26 May 2006

i'm fresh out of clever today.

i think it's because of a significant lack of drama/angst/conflict.

even the drive in this morning was peaceful and easy (unless, of course, you consider the battle i fought against the three 3 who invaded the fin-mobile this morning in the 30 seconds that i had the door open to get in and who beat the crap out of me for almost the entire 45 minute drive - yes, the rotten buggers, they took turns, and what's worse is i only have two casualties accounted for, which means there's the significant possibility that i will endure further biteage on the way home).

i'm off work (after a half day today) through wednesday, and while i'd like to say that i'll be blogging in the interim, i can't really make it a promise.

the weather looks hopeful with only today being the last in a line of grey - - but even today is supposed to be warm. it's possible that it will get ugly again toward the beginning of next week, and while i would like to be miserable over the prospect of that, i have to reserve a little of my gruntledness because i have to think about the slew of other workers who won't be having free time on tuesday and wednesday and have a little heart. if the weather is beautiful, great... if not, also great because i'll still be at home getting some much needed mental relief.

if i don't check back in over my mini-vac, please please please have a great holiday weekend and be safe. if i do, i'll most likely reiterate the sentiment at least a time or two more.

25 May 2006

Sunny Day...

my friend Q has convinced me to come to a tanning booth with her... well, not the same booth, but for a friendly afternoon of tanning session. i figure that with a month in front of me before i'm off to scorching Las Vegas (even if it IS only for 3 days most of which will be spent indoors at a conference of data monkeys just like me) it wouldn't hurt me to get a little base tan. she has her own reasons which aren't mine to share.

so i've been doing research... yes the kind that makes the idea of fakenbaking still scary to me, and the kind that makes me feel more secure in my choice of salon - as i'm not at all keen on the idea of skipping into a storefront converted into a tanning factory. it's A S T O U N D I N G to me just how many of these establishments there are. the cool part is that i can modify my cellular DNA, promote skin cancer, and speed up my skin's aging process for less than $40 for a one month package at a very nice and respectable place. even better that at this establishment Q and i can share the less-than-$40 membership between us. I like this best because it means that if neither of us is too keen on the whole process after our first or second tries, we can chalk it up as a total loss for less than it costs to buy a decent meal.

truth be told, i'm something horrible old school. at 15 i was out in my bikini on a blanket in the back yard no later than the second week of may. trips to the ocean (or any other beach for that matter) were for NO other purpose than taking my skin to that wonderful shade of copper that i love. and even now, i'm sure to wear a tank top when i'm working on the yard - not so much because i get crazy hot doing that kind of work (which i do) but because wearing a t-shirt gives me the rattiest "farmer's - tan" tan lines.

over the next few weeks, if you need me and can't tell where to find me, check out the not-so-bikini-clad lady sweepin' the clouds away...

24 May 2006

shh, shh, she's coming... everybody hide

no one was surprised yesterday when my Keirsey sorter advised that i am introverted... i'm quite possibly the least social person on my floor, possibly even in my department. don't get me wrong, generally i like people (some days) and - especially one on one - i can derive great pleasure from conversation and company. still, i definitely like my own company... almost best of all.

a good surprise... even though the queen of requests is still at my ankles, yesterday she asked if i could teach her how to find some info herself. we have an hour book this morning to walk her through some of the simpler stuff.

a chilling surprise... after getting home and leaving the front porch open for exploration while i dressed the girl and got ready for a quick trip to the grocery store, my cat went out to enjoy the (finally) fine weather. i SWEAR i looked for him all across the porch (except in the baby's play tent, WHY would he go in there?) before we left. on returning (and opening the car doors) the better part of an hour and half later, i heard the painfully familiar plaintive cries of my darling g-man as he came out of the play tent and across the porch to stand, all accusation, in front of the door begging to go into the house.

backstory - - Ghengis is, by his own choice, an indoor cat. this is because once, when he was very new, a friend who was watching my house (and cat) for a weekend, in the middle of december, inadvertantly let him out, and left him out when he left on Sunday afternoon. by the time i got home on Sunday evening, gg was very VERY cold and utterly miserably, and completely decided against the outdoors as a general rule. after MANY years of slowly working on him to enjoy the outdoors, he's recently taken to hanging out with me on the front porch - with it gated and the front door propped open so that he can return to the comfortable confines of his indoor life at his will. no kidding, the minute the front door is closed - - accidentally of course - - he's standing at the threshold grousing to get in.

still - the trauma for me of finding him out on the porch wasn't as much that he was outside, but that the front porch gate was wide open... had something caught his fancy and led him into the woods, he could have been gone gone gone, and the completely destructive force of an already less than good day would have been complete.

opting against pushing my luck, i had a quick cup of soup, a good cry - - as much from exhaustion as stress and woe - - and went to bed.

i'm spending the rest of the day (well, apart from the time i spend training the queen of requests) looking for zen...

