Some nights I turn on Pandora and try to choose something soothing, but inevitably I either sing along to the songs, get annoyed with Pandora’s choices or just get annoyed in general that I’m having to listen to something. Other nights I try to meditate, but my mind OH HOW IT WANDERS. There have to be ways to quiet my mind at bedtime. Just before writing this I made a list of all the things I’m worried about or that weigh heavily on my thoughts. The plan, you see, is that this would take all those thoughts out of my head and deposit them somewhere else for safekeeping until tomorrow.

Not so much. That list has 19 things on it. NINETEEN. Granted, some of them I listed twice. Some of them are weirdo health things that are most likely anxiety induced but worry me just the same. Some of them are work related and some are holiday stuff. Yes, YES I AM ALREADY WORRIED ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS. Where will we spend Christmas? What am I getting everyone? Will there be enough money to go around for the entire family? What if there isn’t? What if I can’t convince family members that we should skip gifts this year and do something good for the planet and/or its people?

And then there’s the weird paranoia that I’m not supposed to talk about on the Internet but that has to do with…a word that rhymes with jerk. But not spelled that way, IF YOU GET MY CRAZY SUBTLE CLUES. Which leads me to think about my list of things I need to do tomorrow, and why not just worry about them now instead of waiting until the morning? If I think hard enough about it now surely the answer will come to me, yes? And if I consult my Google calendar 42 times in the next 15 minutes than surely I’ll be prepared for all my appointments tomorrow, yes?

Help me stop the madness, y’all. There’s a yoga class I want to join this week but I am the opposite of flexible, and I don’t have a mat and is it okay to wear pajamas to yoga? Because that’s not so much relaxing sounding in my head. And then I could take a hot shower but wet head in the bed? No way. Milk? I’ll just have to pee more. All the lights out for quiet time? Obviously you’re not listening.

And yes, before you ask, I consume caffeine. Two Coke Zeroes a day at max, and I try really hard to quit at noon. So the solution for tonight is to write it all down right here and hope for the best.

Wish me luck, y’all.

Me: TOTALLY DIDN’T DO IT WHATEVER IT IS.

Him: Yes ma’am, that’s right. We’ll just peek right here under the [something technical that didn't make sense].

Me: I don’t know what any of this is.

Him: All you really need to know, ma’am, is that these are moving parts that don’t work anymore.

Me: Fucking European cars.

Him: That’ll be $1000. Well, $967 with the discount.

Me: Sure thing, buckaroo. I’ll schedule that repair RIGHT AWAY.

I am so proud of you for everything positive you’re doing in your life. I get lumpy crocodile tears when I think of the silent pain you must’ve been in for so long, and I wish I had known. But now, NOW!, you are doing yourself a solid and being your own best friend, which is a hard thing to do.

Growing up easy becomes sort of hard later on, doesn’t it? I wonder if you may have discovered this accidentally like I did. One day in college I stopped dead in my tracks, looked around and realized I wasn’t like everyone else. My hard part had yet to come, whereas their hard parts were over. Bastards.

I want to kiss your sweet cherub face and tell you to get a haircut. I want to hear you laugh because it makes me cackle. I want to ride in a car with you while you make me listen to some damn band I don’t know. Mostly I want to hug you and promise never to let go.When you pick up the phone to call me, you can bet I’m on the other end, dialing your number. (It usually happens just that way, doesn’t it? So weird.)

You are my new hero. You should probably know that I have a lot of heroes, but you’re new on the list and automatically you’re moving to the top! Congratulations! You and I are very similar though, so you should be warned of my steady non-hero status.

I love you and I want to hug your neck something fierce.

I think there comes a day in everyone’s life when you finally realize that, no matter how hard you work, your life just isn’t going to be perfect. I tell myself this every day, or I try to, but somehow I’m just not getting the message.

I had my work evaluation this week, and I scored a 3.8 out of 5. If we’re looking at it carefully and officially, this is a C average. I AM NOT A C STUDENT, y’all. In fact, I’ve been bitching about this since Tuesday because I am completely incensed. It does not matter to me that my boss got a 3.8 as well. Or that in order to get much higher than that, you have to provide documentation that is akin to giving a blood sample. Or that the scores are averaged among the bazillion people that evaluate you.

