NOT!

HA! Bet you thought this would be the entry where I tell you about Belgium Week 1, but alas, this is just about my lunch.
I figured leftovers are a cool lunch and it also sort of makes me useful; I can do laundry AND dishes AND ingest food before it goes bad and stinks up the fridge. Sort of like a household appliance you might say. Anyway so tortillas were here, several kinds of cheese were here, chorizo was here (although anything where you can actually see the fat chunks in the meat can’t be very healthy, but neither is half the other stuff I ate last week, so who am I to be picky).
For those of you who don’t know, food is a very important part of Belgian culture (so is beer, but I’ll save that for another ramble) and one of the foods they really make a big deal over here is cheese. Seriously, the cheese section in the smallest of supermarkets here is still three times as big as any grocery store I’ve ever seen in America (except maybe one of the brand new Giant Eagle stores where they have a whole section devoted to cheese, and even then, those sections aren’t bigger, just maybe almost equal to the cheese selections here). All kinds of cheese; Belgian cheese, French cheese, Dutch cheese (though I’ve been informed that Dutch cheese is mostly variations on Gouda)…pretty much any kind of cheese you could want and then some. So, there were a few varieties in the fridge, but none were open except the boursin. I like it, it’s sort of like a lighter, herbal/garlic flavored cream cheese (which I have noticed is not big here, American cheese is not even, like, considered to be a real cheese, oh and don’t let me forget to rant about iced tea) but I wanted to try something new. Last weekend we got some groceries and one was a cheese called ‘Camembert Coeur de Lion‘ (I think that’s what it said, though that might just be the brand so don’t take my word for it). This cheese is one of those wheels that’s cut into individual foil-wrapped wedges. So I took one and opened it and was greeted by a strangely broccoli-like odor. Ok, that threw me off. Especially because we got it last week. I mean, I assumed it was probably still good, but when your cheese smells like broccoli and you don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to smell when it’s fresh, it makes you stop and think. But I’m stubborn and don’t like wasting food if I can help it so I took a bite. Hrm…the texture of jello, the smell of broccoli, and a taste somewhere between overcooked broccoli (y’know, when it sort of tastes like you are eating a fart) mixed with partially cooled Knox.

Let me tell you, Boursin on a fajita shell is really good. Add a banana and you have a very nice light lunch.

I’m still waiting to see if the garbage can spits the other cheese back out at me.

It’s 8:30 in the morning. I figured out how to get to Cabana Boy’s mp3s so I put on some music and I’m sitting here listening to the rain on the roof outside, just thinking about things. It was interesting this morning, getting a better preview of how things will be come January. Well, in January we’ll both be leaving the house about the same time I imagine, but still, it was closer to reality than this past week has been. I mentioned a few nights ago how different this situation is that we are in. I mean, duh, ok, an international long term relationship is somewhat unique anyway, at least the way it happened with Cabana Boy and I, although it’s certainly becoming more common with globalization, but what I meant was more along these lines: when you are in a developing relationship with someone who lives close to you, you slowly discover each others quirks and habits, you can have a comfortable physical relationship without the urgency that comes along with constant periods of separation, you can meld your existances more seamlessly. When you are in a relationship where you can maybe talk during the week, but you only see each other, say, on weekends because there is some distance, it’s much more acceptable to spend all your time together like a holiday (by that I mean like a vacation, all you Americans), meeting up and buzzing over to see a show, having dinner with some wine, jumping into bed and staying there for the rest of the weekend. And while that can be a lot of fun (I have had some relationships like that that worked for a surprising amount of time), it is a much less reliable way to form a lasting relationship.
But what we’re in now, it’s neither of those; it’s some off-kilter permutation of the two. We talk every day. CB (Cabana Boy will now officially be called CB in my blog. I should have picked a shorter alias) has probably become one of the best friends I have in the past year or so. Meeting face to face in May was and still sometimes feels surreal to me. Because it actually worked out. And it worked out as close to perfect as it could have. And things have not gone that way for me in such a very long time. It blows me away every day that there is this person (who is not affixed to me genetically) who loves and accepts me for me, the real me, not the accomodating, simpering, apologetic person that prior relationships have reduced me to.
The hardest thing about meeting in May was the eventuality of CB leaving. So now I’m here in Belgium and last week was fantastic. I saw and experienced several cool and different things, my feelings for CB have been bolstered even more, and I had a very pleasant break from work and other stresses that I’ll have to deal with when I get back to the States. I have no doubt that this week will be fine. We have early mornings and evening together and I’ll be able to start to establish some of my own routines which will make this place seem less foreign and strange to me.

This morning was a bit dreary and difficult for me, but mostly I think it is due to the two kinds of relationships I discussed earlier colliding head on in our situation. Whan you don’t see the person you love for several months, all you want to do is barricade yourself in a room with them for several days to make up for some of that lost time. But when you are going for combining your lives, there are so many other things to do and see and feel that I have found, at least in myself, several conflicting urges and emotions. Wanting to go out and see things, wanting to just stay in and hold CB as tight as I can before I have to leave for 4 months, wanting to do things my own way, feeling helpless sometimes when I can’t work something, wanting to do things (i.e. bike riding) that everyone else does, struggling with embarassment when it’s uncomfortable. And today just marks the time when leisure and vacation gears ground to a halt and the “this is what it will be like to actually live here as an independant person” schema presented itself.

Which of course, was the perfect time to blog.