Tag: me

Getting out of bed.

I very rarely have problems getting out of bed in the morning. Most of the time, I wake up before my alarm and I get up and go about my day. Even on the weekends I don’t tend to linger in bed in the morning. But the afternoon? That’s an entirely different story. When not working, I tend to get sleepy after lunch and I lay down “for just a little bit.” Getting up after that “little bit” is a Herculean task and the bit sometimes stretches to a good two hours or so. I nap and read and generally do anything possible to avoid getting up. “Just five more minutes” I plead to myself.

In that ideal life, which I think I can find by locating the city on the hill, I would not need a nap. But in this life, I do.

Savings Bond

Back in November of 1974, someone was excited about my birth and bought me a $25.00 savings bond. I’m 35 now, and that savings bond matured some time ago. It is worth about $130.00, which is a lot, but that weird amount, where I don’t want to cash it and spend it on something like groceries, but also it needs to be spent on something special, so I can point to it and say, “my savings bond bought that.” I’ve been hemming and hawing for years as to what to use it for.

It has finally come to me: I’m going to use it to renew my teaching license. The total cost is around $200 dollars, so I will supplement the savings bond with some birthday money. But I think I finally hit on a fitting reason to cash this bond.

5 years of standard diary

In late 2004, I had lost interest in daily writing of my journal, which I had done pretty regularly since seventh grade. I didn’t miss daily journaling–my life seemed to have calmed down enough that I didn’t have to process so many things–but I did find myself thinking, “How did I spend last Memorial Day?” and “Did I make rolls last year for Thanksgiving?” I also needed a place to keep track of books read and movies watched.

I needed something to record daily life on a regular basis, but not in an excessive manner. I thought instantly of “My Dairy.” My Dairy was a small, red-bound book with a lock and a key and when you opened it, had a page for each day of the year. Each page was further divided into five sections of about four lines each, so that you could note things daily for five years. Small, compact, perfect. Exactly what I needed.

Could I find such thing? Nope. I found a few five-year diaries. But they weren’t quite right in some way or other. I didn’t really need a lock and key, or the years were already entered into the dairy pages, so that I would have to start a dairy part-way through its existence. None of them quite worked for me.

So, like any woman raised on a steady diet of books set on the frontier filled with spunky, make-do, clever women, I made my own five year dairy. I started by purchasing this standard dairy from an office supply store.
Before I bought it, I counted all the lines for each day to make sure that there were enough for five lines per day per year. There were. Then I simply wrote in the year, an initial for the day and drew a line under that. Voila! Five year diary.


After I finished the triathlon, I kept my race bib as a marker. It turns out race bibs make great markers. Bright, made of some plastic paper that doesn’t tear, just the right size.

The standard diary had extra pages which gave me ample room to keep track of books and movies. Most of the pre-made 5-year diaries didn’t have any extra pages.
I didn’t write in it every day, but most days. Friday and Saturday are notorious for not having anything written. Sometimes, if I miss a few days, I’ll jot a sentence or two as to what was going on. The fun really starts after the first year, when you can compare and contrast what was going on one (or two, three or four) year(s) previous. It’s also fun because you can email your friends with things like: Did you know that two years and three days ago we were celebrating your un-bachlorette party? Your friends will be astonished and amazed at your powers of memory.

I’m so happy with how this turned out, I’ve gotten myself another standard diary for 2010 and will begin the process over again. Look for another post at the beginning of 2015.

Resolution 2010.

I’ve read, and observed in my own life, that the interest in sewing skips a generation. My grandmother was an excellent seamstress. My mother tried, but I can still picture her exhaling sharply as she set out to rip another mis-sewn seam. She once made me a pair of pants for Christmas. Suspecting that something wasn’t right, we agreed that I would wear a blindfold and try them on. She laughed when they didn’t fit, and I took off my blindfold and laughed too.

My sewing talents don’t approach my grandmothers, and I’m in a “not sewing” holding pattern, but my homemaking gene is strong.

Similarly, my resolutions seem to go in an every-other-year success rate. In 2008, I resolved to write a letter per day and before burning out completely in late November, pretty much kept to that. Last year, I pledged to stop eating while standing. On the surface, a much easier task to fulfill, but I failed miserably at it.

With the every other year success rate, this year looks good for resolutions. At the New Year’s Eve party I attended last night my resolution was greeted with raspberries, general jeers and calls of “boring!” But I’m pretty excited about it.

Resolved: in 2010, I will spend 15 minutes per day working at my desk. In priority order my tasks will be: checkbooks, in box, blogs.

All three of those things are not really in my control. My checkbooks/money management system is admittedly a labyrinth process that could perhaps be streamlined. But I like the way I have set up its many processes, and checks and balances. When it is caught up, it gives me a sense of security.

It is rarely caught up. When I attack the to-do list monthly, it takes two or three hours and causes much shallow breathing and sighing. I also have a vague sense of unease throughout the month that I could bounce a check at any time. When I neglect the money management for more than a couple months, it takes the better part of a day to dig myself out. After the move, I didn’t catch things up for about six months and spent eight hours setting things right. A bit of daily attention would prevent this, and the resolution is designed to do just that.