I’m pretty sure none of this matters, because I got a C.

In college I would go home after each semester and sing the Cookie Monster song. (C is for cookie and that’s good enough for meeee!) I was trying to be funny because those C’s were grand achievements compared to my French and calculus grades. But now! NOW! Mediocre does not get you a giant promotion. Middle of the road does not a Ph.D. make.

So where does that leave us average people?

I’ve been anxious this year, ever since Christmas, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I am taking my medication regularly, I finished up school, I’m spending more time with my husband and you’d think that would ease the strain on my psyche. Not so much, though. I’m attributing most of it to the amount of caffeine I’m consuming these days (which, in combination with Ambien, is also to blame for the hallucinatory posts I’m writing; see below) but I feel like there’s got to be an underlying current of…something there.

And I think it might be the idea of perfection that is eating away at my nerves, making my stomach shaky and my ability to sleep nonexistent.

I look around at my house and, despite all your suggestions and good intentions, we still haven’t taken care of the, uh…clutter. It overwhelms me and it is such a daunting task that I am constantly berating myself (and Brian) for not having a perfectly put together home. Look at so-and-so! They have four children and zero mess! Remember when we went to such-and-such’s house? It was decorated to a T and we could’ve eaten off their floors!

I keep thinking about that B I got in my research class 3 years ago. That B, the only non-A I got in my degree, kept me from a 4.0 GPA. I graduated with a 3.909. SERIOUSLY, school, HOW ABOUT ROUNDING UP? It’s not a perfect GPA and I’m here to admit freely that I am insanely bothered by that.

People are taking vacations left and right; they are buying cars and houses like it’s the only thing that matters; they are saving up thousands and thousands every month (so they say) and WHERE ON EARTH is all this coming from? Is there a secret lottery I don’t know about? Did some farmer in Iowa finally invent a money tree? And why do I make this comparison?

Because it’s the idea of perfection that eats away at me and I know I haven’t attained it. When will I ever be satisfied with the notion that Hey, this is me. Take it or leave it. Love it or don’t. Get the fuck over it.

Will I ever? Is it possible?

I also made a sudden discovery tonight: I LIKE CAMPING. I’m not sure that roughing it can be defined in only one way, so I’m going to define it MY way: camping is, not sleeping in your own bed, it’s being able to see stars/moon/sun/streetlights from your bed, and it’s taking enough food into that sleeping area, wherever it may be, that you don’t rely on trail mix and melted snow if you get lost. BURGERS, lost people, PORK CHOPS. As some of us may recall from childhood, camping was a fort in the backyard. As adults, I say we bring back the Living Room Fort. We bring it back with pillows, blankets, those old refrigerator boxes, laundry baskets, step stools, THE WHOLE SHEBANG.

As if these weren’t already good enough ideas, I bombarded my mind with extra ideas it needs. (It always needs extra ideas.) My ideas are as follows:

1. Make a new friend everyday. Now admittedly, some of us don’t run into a lot of people throughout the day and that can make this task seem daunting. A new friend can be the Canada goose who poos on your sidewalk. Your new friend can be the multi-pierced fellow at the grocery store who wants to touch your produce. It doesn’t matter, y’all. You’re just looking to make ONE new friend. Pick an interesting one.
2. Be glad for one thing everyday. Today, I am glad that the people who live behind us in the weird house with the sketchy brown fence didn’t get hurt during what appeared to be, at the time, an electrical fire. Although, she’s a former art teacher, so BB and I concocted some fun, what-if stories that we’ll just share at a later date. (What if she was burning some kind of giant plastic bleach jug for an “art” project and then her family got home and was all “MOM! That’s bleach and FIRE!” And she’s all “No, kids. This is art.”)
3. Oh, my other idea. This one rocks so steady, I can’t even stand it. Here it is, are you ready?

