Perforation Problems

A little less than a year ago we got a Crate & Barrel gift card for our wedding. At some point it disappeared, which made me angry mostly because it's typical of something I would do. I lose things all the time, most frequently important things like my credit card. Yes, I'm 30 years old. Listen, I've got too many important thoughts in my head to worry about menial issues like where my credit card is. Important Thoughts like "How much of this salad do I have to eat before I can eat a cookie?" The good news is that I found the Crate & Barrel gift card recently, only about 10 months after I lost it. It slid out of the back of a drawer and was behind some pots and pans in the cabinet. Totally not my fault. I used it to buy some placemats. I remember watching Price is Right when I was little and seeing some woman win a washer and dryer. While the audience oohed and ahhed over her prize, ten-year old me rolled my eyes and made a promise to myself: ...

I spent today working on a new project. It was a pretty perfect day -- I met a friend for lunch, then climbed back in bed with my computer and got some stuff done. It's really satisfying to get wrapped up in a project and make progress. Saturday I ended up rearranging the furniture in our bedroom -- it still needs some work, but I'm much happier with it. It feels more like a room and less like a place we just stuck a bunch of furniture. Also now I can keep the shades up and let the light in because the bed is no longer blocking the window. That seemed like a reasonable idea at the time, but, nope. This is much better. I love being able to see the tree outside. It made for a nice sleepy, rainy day in bed.  Clyde's a good writing partner, sometimes. Other times he really just wants to be petted and you can't actually type. 

I was falling asleep at my computer when I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet. This is a horrible picture, but I do like how you can see Michael making a weird face in the background and Clyde sleeping between us. Typical. I almost panicked because there was no picture marked 9-27 in my folder, but then I realized I took this after midnight, so it's technically 9-28. It's okay -- still counts. It's still that day until I go to bed for real, meaning actually in my bed, not sleeping on the couch. (Falling sleep on the couch happens more than you might expect.)

We did this Strengths Finder thing at work, and I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting and helpful it was. It tells you your five biggest strengths and personalizes a report that touches on the way you work. Most of it seemed to fit, and I like the idea of focusing on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. The idea is that you'll only ever be able to be average in your areas of weakness, but you can be extraordinary in your strengths. It's been a tough week and I needed some coloring time, so I did this visualization of my team's strengths. It's nice to see how we all mesh together, and it's nice to see what strengths individual team members have. Some I expected, some I didn't. I like taking personality tests. It's like that little multiple choice quiz and trait rubric understands you. It's like a paper shrink. 

I remember reading this last year, but it came up again this week when a friend posted it on Facebook: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/ A few standout quotes: "It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again." "Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done." "My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I d...

You guys, I'm sorry, but I have some seriously lame pictures this week. Here's a picture of my new boot as I was waiting outside Little Mexico for my friend so we could eat queso. :o/ Sorry. What's something interesting I can say related to boots or footwear in general? These boots basically rubbed my skin off my heels. I seem to have significant problems when it comes to shoes. I get blisters pretty much 60% of the time, even with shoes I've worn before with no problem. It's like magic, except bad magic. Also my big toenails have fallen off twice, and they are currently black and blue from hiking two months ago. Blisters and gross toenails. NOW I can count this blog post a success. 

This is the only picture I took today, and it was really just to capture the stuff on the giant post-its because I was going to have to type it up later. I'm not sure why I thought this would work, because I'm still way too far away. No worries, I got to take all the post-its home with me. We did an off-site planning day for work. It was a busy and full day, but we left it with priorities for the next year and a lot of ideas. I'm tired -- I don't really have a lot to say about it. Sorry for being boring. 

 Blurring all the things! Took this picture as I was supposed to be writing. This line stood out to me. I think I've always wanted to keep myself from being predictable. I remember as a kid thinking to myself, "everyone expects me to act this way, so I'll do the opposite." I didn't go too far with this -- I was nowhere near wild or unmanageable in any way. It was more that if people expected me to be overjoyed, I'd be mildly pleased. If I thought people expected me to be interested, I'd be bored and waaayyy too cool for whatever you were talking about. If people expected me to be upset, I'd try to be stoic -- at least until my emotions got the better of me. It was my own minor and mostly unnoticed spat of rebellion, my way to say you didn't understand me the way you thought. I also remember thinking that the kids around me were acting in such stupidly predictable ways -- didn't they know they were behaving exactly the way kids did in Full ...

Amanda found a tiny turtle swimming off the pier this morning. Clyde was interested for about 3 seconds before he moved on to something else. I can't really predict which things Clyde will be interested in and which he will care less about. Some bugs (grasshoppers) he lunges after and tries to eat. Other creatures (spiders) he just crooks his head at and watches walk across the living room floor. This turtle went safely back in the lake, where he swam under the lily pads and (presumably) went on with his life. And Clyde went back inside to sleep the rest of the day away.

