10.28.09
Fortuitous
I woke up this morning, certain that I’d forgotten something. What was it? Aaaaaggghhh.
5:15 crept by, then 5:30… and I couldn’t remember. And if I couldn’t remember, I pondered resentfully, I could at LEAST be getting more than 4 hours of sleep.
And then it hit me. Those yellow pieces of paper on my refrigerator, the ones symbolizing the ticket I’d gotten for a broken headlight¹ months before. The headlight I’d had repaired, but the ticket I’d not yet paid. It was after the court date, it was nearly November and the date was in October, it had to be.
Ah, but wait! There, on the piece of paper, was the court date. It said the 28th! And today… is the 28th! I’m not in contempt after all!
Whew. Just… whew.
Yeah. So I’ll be taking a wee detour this morning, it seems. But at least it won’t be a contemptuous one.
¹Oh, yeah. So, my headlights were BOTH functioning when I departed my point of origin that night – I remember seeing them both shining on the garage door. Which means it had to have stopped working between there and the speed trap I passed through, where the officer decided a busted headlight was worth pulling me over for. Probably when I stopped to get gas. Since then, I’m super paranoid about it – always checking to see if I can see two pools of light on the road ahead of me, which is probably impairing the quality of my driving.
10.27.09
Maternal advice
My mom told me to just throw out my life and go get a new one, yesterday.
I’ve just given up on expecting her to think before she speaks, really.
(1) Oh, so you think it’s encouraging to treat my life as something I could just toss aside? When I’ve only complained about one tiny little aspect of it?
(2) And you think I’ve done such a bad job of making a life (stable, gainful employment? check. Reasonably good health? check. Pleasant living environment in a good neighborhood for a reasonable sum? check. A hobby and some friends? check.) that I should just throw it all out and start over?
Look, lady. This is why I don’t come home more often. Because you and I both know what you’re talking about, and it’s none of your business. This is why I don’t come home more often, in case you were wondering.
10.26.09
Runaway imagination
When I think of someone who is always prepared, I think of the consummate soccer mom – or my friend who works in child care. These people have little snack-size Ziplocs filled with an assortment of bandages and antibiotic ointments, doses of analgesics, a Tide pen, a mini sewing kit, sunscreen, aloe, an assortment of Philips-head screwdrivers, and homemade granola bars.
And they have it all in one perfectly medium-sized satchel.
I am not one of these people, just in case that wasn’t clear.
What I do have in common with these people, is the ability to imagine what could happen. What worst could happen. Except, I don’t imagine in terms of bodily harm – I’m more focused on the emotional, for myself and those I care about.
So what do I keep in my virtual satchel? A few extra appropriately congratulatory reactions, several invisible pieces of duct tape (for when saying nothing is by far the best response), and an extra bottle of fortitude for when I’m tempted to forgive but really shouldn’t. Oh – and some tattoo concealer for those ego bruises.
I may not be able to predict how people are going to behave, but I can do my best to react in a predictably prepared (and mature) fashion.
10.22.09
I’ve been…
…attending a conference all day today. I know you’re all jealous.
But to the woman who didn’t seem to understand that my colleagues and I had planned to sit next to each other, and thus sat down in the seat we were “saving” for a latecomer despite the availability of several other solo seats in the vicinity, I say…
Really?
People are weird.
10.21.09
Heavy Lifting
Phew. Now that I’ve gotten THAT off my chest, let me confess something simultaneously lighter, and not.
I am a cardio junkie.
I’ve been going to the gym for years – I used the gym as a way to quit smoking, before I lost my mind and went to law school. And I’ve never been afraid of using weights – mostly the machines, but I’ve played around with the dumbbells and preset barbells over on that one wall, over there. And I thought I was in pretty good shape – a good 35-40 minutes of intense cardio followed by 20-25 minutes with weights and I was good for the day. I’d do this maybe 5 days a week.
Well, it stopped working. So I did the Shred, and that helped a lot – it was really different, and I definitely lost a couple of pounds, and that was a great thing, right before I went to the Bahamas. And then I was in the Bahamas at an all-inclusive resort drinking rum with a splash of Hi-C out of a 20 oz cup, and then I was in Vegas wondering how long I’d have to drink out of the chocolate fountain before security hauled me away.
It was time for a change, and it was suggested that I think about *real* lifting. The kind involving the equipment in the MIDDLE of that room, or along the other wall. The kind that takes a heck of a lot longer than 20-25 minutes, the kind that you can’t do well, really, if you’ve spent 40 minutes running on the treadmill at peak pace beforehand, and the kind that won’t let you run for more than 15 minutes or so afterward, before your legs detach themselves from your body and throw their letter of resignation down on your hapless torso.
I’ve been doing that kind of lifting. And I’ve learned what happens when you overload the leg press machine and then have to fold yourself into a pretzel to get out of it, shamefacedly remove the weights, crawl back in, and push it back up. (1) Nobody laughs loudly enough for you to hear, and (2) you become very determined to not use that machine unless the room is completely empty or football is on TV (I do legs on Saturday afternoons, now – college games provide excellent cover).
But what I really discovered, is that I am a cardio junkie. I miss it. I will leave my gym barely able to walk, nauseated by my recent efforts, and dehydrated despite having downed 36 ounces of water, and I still feel like I haven’t done enough, and I’ll continue to feel like that until the next time I can manage a cardio workout that lasts the better part of an hour.
