindus on the Ganges. But I'm tempted by the idea of going on a tiger safari, and I would like to either start or, more likely, finish the trip with two days in Kathmandu. I can't do all of this, so I have to make some choices and accept that the trip is going to be fun no matter what.

Okay, I think the truth is that it would be cool as shit to see a tiger in the wild, but I have seen tigers at Busch Gardens and I would rather see a Hindu holy city that is thousands of years old and of tremendous religious significance. See? That was easy.

It's a Small World After All

I'm still in the midst of planning my world tour over the next two years. Tonight's focus is southeast Asia. The main thing I want to see, as mentioned, is Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The tours I'm considering typically start in Bangkok and finish in Ho Chi Minh City or vice versa and cruise through Cambodia en route. I'm suddenly possessed with an urgent desire to visit Laos while I'm in the region, even though I don't know anything about Laos except that the Asian family on King of the Hill is from there, but if I don't go there while I'm over in the area, I am going to die. And staying alive is apparently going to cost me some coin because the apparent monopolists at Thai Air charge over $400 for the flight between Bangkok and Vientiane. This flight only takes a little over an hour. What the hell? I just want to go pump some money into the Laotian economy. Why can't they make this easy for me? Damn.

You Say I Only Hear What I Want To

The Cindy Kim has forced me to face some harsh truths about myself. Specifically, I am confronted squarely with the fact that while I frequently profess to want to be in a relationship, my actions say otherwise.

It is no secret that I am routinely attracted to men who are unavailable, usually because they're involved in other relationships but sometimes also because they are too emotionally stunted to give of themselves to another person. I have blamed the girlfriend-having problem with the fact that, at my stage of life, most people are paired off, so most men you meet are already committing their resources elsewhere. That's true to an extent, but I think the real problem is that I don't feel safe enough to let my guard down enough to truly like a man and let him like me unless I know nothing can happen between us.

Sometimes, to be fair to myself, I have been surprised by the revelation that a girlfriend existed after I started to develop feelings for a guy. Such was the case with one whom we shall call The Only Living Boy in New York. He and I fraternized at my old job for about six weeks before he slipped the girlfriend into conversation, and even then, he mentioned her only in passing and only to point out something about which she liked to complain. I can't blame myself for being interested in him up to that point because I thought I was dealing with a single guy who was giving off the impression of being interested in me. But I continued (and continue) to invest in the relationship even after the girlfriend was revealed, I moved to a different city several hours away, and I told him how I felt about him and he told me he wanted to stay with his girlfriend. Don't get me wrong -- he's a nice guy and I enjoy emailing with him, but when I think about it, I see that his main appeal to me as a love interest is his unavailability. I can let him see me because nothing is going to come of it.

I don't know why I sabotage myself like this. I'm sure part of it is that being in a relationship is messy and unpredictable, and I like being in control. Another part of it is that as much as being in a relationship has its allure, I am accustomed to being independent and having only myself (and Teh Doggeh) to answer to. Another part of it is that I've been hurt in the past, and I'm not anxious to get hurt again (although this is really the lamest part, since liking unavailable people is like a trapdoor into Getting Hurt).

I also don't know what to do about this now that I've really identified and acknowledged it as a problem. My usual impulse is to formulate a plan of very intense action to eradicate the problem (this is why Blair is my favorite character on Gossip Girl, the greatest show ever on television). But this time, I think that's the wrong approach (sorry, Blair). I think I just have to give myself a break. The hardest part is probably owning up to this tendency and admitting that I have misgivings about being in any kind of romantic relationship. Once the problem moves out of the subconscious and into the conscious, maybe it will take care of itself while I take care of myself.

I Can Tell That We Are Gonna Be Friends

Cindy Kim and I are officially just friends.

We went out to dinner last night, and the topic of his party came up. He asked again whether I had liked any of his friends, and I used this second opportunity to ask him whether he was trying to fix me up with one of them. He said that he didn't have any particular one in mind, but that he thought I might be interested in one of them. He mentioned that his female friends tell him that it's hard to meet a nice guy. He also said, "Just go ahead and order it. You're not on a date," in response to my consideration of whether I was going to order this really fatty menu item. As the conversation wore on, I was able to bring up our mutual friend's statement that he (Cindy Kim) dates only Jewish girls. Cindy Kim confirmed that this is true, and that he doesn't even allow for the possibility that a nice, non-Jewish girl might convert because something doesn't sit right with him about a religious conversion being motivated by a desire to get married to a particular person rather than true belief in that religion. (Which...okay, fair enough.)

At first, I was disappointed to discover for sure that we are in the friends realm. I have not enjoyed being confused about the status of our relationship, but thinking that Cindy Kim liked me made me consider him more carefully and realize that he is a caring, thoughtful, funny person (acne comment notwithstanding). Even though I wasn't initially open to the idea of a relationship with him, I came to believe that he is at least the kind of person I would want to be with. But as the evening continued and I thought about it, I decided that knowing our status, even if it was a little disappointing, was better because not having to wonder what the status was allowed me to relax and enjoy his company.

I also think that Cindy Kim does like me. I did not imagine the times that he referenced our being on a date, and he clearly thinks about me when I'm not around. He also wore the shirt I bought him on our outing last night. But, I'm not Jewish and converting wouldn't cut the mustard for him, so friendship is the farthest we can go. It's not personal. I'm just not Jewish, and he is, and that's that.

