Category: Daily Life

It’s a little scary that I’m leaving town the day after tomorrow considering that I have 200 pounds of dirty laundry piled in my basement and have given no thought to what I’m going to pack.

I woke up early this morning, but focused my energies on cleaning up the kitchen and making a loaf of banana bread. You can only neglect overripe bananas so long…

All is not lost, though – I’ve started delegating. My husband has generously offered to make a pilgrimage to Micro Center (such a sacrifice for him to make a trip to his favorite store!) and get me a bigger Flash card for my camera. I am determined to take a reasonable number of photos at BlogHer this year, for once.

Before I go, I need to do something about the blue streaks in my hair. The blue is fading quickly, even though it’s only been a little over a week. I have purchased two different semi-permanent blue dyes with which I hope to keep nursing the color along until my next hair appointment. I wouldn’t mind the fading so much except that light blue looks an awful lot like grey, and I don’t want to run around with white or grey streaks in my dark hair. That would tend to reverse the kind of impression I was trying to make.

Tonight I have a practice with the cover band for which I auditioned last week. Apparently they liked me. The good news is that we’re practicing in someone else’s studio instead of the tiny, ring-y basement room where we got together last time. I’m still bringing ear plugs, though.

I won’t be taking the Jeep with me to practice this time. Last Thursday’s gig pretty much finished the poor thing off until it can have some serious repairs done. By the time my husband managed to limp it home, the engine was knocking so loud I could hear it a couple of blocks away. Even before that, the steering rack (or maybe the tie rods) were protesting even the gentlest turn, and of course, the air conditioner isn’t working. We’re going to drop it off with our favorite slow mechanic with the idea that by the time we: a) have the money to pay for repairs and, b) need it for winter driving conditions, it’ll be ready.

The timer for the banana bread just went off, so I’ll wrap this up. Enjoy your Tuesday and if you’re going to BlogHer and haven’t yet commented, say something!

If you don’t read She Doesn’t Get It, you should. Two sisters take turns answering the same questions submitted by readers, and their answers are always fascinating.

Last week I asked them, "How much of your life do you try to plan versus just riding things out and seeing what happens?"

You can see Blondie’s answer here and Dorothy’s answer here.

Now here’s my take on my own question:

It’s no secret that I stay very, very busy. I consider an empty calendar space to be a sign that I need to find something interesting to do that day, pronto! Some days, I end up with so many activities that I have to print out my calendar to make sure I don’t forget something. Even so, I occasionally get so busy and sidetracked that I simply fail to show up for something. It makes me feel like a horrible flaker, but it’s almost unavoidable under the circumstances.

You’d think with a framework like that, I’d be equally regimented about what I expect to happen when I arrive at each activity. In reality, that’s where all planning goes out the window.

For example, I’m leaving for BlogHer on Thursday. My flight gets in around 2 p.m. and I’m leaving around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. In between those times, I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen. Of course there’s the conference on Friday and Saturday. I’ll attend both days and maybe I’ll even decide in advance which sessions I’m going to attend. I don’t know exactly when I’ll track down my roommate, SueBob, after I get into town, nor do I have any idea where or with whom I’ll be having dinner on Thursday. At some point, I’m planning on meeting up with Bruno for coffee – maybe Sunday morning, but we haven’t set a time.

That’s how I always travel and I love it that way. Detailed itineraries are just not for me. Sure, I have a couple of ideas about other things I might like to do while I’m in Chicago, but it won’t be the end of the world if I can’t work them in.

I feel the same way about life planning. I’ve never been the sort of person to try to plan my life as a whole. Even growing up I didn’t have anything set in my mind about whether or not I’d get married (I did), have children (I didn’t), or work in a particular industry or job.

When I was a kid and one of our cats had kittens, my mom would always tell us, "Don’t pick up the kittens, just put them on the floor and watch what they do."

I’ve managed to apply that advice to my entire life: I don’t try to force the action, I just sit back and watch what happens. I actively pursue the things I really want to do and then let the pieces fall into place from there. It may not be the most efficient way to make things happen, but it certainly keeps the stress down.

So what’s YOUR planning style?

On Monday afternoon, I went to my hair stylist and had blue highlights added to my hair. The blue covers a lot of the dark brown, too, so the effect right now is mostly black hair with blue highlights – kind of like Superman’s hair in the old comic books.

