the expected whats-it

You know how sometimes your life gets really busy, and there's a ton of stuff going on and you're moving in a million directions (or in my case, you and your spouse are moving in a million directions, sometimes not the SAME direction, all the while sharing a car)??

That's me, right now. There's a lot going on. The list that follows is a boiled-down snippet of our schedule the past and coming weeks:

June 16-17 - Ashley away on business
June 21-28 - Ashley away on business
July 7-9 - 9 teenagers, ages 17-19, are staying at our house
July 8-9 - Ashley's college roommate is staying at our house (that's today, yay!)
July 9-12 - Brian's sister gets married the 11th and Brian is doing a large portion of the service; we spend these days in Brian's hometown, 4+ hours south of us. (This is the part where we bring back our second vehicle, joy upon joy.)
July 15-17 - Ashley's brother gets married on the 17th; we spend these days in the bride's hometown, 4 hours north. We also drive back the night of the 17th, because...
July 18-19/20 - We fly 2000 miles west for a face-to-face visit with a potential new employer for Brian. Ashley comes back the evening of the 19th, Brian comes back sometime the 20th.
July 24-26 - After work on Friday, we go to the beach, where Brian is performing a wedding on that Saturday.

Add a few crises in the mix, and what you have is a genuine, bonafide mess of a human being, for right now.

People say that this is what life is all about. I'm trying to just sit back and 'enjoy the ride.' What do YOU do when your schedule is out of control? (If applicable:) How do you stay connected with your spouse when you're so busy?
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Manic Monday #174

It's been a while, and I'm behind the times. Nevertheless, here is this week's Manic Monday! Play along here.


What is the longest love relationship (partner) you have had, and if it has ended, why?

The longest relationship I've had lasted about 4 years, with the last year of it being somewhat 'undefined.' It ended because he is a jackass and I wasn't ok with it any longer. When people ask me what happened, I just say this: that our relationship was great while we were in college, but it didn't work when we started transitioning to the real world. A lot of relationships are like that. You change in college, you change when you're finding your way after college. Our changes weren't compatible. Plus, the older he got the more of a tool he became.

Incidentally, I was with that guy longer than I've been with my husband :) And I'm way happier and better off.



What is on your bedside table?

I am currently reevaluating the things I want to have on my bedside table, so this list might shrink. But with that said, my bedside table currently holds a 3-wick candle with a YUMMY smell, my iHome ipod dock/clock radio (which needs replacing because the buttons don't work most of the time, argh), a framed picture of Brian and me on our honeymoon, a framed letter he wrote me shortly after we started dating (so sweet!) and the stack of books I'm reading or hope to be reading soon. My faithful copy of the American Heritage Dictionary is hanging out there for now, too, in an effort to continue recouping the vocabulary I lost with the head injury.



How many pillows do you have on your bed? Do you make your bed every day?

I sleep with one pillow, Brian sleeps with 2. Along with those, I have 3 decorative pillows that I put on the bed most days. No shams, no major foofiness. Plain light quilt that coordinates with the sheets and pillowcases, and the sometimes-present 3 decorative ones. Love. We make the bed almost every day; a lot of times, I'll go in there to make it and Brian will already have straightened the covers! Again with the sweetness. It's so much easier to make when there's no fuss - he doesn't feel alienated, girlied-out, or overwhelmed/put off with ridiculousness, but if I feel like adding 10 seconds of effort, I can toss the pillows on top and get my cuteness fix. It works (well) for us.

Michael Jackson

I was in Philadelphia, my friend Laura's apartment, when I learned that Michael Jackson had died. Growing up, I didn't listen to his music much. Most of the folks in the circles I frequented spoke of him disparagingly and I wrote him off as another 'person of the world' as I listened to my CCM favorites.

It wasn't until college that I really listened to anything he had done. That's when I realized his talent. That's when I began to wonder about the musical genius who had become the eccentric, scandalized weirdo. Would the real Michael please stand up? I'm also pretty sure that at one point or other I bought Thriller on vinyl.

I don't know that I would ever consider myself a fan of his, although for years I have admired his talent and wondered about him as a person. Is he a freak? a creep? a criminal? or just another person who couldn't handle excessive fame and fortune? I randomly caught one of those E! True Hollywood Stories about him years ago, and every time I would hear a song of his, or of J5, playing, I would get really sad for the man he had become and the experiences that drove him there - not to mention the pain and negativity he brought to the lives of an unknown number of individuals.

Michael Jackson as a whole is incomprehensible, but Michael Jackson the eccentric really is not that hard to understand. All you have to do is listen to his record Childhood. So much of what he created to be his life appears to be a desperate attempt to find a dream childhood to become something like the elvish Peter Pan. Peter Pan never grew up, and in so many ways, Michael Jackson tried not to.



Childhood
Michael Jackson

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for the world that I come from
'Cause I've been looking around
In the lost and found of my heart...
No one understands me
They view it as such strange eccentricities...
'Cause I keep kidding around
Like a child, but pardon me...