My inbox is a sorry mess. I caught a reference to it in a previous blog post mentioning something about it’s geologic layers. I think I had it down to one object a few Christmases ago, but that was it. I would love to clear out that sucker, and now that my checkbooks are caught up, and presumably easy to maintain, I aim to do just that.
And oh, the blogs. In my mind, I work on them all the time. One of my friends lists my blog on her site. The listing also notes the last posting. I remember the first time I saw that my last posting on the list was three or four months old. I was surprised, then realized that just because I think about the blog daily, doesn’t mean that things are published. The thing I didn’t realize is that there are so many steps. Taking pictures, prepping pictures, making the blog post, writing it, letting it rest, editing it, editing it again, actually posting it. And I have so many damn interests. All those steps just don’t get done very often. It’s disheartening.

I don’t expect the blogs to get much better any time soon, for right now the money and the inbox promise to eat up that fifteen minutes. But perhaps the blog will move along a bit.

As for implementation, I have printed up calendars for the year and posted them on the door to the office. Each day I do my fifteen minutes, I will make a check mark of some kind on the day. I plan to prioritize this task and do it as soon as I come home from work, or first thing in the morning on non-work days.

Wish me luck.

Positive!

I’ve not been feeling well. It’s a busy time of year at school–although when is it not–and I’ve been feeling run down and my throat hurts. Strep is going around school. But I’ve googled all the symptoms and everything says that adults don’t get strep. Still, I’m not feeling well. I call the doctor and the nurse orders a strep test for me. At Nurse treatment, she tells me that while adults often get sore throats and infections, it most likely is not strep. I tell her I know. I walk the culture over to the lab and wait 30 minutes. I’ve got a limited amount of time because I have to take my Calculus final soon. The technician calls my name, “Patricia Collins?” I approach him. “Are you Patricia Collins?” he asks as he holds shut a pink piece of paper. I affirm that I am. He opens the paper to reveal that my test came back…
“Really?” I gasp. I feel like I won the lottery. “But adults rarely get strep throat!” I tell him, repeating what two nurses and the internet have told me.

“Well, you’ve got it.” he assures me. Still feeling like I won the lottery (I was right! It was totally worth it to miss the December fire drill to get a strep test! I will soon feel better!) I make my way to the pharmacy, get the drugs required and run to catch my train making it to class just in time for my final.

Laundry

A rare sight in my laundry journey. An empty laundry basket. I’m pretty good at doing laundry on a regular basis, so dirty laundry never really builds up. But clean laundry? Often times the laundry basket is holding the clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away as the dirty laundry is piling up in the closet in the space where the laundry basket goes. Interestingly, in the summer, when I can hang out the laundry to dry, I don’t have any trouble putting away the clean laundry. I think it is because I can fold it as I am taking it off the line. The other problem I have is that in the winter time, I’m mostly headed for bed when the dryer buzzes. So I’ve moved past chore mode to rest mode.

License

Years ago, living in Massachusetts, I went to get a new official Massachusetts driver license.  It all went well, I showed my current Idaho license, paid my (exorbitant) fee and brought along my other documents.  Then, I went to take my Idaho driver’s license back from the clerk and the woman snatched it out of my hands.  It seems that I had to surrender my current license to get the new one.  There would be no holding on to this half-profile under-21 snapshot of my life.  So I let it go.

When I went to renew my Oregon driver license I remembered that incident and took a picture of my old one before I went inside.  Above you can see my first license in Oregon.  When I got it, I was astounded that I didn’t have to renew it for eight years.  “Eight years!” I exclaimed to more than one person. “I’ll be 35!”  I didn’t mean, as many people assumed, that 35 was so old, just that it was so far away from where I was at that point.  Eight years was a very long time.

And now those eight years have elapsed.  I’ve lived in four different homes/apartments in my time here and I’ve gotten rid of that striped turtleneck and jean jumper.  My hair has gone through many incantations and my weight isn’t what it says there.  However, it wasn’t when I got the license, either.  I’ve had three jobs and one boyfriend and a host of friends.  It’s been a good eight years, and I wanted to keep a memory of my first Oregon driver license.  According to this calculator (http://www.livingto100.com/) I have about seven more Oregon Driver Licenses in my future.

And guess what?  After they had done all the paperwork for my new license, they punched holes in this one and gave it back to me.  So I have it anyway.

A tragic day for my favorite pair of sandals

I bought these sandals when I was preparing to go to Hungary and Romania in 2005. I love them. They have cute swirly designs on them, they look fashionable, I can walk for miles in them, they give me an extra inch or two in height. They are the perfect sandal. Today, they did what they have been threatening to do for months now, split open in the back. I love them too much to discard them outright, so I will take them to the cobbler to see if miracles can be worked. But I’m not very optimistic. It may be time for us to part ways.

The best intentions.

Things I had in my mind to do today.

  • Deal with the greens harvested from the garden
  • Start at least one round of cheese, if not two
  • Make some salad dressing
  • Work on my scrapbook
  • Work on the roman shades

Things actually done today

  • Five loads of laundry, washed, hung to dry, brought in, folded and put away.
  • Finish fiction book
  • Finish non-fiction book
  • Start fiction book.
  • Take two naps
  • Pretty much laze about.

I think I’m feeling a bit paralyzed by my unfinished projects. Blast!