Memorable Moments

Taking a cue from some of the other bloggers who are doing the 10 memorable moments meme. Being one of the younger bloggers, I’m going to try to think of some especially applicable moments. There will of course be overlap, but I think the reasoning behind the defining moments might be a little bit different.

Feel free to argue against me, or hey, why don’t you create your own damn list?

(Edit: I realize now that these aren’t true specific-moment-in-time moments, but that’s because Nicole and George didn’t do that either, so I got confused. Let’s just go with moments-slash-inventions, ok?)

Ten Defining Moments of My Generation

Wikipedia, Google and Napster, Oh My!
These were among the first online megacompanies that influenced how our generation learned and consumed media. It defined how we and our teachers, professors and parents approached our education. I remember when my 10th grade history teacher forbade us from using Wikipedia because it wasn’t “legitimate.” Libraries were a thing of the past, and copyrights became debatable.

Our First War
I remember on the morning of 9/11 my father telling me that I was watching history. The first tower had already fallen by the time I woke up on the West Coast, and I sat on the couch in the living room with my dad and watched the second one crash into Manhattan. The rest of the day, the weeks and months afterwards were consumed by 9/11, but it didn’t stop. A significant portion of my life has been marked by the second Gulf War in Iraq. I was only five years old when the first one happened, so this is truly my first experience with the words “combat”, “troops” and “casualties” in the vocabulary of our news anchors. I was fifteen when 9/11 happened, and since I just celebrated my 23rd birthday, about a third of my life has seen the war on terror.

Boy Bands
Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Hanson, 98 Degrees… they weren’t the first boy bands, that’s for sure, but they were our boy bands. And we loved them dearly. Now we have a fresh new crop of boy bands (hello Jonas Brothers!) which are, of course, merely a reincarnation of the past. But boy do they strike frenzy in the hearts of teens and fear in the hearts of parents and boyfriends across the land.

VCRs
This was one of the first pieces of “new technology” that I truly remember. That and cordless telephone. But truly I think VCRs for the first time made the idea that you could control what you watched when you watched it, and allowed people to enjoy other activities without missing their favorite shows. It’s something we take for granted now with DVRs and On Demand television, but VCRs were pretty kick-ass back in the day.

School Shootings
First it was Columbine, but in the months after there were mimic attacks in public schools around the country. I was thirteen when Columbine happened and I remember that it was the first time that I was truly afraid for my life. Every school has their outcasts, their delinquents, the guy or girl in all black, who sits by themselves in class or in the cafeteria. For the most part, you just ignored them. But after Columbine, you couldn’t help but wonder…

Cell Phones
For me, this was an indication of independence. It allowed us to make split-second changes in plans and freedom from our parents while, of course, still being within arms reach. Cell phones are now required by law (c’mon now, sure feels that way!) and I don’t even have a land line. My generation is probably the first generation who will turn down - repeatedly - offers from the phone company to get the hook up.

E-mail and Instant Messenger
The only time I ever write a letter is when I’m writing to my grandmothers, because neither of them use the Internet. Well, one of them is starting to use it a bit more but I’m not sure how often she checks it and she only got the Internet about three years ago. However, with my friends in high school and college, e-mail was the way to communicate. Honestly, I hardly even used my cell phone or landline when I was in the house. I was always on the Internet, and thus, always on IM so I could chat with my friends no matter where they lived. I know people claim that instant messaging is ruining the structure of communication with LOLspeak, but I like to think it’s enhancing our ability to interact with those who are different from us, to share ideas and have a dialogue with people we would otherwise be unable to.

America’s Obsession with Celebrities
Alright, I know this isn’t terribly unique to my generation - people have been admiring celebrities for decades - but I think our generation is especially influenced by the media darlings like Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and others. For example, the fashion choices now made by young girls and teens usually have a direct correlation with what a celebrity is wearing. Sure, fashion influence for adults is one thing - but having teens and tweens wanting to look like a 25-year-old is a little creepy to say the least. The fact we have multiple - THAT MEANS MORE THAN ONE! - television shows about celebrities is kinda freaky and I think it sets the wrong example of the kind of people our society should value.

Pedophiles
Have you noticed I haven’t actually put the Internet on this list, but just various incarnations of the Internet? While the Internet has obviously been very influential, there are certain aspects of it that have had a much greater impact on my specific generation. Pedophiles are one of them. When my parents and your parents, and perhaps even you, were growing up, the main fear was of adults taking children from malls, playgrounds and even off the front lawn. Then children were told to stay inside. Then they started going on the Internet, thinking they were safer there. But they weren’t. As a young girl, I have been propositioned more than once on the Internet. When I was 12, it terrified me. Now that I’m older, I have a better sense of who is safe and who isn’t, and I can quickly halt or redirect the conversation. But being afraid of strangers who sound like friends is something no other generation has come across.

Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon was founded under its original name, Pinwheel, in 1979 (thanks Wikipedia!) and was later renamed in 1981, just four years before I was born. Thus, Nickelodeon has been around for my entire life and I spent much of my childhood addicted to its programming. My brother and I even subscribed to the Nickelodeon magazine, the first magazine I ever read on a regular basis. There is something extraordinarly nostalgic about those TV shows, almost like our entire childhood is wrapped up in the shows that aired in the early 90s. Many people call that classic Nickelodeon and that the shows of today just aren’t nearly as good. I tend to agree. Pete & Pete, Clarissa Explains It All, Who’s Afraid of the Dark and All That may have launched the careers of a few famous actors, but for the most part, the casts remain a constant only in the reruns and DVDs of these shows, like a visual scrapbook of my childhood.

My Ten Defining Moments

My Birth
I agree with Nicole - my birth is a fairly significant defining moment in my life, so I’ll put that one first. August 6, 1985 at 10:48 p.m., I, Allison Michelle Blass, was born at Beth Kaiser Medical Center which is now - as my father has told me - Reebok’s Portland office.

The Birth of Eric
That would be my younger brother. This is a fairly significant date as well because without him, I would be an only child and probably have a lot more stuff. Okay, okay, I’m kidding. But being an older sister is certainly a defining characteristic, and has probably made me far more bossy than if I was a younger sister. My brother and I actually got along fairly well when we were growing up, and I appreciate the fact that he was more easy going than I, because it made doing things like going to the corner store for ice cream, picking blackberries and going to the movies actually fun and not a painstaking chore.

D-Day
Being diagnosed with diabetes is probably the second most influential day next to actually being born, because it has shaped more of my decisions than just about anything else I can think. I can honestly say that much of what I have done and much of what I have learned about me as a person is related to lessons that diabetes has taught me. I may still have been a totally awesome person, but in this life, I know that diabetes is a big part of why I am the way I am. For better or for worse.

Becoming a Christian
This is actually a moment seven years in the making. That’s right. It took me seven years to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And let me tell you, that is a LONG time. Like, way long. I was 12 years old when I first approached a pastor about Jesus when I was staying at a summer resort with my family. Seven years later and I was baptized on a Thursday afternoon in the August after my freshman year in college. It was a long and bumpy road full of doubts and questions, and it’s still a bumpy road. But I also know it was the best decision I ever made.

Children’s Congress 2001
This was my entrance into the world of diabetes advocacy. I literally hadn’t done anything except a handful of Walks before this. But the people there inspired me to fight the good fight and I was connected with the right people and shown the right attitude to do it. It’s been an amazing ride.

The Death of Darcee
Darcee was a girl in my fourth grade class who had a degenerative brain disease called MLD. If you visit this website, you will actually see a picture of Darcee in the banner on the upper right hand side of the screen. MLD is a complicated disease that causes personality changes and mobility disfunction among other things. It made Darcee… different. My classmates treated her badly, and even though she wanted to be my friend, I didn’t like her so I wasn’t particularly nice to her either. We didn’t know she was sick. Just as fifth grade started, we found out that Darcee was sick and that she was going away to get better. While she was gone, we sent her get well letters and pictures. I knew how fake it was, but I did it anyway. On December 15, 1995, Darcee passed away at age 10. It was the first death I had ever experienced of someone I knew. Of course, death is hard but when it’s the death of someone who was sick and that you were mean to, the guilt was devastating. Since then, I have always tried very hard to be considerate and respectful of everyone, even if I don’t understand why they do what they do. Darcee would have turned 23 years old on June 28 of this year.

The Deaths of Teddy, Dr. Hansen and Mr. Othus
Eight years later and I went through three more excruciating deaths. The first was Teddy, a classmate I had known for years, who took his own life during the fall of my senior year in high school. It was the first mourning that I experienced with my close friends, and it also made me appreciate how important it is to recognize and acknowledge depression. Dr. Hansen, my first endocrinologist and the one that made diabetes much less scary, died that spring of the liver cancer he was diagnosed with five years earlier. I have written about Dr. Hansen before, so if you’re interested, I encourage you to read about that. Three weeks after I started my freshman year in college, and almost one year to the date of Teddy’s death, Mr. Othus, my history teacher and the mentor to half my high school, passed away unexpectedly from colon cancer. All three of these deaths impacted me in different ways, but they taught me the importance of life and encouraged me to live my life in the ways I admired about them.