Because I feel the need to constantly learn lessons from these kinds of situations, I have come up with two take-away points from this Cindy Kim situation. First, the desire or lack of desire of one person to be in a relationship with another person is not personal. In the case of Cindy Kim and me, it's easy to believe that because I can blame Judaism. But even the instances where there are no identifiable obstacles to the relationship, and where it is hard not to take the object of one's affections' lack of interest personally, it really isn't personal. You like who you like. Who likes you likes you. Second, I need to be more open-minded about dating and give people more of a chance. Cindy Kim was not someone with whom I initially wanted to be in a relationship, but when I allowed myself to really consider the possibility, it started to appeal to me. Cindy Kim and I discussed last night how some people's steady state is being single and some people's steady state is being in a relationship. I am definitely a member of the former group. As much as I profess an interest in meeting someone, when I was confronted with the possibility of being in a relationship with Cindy Kim, I shut up like a clam. The idea of having to be emotionally and physically vulnerable with someone scared me, and my immediate response was to tense up and shut down. I really had to force myself even to think about whether it was something I might want to do enough to overcome those knee-jerk reactions (which had nothing to do with Cindy Kim himself). Cindy Kim, thanks to Judaism, turned out to be a test of the emergency broadcast system, but if I meet someone with whom there is the actual possibility of a relationship, I am going to have to work hard to stay out of my own way.

So, anyway, I'm still a little bummed about the Cindy Kim situation withering on the vine, but at least I know now. We still have fun together, and we have things in common that we like to talk about, so I think we'll continue on as we are now.

He Said, "You're Really an Ugly Girl"

I do not have thick hair. I accept this about myself. I wish I had the hair of Serena van der Woodsen (and so does Blake Lively, because homegirl wears a lot of extensions), but this is just not what genetics has in store for me. Fine.

When I was in school, I saw a dermatologist to have a mole removed, and she noticed that my hair seemed to be thinning a little on top. (I had just discontinued the use of birth control and lost a little hair in the process.) She told me to start using Rogaine to regenerate the hair, and even though I did it, I hated it. Rogaine is a product for men who are losing their hair. I'm a woman. I'm not supposed to lose my hair. Having to use Rogaine made me feel unfeminine and unattractive (though admittedly not as unfeminine and unattractive as a bald spot). I used it for awhile until my dermatologist was satisfied that my little hair follicles had been whipped back into hair-growing shape, and then I discontinued it.

It's hard to convey the sense of shame I felt at having to use Rogaine and at having this thinning hair problem. I hid the Rogaine in my apartment with a level of secretiveness that I probably would not have used to hide, say, my heroin kit. I struggle with feeling attractive, and I'm not a dainty Tinkerbell of a girl, so having to use a product for men just made me feel more butch.

Those feelings came rushing back up to the surface when Cindy Kim suggested I take an anti-androgen medication to cure my (alleged) acne. I wanted to punch him with my manly fists because it made me feel like there was something wrong with me that I would need to take medication to suppress male hormones. (Maybe this is how Jamie Lee Curtis feels about those persistent rumors that she is a hermaphrodite.) Then today, I went to my dermatologist, and she brought up, sua sponte, my fucking thinning hair. I was devastated. I thought my hair was looking better. And now I have to go back on fucking Rogaine again and Propecia, which are both medications for men, and the most I can hope for is to retain the hair I currently have. Plus, my dermatologist recommended that I use Bumble + Bumble's hair powder, which, let me be the first to tell you, is basically spray-on hair. Like from those cheesy infomercials. Spray-on hair. I have no dignity left because my hair comes from an aerosol can. Plus, PLUS, I am now on yet another medication for my acne, so I am currently taking one oral antibiotic and two topical creams for the acne. And all of these medications are expensive, especially the Propecia, which is not covered by insurance (though bizarrely, you can get a AAA discount on it). It is expensive to be ugly.

I just feel so demoralized. I am paying good money to have unwanted hair on the rest of my body permanently lasered away, and yet I am trying like hell to get some hair to grow on top of my head (and in the meantime, I am just going to spray on fucking fake hair out of a fucking CAN). I feel so unattractive and butch and gross. I just want to be feminine and pretty with clear skin and a reasonable amount of hair. Not even thick hair! Just a reasonable amount! But alas, it is not to be.

It's Been One Week Since You Looked at Me, Dropped Your Head to the Side and Said, "I'm Angry"

I've been shamefully neglectful of my blog this past week. Then again, not much has been going on. I've been intermittently busy at work and have been using any down time I have to buy travel guides and plan trips for FY 2009 and 2010. My big travel plan is to see most of the things I want to see before I die by December 31, 2010. Namely, I want to see the pyramids, the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat and visit Russia. (I also want to see the Great Wall of China, but China is a massive undertaking that might have to wait until my mid-thirties and/or until the State Department's website doesn't have such dire warnings about travel to that region.) The trip to see the pyramids is already booked, and now I'm vigorously researching the rest of it.

Other than that, Cindy Kim and I have been in a variety of fights that he doesn't know about. As mentioned, I still have no idea what's going on between us. I haven't seen him since Passover, but he invited me out to dinner at some unspecified future time to be named later to celebrate a recent victory of mine over an important test. I'm hoping that we will identify a time to meet, and I'm also hoping that this could serve as an opportunity to discuss what is going on between us. I'm not sure it's the wisest idea to have a version of the "Where is this relationship going?" talk with Cindy Kim (a version that would be most aptly called the "What the fuck is happening in this relationship and why don't I ever know about any of it?" talk), but I'm not sure it's the wisest idea to persist in a state of confusion and frustration either. If everyone's feelings are out on the table, then I'll know what's going on and can figure out how to deal with it.