Why I never get anything done: Adulting gets in the way

I am so ready for some utter nonsense.

I work for a company that is pretty flexible in allowing people to work from home, or at least my manager is. Which is a good thing because I needed to be home to wait for the installation of our new washing machine. It would be even better if the washing machine was now washing part of the mountain of laundry in the garage, but it's not. Because the installation guys aren't allowed to work with corroded pipes, and evidently the pipes in my garage are corroded. (I feel like this is the beginning of a dirty joke, but it's not. It's just my life today.)

So I called our plumber ("where did you find this guy?" Captain America asks me. "From the business card on the fridge," I tell him. "It's going to cost us an arm and a leg," Captain America tells me.). The plumber cheerfully offers to come over tomorrow at 4:30. It's not perfect, but then this whole thing isn't perfect. But I can make 4:30 work because I have a flexible and understanding manager.

I open up outlook to send my manager a calendar notification telling her that I'll be working from home again tomorrow afternoon due to this plumbing debacle only to find that my internet is no longer working. I go into the office (I've currently taken over the dining room table for work because we've recently had a heat wave and the dining room has a ceiling fan but the office doesn't) to restart the router, and I press the restart button. And nothing happens. The lights don't blink on and off, there's no clicky sound of a button being pressed. Nothing.

I decide to use our old wireless router (we've very recently changed wireless service providers), which for some reason is still plugged in and working just fine, despite Captain America's cancelling the service. The old router is working just fine on my phone, but not on my laptop. It wants some sort of 8-digit all-numeric pin that the laptop is claiming is on the router. There is no 8-digit all numeric anything on my router.

So I unplug all of the routers, plug them back in, and track down about 95 different passcodes, Meanwhile, I've checked that we don't actually have a laundry emergency (Captain America has exactly one clean uniform left, so we don't need to go to a laundromat tomorrow), and I go to text him this information. And there's some sort of weird voice text bar sitting over my text box. So I can't actually see the words I'm texting. Which of course would be fine if the words I'm writing actually ended up in the text, but as autocorrect can be quite the bitch, I really can't rely on that. Fortunately, I'm just texting my husband and he already thinks I'm nuts.

I give up and call Captain America. Captain America asks me to reschedule the installation of the washing machine for Friday, and to call our internet guy to see if he can figure out what the problem is. Then some garble comes over the radio and he says "I'm at work. I have to go." I'M AT WORK, TOO, I want to shout. But of course, by this point, he's off saving the world and I'm only yelling at a bunch of uncooperative technology.

Fortunately, by this point the internet is working again, and I'm able to google my iPhone problem. And the solution is to power off my phone. Of course it is.

While my phone is powering on/off I email my manager to explain to her a) why I haven't actually accomplished a single thing since I left the office, despite being on line for 5 hours, and b) why I'll need to work from home again tomorrow afternoon. She writes back and says, "Oh. I forgot about you."

Clearly my job is impactful.

The rights of the reader

I'm currently reading a book called The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac. And it's awesome.

It might seem odd (or maybe not) that I'd read a book about what a wonderful hobby reading is, since I already love to read, but this book articulates everything I love about reading, and learning to read, and discovering books, in better language than I could dream up. When I write my official review, I'm going to pretty much quote the entire thing.

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about how mind-numbingly dull high school was. I really wanted to skip, say second through fourth grade. Which would have gotten me to high school at point in my mental development when it probably wouldn't have been so dull. (Although, emotionally, on the other hand, it would have been a train wreck.)

I commented to my friend that during the summers, I would easily read seven or eight books at the same time. (Now that I have work and grown-up responsibilities, my max is about 3 before it gets stressful.) What would happen is, my mother would go to the library a couple days a week (it was across the street, and she a librarian) and bring home some books. They'd be on the coffee table, the kitchen table, the dining room table, the porch. Some would make it upstairs into the (accurately, but somehow inaccurately named) TV room. Some would end up on my sister's bedside table, some on mine, some on the floor next to my mother's bed (see, Captain America, I inherited this trait!).

And as we mosied around the house, my sister or I would pick up one book, ask whoever was reading it how it was. We'd sit at the old-fashioned telephone table, waiting for a friend to pick us up to take us somewhere, and start a book that had been placed there as someone ran inside to answer the (land-line) phone (which was, ironically, located not on the telephone table, but in the kitchen, where everyone used to keep their phone). We'd start a book in one room, leave it to get a snack, and begin another as we stood at the kitchen counter (on one leg) eating a bowl of cereal.

We'd tear out strips of the Ladies' Home Journal that my grandmother would bring over as impromptu bookmarks. Sometimes there would be multiple bookmarks in any one book; part of the challenge was remembering which bookmark was yours.

Is anybody still reading this? my mother would yell as she readied herself for a new trip to the library. Sometimes we'd have requests...the second or third or fourth in a series...another book by the same author...a chapter book the kids we babysat were reading so we could catch up and understand what they were talking about when they called us muggles (was this really an insult or are kids just ridiculous?). Yes, even in high school, my mother picked out my books (she was, after all, a librarian).

Who does this belong to? I'd holler down the stairs. My sister would answer her friend, or my grandmother would claim it, or I'd have picked it up babysitting. Books littered my youth the way the shoes accumulated by the front door when we had friends over. (My father had more fits over the shoes than the books...I'm not sure if this was a pick-your-battles scenario or if books just stack better than shoes do.)

Books still litter my house. Instead of getting rid of some of them, we buy more bookshelves. Put the story aside, we're about to have dinner, my husband tells me. Could you put some of these on a shelf, he admonishes, Josafina is cleaning today.

My sister uses rule #2, the right to skip, and rule #3, the right not to finish a book (I can't bring myself to do this). I've mastered rules #4, the right to read it again (somehow Dobby dies EVERY TIME. It's still tragic); #6, the right to mistake a book for real life (um, hello, I have second breakfast EVERY DAY; if second breakfast is real, then by the transitive (or some such) property, Hobbits are real); and #7, the right to read anywhere (most recent bizarre reading location: in a bar during an MMA fight). My whole family uses #5, the right to read anything (I would add the emphasis ANYTHING!!), and #9, the right to read out loud (my sister and I were first introduced to Harry Potter when I read it out loud to her as she was recovering from surgery).

But my favorite rule is rule #1, the right not to read. I've never used it, but it would be a sad day if I had to read rather than got to read.

Oh, the joys of home ownership

I recently started reading Happier at Home, and the first chapter deals with possessions. (Gretchen Rubin is always dealing with her possessions ) For a while now, I've been trying to figure out why I dread using the laptop in the office, and I had the suspicion that it had more to do with me than the machine (the laptop works just fine). There's something about our office that just doesn't feel homey to me (I realize it's the office), but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Then, two weeks ago, Captain America and I moved the expensive, gorgeous chair we keep in the office into the living room, and the significantly cheaper Ikea loveseat into the office. (I had read somewhere that there was value in rearranging your belongings...something about being cheaper than redecorating, and that just moving them around stimulates that "something new" part of your brain. Or something along those lines.)

Anyway, we finally concluded that part of the problem with the office is that it feels cluttered, at least to me. (I'm sure most people would walk in and think it was uncluttered. This is my house, after all.) We decided that what we had was really the wrong furniture for the room. For instance, the drawer-unit on which we store the printer? I NEVER open it, if I can avoid it. As far as I'm concerned it is a cluttered mess and contains nothing useful. Ironically, this is also my husband's set of drawers. Apparently his organizational nemesis is office supplies.

Also, we have a bookshelf in this room that can only store large books because it has open sides. I bought this bookshelf because I liked how easily it folded up, which was a useful characteristic in my twenties when I lived in apartments with roommates, but it's really no longer useful, or at least not as useful as it should be (case in point, we have a much larger bookshelf in the guest room that looks a lot more chaotic, but doesn't feel more chaotic, mostly because everything fits in it just fine, and we can adjust the shelf heights).

