All My Little Words

I am having serious time and space issues. There is not enough of either in my life, although if I could fix one, I’d choose time for sure.
Yesterday felt good, getting so much done, doing something pretty much every minute of the day, all day long. Sounds crazy, right? But most days it is hard to get motivated to do anything as I never have enough time all at once to do anything because of my crazy, broken up schedule, and it’s very frustrating to never get anything done. It’s also crazy frustrating that I can’t get anything done while I’m at work but not actually working. Every time I start something I have to stop, yet I waste so much time sitting around when I think I shouldn’t even start in the first place.

Every day, I think about how much better it would be for everyone in our house, if only I didn’t have to work. It seems crazy to even contemplate the possibility at this time, with all the crazy shit I hear about people selling their wordly possessions because they can’t afford food or gas. But at the same time, we’d probably save money if I never worked because we’d probably never eat out and I wouldn’t be driving around so much wasting gas (I don’t actually drive that much anyway, but for the sake of argument).

Mostly though, i just can’t understand how anyone gets anything done when they work and have kids, yadda yadda. I guess they don’t do anything else in life besides work and take care of their kids, which is hard enough to squeeze in, even if you totally disregard any sort of social life or “hobbies” or artistic endeavors. I got so much done yesterday, yet there is still SO much more to do, and I am back to work again today.

I don’t even really have time to write what I just did, but if I don’t I start to get kind of nuts, as all the thoughts stack up in my brain, sort of like that room in everyone’s house where you just throw stuff, thinking you’ll get around to dealing with it later. But then you never do.

Ever moved and not bothered to change your address with the DMV because it was just too much of a hassle? Well, so have I – in fact, when I was younger and moving around way too much (I still move far too much for my own personal comfort) I just left my license addressed to my parents house, as I knew that if I lost the license and it was returned there, or if I ever got any important mail regarding my license, I’d get it from them just as quickly as anything. And of course, they’ve lived in the same house for over 20 years now.

Well, last night, I discovered just why you change your address, and you do it within the ten days they tell you to (because really, it never seems like it matters, does it?) If you do not change your address, and you happen to -OOPS- do something which may potentially get your license suspended, then you will not receive the happy little letter that they send you informing you of this, and then if you -OOPS- get pulled over after the date the suspension begins, they will arrest you and put you in jail, even if you are unaware that your license is suspended because you didn’t get said letter.

No, this did not happen to me, but to someone I know. Thank Bob not anyone who lives in my house, either. And from what I understand, this person DID change the address at the hearing for the infraction which put him in a position to have a suspended license, but clearly, it should have been done when he moved because they still had the wrong address and the happy little letter didn’t get to him on time, and I’ll bet that night in jail wasn’t any more pleasant than it would have been any other way.

So today, I will be calling to make sure that my address is up to date (in the state of Washington, you have to go into the DMV to get a shiny new one with your proper address – if you change it online or by phone, you don’t get a new one, they tell you to just write it on the back, which rubs off btw, and so I can’t just whip mine out and check it, ’cause you KNOW that I didn’t go and wait in line for that shit.)

It seems as though the snow and hail have come to end, so I have a big day of planting stuff ahead of me. Sage’s birthday is coming up, so there also will be the planning of the party and gathering together materials to make invitations, as that is what he wants to do this year. I’m okay with it, we’re only inviting 4 kids, so it shouldn’t be too horrible.
On the technology side of things, I’ve got the second computer working hard playing music and downloading all at the same time. Soon it may be making mix cds, and downloading photos from the camera and uploading them…somewhere.
Last night, I set up the media server – go me! Alex sent the instructions and I did the rest. It was actually a little too easy, other than having to figure out that anything you actually want the PS3 to play has to be loaded into your Windows Media Library, then, DUH! you have to restart the PS3. That done, we watched a couple of episodes of Dexter together last night. We have been watching separately thus far, now we can watch together, hurrah!
This weekend I mentioned that I wanted to get a photo printer – a good one, I think. I have been wanting one for a while, but had thought I would prefer a portable that I could take to events and print photos on the fly. As I have not been attending events so much these days, I thought getting a nice one to print out nice prints to frame and hang in the house would be a good idea.
The problem? I have no effing clue of what to get. I looked and looked, and I did not find anything conclusive to help me decide what would be best to get. Instinct tells me to go with Canon, as that is my favorite for photo equipment, how could I go wrong? But logic tells me that there is a possibility that there is a bit of a difference between taking photos and printing them.

