Twilight Zone

This is getting a little freaky.  It’s 5:04 p.m. I’ve been home from work for about 45 minutes. The dishes Joe left from late last night have been washed. The trash has been taken out. A luscious meat loaf is in the oven. My kitchen’s still spotless, and the Egypt room is still clean and tidy.

Could I be turning into one of those organized people I keep hearing about? Does this mean that eventually I’ll have the whole house clean and lovely?

Tune in for more info.

Also, I just took my first peek at the bathtub since I went through all kinds of torture attempting to refinish it on Monday night. It looks absolutely lovely. You’d never know it for the same tub we’ve lived with for 8 years.  I don’t think we’ll get anything else done on the bathroom until the weekend, because Joe’s not getting home until late. But I’m extremely hopeful that we’ll actually finish the bathroom this weekend. Regardless, I am going to take a long, hot lovely bubble bath tomorrow night at 8:30 (after the 72 hours since I finished putting the second coat on the tub).  And yes, I promise I will post after pictures as soon as the room is ready.

Oh–meatloaf. I like to make meatloaf, too, and it’s a good thing that Joe likes to eat it. Here’s the lastest one I concocted.

• 1 1/2 pounds extra lean ground beef
• About half a cup of Italian seasoned bread crumbs
• 1 or 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 small or 1/2 large onion, finely chopped
• About 2 small carrots, finely chopped (or 4-5 baby carrots)
• About 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
• Steak sauce, as much as you need
• Ketchup, as much as you need
• Whatever seasonings you want-tonight I used Vegeta and Joe’s Stuff.

Mix the bread crumbs and egg together. Then add in the vegetables and seasonings and toss well. Mix in the ground beef and steak sauce and ketchup. Place in a loaf pan or casserole dish and bake at 350-375 for about an hour and a half to two hours.

I have a regular food processor that has sat on my shelf for a couple of years. But the incomparable Izzybella, when she moved out of her apartment, gave me her small Black & Decker handy chopper. That thing is awesome!!! That’s why my last shepherd’s pie had celery and carrots in the beef part, and why I’ve started adding celery and carrots to my meat loaf. They make it so flavourful, and the chopper is so easy to use and doesn’t take up the space my huge food processor does.

Okay. I’m babbling now. Good evening, y’all!

Cleanliness is next to …

Yeah, you’ve heard that all your life. So have I. And yet I’m still one of the worst housekeepers you’ve ever met. Not because I don’t like having a clean house; I do. It’s a combination of having too much stuff in too small a house, and the fact that I as a writer have a billion books and my husband as a musician has a billion guitars/amps/drums/etc.  But I took the bit between my teeth yesterday, and spent much of Saturday and much of Sunday cleaning.

Egypt is now clean. Not spotless; I still need to mop the floors. But all the stuff that needed to go to Goodwill is in bags in my car. All the stuff that needed to get thrown out is in bags in the garbage bins outside. All the books that need to be returned to Jehara or the incomparable Izzybella are in bags in my car. The DVD’s are organized in alphabetical order. Most of the dog toys are in a box underneath the futon (the remainder are scattered around the house). The Egypt books are on their shelves. The other books that are in this room have been shelved. The ginormous unwieldy piece of exercise equipment is in a closet. Everything has been dusted; the floor and mat have been vacuumed. It looks lovely.

My goal this week is to keep this room clean, and then I’ll pick another room to start working on.

I can do this!!

Thinking Aloud

Well, not really aloud, per se, but sort of, I guess. This counts as aloud as far as I’m concerned. Thinking for an audience. Whatever.

Before I talk about what I came here to talk about, I have to tell you that I got lunch at Pei Wei today. Soleil told me they have incredible tofu. She was right. Wowza! Yummy! And they also have brown or white rice, and they also indicate which items on their menu are vegetarian if you get them with veggies & tofu. So I got honey-glazed veggies & tofu with brown rice for lunch.  I wasn’t really planning to eat out today, but (a) I left my leftovers at home and (b) my boss ordered in pizza and I don’t really care for pizza. Also, I was looking for a book and the Half-Price Books by my office didn’t have it, and I went to the one in Arlington to see if they had it; there was a Pei Wei along the way and I’ve been craving tofu. So it all kind of worked in this cosmically karmic way and I got my tofu. Didn’t get the book I was looking for, but I found another one and had a 30% off coupon, so all was well.

And yum. Tofu.

Okay. Here’s what I wanted to talk about.

I’ve been mega hyper focused on our finances lately. Ever since I read that Bach book on Smart Women Finish Rich, I’ve been thinking, planning, acting, and reading. I’ve since read a couple of other books, and a heckuva lot of blogs. I find that reading other people’s blogs helps me stay focused.  I also find some good ideas that way.