So today, we went looking for a more useful bookshelf/storage option for the office. Which was a total bust. I've discovered that what I thought I wanted is called barrister bookshelves (my mother has some in her house, and I like how they close up), but they are ridiculously expensive, and work in my mother's house because she lives in a Victorian confection, but we live in a cookie-cutter 1950's era I-don't-even-know-what you'd call it.

What I'm somehow hoping to find is a low-ish, long-ish bookshelf that has some doors on it, so I can hide the unsightly office crap I'll have to put in it, but will still let me display the books. But everything we've found that is practically priced is way too tall for the space we have in mind.

And we now have six green chairs in the dining room and living room. That's a little bizarre, but we're going to work through that some time in the future.

Psychologically speaking, it's the pits

When I was in middle school-ish, I had this How To Host a Murder party called Archaeologically Speaking, it's the Pits, which has nothing to do with this blog post at all except for the title of the post. I feel better having cleared that up.

For the past week, I have been waking up with terrible panic attacks. What happens is, I wake up and my heart starts racing, and I say to myself, just get up and get going, and my blood turns to lead and I can't get out of bed (and I realize that if my heart's racing, you'd think my blood would be moving a lot faster than lead in my veins, but that's just not how panic attacks work), and then I think I don't have time for this, and if you get up, you can get the shit you need to get done done, and then there'll be nothing to panic about, but I still can't get up. And then, because I'm neurotic, I think, great, you're probably giving yourself ulcers and gray hairs, and stress causes zits, and all this adrenalin that you're pumping into your body for NO REASON WHATSOEVER is just going to cause you more problems, and then you'll really have something to worry about. Because that's productive.

For the past week, Captain America has been in New Mexico learning how to drive like a movie stuntman. Okay, not really. He's been learning offensive driving, and no, that's not what happens when you take driver's ed in New Jersey and learn to drive with your knees so you can flip someone off with your right hand while you lean out your window shaking your left fist at someone else, all while swearing, preferably in Yiddish. That's also not what he was learning how to do.

Last night, we went to my company's holiday party. So of course Captain America's flight was delayed. Conveniently the party was running on California time, so it didn't really matter at all that we were late. And of course, because we haven't seen each other all week, there was an immediate need to have an argument in the car on the way to the party. Captain America was grumpy because he had just flown and his flight was delayed and he was hungry and this party fell in the middle of a 10 day work week for him and finally I just blurted out, I can't do this right now. I've been waking up with panic attacks all week and I really need you to be charming and delightful like you usually are at these things because I work with really nice people and they all want to meet you and I want them to like me. (As an aside, my official start date with the company is tomorrow.)

And Captain America said, thank you for telling me you've been having panic attacks.

He didn't ask me why I was having panic attacks. He didn't suggest I go to the doctor, or make any suggestions at all, or pry for details or anything.

Yup, I'm married to a super hero.

Who needs angels when you have Captain America?

Why I need to get more sleep

So my sister moved out Tuesday and Captain America left yesterday to go to Oregon. So I have the house to myself. Except this isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds because it's close week at work so I've been working crazy hours, and I've been trying to be consistent about going to the gym because I don't want to blow my whole marathon training program by not running for a week the week before the marathon. I mean, what if I forget how? Or what if my butt gets even more wimpy and pathetic?

Anyway, so between work and the gym and various other chores, I didn't get to bed last night until 2am this morning. Which is sub-optimal in general, but definitely a few days before a marathon. While I was busy not sleeping, I started to think about that book I just read, Hour Game, in which the serial killer mimicked other serial killers, and I thought about how he observed that no one closes their blinds well enough. Which Captain America complains about as well (actually, he complains about me wandering around in various states of undress, while the blinds are in various states of openness...and no, this is not sexy. This is usually me about to get into the shower post-gym only to remember there's a container of yogurt in my bag that should probably be refrigerated and that while I'm walking around I may as well make a to-do list and pack lunch. Meanwhile, I'm probably wearing pants, a heart rate monitor, and no shirt. And I'm probably still sweating. So I feel like anyone who's busy peering at me through my windows while I'm in this state gets what they deserve. Except when Captain America is out of town. Then, I feel like I should make sure all of the blinds are in proper working order).

And then I thought about how I had left the front door open when I went to put the garbage can away, and that's when the serial killer probably walked into the house. He probably quickly hid somewhere, like the shower, taking the 50/50 odds that I'd either find him when I went to shower and he'd kill me then, or he'd just kill me according to his regularly scheduled killing plan. I thought, maybe I should sleep with the gun next to the bed, when I remembered that I can't actually get it out of the holster. And that Captain America keeps it locked when we're out of town. So then I thought I'd just get a big knife from the kitchen and sleep with that next to the bed, except I figured that would really just help the serial killer along, as he would have his wits about him, being awake and all, while I'd be all groggy and, well, dead. And then I thought my best bet would be to not panic and use up all of the oxygen in my lungs while I was being strangled. If I acted quickly and calmly, I could probably inflict enough damage on my serial killer to leave behind some DNA evidence, and the cops would at least be able to catch him with that. Assuming he had committed other crimes and thus already had a DNA record (that's how those things work, right?). He probably has already committed other crimes. I mean, it wouldn't make sense for the serial killer to pick me as his first victim, mostly because I'm in reasonably good shape and we keep a gun in the house. Unless I was specifically being targeted. Then all bets were off.

At this point, I decided I had just better go the fuck to sleep. And so I did. For four and a half hours. So needless to say, my mental capacities were not operating on all cylinders today. And I almost told the guy training me that I was not a recovering heroin addict.

Because he was eating chips. And we have magical food drawers at work. That somehow sprout snacks during close. And I told him that if he was eating chips, I'd feel like that meant I should be eating ships, and he told me, oh, YOU can have chips, in that sort of voice that suggests a double entendre, but I couldn't think of one, so I figured he was just as tired as I was, because he has a baby at home. So I got some Cheetos out of the magic drawer (I mean, maybe chip-eating was part of the training, and I didn't want to miss part of the training). I picked Cheetos partly because there wasn't much of a selection left, and partially because I figured he wouldn't want me getting yellow #7 on his keyboard, so he would just let me observe rather than think, which I was pretty sure I hadn't been doing all day anyway.

And, in case he argued with this logic, I was prepared to point out to him that if he let me use his keyboard, he should be prepared to explain to his wife why his fingers looked like they had been pollinating plants all day and not accounting. (Because you can't get yellow #7 off. No matter what you do. Too bad I didn't have any when the serial killer was in my house last night...the cops would have had no problem catching him.) Anyway, I imagined his wife being both pleased that her husband was concerned about the plight of the bees (you did know that the bees are suffering, right?), but concerned that the pay scale wasn't as high as accounting.

I figured after the Cheetos and the yellow #7, the least I could do was chew a piece of gum. And I even offered him one, too, 'cause I'm nice like that. And then I thought about telling him that when I'm stressed, like in grad school, I'd chew a piece of gum until it was dead, spit it out, and immediately start chewing another one. Like a chain-smoker trying to quit. Or a recovering heroin addict. But I caught myself and realized that that probably wasn't a thought I should say out loud at work. Instead I decided to share it with all of you.

And that's why I need to get more sleep. Although it doesn't look like that's about to happen quite soon enough.

Some thoughts on treats

So, you all know that I read Gretchen Rubin's blog, The Happiness Project, but she also writes a monthly column for Good Housekeeping. For some reason, we have a two-year subscription to Good Housekeeping. I think it was one of those perplexing deals where we'd lose all of our airline miles, OR we could get a magazine subscription for 100 miles and keep the rest.

