Inane Chatter

What made me think it was a good idea to have tea for breakfast and a cup of coffee when I got to work (yummy delicious flavored coffee with too much sugar) and then another cup right after lunch?  I’m jittery.  Tapping my fingers, clicking pens, jiggling my knee…  Anybody need anything auctioned off?

Is it possible to go through a day without a to-do list?  (I started with “get through life”, but that’s too big.)  Seriously, though, one day.  There will always be something, right?  Typical (and very very basic) work day to-do: shower, go to work, do work, come home, make dinner.   At a minimum.  There are always things like go to the bank (didn’t do that today), plant the new trees that arrived today, pick up the contact lenses when they come in, buy new running shoes, call a deck guy, clean the house, exercise, feed the dogs, make your bed, clean up after breakfast (and many many more, of course, with hundreds of variations for those with kids).  What would a day without a to-do list look like?  Maybe if you slept outside (no need to get out of bed or let the dogs out) and were fasting (for spiritual growth, let’s say, so no need to prepare meals or clean up after them).  Your to-do list could be as simple as 1. Wake up.  2. Go to sleep. Would you have to add 3. Watch the clouds float by?  Nah, that’s optional.  Doesn’t need to be on the list.

On the other hand, who really needs a list to get through the usual parts of the day (like shower, go to work, do work, come home, make dinner)?  So maybe I’m not even talking about a to-do list.  I mean, I don’t make a list to get ready for bed every night.  (1. Pull hair back.  2. Wash hands.  3. Take out contacts.  4. Floss.  5. Brush teeth.  6. Swish with disgusting medicinal mouthwash for recent tooth thing.  7. Wash face.  8. Wash with other face stuff.  9. Dry face.)  I just do it.  In that order.  Every time.  I don’t need a list to remind myself to eat breakfast or turn off the burner after the water boils for tea.

Where am I going with this?  Is this about goals?  About direction?  About being a teensy bit obsessive?

Maybe?

You didn’t really want to be productive any time in the next few months, did you?  Of course not.

This is what the internet was invented for.  Puppy cam!

I’m not allowed to have breakfast this morning.  No food, no water, no nothing for six hours before my little procedure (tooth-related, no big deal, but I’m going to be knocked out ’cause who wants to be awake during a sinus lift?).  I figured I’d sleep in a little, play on the internet, read, whatever, and then go.  Sleep in a little turned into sleep in a lot.  Woke up just before 10.  And now?  Time to go.  Am I hungry?  Not in the least.

Shouldn’t have said that.  I’m a little hungry now.

I have a problem.  It’s called food.  I love it.  I’m back on the PAY ATTENTION, STUPID method of watching what I eat.  As of yesterday.  This weekend was full of distractions.  Anyway, I know what my scale is telling me (ugh), and I know what my mirror is telling me (eh).  I’ll get there.  In the meantime, I’ll take what validation I can get.  I walked into my Kukuwa class last night, and this very nice woman (tiny, petite, adorable) came over to me and told me I looked slimmer.  !  I love her.  Meet my new best friend.  (Sorry, Bridget.)

Flatter, as a verb, is kind of funny.  And appropriate.  Flatter is exactly what I want to be.  In most places.

The health care industry worked at super-speed for me today.  I went from work to my doctor’s office to the hospital and back to work in 90 minutes.  The visit to my doctor lasted no more than ten minutes (if you count parking the car and waiting for the elevator).  It mostly consisted of twisting my ankle around and poking and prodding.  “Does this hurt?”  “No.”  ‘Does this hurt?’  “No.”  “Does it hurt now?”  “Not really.”  “How about when I poke the bone really hard?”  “Yup.  Hurts.”  (Before you ask why I was there at all if nothing hurt when the doctor asked, it hurts when I put weight on it and lean in any direction.  I was sitting down when she twisted, poked, and prodded.  I tried to tell her it mostly hurts when I’m standing up, but she wanted to do it her way.  Silly doctors and their silly training.)  Then she bundled me off to the hospital for an x-ray.  Apparently, the radiology department does walk-ins.  Fifteen minutes after I arrived, I walked out and drove back to work.  Super-quick.  I barely had time to read my book.

Later this afternoon, the doctor’s office called with the results: my ankle is fine.  So….what do I do about the pain?  Not much, apparently.  I’m not supposed to do any exercise that puts weight on it for a week to ten days.  Which is kinda not cool.  It pretty much confines me to the exercise bike, which is not my favorite thing in the world.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day (no work – all prep for leaving town), so I’m going to take advantage of tonight’s quiet to listen to some yoga/spa-ish music and relax.