22 May 2006

shades...

according to colorgenics, i'm lonely and frustrated.
according to pandora, i like my music in a minor key.

sorta gets a girl to thinking, "do I really love the sunshine and bright skies and loveliness of life, or am I just a sad neo-goth-punk with delusions of optimism?"

oh, please, come on. i only like my music dark because it's a way for me to dim the brights... my music is kind of like sunglasses... no matter how much you love the sun, no one wants any MORE premature crow's feet...

ok - so the whole story from colorgenics started out with a comment about my love of life, so... i guess i wasn't giving you the whole story, but since when is the whole story interesting enough for the hook line? (and sinker?)

i'm actually totally grooving on the sunshine and blue skies of the past few days - - even if they are accompanied by unseasonably cold air and strong winds. it still feels really good to sit in the car and bask in the sun.

18 May 2006

crash - - boom

after sleepless night after sleepless night, last night was supposed to be blissful slumber. i was supposed to have reached some peace of mind and, with a new approach for attaining certain goals, i was meant to have found a night of rest.

at something around one the first "blinding even through my eyelids" bolt of lightning accompanied almost simultaneously with wall and window rattling thunder yanked me out of the sleep i was just slipping deeply into.

these jolts of nature repeated themselves throughout the night on a schedule patterned almost exactly to match the time it took me to crawl back into my skin and get back to sleep.

then the alarm clock started ripping new channels into my brain at (it's usual time of) 4:30 am.

i'm fairly certain i haven't had a dream since Saturday night / Sunday morning.

when i was young i used to think it would be really neato-bosquito to be able to control the weather; to be able to clear the skies just because i wanted sunshine. now that i'm older (and purportedly wiser) i know that wishing to control the weather means things like - no matter how much you want and need a blue sky and warm sunshine, as long as your mood is grey, you're not going to be able to make the clouds part.

and i'm just the slightest bit afraid that when your heart is troubled and where you fall on the 1 to 10 scale of "doing the right thing" is very nearly a mystery to you, there's a good chance that you're going to have a hard time sleeping through the storm that's shaking your soul.

16 May 2006

annie

the sun is supposed to come out again tomorrow... at least for a while. i am so desperate for this to happen that i've decided to actually believe the weather-caster-folk.

in the meantime, i'm planning on allowing myself to deeply experience the grey and rainy that keeps trying to infiltrate my mood, and maybe even have a good, long, cathartic cry.

15 May 2006

The Season

back in the day it was traveling season. now it's wedding season...

i'm speaking, of course, about the time between Mother's day and - oh - probably Halloween.
this year i only have one wedding to attend... it's one i'm keen on, though... a dear friend who's looked for a long time and finally found a love to live for. (i don't like the phrase "to die for" i think it's sort of ridiculous, really, that if you were to find something super great that you would die for it, rather than live for it... but that's just my silver lining showing, i think)

it's also "dream about traveling" season, or possibly "wish you were traveling" season. i have some mental health time scheduled for the end of the month... starting next friday and wrapping around the national holiday into wednesday. i'm back in the office on thursday that week, but since it's only for two days, i think it should be pretty cool. i'm not going anywhere... maybe a day trip road trip - - maybe to a dairy with real ice cream - maybe not - - but no real travel. it's too expensive, really...

and there's a possibility of travel at the end of june - business travel - my first ever in my life. i'm a real duck out of water... more on that as more becomes clear

i've decided to take the day before independence day for myself (and my family) as well. and september is vacation.

the wedding is end of july by the bye. i'm hoping i can get back on the wagon and lose enough weight by then to wear this (or at least something similar) to the event... time will tell.

my fingernails are growing - more than i would ever have expected they would, especially in the growing season... but i expect that has a lot to do with the copious amounts of grey sky and rain we've been been suffering lately. it's kind of put the kibosh on weeding (woo hoo) and planting (sob)... it makes work easier though.

ok - that's about it for now... i have some stuff (i.e. crap) to do

12 May 2006

mega mix

i listen to a lot of radioio80's. it's what i listen to when i'm not listening to NPR (honestly, i love it when Nina Totenberg reads off the Supreme Court transcript... i'm fairly certain she's much more entertaining / enjoyable than tapes would be) - - so yeah, it's either Nina or Siouxsie. Shine on little dichotomy... i am indeed a half a moon... half reflecting, half dark.

it's been a rough week... no - it's been a rough patch. i spend as much of my time floundering as upright. if it were just my private life it probably wouldn't be so weird, but it's at work too - days when i feel like i just can't get anything done... days when i tornado my way through everything and end up, at noon, hungry for more.

i worry about instilling enough stability in my daughter's life, about being the right role model. that's a very stabilizing thought... until i realise that she doesn't see me or even deal with me for nearly 10 hours a day on most days. it's pretty easy to be a total jack-off when she's not around... i just have to level out and watch my mouth by the time i get home.