Anyway, we get it every month. The September 2012's column by Gretchen Rubin was about small treats. She says small treats are great for when you need a "shot of energy and enthusiasm." She's made a list of small, inexpensive treats, like "treating" herself to a spray of perfume.

Rubin also says "when we feel depleted and drained, and when we have no time or energy left to devote to little activities that give us pleasure, we start to feel exhausted, resentful, and angry." This is how I've been feeling a lot lately. I've been feeling so angry that this is my life. I don't even have a bad life. But lately, it's been feeling like I've been working so hard for things I don't even want. I don't want to spend an hour every day cleaning up my house. I mean, doesn't that seem like an awful lot of time for a house with two basically neat and tidy people? I don't want to pack a gym bag or a lunch every day. I mean, I want to go to the gym, and I want to eat, but I don't want it to feel like such a chore. In fact, I don't want it to feel like anything. I want it to be like, fra la la I'm packing a gym bag, as I skip around my house sprinkling daisy petals. And there will be sparkles.

I've thought about trying to become one of those people who always has a ton of gym clothes in their gym bag (more accurately, I've thought about putting five sets of gym clothes in my bag on Sunday night and then not dealing with it again for the rest of the week). That's beginning to look more and more like a solution, actually. It seems like a lot of lugging stuff around unnecessarily  but by the end of the week, I'll be all, I'm so strong--look at how light my bag is now!

Rubin cautions that in order for something to feel like a treat, you can't use it too often. I've set up a series of rewards for meeting my weight-loss goals, but that's not quite the same thing as treats. I'd consider my cup of hot chocolate at night a treat, but I have one almost every night. Most of the time, I really, really enjoy it. The rest of the time, I usually assign my lack of satisfaction to an imbalance in the ingredients.

Last night, I gave myself the treat of doing nothing. Which, of course, is not entirely true. I did a lot of things. But I didn't clean up the house. Instead, I sat on the sofa and read. It was such an unbelievable treat to come home and sit down in my living room and read.

Of course, that also means that when I got up this morning I had a bunch of stuff left to do from yesterday that I had to get done before going to work. Which sort of puts me already behind for today, although in a kind of planned an intentional sort of way.

I think treats are a great idea, but what I'd really like is to get to a point where I don't dread getting up in the morning or coming home at night because of all of the stuff I still have to do. I guess, until I figure that out, treats are going to have to be enough.

Epic Fail!

Remember how about two months ago, I was totally appalled by the amount of water we use (142 gallons a day), and I said I was going to reduce that by 10%. Well, I didn't.  Not only did I not reduce the amount of water we use, but our usage actually went up by 33 gallons a day! The only good news is, that's still less than the amount we used during this period last year.

Really, the only thing I can attribute it to is that I started this new work out regimen which involves two work outs a day, and therefore two showers a day (I'm still doing two workouts, but I've switched to generally doing both workouts in the evening, since there's no way I'm getting up early enough to do two in the morning, and two showers a day is just a lot of work).

Captain America just walked in and informed me that 1) he's been turning on the sprinklers, and 2) I have scary eyes.  Sometimes when he tells me this, I think of the scene in Toy Story where Mrs. Potato Head is packing Mr. Potato Head's angry eyes, but generally, I just realize that I forgot to take off my eye makeup before doing my Insanity workout.

Water usage!

So our water bill came, and we've increased our usage by 13.6% when compared to the same period of time last year.  Ugh.  Please note, last year it rained all winter, but this year it did not so we had to water the lawn.  There's no dormant period for the lawn here in San Diego.  Stuff grows all year round, and it's just about impossible to bring grass back from the dead.  So don't even bother to tell me we'd reduce our water usage by not watering the lawn.  That's not really an option.  Unless we want dead grass.

I tried to create a spreadsheet outlining the ebbs and flows (ha ha, I'm so punny) of our water usage, but I only found one statement from last year.  So much for my organizational prowess. 

None the less, in the last billing period, we managed to use 142 gallons, on average, per day.  One-hundred forty-two!  Doesn't that feed a family in Ethiopia for a year or something?  And that doesn't even include the water used to make the stuff we use (e.g. water used for irrigating the veggies we eat).  So I'm obviously back on my periodic environmental bents.  Mostly because I've been reading the Skinny Bitch series of books.

For those not in the know, the authors aren't really interested in making people skinny or bitches, but they thought it was a catchy title, and they really want to make people healthier, which generally also means thinner. 

Anyway, 142 gallons of water a day sounds a little excessive to me.  I'd like to get it under 100.  But that's a big decrease, so I'm going to shoot for a 10% decrease over the next two periods (which is roughly four months).  I'd aim for the end of this billing cycle, but we were in the middle of it when we received our bill, and I sort of feel that that would be unfair.  I mean, it'd be like giving a budget to someone and telling them: you've got to get this in check by December, but it's June, and we've already blown more than half of this, so good luck, buddy.

So, a 10% decrease would be 14 fewer gallons per day.  Here's what I've come up with:

• Shorter showers.  This is really all me, because Captain America is a pretty speedy showerer.  This is actually in direct conflict with my new favorite hair product, Wen, which wants you to wait seven minutes before rinsing the stuff out.  So here's what I did yesterday: I brought the space heater into the little bathroom so I could turn off the water while washing my body etc. and not get cold, a la Jory-style. Although now that I think of it, I don't think Voracious has blogged too much about the Jory bathtime routine.  And for the record, we are so low on our electricity usage that getting solar panels on our house would pay off in about a billion years.  So I thought it was a reasonable trade-off.
• Captain America does have a habit of leaving the water running when rinsing the dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.  And by running, I mean not actually running into another vessel, but just down the drain.  It actually drives me crazy, but I'm not a stupid woman: I'm ecstatic that my husband does the dishes.  I did, however, suggest that he be more cognizant of that.  I also suggested that we only rinse the really dirty stuff, like the spaghetti plates.  So we'll see how this works.
• I could shower at the gym more, which wouldn't necessarily reduce my water usage per se, but it would reduce what we pay for.
• And my creme de la creme idea: Travel more!

(And do you love how my bulleted list is not parallel?  That's to annoy my crazy copyediting teacher!  See that, crazy, I'm smart enough to know it's not in parallel, and I don't care!)

How to get organized and my pink glitter lip gloss

Many people probably make New Year's resolutions along the lines of get organized, but I do not.  I'm a very organized person.  But there's always room for improvement. 

Remember my resolution about wearing makeup and leaving the house looking like an adult?  Or is that not exactly how I phrased it?  At any rate, the new year is always a good opportunity to try to mesh together your vision of who you are with who you actually are.  In my vision of myself, I'm a little taller, have better hair, and have no problems finding the perfect jeans.  Alright, I suppose that's my fantasy of myself, not my vision! 

So anyway, in my attempt to leave the house looking like the organized, responsible adult that I am, I'm trying to wear makeup.  I actually don't mind wearing makeup.  I dislike having to take it off.  But that's not the point here.  I have a lot of makeup for someone who doesn't actually wear that much of it, mostly because my mother can get it for free from Lancome. 

Somehow, I have a lot of lip gloss.  By "a lot" I actually mean three tubes, which isn't really all that much, except when you stop and consider that I don't like lip gloss.  Not at all.  I don't like how the brush never gets all the way to the bottom of the container, so you've always got product you can't use.  I don't like how sticky it is.  I don't like that my hair is always getting caught in it.  Even though I live in Southern California, I don't plump my lips, so lip gloss manages to get stuck in all the fine lip wrinkles I have (look closely, you have them, too).  I don't like how it doesn't go on evenly.  I just don't like lip gloss.

