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Ummm…I can’t believe I haven’t posted a blog in over a month. What? First of all, April where have you gone? And second, why can’t I get my lazy butt to think of anything to say? It’s not like things haven’t been happening. I went on a trip to Tennessee, we had cheer tryouts, I went to a coaches conference, I even made homemade bread on Friday (exciting, I know). But apparently I’m either too tired from life to actually write about it or its just that even with things happening they are too boring to report. I don’t even know what to say from here. Can I just tell you that it really bothers me that my life feels mundane all the time? And that it’s so overloaded even while be so boring? Sorry Sorry Sorry. I feel like this has been my complaint for the last 5 years, so I apologize to those of you who have heard me whine about it all that time. And I think the advice most people would give me is to just DO something already. But here is the problem – I don’t know what to do. And in the not knowing, I just have a lot of fear of doing something wrong (wrong as in I will hate that outcome too), and so I somehow convince myself that just staying in this normal routine will be better than trying something different and failing. Wow, this blog post has gone all therapeutic now. Again, my apologies. Ok, so here’s my plan for now: I will blog at least 3 more times this week so that hopefully I can see that my whole life isn’t boring and that there are good things happening in it all the time. Some of the posts will be about this last month, but hopefully some will just be about stuff this week. All right, at least I’ve got a plan. Albeit, a small one, but a plan nonetheless.
Things have been a bit rough these last 2 weeks with Grannie’s hip surgery, recovery, etc. and trying to balance that with the already overwhelmed schedule I try to maintain on a regular basis. Emotions have been close to the surface for me. And the thing that’s getting me through right now?
Yep. Especially songs like Take a Chance on Me, I Have A Dream, and most definitely Does Your Mother Know. Oh Abba, thanks for being there in the hard times.
So a few things of note have happened since my last post. The schools were closed for 2(!) days due to flooding. Annoying. We had a 3 hour cheer practice on Friday afternoon. Not fun – but this may have been mostly due to the fact that I was really nauseous and felt like I was going to throw up for most of it (this was not due to anything the cheerleaders were doing – I think my body was just overtired and worn out). On Saturday we drove 2 hours in a lot of rain down to our competition. It was weird being a coach at a competition. I was so used to either being an actual cheerleader or just a spectator. Being a coach, you are worrying about every girl on your team and about whether you are getting people to the right places at the right time and following all of the “rules”. And you don’t have any control once the team is out there. But all that being said, our warm ups went pretty well – just a couple of bobbles on stunts, some extreme nerves about toe touch back hand springs, and one of our girls deciding to throw her full twisting layout (a VERY advanced tumbling pass) about 10 minutes before we were going to go on. And then we go to wait for our turn. I think we waited in the lobby area for 2 teams to perform and then went into the gym. I sat in the front on the floor right in front of the judges’ table all by myself (the other coach was handling the music on the side). It was really weird to be all alone right there. I wanted so badly to be able to DO something more. Anyway, the team is announced and the girls took the floor, the music started and the routine happens. They were so good! The tumbler who decided to throw the full absolutely nailed it, they did really well on almost all of their stunts, they were the loudest I had ever heard them, and they made facials I had never even seen on their faces. One of my flyers in particular who I always give a hard time about smiling was making these crazy (but cute) faces and after one stunt where she really hammed it up she looked right at me to make eye contact to make sure I’d seen it. At the awards ceremony at the end of the night we found out that we had taken 3rd place in our division. For it being our first time ever to compete (and we’ve been coaching for 5 years now), for not knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves into, and for having to miss a couple of practices due to school closure for the weather, I think we (they) did great! I was very proud.
That night I had to drive a school suburban back in the rain and the dark and with a lot of water on the roads already. Pretty scary. I was so exhausted from all the emotions of the competition and then the driving that I slept in until about noon the next day and actually didn’t even get out of bed until 1:30pm. Sweet goodness.
On Monday I had a really bad headache. The kind that was so bad that when I was falling asleep that night and it was getting perpetually worse by the minute I seriously thought, “Can you go to the ER for a headache?” I guess you probably can and probably should in some cases, but I would have been overreacting if I had gone. Thankfully when I woke up on Tuesday it had diminished quite a bit.