So if anyone can recommend a great photo printer (price hopefully not to exceed around $500!), let me know??

And back to domesticity…thank you to Sasha for coming into the house yet again with the muddiest paws ever.
Now I am off to clean up the house a little before I go to the bank and maybe Ye Olde Thrift Store.

As evidenced by this weekend’s Tweets, it did indeed snow, beginning with an actual accumulation on Friday that lasted through ’til Saturday morning. It snowed and hailed at least some Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I thought all this had reached a stunning conclusion yesterday, when two hours after it had been snowing like it was January, the sun came out and it was WARM. Too warm for my coat, maybe even a little warm for my sweater. Alex and I spent the afternoon traipsing around in the sun, buying stuff for the house (a much needed cabinet for the bathroom, a Dustbuster, also known as “best way to make my life easier”, a frame for a poster that I got for Chop Suey’s one year anniversary 5 years ago, and some outdoor plants) and joking about how everyone was complaining that morning that they wouldn’t be able to do anything outside that day.
It seems as though the outdoor plants may live indoors for a bit longer, though, as my theory about the weather changing may have been blown a bit ago by a shower of hail. Of course, now it is sunny again. Yesterday I said I think Mother Nature has been off her lithium, perhaps.
I must be “maturing” finally, as this is the first time I’ve ever bothered to frame anything, really. The poster deserves it, and it looks great, I just never get around to such things. It will be really funny when we find frames for my Damned and Siouxsie posters which are both probably about 20 years old, and while they’ve both hung on many a wall, neither one of them has ever been in a frame. I like the idea of a testament to my history being a bit better preserved.
Speaking of maturing, my body has been for a while now, and I have made efforts in the last several years to preserve it. One of the reasons a new cabinet in the bathroom was warranted was, in part, to hold my many tubes of facial cleansers and bottles and tubs of moisturizers. My efforts on my skin apparently work, as I am often thought to be much younger than I am. My body still hates mornings though, as well as exercise. This is a topic much on my mind lately, as the domesticity in my life has added a few pounds back onto my frame. Ironically, when I was at my slenderest, I did not exercise at all. I think I was just really active and not around to eat much, or too busy perhaps. Everyone will say “You just need some exercise now” but I hate it. I’ve done plenty in the past, and it didn’t make me feel better. It made me angry. I was paying $60 a month to get up in the dark and freezing cold to go and do something that I didn’t like because that was the only time I could really get in there, as it was so crowded all the time? Sure, overall, maybe I felt a bit better than I do when I am feeling my worst, but I never felt fan-fucking-tastic or anything. So, because there is no way I am going back to the gym, and because I will not break my knees and shins by running (something I have also done plenty of in my life, thanks to the track team) I bought some little weights so I can at least maybe prevent myself from getting lunch lady arms. I suppose at some point I will have to add in some crunches to keep from getting a full on muffin top, and if it ever becomes spring for real, maybe my bike can come out of the shed and my ass will get a little less huge.
Honestly, all of this sounds really unpleasant to me. I don’t have time for this and keeping my brain stimulated and going to work and having a life and and and…I am already gasping for air.

At least two weeks later, my house is still pretty clean.

Ugh.

