jessteronimo

What Can I Say? I'm Really Busy

So, yeah, you probably noticed that I fell off the grid for a while. It isn't because I don't care about writing anymore. When people say, "I'm really busy," that can mean different things to different people. I've found that they don't often mean it the way I do. I mean it more than most.

For the last few months, I've essentially been working three jobs plus some side jobs--and I'm not getting paid for most of it. In fact, I'm paying for large parts of it. I have a full-time job that always promises to challenge and bewilder. We've had a harder year than usual, and I've been contending with problems and situations that tend to hyjack my daily work, which puts me into a lot of overtime. Then, in the late spring, my father's business experienced some significant challenges that he wasn't staffed to contend with and overcome, so I stepped in to help turn things around. It's been a real struggle, especially because it's long distance (he lives about 3 hours from me). I've found that it's damn near impossible to stop a speeding train without a crash, but it won't stop me from trying. I continue to teach and study karate for several hours three days a week. The classes are getting bigger, and the other instructors are getting flakier, which puts a strain on those of us who are there consistently. And I recently helped my sister's business with setting up some IT infrastructure when it moved offices, a process that didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. And I've been helping various friends and family with other things that have popped up. I've been so busy, I didn't even notice when my domain name expired! That's crazy!

In short, I've been spending every waking moment working on something for someone else. It's more than old. I'm beat, fried. It needs to stop, and soon. Or I will simply fly apart.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall

I realized something recently that shocked me a little. I absolutely hate looking at myself, and I do it as infrequently as possible, sometimes subconsciously taking great pains to avoid things like mirrors and windows and cameras--they are everywhere we go! In my quest not to have to see me, I have noticed that my image is reflected back at me way more often than is comfortable. In the rearview mirror of my car. In shop windows as I pass. Caught in the frames of people's cell phone cameras. Even the elevator in my work's office building has mirrors on three sides, and it creeps me out every day. (When I first started my job, one of the two cars had those drab moving pads hung over the mirrors for months; I used to wait for that car specifically just so I wouldn't have to glimpse myself in the mirrors.)

And cameras! Ugh! I'm barely tolerable animated. Still-frame is absolutely frightening! There are maybe a dozen pictures of me since my adulthood that I can stand to look at, and even fewer that I'm comfortable sharing (yes, my Vanity album makes me a little sick, in case you were wondering).

But there is one mirror that is kinder to me than all the rest: My bathroom mirror. Depending on the time of day, the lighting in there is either wonderfully low or it's softly muted natural light, and the mirror has a sheen and cast to it that just likes me. I'm so grateful for that mirror! Not that I spend a ton of time looking in it, but it's the one I can stand the best, and it's where, each morning, I put together a presentation to go out into the world in--gathering my courage, so to speak. I just wish that the rest of you could see me the way that mirror does. So sorry. And I hope you all have your "magic mirrors" that don't know your flaws and whisper that you're truly royalty.

Walking in My Shoes

Near my entryway sits a basket full of shoes, a drop spot for the shoes my family wears on a regular basis--so they aren't under foot, so to speak. The contents change according to the season. (I remember the flip-flops with longing.) I don't usually pay much attention to what shoes are in there because I don't keep my shoes in there. But lately my shoes have gone missing quite a lot. I recently discovered that the basket is full of my shoes. And then it hit me: My daughters are wearing my shoes on a regular basis! This isn't dress-up, like it used to be. They are actually wearing my shoes--to school, to play in, to church, to all sorts of activities. Please tell me when my two daughters got big enough to wear MY shoes!!! There's a lesson in there somewhere, isn't there? Or several.

Pay Attention

Have you noticed that gas prices are creeping back up? I haven't heard anyone talking about it either. When it rises sharply in the middle of the summer to the $4-per-gallon range, everyone screams bloody murder. And we all breathe an audible, collective sigh of relief when it drops just as suddenly back to the $2-per-gallon range (which is still criminally high, by the way). But when it creeps up slowly--up $0.10 this weekend, back down $0.05 for the weekdays, then up another $0.10 the next weekend--no one really notices. Makes you go, Hmmmmm, don't it?