My Depression
I have not always been a happy person, and there were occasional moments during high school and college when that manifested itself in negative ways - namely, the cutting I did in high school and college. It wasn’t something I did on a regular basis, but I had a propensity towards self-harm that I spent a lot of energy on controlling. I eventually sought therapy in my sophomore year of college, which taught me about my need to control situations and the anger I had towards myself when I thought I should be in control and wasn’t. I am a huge advocate of therapy, and medication if that’s something you and your psychiatrist think it’s necessary.

Blogging
Clearly, blogging has changed my life and certainly for the better. Without blogging, I honestly don’t know where I’d be. I have learned so much from all of you, and I truly feel like you have made me a better person. I have had so many opportunities to learn and also share what I know through blogging. I have traveled extensively because of the people I have met, I got my job because of my blog and heck, I was even in the New York Times! Can’t beat that.

Moving to the East Coast
Moving three thousand miles away from everything you know will teach you a lot about how to be alone among millions of people. It’s terrifying. It’s really, fucking hard. And if I knew then what I know now, I probably would have been scared shitless to try it. But I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into and I had only the dream of living in the Big City to propel me forward. Lucky for me, I did the move in baby steps. First a small suburb in New Jersey, now Hoboken, and perhaps in a year or two, the Big Apple. I also had the support of my cousins as well as wonderful co-workers who made it easy to not think this was all a huge mistake. If you want to try it, I say: Go for it. It’s hard, but it’s totally worth everything.

A Room with a View

Today marks two weeks since I moved into my new apartment. This past week was the first time that it actually started to feel like “the place where I live” rather than the “place where all my stuff happens to be.” I wasn’t even here the first three days of living in my apartment, and then it was back to work, so it took slightly longer than usual to get adjusted.

I’m still getting used to my new schedule and my commute, which varies between walking to the train station and taking public transportation to driving to work and fighting not only traffic but also fighting to find a parking place. Tricky.

The Roommate and I are getting along, though I don’t see her very often because of our schedules. But hopefully we’ll get to hang out a bit more soon.

I’m enjoying it so far and it’s nice to live near so many great restaurants and boutiques. I’m only a block and a half away from the grocery store, and I finally purchased reusable grocery bags. I am a bad Oregonian. Please forgive me. It hasn’t been too terribly noisy either, though a few warm nights brought some ruckus. I’m sure it will quiet down when it gets a bit cooler.

But, of course, who could complain with this view:

The Empire State Building, taken from my bedroom. It looks even cooler at night, when the top is lit up in, but unfortunately my camera isn’t a huge fan of nighttime pictures.

The Last Night.

I am sitting in my apartment, sweltering, because my insane brain thought it would be wise to have all the lights on in my apartment while I packed.

Packing. Tonight is my last night in my first apartment that I’ve ever had completely independently. I can’t say I have that many fond memories of this place, considering nothing very exciting ever happened here and the only person who has actually ever really seen it was my mother and that wasn’t until nearly nine months after I had moved in.

When I moved to New Jersey last summer (it feels much, much longer than that - as I suppose living in New Jersey would), I had no idea what or where anything was. Names of cities held no meaning to me - except for that infamous one just south of me (Begins with N and ends with an “ark” and has the oh-so-fitting “ewwww” in the middle) - so I spent countless hours staring at maps of northern New Jersey trying futilely to acquaint myself with an area of the state I had been to for exactly five hours.

Two days after I flew to New Jersey, my dad arrived and helped me settle in. We found my car and while I was at work, he went off in search of my apartment. Yes, you read that right. I started my job before I found a place to live. I think that demonstrates quite well my commitment to my job - either that or my completely and utter insanity.

On my fifth day of living in New Jersey, which at this point was me sharing a hotel room with my dad, I stumbled upon a corporate website for a company that owns several apartment complexes in New Jersey. I called them and asked if they had any available apartments in the area and in my price range and lo and behold, they did!

About a week and a half later, I moved in.

The first night was scary. I had no furniture, except for my mattress and some bedding. The apartment is rather large, and it made strange noises. A fan whirled intermittently throughout the night (and I have yet to figure out where the hell it’s coming from - I can’t see a vent anywhere in my apartment) and the complex is about fifty feet away from the railroad tracks.

I have a hard enough time sleeping in a nice, comfy hotel room so imagine my sleepless nights and near panic at the prospect of having to stay here.