That’s right, y’all. THROWBACK VINTAGE ’60s style MOTOR-FUCKING-LODGE! My SIL stayed for a night this weekend and absolutely fell in love with it. The little guy at the front desk flips open the book to see if there are rooms available. And if there are rooms, he will hand you a real key with a giant plastic number as he pencils in your reservation. WITH A PENCIL. And dogs are allowed and even encouraged. And I just can’t say with any certainty that it will be the finest place I ever stay in, BUT! I think we might try it Brady style. Load up the wagon, stock the kitchenette, bring our beach towels and get the sheets sandy. I mean, hello…it’s the ATLANTIS LODGE.

Bitches.

I need to find calm and clarity.

I need to stop being a people-pleaser.

I need to learn to say no.

I need to find faith in myself.

I need to find strength in my knowledge.

I need to become and remain devoted to what I know is real.

I need to return to writing what moves me.

I need to adjust my attention.

I need to rely on others, if just for a time.

I need to ask for support and allow myself to breathe.

I need to realize that considering myself isn’t selfish.

I am presenting four years worth of graduate degree work on April 25th at 3:00 in the afternoon. I have not finished; I am not ready. I am terrified and excited to show off what I’ve done, except I can’t really remember what I’ve done because I took the last year off. I am exhausted and not sleeping, though I suspect school is only part of it. I feel pulled in two million directions, though I also suspect that is of my own doing.

My therapist used to tell me that I was my own worst critic. Which is absolutely true, because I am constantly thinking in my mind that someone is looking at me funny or strange, or that they are judging me silently. And while this may be the case, why do I give a flying fuck? Why can’t I teach myself to have confidence in my knowledge, or my work, or myself?

I am smart, dammitall. I know what I’m talking about. I can somehow, some way, pull together enough information and knowledge from my own brain to prove to other people that I DO DESERVE THAT DEGREE. Can’t I?

Why oh why must I constantly question myself? Right now as I type this I’m worried that you all (the ones of you that are left, that is) are thinking to yourselves that every sentence in this post begins with “I.” And then I’m thinking, Well, who really cares? Because this is my personal blog and that means I’ve given myself permission to say whatever the fuckity fuck fuck I want to say. But that’s not really the case, is it? I still look around all day and wonder who thinks my hair is greasy, or who is judging the length of my pants, or whether my cankles are particularly stand-outy today.

It’s been quite some time since I meditated, though it hasn’t been that long since I tried. I couldn’t focus this past time; my mind wandered and I couldn’t drown out the sounds in my house. Asking someone – someone who is AROUND ALL THE TIME GOD HELP ME – to keep it down is like asking an elephant to look a little shorter in a picture.

I don’t know where I’m going with all of this except to say that I need some focus and attention to detail. I need some advice, Internet. What do you do when you need to completely drown out all the noise of the world so you can figure out what the hell you’re actually doing?

I need to know this.

I need to find some peace within myself.

I need to graduate.

I’ve been avoiding the blog for a little while because there’s been so much going on I haven’t known where to start. Maybe I’ll start by making a list, as I do love a list better than just about anything.

1.       Brian got laid off.

2.       Brian was home for a really, really long time.

3.       I was the world’s greatest cheerleader, resume-writer and job coach. For free.

4.       I was the world’s greatest church-goer, two whole weeks in a row.

5.       Brian got hired!

6.       Brian’s first day at work was yesterday!

So week before last Brian was running around dropping his resume off anywhere that had an open door, and he decided to take one by his pre-Pepsi company just for the hell of it. Before he could get halfway home, the vice-president called him in for an interview! Can you believe it! Neither can I! Neither can he!

Last Wednesday he interviewed for a similar position as to what he did for Pepsi and they hired him ON THE SPOT. On the spot! For a job! And the sweetest deal of all is that this job is Monday through Friday. Not once in the 7 years we’ve been married has he had the same schedule as I have. We’ve been ships passing through the night, running into each other in the kitchen and occasionally one of us sees the other by sifting through laundry, searching for familiar clothes.

The last few weeks have been the best of our married lives. It’s no secret to our friends that we’ve gone through a bit of a…rough patch over the past few months. In fact, it was super rough. Like, SANDPAPER rough. And yet – YET! – he loses his job and we become blissfully happy. It’s like all the negativity of the world, all the things that beat us down over and over and over had magically disappeared. Brian’s face softened and he slept better. We laughed at stuff and marveled because we forgot what laughing sounds like.

