Category: Daily Life

I woke up to a thunderstorm so noisy that at first I thought someone might be breaking into our house.  Once I woke up a little bit, saw all the lightning and turned off my bedside fan, I realized what was going on and decided to get up to a) enjoy the show and b) get my blog entry done in case the power went out.

It’s been raining a LOT lately.  July was dry and extremely hot.  For a while, our yard looked like a vast field of toothpicks.  All through August it’s been raining frequently, particularly for the last couple of weeks.  I work on the 14th floor of a downtown building, so I enjoy a good thunderstorm view, but dread those days when it’s just grey and gloomy from dusk to dawn.

Then there’s the humidity.  All this rain hasn’t really done much to lower the temperature, it’s just made it almost impossible to breathe outside.  I often walk several blocks to lunch and lately it’s been a little alarming how short of breath I am by the time I get back to the office.  I hate to say it, but I’m about ready for autumn to kick in.

This morning’s storm is sure to do bad things to my commute, but fortunately I was planning to leave early anyway.  I have Cagey’s baby shower invitations to mail, a credit union run to make and maybe I’ll even treat myself to a Cafe Americano at Starbucks if I have time.

But first, I think I’ll sit here for a few more minutes and watch the storm.

A week or so ago I finally took the time to make a few calls and schedule myself for vital physical maintenance, including:

• An appointment with a new dentist this morning.  You may recall my last dental experience, which convinced me that I needed to switch.  It’s only been four months since my last cleaning, but because I have a recurring toothache, I figured I’d take any dental appointment I could get.
• A complete physical later this month.  Lately I’ve only been seeing my doctor for my twice- or thrice-annual bouts of bronchitis and/or pneumonia.  I figured it wouldn’t hurt if she had a look at the big picture every now and then.
• An eye doctor appointment the weekend after next.  I’m on my last pair of disposable contact lenses and I’ve decided I’d like a pair of glasses from this decade, in case I ever need to wear glasses in public.

Once all of that stuff is out of the way, maybe I can move on to surface maintenance.  My sister got me a gift certificate for an eyebrow waxing and I could use at least one more pedicure before sandal weather ends.  Hey, I just remembered that I have a gift certificate for a massage kicking around somewhere!  Maybe I can take a Saturday sometime and put together my own run-all-over-town spa package.  Hectic and relaxing by turns…

But first, I just got a postcard that all four cats are due for their physicals and shots.  Hauling them all into the vet at once is always a delight.  After that, I’ll really need a spa day.

As of this week, my husband and I are back to similar work schedules.  Thus, for the first time in several years, we face a daily Battle for the Bathroom Mirror.

Our house has one-and-a-half bathrooms, an assessment that I feel is a little generous.  The half bath is pretty much a toilet and a pedestal sink in a closet.  There’s no place to set a makeup bag or haircare tools, so it’s out of the picture as a potential morning primping station.

The full bath is not much better.  I’ll start with the decor:  paneling on the walls that’s supposed to look like tile, aging linoleum, beige shower enclosure, yellowed beige marbled sink and countertop, and cheap brown under-sink cabinet. 

The exhaust fan broke a while back, but the sheetrock of the ceiling is too compromised for it to be possible to just put in a new fan without replacing the whole ceiling.  Thus, I’m fighting a constant losing battle with ceiling mildew, even if we shower with the bathroom door open.  When people come over, it’s all I can do to restrain myself from telling them, "You can use the bathroom, but please do not look up."

There’s a cabinet in the wall next to the shower that is inexplicably about four feet deep.  Once a bottle of Skin So Soft makes it to the back, it’s years before it sees the light of day again.  The cabinet door swings over the edge of the countertop, often knocking things directly into the trash where they’re immediately buried by tissues, never to be seen again.  I’m pretty sure I’ve lost some nice cosmetic items that way.

There’s just the single sink, so if my husband is using it, I can’t see past him to use the mirror.  He’s 6’3" and I’m 5’7", so you can imagine the scene.  My only advantage is that I get up earlier than he does, but I usually blog first thing in the morning, so that kills my edge.  Luckily, I don’t care all that much about my hair and makeup anyway.

I have a plan for remodeling the bathroom to make it more useful and beautiful.  I would take out the tub and shower enclosure (how often does anyone really ever take a bath?) and replace it with a corner shower.  I would remove the huge, useless cabinet and extend the counter and mirrors all the way across the width of the room so we could have two sinks.  The extra under-sink storage would make up for the lost cabinet.  There would be no more "tile paneling," but real tile on the walls and floor.

I forgot to mention that when some previous homeowners did the remodel that resulted in our current bathroom, they blocked off the window.  In the back of my house there’s a much-painted piece of plywood covering what should be the bathroom window.  In my fantasy remodel, I would restore the window and glass-block it for light, perhaps even adding a second one.

