Friends with baby

One of my friends in UM just got her doctoral degree and is expecting her first baby in early Dec. In her thank-you note, she complimented all other girls in UM who completed their PH.D. Degree while they were pregnant had one baby, have two babies, or have more. Almost every one of them can handle the big fuss of having a baby, completing their dissertation, and finding amazing jobs. They are, really, superwomen I ever hear of. I am so proud of them! Using the sentence I learn today about the two-time Latvia Champaign of New York Marathon, they are in essence “a steady fist in a silk glove”.

On the second thought, I am ashamed about myself. Conceiving nothing, delivering nothing, and taking care of nobody. What a loser! Hanging on with my friend in THINK café at the corner yesterday night, we were chatting about our life and career in near future. The young kids from NYU were playing word puzzles and committed themselves to non-stop teasing and kissing. The comfort sofa we took gave a sense of hypothetical feeling of in the Central Perk Café. The ice cream melted down in our cups in these between hours of doing nothing.

The theme of our conversation focused on the possibility that we should stop to have fun and become responsible citizen and get into womanhood as soon as possible. In this grey zone of being a carefree and thirty-something girl, we surely have lots of fun. However, we fail to commit ourselves to anyone and any course. It seems inappropriate in the long run. For having family and kids are investment, according to Becker at least. The fun life we have now seemed cannot last forever. At certain point in time, we have to make some decisions. It is about the time. We cannot afford to be a modern time Paul Bowles—the age of wanderer is passing.

Late in night, watching Gone with the Wind again. Crying like a water fountain. Rhett Butler was such a non-committal jerk.

I have a bad feeling that I will eventually end up in the Barbara Strainsandra’s shoes as she was in The Way We Were. I hated when she said to Robert Redford in the end of the movie, “Your girl is lovely, Hubble!” It is a shame to always be the loser in a relationship.

Went to a group-dating event the day before yesterday. I did not think the guys showed genuine interests in the girls. I felt sad about those girls who had dressed up and wished to know someone nice and decent. It seemed to me that they were doomed to be disappointed because of the thin air of sympathy and compassionate feeling in this town.

A girl left our table earlier. She bended to pick up her weekly shopping bags which were weighted at least 15 pounds. No one was there to help. She knew nobody in the other table, got no chance to talk to someone intimately, and gave no phone number to anybody. She tried to walk out with dignity, but the bags were too heavy. She could not afford to walk out gracefully as she wished. She reminded me of this book I am reading, Camus’s The Stranger. The strange sense of alienation and distance and the unexplainable feeling of isolation.

The life in this town bears no similarities to Sex and City, or not what I am aware of. We have no $400 shoes, we have no Mr. Big at the other end of the phone, we don’t have the luxury to meet each Sunday morning and gossip over the brunch table. We get no baby, no job we love, and not a single consort at our disposal.

At the end of the day, we tell ourselves that we cannot indulge ourselves into a loser’s mindset. We should be proactive and have positive thinking about everything. This is just hard if is not totally unreachable.

I had this strange dream yesterday of participating a ratatouille competition. I had no recipe, no time to cook it properly, and I cried in desperation. Too much thinking about ratatouille and friends with baby makes me feel bad. I’d better go to gym and have a good workout to cheer up.