However, I also don't like wasting stuff.  Even stuff I don't like.  (I know, I really need to get over this.)  As sort of a humorous wedding gift, someone gave us a random combination of "sexy" things, including a CD of romantic songs, some warming lotion, and glitter lip gloss.  (First, I would suggest that this is really not an appropriate wedding gift--it felt more like a goody bag from a bachelorette party, and secondly, Captain America and I didn't really know what to make of it--this wasn't someone close enough to us to know about our sexual habits, and how do you write a thank you card for this?  It was just weird.)  Anyway, so I have this perfectly good glitter lip gloss, except that I don't like lip gloss, and the glitter is really big--almost like confetti, so you can really feel it on your lips.  And when I wear it, I feel like I must look about 14.  I'm not saying adults can't wear glitter.  I have sequined shirts, and glitter eye shadow, and I currently have a few pieces of tinsel tied into my hair.  But there's something about this glitter lip gloss that just seems really immature.  Which is totally the image I'm trying to project when I leave the house.

(I tried to find an image of my lip gloss on google, but apparently it's so horrendous that I couldn't even find anything that came close.  So then I thought I'd just take a picture of it on my lips.  But I haven't showered from the gym yet, so a whole-face pic is out of the question, and all of the ones I took of just my lips are a little scary.  You're just going to have to trust me that this lip gloss is a terrible idea.  Unless you're seven.)

So I've decided to get rid of it.  Clearly, I have very few problems if this is such a momentous decision on my part.  At the same time, I decided to get rid of all of the other perfectly good, but not useful to me, junk that had been taking up residence in my makeup bag.  Like pink blush.  I'm a pinkish person to begin with, and inevitably, if I wear pink blush, I look like an Asian who's had 4 glasses of wine.  Again, not exactly the image I'm looking to project when I leave the house.

Meanwhile, in another part of my life, I expensed some Tazo Joy tea.  It's a nice little black tea that's only sold at Christmas.  So, naturally, I bought three boxes.  And by boxes, I really mean tins.  Which is fantastic because I was able to put all of my eye shadows into one tin, and that way I don't have to dig them all out of my makeup bag to find my mascara.  I really like eyeshadow.  It's fun to play with.

And this got me to thinking.  I'm of the opinion that if you want to get organized, you probably own all of the tools you need, mostly because if you have enough stuff that it needs to be organized, probably somewhere in that stuff you have things that can be used to organize said stuff.  This is especially helpful if you want to get organized AND stick to a budget.  This is not helpful if you want every document stored in a pristinely labeled file that's been color coded, but if you have time to keep track of that sort of thing, you should really volunteer to do something useful or something.

So, in my medicine cabinet, I have a few little things that just don't stand very well, and are constantly falling out...like my chapstick (I do like chapstick.  A lot.), my eye cream, etc.  I figured that I had to own some sort of small container I could put these things in so that they'd stop falling out of the cabinet.  My first thought was our salad-dressing-sized Tupperware containers.  But then what would I do with the lid?  I periodically go through our Tupperware and throw out everything for which I can't find the corresponding top or bottom.  I didn't really want to do this because the salad-dressing sized containers are really useful.

But then I remembered that we received, as part of the Christmas white elephants that we did with Captain America's family, a little Japanese tea set.  It's brown and adorable and I love tea.  But I drink tea in big mugs.  Not shot glasses.  So I put this set in the dining room, figuring we'd use it eventually...like when our friend E comes to visit and needs to play tea-time. 

So, I decided to use one of the tea cups in my medicine cabinet.  The result was a success!  I found a way to organize some things without having to buy something new, and I did it in a way that didn't annoy my husband (which is always a potential side effect of me rearranging things).  Ta-da!

September resolutions

So I think this will be the last month where I post my success or lack thereof with my resolutions.  Somehow in the last few weeks, my actually rather uncomplicated life has become complicated.  Here is a picture of what my day planner looks like:

I can't figure out why I can't rotate the picture, but either way, it's a bit insane looking, if you ask me.

Really, the only things I'm doing right now are training for a marathon and taking a couple of online courses.  But, we have three upcoming trips, my mother's coming for Thanksgiving, we've had the cable guys over, and we have some repair men coming.  And I've been experiencing a lot of what Gretchen Rubin calls boomerang projects...I think I've taken care of something, but there's actually another 197 steps before we're totally done with whatever it is. 

So I'm going to preemptively tell you about September, up until today.  I've read every day.  I've done a lot of crocheting and exercising, and a pretty good amount of flossing.  I need to work on that.  As for book writing, I've got an idea that I think is pretty good, but all I can turn it into is a romance novel and that's not really what I want it to be.  But it's going to go on the back burner while I work on making that day planner look less like I'm running a small country and more like that of someone who has all the time in the world because she's unemployed and doesn't even have kids to raise.

The Door Snake

Remember when I was all, I'm going to be super GREEN? Well, somewhere along the way, I fell off that bandwagon.  Work became more stressful, my sister abandoned me to a different farmer's market, and my husband changed shifts, so we're just not cooking as much.  And there was also the whole how-much-is-my-time-worth/how-much-time-do-I-want-to-invest-in-this debate. 

As I've discussed earlier, we recycle as much as possible, we use re-usable bags, etc., etc., but I'm not going to skip out on showers, and I have no interest in getting my hands dirty in a garden.  In fact, we haven't joined a CSA because I don't like vegetables that much, and the thought of getting a whole box of them every week (or two) completely overwhelms me. 

But, while my mother was here helping me recover from surgery, she made us a door snake.  Okay, I'm not actually sure what they are technically called, but it's one of those things that you put in front of the door and it prevents a draft from blowing in (see pic in ad...btw, Mom, you could be making a TON selling these things!).  Yes, I live in San Diego, but it does get cold at night, and we do turn the heat on, and there's no sense in allowing all of that heat to escape when the laundry/sewing/cooking fairy is in our house! 

And ours is purple, so it's way more attractive than what you can buy on-line.  I keep telling my mom to open up an etsy account because she sews a ton, but she keeps saying she's not interested in selling stuff.  Anyway, if you're interested in your own door snake, let me know, and I'll see if my mom is interested in making you one. 

Yes, I am something of an art snob

I have been thinking a lot about art lately.  Captain America wants to buy some art to decorate our house.  I recently helped a friend hang art in her bedroom.  She bought her art at World Market.  Don't get me wrong: I love World Market.  I just don't think that the mass-produced decorations you can buy there are "art."  I'm not saying they're ugly or anything.  My mother bought us some prints there that hang in our living room.  But we never use the word "art" to describe them.  Yes, someone created them, but then they were mass-produced.  Thus rendering them not art.  As far as I'm concerned, if it's not the original, it's not art.  It can still be lovely, unique, or whatever other adjective you use, but once it's been copied, I just don't see how you can call it art.

Captain America wants to hang some art in our living room, and all I can think is, we can't afford art.  We can afford my friend Eric, who makes glassworks.  (this site is a little weird...he's been working on it, but sometimes you have to click in to enter it.)

And then Costco came out with this really cool component of their photo center.  They own the digital rights (or something like that) to tons of artwork that they can print on canvas, or almost anything else you want, and then you go to Costco to pick it up.  Pieces like Monets and Picassos.  It's really very cool.  And did I mention you can print it on canvas, so you don't have to have a framed poster of something (by the way, because I am so ridiculous about this, I refuse to own framed posters of art.  I mean, who am I kidding?  A poster is absolutely not art.  And, no, the irony is not lost on me that this sentence is located right next to an ad for a poster of art.).