So here’s what’s improved since then:

• I know where my money (personal allowance) has gone since then. I’ve still wasted too much of it, but I know what I’ve wasted it on.
• I have $110 in a higher interest savings account. That it’s $110 is due in part to my awesome husband who, when I boasted that I had $55 and had set up an auto transfer of $50 every payday, he told me to write myself a check for another $55. So yay to him! I think it’s paying 4.30% interest right now, which is substantially higher than the piddling interest my regular bank pays. 
• I get paid Friday, and I haven’t run my personal allowance account down to zero–I have a little cash left, and I have $14 left in my checking account.
• I canceled Netflix, which will save me about $19 a month.
• When the catalogs come in the mail, instead of looking at them first and then putting them into the recycle bin, I don’t even bring them into the house. I immediately put them into the recycle bin.
• I took 4 bags of books to Half Price Books last weekend and sold them, thus clearing some space in the house as well as getting a little extra cash. The piddling amount of money I got compared to the amount I paid for those books will, I hope, be some incentive in helping me be a bit more cautious about buying more books.
• Last night instead of automatically going out to dinner, I stuck a frozen lasagna into the oven while Joe and I started clearing out one of our most cluttered rooms.
• I have registers in Excel for my 401(k), my cash, my checking account, and my savings accounts, and I update them daily so I always know how much money I have.

There is definitely a correlation between the debt and the clutter. How many times have I bought things that I didn’t need, to cheer myself up, or because I thought I deserved it, or for whatever tomfool reason I came up with? I couldn’t even begin to tell you. And how much of the clutter in our house is due to those types of purchases? And then we can’t find things we genuinely need, so we end up buying another one, or two, or three. Joe has gone from adamantly refusing to throw anything away “because we might need it someday” to realizing that we’ve got way more than we’ll ever need and than we can possibly use and than we have room for, and he was really helpful last night. We got a good 3 or 4 bags of rubbish out of the house last night. We didn’t finish getting that room cleared out, but we made a good start. I think we might have finished it up, but he got distracted and went to play guitar for a while. And I don’t want to push him too much. I think maybe we can finish it tonight while we’re waiting for goblins and princesses and spidermen to come knock on the door for treats.

And once we’ve got that room cleared out, it will make it so much easier for me to keep the kitchen cleaned. And then we can actually cook at home, and eat in the — gasp — dining room! Wow! I’ve found that if Joe will let me plan the meals, without him getting all freaked out about having to have meat substitutes, vegetarian cooking is a lot cheaper and more healthful than the meat eating that we used to do. If we can get that dang grocery budget down, we could put that money on snowballing the credit card debt.

This month things went askew also, because we had to buy a new refrigerator ($500) and had to get plane tickets and a rental car for a trip to Buffalo ($1000). But the refrigerator had to be replaced, and Joe’s mother doesn’t turn 80 every year. It’ll be the first time all her kids and their spouses have been together since 2004, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.

So when I get paid on Friday I’ll transfer another $50 over to my savings account. I’ll get my allowance. And I’ll put the rest into our family account to pay bills with.

I’m hoping to only spend half my allowance this time. When I record anything I spend in my register, I’ll note whether it was a want or a need with the goal being to cut way back on the wants.

Because my biggest want is to get out of debt and get my finances in shape for the things I truly want to do in life. And they don’t include nickeling and diming myself to death. We got out of debt once before, before almost immediately getting right back into debt, and far deeper. But my focus now isn’t only on getting out of debt. I have a long-term focus on being truly financially free to be able to take care of ourselves, and help our family and friends. We can’t do that when we’re ensnared in debt.

My Weekend

Tags

Books

It started not very happily (for me) when I got the word that Joe’s company has decided to keep him as their roving trouble shooter. He’s over the moon about it, and I’m happy for him, because he truly enjoys the challenge. He’s said that going back to an on-site position after this would be soul-destroying. So when I say I’m happy for him, I honestly mean that. No, my feelings come from missing him so dreadfully. But he will be home most of the month of October, which will be truly lovely.

Then I was also stressed about almost all of my plans for the weekend falling through. And I’d honestly had a strong feeling we were going to be moving, so that was a disappointment in its own way. Not that I wanted to leave my family & friends, because I don’t, but I was looking forward to new horizons and adventures.

So I was emotionally all over the place during the day. L-squared helped me get a little more even keeled as she helped me see what I could do with the house to feel better about it. And when I got home, Soleil was there for me with a book and a trashy magazine and big hugs. Soleil does great hugs!!! And we had a quick dinner and talked about things before she had to go to work.

I decided for my weekend project to tackle what I call “The Big Ugly,” aka the main bathroom. I rarely go in there for anything but the fastest of showers because the room’s so disgusting. It’s Joe’s domain. He junks it up beyond anything describable. And he almost never throws anything away in there. So on Friday night I got one of those huge heavy-weight contractor’s trash bags and threw away every empty or mostly-empty bottle of shampoo, skin care, whatever. I threw away the stuff we’d tried once or twice and didn’t like. I threw away the stuff with broken lids that we couldn’t get out. I threw away the hairspray with the broken nozzle that sprayed all over your hand instead of your hair. I got rid of the cheap Avon cologne that smelled like, well, I don’t know how to describe what it smelled like.  I threw away the old Q-tips that were laying on the counter, used matches, old cotton balls, newspapers, samples that we’d had in there for untold years. All gone.