Until the Money Fairy waves her wand over our household finances, we’re stuck with the awful bathroom.  We have no skills at all for doing the work ourselves, and for that matter wouldn’t be able to afford the materials.  Someday I’ll have the gorgeous bathroom of my imagination.  Until then, I suppose I’ll have to start getting up a little earlier and invest in yet another bucket of Kilz for the ceiling.

I’ve been following the news about schools returning to healthier cafeteria fare with a good deal of interest.  My question is:  what made them lower their standards so drastically in the first place?

When I was in school, there were two choices:  bring a sack lunch or eat the daily entree in the cafeteria.  There were no vending machines of any kind.  If you didn’t want a half pint of milk or chocolate milk to go with your meal, there was always the drinking fountain.

I usually brought my lunch from home, but the cafeteria food wasn’t really that bad (except for the chicken chow mein, which was always an off-putting pale chartreuse color).  The cafeteria meals included all of the four basic food groups plus a modest dessert, and cost very little.

I could see that things had changed when my husband’s sister lived with us while she went to high school.  I was appalled to see banks of vending machines in the cafeteria packed with sugar-filled sodas and candy bars.  Presumably the cafeteria staff still made traditional school meals, but I doubt that any of the kids bought them when they could have Pizza Hut, hamburgers and french fries, and other junk food every day.

It’s no wonder obesity continues to rise among children.  If I’d been given the opportunity to eat fast food every day as a child, I’d have tossed my PB&J and apple and lined up for the pizza and french fries.  I know this because as soon as I started college and had access to unlimited junk food, my dietary standards immediately went downhill.

I hope we’re seeing the trend toward junk food in school cafeterias is coming to an end.  Yes, schools need to have physical education classes, too (it’s hard to believe that gym class has gone by the wayside), but limited access to tempting, empty calories is also important.

After having had a camera phone for months now, I’ve finally found an excellent use for it.  A friend and I are planning a baby shower, but we couldn’t find a good time to shop for invitations together.  That wasn’t a problem with the camera phone, though!  When I found some invitations worth considering, I’d simply photograph them with the camera phone, send them to Flickr and share them with her.  Then she’d veto them all and I’d start again at the next store.  (Just kidding!  It went much more smoothly than that.)

Then there’s this:

I was shopping at Borders last night and I had to take a photo of this picture frame because the minute I saw it, I thought that it looked like a creepy shrine cobbled together by a crazed stalker.  I cannot imagine anyone actually purchasing it and displaying it in their home.  It’s disturbingly "psycho ex-girlfriend/boyfriend" – there’s just no getting around it.

As you can see, the big problem with the camera phone is that it takes crappy pictures.  However, it makes me want to get a decent quality, pocket-sized digital camera to carry in my purse.  Now that I’ve upgraded to the Flickr Pro account, I’m inspired to take more photos.  I’ll never be as good a photographer as some people I know, but at least I can have a little fun with it.

This month, a home furnishings store called Design Public is running an online feature called Baby Blog-A-Palooza that allows parenting bloggers such as finslippy and Mrs. Kennedy to blog about child-oriented design (mostly) for everyone’s entertainment.

I heartily agree with Mrs. Kennedy’s assessment that white towels do not belong in anyone’s household.  However, if I think about my own towel collection I realize I am in no position to advise anyone on towel purchases.

I actually have a set of white towels that are not only miraculously stain-free but really, really old.  I’m pretty sure I was in elementary school when I received them as a Christmas gift from my great-aunt.  They have Chessie, the sleeping kitten symbol of the Chesapeake Railroad embroidered on them.  (Awww.)  I don’t use them much, mainly because they would look weird hanging in my bathroom, so they’ll probably last forever.

The first towels I ever purchased were from the Sears catalog.  I worked at Sears all through college and I’m pretty sure these towels were a catalog return that I bought at a huge discount.  They’re brown.  I say that in the present tense because I still have them, even though they are thin and cheap and, well, poop-brown.  They’re great for mopping up kitchen disasters, though.

I have a set of pink towels that were given to me when I moved into my first apartment.  They go nicely with the pink silk chrysanthemum that skulks dustily in the corner over our toilet.  At least I think the chrysanthemum’s still up there – maybe I came to my senses and threw it away the last time we did a big spring cleaning.  Anyway, the pink towels are getting pretty thin and scratchy, so I really only use the washcloths.  The towels are good for drying my car after I wash it, though.

A couple of years ago I bought a couple of nice, thick, sage green towels that complement what I loosely refer to as our bathroom decor.  Somehow, my good bath towel always ends up being paired with a random, lesser towel that I use for my hair.  I have several of these orphan bath towels that don’t match any of the other towels and whose origins have long been forgotten.

Will I someday rid myself of all the old, crummy towels and purchase good towels for both bathrooms?  Nah, I’m too cheap and it really doesn’t matter that much.  Now if you hear about a good deal on nice cotton sheets, maybe we’ll talk…

When my husband woke up on Saturday morning a little before noon, I made us omelets, maple bacon and toast to fortify us for loading the Jeep with the P.A.* equipment I needed to take to band practice. 

