Category: Daily Life

This is why my cleaning lady is worth every penny. She was here on Tuesday and I didn’t notice this until today:

It’s a lovely little tableau of organization, drawn together from different messy countertops and united in one compact spot. (In case you’re wondering, the wooden apple is a recipe card holder.)

I don’t know if she noticed my desperate strivings toward the Kitchn Cure or just saw the opportunity and went for it. Either way, it inspires me to keep going until I’ve wrestled the entire kitchen under control. That is, after I finally do my taxes…

There are a lot of runners where I work and I can’t for the life of me understand their motivation. Running is the absolute last thing I ever want to do unless there’s a predator chasing me.

Walking, on the other hand, is something I can deal with. I love to go on walks for the fresh air, the exercise, and the opportunity to take photos of things that I usually zip by in my car.

Ignoring for the moment that I still have the sore ankle that started two months ago when I had the flu, I’m planning on doing a lot of walking this spring, beginning with the Monkey Mountain Nature Hike on April 26th.

My next walk opportunity is the March for Babies on May 4th. This one involves fundraising, so I’m going to boldly ask you to go to my profile page and donate some money. Think of the babies, people!

Last but not least, there’s another KC TourWalk on May 18th. This one scares me because it’s 13 miles, winding all through Kansas City and all the way into Prairie Village. You may remember the 7.8 mile walk I took back in November that damn near killed me. Yeah, same people but WAY longer. This one is going to depend heavily on whether I’ve managed to get in reasonable shape by then. I certainly can’t do it cold.

So now all I need to do is develop a reasonable training schedule and stick with it. Easier said than done, but worth it in the long run, I’m sure.

Thanks for all of the feedback on the photos yesterday. On both the blog and Flickr, I think that’s the most comments I’ve ever gotten (even if you subtract the ones I made). I imagine we’re probably going to choose one indoor and one outdoor and use them for different purposes.

Trouble is, my husband doesn’t like any of the photos that the guitarist and I chose, and I don’t like the way I look in the ones he chose. We have about 125 to choose from, so I think the three of us will just have to sit down and hash out a compromise.

What else is happening? Well, KU won last night. I’m sure that’ll make a lot of people I know very happy. When I went to bed they were behind by 7 points, so you can tell that my investment and interest in the outcome was nil. But then, I went to UMKC and I never pay attention to how the ‘Roos are doing either.

And hey, what do you know? It’s tax time! Except that I haven’t even consolidated my easily findable stack of tax paperwork and my "have to hunt through a bag of junk mail" tax paperwork, much less dropped it off at my accountant’s office. Yes, I think I’m going to have to file for an extension just because I’m friggin’ lazy. Did I mention that I’m 100% certain of getting a refund? That’s an important part of the story because it shows just how transcendently stupid the whole situation is.

I’d love to stay and keep chatting away at you, but it’s cleaning lady day and I need to wash some pots and pans and put away laundry before I go to work. Have a lovely Tuesday.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that the band photos curse struck a day early. After I’d already lined up the photographer and spent big bucks getting my own hair re-highlighted yesterday, our lead guitarist, who runs his own business, e-mailed at almost 11 p.m. to say that he was out of town working and wouldn’t be able to make it.

In the words of Adam Sandler’s character from "The Wedding Singer" (which I watched last night while I was babysitting): "Gee, you know that information really would’ve been more useful to me yesterday."

Of course, these things don’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve been through this before with the same guy in another incarnation of the band, so it kinds of boils down to, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Unfortunately, our brand new bass player ended up being copied on the entire e-mail thread, so we’re hoping he doesn’t get scared off, too. He’s probably fine, though, because this sort of thing really isn’t that uncommon.

Our rhythm guitarist has a buddy who might be interested in the lead guitar position, so he’ll likely be coming over this afternoon for an audition after our four-band-member photo shoot. One way or another, we’ll soldier on.

Why must it be so difficult to get a band together?!?

We are doing band photos on Sunday. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is in several respects. First of all, it means I need to dress up. Second, it means I should really do something interesting with my hair. Third, I need to wear more makeup than usual. Finally, there’s the whole band photos curse, which I’ll address a bit later.

The clothing isn’t too big of a deal. I was initially thinking of wearing my usual jeans and t-shirt, but my husband pointed out that something a little more "rock" would be better if we’re planning on trying to book ourselves as a "show." Thus, I think I’ll probably wear my faux-crocodile jacket, a black tank top, dark jeans and boots. The only thing I don’t have is the jeans, but I have a reasonable amount of time to procure some between now and Sunday afternoon.

Then there’s my hair. The blue highlights have almost disappeared and my roots are getting a little sparkly (that’s the grey hairs poking out). Miraculously, I managed to get an appointment for highlights and a cut tomorrow afternoon, even though I didn’t call until late today. So that’ll take care of my color and perhaps even the style if I can make it last.

Makeup is easy: I need some under-eye concealer anyway, so a trip to Sephora around noon on Sunday will give me the opportunity to be completely made up by one of their people under the pretext of buying new eye makeup. I don’t have anything else going on until the photo shoot, so why not?

