The bargains I make in my head June 7, 2011

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.   -William James

I can’t do anything without a deadline.

I don’t know if procrastination is even the right word, exactly, because I do always get the thing done–it just means that I also always count time backward from the time I know it has to be done based on my (often inaccurate by 30 minutes) estimate of how much time it’s going to require.

I know this about myself, so I am constantly making these little deals with myself in my head. This applies to everything from cleaning the house before someone comes over to getting ready for an important presentation.

For example, I am currently sitting alone at my kitchen table.

DID YOU HEAR THAT?

I can’t remember the last time I was alone in my house for any reason (it was a while ago, and probably several houses ago). It’s fine, that’s just the stage of life I’m in right now, but it neverever happens. But this week, Baby Girl is going to Vacation Bible School (I just typed Vatican Bible School by mistake–wouldn’t THAT be a fun theme for VBS?) at a church just down the road every morning, and I have three glorious hours to myself each day. I do not take this luxury lightly, people! However, I also have some work to get done (so I can, you know, get paid) (and by the by, I don’t know whose idiotic idea it was for me to work all summer, but NO BUENO), so I promised myself that:

• IF I work during those hours on Monday and Tuesday and get the work done and off my plate,
• I can go get a pedicure during that time on Wednesday.

That’s usually how the internal bargaining goes. Standard Premack Principle for you educator types.

As a bonus, the pedicure is already paid for (Andrew got me a gift certificate for Christmas and BAM, six months later, I manage to schedule the appointment). Embarrassing fact: the last one I had was right before Tim and Heather’s wedding, so that was, let’s see, I don’t know how long ago–but long enough for her to finish a Master’s degree and for him to serve a tour in Afghanistan and get back home. TOO LONG. October 2009? Yep, that’s it. I don’t do fingernails (I don’t know why, they freak me out, so I just keep mine short), but I should probably replace that lack of beauty maintenance with a pedicure about every month or so. Fat chance, but a girl can pretend, right?

None of this really has any point (and does nothing for the backlog of photos I’ve been intending to post), but there’s your daily unsolicited peek into my brain. Welcome.

I can’t believe I just typed an entire blog post about my feet. Lovely.

Often, the obvious eludes me… June 1, 2011

Warning: this is a ridiculous, trivial rant about social media and my own stupefying lack of logic. I can’t believe I was wasting brain space on it (and now making YOU read about it–ha!), so maybe typing it out will get it off my mind.

I had a moment earlier this week when I realized I was stewing over something one of my friends (not someone I see in real life anymore) posted on facebook. It wasn’t even a right/wrong issue, more of an opinion/observation, but it was all I could do not to fire off a response to what I saw as a small-minded, elitist statement. The fact that it was followed by lots of comments from obviously like-minded people didn’t help my stewing. Here’s the best part–this was DAYS later, and I was STILL thinking about it.

And then, it hit me.

What in the world was wrong with me?

Hide all posts from _____.

Remove from friends list.

Unfollow.

Unsubscribe.

Duh.

There’s a reason we have those buttons, people. WHY it didn’t occur to me to do it sooner is beyond me. Here I was, rolling my eyes to myself every time someone posted something that annoyed me (and hey, I’m the one who picked these people in the first place), I was just letting it happen to me. The kicker was that the things that were annoying me were so, just…dumb–atrocious grammar, pompous opinions like the one that sparked this post, just things that make me cringe. When people post opinions/beliefs that are in total opposition to mine on issues that actually matter, that doesn’t bother me. It’s the small, silly things (like the statements that make me realize I might be “friends” with a jerk). I’m not friends with anyone on facebook I don’t know in real life, and that group has a wide range of opinions for sure, but I was completely ignoring the fact that I had complete and total control over the situation.

NEWSFLASH: I DON’T HAVE TO READ IT.

