things to be thankful for, things still undecided.

this year marks the first time i remember being able to really eat a thanksgiving meal, and i'm incredibly thankful for that. usually i eat about half a plate, push it away, and then succumb to feeling crappy. i always heard it was normal to feel bad after a turkey day gorging, so i never worried about it. only now do i realize i was feeling miserable after 400 calories, while others had packed in thousands. so yeah, today i ate a reasonable to full sized meal of thanksgiving favorites and felt ok. take that food allergies and digestive disorders! of course my mom had to read every label while grocery shopping and had to go to several stores, and we had to be careful when preparing everything, but i actually ate a really great (and normal, for what that's worth) thanksgiving dinner.

i'm in pennsylvania for the holiday and another thing i'm thankful for is that i don't live here. thank god i got out of here while there was still a chance for me to come out ok! wow, i didn't realize how "small town" the place i grew up was. many of the houses are at least half an acre apart, and there are only a few subdivisions. while i'm thankful that the land isn't overdeveloped, in the abstract, i feel like i'd go a little crazy living in a place so sparsely populated. this is actually worse than the shitty midwestern college town where i went to grad school. the internets can apparently tell that i'm in PA now, and all the ads have changed to PA. my favorite, so far, is "local singles near (my bumfuck tiny town)!" yeah, i can't imagine there being a singles scene here. there's like one bar six miles away and most people who are still single at my age live in their parents' basements. awesome!

ok, so things still undecided. i'm thankful for having options for different things to do with my life, but i still don't really know what to do with them. i have about ten seconds left before i have to decide whether or not to go back to grad school. applications are due very soon, and i need to get recommendation letters from a variety of people in my past. i'm especially still trying to figure out what to do with my life as a sickly person. while the costs of maintaining my health are at a historic low, i'm afraid things will change while i'm in graduate school (and possibly underinsured). i was just in san francisco on business and vacation, and i tried to throw myself into a lot of different situations to see how i'd react. i was really happy being in a city, and thought that could be something to look forward to. however, i was basing that on crashing at a friend's house, and staying at a Generic But Nice Conference Hotel.

So I decided to give myself a more ... authentic ... city experience. I stayed at a small independent hotel on the last day, which was more like a city apartment complex. To call my room a studio would be an exaggeration. In any case, the building was fairly old, and the mold really got to me. I woke up in the middle of the night with breathing trouble, and had a headache and felt sluggish much of the time i stayed there. I really worry about whether I can live in a city at all as a sickly person of little means. I had to leave apartments in grad school before due to mold issues, and that was expensive enough in some tiny midwestern town. In a big city, I don't know if it would be negotiable at all. And on top of the fact that rent is higher and hence switching places would be more difficult, getting allergy-friendly food could also be costlier. Sigh. I feel like I'm putting myself at risk for becoming seriously, seriously in debt. That's really hard to deal with, since I've spent the whole time since I left grad school trying to recover from health and financial issues associated with living in moldy buildings. I can't imagine telling myself to put it off another year, or indefinitely, until I can totally afford all of my health costs without the threat of going into debt (haha like that will ever be possible), but maybe i should.

on the flip side... there are lots of benefits to living in a city. it's *so* much easier to find hypoallergenic prepared foods in most cities. i eat so well when i'm visiting big cities. sure, there are a handful of restaurants in my native durham that i can eat at, but after you've eaten at each one over a dozen times it gets old. And sure, I can cook my own special food, but that's hard when you're coming home at 8:30 after an 11 hour long work day (and due to your acid reflux, you should have eaten at 6:30 pm). Other benefits of the city... would be the ability to walk a lot of places. moderate exercise is actually really helpful for most asthmatics, and i generally feel better when i stay in cities and walk a lot. also, one of my top choice schools is in canada, so i could get on the canadian healthcare system after a little waiting. i can't even imagine what my life would be like if i didn't have to constantly worry about health costs. maybe i would be so happy and free that i'd never want to come back. just maybe. lastly, i feel mentally healthier in cities. i feel like i fit in more when i'm out of town than when i'm home. my parents were city people and raised me that way, but i haven't ever been able to fully put it to use. i want to meet other difficult, bitter urban hardasses out there, and see what sort of beautiful and delightful interactions might result.

argh. It would be hard enough to decide whether to stay in my current job or whether to go to grad school as a healthy person, so it's just that much harder when you have all this sickly stuff to take into account.