Being on Facebook sometimes just makes me think about ex’s. I have ex-friends, ex-co-workers, ex-professors, and ex-boyfriends that show up in my Facebook suggestion box, and when they do I kind of get annoyed. I mean who does Facebook think he is reminding me that these people are no longer in my lives? But every now and again, on a slow Sunday I think to myself, “Self, maybe you should ‘friend’ that person, send them a little note and see if there’s a possibility of being friends again”. Then I lose my nerve and I move on. (more…)
Archive for July, 2011
Ex’s
July 31, 2011Dishwashing
July 30, 2011There is some sort of freedom that comes from the ability to allow your dishes to sit in the sink, counter, kitchen table, or living room overnight. Ahh to leave a dish sitting on the stove for more than a day sounds a little like heaven right now. I’m not sure if I’m alone out there, but I feel this need every day to “reset” our house at night. We put away August’s toys and books, throw away any junk mail, put the pillows on the couch back the way they were, hand wash August’s bibs, put my wallet, keys, and cell phone all in a place where they can be easily found, load the coffee for the morning, and we wash all dishes either by hand, or load them into our dishwasher (which is not that great, so we still sort of have to hand wash them to a certain extent). And at the end of every evening, I find myself yearning for my life when I didn’t feel the need to do all these things before going to bed. I find myself thinking about being a sloth, not being so organized and not so addicted to coffee (is there any parent out there not addicted to coffee? Although I have to say that I blame pregnancy for my addiction to coffee – since I stayed away from it during the pregnancy and then tried to have very little while breastfeeding). (more…)
Monk
July 29, 2011Anyone seen this show? Since we don’t have cable, I’ve have caught a few episodes on our local SF TV channel. I find this show highly amusing for many reasons, but mostly because I’m not only vastly different from this guy, but also because I have people in my life that remind me of him. In case you don’t know, Monk is a detective of sorts who’s completely anal retentive, or maybe it’s obsessive compulsive. I’m not even sure if that’s the right word choice, but basically he likes everything just so, every pencil must be the same length, every coat hung the same way in his apartment, all suits are neatly tucked away in some order that makes sense to him in his closet, and he is constantly cleaning his hands and doesn’t like to touch anything or anyone. As his assistant says about him, “He has a little problem with germs.” (more…)
The bleepin’ green light
July 26, 2011Since I quit my job, I no longer own a computer. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never had to buy a computer because in college I borrowed friends’ or boyfriends’ computers, and since working companies gave me one. But here I am now without a computer and therefore Brent and I are sharing his Apple. This pains me to no end because I kind of loathe the Apple company, but it’s either this or buy a computer, and that seems wasteful when we’re not swimming in money. But what this really all boils down to for me is there is no IT to help me at my moment’s notice. When something goes wrong with our computer, I can’t just call an 800 number, file a ticket and get it fixed within 24 hours. Now I have to make an appointment with the Apple store and go down there and shell out some undetermined amount to fix the stupid thing. (more…)
Do you catch more bees with honey?
July 25, 2011Brent and I have different approaches to naps – I try to keep things as quiet and stable (noise-wise), and he tries to make as much noise as possible. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but he has been known to grind spices in our very close-by kitchen while he’s sleeping. Meanwhile, I don’t even flush the toilet in the bathroom right across the hall from his room. Neither approach is perfect, but they work for us. I’m officially in charge of naps now Monday – Friday, which means no toilet flushing for me during nap time. (more…)
Reverse Commute
July 24, 2011Before I quit my job, I commuted with the best of them. I worked until 5pm, left work, hopped on one train from Oakland into San Francisco and commuted with every one else in the Bay Area to arrive at my writing class. At 5pm, sometimes you get a seat on the train, and sometimes you don’t. If you look around the train you would find people doing mostly one of three things: listening to their headphones, playing on their I-phones or texting on their cell phone, or reading. What did I use to do? I slept. If I could get a seat on the train, I would take the extra fifteen minutes of peace that I wasn’t going to get in class, and I certainly didn’t get at home, and just slept. To be fair though, I used to do this when I lived in New York, before I was even married. I love my sleep, so I’m the first to take every opportunity to grab a few extra minutes. In fact, it’s quite impressive if I do say so myself. I only have fifteen minutes, and in that time I have actually had dreams. I’m that asleep.
Anyhow, last week, for the first time, I took the inbound train (not the outbound train like before) at 5:45pm to get to class. I immediately took my seat on a mostly empty train. At first nothing struck me, but then, an outbound train passed us. That train was packed with people reading their papers, texting on their cell phones, and listening to their headphones. Suddenly, it occurred to me, I was doing a reverse commute. I looked around my train car and the people looked much more unique, more relaxed, and certainly not like they were headed home from work. These were younger people, students maybe, or tourists, hard to say, but not nine to fivers. A smile took over my face. I was no longer a part of this world, but merely looking at it through a window. I felt relieved and lucky, and when my stop arrived, I skipped off, bought myself a coffee and gleefully headed to class.
Writing class
July 23, 2011On Thursday we had to talk about our “journals” we’ve been keeping during our course. I’ve been assuming that this blog is my journal, so I went in and talked about it. The teacher asked all sorts of questions about our process, what time of day we write, what struggles and successes we’ve had, what types of things we write about, and how often we’re writing. Her first question, however, was what do you write on : a book, a computer, scraps of paper, etc? When it came to be my turn to share, I said that I write my journal as a blog. I suppose I should have realized this would make the conversation a little different from everyone else in the class, but it never occurred to me. I thought we were just going to share some excerpts from our journal, not talk about our actual journals. I’m the only one with a blog (or I’m the only one who admitted to having one) besides the teacher. Because of this, the conversation got a bit derailed. We discussed things like who reads my blog, what do I talk about, how am I applying what I learn in class, do I do the “try this” exercises on this blog, etc? At the end of the conversation she asked for my website address. Suddenly talking about my journal wasn’t so easy. My immediate thought was “Okay, as soon as I get home I must double-check my posts and make sure I didn’t say anything bad about anyone in class”. I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. You never know what one little rant can turn into. (more…)
Ramblers
July 22, 2011One of my biggest pet peeves are people who ramble on, and on, and on. You ask them a simple question like “How’s the weather where you are?” and they go on for twenty minutes beginning with a discussion about their car and how they just washed it, and they had to wash it again, the pool cover wasn’t on, and so now the pool has to get cleaned, and then the discussion moves to how there’s too much chlorine in their pool and they think it’s stinging their eyes, and it just goes on from here. All I asked was “how’s the weather?”. A simple answer of “it rained last night” would suffice. I was really only making conversation to begin with, and I didn’t even care what the weather was like. My fault. I should have never asked. (more…)