….it sure is raining. And it is absolutely brilliant.
Everyone else hates the rain, and most seem to think I’m insane for loving it. I feel like it has been so socially ingrained in everyone to hate the rain, that no one can appreciate the beauty of a wet world. maybe it is because I grew up here in the rain, or maybe it is because I have to look at the world through more of a lens. Even though I am not a professional photographer, I see the way I see the world as being more of a photographic perspective, as my eyes are quite sensitive to light. Not only is bright sunlight painful to my eyes, but every bright sunny day is like a never-ending series of washed-out, overexposed photographs. Colors aren’t as bright, things aren’t as sharp.

On a rainy day like today, the grass is extra green, washed clean of dust and sparkling with droplets of water. All of the freshly deposited mulch is black, rather than muddy grey-ish brown from being dried in the sun. Even on an overcast day like today the light out there is more than sufficient – I find myself squinting (oh, the wrinkles!) – to see the myriad of colors, but against a deeper, darker backdrop they are much more like jewels.

And the sound of it pouring down on the roof and the skylights is probably my favorite sound in the world.

This weekend it is supposed to be cold. 20 degrees colder than it ordinarily would be at this time of year. Cold enough to snow, maybe.
One week ago, it was sunny and 75. Everyone flipped the fuck out. It was like someone put drugs in the water supply, everyone was cracked out on sunshine, all sweat and crazy Tom Cruise grins.

Even I, a lover of fall and winter – an appreciator of any season NOT SUMMER, really – am ready for some warmer temperatures and maybe a few rays of light peeking through my beloved clouds. Yet, as everyone else last week was singing the glories of SPRINGSPRINGSPRING, it’s finally here, hallelujah from the mountaintops!!! it all felt false to me. Not springlike at all, just another one of those dirty trick days that we usually get here in February (that we had for the whole month of February this year), the ones that happen all too suddenly to be the real deal.

I didn’t know why this one felt like a fake until this morning. It wasn’t the brilliance of the flowers, bursting with color out of every yard, even more spectacular than just a week ago. It wasn’t that it looks like an April showers kind of day. It certainly wasn’t because it is sunny and warm today. As I got out of the car after taking my son to school, I smelled the air. That was it. You can’t have spring until you have that smell, a perfect, undeniable freshness that can lift even the blackest heart into a state of euphoria. Not a crazy, grinning like a maniac euphoria, either. More of a close your eyes and breath deep as if doing yoga kind of feeling. That hot, sunny weather brings out a craziness in people (what, Son of Sam?) that puts me on edge. A day like today, cool and cloudy, but definitely overflowing with Spring, brings calm, peace and hopefully happiness.

Wednesdays are like Mondays to me, I have just had my last day off for a few days, and am faced with the longest part of my week. I really don’t have much to complain about though – the long part of my week goes a little like this:
Wednesday – Work one of the longest days in my week, 7 hours!
Thursday – Same as Wednesdays!
Friday – I usually only do a half day of about 4 hours, then pik my son up from school and hang out with him for a couple of hours until his dad picks him up.
Saturday – 6 hours! These can be brutal though, non-stop, no lunch, constantly ringing phone.
Then, the “short” part:
Sunday – Off
Monday – back to 7 hours!, but then…
Tuesday – Off again.

So on Wednesday, I’ve got 4 whole work days in a row to “look forward to”, and the first two are long. Everything feels much better at the end of the day Thursday though, as I’ve made my Fridays short, and we usually try to do something fun. Saturdays cause me serious anxiety, but at least it is over quickly. Needless to say, Sundays are my favorite.

Today, I was getting ready to take Sage to school and suddenly realized that MY LANDLORD WAS SUPPOSED TO COME BY. Like, right when I got home from dropping Sage. Oh. Crap. So I rushed to tidy up and quarantine my cats. Got back and really quickly did the dishes. Then he never showed up. Argh. Oh well, at least m,y kitchen is REALLY clean.

I have been keeping super busy on my days off. Yesterday was errand day all day long, by which I mean shopping. I do not like to shop, therefore it is a chore. I needed to go to Target and I don’t go often, so I try to make it good when I do go. So I was in there for a couple of hours. Then shoe shopping, which was GOOD, then grocery shopping because I needed a few more things to make homemade chicken vegetable soup, which we will be eating tonight, as I was the only one home for “dinner” last night.