On Tuesday I found out that my Grannie who lives here in town had fallen in the dining room of her nursing home and broken her hip. I saw her at the hospital that evening and she had surgery the next day. I feel so bad for her especially because her short term memory is very poor and she can’t remember what happened, that her hip is even broken, or that she is in the hospital. I’m going there tonight to sit with her for awhile. I think I’m going to bring Gone With the Wind to read aloud to her. I have her old copy of it and I’ve actually never read it.
Obviously this isn’t the most exciting of blog posts. But I have just had a rigamaroll of emotions these past few days and thought writing about them might be a bit cathartic. I’m looking forward to a 3 day weekend coming and a chance to hopefully get some good rest, some time with Grannie, some fun with friends, and some work done in my crazy mess of a room and apartment. I’ll have to report back to tell you what I’ve actually accomplished (somehow it is very easy for me to skip over the cleaning and organizing for just about anything else).
So right now I feel like I’m trying to squish 2 or 3 weeks of stuff into this one week. Actually less than one week because I was sick on Sunday and Monday and did nothing but sleep or lie on the couch. I know everyone feels like this especially around the holidays and my bit of complaining here is like white noise. But seriously as I’m looking at the week almost every bit of time is taken by something. Work or cheerleading or errands or chores. And I do have some fun things coming up this weekend, but I want to do some things to prepare for them (some baking, making little gifts, etc.) and I honestly cannot seem to find a place in my schedule to get it done. Like not even an hour. And actually I don’t even have time for all the work, cheerleading, errands, and chores I HAVE to do. So my room remains a complete disaster (but, hey what’s new?), my car continues to be a little too much like a trash can, and my dumb task list continues to to just have things added on rather than crossed off. And pretty soon I’m going to need some more clean underwear. 
And really I know that there are some things I could be cutting out to get the rest of this stuff done – things like writing this blog or watching an episode of Friends or finishing book 4 of the Twilight series (yep, did that this morning from about 5:05 – 6:10am), or checking my facebook more than once a day – but I think I would feel like a complete robot without a little bit of those kinds of things in my day. And really the time spent on those things doesn’t add up to much and is usually done while I’m eating dinner or doing some little project (my roommate might tell you differently).
And yes, I’m really busy this week, but in actuality most of my weeks are pretty similar. I’m always completely excited when I have 2 nights during the week with no obligations because that is a very rare occurence. As I get to be a little later in my 20’s I’m resenting and worrying about this even more. I don’t want to look back at my 20’s and just see how well I did at fulfilling obligations, I’d like to see that I lived some good life stuff in there too. Right now my life doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. That’s not something I want to have continue.
So I just got back yesterday morning from a Thanksgiving trip up to Alaska. I had forgotten how brutal the redeye can be, but all in all the trip was great and the traveling went off without a hitch (unusual for Thanksgiving weekend!). Anyway after being so tired from the flight and then sleeping until 1pm, I was not at all tired around the usual bedtime of 10:30 or 11. Plus I was about two thirds of the way through Eclipse (the third Twilight book – and yes, I’m completely addicted now), so I just stayed awake and kept reading. Finally at midnight I forced myself to shut the book, turn off the lights, and keep my eyes shut. But sleep would not come. Instead a very uneasy feeling settled in my stomach and the ever ready feelings of anxiety set in. With the amount of times anxiety has come up on this fairly new blog it shows that obviously I’ve got some issues to work out. I started worrying about going back to work, about the piles of stuff that I needed to get done there that I already knew about and the piles of new stuff that would have appeared for me after taking 3 working days off. I worried about the first set of basketball games my cheerleaders would be cheering at tonight. I worried about the 4 girls who are brand new to cheering for basketball. And then all that anxiety led me to the normal big questions – “what am I doing with my life?”, “why do I feel so alone in this?”, “why do I so over commit myself?”. And it just went on and on. Finally I somehow fell asleep only to be wide awake at 5:30am with no alarm to even wake me then feeling that uneasy feeling again. I wasn’t planning on getting up until 6:45 or 7 so I just stayed in bed and finished Eclipse (yes, finished – on to book 4!).
