10 Things to do in San Jose

This is more serious than my last list post, I promise.

It's Easter weekend, which I was completely unaware of until someone at work told me to explain how damn busy we were. Since my place of work only closes on Christmas, we're going to be busy as heck on Sunday. (I work that day. Of course I work that day.) I don't blame the guests, of course. When someone has time off and people visiting from out of town in San Jose, the first place they think of going is the Winchester Mystery House. When you're visiting San Jose, you do that and the Tech Museum and maybe Great America, and then you drive up to San Francisco. Our tourism industry in this city is a joke, to be honest.

But it's my spring break, too, and I'm too poor to travel up to San Francisco. There are other things to do in San Jose, and in the spirit of... much better bloggers than me, I'm gonna do a top ten list! But because I'm shit at thinking of the order of things, it's in alphabetical order. Enjoy! And do consider taking your out-of-town friends/family to one of these places.

What a Nunderful World

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a nun.

I knew nothing about nuns. My entire knowledge of nun life came from the "Sister Act" movies and from a library book that I can't remember the title of now about a young girl in medieval times. I knew that they got to all live in a convent together and they didn't have to marry men, facts which were very desirable to my young gay heart. (I didn't yet know about the lesbian nun Benedetta Carlini, but I guarantee you if I had it would only have furthered my desire.)

"It's okay to kiss a nun. Just don't get in the habit." ~ Sarah.

I eventually came to my senses (the whole giving up all my material possessions thing wasn't very exciting for an 8-year-old, and a week later I decided I'd rather be a mortician. Plus, you know, I'm not Catholic.) but for that short time period nun life was just fascinating, and some small part of me has never fully lost that fascination.

So when a coworker told me there happens to be a monastery just a couple miles down the road from our work, I knew I had to visit...

So follow me through the pink doorway and under the text cut for a lot of pictures of this beautiful little hidden gem of Santa Clara. As long as no one finds out I'm a non-Catholic lesbian, we'll be nunstoppable!

(I refuse to apologise for the nun puns.)

On Changing Plans And Severe Depression

Those of you who read the last (itty bitty) post on this blog probably wondered what the hell that was all about. Or maybe you don't care, I don't know. But for those who are wondering what brought it on, the day I wrote that post I got sent home from work for bursting into tears right before I was supposed to go on tour. (Luckily another tour guide saw me and asked the guide station if she could take my tour so I could go home. Thankfully my coworkers like me.)

It says right up at the top of this blog that I suffer from mental illness. The terrifying cocktail that makes up my brain chemistry consists of one part anxiety, one part PTSD, and one part severe depression that every so often flares up and tells me "Hey you know what would be great? If you just killed yourself!" And that's just the diagnosed stuff.

Near the end of February it came to my attention that Sarah was coming back to California for the summer, at the behest of her parents. They pay for everything, they get to decide which coast she's on. I was already slipping down into a depressive spiral for other (mostly unrelated) reasons, but hearing this just sent me down to rock fucking bottom. In that moment, I couldn't handle a change of plans. Because if Sarah was here in July, what would that mean for my flight date at the end of July? I fly out to New York with no one to pick me up and no where to go and end up sleeping on a street corner somewhere until someone stabs me, that's what.

"Save yourself the wait," my brain said. "Why wait for someone to stab you in the streets when you can do it yourself? There's a bottle of painkillers from your last dental surgery right there."

Now obviously I was overreacting. Logically I knew that even then. Fun thing about mental illness? Logic doesn't matter.

It's not Sarah's fault of course. Like I said, even before she told me that I already wasn't going well. It's just my brain chemistry. It does that sometimes. In fact a big part of why I didn't give in and just kill myself - why I'm writing this blog entry now - is that I knew it would break Sarah's heart.

So where does that leave me now?

Sarah goes back to New York in the end of August, she moves in to a student building in Brooklyn (I believe it's Brooklyn; I may be wrong) on 21 August. I have to change my flight date to the end of August, or early September. Which is actually what I originally wanted to do anyway, the July date was for apartment hunting purposes.

And I won't be a student when I move which means I either take a community college class to live in that building with her, or I stay with her (the building will let me crash on her floor for a week, and she has friends with buildings where I can crash on their floors too if necessary) until I find a place of my own. Or, more likely, an apartment that needs a 3rd or 4th roommate. She won't let me be homeless. And I've actually made my peace with not living with her. Ilana and Abbi on "Broad City" don't live together, after all. And I know basing my life decisions on "Broad City" is maybe not the wisest move but fuck it, if that thought is what it takes to get me through this, then yeah, I'm gonna hold onto it.

And once I'm there? I've been looking at internships - the American Museum of Natural History has a pretty good one. Or maybe I'll get a dental job, I have experience in that. Or, if I decide to stay a paid tour guide, the New York Museum of Sex was recently hiring for a position that paid $18 an hour (I was so bummed I couldn't take it). So the job opportunities are there. I'll be okay I think. I hope.

My plans have changed. But I still need to do this. I still need to conquer New York. For Sarah, and for myself.

Suck my dick, mental illness.
~Nym~