Category: Daily Life

My husband and I have fallen into a fairly regular weekend breakfast routine.  On Saturday morning (or early afternoon, as the case may be), we go to our favorite breakfast restaurant.  On Sunday, we go to a bagel place just down the street.

It seems we’re not the only regulars at the bagel shop.  Twice now, we’ve ended up seated near a guy who is clearly in it for the long haul.  He has a big stack of newspapers on his table and a refillable thermal coffee mug.  Any signs of his own breakfast are already gone when we arrive.

His contribution to the restaurant’s ambiance is to noisily hork up phlegm while we’re trying to eat.  He has an astounding repertoire of hideous snot-clearing sounds that are guaranteed to make anyone’s egg sandwich 86.8% less appetizing.

Of course, my husband can read my mind.  He knows I’m *this* close to leaping to my feet, going to the guy’s table, and screaming, "Good God, man!  Hack up your goobers at home and let us all eat in peace!"

I don’t do that.  My husband still eyes me warily until I’ve finished eating.

Until the weather gets nice and we can eat on the patio, I think we may be forced to take our bagel sandwiches to go.  I don’t think I can handle another meal in the vicinity of the mucous snorker.

Or maybe it’s time I started cooking breakfast at home again.

I really should have packed a lunch today because there’s a St. Patrick’s Day parade a few blocks from my office that starts at 11.  I should have learned my lesson last year, but I’m not big on the whole lesson learning thing (as yesterday’s post also illustrates).

I don’t think anyone in my geneaology is Irish, but I’m still willing to jump in and celebrate a bit today.  I’m wearing a green shirt.  We’re going out with another couple to see a band play tonight.  And on Sunday, I’m making Beef and Irish Stout Stew to take to our local Ronald McDonald House for an Irish-themed dinner.

Anyone else have fun St. Patrick’s Day plans?

Yesterday was a day-long reminder of why I ordinarily make no attempt to be fashionable.  I wore a suit with my cutest shoes:  pointy-toed slingbacks with a heel.  Oh, the discomfort!

Suddenly, the walks I take for granted every day became miserable endurance challenges.  The two-block, uphill walk from my parking lot to the office and our lunchtime jaunt to the restaurant "just down the street" were excrutiating.  By the time I picked my way back down to the parking lot after work, I was losing my will to live.

I can’t imagine how some of my co-workers can wear high-fashion shoes every day and survive.  I felt like the weak member of the herd, ready to be picked off by predators at any time.

Today I’m back to my plain, old Keds and jeans.  Let’s hope I’ve learned a lesson that’ll stick with me for a while.

As much as I love wearing jeans, t-shirts and athletic shoes to work every day, it makes the contrast that much more pronounced when I have to dress like a grown-up. 

Tonight we’re having a Soroptimist Club awards dinner and presenting our local Violet Richardson Awards and Women’s Opportunity Awards.  I won’t have time to go home before the meeting, so I’ll end up wearing a suit or dress all day at work.

It’s been so long since I had a job that demanded business attire that I’ve almost run out of decent clothes.  I have one nice suit that I’m pretty sure I wore to last year’s awards function, but may still wear again.  I have a few skirts and tops, but nothing that’s really nice enough for this.  All my older suits have either been retired already, or should be.

The only good news is that I have the option of wearing open-toed shoes because I got a pedicure last weekend before it turned cold again.  Oh, but it’s cold now, so nevermind.

I guess I’d better start getting ready.  This is going to take some thought…

Yes, this week is going to be pretty much all work and no play – at least until the weekend.

Highlights so far:

• Yesterday I received the Mozart and Good Grammar Costs Nothing shirts I’d ordered from Glarkware.  I’m saving the latter for St. Patrick’s Day because it’s green.
• Today is house cleaning day!  Sure, I’m spending the morning tidying up, but it will be worth it to step into pine-scented cleanliness when I get home this evening.
• I watched the season premiere of The Sopranos yesterday.  It should be an interesting season.

Now I’d better make myself presentable and head out for my dentist appointment.  It’s going to be a busy day.

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.