I know that’s not exactly a revelation, but for some reason I had to take a winding road to get there this week. I spend way too much time on the computer for work already, and then I CHOOSE to spend even more time online just for fun. This is often a waste of my emotional energy, if I let it get out of hand. Social media is fluff, a time-waster meant for enjoyment, right? If you find yourself (over)reacting like I did this week, it’s time to prune your lists. Clean out your friends lists, people you follow, blogs you read, etc. You’ll feel much better, I promise!

That makes it sounds like I really, really need to go outside and play a lot more often. I promise to do that, too.

As soon as the cicadas DIE.

Insomniac party and an out-of-towner May 24, 2011

Hey, would you like to hear an incredibly boring story?

A bird started chirping outside our bedroom window at, oh, about 2:40 this morning.

Charming.

I woke up.

I started reorganizing my work-related, color-coded Outlook tasks in my head. Those little flags and checkmarks make me really insane, but necessary evil and all that. This is the first year I’ve gone totally electronic for all my planner/life organization needs–I’m disproportionately proud.

After about 2 hours (turns out that thinking about your to-do list is NOT an effective way to get back to sleep), I gave up and actually got on the computer and got my task list under (moderate) control.

The end.  

See?

Told you so. IF ONLY it were boring enough to lull me back to sleep.

___________________________________________________

Anyway, I promised y’all reunion pics with my old friend Janelle. You remember her. After some false starts, we pulled it together and found a weekend for her to come down.

Okay, she looks precisely the same as she did when I met her on a beach in Michigan ten (eleven? ugh) years ago. I adore her despite this obvious personality flaw.

Please note: the only photo in existence of me with a tan. WEIRD.

Friday night, we joined my fun cooking club girls at Mama Mia’s. It’s a tiny BYOW place and would be an awesome date spot, despite the fact that it is located in a gas station parking lot (well, it is).

Saturday, Janelle and I browsed the downtown Nolensville shops, then headed out to the Nashville Farmer’s Market (where I spent $15 on perfect, delicious produce and my child chose artificially dyed rainbow colored popcorn as her bribe treat–of course).

Then we headed home, put Baby Girl down for a nap (I’m sure Janelle was very impressed with the glamour of my lifestyle at this point), and Janelle and I watched Tangled. In my defense:

1. She had never seen it, and

2. Shut up.

And for the evening, we headed to Sevier Park to see The Goonies. For free! So random and so fun. Andrew was sweet to keep Baby Girl so we could go (he’s been working very hard on his solo EP which is FINALLY off for mastering and the reason I have gotten a TINY, miniscule taste of what it must be like to be a single parent for the past few weeks–and today, I learned the title of it from his blog–hilarious).

Other highlights: Janelle made the rookie mistake of asking BG how many ponies she has and what their names are (THAT took a while), and she turned to me at one point during the weekend and asked me if BG ever stops talking (I think she asked if there was EVER silence in my life…). Nope.

Okay, I promised myself I would try to go back to bed at 5. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Insomniac Party. Cheers!

Debrief April 25, 2011

Whew.

Good one, Monday. You got me.

After the usual trainwreck that is Sunday night at our house (resulting in JUST not quite enough sleep for Monday, of course), Monday got off to a roaring start.

It’s funny how this always surprises me! I never learn.

I was all proud of myself for getting out the door on time and getting Baby Girl settled with the sitter with minimal fuss (I was even so virtuous as to forgo coffee in favor of scoring a stack of protocols staring at me from my work bag), and then…I noticed the temperature gauge was creeping up into the “Hey! Pay attention to me!” range. It has some very minor leak and needs to be replenished every so often, but we’d been staying on top of it. No huge deal.

I once misspelled the word “gauge” in a 4th grade spelling bee, and I still can’t spell it. Just so you know.

However, this morning I hadn’t checked it before I left, so of course it needed some attending to. As soon as I realized it was overheating (I was just getting off the interstate, about 2 miles from my school), I was able to pull over into a driveway-type drive for a farm and about five houses. I kid you not, before I could even pop the trunk and get out, there was a truck pulling in behind me to see if I needed help, and another one before I was able to get the water jug out of the back. There IS a benefit to working on the rural side of Franklin after all! Helpful strangers with trucks and extra fluids. Anyway, to make a boring story a little shorter, we got the coolant/water added back in, checked everything else, and I was ready to try again. I put the first (!–I know, I know) container of water in myself out of principle, but one of the guys did the other one for me and checked the levels of everything else. I was very thankful, as it was a VERY windy day and I had on a very non-wind-friendly dress. A new dress which I was hoping to not stain with motor oil if at all possible, by the way.