i drive a station wagon - really, am i THAT hungry for stability? ok, really it's just common sense and the fact that i like to have room for crap... a baby has a lot of crap - - if i were talking in front of her i'd have said stuff - - and without the room for it, you're just a ridiculous expression of "holy 'stuff', i wasn't ready to be a parent" when for me that's just not the case... i was SO ready to be a parent... i'm just having issues with all of the peripherals, i guess.

actually, the ONLY thing in my life that I feel like i've got the gist of is being a mom (thank goodness i feel that way just in time for Mother's day, no?) and even that is sketchy when i remind myself that it's fairly easy to think you have the gist of being a mom when you spend 50 hours a week away from your child... and people wonder why i don't want to go out and do grown up stuff.

i just did the math on my excel spreadsheet - - i get about 51 hours of time with my daughter a week. this is inclusive of time when she's helping me do the grocery shopping, laundry, gardening, yard work, lumberjacking, vacuuming - - which she hates - - and all of the other little house things (apart from cooking because except for a few things that she's allowed to help with, having her in the kitchen right now is just too dangerous - she's walked into the open refrigerator door resulting in a bruise on her forehead more than once - i don't even want to think about her in the presence of knives or bacon grease. i get only one more hour with her (awake, that is... you can factor in another roughly 56 hours if you count unconscious sleep time) than i do with work and commute... oh yeah, sign me up for the "mom of the year" boards.

probably i should just stop now. i didn't want this to be a nega-blog.

happy mother's day to everyone who is a mom, or has a mom.... heck - happy mother's day to y'all.

11 May 2006

only two answers

recently my friend reminded me that there are only two answers: "yes" and "no"

sure, i realised that there's always "it depends" and "maybe" and my mom's old standby "we'll see"; but if you rule all of those into the "most likely a 'no'" category - - as i do - - there are really only two answers.

that helped me have the courage to ask about my department sponsoring a business trip that i would really like to take.

chances are they'll probably say no - but at least i asked, and i won't be wondering a month and a half from now if i could have gone.

it's a very neat prospect.


in other news - it's raining and is supposed to continue on being ugly and mostly miserable for the next interminable span of days. i don't necessarily hate inclement weather, but at the same time, it draws me to miserable thoughts... like: "today would be a great day to stay at home and curl up in bed and be grey and foreboding like the sky". of course, if i were planning on playing hookie, it would HAVE to be on a beautiful day when i could actually enjoy it. truth be told, whenever i've stayed home on rainy days, about all i have done was curl up and grouse around and behaved much like a big ugly grey cloud. it's better that i'm here, where i can draw my tablecloth across the window that looks down a hall and out two windows that only serve to make the grey look greyer and more miserable, and not impose my grousy-butt mood on anyone that i really, truly love.

except, of course, you - - dear reader - - who at least don't have to witness my scowl

08 May 2006

green (around the gills)

when i woke this morning, i felt as if i had had three hours (or maybe only 2) and that someone had inadvertently set my clock ahead by somewhere near 5 hours. really, i'm NOT kidding.

apparently there's this nifty trick inside the combination of Aleve (for the muscles) and Zyrtec (for the allergies) [both side effects of a weekend of digging in the dirt, trying to rid the hill in front of the sitting garden of all things weedy - - and only making limited progress] that encourages the body to tune out and sleep deeply, but also prohibits the brain from recognizing that the sleep actually occurred. NO - i'm not kidding - geez! - i really think there's something chemical that happens and the brain just can't register the rest. other times when i've take the same "cocktail" i've woken up KNOWING that i slept very soundly, but feeling like i had barely taken a nap.

the good news on the tail of the work week is that i spent the entire weekend (mostly) in the garden of doom and walked out without being - - knock wood - - hit by the poison ivy.

the bad news on the tail of the weekend is that the baby is still suffering the lingering ravages of the virus that has attacked her tummy, and while she can keep food in on the top side, she's still harboring a "sad" bottom. i agonize to know that she's miserable, but that really, there's not much we can do but force the fluids, try to get as much solid food into her as possible, and try to keep her focused on the fact that it's ok to be sick, it happens to everyone, and she's not an unbearable burden because of it. she's so sensitive...

03 May 2006

spring cleaning

i scraped the gunk off the feet of my mouse and now it moves freely again.

that's it - that's the limit of my actual spring cleaning. the rest has been effectively lip service: spring laundry (nominal amount of that even) and "spring-moving-stuff-from-one-place-to-another".

i'm sorry, i've been busy with other spring events like:
- - spring berry planting
- - spring herb garden
(which sounds a bit like something from chia)
- - spring playing on the grass with the baby
- - spring hair cut
- - spring barbecuing
- - spring shopping
and soon
- - spring sewing
- - spring hair color

probably none of my list of sprung is as cathartic or wholesome as spring cleaning, but even as i wade through the detritus of my winterness, it feels really, really good to have that all under my belt.