People say I'm not okay
'Cause I love such elementary things...
It's been my fate to compensate,
For the Childhood
I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?

People say I'm strange that way
'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate,
For the Childhood I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
The dreams I would dare, watch me fly...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me.
The painful youth I've had

Have you seen my Childhood...

real live mystery

No talk of books this morning.  We've got ourselves a puzzle to solve.

This morning, like most mornings, I got up before Brian.  I went to take the dog out - he goes outside through the kitchen - and I noticed that all over the tile kitchen floors there was a brown splatter.  This was not there last night.

I looked around, checked other places for any sign of the whatever, didn't find any, and sat there puzzled.  (Notice I did not clean it up.  I'm not about to get elbow deep in mystery goo until I know what it is and I know what will get rid of it effectively.  I just...won't use the kitchen, yeah.)

Brian woke up a few minutes later, and before I could ask him about what he spilled all over the kitchen, he showed me similar-colored brown smears all over his hands, asking if I thought they were blood.  I said I didn't know, but that it was all over the kitchen floor too.

After a series of questions and poking and looking places, we learned that Brian did not (knowingly) go in the kitchen last night; it's not a nose bleed because his hands are the only place it appears on him, and it is nowhere on his clothes or pillow or anything.  JUST the kitchen floor and his hands.  AND, I can vouch that there is/was no meat in the fridge last night that might have dripped everywhere if moved or taken out.

Bizarrrrrrro.....  cue the creepy music.

purses

At the beginning of this year, I carried a pretty big purse because I was job-hunting and I needed to keep my records, job descriptions, spare resumes, etc. with me. The bag I got was a really great shade of plummy purple, and it was tall enough to keep a portfolio but not HUGE - it had a slim profile.

After I started full-time permanent work, I didn't need to keep carrying around my portfolio. I lost the paperwork but kept the giant bag. And I bred in myself a new kind of crazy. My purse became the thing I've often sworn it would never become: a giant pothole of cluttery papery doom, heavy and lumpy and not convenient at all, attached to my shoulder and requiring me to adjust my stance just to port it.

NOT COOL.

Around the same time I decided I was going to lose my mind if something purse-ular didn't change and soon, I stumbled across a bin of my 'spring purses' (whatever that meant) up in the attic. Small cute bags! many of which I've had for years and still love! Perfect. Time for the switcharoo and re-establishment of at least one sector of sanity in my jumbled-up head. I picked out my favorite, a cheery little bucket bag from Coach a la 2002ish, with red and white and various-shades-of-blue stripes. It is SO CUTE and actually does not clash with a good portion of the outfits I wear.

This is it. Frugalista purse nirvana. I love it, I didn't have to buy it, and it's too SMALL to get cluttered up and jumbled, right?

Say it with me: WRONG.

I am now faced with a super-cute bag that is big enough for just the essentials, though I am not really a 'just-the-essentials' kind of girl. Time for a new strategy. I think it's time to be a grown-up and actually clean out and declutter my purse on a regular basis. Because clearly I have a problem.

Do you carry a purse, backpack, handbag, briefcase, or other related carry-all? How often do you find it needed to be cleared out?

manic monday #171

This week's Manic Monday questions:



If you joined the circus, what act would you most want to perform?

I'd want to be either an acrobat, or the lady who plays with the elephants. Those things are cool! And this may or may not be a response to the novel Water for Elephants :)



Would you generally be overdressed or underdressed at a party?

Ick, on the hit-or-miss scale I am almost always a miss. And sometimes it's because I'm overdressed and sometimes it's because I'm underdressed. Or dressed in the right level of dressiness but my actual wardrobe choice is a bomb. Things I think are cute end up not being cute. I am not very good at dressing myself.


Do you feel that children should be sheltered from unhappiness?

No. I think kids need to learn to be disappointed, angry, uncomfortable, etc. I think the notion that 'everybody wins' and 'there is no best and no worst' are doing no favors. Kids are people too, and I don't think youth means you get an exception to being let down by life.



Play along here!

booking through thursday

From the BTT website:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”



I'm not sure I can come up with 15, but here goes:

- to kill a mockingbird
- tuck everlasting (i don't remember too much of anything from my childhood, but this and the next one come soaring through)
- the fall of freddie the leaf
- early from the dance
- crazy aunt purl's drunk, divorced, and covered in cat hair
- a year in provence
- chasing cezanne
- the reluctant tuscan
- water for elephants
- the time traveler's wife
- back when we were grown ups (i will always wonder how rebecca ended up)
- peace like a river
- tuesdays with morrie


most of these are novels. i think the reason that novels stick with me harder is that most of what i find 'sticky' about books is wondering how things turned out long-term for the people invovled. with memoirs and nonfiction, there isn't a whole lot of wondering to do because it really does play out. with novels, most of the time you don't get the next installment down the road. it's like a friendship cut short for me.


Read other responses here. How about you?