But over time it grew on me. It was conveniently located to work and right down the street from a CVS, which made getting my diabetes medication fairly easy. It’s also right next to a park and since the spring, I have enjoyed walking around the lake and making late night trips to Dunkin Donuts.

I never really decorated it the way that I wanted to. I’ve bought a handful of pictures from Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond and I put up a ribbon bulletin board near my front door and decorated it with pictures of my family, my high school friends and even some of my O.C. friends, like George and Scott and the OCapalooza gang. Although I love all my furniture, especially my red couch and even my ironing board, it never really felt like home.

Just a place I lived. I liked it well enough but it certainly wasn’t a place I was going to stick around forever.

Tonight, when I was loading up my car with my deconstructed IKEA desk (boy was that fun!), my upstairs neighbor heard me opening-and-shutting-opening-and-shutting our shared front door. Thinking I was her son, she came out to the top of the staircase and we started chatting. I told her I was moving.

“Already?! It’s only been a year,” she exclaimed.

And?

I’m sorry, but I’m almost 23 years old. In my world, a year is a long time. Especially a year living in the suburbs. I told her I wanted to be closer to the city and she seemed to understand. I am “young,” as people keep telling me. I’m not sure what being young has to do with wanting to live near the big city. New York City is why I moved to the East Coast. I don’t think I need to defend my desire to live close to it.

The concept of home seems rather fluid right now, and I’m sure it will stay that way for while. I’m curious though, at what point in your life did you feel you were “home”? Was it after you were married? Bought a house? Had children? Was your home a physical location or did you relate it more with a person or a lifestyle? Just curious.

I titled this post “The Last Night” because this is my last night in my apartment. But in all honesty, this feels more like a beginning than an end. I’m not sad, but instead I’m filled with excitement, an electricity that’s pulsating through me at the thought of all the possibilities my life has right now.

Whatever happens, I hope you will be here to share it with me.

Good night.

23 Days Until 23

There are only 23 more days until my 23rd birthday on August 6.

The years of exciting milestone birthdays are over, sadly, so I’m not exactly on pins and needles about it. I’m looking forward to August because that means I’ll be living in Hoboken finally and I will just have returned from a weekend in Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

On August 2nd (the day after I move, keep in mind), my family is throwing my great-aunt a party for her 90th birthday. I’m really excited because my grandmother, my aunt and my dad are all flying in for the event. Afterwards, my dad and I are driving down to Baltimore, where he will be working on business and I will be taking the train down for the day for the Quilt for Life showing. I haven’t decided if this means I’m going to cancel the Washington D.C. dinner and just see who is around on Monday or if that means I will go down to D.C. on Sunday night and on Monday. People who are in the area, please feel free to leave me a comment letting me know if you have a preference or if you are planning on attending the Quilt for Life showing (I will be there at 10 a.m. and would LOVE to meet people, so feel free to come say hi!), otherwise I will just send out an email to those who I already have spoken with.

It will be a busy, busy time but I’m definitely looking forward to celebrating an early birthday with my family and friends and seeing the ENORMOUS Quilt for Life presentation at the National Mall. That will be a sight to see! Having a quilt representation of my life on display in our nation’s capitol is definitely an achievement, I think.

In more fun news, I discovered that as a blogaversary present (well, not really), Guy Kawasaki’s blog directory, AllTop, has listed myself and many of our fellow bloggers in the Diabetes category. I helped with some of the recommendations, but I had no idea I would land in the first line, alongside Kerri and Amy! I’m very excited to be listed, and everyone else should be too. Many of you may not know who Guy Kawasaki is, but he is a prominent figure in the social media world so I have known about AllTop for several months because of my job. I wrote to them originally recommending Amy for their Health category, then found out they were creating an entire Diabetes category!

Speaking of presents, if anyone out there loves me enough to consider buying me something for my birthday, feel free to check out the Amazon.com Wish List I created for my family. Or just visit Amazon.com, click on Wish List and search for my name. Not that I’m expecting anyone to buy me a Nikon D80 or a Macbook, but if you’re feeling generous, a subscription to Glamour would be pretty sweet… Something to decorate my new IKEA coffee table!

Shifting.

I have been managing diabetes for more than fourteen years. Over time, I’ve learned that taking care of diabetes isn’t usually that hard - the actual act of finger pricks and pressing buttons isn’t a challenge - but juggling of numbers is just excruciatingly frustrating. Numbers are not my friends. I haven’t taken math since my junior year in high school and even then my grades were less than stellar. The fact I have diabetes, which requires a life of numbers, is a cruel joke. My saving grace is the bolus wizard calculator in my insulin pump.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, I don’t enjoy making modifications to my insulin pump. I suffer through days of ridiculous blood sugars and obvious patterns before finally giving in. I don’t know why it takes such effort to make these changes. But once I do, once I raise or lower my basal or bolus ratio a notch, suddenly, everything falls back into place and it’s like I’m a whole new diabetic.