Anyway, this Costco stuff looks really nice.  And I have found Costco's products to be of great quality.  So now I'm suffering from this inner turmoil.  I don't want the art in my house to feel like a lie.  But is it really a lie if I already know it's not the original.  I can get Monet's Water Lilies, which I L.O.V.E.  I LOVE them so much that when people tell me they don't really care for impressionism, or it just doesn't do anything for them, I actually wonder if I'm in a bad dream?  Has their brain been eaten by a space alien?  Have I entered some sort of alternative reality where Monet is not the most brilliant painter of all time?

Really, though, if I got a print of the Water Lilies, who would think I owned the original?  I'm not sure I'd even want to.  I don't know how to care for something like that (assuming we find some sort of work around to how I'd afford it or where I'd put it).

The more I think about it, the more I feel like it should be okay for me to buy Costco's canvas prints of digital images of art that I LOVE.  After all, it's not like I can jet off to the New York MoMA whenever I want to see them.

Household emergencies

Did I blog about the time the shower broke in my hand and I ran around the yard in my robe while my father-in-law instructed me not to stick my hands in dark empty holes that may or may not contain black widow spiders?

I feel like the answer is no, but I honestly can't remember.

I looked through my blog archives, and it seems I did not.

So let me back up a little.

A while ago, I was about to step into the shower, when I turned it on and heard the plastic handle crack and then I couldn't turn the water off. Believe it or not, I'm not a total idiot when it comes to household stuff, but like I've said repeatedly before, I don't like to get my hands dirty.

Unfortunately, Captain America wasn't due home from work for about an hour, and I had a faucet that wouldn't turn off, and water is really expensive in California, not to mention the fact that this was really wasteful.

So I did what any resourceful girl would do and called my dad. Who didn't answer the phone. Then I called Uncle Chef, who also didn't answer the phone. Then I called my father-in-law. The reason I held off so long on my father-in-law is that I'm pretty sure he considers me completely useless around the house, and I really didn't want to further that image. But he's also a really nice, patient man, who is surely aware of my other, more redeeming qualities, although I can't think of any examples right now.

[As an aside, "father-in-law" is a lot to type out, but I really hate the abbreviation FIL, and "Captain America's Dad" is even longer, so I'm just going to refer to my father-in-law as Dad for the rest of this post, since my own dad won't come up again in this story.]

So I called up Dad, and explained the situation, telling him that I knew there was a water shut off valve somewhere, but I didn't have any idea what I was looking for.

He patiently explained to me all of the possible locations for such a thing, including the spot out by the street that is covered by a small cement block. He remembered to tell me to get gloves because I'd be reaching my hand into a dark hole that most likely housed a family of black widow spiders. And then, gloves on, nerves steeled for the task, I heaved the cement block out of the way, squatted down to reach into the abyss, only to find that there wasn't actually anything to turn in the hole. There were lots of spots that looked like they should have a handle, or whatever, but none actually had handles.

I thanked Dad, telling him I was now going to call the water company (I figured that since the water company is so busy telling us ways to conserve water, they might be willing to help me stop such a blatant waste of it), and that I'd call him back later if I still needed his help, or to let him know that the crisis had been resolved.

I spoke to a very pleasant lady named Molly, and she contacted a workman or something to come to my house. The caveat was, they shut off all of the water, because their responsibility ends at my house. That was fine, I said, thinking, well, we can shower at the gym, and I'll just go fill up some water bottles and pots so we can brush our teeth, etc, and it'll just be inconvenient until we can get a plumber here. See how reasonable I can be?

In the meantime, Molly walked me through basically the same thing that Dad had, suggesting various location where the water shut off valve at my house might be (as opposed to the one in the scary whole with the spiders that her workman was going to use), and finally, I decided, screw it, I'm going to turn this valve labeled gas at the front of the house, that seems like it should be connected to our water, but is clearly labeled gas. Generally, I don't mess around with our gas, or anything electrical, but I figured, what's the worst that could happen? I could blow up the house, but no one's in it right now, since I'm still running around the yard in my robe, so that would suck. But probably no one would die, or even lose an eye.

So I turned the valve, and the water shut off. Who was the genius who labeled the water valve gas?

I thanked Molly, she cancelled the workman, I called Dad, told him that some idiot labeled the valve gas, but at least I knew where it was, and then Captain America came home, unscrewed the shower thing, took his pliers, turned off the faucet. We turned the water back on, showered in the other bathroom and lived happily ever after.

Until earlier this week when I blew a fuse by having the heater, the space heater, and the Christmas lights all on at one time. This time, I happened to be in the shower, and my first thought was that the entire neighborhood had lost power, but then I looked out of my shower and saw the lights on in the kitchen, and I realized it was just the fuse. I finished my shower, since the water heater was still working, and I don't actually ever see my hair when I'm washing it anyway, and then I went to deal with this.

Captain America finds it mildly amusing that all of my household emergencies originate in the shower. Although to be fair, our shower can't possibly be blamed for this one, since it is decidedly not electrically powered.

So I towel off, put on my pajamas, and walk outside to the fuse box. I flip the fuse. Nothing happens. I unplug the space heater and the Christmas lights and flip the fuse. Nothing happens. I flip all of the fuses. Nothing happens. I call Captain America to give him the heads up. He instructs me to flip the fuses. And unplug stuff.

Remembering back to this water issue and friendly Molly, I decide to call SDG&E. Maybe there's something more that needs to be done, since fuse-flipping clearly isn't working.

I don't know who I spoke with because the person at SDG&E didn't seem to speak English. She had to ask me three times for my address before I worked out that that's what she was asking me. I explained the problem, telling her I had flipped all of the fuses and nothing happened.

"But you have lights on in other parts of your house?" she clarified.

Yes, I explained, but not in the bedroom, and the furnace wasn't working anymore.

(I know, I know, normally no furnace isn't a big deal in San Diego, but earlier this week it was actually in the 30s at night, which, as far as I'm concerned, is cold.)

"Well," mystery-woman-who-doesn't-speak-English said, "SDG&E is only responsible up to your fuse box. You'll have to call and electrician."

That was it. But I persisted, because I have this strange notion that the people who are supposed to be able to help you probably can, and if they're not willing to help you, it's just because they don't want to, or are too lazy, and they don't know who they're dealing with. I can totally outlast your stubbornness with my own stubbornness and impeccable logic and reasoning, since I've already figured out why you're the person who can solve my problem.

"There's nothing you can do for me?" I asked. No, I was told. "Do you have any suggestions for what I should do until the electrician shows up?" No, again. "Do you have a recommended electrician I can call?" No. Great, I thought, anther completely worthless person. Don't we have enough of those?

Captain America came home to me holding my head in my hands, with a lone candle lit on the coffee table as a heat source, tromped around the house a little, accused me of using the microwave, too, which doesn't make any sense, since that's on a different fuse, turned off all of the lights, flipped all of the fuses again, and poof! We had electricity again, and lived happily ever after, until I took anther shower.

So, the score is, the people at the water company: 3, for being friendly, and helpful, and nice, SDG&E: 0, for being totally useless.

Having some work done on our house

In case you didn't get it from the title of the post, we're having some work done on our house.

Captain America finally warmed up to the idea of hiring other people to do stuff. I've been a big fan of this policy all along, because I don' t like to get my hands dirty and because it's my American duty to improve the economy (which is why I also have a personal trainer, a massage therapist, a chiropractor, an esthetician, and a cleaning lady; you're welcome, Mr. President).

Mark, the handyman hired to do this round of house-related stuff, is a little odd. His work seems competent enough, which is the point. Captain America is of the opinion that it's moving slower than he anticipated, but I think it's fair to say that the first rule of home-ownership is that everything takes longer than anticipated. It took longer to find the house, for crying out loud!

