Keeping Things Interesting

We are in the heat of things now, semester-wise. During the week it's all I can do to keep my head above water. Plus, I'm trying to do everything I can to help free up my weekends, and this means I usually find myself grocery shopping on Friday night.

Basically, this is to say that I will literally do anything to keep things interesting for myself.

And look what was only $7.99!!

Her Valentine panda buddy is safely packed away in the garage and I was awaiting the stuffed animals for St. Patrick's Day, but I guess King Soopers is skipping straight ahead to Easter, which is fine with me. This new lil gal pal doesn't fit her color scheme (as you will remember, neither did the orange Halloween pumpkin), but with stuffed animals and real people, all colors matter, and we're trying to teach Lucy this. :P

In case you're wondering, here's how the introduction went down last night:

How long until Easter?

Sigh.

TGIF, people!

Compliment? Insult?

So, I think we can all agree that I'm not exactly a fashionista. But I have to say, in my own defense, that I usually look nice. Not nice, like sexy. Not nice, like uber professional. But nice, like an Amish teenager wandered into TJ Maxx.

On a related note, I work with a self-described gay princess who let's just say isn't known for his tact or diplomacy.

Yesterday I decided to mix it up and I wore a black dress and boots to work. I didn't look any nicer than I usually do, but it occurs to me from the amount of compliments I received that perhaps I looked...stylish.

As I walked in the door and started to arrange my stuff for the day, he made a beeline for me, stuck his finger in my face and said, "This," [gesturing up and down and my outfit] "is what you should be wearing every day."

Taken aback, and also seriously enjoying the compliment, I said, "Are you saying I need to throw away all my other clothes or what?"

He goes, "Of course not. I'm saying you need to burn them."

Making Peace with Middle Age

I know, with a title like this one, you must be expecting a snarky post from me. Well, buckle up loves; this post is real.

Today I became OK with being middle aged.

It happened about an hour ago, on a walk I took around the park. I take this walk weekly, on a break between teaching and the writing consultant job. It's a beautiful day - one of those 70 degree, sunny days that Denver often gets in February (!) - and this was my only chance to get outside. As I walked, I tried to kidnap other peoples' dogs like I always do, waved to the Fed Ex Delivery guy, and said a few prayers such as "Lord, don't make me that person when I drive. Also, thanks for a manageable week. I'm starving!...What did I pack for lunch today?"

And then it hit me: I am middle aged. I am just barely hanging on to my thirties with the thinnest of teensy threads. I'm purposefully taking a walk to get some sunshine and stretch myself out before sitting all day and tutoring people.

Immediately the same old tape began playing in my head. The tape that starts to joke about being old. My realization today - and the reason for the serious post - is that it finally dawned on me that just because I'm no longer young, doesn't mean I'm already old.

I'm in the middle. Like, there's this whole middle space that I'm in. I didn't just skip over it and hop (fall?) into old age. I'm becoming older. I am not old.

If life were a marathon and you made it to mile 10, I would not say, "Congrats! You did it!" Instead, I would say, "Good job so far! Keep it up! Keep going, you can do this!"

If one of my students was in the middle of writing a paper and hung her head in defeat, I would not say, "Better luck next time." I would say, "This is a good start. What can you go back and fix? What direction are you headed? Where do you want the rest of the paper to go?"

So, why, then, am I treating myself as if I'm at then end? When, in fact, I've just reached the middle?

Are you doing this to yourself? My dear 2.5 readers who just so happen to be around the same age as I am?

If the course of life were, say, a plane ride, I would just now be unbuckling my seat belt and awaiting the first beverage service. The engines are no longer operating at extreme capacity. They have started to shift into cruise mode; they have worked hard to gain altitude and are switching gears to maintain the rest of the flight.

There is no longer the turbulence and anxiety of take off. Those first few high-speed bumps and shifts have now stabilized. We can switch on our electronics and use the free wi-fi. In other words, we can get on with it now. There is no going back. There is no switching seats. We're on our way.

But let's keep those seat belts fastened in the case of any unexpected bumps along the way.

There was not some distinguishable shift from youth to not-youth. Nobody sent me the memo. Nobody marked my calendar and told me to plan for this. The grey hair, the occasional wrinkle, the sun spots on my hands, they're all present and accounted for. And the worst part? They're no longer new to me. I'm no longer freaking out about it.

Well, OK, I am. But I only freak out about 10 times a day now. Which is about 71% better than I've been the last 4 years or so.

(Which is just the worst. It's the worst thing in the world to be used to the thought of getting old.)

When the pilot first turns off the seat belt sign, and the flight attendants start prepping the drink cart, and the relieved mom walks her toddler to the bathroom, I do not think to myself, "Whew! Almost there!" Because the journey has just begun. There was all that work with the lining up on the tarmac and the taking off and the miracle of breaking gravity, or at least working in conjunction with it.

I'm past a lot of the initial hard work. But I'm nowhere close to my final destination, so I need to stop the inner monologue - which is false and defeating - that says I'm old.

A woman right around my age just joined my writing consultant team. I do not think she's old. I don't think about her age at all. But I've noticed that we make significant eye contact when our younger co-workers agonize over their Problems with a Capital P.