All that to say–I love the kindness of strangers, and that is why I try to stop if I see someone who is obviously stranded to at least offer the use of my cell phone or a ride to the nearest gas station, despite the fact that my father is going to read this and have a heart attack. I don’t always stop if it’s a man alone (using the old intuition–which is probably not all that smart given my track record), but I do if it’s a woman. I’ve been there, and it sucks. And if I happen to get murdered doing that one day, my dad will be able to say, “I told you so.”

Anyway, I got to work only a little late for my first meeting, and the day just went on from there. MANIC.

I told a co-worker that, often, my goal is just to get through the day without doing any of the following things:

1) Accidentally making someone cry.

2) Accidentally making someone white-hot with rage.

3) Not realizing that what I’m about to say/do is going to incite one of the above reactions.

Better luck Tuesday!

Have a great evening, people.

I guess we live at the zoo now April 2, 2011

For the second time in five days, off we went to the zoo. Nathan was the organizer of this trip, and reminded me that he’s the only teacher I know who WANTS to hang out with a very select few of his students on Spring Break. We had a fun time (NO GIANT PLAYGROUND) catching up, handling the various tantrums, watching Whitney text 2,000 words per minute, and racing the strollers to the zoo exit (Nathan and I will NOT be participating in any 5Ks anytime soon–it was pretty pitiful how out of breath we were, but it got Baby Girl to stop screaming, which was the point).

 

This is Micah’s birthday week (which will be celebrated this year at Bounce U, the scene of all my sensory nightmares–thank you very much Nathan), which means it’s been three years since Kathy died. I hate to sound like a broken record, but sometimes I just don’t believe it really actually happened. I just don’t. These are always hard weeks for Nathan, and this time is no different. I just hate it. If there was ever anything I wish I could fix, wish I could undo, this would be one of those things. I keep having these awful dreams that take days to shake. I have a few images that I can’t get rid of, and I know Nathan and Kathy’s family have thousands more that are even worse. Two Sundays ago, someone was wearing this certain T-shirt that I associate with that day, and I thought I was going to have a panic attack. I simply don’t get it. Nathan is exactly the father he should be–I just always see someone missing. I know he does, too. I won’t tell his story here (and obviously his grief trumps mine by 1000%), but I am still really processing this. And not well much of the time.

But, every so often, her son snatches a humongous buttered breadstick from my plate like a feral animal and shoves the entire thing in his mouth before I can blink, and I just have to laugh. Come to think of it, he snatches food off my plate a lot. And he calls me ‘Nessa.

That helps a lot.

And that’s how MY day got started March 15, 2011

I have no purpose in telling this story, other than that it won’t get out of my head. I hate it when people do weird things and I never get to find out why.

I was on the way to work this morning, coffee halfway enjoyed and attempting to ignore the dinging that was my Blackberry telling me about all the work emails that came in between the time I left the house and the time I would get to school (I’m coming, I’m COMING!), when I saw something that is funny for no precise reason I can pinpoint.

I was waiting in line to turn off of the interstate, which takes a while at that time of morning. I watched a guy in a blue BMW hit and kill a bird on the opposite onramp (not his fault, it was a total suicide dive on the bird’s part), pull over, GET OUT, and take a picture of the dead bird with his cell phone. He saw me watching him, smiled like “Yeah, I know that was a totally whack-job thing to do…” and got back in his car.

And all I could think was, “I wonder if he’s going to post that on Twitter.”

Yes, that is the whole story.

I’m very, very sorry.

And that was pretty much how the rest of the day went. Better luck tomorrow!