However, it would probably take us even longer if we were doing this stuff ourselves, and we would probably average, oh, I don't know, about one argument every hour or so. So, we're not only improving the economy and our house, but we're saving our marriage. That alone sounds like money well spent.

On Sunday, Mark's odd behavior included informing me of when he took his lunch. I suppose this is appropriate, as we're paying him by the hour (okay I realize that may sound strange, but he gave us an estimate of what the total cost for our project will be, and how long it would take, and the end result is that we agreed to pay him every morning for the work he did the previous day). Mark doesn't seem to know me very well, which is probably a good thing, but what he doesn't get is that it doesn't really matter to me when he takes his lunch or for how long.

Mark also informed me that I reminded him of some TV-preacher's wife, whose name is Victoria. I'm not sure if he knows what my name is, or if maybe we're the only two people who's name starts with a "V" that he's ever heard of, or maybe he's just happy with the simple things in life.

On Monday, Mark had a moment of panic, packed up his stuff and left randomly. He was supposed to go work for the salvation army, but he felt bad that he hadn't finished our bathroom, so he came over to do that instead. We told him it was no big deal if he went to his other job, because really, he's a handyman...if stuff at our house takes longer than he estimates, then of course it's going to mess up whatever's scheduled with his other clients.

Here's the conversation between Mark and Captain America regarding Monday's mini-meltdown, as far as I can recreate it:

Captain America, upon seeing Mark pack up his things: Mark, what's going on?

Mark: I've gotta go. These people are pulling me in too many directions.

Captain America: Did you get a call from the Salvation Army? Do they need you? Is that why you're leaving?

Mark: I think you know what's going on.

Captain America: No, I don't know what's going on.

Silence from Mark.

Captain America: Is there something you need to tell me?

Mark: No.

So. I'm hoping that Mark was feeling a little stressed because our project was taking longer than anticipated, which was preventing him from doing other things, and that the "these people" weren't voices in his head. Or that if he really does have some sort of mental illness, that he's got a plan to manage it.

Mark wasn't supposed to come over yesterday, but for whatever reason, he called to say he could.

My sister wanted to come over to make a lasagna.

I tell Mark this, to give him a head's up, because Sister was going to show up before I got home from work/the gym/etc, which prompts another randomish conversation with Mark:

Me: Hey Mark, my sister is going to come over later today, probably between 5 and 6 to make lasagna. If you're not here, no worries--she has a key, but I just wanted to let you know in case you're still here. She's taller than I am.

(In retrospect, I realized that probably wasn't much of a description, and I was going to say, she's the other girl, who sort of looks like me, in all of the photos all over the place, but I really didn't want him to think he should be staring at my photos to figure out what my sister looks like).

Mark: Okay. Why is she coming here to make lasagna?

Me: She says her oven's broken or something.

Mark: Why is her oven broken?

Me: thinking: what do you care? says: I don't know...maybe it's not heating evenly.

Mark: She should get it fixed.

Me: thinking: Duh. says: She's probably told her landlord.

Mark: She rents? Her apartment complex should fix it.

Me: thinking: Good grief! I have to go to work. It was just supposed to be an FYI. says: I'm sure she's told them.

Mark, unsure: Well, okay.

I'll be very interested to hear what sorts of conversations Captain America had with Mark, and even more interested to hear if Sister gots to meet him. I already warned her, he's missing a tooth.

I have a pretty good life, but still...

I have a pretty good life. I've got a fabulous husband, a nice house, a relatively stable job (touch wood), and good friends, blah, blah, blah, but I get the blues more often than I like, and I get upset about stupid things.

As an exercise, a few months ago, I wrote down a list of all the things that were making me grumpy, and what I could do about them. I know there's rarely only one option in life, but when you're feeling blue, it's really easy to think there's just one choice.

For example, my hair normally doesn't lighten in the summer, or ever, actually, but the California sun is so strong that it is. Lightening, that is. Except, that instead of getting lovely golden highlights like my sister, my hair is fading into this stupid red color. Not strawberry, or dark red, or even arrest-me-red, which would be strange, but at least interesting. No, my hair is dull red. But I have options! I can do nothing (which is what I've thus far chosen to do), I can dye it some other color, I can shave it off, I can get a wig. I'm sure there's some that I'm missing, too. The point, even though I've chosen to do nothing, is that I don't actually have to have stupid red hair because that's what the sun god wants. Oh, I could wear hats, or scarves!

In no particular order or ranking, here are some things that I don't like about my life:

• Feeling rushed in the morning
• The lack of routine in my day
• My parking garage
• Not having a lot of time to spend writing
• Having a huge pile of books (four, actually), next to the bed that I haven't gotten to
• Pumping gas
• The security doors on hour house

I know, some of them are totally ridiculous! I can come up with three ways to not use the parking garage at work, and none of them are particularly useful: if I walk to work, if I get dropped off, or if I park further away. The good news is that I'm not the only one who dislikes the parking garage, and that I have options, and at least my car isn't parked in the sun all day! (As a side update, since the time I wrote this list...not the copy here in the blog, but the actual one, they've opened up the first floor of my parking garage again, and boy, does that one stupid thing brighten my day!)

I've never liked pumping gas. I grew up in New Jersey and then moved to Oregon. That's all I have to say about that.

And security doors are not as easy to take off as you'd think...hello! They're security doors! But, at the same time, Captain America is, well, Captain America...trained in firearms and defensive tactics. I'm pretty sure anyone breaking into our house is going to have their hands full. Besides which, we don't really own anything worth stealing, in my opinion. (As I type this, I'm trying to think of the most expensive thing inside our house, and I'd have to say, it's probably our queen mattress set...yeah, that's a hot item to steal!)

On top of all of this, we have three security doors on our house, but the only one that really drives me bananas is from the house to the garage. Under what circumstances am I going to need a security door inside my house? I'll tell you: the old lady who lived in the house before we bought it would keep the garage door open when she ran her dryer because the dryer vented into the garage. Yeah, we said no to that, and they fixed it to have the dryer vent outside the garage before we signed the papers. So the lady would leave the garage door open to let the heat out and wanted to be safe in her house.

I suppose that's reasonable, but here's why I don't like it: I'm not an old lady, so I frequently walk into the garage and turn the light on at the same time. Or, if I'm just tossing something into the laundry bin I don't turn the light on at all. See, my balance works in the dark. (OK, for those of you who are laughing at this, my balance works just as well with the lights on as it does with them off, and depsite my recent biking debacle, I rarely actually hit-the-ground-fall, I just stumble a lot, but like I said, that's just me...lights or not has nothing to do with it!) But, if the security door, which is black, is partially shut, I don't see it as I walk into the garage, and I walk into it. Which is not painful, but it is annoying. Go figure, I don't like being annoyed.

And furthermore, we have to take this security door off to rip out the moulding so we can put in some sort of fire-safe door, that you really should have between your garage and your house, especially if both your gas-powered dryer and gas-powered water heater are in the garage. We just haven't gotten to that yet.

So now this rant, which was originally about small things that bug me and how I found a semi-cathartic exercise in writing them down and figuring out what I can do about them has turned into a rant about the security door on my garage/house door.

If you're thinking, she has got to find something better to do with her time, well I agree! But then I thought about a quote I read once that said something to the effect that removing petty grievances from one's life does more to boost happiness/well being/whatever than solving big problems. If you've ever been out walking and suddenly discovered that you somehow have a rock in your shoe, you know that removing that rock is way more important than whether or not your shoe is the latest walking shoe or last year's beat up sandals.

So, if you find yourself being constantly annoyed by something that is seemingly petty, first, you're in good company, and second, see if you can figure out some simple solutions to the problem--even if you don't implement any of them, you might feel better knowing you have ways to deal with the situation.