And so this past weekend I surprised him with an overnight trip to the beach. It was amazing timing because North Carolina had its first 70-degree weather of the year and we honest-to-goodness took our beach chairs out on the sand. We snuggled in with books and short-sleeved shirts, and we walked for a little while with our toes in the water. (Which was frigid. We are obviously stupid.) We had a nice peaceful dinner, walked on the beach at night under a weird orangey moon and we slept in. We took naps and we laughed some more, because it kind of sounded good.

Now I realize all of this might come off as a little, I don’t know, cheesy maybe. And that’s true. But I’ve found myself in a new quandary, Internet, and here’s where I need your help.

For the last few years, Brian has been the primary housekeeper because he was home ALL THE TIME. He had like, a gajillion days off and so the cleaning fell on him. Now that we’re back on the same schedule, we have to rework our chore chart a little. I want there to be less clutter, obviously, but for right now I just feel like we need to spring clean for a fresh start.

I’m doing one room at the time, starting tonight with our bathroom. I’ll tackle the other stuff later. What are your best cleaning tips? What makes the whole job easier for you? I might just sweeten the comment pot with a little prize for the one cleaning tip that saves my life. YOU NEVER KNOW.

NBC

Like an afterschool special, I am here FOR YOU. A community service, if you will. A fount of good information to help you be your best you.  So today, I ask the question:

Did you know?

1.       That the reason aluminum is the main ingredient in deodorant is because that’s what keeps you from stinking? And that “all-natural, aluminum-free” deodorant is code for makes-you-stink?

2.       That giant glue traps designed to catch roaches can stick to a cat’s hind end?

3.       That a combination of scissors, Palmolive and Wesson oil can’t get that kind of glue off?

4.       That my vet will bathe a cat for only $20?

5.       That Facebook might be just the thing to get a man out of his dark, jobless depression?

6.       That while the rest of the country is buried in ice and snow, North Carolina has 70 degree weather with howling winds and eerie pink skies?

7.       That Doritos, Gatorade, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Quaker and everything in your pantry is a PepsiCo product?

8.       That trying to ban PepsiCo products is next to impossible?

9.       That Coke Zero is the best-tasting thing since Coke?

10.   That my world is upside down?

Anyway, this weekend I was all I’m gonna organize! I’m gonna get shit done! I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna! and now it’s Sunday night and I haven’t even finished that one load of laundry. HOWEVER. I’ve yet to find a person out there who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s Millienium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and I’ve been anxious to watch the movie. A quick search of the on-demand movie channel revealed that the first two books are now movies in Swedish with English subtitles. Let this not deter you, Internet! These movies are OUTSTANDING.

If you’ve read them, you know how graphic they are and the movies do the nasty parts some serious justice. They are entertaining and stick with the story pretty closely, but by far the most fun for me was learning Swedish words. For instance, did you know that “okay” in English and “okay” in Swedish are the same? ME EITHER. And “holy shit” and “what the fuck” sound exactly the same, except with extra syllables. I always thought Spanish was fun, but Swedish? Well. I haven’t asked anyone about this officially, but I’m pretty sure Swedish is a combo of German, French and English, and maybe some other languages, and they use all those fun letters with the dots and slashes through them, like the No Smoking signs. SO FUN, RIGHT?!

Now this is interesting: I just looked on Wikipedia and it turns out that Swedish is the official language of Finland, too. Which totally confuses me, because I would think that Finnish would be Finland’s language, but does that mean that Finnish isn’t a language? Or do people in Finland not like their own language? Or is it like Canada, where people speak English but probably don’t want to, and feel like Americans just shoved English down their throats and so they rebel by saying “oot the door” and other weird stuff?

These are the questions that keep me up…in the afternoon. I didn’t even nap today thinking about this stuff. I blame Stieg Larsson.