I will say, I make some damn delicious chicken vegetable soup. I don’t use a recipe, so it is a little different each time, although the essential ingredients are the same. This time I put in some broccoli, which I never have before, just because it was lying around. Pearl onions in addition to some regular onion, just to try it. In addition to leeks and garlic, this soup often features as many as three types of onions. I season it fairly randomly, with the only real constant being salt and pepper, and usually throwing in something just because I want to use the last of it, or because I got a new jar of something and I want to throw it in there. It is always good. It is easy to make, if you don’t count the prep work of cutting up chicken and veggies.

I have absolutely no amusing stories to tell about the soup, I just needed to document my increasing domesticity.
As a side note to all of this, I rarely use recipes when I cook. Usually when I do, it is as a quick reference point, and I don’t actually follow the recipe, just use it for an idea. So it was pretty funny to me last night when I read something about John McCain’s wife plagiarizing recipes. Wow. I don’t even know what to say about that.

My morning, thus far, summed up in a text message.

“Still love you more. And your dog has muddy feet. But mine pooped, so I guess they are even. And they are bothe doing their best to make up for it by being the two cutest bad dogs ever curled up on the couch together. The couch that no one gave them permission to be on. That I can’t bear to kick them off of.”

And yes, that is one, single text. That is about the average length of a text message form me. This is the beauty of having a “PDA” style phone. Now that I have the OBJ back, I am an even better texter. It is actually superior to the BJ2, if you ask me. The buttons work much more smoothly.

Our house is in a constant state of needing to be vacuumed, despite the fact that we vacuum every day.
Other than that, I feel pretty good about the state of things here, seeing as how we are caught up on both the dishes and the laundry.

I have once again forgotten all of the VERY IMPORTANT things I had to say today, due to the interwebs being brokies at work AGAIN. As I have switched back to the OBJ, I didn’t even have Twitter programmed so that I could text in Tweets. Buh. Mer.

I have a ton of things to do tomorrow, but I don’t mind. The old OCPD wants me to make a list of things to do. But since I have turned the volume down on that, I am refusing. I am much less stressed out when I am not following a schedule, whee!

I really hate it when I know I had things to say, but now that 8 o’clock has come and gone, I have forgotten everything. Oh well, the ,laundry and I have a date with Dexter.

The rest of Friday was a bit of a bust. We didn’t get to Elemental early enough to get a table, so we went to Bizarro instead. I used to go there every now and then, and liked it quite a bit, but hadn’t been for a while. I’d read some reviews about it having changed and wanted to see for myself. It’s not really to my liking so much anymore. And the carafe of wine we had really did not agree with either one of us, as we were both useless after returning home, and were asleep on the couch in about an hour.

Speaking of being asleep on the couch – Alex was yesterday when I arrived home, having gone out for drinks with his co-workers after work. Unfortunately, this meant his poor cousin, who had come to bring Alex a new computer, was on his own until I got there and kicked Alex awake. They did their computer thing, and then we all went to dinner.  As the tone for the evening was already set to: “Pick on Alex’s drunk ass”, a very interesting conversation ensued. I’ll spare you most of the details, but Cousin Jay wins a prize for best comment.

“Alex, if there was no gutter, your mind would be homeless!”

On Sunday, poor, poor Alex had to endure my lasting wrath for the night before. He found redemption in vacuuming and laundry while I worked on the yard, then we took our worthless mutts to the dog park, where they had a seemingly fabulous time. On the way home, we stopped at this divey bar I know called The Viking, as it has great food. Two delicious sandwiches later and we were back home, folding laundry while we finished watching The Good Shepard, which we had already fallen asleep on 2 or 3 times. Booooring. It could have been a pretty good movie, but it just never really went anywhere.

We also installed wireless on my desktop, so I now have simultaneous use of TWO, count ‘em TWO computers at once. Sweet.