Lately, my life seems to come in sweeping changes. First, new school, new classes and new friends. Then, when that was a done, I did a completely 180-degree turn and went to the other side of the country and into a profession I had absolutely no intention of pursuing. With that came a new city, a new apartment, more new friends and new doctors. Now I’m about to make another huge change by moving into an apartment with a girl I’ve known for two weeks.

Big changes have obviously had a huge impact on my life, both physically and emotionally. I’ve noticed that with diabetes, even small changes can have a huge impact. Whether it’s a half a unit more of basal, a half an hour of exercise, or a few less carbohydrates a day, the results show almost immediately in my blood sugar readings. Suddenly the anxiety from my blood sugar readings dissipates and I’m more relaxed throughout the day. Although the changes need to happen more often than I wish, the positive - or in some cases negative - results are encouraging.

So why is it, despite my obvious willingness to take such risks in uprooting my life, that I am so stubborn in making minor changes in something that has such an immediate positive impact on my health? I don’t know the answer, but I know it needs to change.

Another change. So many changes. Makes me dizzy, sometimes, and I wonder if I’ll fall down from all the shifting.

A Whole Year.

Last Saturday, I drove down to my dad’s cousin’s house for dinner after babysitting for a little girl with diabetes and her baby brother. My great aunt was also there, so we spent some time catching up on work and life. I told them about my plans for moving, talked about my job, and I found out that her daughter, my cousin lives in Israel, is going to have a baby girl soon. Then I realized that it had been exactly one year since I moved to New Jersey and I was exactly where I started. A full circle.

Today is another important date. Well, to me it is. I started my job one year ago today. I feel a little self-conscious bragging about my job and co-workers because, well, they all apparently read this. (Hello co-workers!) But needless to say, I’ve learned more about social networking and blogs than I ever did in the two years of being a blogger and I’m very, very appreciative that none of the people I work with are psychos. They are a little nuts sometimes but thankfully just the good kind.

Besides growing professionally, I also feel like this was the year I became a full-fledged adult. I pay my own rent. I have my own 401K and health insurance. I have made new friends, including some that don’t rely on artificial insulin! When I wake up in my apartment, or when I get another bill, or when I’m standing in the hallway getting a new reservoir from the closet, I still get a little thrill that this is all mine. I don’t know how long this will last… Maybe I have only a few more months before I think being a grown-up is totally overrated. Okay, occasionally I think being a grown-up is overrated, but mostly I think it’s pretty cool.

I’m excited to see where the next year leads me, especially with my impending move, and seeing how my responsibilities change both professionally and personally. I have added new freelance jobs to my resume in the past few months. In November, I signed on as a writer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and I’m leading the JDRF Blogger Round Table, this spring I’ve been working on a new article for Diabetes Self-Management, and on my trip to Oregon, I met with the founder of SweetSpot.dm and agreed to help with publicity. I continue to enjoy exploring New Jersey, which despite the rumors is actually very nice, and the entire East Coast.

Plus I have this whole list of exciting adventures to complete.

When I moved, I knew my life was going to change dramatically. But I couldn’t imagine just how true that was going to be. Although I am living in New Jersey, a state I never imagined living in (seriously, who grows up saying “I want to move to New Jersey!”) and although I’m working at a PR agency instead of that non-profit I spent five years preparing for, I think “Allison” has still stayed the same. I try to keep the same values that I was raised with. I still hate the humidity. I think sales tax is the most annoying thing in the world. I am still frustrated that my apartment complex doesn’t support recycling. I still wish I could see Mt. Hood, I still think trees are as important as people, and I still think people need to slow down and enjoy life just a little bit more.

You can take the girl out of Oregon, but you can’t take the Oregon out of the girl.

The New Girl.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been on a mission. A mission to find a roommate. The mission began when I realized that I desperately wanted to moved out my apartment in Distant Land Away From NYC (okay, it’s not that far, but it sure feels like it sometimes) and make my way a little bit closer to, well, people who don’t have children. The town I live in is a lot like the town I grew up in, just a lot less wealthy. This town has lots of families, grocery stores, gas stations and two (!) Dunkin Donuts. It has a CVS and it has Catholic churches. It has a couple parks - one of which I live next to - and it’s cute.

