don’t worry – i am alive

So, I did okay posting semi-regularly there for a little while.  And then dropped off the face of the planet.  What have I been up to since my last post you ask?

*I visited my good friend from high school and her family in Tennessee.  I got to meet her 10 month old baby for the first time.  And I fell in love.  Like wanted to steal her and bring her home with me.  Oh, how that baby stole my heart!

*We wrapped up football season.  Two games in the post season – not too shabby for our team.

*I saw two of my good friends down in Seattle (ok, Lynnwood) and we went to the Spaghetti Factory.  Which I love.  That browned butter mizithra pasta is to die for.

*I completed my cheerleading judging internship.

*We started basketball season.

*I turned 29.  My roommate made my favorite fondue to celebrate.  Apparently I like cheese based dishes a lot.

*Visited my grannie in the hospital.  Thought she could no longer remember mine or my uncle’s names.  Worried for about 14 hours and then got the call that she was “back”.  We still aren’t quite sure what the issue was, but I’m happy to have her healthy and remembering us again.

*I got deathly ill the day before Thanksgiving and was either on my couch or in my bed for the next 72 hours.  Worst cold ever.

*My first outing from the house was to go see Harry Potter with my roommate.  Loved it.

*Went to our staff Christmas party.  Won the best prize in the raffle.  Can’t wait for my personal boat day sometime next summer!

*Registered to take the WEST-B in January.  It is an entrance exam for grad school.  It was the first “real” step I took towards applying.

*Got our Christmas tree.  Finally figured out that it is better to get a smallish tree rather than one that will take over half of our (already small) living room.

*Did the majority of my Christmas shopping online.  Being able to ship things to Alaska (where I will be for the holidays) is wonderful.  I will still have to check a bag on the plane, but now I can at least pack clothes to wear as well.

*I observed a friend who is a newish (2 years) high school teacher.  It was good to be in a classroom and see what high schoolers are really like in that setting.  I am now excited/nervous for grad school.  Which is exactly what I was feeling before I observed his classes.  Oh, and I accidentally let it drop to my boss that I’m planning to apply for school.  Completely out of the blue.  Good planning, Cait.

*Flew to Spokane to judge a cheerleading competition.  Left Seattle at 8am and was back by 5:45pm.

*Saw Harry Potter again.  Loved it again.

*Went to a cheer coaches association meeting and got nice perfume in the white elephant exchange.  There was a $15 limit, so I’m guessing mine was a regift since the Be Delicous perfume by DKNY that I got retails for much more than that.  But I don’t mind – regifting was my gain.

*Came home and crashed.

*Woke up this morning for another round.  My eye is on the prize of the first weekend in March – cheerleading season will definitely be over by then and perhaps I can get my life back.

 

 

and she ran and ran and ran

Don’t worry peeps.  I haven’t hopped on the crazy running train (although many could argue that it isn’t crazy at all and that I should hop on it already!).  I am just trying to keep myself moving through all the stuff I have to do.  Of course I was super lazy yesterday and finished Harry Potter book 6 (on to 7 as of last night!) but I needed a day to breathe and keep myself from having a panic attack.  So many things are on my mind and on my schedule:

*Cheerleading and the million billion things that entails.

*Work and the million billion other things that entails.

*Researching and testing and applying for grad school.  Well, actually making the firm decision to go first.

*Studying up on being a cheerleading judge for competition season.

*Buying a plane ticket to visit one of my best friends and her family in Tennessee.

*Hoping to see another best friend who has just made it back to Washington state.

*Getting rid of some of my STUFF.  I’ve been better about trying not to acquire more things, but I still feel like have so so so much.  And I don’t need it all – I need to share the wealth.

*And about a million billion other little things.

I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed when I think about how much there is to do and how little time there is to do it.  But the one thing that I’ve been continually impressed with is the fact that in the past 4 weeks (since cheer practice started) I haven’t felt like I needed to have a complete and total breakdown (ok, and that is an exaggeration anyway).  For the most part I’m getting what needs to be done, done and I’m just living life along the way.

randy roos

Last night I had a bit of trouble falling asleep and started just thinking about random things.  And here they are:

1.  Right now the foods I am craving the most are oyster crackers, caramels, and milk.  And no, I am not pregnant.  Those are just the things I want to eat all the time.  And when I don’t have them I think about how good they would taste.  I’ve rounded out those 3 things with a little Panda Express and pizza lately.  My regular diet is just fabulous isn’t it?

2.  We checked two big things off of the cheer calendar last week.  That is always a relief and it is basically the only way I’m staying sane with cheer right now.  I can survive as long as I am seeing progress.  The next month(ish) will continue to be crazy, but I’m just going to keep plowing through.