Allow me to explain the curse, which is almost certainly a music-oriented variation of Murphy’s Law. Over many years of playing in bands, I have observed that band photos are often the kiss of death for a band. Sometimes they just cause one band member to leave, but at other times they break the band up completely. There’s something about getting everyone’s image on film together that seems to exacerbate the most minor personnel problems. It’s quite unfortunate.

The photographer I’ve hired is someone I’ve known for many years. When I worked at a magazine after college, we used to purchase concert photos from him of headlining acts that came through town. Thanks to our long history, I’m getting a substantial discount off his usual shoot fee, but he’s still not cheap. I’ll be very unhappy if Sunday’s session triggers the band curse.

Please send good vibes our way that day.

Yesterday we had the power company come and install new thermostats. They’re the fancy programmable kind, they were free, and they allow for setting the temperature by time of day. Oh, and they also allow the power company to cyclically override their settings in the summer during peak power usage periods when necessary.

My husband was home when the guy came to do the installations, and he randomly decided on the temperature settings for Wake Up (75), Away (70), Evening (75) and Night (70). What?!? I never turn the heat above 70 under any circumstances. Most of the time I keep it at between 68 and 70 when I’m up and around, and 65 or below when I’m gone or sleeping.

Fortunately, it’s possible to go online and make the adjustments (pretty neat, huh?), but that would require me to look up our account number, which I haven’t gotten around to yet. Thus, the heat is cranked up to 75 right now and I’m sweltering.

I guess that should be my major morning initiative before I head out for Coffee Morning. Have a great Friday, everyone!

I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m almost too busy to keep up with my personal online life. I’ve barely been on Twitter all week, my Bloglines feeds are out of control, and the only reason I’m keeping up with my e-mail is that I hardly ever get e-mail anymore.

So what have I been up to? Well, work for one thing. I’ve been going in early and leaving late every day. While I’m working, I’ve been getting so absorbed in what I’m doing that I keep losing track of time. On Tuesday I meant to leave work at 5:00 p.m. because of band practice, but the next time I looked up, it was 5:45. I was running so late by then that we had to have McDonald’s for dinner. I did the same thing at lunchtime the next day, which caused me to miss yoga class.

Speaking of band practice, we auditioned another bass player on Tuesday and he was awesome! Not only is this guy a talented player, he’s also a luthier who makes his own basses. Needless to say, he’s hired. Really, the only drawback about him is that he’s so skinny that his legs are probably as big around as my arms. I’m gonna hate having to stand right next to him onstage unless I manage to drop 20 or 30 pounds.

Another side-effect on working so much is that my poor attention to ergonomics has finally caught up with me. By the time I left the office on Wednesday, my neck, shoulder and upper back on one side were in complete, painful spasm. Unfortunately, I’d already agreed to go to my dad’s office and work a few hours, so I was in agony by the time I got home. My chiropractor worked on the muscles as much as she could today, but I’m still popping Extra-Strength Tylenol and alternating between ice packs and the heating pad.

So really, you weren’t missing anything when I didn’t post earlier today. Just wanted to let you know that. Perhaps I’ll be able to think of something interesting to talk about tomorrow.

This morning I awoke with thoughts bouncing around in my head like a litter of rambunctious puppies:

• Don’t forget to wrap me’s birthday present.
• Here’s a column you could add to your spreadsheet.
• Hey, don’t forget to run the Roomba in the studio when you get up!
• Ask designer about the band logo and order screen-printed blank CDs.
• 8:15 status meeting tomorrow, don’t oversleep…
• How does the second verse of "Possum Kingdom" go?
• I wonder which cat is down by my feet?
• It’s hot in here.
• Hmm, I’m really kind of tired still.

I looked at the clock and it was only about 4:20 a.m. Sigh. I really wanted to sleep at least another hour.

I turned down the thermostat, rearranged the snuggliest cats and managed to go back to sleep. I had an involved dream about orphaned kittens – one of which had six eyes – and didn’t wake up until after 6:30.

So now I need to spend my morning making my daily yogurt parfait, getting made up and dressed, and heading out the door as soon as possible.

What are you up to?

I haven’t had any time at home in the evenings this week, but I managed to get a total of three cupboards cleared out over the weekend. I picked the easy ones first, but it’s been so satisfying that I need to share my minor amount of progress. Please don’t laugh at my horrid ’50s cabinetry!

Here’s the "Before" shot of the cupboards we use for baking staples, crackers and cereal:

And here’s what it looks like now:

You’ll notice that I threw away most of what was in there. Actually, the stale food went in the yard so the birds and squirrels could have it, and I moved the nutritional supplements elsewhere.

Here’s the "Before" shot of the cabinet I use for cups and glasses:

With a little tidying and the addition of the lazy susan you might remember from the "Before" shot of the previous cabinets, voila:

I should have plenty of time this weekend to work on the rest of the cabinets. My Flickr set of horrible "Before" shots is here. Here’s the Kitchn Cure site again – today’s the last day to sign up.

Anyone else doing this and making progress?

Attention Kansas City area folks! There’s a KC Blogger Meetup tonight starting at around 5:00 p.m. at Jaywalkers Sports Bar and Grill, 3916 Rainbow Boulevard in KCK.

Today’s drink special is $2.50 local brews: Free State, Boulevard & Flying Monkey. They had me at Free State.

If you’ve never been to one of these, they’re a lot of fun. Come on out!