Long Day Tuesday March 8, 2011

“Due to circumstances beyond my control…” — Michael
“…impulsivity and inattention to detail…” — Dwight

That may be my very favorite side-comment/interruption on The Office ever.

Anyway, that’s not what I came to say. That has nothing to do with anything other than I like it.

I came to say:

• I won’t, but I wish I could vent about my day here without A. Sounding like I’m complaining about a role I’m very grateful to have and B. Discussing things that have no business here. Sometimes, I collapse into my car completely drained of all human emotion. Makes me an enjoyable dinner companion, I’m SURE. You’re welcome, Andrew.
• Tonight, I registered my baby for Kindergarten. Hold me.
• We took her on a tour around the school (I used to work there and it’s humongous). When we passed by the gym, she asked, “Oh! Is that where we’ll go to scream?”
• Colin Hay. Gosh, I just adore this guy. Sweet friend Brian reserved a table for us, so we actually got to sit comfortably (3rd and Lindsley can be a crush on a night with a popular artist). I will say, he’s MUCH funnier when he’s not on live radio. And then, just to torture me, this guy  is there the next Sunday night. I don’t think I can skip out two Sunday nights in a row, so I’ll have to be content to listen on Lightning 100.

• BG is obsessed with the movie Tangled. Her current favorite activity is tying long things (almost anything will do) to her ponytail, carrying around a small frying pan, and talking to her imaginary chameleon. She will walk around the house for an entire day trailing this behind her:

 

• And y’all: I totally commissioned art! Classy. I saw this pretty mass-produced canvas at World Market (you know, where they keep all the things I love and wish I could buy), but it was quite small and WAY more than I would spend anyway. However, I have a thing for doors and took a picture so I could mull it over.

I showed it to my VERY talented friend Jennifer around Christmas, and (sort of) joked that she could paint one for me. I really was mostly joking, though everything she paints/draws/creates is beautiful. Well, she just brought me this:

How cool is THAT?

Things unrelated February 8, 2011

               Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

                                                                        -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

I love that.

All of the following items have one thing in common:

I’m typing them in the same list.

That is all. It’s really the bullet points that pull it all together, in my opinion. LIKE MAGIC. I’m satisfied with merely the illusion of cohesion.

• I never have enough time. Also, I do realize that every other person on the planet has this very same problem. Helps me zero!
• You know that thing you’ve been looking everywhere for? I found it. It was in my car. I just cleaned it all out, and whatever you need, I promise it was in there. Come on by and see for yourself. I’ve done all I can do.
• We are the proud owners of a booster seat for Baby Girl. Apparently, the kids these days need LED lights mounted into the headrests. I can’t help thinking we’re going to have a hard time convincing these little people to get jobs and work hard one day if we keep giving them all this cool stuff right out of the playpen.
• Speaking of, I was watching Baby Girl try out her new booster carseat, and I got this lump in my throat over how fast she’s growing up (not typical Vanessa, by any stretch of the imagination). I sort of wallowed around in that while I made her dinner, but she fixed my wagon. She came to me, sobbing hysterically, about ten minutes later. She couldn’t tell me what was wrong; she was just SAD. She wanted me to hold her (gasp!) and just love on her. So, we sat on the nearest steps and rocked and rocked until she felt better. Every once in a while, that long-legged colt of a smart-mouthed mini-teenager is still my baby. True to form, when she was ready, she bolted right up and asked me to help her find a hammer so she could turn the box the carseat came in into a pirate ship. In case you’re wondering, I did not grant that request. Just for the record. The last thing this kid needs is a hammer.
• Work. Totally overwhelming. The end.
• In response to that one–I’m afraid the creation of Netflix Instant is about to start making up for all the television I’ve not watched in about four years. I’m very impressed with the INSTANT. Right up my alley.
• Lastly, I have a crafting/creating bug going, but no ideas about what to do with it. I want to strip/paint a dresser, build a bookshelf, ignore everything and hyperfocus on some intricate stencil or cutting out something tiny…just something. I pretty much abhor the pointlessness that is Valentine’s Day (my husband is one of the lucky few whose wife actually means it when she says we don’t have to celebrate, really), but the cutesy DIY blogs are getting to me. I need to figure out how to make a knock-off of this (because no way is Pottery Barn getting that much of my money):

(Oops. Someone already did. Cool!)