3.  I am not happy with Directv.  We’ve had it for 4 years and have had issues with it for at least half that time.  There is now a tree that has grown enough to block the satellite feed and it is messing up the channels we can get and whether it will even be a clear picture.  Which yes, I know, “wah wah, my first world problems are soooo terrible!”.  The issue at this point is that I just hate confrontation and phone calls so I’m not looking forward to canceling Directv and trying to set something up with Comcast.  Why do I not have a personal assistant to do crap like this for me?  Oh right, because I’m not famous or a high powered CEO.  In fact I am an administrative assistant myself.  Thankfully I haven’t yet had to call and cancel my boss’ cable provider.

4.  Speaking of work, it has been CRAZY busy.  I work on the piles of tasks all day and feel like I leave with piles that are the same size at the end of the day.  We’re also getting to the point that everyone is so stressed that they can’t even remember what work has already been done so then they do it over again.  We are wasting time people!  And at this point I just don’t see an end in sight.

5.  I think I might start posting a “Song of the Week”.  Obviously I enjoy sharing the random songs I hear and like and it might be a way for me to just get on here more often and get the thoughts flowing otherwise.  I already have a song for this week picked out, but it will have to wait for its own post.  Gotta spread the wealth here people.

6.  I’ve been reading Harry Potter and I’m pretty much obsessed.  I didn’t read them while they were coming out and in fact thought they were kind of dumb and childish (sorry to my 2 college roommates who were obsessed with them at the time – I’ve been proven wrong).  But since then I’ve seen all the movies and for some reason last spring my current roommate (who was the 3rd college roommate but who also didn’t read them then) and I started to get all crazy about the movies and watched them all on ABCfamily.  I even went to Blockbuster late one night because our dvr hadn’t recorded one properly (damn you Directv) and we were sooo sad not to be able to watch it.  Anyway, I decided to read them and started at the very end of July.  And I am now more than half way through book 5.  And all I want to do is read it all the time.  I don’t want to have to work or coach or make food or clean my room.  I just want to read Harry Potter.  Where is my rich husband who would make it so that I could just sit at home (or even better – by a pool or on a beach while on a tropical vacation) and read?  I have a feeling he is off somewhere with that personal assistant of mine.  Now if I could just track them down.

7.  My mom thinks I might have Lyme disease.  That is the conversation we had on the phone yesterday.  She has some basis for believing this because many of the symptoms are things I have been dealing with.  Except for oh, the TICK BITE AND RASH you are supposed to have.  But I did google it and I could see there might be a slight possibility that this is what is wrong with me.  The symptoms do add up and the first site I read did say that sometimes you don’t notice the bite and that the rash might be so insubstantial that you don’t think anything of it.  Which great.  Now I’ve got stinkin’ Lyme disease.  Thanks Mom.

8.  Sometimes I think the world is going to blow up because of all the ways technology has just exploded (no pun intended) in the last 10 or so years.  I’ve been out of high school for just over 11 years now and the way I live my life and use technology now is so vastly different then it was back then.  Which duh, it is for pretty much anyone.  But it blows my mind that I didn’t have an email address until about the middle of my senior year (I can distinctly remember getting it too – a boy named Josh helped me while we were in our “Applied Graphics” class).  And now with the cell phones and texting and facbeook and blogging and tweeting and skyping and everything!  Which yes, I know this is not a new topic at all, but the thing that set my mind off about it recently was when I was watching the VMA’s on Sunday night and they kept reporting which celebrity was the most popular tweet conversation (is that what you call it?) at that moment.  First of all, who cares?  And second, why are we wasting our time tweeting about random celebrities while we are probably all at home watching it by ourselves?  Where is the face to face interaction?  I just can’t imagine what will be coming next with the rate everything has happened in the last decade.

9.  If you can’t tell from that last entry – I am getting old.  You know, 28.  Which is apparently when you start feeling old.  And when you are a teenager or college student you think that this could NEVER happen to you.  You will always be hip and with it (well at least as hip and with it as you are as a teenager or college student which as we all know varies quite a bit).  But there comes a day or a week or a time period where you realize that things have changed and you either haven’t changed with it or you’ve changed too much to appreciate the world changing.  And suddenly the hipness is no longer there.

10.  Does anyone want to call Directv and Comcast for me?

back at it?

Well.  It’s been a little less than a year since my last post.  Which was written just a few days before cheerleading season began.  And I just recently got home from cheer camp for this year and am on my official “break” from coaching right now.  Which means I suddenly have time and a desire to actually write on my blog.  One could gather some thoughts/ideas from that pattern, but we’ll leave it at that for now.

The truth is, this has been a difficult year overall.  Cheerleading had its ups and quite a few downs.  My co-coach and I are always somewhat mystified by the way each year always (ALWAYS) brings new situations/problems/joys/anxieties.  We never (NEVER) have a year that just flies on by without any new and hard situation to tackle.  This past year seemed to bring them in droves.  But, I survived!  And I’m planning to coach again next year (although to be honest, part of me feels like I’m crazy for doing it).

