Train Wreck
Reality Check
Thoughts From the Crazy Train
Weirdness But Truth
What's Wrong With Me
Where Am I Going With This
My Scary Thoughts
Whatever
Confessional
Cynicisms
Hello Darkness
Hello Weirdness My Old Friend
I Don't Care (But I do)
What Should I Call You
Randomappenings
Living On the Edge
Like I Just Dont Care
Random Truths From the Rabbit Hole
This Was Supposed to be Short
You've been warned.
I've abandoned this space recently in the hopes of recharging my brain. One of the dangers of creating a series of posts (such as my "Scale day" posts) is that they become canned and kill the creative love I have for the written word. Perhaps you all (or you few?) have felt it too because readership has dwindled away like popsicles in the sun. I say I don't care...I don't care...because I would continue to write simply because I enjoy doing it, even if no one reads. I will admit I'm curious, though. This is one of those posts I might be thankful for a small readership of. I feel the crazy seeping out.
I turned to physical creativity instead. I accomplished a huge personal goal and opened my Etsy shop after seven years--SEVEN YEARS--of procrastinating. I made several batches of woodburned ornaments, and a few other things that people have shown interest in buying in the past. My hope was to make some money to help pay for Christmas for my own family. (I promise, this is not a gimmick to guilt anybody! To prove it I won't share my Etsy link here.) I didn't have a lot of things to sell, but I figured it is what it is and when they're gone they're gone. I'll make more when I have time. You see, I was laboring under the delusion that my handiwork would fly off the virtual shelf. Several weeks and one sale later, the time I thought I'd need to remake and restock my shop is being spent thinking I should probably get to putting away those piles of clean laundry and grading that homework. And then I wander around the house some more. But I will continue to make things because it's what I love to do, even if nothing sells. As time allows. Because there's not as much time when I'm busy wandering around aimlessly, thinking.
Way to turn around and slap me in the face with reality, life. *High five.
How much of our lives are spent pretending we're not feeling what we're actually feeling?
The season of darkness is upon us. Days will steadily get darker sooner until right before the birth of Our Lord. It's also the season of anticipation, which usually keeps me going. Instead of being excited, I go in stages of anxiety and overcaring, to not caring and not feeling anything. I can feel the icy fingers of depression crawling up my spine, while on the edge of a stress-induced fit of uncontrollable laughter. It makes me want to go a little crazy and do ridiculous things normal people would probably not even think of doing. I found myself in this odd place I like to call the eye of the storm recently and almost shared pictures of my trashed house. What the heck.
My dining room is in an uncomfortable state of limbo. The table is used to find (oh autocorrect, that was supposed to say fold, but I'm leaving it because find is also appropriate) laundry, do homework, and the centerpiece is for seasonal decor.
This is the best illustration there could be of my interior struggle to decide what the priority is: laundry or Christmas decorating. As you can tell, neither won. If Instagram was full of these real life photos, what would we do? Maybe some of us wouldn't try so hard.
I can't finish decorating the table because my mind has decided that it needs a lovely silver dollar eucalyptus garland woven around white candles on rustic wood slices. But I already made my Wal-Mart run for the month, and they don't sell eucalyptus anything. This is how I ended up with $80 of eucalyptus things in my Amazon cart at midnight. I'm so thankful my husband and I have separate Amazon accounts. He would probably have a heart attack at all the things that get added to my cart only to be "saved for later" when reality takes over.
And my husband came home from work last night with the kindness of heart to say, "I can see you had a productive day." He said it with sincerity, I thought, though that totally would have worked as a sarcastic comment.
I never breathed a word to him that I flirted with the idea of running to Shopko to get a few more Christmas decorations on their 60% off sale...and to our pharmacy that's all decked out in cute crafty farmhouse decor, therefore a place I've been forbidden to shop at unless the kids need medicine. For seven hours I contemplated it...making up my mind every hour that I was going to finally brave the roads despite the freezing rain and sleet and 35 mile an hour winds, until I'd go out to the garage and see the clean Suburban and clean(ish) garage floor and decide there was no way I could venture out without tracking pounds of frozen evidence back into the garage. And then I'd have to explain to my reasonable husband what the emergency was (briefly imagining a way to invent a trip to the ER....) that necessitated risking my life and that of my children in leaving the house. There was no way to hide "retail therapy" as the reason, and I could imagine no way that conversation could go well. So I stayed home and wandered around instead.
I've been told that aimlessly wandering is a form of sloth. I can see it as such sometimes, but other times I feel as though it's a tool that helps me work through piles of mental clutter. It's often more exhausting than many kinds of real work.
Also, I have decided that holiday decorating is a mental disorder, if not a disease. Well, probably a disease since diseases are contagious.