Ok, so this long drawn out story about my sleeping patterns (or lack of) last night was not the main point of this post. The main point is that after all the worry about the things I would encounter today, I survived! Yes, when I first got to work this morning I had over 60 emails to sort through, and yes, some of them made me want to scream (oh, I didn’t mention – I cried at work two weeks ago – like blubbering sobs in the bathroom and now I’m caught in between this embarrassment about that and relief that I finally just let it out – so it’s not unreasonable to think that one of these days I really might just scream bloody murder over one of these annoying emails), and the fax machine decided it hated my existence and continued to beep even after I took care of the freaking paper jam (turns out I hadn’t, the paper was rolled up into a tiny little tube and stuck in the very middle of the insides of the machine – urgh!), but in the end there was nothing too horrible. And we had a good staff meeting where everyone was in a good and joking mood. And my boss and I went for lunch where we were able to have an honest conversation about where I am in life and how I’m not the happiest with it all at the moment. Whenever we go to lunch together I am always reminded that both of us are human and that she has a lot of the same thoughts and feelings I have about our work life in general. And then my cheerleaders were AWESOME at the game tonight. Sure, there were a few mistakes on some of the cheers, but for the most part they were sharp and loud and super spirited. I was a proud little mama. And the games were great and exciting and I remembered that I do like coaching basketball cheer. Plus my co-coach came to the games (she coaches the wrestling squad during winter season) and it was so nice to have her there to sit with me. So not only did I survive today, I came out the other side feeling good about it. Three cheers for that.
Today is my 27th birthday. This is a day that never really crossed my mind when I was younger – I thought being 20 was old. But here I am at 27 with 30 sort of looming right there in the near future. Weird.
I celebrated with friends yesterday. A bunch of girls from my small group joined me at the Abbey Garden Tea Room (one of my favorite places ever) for a little tea party and then a few of us went to the new James Bond movie after that (I liked it but I think Casino Royale was better).
In honor of this day and the year that has led up to it and the year that will come from it, I decided to make lists of 26 things I did in my 26th year and 27 things I’d like to accomplish or do in my 27th year. So here it goes:
26 Things I’ve Done This Year (in somewhat chronological order)
1. Went to Alaska twice
2. Continued to support Harriet who lives in Uganda through Childcare Worldwide
3. Read Pride & Prejudice for the first time (I’d read every other Jane Austen book except for Lady Susan but still had not conquered the most famous one)
4. Learned to make really good garlic mashed potatoes and cooked a butternut squash for the first time (random I know, but these mashed potatoes are so good that I get sudden cravings for them at least every other week)
5. Got my first bikini wax (I know – TMI, but it was significant in my year only because now I know they aren’t to be feared!)
6. Went to Disney World for the first time (not as great as I imagined)
7. Had surgery to remove a melanoma
8. Became an aunt to my darling nephew
9. Started my fifth year coaching cheer
10. Went to Disneyland for the sixth time
11. Met my good friend Naomi’s fiance
12. Camped at a music festival on Orcas Island (and played about a billion games of Bananagrams)
13. Went to the dentist for the first time in 5 years
14. Hosted my friend Carlie and her baby on their visit here from TN
15. Took a CPR/First Aid class
16. Got hooked on the abc family show Greek
17. Took my first ballet class in 5 years (after having danced from 2nd grade through my senior year of college)
18. Went horseback riding (this was a birthday present to my roommate for her birthday 2 years ago! I finally made it happen.)
19. Went to the So You Think You Can Dance tour (I love Chelsea Hightower.)
20. Quite working at the INN (sad.)
21. Started this blog
22. Went to Hood River for Naomi’s bachelorette weekend
23. Went to the movies by myself
24. Got rid of 2 garbage bags full of clothes and a box full of shoes (actually I still need to take one bag and the shoes to Goodwill!)
25. Went to Stoney Ridge Farms for the first time (This is the Disneyland of pumpkin patches. Oh, and I ate an apple right off the tree for the first time!)