In other news, everyone in these movies drives a Volvo. Or, if they’re executives at their jobs, they drive Audis or Mercedes. Can you imagine living somewhere where there isn’t a tacky 12 year-old domestic death trap parked on every street corner? Me either. And all the houses in Stockholm looked really quaint but modern and Ikea-y and the rural towns have names like Uppsala and Hedestad. I said on Facebook today that I wanted to plan a trip to Sweden soon and one of my friends sent me the current weather in Stockholm, which was 22 degrees, and I said that I didn’t mind because hello? It’s colder than that in Pittsburgh today. (I only know that because I’m watching the Steelers play the Jets, and that’s only because my friend Kristen showed me Heinz Field when I was there a few months ago and now I feel beholden to Pennsylvania.)

Tomorrow I’m going to see the lu-lu doctor, which is not the vagina doctor. Apparently this is confusing to some people. I’m going to ask her what I’m supposed to do about taking my crazy meds when I’m sick with a stomach virus, and also about Ambien amnesia, which is happening more and more. Maybe I’ll come out of there with some new prescriptions, and if that’s the case, I’ll be sure to let you know what’s good and new on the crazytrain market.

Until then…

Var är toaletten? (I’m asking you where the toilet is, please, when I’m in Sweden. Or Finland.)

I vow to try really hard to remember to use my muscles a little more often.

Since Christmas, the house has been quiet but tumultuous, if that’s possible. I had a three week break from school over the holidays, which I really enjoyed but which threw my circadian rhythm off so much so that I worried for days about oversleeping on my first day back. The first week back was a blur of training, registration, lesson planning, putting out fires and getting back into a regular sleep schedule. The second week back was about as awful as I would expect in January. We discovered mistakes we’d made with advising this past semester and had to rectify those quickly, until it snowed and I got the stomach flu and we had extended drop/add and my co-workers were short staffed and OH GOD THE STOMACH FLU.

From what I know, it’s spread like wildfire around this town. From what I’ve heard, it’s all over everywhere. I think I’d rather be shot in the toes than have that again. Not even kidding.

So I guess the point of my story is that my mind has been elsewhere and I’ve suffered because of it. There are so many things that I think Oh! I need to remember to blog about that! and then a day goes by and I forget, or it’s not relevant anymore. I watched some serious TV over both the holiday and The Illness of January, and I’m happy to report that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is my new discovery. It’s just…genius. I can’t believe I hadn’t found it before, but I owe that show a debt of gratitude for helping me climb out of a panic attack the other day. The thing about a stomach bug is that if I can’t keep anything inside me (I know this is gross, but most of y’all are moms and your gross-o-meter should be tolerating higher stuff than this) I can’t keep my medication regulated. So it stands to reason that without the good drugs, I am a pure-T nutcase. I’m telling you, this week was not pretty.

Catching up on Google Reader was a treat this week, as I’m woefully behind on my reading and have so much more to go. A lot of your posts have given me good ideas and some have even helped me come up with things to talk about in my class this semester. Y’all are so smart. I feel so…inferior.

In other news, things that have been rocky are slowly rocking themselves back right again. I wish so much that I could talk about this here, but the important thing is that you know I am and will always be a shiny, sparkling, extra wonderful, fantastical rock star. I just don’t see how you could argue otherwise. I didn’t make new year’s resolutions because frankly, who keeps them? (not me), and most of them cost money (gym, diet crap, buy a fancy planner, buy organization shit that will sit in a bag for a year) so I just scrapped that plan. Instead I am resolving NOTHING. I promise you absolutely nothing, I don’t guarantee a single thought, idea or gesture, and I surely am not planning to live up to anyone’s expectations.

See what I did here? I lowered your opinion of me so when I do good shit, you’ll be all surprised and impressed. I said it already: I’m a genius.

Finally, this exercise of the writing here has sparked some ideas so I’ll be back in the next few days to write specifically and, perhaps, intelligently. I ask that you stick with me, and I ask that you do this one huge thing for me that would make me happier than all the Doritos on the planet: send your love, your happy thoughts, your prayers for good and your healing powers to my friend. She is an even brighter and shinier star than I, and she needs a few peanuts in her gallery.

Thanks bunches.