For you music geeks who might be interested, I have a pair of Peavey SP-2 speakers that were probably made in the 70s, a QSC 100-watt power amp, one newer Peavey monitor, an ancient Sennheiser microphone that really needs to be refurbished, and a fairly new AKG D3800 microphone.  One of the other band members has a Peavey CS800 power amp (we used my amp for the monitor) and a mixing board.

Fortunately, we loaded the Jeep a few hours before I needed to leave because it started pouring rain about an hour before practice.  When I got there, we set up the P.A. pretty handily except that we came up short on speaker cables.  Our bass player managed to retrieve some of his from a friend who lived nearby.  The CS800 amp was half blown and was really only pushing 400 watts on one side.  It also had a bad switch, so we had to jury-rig it with tape and slats of moulding to keep it powered up, but it worked well enough for our purposes. 

It was wonderful being able to actually hear myself at band practice for the first time.  Until Saturday we’d been running the vocals through a guitar amp, which I do not recommend.  Eventually, volume creep by the guitarist and drummer began to overwhelm the vocals, but I believe it may have partly been the heavy-metal-inappropriate subtlety of the Sennheiser mic.

I’ve been so busy (and lazy) since I joined the band that I still haven’t written any lyrics to their original songs.  Every practice makes me feel like the schoolgirl who didn’t do her homework.  However, I’ve been listening to the songs a lot this weekend and I should be able to have two or three of them ready for our next practice.  I know my husband is itching to "help me" write them, but I think I’d like to have a go at them on my own.

My musical goals from here on out:

• Daily warmup and practice
• Set aside lyric writing time several times per week
• Memorize the lyrics to all the songs
• Prompt the band to choose a name
• Get us a gig at a roller derby match when we’re ready

It’s nice to have a hobby!

*P.A. stands for "public address," in case you were wondering.

I seldom wear fragrance, partly because the strong ones can give me a
headache and partly because I figure my soap, hair products, clean
clothes and deodorant probably have enough perfumes in them.

Still, just as I’ll occasionally leave the house dressed like a
grown-up, so will I occasionally take the extra step and apply perfume.

My husband recently ordered some haircare products from Sephora, which came with a number of perfume and cologne samples.  Some of them were women’s, so I’ve been trying them one by one over the past couple of weeks to see how I like them.

The first and best was Essence by Marc Jacobs.  It’s a gardenia scent with some kind of heavier note keeping the sweetness in check.  I would actually buy it, except that it retails for $65 for 1.7 oz.

The second one I tried was Bulgari BLV Notte.  When freshly applied it had a faint "tire rubber" note that I found a little off-putting and overall I thought it seemed a little matronly for my taste.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the third sample, Britney Spears’ Curious.  I put off trying this one for a long time because the radio commercials made me gag and, really, who wants to smell like Britney?  Judging from the perfume itself, I’d say they’re banking on the pre-teen crowd.  The perfume is very sweet and smells a lot like cotton candy when first applied.  If I were eleven, I’d be all over it (Sweet Honesty, anyone?), but I think today will be the only time I wear it.

Once upon a time I worked as a consultant for a large corporation.  It was my first exposure to the horrific business catchphrases that people at large companies pick up and carelessly throw around in conversation.  On the first day when my supervisor told me to meet with someone for "knowledge transfer," I almost laughed in his face.

Now that I work at a small company again, I thought I was immune to the worst corporate-speak cliches, but judging from this article from Fortune, Business Buzzwords That Make You Gag, I need to rid myself of a few lingering jargon parasites.

Are you guilty of uttering any of the phrases on the list?  Can you think of any bad ones that didn’t make the list?

After all of July’s travel and extra work, it’s been a special treat for me to be able to stay home for two evenings in a row.  It’s over as of tonight – I have a board meeting and a dinner with friends – but it’s been very satisfying to sit on the couch with the TV and the laptop, doing nothing of significance.

I did manage to hoist myself off the couch long enough to cook a pot of chili yesterday.  By some miracle, I had all of the essential ingredients on hand.  Now, however, if I were to clean out the refrigerator and organize the cupboards, we’d be in Old Mother Hubbard territory.  Since the weekend, I’ve made two meals out of freezer scrapings and there’s just nothing left to eat in the house unless I want macaroni and cheese or canned beets.

My schedule is always so full that it’s hard for me to take a couple of evenings off without feeling guilty.  I keep thinking I could be working on my club’s website or starting an outline for the book idea I have or writing some song lyrics or filing paperwork or shredding junk mail.  Then I remember that I had a headache every day last week and I’m feeling perfectly fine this week, probably thanks to the extra downtime.

The procrastination has to end sometime, but I know I’m probably okay for now because I haven’t been waking up worrying about projects that need to be done.  Isn’t that a terrible gauge of productivity?!