26. Voted in the presidential election
And now…27 Things I Want to Do This Coming Year
1. Go to Alaska (this one’s easy – I’m going next week)
2. Get my passport renewed (this has been on the to do list for almost 2 years – I’m ridiculous)
3. Go to a foreign country
4. Read the books from my current “to read” pile before buying any more
5. Oops, except for I want to read Twilight so that I can see the movie in the theater if I end up liking it
6. Downsize the amount of stuff I own
7. Take more ballet classes
8. Actually go to the gym
9. Celebrate at Naomi’s wedding
10. Watch my cheer squad compete for the first time (and hopefully a second time if we qualify for state)
11. Take more pictures
12. Blog on a regular basis
13. Stop eating out for lunch so much
14. Get my 3rd full body scan to check for any more skin cancer
15. Figure out a next “step” in my life
16. Drink more water and less soda
17. Go to my 10 year high school reunion (which I might have to plan 
)
18. Volunteer at a food bank
19. Do a better job keeping my room/house/car from looking like a bomb went off
20. Take time to actually enjoy coaching during basketball season
21. Continue to send birthday cards to friends and try to keep in better touch with them overall
22. Write more thank you cards
23. Try out yoga
24. Clean out my email inbox (how boring am I on this one?!?!)
25. Spend more time with my Grannie
26. Not allow my social life to disappear because coaching and work take up too much time
27. Work on focusing on the positive and trying not to allow anxiety to get the best of me
I’ve had sort of a rough week. And really it didn’t need to be. You see I have this very sensitive side of me that gets all worked up and offended by things that aren’t even directed at me. Oh, and I get anxious about things happening in the future that might cause me to have these reactions. It irritates me that I do this and I realize that I could specifically choose not to let these things affect me, but affect me they do.
Anyway, in the spirit of trying to change and to see the good things that are happening in my life everyday I thought I would recap the positives of this weekend.
Friday:
*Didn’t have to work at all because I got ALL of my hours in during Monday-Thursday (an unusual feat for my normal schedule).
*Set up my printer that I’ve had for almost a year. I know…ridiculous!
*Attended our last football game for this season of coaching cheer. I like football, but it is nice to move inside for basketball and to feel like we’re making progress on this year.
Saturday:
*Went to this very cool craft fair put on by Ten Thousand Villages. The roommate and I have now gone for the past 3 years. I like having this tradition with her.
*Made apple crisp.
*Ate said apple crisp at an early Thanksgiving meal I was graciously invited to by some very nice friends. Was entertained by one of my favorite 2 year olds, ate lots of good food, drank some good wine, and got caught up with some people I hadn’t seen in quite awhile.
Sunday:
*Went to Target with the roommate for random shopping and to see “Christmas”. They have some nice new ornament sets.
*Watched “Victoria & Albert” about Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. We looked up lots of people on Wikipedia and are now much more educated about the English monarch – like the fact that as Queen, Victoria had to propose to Albert and that she arranged the marriages for 9 of her children and 42(!) of her grandchildren. Yes I know – nerd alert!
Monday:
*While not technically the weekend, it was definitely a positive to wake up early enough that I was at work by 8am (also not a usual feat for my normal schedule).
*I’m listening to Pandora and I’ve heard 3 of my favorite songs from back in the day in the last 5 songs. Good stuff. Oh, make that 4 – another one just started!
In the middle of our nation’s economic crisis it feels like I’ve had money flowing out left and right recently. I had brake work done on my car on Saturday because my rear brakes have been atrociously squeaky for awhile now. So I bit the bullet and took the car in. It turned out to be leaking wheel cylinders (who knows what that means?) and a “severely” cracked serpentine belt (what?) and ended with me writing a pretty good sized check. Then I drive home (squeaking happily gone), check the mail and there is my 6 month car insurance bill. Good times. Then on Sunday I come home from doing some errands and start to put a load of laundry in the wash. My roommate informs me that it made a “weird” noise on her last 2 loads that day. I’m thinking like a funny bumping sound like the drum is off balance a bit. Ummm…NO. A very loud and scary grinding noise that lasts all the way up until the spin cycle. So I have to call an appliance repair man (a first in my adult life) and leave work early today to meet him at the condo. In my mind I’m thinking I could be paying several hundred dollars this afternoon or getting news that I’ve got to just buy a whole new machine (which would be a new washer and dryer – mine is a stackable unit). The repairman comes and things get worked on and he makes a few comments about how it must be the pump and he hopes it isn’t the pump because that can be really expensive. The whole time I’m just thinking $$$$$$ – aaack! But suddenly he finds a pen (like a regular Bic pen) and realizes that it was caught in the pump. Which he assures me makes no sense, but continues to check it all out and says it doesn’t seem to be anything else. So in the end the washing machine is working again and the bill was much less than I anticipated. Phew – hopefully that turns my luck with the amount money that’s been going “out” lately.