What is doesn’t have is any semblance of a downtown or population anywhere close to my age.

I decided I wanted to move to Hoboken, which is this adorable little town across the Hudson from Manhattan. It’s a lot cheaper than living in the city, but it’s just as close to Greenwich or Soho as it would be if I lived on the Upper East Side, plus my apartment will be significantly bigger. I also wanted to stay somewhat close to work. Taking two subways, a NJ Transit train and a shuttle *one way* to get to work is not my idea of a good time.

However, finding a new place to live isn’t so simple. First, I can’t just pick-up and move into an already established apartment. I have a lot of stuff. I have my couch. My ironing board. A flat-screen TV, a dining table, a fully stocked kitchen and a really cute bathroom curtain of colorful butterflies. All of which I don’t want to get rid of. This meant I had to find a roommate who didn’t have any of this stuff who needed a place to live. Maybe she lived with her parents, maybe she was just graduating from college or maybe she was moving across the country.

Basically, I was looking for the me from last year.

I put an ad up on Craiglist. I said I was 22, worked in PR and looking for a roommate. I gave my pricing and a few requirements (no psychos, only nice people need apply). I received a few emails back. A couple people either were in the wrong financial bracket or they had unreasonable requests (such as boyfriend and dog spending every weekend there - uh, no. I’m moving in with you. Not you and your boyfriend.). A couple other girls seemed nice. They had steady jobs and were my age. I wrote them back and told them a little bit more about myself.

Feeling a little uneasy about the whole diabetes thing (said in a hushed voice), I quickly added at the end of the email that I wanted to let them know I had type 1 diabetes, but was fully in control (whatever, they don’t need to know the details) and that I had never had any issues whatsoever.

And guess what happened.

I never heard from them again.

Now, I know I shouldn’t be surprised or insulted by the disappearing acts of these girls. I mean, if I didn’t have diabetes and could choose to not live with a perfect stranger who had a scary chronic illness, yeah, I probably wouldn’t have written back either. But it still hurt my feelings. I debated whether or not that was really such a smart move on my part. I decided it probably wasn’t a great idea to be that up front about the diabetes especially since it didn’t give us a chance to really discuss it before they made a decision.

Finally, I received another email from a girl who lives with her parents but works in finance not too far from Hoboken. She seemed nice and we agreed to meet for dinner at Applebee’s. But I didn’t tell her about the diabetes. I figured I could eventually bring it up in conversation.

Well, it’s a lot harder to spring something like that on someone that I thought. Typically with friends and co-workers, them finding out I have diabetes never really seemed like a deal-breaker but with a roommate all of a sudden I went into panic mode.

We met for dinner during a horrible thunderstorm. Torrential downpour, lightening just miles away from us, and booming thunder that freaked me out. I came straight from work and only had my laptop bag, so I had to test my blood sugar in the car. I slipped my license and debit card into my back pocket and ran from my car inside Applebee’s using the United Nations umbrella from World Diabetes Day to shield me from becoming a wet rat (yeah, I still have it in case of emergencies - it’s nice and big).

When we sat down for dinner, we talked first about the apartment. What we liked, what we didn’t like. We talked about where we lived and what we did for a living. We talked a little bit about hobbies and what we liked to do on the weekends.

Then the Potential Roomie mentioned drinking.

“Do you like to go out and drink?” she asked.

This seemed like as good a time as any to bring up the Big D. I explained that I did drink and liked to go out, but that I didn’t drink a lot because I have type 1 diabetes. She didn’t know that much about it, so I explained that I like to keep my blood sugars pretty much under control and that I didn’t want to my roommates to feel like they had to take care of me.

“I like to be self-sufficient,” I said.

Potential Roomie didn’t know that much about diabetes, so I just explained that my body didn’t make insulin anymore that I had to take it myself. She asked me if I had that “thing” and motioned to her abdomen. A pump! She knows what a pump is! I told her I had one, and she said a girl she went to college had one too. Okay, so the girl has some experience with this. That’s good. We talked a little bit about our eating habits - turns out, she’s a vegan and probably has more restrictions than me!

After that, we talked about her dog, our favorite movies and books we were reading, and as we signed the receipts, I asked what our next steps were.

“Do you want to take some time to think about this?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said and with that, she went from Potential Roomie to The Roommate.

Sigh of relief.

Lessons Learned at Powell’s in Portland

This afternoon, after my speaking gig to a group of soon-to-be graduates of the University of Oregon’s journalism program, I decided to take advantage of being in Portland and I headed to one of my favorite places in the city: Powell’s Books.

