Author: Average Jane

I woke up on Sunday morning to the sound of tornado sirens.  That seemed bad.

I turned on the TV and learned that our area was under a tornado warning and that we could expect damaging storms and up to golf-ball-sized hail.  It made me wonder if my husband’s Jeep was parked outside.  It was.

My next thought was to wake my husband up in case he’d like to share my concern about the weather and perhaps tell me where I could find his car keys.

"Keys…studio," he mumbled, before falling back asleep.

I searched his entire desktop in the studio and found no keys.  I went back down and asked him about it again, but his contributions to the conversation were over.  Stomping back upstairs, I found his keys on my desk, went out to the garage in my bare feet and moved the Jeep inside.

By the time I settled down in front of the television again, the tornado watch had expired.  As it turned out, the storm moved north of us and all we got was a few minutes of high winds and a little bit of rain.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I are at opposite ends of the tornado concern spectrum.  When he finally woke up (almost four hours later), I told him I was *this close* to gathering up the cats, taking them to the basement and giving a regretful wave in his direction to commemorate the 11 lovely years of marriage we’d had before he foolishly sacrificed himself to the tornado.

"Eh, I’m not moving until I hear the freight train sound," he said.

"Don’t you think it’s kinda too late by then?" I asked.

"Well maybe I wouldn’t have made it down to the basement, but I could have gotten to the bathtub or at least the hallway," was his reply.

I feel as though I should track down his old elementary school teachers and give them hell for failing to properly train him in tornado safety.  Instead, I guess I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that the big storms keep passing us by.

I am so insanely busy this week that I’m having a hard time making sure that I don’t forget anything (like, say, posting yesterday).

This afternoon we’re having a family remembrance gathering for my grandfather.  Last night I made a batch of baked ziti and some brownies to take with me.  Before that, I went shopping for a bridal shower gift I’ll need early tomorrow, and a birthday gift to take to my aunt today.

I’m suddenly on even more projects at work than ever before.  That would be fine, except that everyone wanted to have kickoff meetings today.  I’m going to be able to squeeze in one of them at 9:30, but I’ll have to leave immediately after that.  I presume I’ll make it back to the office in the late afternoon or early evening and can theoretically do some more work then, but who knows if other people will be around.

Tomorrow I have a vocal lesson at 9:15, the bridal shower brunch at 10:30, I’m going to a jam at the music store where my husband works at 4:00 and a local BookCrossing meetup at 7:00.

On Sunday, I may not get out of bed at all.

I actually like keeping my time fully scheduled.  It stops me from sitting around watching TV I don’t really care about.  Oddly enough, I get more housework done when I’m already in schedule overdrive.

So, what fun things are you doing this weekend?

On Monday and Tuesday, I finally launched a two-pronged attack on the neck and shoulder pain I’ve been suffering from since I slipped and fell on the ice in early December.  I’d been holding so much tension in my shoulders and neck that it was clearly affecting my singing, and I just couldn’t have that!

I had my first deep-tissue massage in years on Monday evening.  My right shoulder muscles were so tense that they almost didn’t have any feeling (until the next day when they were quite sore).  I could tell the massage helped a lot, but my subconscious wasn’t quite as convinced:  I had a dream that night that I was being held prisoner and tortured.

On Tuesday evening I went back to my chiropractor in the hope that this time I could get an adjustment that wouldn’t get pulled right back out by tense muscles.  I think it worked!  I woke up without a headache today for the first time in months.

The only little wrinkle in the whole pain-free plan came about on Monday as I was leaving work to go to the massage therapist.  I was waiting for traffic to clear before I could cross the street and when the lanes opened up, I started walking forward…right into the post of a street sign.  I’m sure there’s a hi-larious security video of my slapstick episode somewhere. 

I whacked my nose and right eyebrow pretty hard, but luckily there was no blood.  The bridge of my nose is still rather sore, but there’s no unusual movement or swelling, so I don’t think it’s broken.

So other than the nose, I’m feeling pretty darned good today.  How are you doing?

Probably because I’m a writer and not a particularly eloquent speaker, I’ve come to prefer e-mail as my primary mode of communication (other than face-to-face, that is).

I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with phones. Although I carry a cell phone, I’d really rather not talk on it very much.  I do have a bad habit of calling my sister to chat when I’m stuck in immovable rush hour traffic, but other than that I really only use the cell for quick calls that would have been e-mails if I’d been at my computer.

Our home phone might as well be out of service.  It’s there for the sole purpose of connecting our alarm system and TiVo to the outside world.  I hear it ring sometimes and I presume that some people might leave messages on the answering machine, but I do not check them for weeks at a time.  I think my husband might, but I’m not sure.  As I see it, if you’re my friend, you have my cell phone number.  If you’re calling me at home, you probably just want something from me.

I’m a little ambivalent about instant messaging as well.  I like the new Google chat functionality and I’ll use it now and then to talk to my husband.  I’m also on Windows Messenger, but only a few of my friends and co-workers have it, so it’s kind of a waste of desktop real estate.  Anyone who wants to have a lengthy conversation with me that way at work would probably be better off just walking down the two flights of stairs and talking to me directly.  Or calling (*shudder*).

My preference for e-mail over calling is usually okay, except when it comes to my band.  The guys all have e-mail addresses, so I thought that would be our default communication medium.  I’d send e-mails to the whole group between practices, hoping for input on the band website, photos, song lists, etc.  Turns out, they don’t check their e-mail very often at all.  To me, that’s crazy talk.  I check all five (six?) of my e-mail accounts several times a day.  It’s the modern-day equivalent of waiting anxiously for the postal truck to arrive. 