Another bad thing brought about by holiday decorating? Having to go up in the attic and get the Christmas tree down. I put my big girl pants on and did it myself this year. Despite dozens of pins I've saved on Pinterest of gorgeous attics done up as game rooms, boho chic spare rooms, and airy libraries with macrame swings, our attic remains gross, unliveable and a bit scary (unless you're a bat, which is why I will not even peek up there from March through October). I decided I was going to be on top of things this year and responsibly brought a new light bulb with me because I remembered its solitary lightbulb had burned out a year ago. It was worse than I remembered. The cage that graces the southern gable end of our attic seemed innocent in comparison (considering it was probably used to keep rodents out of drying food) to the scat that littered the floor. Bat droppings. In case you don't know, bat droppings are like rolled up capsules of dried chew spit. Which makes sense when you realize that they're basically crispy digested bug parts. (You're welcome.) This is my reality. And bats are on my list of most feared things, reasonable or not. I was prepared for some mess and thankfully had old shoes on. What I wasn't prepared for was the odd water drop stains all over the floor as if it has been raining up there, and the curling floorboards, and the mold growing on the roof where the chimney used to be. None of this was there two years ago when I was up there last, and I knew just a year ago Eli had cleaned up the bat droppings. This would explain why the plaster ceiling in Aidan's room is starting to warp. I took a video of my foray into the attic to show Eli and so I wouldnt have to go back up there to remind myself what it was like. After discussing, we determined that when we closed off the chimney a couple summers ago the attic no longer had enough air circulation. So our big project for next spring will no longer be the desired deck over the crumbling front steps, but having bats and mold removed from the attic and having it vented and insulated. Old houses are stinking awesome.
The icing on my day was, after disinfecting the Christmas tree box that we had thankfully wrapped in plastic, showering, and then setting up the tree, the top section of the prelit tree no longer lit up. After spending an hour replacing dead bulbs to no avail, I ripped all the cottonheaded ninnymugging lights off that section and bought a new string of lights at Wal-Mart. On my top 10 of worst jobs ever to have: Christmas tree light stringer. Also there: bat pest control.
I recently dropped a stick of deodorant in the bathroom. You know it's a tiny space when it turns into a game of Plinko before hitting the floor.
Today the mental loop I'm stuck in: there's a box of cheese breadsticks in the freezer. I cannot eat them because I haven't been eating great for the majority of the last three weeks. Oh, but I deserve them! No, why on earth would you deserve a food that is bad for you? Ok, but I really want them. What if that's the only thing I eat all day?But you'll eat the whole box and be hungry the rest of the time! No, Addie always eats half of anything I make. That leaves me with 3 breadsticks at the most. I'll fill up on carrots later. Really? Really. But we're having supper guests Saturday night and cheese breadsticks are part of the menu. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to explain to hubby why this box disappeared? Grumbling: but we'll have to buy more anyway. *Sigh FINE!
My brain will seriously do this until hubby gets home.
I gave my little boy animal crackers for breakfast today because they have to be healthier than cereal. Right? And he was so incredibly happy. I said no at first. But today we need happy.
Another thing I said no to at first? One of my big boys playing out in the snow. It's actually a pretty stupid thing to say no to, but the snow is so soupy wet all I could see was the big mess coming back in my house. But this is the best snow to make snowmen out of, and it really is so pretty out. Let it go, mama. He has been outside playing happily now for 2 hours. Those are two hours he was not watching TV or bickering with his brothers. Happy.
My youngest son (4) insists that Santa is bringing his gifts. Now you can disagree with our parenting methods all you want, but my husband and I agreed before we had babies that Santa was deceptive and not the lind of tradition we want to pass on to our children. Instead we have a tradition much like the old Christkint or Christkindl tradition in which the gifts are from Christ. Despite reassurances from his brothers that, no, Santa was really St. Nicholas and is now dead, he still insists. I've decided not to get too involved and see how this plays out.
We went to my aunt and uncle's for one of three Thanksgiving celebrations this year. We meaning the kids and I, Eli was working again. My social anxiety was alive and well, despite personal reassurances that I was now one of the cool kids and wouldn't have to sweat small talk anymore. Only, when your family is the size of a small nation and the pre-luncheon din alone makes small talk more like small yells, and you're balancing two plates so you don't have to brave the mile long food line again too soon, simultaneously trying to keep gravy off your new buttery soft mustard hued top--social anxiety puts your (my) brain on auto-pilot. This is why, when my uncle behind me me in line said "Hi Julie!" I quickly exclaimed "Hey! Merry Christmas!" Um. Yeah. I made a joke of it, like I always do. And then I presumed to be uncharacteristically social and commented how much my cousins family had grown since I'd seen him last. He responded that it was as much as it was going to grow, so of course I had to quip "Oh come on now, don't be a quitter!" That too I had to laugh off and then quickly escape. I decided for the remainder of the time to hide safely in a small breakfast nook until I saw others start to leave.
Why, every time I try to type "let me know" on my phone, does it autocorrect to "leery me knits"? The best explanation I've decided is that my autocorrect was programmed by an angry leprechaun. It makes for some interesting text conversations, like "We'll be heading your way tomorrow, ok if we stop?" "Yeah, just leery me knits." Or "Might get free turkey coupon from work today." "Ooo, leery me knits. Wish it was ham."
I'm having a love/hate relationship with slippers right now. There's never a right temperature with them, they either keep my feet freezing cold or blazing hot. And I know if I keep throwing them in the washer to freshen them up they're going to fall apart. However, I wear them because they keep me blissfully ignorant of the crumbs under my feet, thereby relieving the anxious need to obsessively sweep the floor.
That is not teen spirit you smell.
Because I decided to slip them off as I sat here to write on my leery me knits phone (because our operating system deleted itself again on the old PC) I have a cold, wet dog nose stuck between two of my toes.
I still have not eaten the cheese bread sticks.
At this point I think I've exhausted the well of crazy that was about to bubble over, so I'll leave you to your day.
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