Do you sometimes feel like you're part of a massive social experiment, like some entity out there is testing our pain thresholds to figure out how much we will pay before we start to change our behaviors? I do. Makes me a wee bit mad too. But not enough to actually fight it. I'm way too distracted for that. Is that another Starbucks going up? Where's the nearest Wal-Mart? Oooooooo, look! Mountain Dew on sale! When's the Super Bowl?

Sad, really. 

Week(Never)End

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

High School Buddies

Some enterprising (and probably bored) you folks from my high school put together a website for the alumni to reconnect. It's free to use, but you have to have a login (and be an alumnist?) to view the data. I spent a bit of time today updating my bio and reading some of the others. Most are woefully out of date, from what little I know of the lives of some of those listed. Check it out: http://www.uintahhigh.com/index.htm

I'm not one of those people who never left high school, but I don't believe it's necessary to leave behind the friendships I built there. I know some extraordinarily awesome people from those days. My *gasp* twenty-year reunion is coming up soon, and I can't wait to see my friends again.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My oldest daughter got stung by a hornet today. I wasn't there, but I wish I had been. My Mom was deathly allergic  to bee stings. She'd been stung twice in her life, both causing massive swelling and pain that landed her in the hospital. Luckily, my daughter's first bee sting did not swell at all, but she described feeling the pain of the poison march up her arm all the way to her shoulder before subsiding. I've never been stung before (*knock on wood*), so I don't know if that's a typical hornet sting reaction. Sounds unusual and scary to me. I wish I could have been there to comfort her, but I'm glad her Dad was there to help her soldier through the ordeal.

100,000

Yesterday, we watched with mixed emotions as our car's odometer turned over to 100,000 miles. While I'm still impressed with the car's durability, performance, and gas mileage, I was sad to see resale and trade-in possibilities fly away. Now we're truly committed to keeping the car or giving it away when we upgrade who knows when. Ben is completely against getting into a newer car while this one is still running well and has been paid off for years. I begrudgingly agree, but it's hard when so many of my friends and family are getting newer, cooler vehicles. *sigh* I guess I should just be thankful for having a reliable, economic vehicle.

Garbage Can Goalposts

Sometime during the day each Wednesday (usually in the morning), Ben places the city garbage can at the end of the driveway on the right side for collection on Thursday mid- to late afternoon. Every other week, he places the city recycling can at the end of the driveway on the left side for collection in the mid-morning. He separates the two cans to make it easier for the garbage trucks to get to them. So every other week, whenever I go anywhere on Wednesday or Thursday, I get to negotiate my car between the two receptacles. And it may be my imagination, but it seems like each week, he puts them closer together.

Howdy, Neighbor!

On Friday morning, the city dropped off huge dumpsters about every 30 feet in our neighborhood for the annual neighborhood cleanup project. Immediately, our neighbors all around and up and down the street started hauling garbage and discarded junk from their homes and yards out to fill up the dumpsters. It was kind of amazing how quickly they filled up. We contributed, of course. Ben threw away a bunch of stuff I wasn't terribly happy about, along with the stuff I was glad to see finally go. (It's an ongoing fight we have.)

While we were out there cleaning up, we noticed that the neighbor immediately to the west of us was hauling tree branches and bags of stuff to the dumpster. She's a slightly older widow. That's all we knew about her. Like good (well, decent) neighbors, we and our girls went over and started helping her. It took us about twenty minutes to haul our junk; it took us about an hour to haul all her junk. During this process, we actually introduced ourselves for the first time. We've been here for a year and a bit, and we finally formally met our neighbor to the immediate right of us--over our mutual garbage. Now we will probably have to formally meet the elderly widower neighbor to the immediate left of us. I'm a little nervous that we'll suddenly start getting in each other's personal business--but after a year and a half of no overtures on their parts, perhaps they're also not that kind of people and we're safe afterall. ;)