I asked them about it at our last practice and the consensus was, "If you want to talk to me, just give me a call."

Noooooooooooo!

My husband is encountering a similar communication style difference with his teenaged drum student.  She prefers to set up practice times with him via text messaging rather than talking over the phone.  I think it’s safe to say that she’s the only person to whom he ever sends text messages (except one to me once, to show me how it worked).  I can tell it’s having an influence on how he IMs and e-mails – he’s suddenly using acronyms that I’m pretty sure he didn’t before.  Luckily, they’re easy to figure out.

So, what communication technology do you prefer, and why?

It’s Friday, I’m lazy and I don’t have much else to talk about, so:

Brrreeeport

Here’s what it means, in case you’re interested.

It’s been unusually warm outside this week and we slept with the window open last night.  It was delightful!

The cats actually stood in line to jump onto the windowsill and smell the fresh air.  We booted them out before we went to sleep and enjoyed the cool air all night long.

I know that the threat of winter weather still looms – we’ve had big ice storms later in March than this before – but it’s still a wonderful treat to get this glimpse of spring.

I need to talk my lunch companions into going someplace where we can sit outside today…

Today I bought my daily Red Bull from the vending machine at work and as I rinsed off the top under the sink and carefully dried it off with a paper towel, I realized that I’d picked up that finicky habit from my dad.  I could almost hear him saying, "You don’t know where it’s been."

Of course, family members influence us in lots of ways that become so blended into our everyday behavior that it’s difficult to trace their origins.

When I make a bed, I put the fitted sheet over the mattress starting with one lower corner, then move on to the upper corner that’s diagonal from it, for no other reason than it’s the way my mother taught me to do it.

I have no doubt that I still tie my shoes exactly the way my aunt and her cousin taught me to when I was a child.

I can’t have even a brief conversation with my sister without picking
up her speech patterns and certain phrases.  I’m sure that’s why we
sound so much alike on the phone – to the extent that we used to trade
the phone back and forth as teenagers to fool each others’ boyfriends.

How are influences from your family members still reflected in the way you do things today?

Last night I had a very satisfactory evening, even though I got home from work a little later than usual.

I’d had a $100 gift card burning a hole in my pocket since December, so my husband and I decided to go out for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (I know, I know).  I chose my favorite pasta dish and carefully portioned it out so I would have enough leftovers for Wednesday’s lunch and also enough room in my stomach for a piece of cheesecake. 

We thought about using some of the remaining credit to go to a movie, but then remembered that tomorrow is cleaning day and the house was a mess.  We waddled to the car and went home to tackle the chaos.

I looked around at the mounds of dirty pots and pans, the baskets of clean but wrinkled laundry and the piles of junk mail on the counter and decided I needed something to elevate my mood before I got started.

I went up to my office and loaded my iPod with the songs my band does (both originals and covers) and a few extras just for my own entertainment.  I’m learning three new songs for this coming weekend’s band practice.  You’ll get a good snapshot of just how random our song selection is when I tell you that the three artists whose songs we’re adding to the set are Iron Maiden, Rush and Kelly Clarkson.

Anyway, once I had music piped directly into my ears, I was able to crank up my efficiency level and clear out the worst of the clutter and mess in the public portions of the house.  The guest room has been lost for the time being; I think it’s going to take a weekend and a lot of rearranging to figure out what to do with all the stuff we’ve been ditching in there.  Once we fully reclaim the room and can afford to do some light remodeling, I want to get this to put in there.

For this weekend, I’m supposed to think of some more songs to suggest to the band, but I’m having trouble coming up with ideas.  I was about to suggest Jane Child’s "Mona Lisa Smile," but it’s rather dirty and I hate to take the chance that I might end up performing it in earshot of anyone in my life who might be shocked.

I guess I’ll have to run through my CD and record collections and see if anything jumps out at me.  (My extensive collection of recordings on vinyl is the most glaring evidence that I’m more than half a decade older than my bandmates.  I need to stop mentioning it at practice.)

If you have any suggestions of rock, hard rock or heavy metal songs from the late ’70s to present that we could do, please pass them along!  In those genres, I don’t really have an upper limit on vocal range but I discovered at our last practice that Stone Temple Pilots is too low for me.  Let that be your guide.

On Saturday, I went to a birthday party for a two-year-old.  I was the only person there without children.  I lasted for two hours and then had to go home and take a nap.  I don’t know how parents do it.

That evening, my husband and I went out to see three bands play.  We met up with some of my co-workers beforehand and chatted for a while, then went to the bar and stayed until it closed.  It was a lot of fun to get out into the local music scene as a spectator rather than a participant, for once.  I hope we start doing that more often.

The next day was my nephew’s first birthday party, which started at 11:30 a.m.  Does it reflect poorly on me as an aunt if I reveal that I arrived with a bar stamp on my hand and the lingering smell of smoke in my hair?  11:30 is pretty darned early to make it half an hour across town when you didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m.

Between all the social events and running a ton of errands over the weekend, I kind of wish I could have another day off.  I think that feeling haunted my subconscious overnight because I had a stress dream about being late to work and missing an important meeting.

The good news is that this week isn’t quite as overscheduled as usual.  I have a lot to do at work, but the evenings are mostly free.  I’m sure I can catch up on my sleep within a day or so.  Now I just need to take the time to do some of the housework I’ve been neglecting…