Now, despite the fact that this bookstore is on my top 10 list of Places You Must Go When In Portland, it has not always been this way. Powell’s Books takes up one city square block and is three stories high. The bookstore is divided up into rooms based on genres and each room is named by a color. Among them are the Gold room is the science fiction/mystery/thriller room, the Orange room is the business/planning room, the Purple room is the religion/language/travel room, and the Blue room it the literature/poetry room. The cases are ten shelves high and are jam-packed with books, sometimes two rows of books on one shelf. Powell’s Books is one of the largest bookstores in the world, having rightly earned the nickname the City of Books.

Unfortunately, because of the sheer enormity of the building, the bookstore had a tendency to scare me as a small child. I didn’t like to go because I was afraid of getting lost - which is not hard to imagine because even grown-ups sometimes lose their way around the building.

But now I have come to appreciate Powell’s selection and as an West Coaster-turned-East Coaster, I also appreciate Powell’s ridiculous good prices. I browsed the bookstore for about an hour with my Peet’s coffee, another love of mine, though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as Powell’s. Though Peet’s does serve as a reason for at least a couple Boston pilgrimages a year, as Boston is the only city on the entire East Coast that has Peet’s Coffee and Tea locations.

I ended up with a selection of about ten books but I knew I couldn’t afford all of them… the total price was over $60 and while that’s a steal, that didn’t necessarily mean my bank account would approve. I wheedled it down to six books for just under $50. My purchases include The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, because I read The Secret Life of Bees and loved it so I thought I would enjoy her memoir; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, because I saw the play last summer and loved it, plus it came highly recommended from a couple OCers; The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, which I have been nagged to death to read by several people, plus his other book Friends, Lovers and Chocolate, which is the second in the series after The Sunday Philosophy Club which I finished earlier this year; The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which is a monster of a book but I’ve heard rave reviews about it so I’m hoping it’ll be worth my while; and finally, The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College, which I’m giving to my younger brother who is graduating from high school on Friday.

This is definitely quite a bit of reading material and I’m not even starting on any of them until I finish Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, which I bought a couple months ago but just started reading on the flight out here on Saturday. I’m over sixty pages in so far and I’m really enjoying it.

In the past, I go on the book binges with the intention of devoting a significant amount of time to reading and absorbing the messages and lessons in these books. I have visions of myself curling up in a coffeeshop and reading for several hours, while refilling on cappuccinos and munching on scones. Of course, this never, ever happens. Usually I go through two - maybe three, if I’m lucky - books before craving yet another book binge which leads me with six more books that will sit on my shelf, patiently waiting to be read in a never ending queue of literature.

But I have decided that it is absolutely imperative that I break this trend. For the past few months I have become acutely aware of how much of my life has been devoted to the Internet and the mindless social networks that eat up so much of my time. I’m not even talking about the amount of time I spend on the Internet at work. I’m talking about all the hours and hours I spend glued to a computer screen, which I’m sure is going to cause brain cancer someday. As I zig-zagged through the halls of books, I realized that unless I made some serious changes to my time-management I was going to spend most of my life twittering it away and not actually do or experience anything. I mean, how much life reflection can you do on Facebook anyway?

One of my items on my 101 Things To Do in 1,001 Days is to give up the Internet on the weekends for one month (#92). But I have decided to expand it for the entire summer. It doesn’t hurt that my weekends are already swamped with plans, but adding a few extra weekends to the goal will really help me make the most of the summer before the weather turns so cold your air starts to freeze and your breathe turns into slabs of ice (okay, so that hasn’t actually happened to me, but I’m sure it could!)

Starting today and ending Labor Day weekend, I will not be using the Internet at all during the Saturday and Sunday hours. The only reason I will allow myself to log online is to get directions or look up a phone number in case I am absentminded and forget to do it at work, which, knowing me, is bound to happen. I did this last summer for a little over two months because I was without the Internet or television for six weeks when I moved into my apartment (that was the earliest the cable guy could come and install the equipment in my apartment). This meant I was forced to explore my new surroundings and I really appreciated how it helped me acclimated much faster to where I was. I felt comfortable with New Jersey much faster than I would have had there been an excuse for me to stay inside my apartment.

Hopefully by the end of the summer I will have regained a bit more of a sense of self instead of relying so much on other people’s lives to provide entertainment. I shouldn’t have a constant feeling of watching the Real World. I need to be out there. I hope you’ll join me.

One-Fifth

Last Saturday, I watched Number Twenty on my 101 movies in 1,001 days challenge. That means I am one-fifth of the way done with that challenge and I still have more than two years until the challenge is over. Although two years sounds like a long time, if you look at my list, you’ll see that there is a lot of other stuff on my list that I still need to finish!