That’s how I described why I had to go to the grocery store today.  If I don’t go, I will make bad eating choices.  We don’t want that.

I realized (again) this weekend that I am a creature of habit.  We went to John’s parents’ house for the night (last night), and as I decided what to wear and what to pack for the ride home, I realize that I was about to choose the same two t-shirts I always wear when I go there.  And it’s more than just when we visit his parents.  I always travel in these shirts.  And I’ve always done this.  I have countless vacation pictures of me traveling in my Stomp t-shirt (purchased at a Stomp concert at Centre College my junior year in high school), and now I have countless vacation/holiday pictures of me in this green t-shirt I picked up at a Timberland outlet.  It’s so comfortable.  I can’t help it.

Wednesday evening, before I went to gym for my class, I had the windows open (because it was a beautiful day), and I was singing along to some of my favorite new songs (using the TV and the big speakers, because I can).  My next-door neighbor came up to me in class later and asked me if John’s band was practicing earlier.  I turned crimson, I’m sure, and said “No…that was just me being loud.”  How loud was I?  She said she was outside, so at least she couldn’t hear me from inside her house,  but still.  That’s me, disturbing the neighbors.

I had some major balance problems in my strength class last night.  I kept teetering over during lunges, and when we were doing push-ups on the balance ball (you lay on your stomach on the ball, put your hands on the floor, and walk yourself forward until the ball has rolled down to your shins and ankles), I rolled off three times in a row.  I wasn’t the only having problems, though.  The guy next to me tried to take out my knee with his weights when he rolled off during chest presses.  I forgave him; he looks like Jon Hamm.

Speaking of celebrity look-alikes (who are all around – it’s getting weird), I ran into young Stockard Channing again recently at work.  An eerie resemblance, at least in part because she’s not that young.  She’s like an alternate version of Stockard Channing – another way she could have looked if she’d aged in another direction.  I know exactly what I mean by that, but when I read it over, I don’t know exactly what that means.  In the same meeting, there was a woman who looked (and sounded) like Catherine Keener.  Maybe it WAS Catherine Keener!

To add to the weirdness in that building (I was downtown when I went to the meeting with all the celebrities), they have a public bathroom that – wait for it – actually smells good.  It smells like flowers, clearly an air freshener and not actual flowers, but it’s a nice air freshener that doesn’t seem to be just covering up bad smells.  I like that bathroom.  I don’t want to hang out in it or anything, but it’s my bathroom of choice before I hit the road to come home.

Oh, oh!  Wildlife sighting!  The dogs and I were jogging on the trail this evening, and I saw NINE DEER.  At once!  Just hanging out.  They saw us, but they didn’t run (which is why both of my arms are still attached to my body – I think if the deer had taken off, the dogs would have, too); they sort of ambled off into the woods, looking back at us over their shoulders.  Nine of them!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many deer in one place.

When I got home, I got a little lost in TV Tropes.  If you’ve never been there, be warned!  Don’t do it at work!  It can sometimes be hours before you come up for air.

It’s been a very exciting evening.

I’m sore all over.  I’m tired.  My brain is fried.  Lightly, like tempura, but still fried.  (Is it insensitive of me to refer to anything Japanese?  I don’t mean to be insensitive.)

I just got an email from TurboTax that says “It’s time to put the ‘fun’ in refund!”  Good luck with that ad campaign.  If I dream about doing our taxes, we’ll know they put subliminal messages in their emails.  I’ll let you know.  I’ll be doing important investigative work in my sleep.

It’s amazing how much easier Friday is to get through when you didn’t go work on Thursday.  I should take every Thursday off.  Or take ginseng or ginkgo biloba or whatever the memory-enhancing stuff is.  I’m totally losing my mind.  The other night I went into the dry cleaners to pick up a pair of pants I’d dropped off that morning (the ones someone dumped coffee on the day before – that was fun).  The guy hung the pants on the rack next to the register for me, I paid, and then I walked out of the store.  He came running after me, shouting “Pants!  Miss!  Pants!” and waving my pants over his head.  That’s not embarrassing at all.

End of story.

I have weeks where work takes over my life, when even though I’m home doing things I enjoy, work is still on my mind.  What I’m going to do tomorrow, how I’m going to solve that problem, what I’m going to tell the client in the next meeting – those things buzz around in my brain when I’m trying to relax.

Then I have weeks where work might as well be on another planet as far as my brain is concerned.  It’s taking everything I have to concentrate on work today (and clearly, since I’m here, I’m not doing a very good job).  My brain would rather be making phone calls and appointments, taking placement exams and registering for classes.  Or READING.  I had an appointment today (x-rays that determined I will have to have a sinus lift before I get a new molar), and I was able to finish No Second Chance.  Good.  It was good.  I want more!  It’s cold outside, but it’s sunny.  Why can’t I be out there enjoying the sunlight?  I’m not stressed – far from it – but I’d like to be able to enjoy my zen-ish state somewhere other than this gray cubicle.