Or make this.

Or this.

Or these.

Or this.

Apparently, I’ll be digging though my packed books tonight to find some Jane Austen. It’s that kind of mood. Who knew?

Good night, friends. Sweet dreams.

What happened here? December 10, 2010

 ETA: I posted this, deleted it pretty much immediately, and now I’m putting it back up. You know what? That’s where I was that day, healthy or not. It’s not where I am today, and the thing is whiny and self-serving, but that’s the purpose of a vent in the first place, right? It may come back down, but for right now it stays.

 

I’m sorry–this is going to be one of those cryptic vents. Do they still have those places where you can pay to go and smash a few boxes full of dishes? THAT SOUNDS FABULOUS right about now. It was a rough night.

I had this conversation just yesterday with two empathetic friends, so at least I know other people lose it sometimes, too. We even laughed about it. Maybe my memory and perceptions are skewed on this, but I’ve always seen myself as someone who is (most of the time) even and collected. When I would see other people flip out, even if I was right there in the middle of it and involved, seeing someone totally lose their cool and throw what amounted to an adult temper tantrum always made me just “click off” any frustrations I was feeling and let me find the ability to pull it together enough to just handle the situation and get on with it. Practical to a fault.

I don’t think I’m that person anymore. When I’m frustated, I feel like a ticking time bomb. I feel selfish and unreasonable; I feel like my emotions are not in sync with what’s going on and they’re often just firing randomly. I’m anxious in the face of nothing in particular, and completely ice-cold calm when I should probably be doing a good amount of justified freaking out. I haven’t figured out how to reset myself and start acting like I know I should when I should.

I know none of this makes any sense. It sounds about the same in my head, believe me, like white noise.

There. I feel better.

Now, I’m going to schedule this for later so I can decide if I should even post it or not. It helps to get it out, even just a little bit of it.

A klutz will always find a way December 9, 2010

Some points of no interest:

• I just flipped through the photos on my memory card and planned to post some, but it’s just too much work right now. I can’t muster the concentration.
• Yesterday, I hurt myself in the strangest way I can remember in recent history. I was leaving my office and somehow caught my ring on the door handle and almost ripped my finger off. I had an immediate circular blood blister line and my finger was so swollen that I couldn’t get the rings back on. I can’t at all figure out how that happened, even after examining the door with the librarian and laughing so hard I almost cried. I’m about 75% sure it’s not broken.
• Baby Girl’s brain just goes on pause while she sleeps. Without fail, whatever the last sentence out of her mouth is when she goes to sleep is continued with the first sentence out of her mouth in the morning when she wakes up. No “Good morning!” from this one. This morning it was, “and NOW can I build the gingerbread house NOW?” Kid, it’s not even 8 am. Chill. Mom needs coffee. And mascara.
• You know, I think not having TV for 9 months worked! BG just watched SuperWhy and then clicked it off, saying that she thinks she’s watched enough TV for today. Christmas miracle? I think so.
• Friends Kelli and Stephen came for a surprise visit and crashed at our place for a few days (this guest bedroom has been rotating people like a hotel). They’re moving to Thailand in January, so it was great to get to see them one more time. Photos and better details to come! Also, I got to have a very detailed conversation about why it is now okay for them to sleep in the same bed, but they didn’t when they used to stay with us. Pretty sure she thinks she gave them the power to sleep in the same bed by being the flower girl at their wedding.
• On a related note: Kelli? Did you take my house key to Arkansas with you?
• I need to be getting us out the door this morning for errands (well, that might be a little bit of a lofty description–BG and I have a coffee date in Nashville and we need to mail a package to Mr. Tim In the Desert and there’s a trailing to-do list after that), but I can’t seem to tear myself away from my Google Reader to save my life. ISSUES.