nina showed me this amazing calendar a while back on etsy.
it's a year-long calendar in one big sheet. and everyday, you draw a face on the day, to note your mood for that day.
and i remembered it yesterday, thinking about how many different ways i felt throughout the day. and i thought, 'wow. i'd need at least three faces per day - morning, noon, and night.'
and then realized, holy shit! that's not even enough... because yesterday would have looked something like this:
:) :( :( :) :( :) :(
what the fuck?
how can i feel so much in one day? so imbalanced.
most of my days lately have been mostly happy. but yesterday was one of those days that i'd so much rather have slept through.
work pissed me off, and stressed me out, and gave me a near panic attack.
and then i got a bummer email that made me pout like a spoiled brat for the majority of the afternoon.
and then i hung out with alice and got to vent about work, and hear about other people's lives. and we had a lot of fun. it felt good to bike over, too. and then i came home and got sad again. and then hung out with aubree and cracked up, because she rules. and then got and stayed sad until i fell asleep.
and woke up muted. it's overcast, which isn't the way i wanted today to be. i thought that baking in the sun for a few hours would help with my crappy mood. but i also knew that it was supposed to rain the entire weekend, so i kindof expected it. and accidentally slept in until 1045. i thought it was 9 when nina called. but it was almost 11 instead. so i got up and made coffee before a headache could kick in.
i think the weather is partly to blame for my mood, too.
it has been so super hot this week. we had a crazy heat wave. the worst bits of it included seeing some old dude at suck store hospital, bleeding from his mouth and covered in blood in the parking garage, shaking. i assume he literally had a heat stroke. and i walked past him, leaning up against a car, and asked if he needed help. he said someone was coming with a wheelchair to get him.
it was fucked up. i have a super weak stomach, and seeing that guy in that condition was pretty hard on me, heading home for the day on wednesday, after hitting send on the quinn email.
thursday night was the thao and mirah show. i'm listening to their joint venture album while i type this out. and i do like it. i think there's a learning curve with every album thao puts out, because each one is so different from the one before. i instinctively like the newest thing less, because the one before was so amazing. but, usually over time, the most recent becomes my favorite.
the show was weird for me for a few reasons. seeing all these happy couples there, being all cute and affectionate, was hard. i think that, for the most part of the last year, i struggled with that. seeing couples and feeling the frown lines between my eyebrows increase in intensity. and for so long, seeing brides-to-be out drinking, i wanted to scream 'run!! don't do it!!' every time.
and lately, i've cooled it. i guess since i started dating, and having a couple experiences out in public, holding hands or accepting a kiss on the cheek, or a knee rub. i realized that i like that stuff, and that i was just bitter. obviously. but somehow, at the show, i reverted back to being a little sad about seeing so much of it. and definitely jealous of it.
but the other reason why the show was hard was because i'm kindof a snob when it comes to music. the shows i go to, for the most part, are bands that i really love. and bands that i know the discography of. super familiar, all the lyrics memorized. and i was (cringe) in my younger days, one of those people who sang along with every word. now i just mouth them, when i can't control myself.
but i love having a couple songs i want to hear live, and being very familiar with the rest. and i went to this show, of my absolute favorite musician, and knew that it was going to be weird for me, because i hadn't done my homework. i hadn't heard the new album more than twice, and neither listen was focused.
so when i only heard a couple songs i knew that night, and recognized most of the rest as being on the new album, but not knowing them at all, it was a little disappointing.
not to mention, their show together last summer was potentially the best show i'd ever been to. so it would have been hard to top anyway.
it was a great show. but as much as i love that they have combined forces, i realized that, live? i prefer them on their own. i want to see thao by herself, playing every song that helped me through the darkest times of my life, and the most liberating times of my life, and through the buildup before coffee closure, and the mini-heartbreak afterwards. and the return to normal once it filtered through my brain, and eventually feeling like i was completely over him.
back to the heatwave...
the craziest thing happened the night of the show, right before we left.
aubree and i were in my room, laying around goofing off on our laptops, killing time until we went to the show in the a/c. and we were sitting there, and i heard rain start to fall. i'm preety good about paying attention to the weather. maybe it was an effort to ignore the sweltering heat this week, but i was COMPLETELY unaware of the severe weather headed our way.
when i asked aubree if that was rain, she said yes. actually, there was tiny hail, too. and lightning that was so crazy. we don't really get too many storms like that here. i grew up with them daily in florida, and it still surprises me when i see weather like that here.
the wind was gusting to 60 mph. and aubree said, 'the window is going to blow in.'
the last day contractor and i worked on the house was the day we opened up the window to the roof. aubree had nailed the window back in place with one solidly attached nail, and a bunch of nails surrounding that one, kindof wedging the window in place. but it was NOT secured well. it took 30 minutes to undo it last weekend when i spent time on the roof in the sun.
but it was no match for the wind that night, and not even two minutes later, we heard it hit the floor, with a double crash of it landing on the ladder we'd leaned against it for extra support. we looked at each other in an 'oh shit!' moment and ran out of my room on the second floor. when we got about 5 feet out of my room, we were getting rained on in the middle of the hallway. it was horrifying to be in the middle of the house, in a storm somehow. i ran up the stairs, into the wind and rain that blew halfway into the house.
