That’s Jenn’s painting in its new grey frame, our new grey landing, and a very cool poster/map/Shop + Dine Guide to Lamar Street I nabbed at SXSW2009 (with the lovely Joy Pecknold) on the wall in my grey office. All presented in vertical stripes because they are oh-so-slimming.
If you look closely at the cork board in the center picture (which, by the way, I nabbed years ago from Roommate Katy’s junk pile – She made it herself) there is a picture in the top left-hand corner.
This picture, to be exact:
That’s me on the right, watching with equal parts awe and jealousy as my late PaPa allowed my older brother to clean out his fingernails with his pocket knife. What I was jealous of? Equal parts Attention from PaPa and I WANT TO PLAY WITH THAT KNIFE.
I love that picture. It makes me smile every single day.
There are not many weekends that leave me with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. My personal to-do list is as perpetually-growing as my professional one is; I almost never cross as many things off the list as I add in a given day. The few times that I can recall feeling accomplished after a weekend were after large projects were completed. The time I painted our entire bedroom with my mom, the time that I finished making all my Christmas presents, or the time I re-arranged all the furniture in the house by myself. I also feel this way whenever I’ve actually achieved having my entire house clean at the same time. It doesn’t seem like it’d be that hard–everything has a place, right? But it is hard. Usually, when the kitchen sink is shining, the office is suffering. Or if our office is perfect, including neatly organized drawers and closets, our bedroom is a wreck.
Anyway, my point in all that is to tell you that I am feeling that level of accomplishment today. Saturday I journeyed down to my friend MP’s house and we sewed until our fingers bled. Quite literally. I started a project I’d been putting off for about 5 weeks now, and BOOM. I started and finished the project all in the same day. Painlessly, even, considering MP’s company! It was pretty fantastic.
Motivated by my super-charged Saturday, today I set out to accomplish more projects. Projects that I could finish. I started with painting a picture frame so that I could hang the artwork that Jenn gave me for Christmas! Done! And then, on the way to take my grey paint back to the laundry room, I walked through the hallway/landing (a weird 5X8 room in our house where all the rooms connect to each other. It’s not really a hallway, cause it’s too big. It’s not really a landing, cause we have no airplane traffic there. It’s just a weird space.) which clung to the very last bit of the beige wall color in the house. I looked at the walls. I looked at the paint in my hand. I looked at the paintbrush in the living room. And then I painted the landing.
By myself! Like a real grown-up! And what’s even more impressive, then I FINISHED painting the landing!
I was so stoked on all this starting-and-finishing I started wandering around the house looking for projects that I’d abandoned over time. Poster from SXSW 2009 that I still hadn’t hung? HUNG. And it took me all of 25 seconds to hang it. Why had I been putting that off for so long?
So, if you need me, I can be found just hanging out in my landing, trading glances between my poster, my framed art work, my freshly painted walls and my overly bloated sense of accomplishment.
I was flipping through the pictures on my computer today, and I couldn’t help but laugh at this one. It looks like I’m modeling my Nicole Miller Eyewear, doesn’t it? Target Vision models, watch out! I’m totally angling for your job.
Zack and I saw a license plate that read “EUNIQ” on the highway yesterday.
We looked at each other and both said, “Eunuch? Really?”
Upon our second look, we decided that perhaps the person was aiming for “unique” but missed the mark a bit. That, or they’re just equal parts proud and brave. One or the other.
(I bet, though, that even Unique Eunuchs know what labels are.)
While I was at work today I received a call from the office staff of the middle school where our 5th graders are going to go next year. She said, “Are you the office person?” I was like, “Yeah!” She goes, “Good. Our Counselor wanted me to call you and ask you to please have the labels ready by Tuesday.”
At this point, I knew as much about “The Labels” as you do. Absolutely nothing. So I replied, “What labels?”
She said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “I’m in my first year at this job, so I’m not sure what labels you guys get from us.”
She said, “It’s my first year, too. I don’t know, either.”
So I told her, hey, no big deal, just tell your counselor that I’m not sure what she means, and have her give me a call. She agreed and we hung up. I assumed that she wanted labels with information about our 5th graders that will be at their school next year, but I had no clue as to what size label she wanted or what information she needed the labels to contain. Or why she needed them by Tuesday.
Hours later, as I was on my way out the door for the day, the phone rang. I saw on the caller ID that it was the counselor from the middle school, so I set down my bags and answered the phone.
She asked, “Is this the office person?”
I answered, “Yes, hi, thanks for calling me back.”
She continued, “I understand that you had a question about the labels.”
I said, “Yes, I was wondering if you could tell me more about what it is that you need.”
And I swear to God, this is what that woman said: “Well, it’s like paper, but it’s sticky on the back. And you can attach it to things like folders or paper without having to use tape.”
I flexed every muscle in my body. I used my teeth to still my tongue. I pressed my knees against the edges of my desk, and wrapped my fist around the telephone so tightly that it creased my cord permanently.
I said, “Yes. I know what labels are. I was just wondering if perhaps you could tell me about what information you’d like the labels to contain.”
I am still dumbfounded. It’s like paper, she said. But sticky on the back.
I can not think of one single thing to write, and that’s Barbara Kingsolver’s fault. I always suffer from a touch of writer’s block when I’m reading one of her novels (The Lacuna is the one I’m working on right now) because DAMN. That woman can WRITE, you know?
Zack and I went to Bass Hall tonight to see a piano concert.
When we sat down in our seats, we landed next to an old lady who was hell bent on talking to everyone around her. Zack begrudgingly wound up right next to her (as opposed to having me sit beside her), and she immediately started asking him questions.
