Break-ing

Hey. It's been a while since I actually wrote an update about my life. There's no real excuse for that since I spend several hours each day just lounging around the house reading and watching TV and playing with the dogs and basically doing nothing important, and I keep meaning to get on the internet and update this thing but I just never think about it at convenient times.
I guess one of the reasons I haven't updated much is that there hasn't been much to say. I've been having a really great break, there just hasn't been a lot to talk about. It has been a really relaxing, fun, relatively drama-free break. I spend most of my days at home with my family-well, my mom and sister really since Dad is usually at work and Shane is god-knows-where most of the time. I play with the dogs in the backyard, we go to movies and watch movies here at home, I've finished three books already since I've been home.
When I'm not with my family I'm usually with Mike. We go to lunch together most days and end up doing random things together, like today we went to the mall so he could buy some socks. Sock shopping! That's what I've always really liked about Mike, though, that we can spend an afternoon doing pretty much nothing and somehow it ends up being fun and entertaining. We've gone out with his friends several times to the bars on Cincinnati Street and to UTEP basketball games and I'm starting to actually get to know some of them. I no longer feel like such a tag along when I'm with them. I do still feel a bit awkward at times, though. Like it's Mike's birthday today but I told him to go ahead and go out with all of his friends without me since I sort of feel like he ends up having to go out of his way to keep me entertained and explain things when I'm with his friends and I just don't want to be a burden tonight. Especially since I bet a ton of people will go out, and a lot of them will be girls, and I'll just end up feeling like I'm in the way even if he does legitimately want me there. I did tell him I'd go if he wanted me to, but he told me he "doesn't know". This whole thing can get kinda complicated at times. I wish we just lived in the same city so we could be in a serious relationship again and save ourselves all the what-are-we-doing-should-I-feel-bad-for-dating-other-people? drama. Maybe this is better, though, because since we're not in the same city and aren't going to be for at least a year it gives us plenty of time to figure out what we both really want. Especially since neither of us are still in any rush to settle down regardless.

What else? The whole first week I was here Mike and I rented a hotel room, which was awesome. That's the only thing that really sucks about being in El Paso. Mike lives with his parents and I just don't feel comfortable sleeping with Mike in my parents' house and fooling around in car is possible but just kinda sucks when it's cold out. So we got a room for $120 a week at this cheap ghetto hotel right by all the college bars. Obviously at only $120 a week it's not even like, Motel 6 quality, but it's also not nearly as scary as you would expect it to be from the price and the location. I mean, I'd never want to actually stay there for an entire week and have to shower there and stuff, but to use the room for a few hours every night for "fucking purposes" (Mike's quote, not mine!) it's not bad at all. It would actually make a cool set for a quirky movie. It was built in the late 50s or early 60s I'd guess and it definitely hasn't been remodeled since. The rooms have green shag carpet and the walls are made of glazed rocks (know what I'm talking about?) and the comforters are shiny and brown and the TV has rabbit ear antennas, I'm not even kidding! The hotel seemingly exists to service two types of people: illegal immigrants from Mexico on their way through town after crossing the border (I got this idea from the sign prominently displayed on the check-in desk stating "We DO NOT rent rooms to illegal aliens"-if they have to actually put a sign up it's clearly a problem) and college students who are either a) too drunk to drive back to the east side of town after a night at the bars or b) want a room to hook up. Mike and I fondly referred to our room for the week as the "Murder Room" because the first night when we checked in Mike noticed some reddish stains on the number plate on the door and immediately decided it was blood. I pointed out that it was actually just red paint that had almost all chipped off but by then he'd already decided that we had the murder room. Nothing is funnier than a text message that says, "Want to get a drink and then go to the murder room?" Ha.

Let's see, I also have gone out with my friend Cassie a couple of times since I've been home and I met her boyfriend for the first time, which was fun. And last night at the Ale House was one of those random nights where I went to the bar expecting to meet one friend and then ran into about sixteen other people that I hadn't seen since high school graduation. It was actually really fun because I ran into a bunch of people I used to do theatre and student council with. Most of them are actually a year older than me and I hadn't seen them since they graduated in 2000 so it was really good to see everybody again and find out what everyone has been doing with their lives for the past 5 1/2 years. And there was this awesome moment where my friend Deena ordered twenty Red Headed Sluts and passed them out to everyone we knew at the bar plus two or three random people who just happened to be standing near us. I've never seen so many shot glasses raised in the air at once. We owned the bar last night! (I mean, my dad DOES own the bar technically, but we OWNED it). It was a fun night.
All in all it has been a really fun couple of weeks. I feel like I was going to say something else, but now I've forgotten what it was. Oh well. I leave you with the following:

Conversation of the day:
Me: I'll take my belly button ring out when I get fat.
Mike: (teasing and tickling my belly) Then you should have taken it out already!
Me: Shut up! You shouldn't tell me things like that!
Mike: I only say it because you know you're thin.
Me: I know, I got happy today because at my doctor's appointment this morning he congratulated me on my weight and my blood pressure and said I must be doing a good job of working out to stay so thin.
Mike: He was probably just saying that to try to get in your pants.
Me: But he's my gynecologist. He doesn't really have to try very hard to make that happen.
Mike: Ha. That's a different sort of getting into the pants entirely.