That’s what I did on Friday night.

And I cried. And cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. I got two very well-meaning but thoughtlessly worded e-mails from people I love very much and who love me. And in any other mood I’d have been able to shrug off the sting, but on Friday night I was in such a bad place that it was truly frightening. It reminded me of when I had the breakdowns when I was working for CPS. I’d manage to stop crying for an hour or so, and then it would start up all over again.  I had plans to go into the office and work for 3 or 4 hours on Saturday morning, but when I was still awake, and still sporadically crying, at 4 a.m., I knew there was no way. I finally fell asleep between 4 and 4:30, and slept until around 9:30.

I woke up feeling fine. Not great, but fine. I got up, went to the Evil Empire (TM) and bought some cute smallish wicker laundry baskets, some non-adhesive shelf liner, a couple of scrubbing brushes, and went back home to tackle The Big Ugly. I scrubbed the shelves. I lay the non-adhesive shelf liner. I discovered that I could fit two of the cute smallish wicker laundry baskets per shelf. I decided what stuff I would put in which basket where. I had salvaged two laundry hamper-sized baskets that Tom Thumb was getting rid of last week, and I put those in the bottom part of the shelf area; one’s for clean folded towels and the other’s for dirty laundry. And the wash clothes get rolled up and placed into one of the small baskets. All very pretty.

And I scrubbed the tub. We have a very large very old tub, and it’s badly stained. One can scrub for a long time and never make any impact. It was slightly better when I was finished. I, on the other hand, was hot and sweaty. So I took off my clothes and lay on the bed with the a/c blowing on me until I cooled off enough to take a luxurious bath. No, The Big Ugly wasn’t finished yet, but I had a “party” to get ready for and I was stinky from the sweat and the scrubbing. So nice bath with a lovely bath bomb Joe got me from Lush in California, and then I was dressed and out the door.

The banned book party, well, it wasn’t so much a party as a dinner with two other people. We did some book talk and had one game of sorts. I went down a list of the top 100 banned books in the last decade, and the person who had read the most was proclaimed queen of the banned books. She got a tiara and a $10 gift card to Half Price Books. The other person got a bag of banned books, including Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block, The Great Gatsby, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and I forget what all else. We talked a bit about the reasons some books were banned, and we exchanged books. I received a copy of Huckleberry Finn, which I haven’t read in ages. I brought Lysistrata, and the other person brought Anne Frank and Walden. So it was all fine as far as that went. I’m sorry more of my friends were unable to make it, but we had a pleasant evening.

Yesterday I sporadically read, and cleaned The Big Ugly. I had to make another trip to the Evil Empire (TM) for a step stool (there was a shelf I couldn’t reach and needed to make use of) and another basket or two. And I got kidnapped by my sister, the incomparable Izzybella, and hauled off to the book store and forced to select a book that she wanted to buy me. Don’t you hate it when people want to buy you books? Yeah. Me neither. Not only that, but she also got me a Godiva dark chocolate bar. Mmmmm. Booky and chocolately goodness, all in one fell swoop. So the only thing left to do in The Big Ugly is to clean the floor and the outside of the toilet. I just flat ran out of time this weekend. But if one looks at where it started–which I’m the only one who did, and Joe of course, because I would never let anyone see it–and looks at where it is now, it’s already so much better one would plotz. So I don’t feel bad about running out of time. Plus, hey, I did a load of laundry to boot.

So I feel pretty good. I had a mini nervous breakdown, almost finished cleaning The Big Ugly, read several books, had dinner out with some friends, and got kidnapped by the incomparable Izzybella and spent time with Soleil. All in all a very eventful weekend.

Oh! and hey, Janet of Fond of Snape tells me I won her book drawing! All with the good there too, right?

Books I read this weekend:

Extras – Scott Westerfeld. The fourth book in the Uglies trilogy. Soleil got it for me. It’s fantastic. Unlike the first three books in the story, Tally is not the main focus of the story. She comes in later on. But she definitely plays an important part. Four thumbs up.

Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin. The book that the incomparable Izzybella got for me. It’s fantastic. I really really enjoyed it. Quite an unusual take on the afterlife. Four thumbs up.

Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Lawrence Miles, Lars Pearson, Christa Dickson. One of the better of the Buffy guides. Yes, I practically know this stuff by heart, but when one is having a mini nervous breakdown, one needs this kind of fluff. Besides. Buffy. Four thumbs up.

Clutter Buster

Tags

It's a Dog's Life

Joe and I both agree that we’ve got way too much crap in this house and that we need to declutter. The only problem is that we rarely agree on what needs to go.

But guess what! Joe’s out of state. That means that I can declutter.  Now don’t start thinking I’m a nasty wife throwing away my husband’s treasured possessions. Not at all. I’m throwing away my stuff.  It’s just that 99% of the time when I try to get rid of things I no longer want or need, he refuses to permit it. We might need it sometime, see. Or he’ll use that even if I don’t. You know.