Things I don't like and what I can do about them: facing adulthood

Boy have I got things about which to blog!

I started reading this blog, RealDelia, which has the tagline "finding yourself in adulthood." Again, it's anther blog that I read that I'm not truly sure I like. Y'know how when you read a book, sometimes it takes the first few chapters to figure out the characters and the writing style and such, and then you realize you're either actually reading the book, or you're just sort of putting up with it to the end? I tend to read everything as if it's a book, and so with blogs, it frequently takes me several posts to figure out if I actually like it or not. Either way, in the "about Delia Lloyd" section of the blog, she talks about how, when she was younger, she thought she'd arrive in adulthood, but that in reality, it's way more of a process.

A while back Captain America and I were having dinner with some friends with two young girls. While their father was grilling, we were playing a sort of improvised game of soccer. At some point, Captain America and I both turned to the dad and were engaged in a conversation about I can't even remember what. The older daughter put her hands on her hips and said something to the effect of "the grownups are not paying attention to their goal!" I looked around to try to figure out who these people of terrible sportsmanship were, when I realized that the "grownups" she was referring to were Captain America and me. When had we become grownups?, I wondered.

I think a lot about adulthood because there are a number of things about it I don't like. I remember having a conversation with my aunt when I was in middle school, and she said something to me along the lines of "when you're an adult you can have Oreos for breakfast if you want." I must have been complaining about having to eat something healthy. But now that I'm an adult, I really can't eat Oreos for breakfast. I'd never burn off those calories. But in middle school, I was on a synchronized swimming team, which means, if I was awake, I was eating. I don't like that now that I get to make the decisions about what I eat, I really can't eat all of the junk I would have liked to eat as a kid.

I've been feeling sort of melancholy lately, with this sort of generalized, overarching feeling that despite knowing I've got a pretty good life, I'm just not that pleased with it. I feel like I've got a good life, but it's not the life I would pick out for myself if I could shop for one at Macy's.

I've already blogged about how much I don't like my stupid parking garage situation, or blow drying my hair. The other day, on my evening walk, I came up with the idea to make a list of all of the things in my life that I don't like, and what, if anything, I can do about them. I thought this might be a good exercise for a few reasons. First, sometimes just identifying the problem is enough to feel better about it. Once it has a label you can sort of mentally file it away somewhere.

Also, I thought I'd see if there was an aspect of my life that could just use a little tweaking and I'd feel a lot better about it. For example, when I had a long, awful commute in Oregon, I found that listening to an audio book on the drive made it significantly more bearable. Sometimes a little change really can make a big difference. Also, for me, the important thing is noting what I can do about something. Not what I should do or what I'm going to do. Just what my options are.

Maybe this seems like a silly exercise, but I thought it was worth trying. Here are a couple of my dislikes and what I can do about them:

I don't like my that my hair is fading into this sort of reddish color. I can dye it a different color. (I could also cut it all off, or wear hats so I don't see the color.)

I don't like exercising in the morning. I decided that this wasn't entirely true. I don't mind exercising in the morning; what I don't like is feeling rushed in the morning to get out the door. So, what I can do is organize more things at night, go to bed earlier so it's easier to get up in the morning, or just not exercise in the morning so I have fewer things to do before I leave for work.

When I realized I started to generalize my list, I don't like not being able to focus at work, I tried to make it specific. It's not that I can't focus at work, it's that I'm being pulled in different directions. I do a number of different things at work that my boss isn't directly involved in. Of course, all of these other team leaders think their thing is the most important item for me to work on. But my boss is on my side, so I can always check with her as to what she thinks I should be doing. I can discuss with her what I'm being asked to do and why I think one thing should be a priority over another. It's also her job as my manager to tell other people to back off when they're pushing too hard (getting SOX compliant info to the auditors now really is more important than writing requirements for a project that isn't going to launch for another eight months. Really.) And I can take frequent short breaks at work. I've read a number of articles stating that taking short breaks enables the brain to re-energize itself, but I actually rarely take a break at work, and when I do, I feel guilty about it. No more. If spending a few minutes every hour or so not thinking, or going outside, or whatever make me a better worker, then that's what I'm going to do. Or at least try.

I also discovered that some of the things I don't like are really quite silly. I don't like the security doors on my house. We don't lock them. We don't even always close them. They're just annoying. Captain America has plans to take them down, but that requires bolt cutters or something, and his uncle promised to help, but we apparently haven't been able to sort out a good weekend to do this yet.

Or, I don't like that we have to eat every day. It is such a waste of time to make lunch every day just to eat it, and then have to do it over again the next day. But, it would get expensive to eat out every day. See? This is both ridiculous and tough. I could make a giant smoothie every morning and just sip it all day. I could eat only really easy things, like Clif Bars. I could have Captain America be in charge of our food situation. Or, we could become a bit more prepared with our meal planning so we don't have to do all of the washing, chopping, and cooking every day.

Whenever I say to my friends, in a joking sort of manner, that sometimes being a adult just sort of sucks, they always laugh and agree. It's definitely one of those things where there are benefits (like no longer living with my parents), and challenges (someone's got to figure out dinner, despite working a long day). When I was little, I thought that once I was an adult, things would be better: I'd get to make my own rules, set my own standards, do what I wanted, and basically live the life I wanted (I also thought I'd be tall and thin and have long light-brown hair and live in a brownstone in the Village. And be the sort of person who can always find the perfect pair of jeans).

To an extent I do live the life I want. But there are also limitations. My company expects me to work Monday-Friday. But I think I'd rather work Tuesday-Saturday. Captain America and I do a number of things that we never did as kids, like travel to Egypt and Europe. But at the same time, I can't quit my job and spend my days reading and writing because we have a mortgage to pay. I know I'm not the only one trying to find the balance between doing the things that need to be done so I can live the life I want, and actually living that life. So let me know if you've come up with any good solutions to this problem, okay?

The Happiness Project

I've added The Happiness Project to my blog list. It's something that I've been reading for a while, but I didn't want to add it to my list because I wasn't sure if I liked it. Sometimes it seems so...quaint...neive...innocent. As if you can just decide to be happier. And she wrote a book, which she shamelessly promoted on her blog. And I was just thinking, another self-help book, but I added it to my reading list anyway. I'm never going to get to everything on my reading list. *Sigh* So sad.

And then, BookSnob, another blog I've been reading, but wasn't sure I liked, wrote a review of The Happiness Project (the book, not the blog), and she compared it to Eat, Pray, Love, but more like for the rest of us who can't take a year vacation to foreign countries to figure out our problems. And she (Katy Keim) mentioned that it was very brave of Gretchen Rubin to tell people (at cocktail parties, etc) that she was starting a happiness project. I mean, think about that conversation. Random party goer: So Gretchen, what are you doing this weekend? Gretchen: I'm starting a happiness project! I'm going to do a ton of research and read a bunch of works by all sorts of people and figure out what actually works to make me happier and what doesn't, and I'm going to write a blog about it! Random party goer: Uh-huh.

So then I thought, what if she's actually sincere? What if Gretchen really wants to make herself happier, and she wants to help others (me!) do it to? And then (and then!) she posted this post about the office. I haven't actually seen the clip she's referring to, but based on her description, I can totally see it in my head (yes, my imagination works like that). I really like Pam and Jim, too. They're really nice, really decent people, who aren't always right, but even when they're wrong, they're not that wrong either. If the entire show had characters like them, you'd want to puke. But it doesn't, so it works.

My husband bought me a house, too. I mean, I helped, but really, he bought me a house. I should be happier about it. I have a house! With three bedrooms and a yard and trees! But then there's that pesky should. It's very easy to get into trouble when one thinks one should something when one does not.