…for things to get stuck in trees.  At the corner of the park down the street, a kite.  Makes sense.  Kites, trees – there’s a connection.  A few streets over, a tree in somebody’s front yard has a football stuck at the very top.  About halfway up in the same tree, a tennis ball is wedged in the junction where a branch meets the trunk.  As I walked by, three boys came tumbling out the front door with a mini Nerf football, arguing about whose aim was better.  Now I know how the football and the tennis ball got stuck.  Tomorrow, I’ll probably see the Nerf football up there, too.

I’m trying to get through my to-do list, but I don’t have the motivation.  I tried today.  Called the insurance company to check on coverage.  Got frustrated and wasn’t able to mark it off my list.  I understand the necessity of menus and options when you call companies, particularly on weekends, but I really hate the ones you have to talk to.  I had to go through three minutes of “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.  Did you say medical or help?” just to find out that my insurance company’s customer service center is closed on weekends.  Tell me that up front!  I much prefer using the keypad.  Actually, I’d rather do it online, but I can’t get to that level of detail online.

Work has been hard, and I’m not looking forward to going.  This morning, I found myself trying to find a day in the next week or so when I can call in sick.

I’m about to leave the house, and when I leaned forward just a few minutes ago to shut down my laptop, I saw lots of cheerful little rainbows on the wall in front of me.  The buttons on my sweater are beveled glass, and the sunlight must be coming in the window at just the right angle to refract (it’s refraction, right?  It’s been a while.) through them.  Made me feel a little better.

I have nothing but work stuff on my mind tonight, so I’ve decided not to post.  And I came straight here to post that.  Probably counts as cheating.

Sadly, I don’t think it works that way.  I did two classes back to back this evening at the gym.  Work today was a nightmare, I left late with no time to stop at the store, got home with barely enough time to change and get to class, and I still had to pick up my dry-cleaning first.  So I dashed into class and found a spot near my neighbor (Have I mentioned that my next-door neighbor comes to this class?  We’ve chatted more in three evenings than in the last five years.), a little out of breath, and within two minutes, I was calm, relaxed, and happy.  It was SO nice to not have to rush, to just BE there.  I didn’t get that any other place today.  I’ll be looking for it the rest of this week, but with three days in DC in a row (starting tomorrow), I don’t think I’ll find it.

I’m a snorer.  I can’t help it.  Most of the time, if I snore at all, it’s quiet enough and not constant enough to bother John.  (Or so he says.  It certainly doesn’t bother me.)  Unfortunately, we had a little change in the weather recently, and I’ve been the tiniest bit congested the last two nights.  Just enough to start snoring.  Just enough to keep John from sleeping.  His reaction to my snoring?  Jiggle the bed with his leg.  It’s like a small earthquake, but I know it’s a signal from John that means “Ohmygodyou’resnoringpleasestopNOW.”  So I roll over onto my side and try to go back to sleep withOUT snoring.  It doesn’t last.  More bed-jiggling, more rolling over, more guilt on my part ’cause the last thing I want to do is keep John from sleeping, and while all this is going on, neither of us is quite awake enough to consider moving to the guest room.  This morning, though, that was the first thing on my mind.  I’m awake, I’m exhausted, and I’m sleeping in the other room tonight.

It’s funny what an unexpected internet outage can do to an evening. Since yesterday was my day off from exercising, I’d planned to spend some time reading my regular blogs (it’s been a couple of days) until John came home and we ate dinner.  Instead, I got home from a whirlwind day in DC with my boss (We commuted together and were in almost every meeting together – that’s a LOT of quality time.  I value my time alone in the car after days like this; I need it to relax and let the day go.  Didn’t happen.) to find that we had no internet, we had no phone (we have Vonage for the house (needs internet) and my cell phone battery was dying), and the problem seemed to be with the cable company.  At least we had power.  It was cold in the house, so, while I waited for John to come home so we could have stir fry for dinner, I made myself some de-caf Earl Grey and curled up under a blanket on the couch with my book.  My new book, a mystery set in post-WWI England with a haunted detective.

The internet came back this morning (obviously).  I missed it.

Erik and Margaret came over this afternoon so we could get some very important things figured out about their wedding: what music they should use for the processional and what wines they should serve at their reception.  Very important.  The music part was definitely worked out (but it’s a secret – I’ll tell you only that there will be guitar and singing).  The wines…a little more testing (and tasting) might be needed.