So, there's that.

The Absolute Best Lil Valentine

Merry Christmas, Part I

The three of us have been getting pretty tired of all the brown in the living room. Since we moved in almost 4 years ago. So, for Christmas this year, we said "No presents. Because we're mounting the TV to the wall and getting new furniture!"

Before

Now, granted, this picture shows the living room as way more crowded than usual. But, the brown. The brown. Could you die? It's too much. We wanted to start by mounting the TV to the wall and getting rid of the enormous entertainment center-y hutch. After much deliberation, though, we decided not to mount it. The wall is wood paneling and we didn't want the headache of the drilling, patching, then inevitably messing something up and having to repaint the entire wall, and then repaint the entire living room to match. Etc.

So we bought what we were hoping would be a sleek and streamlined entertainment hutch.

After

Nice, right? Our main concern - ok my main concern - was not being able to see wires. No wires. No wires anywhere. And G spent the better part of this week winding and threading and velcroing and cussing and griping at Lucy and now look! No wires!

During

See how helpful Lucy was?

The next step is to get new furniture, but that will take a while. What with the teensy cost and the one or two other things we have going on the weekends (GRADING WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME. I'LL GIVE YOU ALL MY KING SOOPERS COUPONS TO GRADE PAPERS FOR ME).

Nice improvement though, right?

I hate you, brown. Your days are numbered.

TGIF, people!

Has anyone seen my keys??

Up Next!

TGIF, people!

Slippery

Last night as we were getting ready for bed, G (my personal weather forecaster since I never check it on my phone or the news) mentioned that today was supposed to be icy. I was fluffing my pillow and arranging my latest Anne Lamott book, so I was like, "Mmm k hon, love you, night night." And he was like, "So, we need to be careful driving and walking," and I was like, "Yes, and what are we? 85 years old? It'll be fine."

Sure enough I nearly busted my a$$ in the driveway this morning. As I was walking to the car. In hiking boots. (massive eye roll)

Cars were careening around on the roads, and students were skating - not walking - to class. Myself included.

It is a blustery day in the Mile High City, my friends.

This:

Quickly turned into this:

In case you're wondering, no, I do not just randomly take selfies. But I wanted to show off my necklace that A-peep got me for Christmas. It's African, nbd. I love love love it. I want to move there and work on an elephant preserve and never write a paper again. I can read from atop an African elephant as we saunter through the brush on our way to pet baby cheetahs and such.

The arctic picture above is from a brisk walk I took in between teaching and my other job today. Walking in the cold is my favorite and I'm trying very hard to live my life rather than letting it live me and exercise is one way I can make myself delirious off of endorphins instead of adrenaline and anxiety. It's one way that I can try to be in the moment and halfway aware of myself and how I'm feeling and how I'm doing and if, generally, I'm OK.

I do what I can, is all I'm sayin.

It was very beautiful in a cold, icy, silvery sort of way.

The lil chicken has been doing perfectly fine. No more tummy issues, so, you know, now we can sleep at night. I bought her a seasonal friend in honor of Valentine's Day because I just couldn't help myself. It was only $5 AND matched her friends AND it's a panda!

I mean, right??

Sometimes she puts up with him, and sometimes she most certainly does not. What can I say? She's a strong female. I support that.

Now if only she would snuggle with me all day...

On Taking a Chance

Look who came over last night! The Russkie!

I wanted to title this post: American/Russian Relations, but that's too politically sensitive right now. No need to invite hackers to the blog. Oh, who are we kidding? They're already hacking everything anyway.

The Russkie came over last night and we ate delicious soup and caught up on life and mostly talked about politics. Because I guess that's the only thing most of us can think about and try to process these days.

But. As we were talking, I was thinking about how we are friends only because I took a chance.

Before I left my old job and entered poverty by going back to school and working for mere crumbs, I took advantage of my very good health insurance by catching up on All The Appointments. Dentist, General Practitioner, Eye Doctor, all of it. During one of my appointments, the Russkie helped me and in the middle of our interaction she goes, "Ok, sorry, but your eyelashes are amazing." This was back when I had eyelash extensions because, disposable income. Her comment basically caused us to chat nonstop for like 20 minutes. She worked and chatted. I sat there and asked her questions and talked about Colorado and basically, eventually, kept her from doing any work at all.

And then I left. The appointment had been on a Friday and I was scheduled for a quick follow up early the next week, and I thought a lot about her that weekend. I didn't even know her name. But, here I was, confused, despondent about the looming Job and Life Change, and I had had such a good conversation with her! So I thought to myself that if she happened to be in the office when I went back in for my follow-up, that I was essentially going to do the grown-up version of passing her a note and asking her to be my friend: I was going to give her my business card and ask if we could have coffee sometime.

She was in the office. We chatted some more and our interaction gave me the courage to "ask her out". I told her that I'm not a crazy person but here was my card and I really enjoyed talking to her and maybe we could hang out sometime? And then I waited.

She calmly took the card and walked away.

Just as I was starting to mentally flail around, she came back with a note pad and a pen. She wrote down her name and her email address.

A few weeks later we met for sushi (well, fake sushi for her) and the rest is history.