I finally got around to updating my NYC Restaurant list, though I’m pretty sure I’m leaving one or two out. There is also a Thai place I went to in Queens with Scott and Jon but I don’t remember what it’s called (Scott! Help!). It was yummy, too. The 101 movie list is still sorely outdated as I have way too much catching up to do, and with all those movie links to do… it might take me awhile. I also have three movies from Netflicks waiting for me at home.

As far as the other items on my list, we all know that I’m now going to London. Then there’s the upcoming CWD conference (one goal is to go to a CWD conference once a year) and I have more blogger meet-ups planned throughout the summer. I might actually reach my goal of meeting ten bloggers by Labor Day! I’ve also found a church that I like, so I’m two weeks into my (at least) six month stint there. I’ve also begun downloading the sermons from my old church, Imago Dei Community Church, off of iTunes and I’m about a month into that.

I would love to hear suggestions from you at home about what I should work on next or how to accomplish them. Do you know of a cool art gallery (#36) or restaurant in NYC (#42) I should check out? How about a place to get a massage (#20)? Are you a diabetes blogger who is in the NYC area who wants to meet me? Just send me an email (#5). If anyone want to surprise me with tickets to the NYC Ballet (#40) or a live taping of a TV show (#47), hook a sister up!

As you can see, I’ll definitely need the next two years to get everything done. But it sure is fun!

Self-Identification

In the past week, I’ve attended two social events from two different organizations. The first was a movie (Made of Honor) and drinks, and the second was a women’s networking dinner. So far I’ve met two dozen girls that live in New Jersey, all of them a little bit older than me (which, at 22, isn’t all the surprising), all working professionals, some of them single, some of them married, and none of them know I have diabetes (technically I told two ladies who I met at the beginning of the dinner, but then I changed my mind and didn’t tell anyone else - luckily they didn’t bring it up again). It was strange spending so many hours with so many women and not having diabetes come up once. I tested in my car and bolused covertly under the table.

For such a long time, diabetes was almost forced into the conversation. When I first diagnosed, all my friends knew because, well, I was just diagnosed with a chronic illness and was in the hospital and it was kind of a big deal. So they knew, and all my teachers and classmates knew because that’s just what you did. When I went to college, sometimes people asked me if I worked, for months my answer was Diabetes Teen Talk. When people asked me what I hoped to do with my degree in public relations, my answer was to work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (I honestly had no plans to work for an agency, and I would still love to work for JDRF in the future). Without even meaning, diabetes became very much a part of everything I did. I didn’t exactly hate this solid integration of diabetes into the rest of my life, but I did get tired of teaching diabetes all the time, as you do.

When I moved here, most of my immediate friends were people I knew because of blogging. My social circle because almost entirely people with diabetes. At work, my boss knew I had diabetes before I even had my interview (the guy from DiabeticFoodCritic is the one who got me the interview, so it was kind of obvious). Which was actually kind of cool because I avoided that whole “So, I have this thing called diabetes… and sometimes I might need to take a break…” My co-workers knew right away, because one of the reason I got my job in social media public relations was because I was the “girl who blogged about diabetes.”

Now, I’m starting to make new friends. And I’m not telling them. At least, not yet. It’s strange. For a few brief hours, it’s almost as if I don’t have a disease. I answered questions about moving from Oregon, about my job, about where I live and what I think about New Jersey. I talked about how cool Hoboken is, I talked about movies I liked, I talked about yummy Indian food in Edison. I listened to the girls tell me about their jobs, their relationships and their hobbies.

I’m not sure what difference the silence really made. It’s not like I wouldn’t have talked about those same things if I had told them I have diabetes. But I think my self-identification, this idea in my head that saying I have diabetes automatically makes someone think I’m sick and weak, has made more of a difference to my self-esteem than anything anyone has actually said. I wonder if all of our concerns about telling people we have diabetes, all of our covert operations, are really just our way of protecting ourselves. We are protecting ourselves from wondering if someone thinks we are defective. Not that people actually think we’re different, or unlovable, or someone they shouldn’t be around, but that we think they’re thinking that. So if we don’t say anything, we have a barricade up. It protects us from the things other people are thinking and the things we think other people are thinking.

I don’t know if any of it’s true. I don’t know what anyone thinks when they look at me. I hope they see someone who does what she thinks is right. Someone who tries to help people. Someone who tries to tries to be strong, and someone who always gets back up when she falls down. Because that’s what I see.

That’s what I try to be.