home, sweet home.

ah, the end of the semester means my nice, warm (and did I mention extra-large by college standards?) bed, my family and my kitchen. even though I have a kitchen at college, there's something so comforting about baking at home, in my big, fancy kitchen -- a place where the oven temperature is accurate, I don't have to buy flour and granulated sugar and cookbooks abound. it's pretty much the promise land of all kitchens.

and so I'm sitting in my kitchen, baking peanut butter cookies and I realized something amazing. I love cocoa nibs. for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, nibs are these little, crunchy cocoa bits, usually unsweetened. I never really used to like them until dad got these delicious ones from scharffen berger and now, I have to tell you, they are blowing my mind. winter break is wonderful.

I'm reading eat, pray, love right now and it's giving me such perspective. I think I might have needed to be reminded of the importance of impermanence and ephemeral aspect of life and emotions that the buddhists place such an emphasis on. it's importance to put everything in perspective and I don't think I've been doing that often enough. not that I'm a yoga-doing-vegan-food-eating type of person (I'm much more of a gym-going-treadmill-running-meat-eating individual) but there's something so appealing in the dominant ideas of eastern religions, something that I really want to ingrain and inculcate into my head.

relating to such ideas, I went to the rubin museum of art today -- highly recommended. it's a beautiful museum of eastern art and it's such a place of zen. related perfectly to my choice of reading these days.

and now, time to munch on some cookies and drink wine with mom. did I mention that I love home?

...

dear life,

please strike me with some creativity. I feel deprived.

thanks,
sarah.

death, suffering & numbness.

so last night my cat died. my cat, who I always joked I hated, who really had nine lives, who used to like nothing better than to curl up on the mat in the kitchen, who we got because 14 years ago I used to feed him on the back porch of my country house, died from tumors last night. they attacked his stomach & colon and I watched him convulse and listened to him cry all of yesterday afternoon until dad got a call from mom around midnight that he was gone.

and this comes around the same time as dan and I are on the verge of breaking up. we didn't, but it was a definite possibility.

and so I feel numb. I don't know what to feel anymore. I'm not hungry, it was hard falling asleep and I woke up a hundred million times this morning and forced myself back to bed until, at 11:10 I deemed it time to wake up. at 2 I forced myself to eat something. I'm trying to focus on nietzsche but that doesn't look like it'll happen today until much later. maybe just a day of the OC with me, marissa, seth, ryan & summer? I wish I knew how to feel.

laughing with leelee, a retrospective.

so I realized today that I started this blog pretty much a year ago and I was at such a totally different place in my life -- it's crazy to think that you'll be able to predict the outcome of future events. really, you cannot. last year, my life looked a little like this: unsure where I would get in to college, unsure where I would go to college, unsure where I would even end up applying to college (!), confused/crazy/upset with dan, kind of involved with someone else, feeling miserable on a daily basis (not in a depressed way, just in a shitty way), challenging myself to find myself & be comfortable with myself and convinced that nothing would work out in the end.

well. hello macaulay. hello coming to terms with college acceptances/rejections/waitlistings. hello dan. hello prom. hello self. hello happiness. hello college friends. hello new life. hello typical sarah.

things just worked out. didn't I always say that they would? and I am so grateful they did. reading back I was so unhappy with so much of what was going on and now I'm just kind of floating, existing, being. and I'm happy. granted, I still regret not getting into columbia, but whatever. I'm at macaulay. I went grocery shopping today. I went out for dinner tonight. please. I am happy.

I'm glad I started this blog to challenge myself to think about the world, others and myself. it was a good project, a good endeavor. it gave me a lot of space to think out things and gave a lot of other people a good read. all in all, well done, self.