Stranger Chit-Chat is one of Zack’s least favorite things in the world. He gets disgruntled when I’m too friendly with strangers. This is unfortunate because I tend to start up conversations with grocery store cashiers, people in line with me, and, oh, just about everyone else that I make eye contact with in the public arena. Well, I used to, anyway. I’ve drastically reduced the number of strangers I converse with in public because of two reasons: 1.) Zack and his constant reminders about Stranger Danger, and 2.) Zack and his constant eye-rolling and quiet growling. He audibly groans at me when he hears a person say something that he knows would usually trigger a reply from me. The groan, roughly translated means, PLEASE PLEASE OH MY GOD PLEASE DO NOT START TALKING TO THOSE STRA…. DAMN IT.
So, in short, Zack and I sat down next to an Arts-Loving 75 year-old version of me.
It didn’t take long for Old Me to get distracted (another similarity!) and leave Zack alone. Soon enough the lights dimmed and the concert began. Zack and I ooched to our left 1 seat to give him a little bit of a buffer on his right side.
Old Me got up to go to the restroom during intermission. After she left, Zack leaned over to me and whispered that he was so glad we were able to move seats, because any more time next to Chatty Cathy and he was going to scratch his eyeballs out. Not long after that Old Me/Chatty Cathy came back to our area. She walked past our row to the row in front of us, then began systematically introducing herself to everyone on the row.
“Hi, I’m Betty Skank from Denton,” she said to the lady right in front of me.
Zack and I stole a very telling, but silent, glance at each other.
As she introduced herself again, the A in her name replaced itself with the rightful vowel, an I. “Hi, I’m Betty Skink from Denton,” she said to the next person in the row.
When she was done with that row she walked across the aisle, moving away from us. Zack and my communication changed from palm-shielded glances to under-the-breath whispers.
“I THOUGHT SHE SAID HER NAME WAS BETTY SKANK!” I whispered through gritted teeth.
“SHE DID,” Zack whispered. It was the most empathic whisper ever whispered in the history of the world.
I said, “No, she said SKINK, not SKANK. I misheard her the first time.”
He said, “That’s not a whole lot better.”
Then the lights went down again, saving the both of us from having to make eye contact with Betty Skank from Denton. I have no doubt that Zack will try to apply this story as a life lesson in the future. I can’t wait until he tries to make a Stranger Chit Chat situation less awkward by saying, “HEY BETTY SKANK, SHHHHHH.”
I know there should be some sort of a limit on the number of birthday posts one girl should be able to write about one birthday, but I haven’t seen that blog law posted anywhere and I still have one more story to tell.
Zack got me flowers for my birthday. He’s never sent me flowers before in the history of the whole entire world. To say that I was surprised is a pretty major understatement.
He ordered the flowers from 1-800-flowers, not knowing that they would arrive as buds-in-a-box*. He also didn’t know that I was going to be leaving work early that day. On my birthday, by a fluke, we both wound up at the house together at lunch time. I had a meeting to go to in the afternoon, and he was in a class that allowed an extraordinarily long lunch break. When I came home for lunch he was all, “So, um, are you going back to work at all today?” And I was like, “No.” And he was all, “DAMN IT. I SENT YOU FLOWERS.” That’s when we tracked the flowers (first clue that they were coming in a box) on UPS’s website (second clue) and found that they were marked “Out For Delivery” (it was this, the third clue, that really drove the point home, I think). He thought I was going to be disappointed because of the a.) ruined surprise and/or b.) the buds in lieu of flowers, but he was wrong. #1: I was still very, very surprised. and #2: watching flowers bloom is kind of really, really awesome.
In fact, these lilies have bloomed and bloomed so much that I’ve made two flower arrangements out of them, so that they’d have room to spread out and show themselves off a bit.
After he got home from work he told me that we were going to dinner! At a restaurant that is so fancy that it required a reservation! And I ate steak! Oh, birthdays are good.
Then, after we got home, we popped the cork on a bottle of wine we’d been saving for a special occasion. It was like heaven. Zack slam dunked all my favorites in one day: he provided me with flowers, steak, wine. Icing on the cake? He dressed up for dinner and even wore cologne.
Dude’s totally crushing on me.
*Thus the reason for the posting delay. I had to wait for the flowers to bloom before I could photograph them and post about them.
I turned into my mom tonight. I did that thing that grownups do sometimes when they go to the grocery store, buy a whole bunch of food, then come home and immediately cook it all. That’s right. I stocked the fridge with meals that are cooked tonight.
Also, Sarah1 and I went to go see “It’s Complicated” and laughed our asses off through the whole movie. On the way home she noted that perhaps the reason that we thought it so funny was because we’re kind of old. I couldn’t disagree–my favorite line in the movie was when Alec Baldwin told Meryl Strep that one of the reasons that they should be together is because her cooking did such good things for his digestive system.
In conclusion, I’m super old. But so is Sarah1. So that makes it okay, right?
*cause I have to go to bed. Cause I’m old.
My friend Betsy and I spent the evening babysitting the nieces. After we got the girls dressed for bed, I told them they could watch one video. The both immediately chose “The Kate Video.” Betsy was astounded that out of all the hundreds of kid show options they had before them, they chose to watch a Year In Review home video compilation that their dad, Matt, put together for them last month. My heart warmed as I watched Abbie, thrilled to be sitting in the lap of her new-found friend, excitedly turn around and make sure that Betsy was soaking in all the happiness of the video, checking that Betsy was catching every one of Kate’s happy giggles.
These girls are like magical happy pills. Needless to say, I’m feeling much better today.