A week or two ago I threw away a bunch of stuff that I’d had in a “figure out where to put this junk” box for 6 months or longer. It felt very liberating.  So today I’m doing some more housework (pick yourself off the floor; I said I clean every now and then) and threw away more crap! Yay! Like I found an envelope from the World Fantasy Conference that I attended last November. It was full of ads for books, CDs with a few chapters of new books, cheap pens, cheap bookmarks, etc. I threw every bit of it away. I found in the same drawer where the envelope had been at least 10 other cheap giveaway pens. I don’t like that type of pen, but I always felt vaguely guilty about getting rid of them. But they’re gone.

The old bottles of outdated medicine are gone. The assorted receipts for $2.19 worth of cupcakes or hair ribbons or whatever are gone. The free samples I was given and never uesd are gone. The various products I had purchased, tried, and didn’t like? Gone.

Now I know that stuff is still good. But who wants a partially opened bottle of hand lotion that I didn’t like? And if I get into that “still good” dilemma, then I’ll never get rid of the clutter. So out it goes! And the socks that have no matches, well, I’ll probably toss them out as well.

Last night Izzybella and I went shopping. I made the mortal mistake of laughing hysterically when she put on a certain article of clothing. I felt really bad about it, too, but it just couldn’t be helped. She got even, though. As we were putting our own clothes back on, she suddenly pointed at my socks. “Your socks don’t match!” she shrieked.  She was right; the right sock was orange with maroon little streaks in it, and the left sock was pink, purple, red, and white striped.  “Did you know they didn’t match?” she persisted. The answer to that question was, regrettably, yes. I did know. But I was in a hurry when I got dressed yesterday, and didn’t feel like sorting through a drawerful of loose socks to find a pair that matched. Besides, my jeans were three inches longer than I am tall, so it’s not like anyone was going to see my socks. And it doesn’t matter if they match or not anyway. It’s a personal statement of style. Right? Right? (The echo is deafening. Sounds like you’re all hysterically laughing right along with my sister. I deserve it.)  Anyway, yeah. I’ve got socks that one sock disappeared years ago, and I haven’t gotten rid of the remaining sock “because it might turn up some day.” Socks are cheap, Faith. Dump the silly thing.

You get the picture. I’m getting rid of clutter while Joe’s gone so that when he gets home he’ll only notice that the house is cleaner. He’s not going to know or care that I threw away 20 cheap giveaway advertising pens and 34 socks and 19 receipts and 4 bottles of outdated medicine.

Oh, and Molly’s still punishing me. This morning I had to leave for several hours to run some errands. When I got home I found that she’d peed half on her pee pad and half on the floor. So I’m still cleaning up nasty messes. Granted, it wasn’t as gross as the barf on the bed, but it wasn’t pretty.  It’s got me wondering if I should go to California next weekend–if she’s doing this now, how’s she going to behave when I pick her up after she’s spent the weekend at the kennel?

It’s Wednesday

And Joe’s leaving this morning for another few weeks. It’s the first morning I cried when I had to say good-bye, so I guess this is getting to me a little bit.  He’s planning on coming home every two weeks for a long weekend, and I almost don’t want him to do that just because saying good-bye is getting harder. But I don’t want to tell him not to come home when he’s the one miserable because he’s away. So I’m just going to deal. But if I leak a few tears this morning, you’ll have to bear with me.

We got a free jeans and sneakers day at work, always something to enjoy. Furthermore, they’re actually letting us wear tee-shirts. So I’m wearing my lovely MoMentuM tee-shirt. I can’t resist the sales pitches–”You like my tee-shirt? Thanks! You can get your very own from Cafe Press, and support MoMentuM at the same time!”  Poeple will be actively avoiding me by the end of the day! It really is very comfortable; I foresee it becoming my gym shirt.

So Joe’s gone again; it’s going to be at least 2 1/2 weeks (if not longer) before he gets home next time. So beyond my wanting to completely veg out tonight (but I am going to the gym before I veg), I’m asking myself what I can accomplish in his absence. The smell is almost gone; the only room that still stinks is the bathroom. And if I leave the bathroom door shut and the window wide open all night in there, it is tolerable enough that I can manage to take a shower. So I’m not going to be doing a deep scrub of the bathroom until the stench is completely gone. But I can get the kitchen and dining area cleaned up the rest of the way. The kitchen is mostly clean, but he’s been storing all kinds of stuff in our dining area.  I wanted to get it out the last time he was gone, but didn’t know what to do with it. I asked him a few days ago, and he was quite vague about it. So I made an executive decision. Anything that doesn’t belong in the house itself but that we do need, I will go ahead and box up and put into the SUV so he can haul it off to our storage unit when he returns. Or hell, maybe I’ll enlist the strong arms of Izzybella and Soleil, and get them to help me haul it off. Either way, I’m so tired of not being able to eat in our dining area because it’s full of all kinds of crap that shouldn’t be there. I think I can get that done while he’s gone for this first period. It’ll be quite a chore, but it’s doable.