Runner’s high – more addictive than nicotine. Who knew?
10.20.09
Other people’s choices
“If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” – Margaret Thatcher
If you look around… I mean, really, really LOOK, you see it everywhere. And I, for one, have never been so grateful for my penchant to sit back and observe, because I feel like I’ve just been handed a HUGE life lesson – one that, while mildly uncomfortable, could have been accompanied by far worse consequences if I’d learned it the way I do everything else.¹
I was officially gobsmacked this Saturday – and that’s not a word I use lightly (or ever before, to my knowledge), but there’s no other word that so accurately depicts my involuntary reaction to what transpired. I believed that things were one way, and was working towards improving a situation based on those assumptions – assumptions that had been bolstered by the assurances of the parties involved.
The thing about parties involved? They can… prevaricate. Obfuscate. Evade. Until they slip up, and are found out, which leads us back to the gobsmackedness.
In other news, your author can be incredibly naive, but has decided she’d rather be naive than cynical, and the actions of others are not a particularly good reason to start suspecting everyone.
In other, other news, I am also a lot more judgemental than I thought. Because when examining the choices of parties involved, I found myself thinking poorly of them not just for the prevarication, obfuscation, and evasion – but also for the impetus behind those actions. Really? That’s the thing you’re willing to trade your integrity for? And if it was worth all of that… wouldn’t you want to stand up for it, to advocate?
I have been extremely conflict-avoidant for a good portion of my life – when one grows up in a household where dissidence is verboten, one learns to lie at an early age – to give the answers most likely to please, rather than speak one’s true thoughts. Having seen where that leads as an adult, I can say that I’d rather be yelled at or ostracized for my point of view, than be a coward about who I am.
¹The hard way, of course.
10.19.09
Cleaning shrimp
iIt’s not something I do without good reason, because it is a vile and disgusting task, and I am not a fan. But when you want colossal shrimp, and you don’t want them from a bag of frozen-ness, you go to the store, you talk to the fishmonger guy, and you head home with a plastic container filled with enormous, yet very much in possession of both shells and intestine, shrimp¹.
This marks an interesting change for me. A couple of years ago, I would have been fine with picking up a bag o’ shrimp from my nearby grocery store, with store-bought bread crumbs and maybe even sauce from a packet. But I braved I-66 in the rain, toasted and food-processed my own breadcrumbs, and painstakingly stirred the beurre blanc into being from 5 distinctly non-powdered ingredients.
All for a very, very good reason. So all in all, this weekend was a win. Not only did I grow up enough to take some pride in my culinary crafting and final product, but I was lucky enough to have an additional, very good reason for doing so.
¹I have the actual recipe from the restaurant, which is considerably more complicated than the one presented there, and does NOT involve (shudder) any suggestion of hot sauce.
10.16.09
Arithmetic
I am working from home, and someone just sent me a link to a recipe for homemade nutella. Which, um. Is just hysterical. And, will not get me fired because I am going to wait until after I have signed off to run to the store for hazelnuts and scharffen berger.
10.15.09
Four things
Me, a stick, some balls, and a table with holes in it.
I was looking at my stats the other day, and noticed something. I am undefeated (knock on wood) on one of my teams this season, despite having played more matches for that team than either of the other two – nearly as much as the other two combined.
And I was trying to figure out why that is. As easy as it would be to blame it on the shots we do as a team-building exercise, I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m more relaxed with them, and therefore more focused.
Why am I relaxed? Because the captain of that team has a tendency to play me last – which means I stay late and don’t get enough sleep, but also means that we’ve usually already taken 3 of the 5 matches we’ll play – so there’s not as much pressure. And when I’m coached, I’m encouraged to take riskier shots – which makes me less concerned with failure, since my coach wouldn’t be encouraging me to take risks if he were going to be truly annoyed if I lost.
I’ve been trying to think of how I can bring this relaxation to my other teams – since I know nerves are at least partially responsible for poor performance, I need to up my mental game. So I think I’m going to create a little mantra – me, a stick, some balls, and a table. That’s all that matters when I’m down on a shot – no matter who is on my team, who’s watching, or what the consequences of that shot might be.
10.14.09
Helpful
For some reason, it has been suggested that I should quit my job, go get a degree in psych or social work, and hang my shingle as a therapist. I’m not opposed to the idea, so long as I can figure out how to deal with two types of people in an adult, professional manner. Oh, and how to not become poor in the process. I don’t want to be poor.
My former therapist (haven’t seen her in a while, you can debate the wisdom of that decision amongst yourselves) was particularly good at not offering advice. Rather, she asked a lot of questions that helped me figure out what was going on with me. And it would be lovely to acquire that skill.
But lately, a few friends have approached me for advice. And one of them is, in particular, an incredibly frustrating case. See, this person has come to me several times, about the same issue. And this person has an incredible capacity for rationalization – to the point where it seems that no matter what I say, excuses will be made, justifications will be attempted, and the end result will be… predictable.
And so I find myself wondering why this person comes to me for advice. What about these dialogues is helpful? Talking to me must be like bashing one’s head against a stone wall, in that I never ever seem to give the answers being sought… and yet the same conversations happen as though the “repeat” button were jammed in the on position.
I want to be helpful… but I have no idea what kind of help I’m supposed to give, to someone who has demonstrated a clear aversion to actually taking my advice.