I made Michael take a picture of me with this gourd that looked like a duck. We went to the Johnny Appleseed festival in Ft. Wayne with our friends, Brandon and Amanda. I always find myself wanting to buy the kids' toys -- not for a kid, mind you. For myself. I really wanted a bow and arrow set and a pirate sword made out of wood. I ended up buying a $5 alligator that I named Bart. I'm sure he'll make an appearance later, but I'm saving him for a day I don't have a picture and don't want to resort to Clyde. I feel like taking lots of pictures of a wooden alligator in strange places is the reasonable thing to do.  Later we went back to the lake and took the pontoon boat out -- happy to say I managed to park the boat without any major accidents, despite the strong wind.  It was a nice weekend, though I was still tired from my trip and didn't feel overly refreshed when it was over. That's what the next weekend is for, right? 

There were some "Yay, you're home!" flowers waiting for me when my flight finally landed at 1:15 Friday morning. I was too lazy to put my macro lens on, but I like the picture anyway. There's something about red and orange flowers. 

Thursday was my favorite day of the conference -- the speakers were interesting and the networking was minimal, and afterwards, we had a little bit of time to explore before our flight. The second half of the day turned out kinda lame, but I did get to see the new World Trade Center tower. I also met this bird. And then I found a Drummond on a WWII memorial. Buuuuutttt...then I waited forever in the airport, my plane delayed. At least I got some more writing in. 9/19/2013 On the way home from NY. Stuck at the airport -- flight delayed.  It took us forever to find an electrical outlet at the Newark airport. We walked past terminal after terminal, peering behind seats and (surreptitiously) under people's legs, but no outlets. Our flight was delayed; only by 20 minutes at first, but that's a bad sign. We had 3+ hours for things to get worse.  We ate at the Garden State Diner -- I had a grilled cheese called The Happy Waitress and Maggie had fries and co...

This was my favorite part of a busy day: leaving the conference networking party to pick up nachos and eat them on the roof of our hotel. Yeah, so the nachos had potatoes in them (?) and the rooftop garden turned out to be too dark, but at this point, waiting at the bar for my nachos to be ready, I was anticipating cheese, happy and just slightly tipsy on cosmos. 

 I spent time before the conference today walking around Chelsea and exploring the High Line , an old raised railway now turned into a park. Here's a picture I took of a guy about to take a photograph of his wife. How do you think this guy would feel to know that now he's on my blog? I have better shots of the High Line but I like this one best, for some reason.  Walking back to our hotel, I saw a woman taking a picture of a convenience store. "God, tourists," I thought to myself. "Impressed by a NYC gas station." But then I saw it myself, and next thing I knew, I was taking a picture, too. The thing that interests me the most here is the man inside the fence wearing a suit. I don't know why he's there or why this gas station-turned-weird-fake-sheep-park needs a dressed-up bouncer.  I looked it up later -- apparently it's an art installation : "Set in a surrealist landscape amidst the existing industrial gas station archite...

I spent some time at the airport today, waiting for my flight to New York. The Indianapolis airport is probably one of the easiest airports anywhere -- security took me maybe 5 minutes, and all the terminals are in one place, so there's no way you can be too far from where you need to be. By 15 minutes after Michael dropped me off I was sitting at my gate, with an hour and a half to wait. For some reason writing comes easily in airports. I wrote a thousand words without even really thinking about it, just letting the people and conversations around me fill up my head. None of it really adds up to anything, but it's still fun and good practice. There's a woman sitting across from me with her nails painted like the Jamaican flag. I think it's the colors of the Jamaican flag. She's got a plaid baseball cap on and headphones in, and whatever she's listening to is so loud that she can't hear the lady across from her, who is trying to tell her she'll watc...

This is kind of boring, but I made some Hawaiian chicken in the crock pot. It's significant because I never cook anything. I just felt a little bit like I was answering a question for English homework. "Myrtle sees Tom driving Gatsby's car from the window. This is significant because..."

Look how crazy this plant is. It suddenly exploded. It makes me feel like I'm in the jungle.

I walked by my coworker today and he was sitting like this, so I asked if I could take his picture. His response was, "Should I be working or can I keep looking at BuzzFeed?"

I drove home today with two rose bushes in buckets in my front seat. They're from my grandma's house. We dug up two bushes that I hate and replaced them with these -- I hope they make it through the winter. Isn't it crazy that it's almost halfway through September?  I'm going to tell you something embarrassing. I'm laying here with two cold packs in my armpits because I've got a mad case of razor burn + bug bites. Yes, bug bites in my arm pits. Don't ask. And I put lotion on after shaving, which I think is what caused my arm pits to suddenly start blazing like a furnace. It's like I'm in some ring of hell and this is my punishment. Luckily I have a husband who not only wouldn't let me scratch them anymore but who brought me ice packs wrapped in wash clothes. I still want to scratch them, though. Oh, the agony. 

Tonight was one of those nights where I was too sleepy to muster up any kind of real enthusiasm for taking pictures, so my water bottle is making yet another appearance. This time you get to see the bubbles.