You know, he always tells me that old saw about many hands making light work, but I find it very annoying to try to clean house with him. I’d rather work fast and sort and clean and junk, and he questions everything I do. Maybe that’s why it’s annoying. He thinks I should use a different cleanser or he wants me to put something somewhere else or he wants us to work on one room when I want to do something different. So as much as I loathe doing housework, I almost kind of look forward to doing it while he’s gone.

I’ve got a couple of rooms that need painting, but I’m really sucky at painting. They’re not going to get done right away, but I can see working on it after I get the cleaning done. My robins-egg-blue kitchen walls have GOT to go. I’m not a robins-egg-blue-with-picket-fence-and-birdhouses type person anymore (never was, really, but that’s when I was trying desperately to fit in).

I’m looking forward to autumn and winter. I love the cold months of the year, the holidays, all the fun things about it. It’d be really nice to go into the holidays this year having the house already cleaned.

I can’t believe I’m such a slob that I have to set these types of goals. It’s embarrassing to have to admit to myself. But even Joe agrees with me that it’s less slobbiness (although that’s definitely a factor) and more that we still have way too much crap in the house that we don’t need. I’ll be making plenty of runs to Good Will over the next few months. And I’ve got to get more bookshelves so that I’ve got places for my books; makes them easier to find when they’re shelved than when they’re piled up all over the floors in various rooms.  And I’d like to find some way to organize his music room.

I’m having to work a fair bit of overtime this month, but otherwise I’m planning to spend a lot of time between the gym and housework. And movies. And the Buffython, whenever that happens. So staying busy, but trying to remember to have fun, too.

I know it’s been forever since I did any writing, but I have a new post up on Seduced by the Muse. And there are a couple of new posts up at Faith’s Journey as well. Stop on by if you’re interested!

My Weekend

Tags

Harry Potter, It's a Dog's Life

I’ve already rhapsodized over Harry Potter, and don’t want to spoil anyone, so will refrain from further rhapsodies, beyond the occasional “squee,” but I did actually get a few other things done over the weekend, believe it or not.

Rehearsal Friday was, well, interesting? Exhausting? Illuminating? All of the above? I guess I’d have to go with D, all of the above. Exhausting, definitely. I was in a muck sweat by the time we finished, and the bottoms of my feet were caked with black dirt. Definitely made me rethink whether I want to perform the show in bare feet. I was also intensely frustrated to realize that despite the time I’ve spent on certain scenes, I’m still not completely off book. One scene I’m in I even wrote, and it’s the one I’m having the most trouble getting off book on. I have done everything short of getting on my knees and begging for that one to be cut, and would do that if I thought it would work! We had a photographer from the Fort Worth newspaper out to take pictures for part of the evening for a story that’s due to appear this week. Most of all, though, it was good to see how things are coming together. It’s going to be a very good show.

On Saturday afternoon after Izzybella called the umpteenth time and ordered me to wake my lazy self up and pick her up (it was a kindness, trust me!) for V’s housewarming party, I kicked L-squared out, and Soleil and I went and picked up Izzybella and we did in fact go to V’s housewarming party.  It wasn’t, however, at V’s new house. This would be because V’s new house is in another state far away from this one.  It was held at the home of V’s parents-in-law, and was a really fun party. V’s parents catered, and if you’ve never had the good fortune to eat a meal they’ve cooked, oh, my, you’ve truly missed out. They always make sure they have something for the vegetarians in our little crowd, and I feasted on rice and squash with cheese, and guacamole.  I’m really glad Izzybella got bossy, because honestly, Soleil and I could easily have slept all day. And V’s too good of a friend, and we’d have felt like big fat jerks if we’d missed her party.

Afterward, Izzybella and I took Soleil home, and then I took Izzybella home, and then I took myself home, where I proceeded to begin rereading Harry Potter.  I was approximately 3/4′s of the way through the book, bleary-eyed, when Joe called me. He ordered me to sleep until noon the next day.

Ever the obedient wife, I did just that. Well, sort-of. Molly woke me up at 7:30 begging to go outside, so I let her out, read the last bit of Harry Potter, and then went back to sleep until noon.  Does that count?

And Joe frequently casts aspersions upon my abilities to keep house. Justly so, I should admit. I loathe cleaning house. But while he’s been gone, I’ve successfully kept clean the rooms that were clean when he left.  I’ve also begun cleaning some other rooms that needed cleaning.  So yesterday I started work on the guest room–critical, since Mom’s due to arrive on August 2nd. I worked sporadically on that room until Izzybella called and said she was picking me up in 10.

We ran a few errands, ate some lunch together, and had a very nice interlude. She then dropped me back home, and I returned to my chores. I also managed to watch Capote (WOW!) and Notes on a Scandal (also very good) before I’d had enough. No, the room’s not finished, but it’s a lot better. I have about two loads of laundry to wash, some books to put away, and two boxes of stuff that I need to put somewhere but I don’t know where. How do I manage to do that? Amass such piles of stuff? Don’t tell me–I don’t want to know. I just want to be done with it.

