whatsawhatty? who what?

some thoughts on being home.

1. never before in my life would i have said l.a. was home.
2. people in l.a. were so nice! i think i'm going to overdose on nice when i get to iowa. whoa.
3. the man at starbucks said i was a fantastic lady after he asked me casually and disinterestedly how i was and i freaked on him and told him how happy i was to be home. i made his day wonderful, he said. awww. it was the nicest compliment i've gotten since that shop owner in india told me i was fit, and that's why i had nice arms, arms like a man.
4. traffic cops. forgot about those.
5. felt weird to eat grapes straight up without peeling them. it still made me nervous. yikes! disease!
6. for lunch i had a bagel with cream cheese and reeces pieces mushed inside. so glad to be back!
7. i've now officially been wide awake for something like 80 hours. i haven't slept since koh tao. can you believe it? no sleep. at all. none. i feel a bit odd. 80 hours. huh. 80. and i'm not tired right now. i think i'll just never sleep again. i sure am getting a lot accomplished. like hallucinating and not-being-able-to-stop-shaking.
8. the package i thought was lost was really just consolidated! yay for yoga notes and indian cooking recipes! boo for indian shipping companies who open my packages and consolidate them and don't respond to my emails and make me worry about my wonderful yoga notes. ppthbb.
9. i'd forgotten how wonderful it is to flirt with everything that moves and the fact that i am a big fat flirty flirt. what i have been missing! i don't mean flirt like boy + girl + social setting = flirt and i don't mean big minnie mouse eyelash batting. i mean flirt in the sense that everyone flirts with everyone they pass on the street and wink at or smile at or buy a bag of reeces pieces from. or maybe it's just me. but i'm pretty sure i read an article in a reputable magazine once about the benefits of flirting or something and how everyone does it. it's a friendly, charasmatic, playful hello. (am i spelling everything wrong and/or making up words?) and it's not flirting to get anything from anyone else. it's not the dreaded india-barter-flirt. it's just a happy acknowledgement that the other person exists, and that we're all going to smile over our mutual recognition. i haven't flirted in months. maybe since i left for korea, even. it's hard to flirt properly when people don't get your jokes or understand your language. or mimic your body language. body language! wow. i hadn't even realized what i was missing, but it's so nice to be back in a place where i feel like people are feeling my flow and we're moving to a same-ish rhythm. and i can look people in the eye. not so much at the greyhound bus station. that's for bullet 10, though. i had a great time in the airports these past few days, hours, whatever, in america, interacting with large groups of americans. i feel so so good. and i'm charming the pants off everyone! it feels so so good to make such a mutuably appreciable human connection with strangers. oh it feels so good! i'm going to do some more of that tomorrow, boy howdy.
10. at the greyhound bus station i met a man who said "well aren't you a purdy little thing?" so i promptly left and waited around back at the airport, where there was air conditioning anyways. so then i sat on my bus next to a guy who said the new superman looks like the real superman. i said, you mean the cartoon? no. you mean, christopher reeve? no. the real superman, you know. the really really real one. okay. so then i engaged myself in a conversation with the man to the other side of me who wanted to know, loudly, about my views on politics, abortion, and religion. oh, and hispanics in the u.s. and that was fun because there were many hispanics in the u.s. on our bus. so i changed the subject back to abortion. gladly.
11. and then ryan got me at the bus station! hooray! i should really probably go to bed. now. yup. that makes 82 hours awake. fascinating.