Gretchen Rubin includes this in her post:
One of my resolutions is to Imitate a spiritual master, and my spiritual master is Saint Therese of Lisieux. I often puzzle over a particular line she wrote, an observation that seems very significant to me, but that I don’t really understand: “for the love of God and my Sisters (so charitable toward me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.”

I'm going to work on being happy about the house my husband bought me. Despite the problems. We discussed just the other night about how no one has a perfect house. And even if we built it ourselves, we know we'd move in and think, we should have done this, we should have done that. It's probably easier to be happy about the one I've got rather than to go and build a new one.

The joys of home ownership

We've had a number of home projects going on lately.

First, we had our windows replaced. Then we had the light in the garage fixed. Today the plumber is supposed to be over, and sometime this week, I'm getting a new dryer! And then my short list will be all checked off, and I'll have to find something new to keep my stress level elevated. Because, in case you didn't know, owning a home isn't relaxing. Despite my resolution to spend more time on my couch, I don't think my stress level has been this high since...well probably since the disastrous relationship I was in prior to meeting Captain America came to an inferno of a conclusion, what would that be, six years ago, or so.

Don't get me wrong: I really like living in my house. It's just about the perfect size for the two of us, the location is great, and we have trees in the yard! In SoCal! Of course, I rarely go out to the yard, but I just like knowing the trees are out there, in case I ever do decided to venture outside. I just don't always like owning my house.

I'll start with the easy stuff. As you know, if you read about my adventures with laundry, the light in our garage went out. My husband tried to fix it, but it only lasted a few weeks. Uncle Chef was supposed to come down to help fix it, as well as make other repairs, but then the dryer went, and I insisted we needed the light fixed. Here's my logic: the dryer man can't replace the dryer in the dark, so we need a light. Captain America argued that there's plenty of daylight in the garage if the door is open. I remained unconvinced, and several arguments and $145 later, the light was fixed.

We have some sort of warranty on our home, which I don't understand, because our house was built in 1958, but for $55 the warranty people sent out an electrician. Except the problem in the garage wasn't electrical, per se. The wiring was apparently okay, but the fixture itself had died. The electrician explained it much more clearly, but in the end our option was, we could pay the electrician another $90 and have him fix it, or for about $40 Captain America could go to Home Depot and buy the fixture and do it himself. I have never pitched such a fit over $90 before.

Apparently, the real problem wasn't the $90, it was that I was taking away Captain America's man-card. I said, when we come back from Europe, Uncle Chef will come down and teach you how to do this, but right now, it needs to be fixed and the electrician is here. And I actually laughed about the man-card bit. But I apologized! I didn't mean to hurt Captain America's feelings. I'm a girl...if I can't fix something, I hire someone who can, or I buy a new one. I forgot that men don't always think like that.

So we survived the electrician with our marriage in tact and headed out to buy a dryer. We ended up at Sears, and we're happy with our pick. The dryer I liked best was rated the "best buy" by Consumer Reports (a coworker of mine, also in the market for a new dryer, went to the library and got a copy of the Consumer Report, which she gladly shared with me. It's nice to know nice people!). They should deliver the dryer later today!

And the plumber came yesterday. Our shower broke. It seems like the handle was stripped, and just wouldn't turn properly. In this case, Captain America watched some videos on how to fix it, but decided that in the end, it might be better to just watch the plumber and save himself the aggravation and time of trying it himself. Good choice, Captain America!

So, back to the big project of having our windows replaced. Captain America had been wanting to replace our windows because, well, frankly, they suck. They were the original single-paned windows that used "stick technology" as the locking devise. I had been hoping to pay off the truck this year. See, Captain America, you do win sometimes! And there's some sort of tax credit for energy-efficient windows.

We decided to go with Sierra Window Concepts, with the hopes of meeting William Shatner. And despite their annoying sales tactics. The guy came to tell us about the windows a few weeks ago, and spent three hours at our house! I had expected an hour or so, but he went over every detail of everything! A couple of times! And then, he would do comparisons with other windows. Good grief! We are totally capable of looking at other windows on our own! In my opinion, and in Captain America's, this was all a little too much. We eventually negotiated what we considered to be a pretty good price, but that was a hassle, too. Captain America had another window guy come over for a comparison, and his estimate was about the same, and we thought the quality was about the same, but the warranty on Sierra Window Concepts was better, so we went with them.

Then we had a debacle about frosted glass. I could have sworn the sales guy said they didn't do frosted glass, but that they could put a film on our windows. Captain America insisted that they said they could do frosted glass, but that we didn't want it. I was discussing this situation with a neighbor from when I lived in New Jersey, who also has a window in her shower (literally IN the shower), and we began to wonder what sort of window company can't make frosted glass.

As it turns out Sierra Window Concepts can make frosted glass, and somehow I was napping through that entire discussion. Evidently, I don't have a long attention span when it comes to windows. So we had to change our order. And I was feeling a little bit like, can't they hold off on our windows...I'm not ready for this!

The two big problems that we encountered were that Captain America went to the showroom without me because I didn't have time to go. I didn't know I had opinions on windows until I realized I didn't want what we had ordered. So we've learned that if there's a big project for our house, Captain America can't make decisions on his own. Not because he makes bad decisions. But because I'll apparently have opinions on things I would never have thought about before buying a house.

The second big problem is that we agreed to the Sierra Windows the day the salesman was there. Yes, we had negotiated them down in price, but I still felt a bit hurried. Like I said, I hadn't planned on buying windows this year at all, but I certainly hadn't planned on buying them before our trip to Europe. Who has time for windows when there's a vacation to plan! Our plan was to get a couple of estimates before we decided, but evidently that plan went out the window during my nap time!

So I worked from home on Friday while the window guys installed our windows. The salesman told us they would clean up afterwards, which, of course, I didn't believe at all, but they did a really good job. Of course Captain America vacuumed after them, but I'm pretty sure Captain America dreams of getting one of those robotic vacuums so it can follow me around the house.

We had huge rains on Saturday, but no tsunami, and we found no leaks. So after about six weeks of aggravation, we have really nice windows.

Adventures with Laundry, or the Story of the Thwarting of Virginia's Knight in Shining Goggles

After my very long post yesterday, and my very exciting title today, I seriously doubt anyone will continue to read my blog. That's ok, I already talk to myself a lot. I really was going to cut yesterday's post up into smaller ones--three--one for each resolution, but I guess I never came up with a good way to do that.

This is not entirely a non-sequitur, but I realize it seems like one. One of my old coworkers used to refer to my husband as Captain America. At the time, my husband's ringtone on my phone must have sounded like super-hero theme music, because my coworker would say things like "Captain America's calling you!" My husband's new ring tone, a change due to an upgrade to a new phone with different ring tones, disappointingly does not sound like super-hero theme music.

So, on to the real point of this blog:

A few weeks ago, the light stopped working in the garage. The light bulbs were new, so hubby, aka Captain America, called Uncle Chef (obviously a man of varied skills) to find out what to do. Uncle Chef walked hubby through replacing the switch box. This seemed to work, more or less. The lights worked, but they did that annoying flickering thing that fluorescent light bulbs do when they're dying. Except ours aren't dying. So hubby called Uncle Chef again, and he agreed to come down from the O.C. some time and help out with this project, as it now seems the entire thing will need to be rewired.

Uncle Chef hasn't come yet, and the lighting situation has nearly disintegrated. When we're home during the day (i.e. Saturday and Sunday), we can just do the laundry in the garage with the door open. This is not a step forward when it's dark out.

The light in the garage does emit some light. I suggested to Captain America that he just go get me his night vision goggles and I'd wear those while doing the laundry. How cool would that be?

Yeah, well, Captain America decided that it would just be more sensible for him to hang the cage light above the washing machine. Who knew super heroes were practical?