Today Joe decided that he doesn’t want me to go to San Antonio with Mom and Izzybella the day after the show closes. Now I’ll freely admit that I wasn’t entirely wanting to go ONLY because I know how tired I’ll be. However, I was very much looking forward to spending the time with Mom and Izzybella. So I was disappointed. I was also very frustrated because I knew that it would hurt my sister to have me back out like this.  But he’s worried about how tired I’ve been, how sick I’ve been lately, how much extra I’ve been doing with him out of town. He’s also frankly been worried about Molly, because she’s been missing him a LOT. She’s not used to him being gone so much, and he is worried that if I pick up and go somewhere for a couple of days that she’d kind of freak out.  And my not going means I don’t have to make up that 8 hours from work–I’ll just go to work on that Monday and not have to work 10-hour days the rest of the week. It’s a mixed bag. I feel torn. Relief on the one hand, and immense guilt and frustration on the other. I hate hurting my sister, who is my best friend next to my husband. It’s put a heavier burden on her to have me not be there, because now she’s the only one who’ll be driving, etc. But maybe it’ll be good. She’ll have some quality alone time with Mom. And just think of the guilt factor! Whenever she wants me to do something, and I start the “I don’ wanna” whine, she just has to bring this up, and I’m her slave!  And when they get back from the trip, I’ll have a good dinner ready. And, Izzybella, I’ll give you a good massage when you get back.  Okay, I know I’m pushing. I’m just trying to make the best of a difficult situation.

So tonight we’ve got rehearsal in Ft. Worth again, but the rest of the week is tech week in Addison. That means long nasty drives, late nights, exhaustion, and we open on THURSDAY! I’ve got to remember to buy dog food tonight, because I won’t get another chance, and we definitely don’t have enough to last until the weekend.

Joe gets home on Friday. I’m glad. I’ve missed him. I think he said he’s going to fly back on Monday, so I get to have him for the whole weekend. Yay! That’ll be nice. Of course, Molly will probably be fighting me for his company. . .

Oh, yeah. One more thing. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. SQUEE!!!!!

Loved It/Hated It/Miss Him

Tags

Books, Harry Potter

LOVED IT:

The Last Holiday, a Queen Latifah movie. It’s been here for a week, and I finally plugged it into the DVD player tonight, figuring I could just listen to it while I was washing dishes/running lines/cleaning house/missing my husband (ADD, remember?).  But I soon found that I kept going back into the living room and sitting on the sofa, entranced. It’s a sweet romantic comedy. I cried near the beginning when this lovely aspiring chef/Hellmart sales associate found out she had a terminal disease and only 3 weeks to live. But after some “why me” episodes, she faced it with grace, cashed in her IRA and bonds, and decided to make the most of her remaining 3 weeks.  Yes, parts of the movie were highly predictable. That didn’t take away from my enjoyment. It was well cast and beautifully filmed.  It’s a keeper.

HATED IT:

Thirsty, by M.T. Anderson.  I like me the vampire stories. That’s no secret. But this vampire story I could have done without reading.  The protagonist, Chris, has a crush on a girl at school, and a couple of so-called best friends that he’s really outgrowing. And he’s starting to feel a little strange.  His town has an upcoming ceremony designed to keep the vampire lord Tch’muchgar locked away in the prison-like dimension where he has been entrapped; one day Chris is approached by a mysterious being who calls himself Chet. Chris is turning into a vampire himself, Chet tells him, but the Powers of Light will save him if he will do them just one little favour.  After plenty of denial followed by incontrovertible proof that he is, indeed, turning into a vampire, Chris does the favour requested of him.  But Chet doesn’t return to cure him. Is Chet really a good guy? Is there any hope for Chris? Well, if you don’t want to waste your time reading the book, email me and I’ll tell you. Otherwise, go for it. It’s not badly written–I just didn’t particularly care for it. I have another book by M.T. Anderson on the list for one of my challenges. I hope I like it better.

MISS HIM:

Joe. Who else? I’m sitting here pouting because I only got to talk to him for about 2 minutes today. And those two minutes were when he was going back to his job site after lunch–I heard him say something about a nice pair of shoes, and a gruff masculine voice near him said, “Forget the shoes; that’s a nice butt!”  And I told him to call me later. Only he didn’t. I know, I know. He’s really busy. He truly is, and I know that. And maybe his cell phone’s out of juice, and he hasn’t gotten around to charging it. Maybe he doesn’t even know it’s out of juice. But I’m sitting here pouting nonetheless.  I know I wanted some time, but really, just having him not working from home would have been fine, thank you very much. Having him gone 3 weeks at a time is just a little too much alone time.