Reaction has ranged from bewilderment (my dad and step-mother) to enthusiastic approval (my husband and the band for which I auditioned yesterday). I’m sure there are people questioning my sanity behind my back, but I’ve already been through all of the realistic hair colors, so now it’s time I got creative.

Because I work in the creative department of an ad agency, there’s nothing in my life that precludes me from running around with blue hair. I waited until my Soroptimist Club presidency was over, just for propriety’s sake, and now I figure I’m free to look any way I want.

One happy side effect of the blue color is that people I meet are assuming that I’m significantly younger than I really am. One of the band guys yesterday said, "So, are you about 24 or 25?" No, but thanks so very much! (I didn’t tell him my age. My current answer to that question is "Old enough to know better.")

The audition went well last night, incidentally. I think the band has the raw materials to get four or more sets learned and ready to play out in a couple of months. Unfortunately, their practice room is tiny and my ears are still ringing this morning. That setup is going to have to change – particularly since my not-25-year-old ears don’t bounce back as well as they used to anymore.

So that’s my news for now. Today’s the day the conference kicks into high gear, with classes spread out over several buildings. It’s going to be a long, tiring day. Wish me luck!

My husband has a Jeep Grand Cherokee that we mainly keep around for when it snows. It also comes in handy when we have to haul music gear, but that doesn’t happen very often.

A month or so ago, our guitarist was over and we decided to take the Jeep to dinner because our other cars had too much music gear in them. As soon as we opened the Jeep door, a wave of unspeakable stench leaped out at us. It’s difficult to describe the odor, but it definitely involved the rotting of something formerly alive. I would have guessed that someone went fishing and left their catch in the back seat all through the spring. However, we don’t fish.

We rolled down all the windows, but it didn’t really help. When we got back home, I searched carefully under the seats and sprayed every available fabric-covered surface with Febreze and then left the windows down for a couple of days. The smell remained.

We kept speculating about what the smell could be. Did an animal somehow get in and die? Did we run over some roadkill that just lingered because we so seldom drove the vehicle? There was no telling.

Yesterday I needed to haul a small PA system, so my husband readied the hot, stinky Jeep. (Did I mention that the air conditioning doesn’t work? That makes the experience extra special, let me tell you.) There was a bunch of random music gear in the back, so he started pulling out cymbals, cables, etc. to clear a spot for the speaker.

When I got home to switch cars, my husband had some news: he’d found the source of the smell.

Back in March, my husband’s sister came into town with her son and husband. We’d all gone out to dinner and ordered way too much food. It turns out one of the take-home containers of food never made it out of the Jeep. One of our guests had tucked it behind the back seat and it had vanished into the sea of music gear.

Thus did a styrofoam clamshell of barbecued beef ribs decay in our hot Jeep for FOUR MONTHS. When I heard the story, I said, "How bad was it?"

"I didn’t open it!" he said.

What I meant was, how bad was the smell in the Jeep? It turns out that it’s much better than the last time I experienced it. Still, there’s a lingering funk that I think will take a good deal more Febreze and fresh air to dissipate. I can stand it (really, the heat’s worse than the smell), but I wouldn’t offer anyone a ride right now.

I’ll be driving the Jeep again tomorrow to my vocal lesson and on to my audition with the classic rock band. I’m hoping that a good shot of air freshener in the morning will clear out the last of the smell, but I’m not counting on it.

The whole experience makes me want to clean out all of our cars so that no food item could ever again slide out of sight. I’ll probably just settle for paying more attention when we get home from dinner from now on.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I love to sleep. I like to get at least 8 hours a night and still take a nap for a couple of hours in the afternoon whenever I get the chance.

Unfortunately, my favorite activity has been rudely yanked from my grasp in the past couple of weeks, thanks to an uncharacteristic bout of insomnia. Otherwise, you can bet that I wouldn’t be up and writing this at a quarter to 6 in the morning.

Lately I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and sleeping fitfully – if at all – until dawn. I wake up all stiff and tired, which is not a good way to start the day.

I don’t think that my recent birthday has anything to do with suddenly starting to sleep like an elderly person. I’m inclined to blame a new medication I’m on.

No matter what’s causing it, I hope it stops soon.  This promises to be an extremely busy week and I’m going to need all the rest I can get.