My health has given me quite a few problems too.  Starting last fall, I had incredible pain that was brought on by tension headaches – really tension head/neck/shoulder/back aches.  These lasted a good 4 to 5 months and still affect my everyday life to some degree.  I am extremely thankful for physical therapy that basically just involves getting massaged in the specific problem area for an hour or so.  My PT saved my sanity (or what was left of it).  In more recent months I’ve been dealing with being really tired most of the time.  I’m in the process of figuring out the cause (if there is one) and trying to deal with it.  It is affecting my ability to be at work on time and stay focused throughout the day.  Not the greatest when my outside of work schedule doesn’t always leave room for making up hours.

And then to add insult to injury, my parents both had health issues of their own.  Mom had a bunionectomy right before Christmas (lucky for her I was able to be in town to help nurse her back to health – or really just keep her from wanting to kill my dad).  Dad had a heart attack in March that he thankfully seems to be making a full recovery from, but my hope is that he is truly learning from the experience as well and will do a better job taking care of himself.  We shall see.

Now enough with the whining.  There have been exceptional (EXCEPTIONAL!) things that have happened as well.  In October, I was able to travel to Italy with an old college friend.  We did a week long Rick Steves tour in Rome and then we traveled up to Cinque Terre for a few days on our own.  The tour was incredible and I fell in love with Rome.  We saw and did so many amazing things, I still get a little giddy when I think about it.  Like the fact that I’ve actually stood in the Colosseum and walked through the Forum.  These were things I studied in college and to actually see them in person and breathe it all in was amazing.  My very favorite thing we did on the tour was go to the Borghese Gallery.  The statues by Bernini that are held there are some of the most fantastic pieces of art I have ever seen.  So just a tidbit in case you ever find yourself in Rome wondering what to do.  Oh, and another tidbit…the hot men work at the Vatican (and no, I don’t mean the Pope).  I enjoyed our time in Cinque Terre as well, but to be honest I was so ready to be blown away because of all the wonderful things I had heard about it that once I got there it was a tiny bit of a let down.  Plus we were pretty exhausted after our tour (there was lots and lots and lots of walking).

Other great things have happened this year as well.  Lots of friends have had babies.  And really cute babies at that.  I was able to be in Alaska at Christmas and got to celebrate my niece’s 5th birthday with her.  I served on a board for cheer coaches in the state.  Which okay, does not sound like that much fun, but it helped me to be more involved with cheer on a wider level which is something I’ve been wanting for a long time.  And along with that, I also trained to be a judge for cheer competitions and passed all four of the testing points on the first try.  I’m looking forward to judging competitions this fall/winter.  And this last spring I sort of got promoted.  Technically I am still the administrative assistant, but I used to have receptionist responsibilities on top of that and it was getting to the point of being too much to balance.  So I got to move up to a different office and I got a raise.  All good things.

Anyway, I’d like to keep blogging on a regular basis, but I always seem to cave under the pressure.  “What pressure?” you ask.  Um.  Just the pressure I put on myself.  Because I am a perfectionist who only likes to do things if I can do them right and well and you know, perfectly.  So of course we’ll see how this goes, but hopefully it goes somewhere.  Maybe my next post can be less than 10 1/2 months from now?  That’d be a good start.

the countdown begins

Cheer practice starts this coming Thursday.  As in 3 whole days away.  Basically 75 hours from now.  I have mixed emotions.  First, I am sad that my summer is coming to an end.  It has been a good one.  Unusually hot, but still good.  On the other hand, I am excited to see the girls and get geared up and work hard and have them live up to their potential.  I am excited about the propects of what this squad is capable of and how far they can go.  But, I’m also worried that they aren’t going to push themselves much and will rebell against me pushing them.  We shall see.  I’m gearing up for a big pep talk first thing on Thursday.

Besides getting ready for practices to begin, I’m trying to jam an incredible amount of stuff into the next couple of days with a somewhat weird schedule.  Sounds pretty much the same as my life usually is from this time through mid March.  I never understand how other people can get so much stuff done!  I figure they must not sleep.  But I shouldn’t complain.  This weekend I was talking to some friends about facebook (which seems to have become overrun with people these days) and told them that my pet peeve is when people will write a status like “I have so much to do today!  I don’t know how I’ll ever get it all done.”  And the response in my head is always, “Well, get off the damn facebook and maybe you’ll have a chance!”  Of course I never actually say that in a comment.  Because that would be impolite and confrontational.  And then I’d get uncomfortable.

Anyway, I’m just reporting my schedule to you.  I’m not complaining.  So no one needs to confront me about the fact that I’m blogging right now instead of actually getting my crap together and getting something accomplished.

can this week have 8 days?

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.