I thought I’d be so productive tonight. Get my lines, get the house cleaned. Why do I always think I can do three weeks of work in a 4-hour period? Because I just can’t. I washed the few dishes that needed to be washed, cleaned off the counter, moved the microwave from the baker’s rack in the dining room onto said counter, made dinner, took out the trash, worked on my lines, watched a movie (mostly while working, but some of it I was just sitting on my backside), did two crossword puzzles, and explained to Molly that she really needed to use the pee pad if she can’t wait until morning. And then I finished reading the aforementioned book, cried, and turned on my computer.

I loathe having to take sleeping pills. I always have trouble sleeping because I just can’t get my mind to slow down enough to fall asleep. But when I’m in a show it’s worse than ever. I know I’ve talked about that before, but I’m feeling it right now because I didn’t take an Ambien yet, and I’m not the least bit sleepy. But if I take it now, I won’t be able to get up in time without being groggy. It hits me hard; if I wake up in the night to go to the bathroom, I literally stagger to and from the bathroom.

So there’s a story about MoMentuM and Las Mujeres de Juarez in this week’s Fort Worth Weekly.  I’ll link to it tomorrow, but you can do a search for Fort Worth Weekly and find it.  The reporter got some details wrong–trust me, we don’t only focus on doom and gloom and death and destruction and we do put on fun shows as well–but still, publicity is publicity, right? And we’ll be in the Fort Worth Star Telegram as well; a photographer is coming to our Friday night rehearsal.  So I’m really hopeful that the publicity will get some people out to the show who wouldn’t normally come.

I’m still twitching, by the way, and it’s getting increasingly annoying. I looked up some remedies, and it appears as though taking magnesium may help. It’s worth a try. Of course, I’m sure it’s mainly stress, and that’s just going to be there for another several weeks. Can’t do much about it.

Apparently my mom is reading my archives (hi, Mom!) and she tells me that I erred when I said that she thought Izzybella was going to be a boy (see Izzybella’s Birthday in December 2006). That’s how I remembered it, and when you’re a kid, you don’t necessarily realize everything that’s going on. I do remember not understanding about how being heavily pregnant made it awkward to sit at the table. Mom was sitting kind of sideways and had propped up one elbow on the dinner table, and I smarted off with a phrase I’d heard in Girl Scouts or somewhere. “Mabel, Mabel, if you’re able, get your elbows off the table.”  Whoo! Did I get in trouble! Okay, I got sent to my room, but still, I was smarting at the indignity. Again, in retrospect, duh, and I’m sorry, Mom.

I guess I’ll quit writing now.  I’ve had some friends tell me that they’ve done drunk texting. I’m not drunk, and I’m blogging, not texting, but it feels remarkably like how I imagine drunk texting would be.

Oh, yeah! Two days and two hours until HARRY POTTER!!!

Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!

Have you ever heard of A Complaint Free World?  Some pastor somewhere had the idea of how to help people get out of the habit of complaining all the time. He shared it with his congregation, and they started giving away these nasty little purple bracelets. I HATE the nasty little rubber bracelets, but I thought, you know, I do complain an awful lot, and I sent off for one. They sent me three. That was probably a good thing. I’ve been wearing it since Sunday, and haven’t even gone 6 hours, much less 6 days, without complaining.

You put the bracelet on your wrist. Doesn’t matter which one. And if you catch yourself complaining, you put the bracelet on your other wrist and start counting your days over again. Ideally you want to go 21 days eventually, because that forms a new habit of not complaining, yadda yadda.

So I have switched it back and forth ad infinitum, although I will say that about 75% of my whingeing is done silently. But I still know I’m doing it.

Here’s what I’m annoyed about today:

1. One of my best friends got scammed out of a large sum of money. That really has me angry. I’ve been angry ever since it happened, and I’m still angry.
2. The apartment of that same best friend was broken into, and her laptop and last bit of cash was stolen. I’m even angrier. She has been searching hard for a job, but has yet to find one. She’s one of the coolest, nicest, most whatever superlative you can think of people I’ve ever met, and it pisses me off that people hurt her like this.
3. My sister is sick. I know what you’re thinking, but I honestly don’t think she caught what I had. I’ve been over the infectious part for a couple of weeks, even if I still am hacking up a lung at least 10-15 times a day. Nope. She’s got something different. And this is the last week before tech, and we open a week from Thursday. She doesn’t have time to be sick, and she’s so frustrated by the whole thing. And of course there’s nothing she can do; it’s not her fault she got sick. Please. But I’m pissed in her behalf. Because I was so sick for so long, and it really sucks. Of course, she is blessed in that she has reasonable bosses and reasonable sick leave policy.
4. Work is driving me abso-frickin’-lutely insane!!!  There are people who request credit bureau reports from me, only to delete them as soon as they’ve worked them. Lo and behold, they need it again. Do they tell me they need me to repull a report that was pulled on a certain date? Nope, they just do a brand new request. My job is hellish from July through December anyway, and this just makes it worse. I caught myself today furiously noting an account that I emailed the July/XX cbr to Soandso “because I don’t already have enough work to do.” Of course I spaced it back off and just noted that I’d emailed the reprint to Soandso. But you get the picture. What is even more maddening is this particular Soandso was coming in my office every day the first week of the month wondering when I would get to her credit bureau requests. I explained that I do them in the order in which they’re received, and as I’m currently doing over 100 a day, it might take an extra day or so.  I finally got to the bottom of that stack, and realized that Soandso had never even submitted any credit bureau requests to me. When I told her that, she wondered what had happened to her requests, and printed new ones. Of course, as I’ve pulled them, I’ve searched the account and, as I suspected, she’d never requested them to begin with. I’M NOT STUPID!!!
5. Molly is apparently traumatized about Joe’s absence. I came home yesterday to the ripe smell of dog crap in the house. I checked the pad I leave by the back door. Nothing. I check the bathroom (her other favourite place when she’s punishing us). Nothing. I check the bedroom. Nothing. I finally thought she must just be really gassy. But no, the smell was just as ferocious when she was outside. I finally stuck my head inside our home office, and she’d left two gigantic piles of crap on some papers Joe’d left on the floor and the rug. NASTY!  I cleaned it up, and had a talk with her about it. Apparently she’s still stressed about Joe’s absence, though, because when I woke up this morning I found that she’d peed on the floor, right next to the pee pad, by the back door during the night.  I swear she flipped me off when I asked her politely to either come get me or use the pee pad. I know she’s traumatized, poor baby, but there’s nothing either Joe or I can do about the situation.
6. Joe was going to come home this weekend, but he’s decided to wait until next weekend. I think that’s a good idea. There’s a lot of music for him to go see in Saint Louis next weekend, and I’ve got a billion things going on this weekend. Plus, if he comes home next weekend, he’ll be here for opening weekend of the show and can also escort me to our end of season banquet.  So I’m glad in a way, but also bummed.
7. My back hurts. And I’m still coughing frequently, and my voice still comes and goes. And I’m still not off book. And we open next Thursday. Oh, and my house is still a disaster zone and I’m having a bunch of friends over Friday night for the Harry Potter party. And we’re getting out of rehearsal late on Friday night (which is a bad thing) because a reporter & some photographers from the paper are coming (which is a good thing).

I suppose that’s enough complaining for one gripe session. Pretend like I just moved the bracelet back and forth 7 times, and I’ll start all over again. :p

Catharsis

Emotional cleansing, right?

One of the scenes I’m doing in the Juarez show is turning out to be very cathartic for me. I don’t want to describe it in a whole lot of detail, because I’m hoping at least some of you who are reading this might be able to see the show and I don’t want to spoil it for you.

However, some of the details of the case eerily mirror the the death of my sister A. In the scene my character is desperately trying to find her sister’s body, blaming herself for allowing her sister to run around with a drug dealer and thus for her death, and bargaining with God to let her sister live.

I was really apprehensive about doing this particular piece. When I read it I immediately thought of A. I knew that I would be feeling the same guilt my character feels because I didn’t resolve things with A. before she died, and I’ve been wrestling with my own guilt ever since.

So last night when I rehearsed the scene for the first time, I broke down in tears almost as soon as I started. That wasn’t acting, folks. That was real.  I stayed in character and made it through. The second time I did it, I didn’t cry until the end, but again, the tears were real.

I’m new to this whole acting thing. Well, at least, acting on stage anyway. In a sense I’ve spent my whole life acting. I want to do justice to this scene. It’s not a character, per se. It’s a person. I’m telling the story, dramatized, of a real person. I don’t want my own personal guilt about my own sister’s death to interfere. At the same time, if that can help me tell Y’s story, I’m willing to use it as long as I can keep it in check.  How do I find that balance?

This rehearsal process will be an interesting one.

On the positive side, I actually slept relatively well last night. Perhaps there is something to be said for catharsis after all.

* * * * *

Moving on to another topic, I really like Nyquil Liquigels.  Yes, my friends, once again I have managed to get sick. There’s something going around at the office, and I’ve managed to catch it. I felt fine until after lunch when I started getting a sore throat and began coughing. The aforementioned medicine lets me get nice and loopy and sleepy and I don’t have to taste the nasty indescribable liquid.

It looks like Izzybella and I get to have our Mom see the Juarez show! We’re both very excited about the prospect. We’re flying her out here the Wednesday before the last weekend of the show. She’s seen Izzybella on stage several times, of course, but she’s never gotten to see me act before, as this is only my second play. That means that I need to do some serious housework. You did read my 5 things post, right? Where I admitted to being a slob, and said that if I were a millionaire the 5th thing I’d do would be to hire a housecleaning service? Yeah. So somewhere between working full-time and rehearsals and working on the displays for the show and my personal writing projects I need to do some major housecleaning.  Oh, and get over this crud, too.  Help!!!!

I think the Nyquil is telling me that if I don’t sign off now, my head is going to crash into my keyboard and ghlhjklt4quoeqjkln gf jk fjklbvc