Hey, did you notice that today is Friday, the 13th? I find it difficult to believe that anyone in this day and age would find that fact alarming, but apparently it’s still a common superstition.

In December, my husband and I will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary. We’ve decided that it would be fun to have a "Lucky 13" party that day and invite all of our friends over. We already have two black cats with which to accessorize the house.

Do you have any negative associations with the number 13?

I can’t believe it’s July 12th, but the temperatures have been downright lovely for the past few days. Next week is my dad’s annual seminar and it’s usually the hottest week of the year. (If you read those old posts, you’ll see that the heat addles my brain and makes me repeat post titles.)

For the last week or so, it’s barely made it into the low 90s, which is unheard of for July in Kansas City. If this keeps up, maybe next week’s posts won’t be quite as grouchy as the previous years’ reports.

I’m trying to plan little escapes from the seminar next week to get a few things done. On Monday afternoon I have a hair appointment to undo some of the chlorine damage from last weekend’s swims. This time I’m going to have the hair stylist do dark brown again, highlighted with a LOT MORE blue streaks than last time. (Did I mention that I had a blue streak put in? Maybe not. I did, though. But it’s gone already.)

Early Tuesday evening I have my vocal lesson, followed by an audition for a classic rock band.

I’m not giving up on my original band, but it seemed like a good idea for me to get in more singing practice than I’m inclined to manage without prompting. I figured joining a cover band would give me vocal practice and some extra spending money in the bargain. More on that as it develops.

On Thursday, I’m playing with yet another cover band at that night’s post-seminar social event. It’s a band for which I fill in as a vocalist now and then, sometimes with my husband on drums, sometimes not. In this case, all of the band members are fill-ins except for the guitarist whose band it is. I’m not sure why I’m even telling you all of this.

I’ve now wandered so far from my original point that there’s no getting back to it. Hope the weather’s nice where you are!

First things first: Cagey had her baby last night! Anjali was born at 10:27 p.m. (right around the time I went to bed), but I got the news via e-mail from her husband and text message from her. Ain’t technology grand?

I spent the evening working for my dad (his big annual seminar is next week and the workload is already daunting), doing laundry (last weekend was fun, but it involved a lot of clothing changes), reading "Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife" by Mary Roach, and watching "The 4400."

I am really enjoying "Spook." The writing style has a dry humor that I love and I find myself laughing at footnotes. It makes me want to go out and buy her other book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."

I have a vocal lesson tonight and I hope to finish the vocal track on our song, "Predator," when I get home so that I can upload it to GarageBand and enter it into competition soon. The band has really been enjoying the review process since we entered "Haunted." We don’t always agree with the reviewers’ assessments, but many of them have very helpful things to say about the production. My husband has already re-mixed "Haunted" based on some of the feedback and we’re trying to figure out if we can upload the new track without losing our place in the competition.

This week, we’ve won Reviewer’s Choice awards in Metal for Best Female Vocal, Best Melody and Rocking Track, and we’ve also been recognized for Rocking Track overall. Kind of cool, don’t you think?

That’s how my week is looking so far. Do you have anything interesting planned?

After spending my birthday weekend with my niece, I have almost no clean clothes left, my hair color has been significantly compromised by two trips to the pool, and the theme song from "Hannah Montana" is running through my head non-stop. In other words, we had a blast!

I think we have the makings of an annual tradition here.

Today’s the big day and my plans pretty much remain the same as they were yesterday: yoga, brunch and a movie. My niece has asked if we can also go swimming, and I don’t see why not. I’ve never been to any of the pools near my house, but there’s a first time for everything.

My husband’s tests yesterday went swimmingly and he’s been given a clean bill of intestinal health. The experience seems to have renewed his optimism about his general health and he’s making noises about joining a gym again and eating healthier. I hope it sticks.

In other household news, Xena is on my shit list because she jumped up on top of our TV and knocked down two of my plants, breaking one of the pots. I was so mad that I actually spanked her, not that spanking a cat ever does any good. I had to throw away the now-rootless sansevieria, but I think the schefflera is going to survive. The worst part about the whole thing is that she was almost certainly stalking our betta fish when the incident occurred. I wish she would grow up a bit and stop messing with my stuff.

That’s all I have for now. My low-key birthday activities begin soon, so I’d best hop in the shower before it’s time to wake up my niece.