Yesterday I used super glue to fix the broken K that had fallen off of our wreath. I couldn't get the glue to come out at first and then ended up exploding it all over my hand. So I spent the rest of the night trying to pull super glue off my fingers. Here's an obligatory picture of Clyde, since you haven't seen him in awhile. And here's the dream I had last night: I was about to have surgery, so the doctor gave me some drugs to put me to sleep. He then started throwing sweatshirts on the floor and said, "You should sleep there now. We'll do it later."  So I laid down on the sweatshirts and tried to sleep, but my family was having a picnic around me. It was like a picnic in honor of my surgery. Everyone kept talking around me, and I kept feeling like I had to interject my opinion into what they were saying, even though I was supposed to be sleeping. Then over to the right of me was a kid playing on a little plastic trike. She tipped h...

Today, nothing sounded appealing for lunch except a hot dog. So I actually ran to Kroger and bought buns, hot dogs, and cheese so I could make myself a cheese dog. Don't ever underestimate the power of food to make your day better. I'm sorry to take the stereotypical picture of my lunch. This week is a little bland. 

It was too hot today to run. I said that to myself around 1pm, when Michael left to take care of some yard work at the old house. I said it again around 3pm, as, feeling a little too lethargic,  I picked up my shoes. "I'm just going to take Clyde for a walk." When I couldn't find my regular shorts but my running shorts happened to be right on top of the clean laundry, I put those on, instead. And yes, it was too hot to run. It sucked. But once I was on the path, it wasn't such a big deal to run a lap. I was there anyway. I think this is probably something I should take to heart in terms of my writing woes from yesterday. If I put myself on the path in my running gear, then there's not really any excuse for not running a little, even if I go even slower than normal and walk most of it. There's probably a lesson there. Deep, huh? This butterfly let me get up close while I was pausing to let Clyde poop:

Today's pictures are subpar. Michael and I went to see The World's End, and I snapped a picture of the movie theater as we walked over from the pizza place where we had dinner. Lately we haven't been so great at time estimation -- for the second time in a row, we ended up at the theater too early. I took this second picture while we sat outside, waiting for the theater to be cleaned.  The movie was good,  the kind where at some point you realize everyone in the theater is laughing, and you're laughing, too.  That's enough of my fascinating movie story. I'm supposed to be writing right now, but I'm procrastinating. Why is it that writing has to be such a cruel bitch? I say I want to write, and I associate such good feelings with having written, but when it comes down to actually doing all the things I say I want to do, I balk. It's too hard. Am I worried I won't be able to do it? Am I worried I'll find out once and for all that t...

I have a couple thoughts right now. 1) I'm really glad I have two arms. Like, really just thankful for arms in general. Imagine if you only had one arm. I mean, I'm sure I'd adjust, and there are people out there that deal with only having one arm, or one leg, or no extremities, and they're fine. I don't want to be insensitive. But really, I'm happy to have arms. There's nothing really setting up this thought, except that I was holding my tea and trying to open my gum packet with one hand, and it was difficult. 2) I am everlastingly disappointed that multi-grain and whole wheat bread does not taste as good as the enriched flour stuff. Almost as disappointed as I am in oatmeal cookies. I went to a local farmers' market today. I've wanted to go all summer but somehow keep forgetting that it's on Thursday evenings. I bought some bread and some honey crisp apples. I really love farmers' markets. They feel fresh. It'd be better i...

Here's what happened this evening. 1) I wanted to read outside in the swing, but lately mosquitos have been latching on to me like I'm some kind of sugar lump. Imagining that mosquitos like sugar. I don't know if they do or not. I like sugar, though, and I don't see why they wouldn't. 2) Michael very kindly found the citronella candles for me in the garage. Unfortunately, the wicks were buried under wax, so I started to dig them out with a rock. 3) I had no luck finding the wicks.  4) I paused to take a picture of this plant growing from underneath the deck. Please ignore our unsightly chicken wire. That's a different story.  5) My darling husband pulled out the citronella torches and put them up. Please ignore whatever is growing in that stoneware crock that I have ignored all summer.  6) He also pulled out a shovel to attack the yellow jacket nest in our paving stone border. This concerned me but turned out fine.  7) I sa...

A friend tweeted this comic the other day, which is based off of a commencement address  by Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin & Hobbes). It echoed many of the thoughts I've been having lately as I try to figure out where I want to go in my life, especially the following: "You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled [...] "Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement [...] You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and ...

It may be September now and summer may be over, but there are still plenty of flowers around. I found this purply-blue wildflower by the mailbox this evening, and then I accidentally broke off the daisy when I was pulling off some of his dead brothers. Our cedar table is starting to turn a little gray, which I think? is the look I want. We'll see, I guess?

Here's the aforementioned kayak. Beautiful, huh? Also fun. More fun than a $200 kayak you could get in a store? Not sure. But I don't think that's the point. I made Michael take a picture of me in the kayak. It was actually in the water earlier, but I didn't get a good picture then because we were too worried about making sure it didn't get scraped up on the seawall. I feel like it's going to end up mounted on the wall as art eventually. It's too beautiful to mess up. 

Meet my grandparents: "I'm 71 years old and I've been right every single day of my life." -- Grandpa  "Pam, you're a sight for sore eyes, the light of my life. I can't believe how you've held up." -- Grandpa  Today we went swimming, crashed a party, ate some stolen fish, and bought a very expensive handmade kayak. When you're 71, I guess that's the thing to do.