it was POURING. flooding in the window and freaking me out. pouring down the wall, and pooling on the floor. in a fuzzy panic, i grabbed the window, dodging the broken glass from the broken pane, holding the window in place with all of my strength. the window is super heavy because it was original to the house. heavy wood, and twelve little rectangular panes. a huge window.
and mike heard the commotion and ran up to help, while we tried to figure out how to get it back into place.
and i held it, getting soaked, water running down my arms. and there was a gust of wind that literally blew the window onto me, and i stumbled backwards. i almost fell with the window on top of me, onto the ladder, which would really have sucked. i felt lucky to keep my balance.
in my panic, i had them hold the window while i changed into my bathing suit, at lauren's suggestion, to go out onto the roof in the crazy scary storm, to try to nail up the tarp on the outside to keep the rain out of the house and framework.
and climbed back inside, feeling lucky to not have been struck by lightning with a hammer in my hand, standing two inches from the metal downspout. it was stupid to have done it, but totally necessary.
and hammered the window in place, with aubree's help.
as soon as the work was done, the storm had blown over. naturally.
and got a shower before the show and left.
it was crazy. i've been through more hurricanes and accompanying storms in florida growing up. but that was scary. feeling vulnerable to the storm and like my house was being attacked. all because i didn't know that it was coming, and did nothing to prepare for it.
i feel like my biggest lesson this week was about unpreparedness in so many different ways.
my work panic yesterday was spawned by feeling caught in a way. with everything that happened with quinn, i realized how unprepared i was for something like this, paper trail-wise. not to mention, living in constant fear of the health department. no one is certified, and we will be shut down if they show up before i get everyone enrolled in a class and certified.
and then the email that disappointed me to no end, after already feeling completely overwhelmed. the only thing i was looking forward to this weekend was dashed in one short sentence. and it was just too much.
and i pouted and felt sorry for myself. like a spoiled brat. a lot is not enough for this girl.
but i drove home and went to alice's and felt a lot better, distracted completely. and came home, had dinner with aubree and mike, while watching the phils game on tv.
and went to bed shortly after that. aubree decided to sleep in my bed with me, because my room gets plenty cool with the wall unit.
i had the sheet, and she stole the blanket, and i had nightmares all night, which NEVER happens. i only have them when i nap, and i woke up from two before i realized that i was too cold without the blanket. to not wake her, i got up and grabbed a spare from my wardrobe. and when i pulled it out, a single martini glass i'd rescued from old apartment hit the floor and shattered, waking her up.
i left it there, and got back into bed, trying to fall back asleep before my mind started racing and i wouldn't be able to.
and had a couple more nightmares. woke up to pee when the sun was coming up, went back to sleep and had two more.
i don't remember any of them now. they were all different, not one continuous one. it sucked.
and when nina called and woke me up the last time, aubree and i both thought it was nine. but it wasn't. it was 1045, and the race was on to brew my weekend coffee before the headache set in.
i succeeded at that, and tried to start my day off better than the one before ended. we went to lauren's to get some things she didn't want to move, spent a solid thirty minutes trying to fit it all in the versa, before succeeding at that and driving home.
it started pouring half way home, but stopped when we were nearly home. and unpacked and i started cleaning the house.
an all day event, it's turning out to be. it always is. i remember the days of telling ever that, if he'd just let me buy a house, i'd be happy to clean it. i never thought we'd end up in the biggest house in south phila, or that i'd end up cleaning it alone until i moved back into it.
aubree helped, and we got her room (the one with all the window and storm mess everywhere) back to square one. and worked our way down.
the living room is all that is left now. my room is the cleanest and most organized it's been, thanks to a call from greg that let me think about other more fun things while i organized and didn't pay attention to the work i was doing.
the box of candy from mom, which had become a catchall, was nearly empty of valentine's and easter candy. and i put everything else where it belongs. now there's just one huge box of junk and keepsakes to go through before my moving unpacking is finally complete. it has also become a catchall for things without a place, and when i go back in, after cleaning and rearranging the living room, i'll deal with it, finally, and feel like i've gotten somewhere.
it's a good day at funkhauser. it didn't feel that way for a while, and now i'm sufficiently covered in sweat and grime. and i'll gladly take a beerble bath when the work is finally done. i got a desk chair (the awesome swivel kind), three kickass lamps, pieces of cans of paint that are exactly what i'd already chosen for most of the rooms in my house, and a la-z-girl chair, as lauren calls it, which aubree has been sitting in and enjoying for most of the evening.
it's nice to feel better today. yesterday was the worst. if i can just get through the beginning of next week at work without incident (which isn't really possible, as quinn did nothing i told her to), there will be a sweet greg-shaped reward mid-week, once he's back from his business trip.
i can hardly wait.
not that i'm wishing the weekend away. i worked all week just to get to today and tomorrow. and doing what i do best - getting all the housework done on a saturday - means that, if the sun is shining tomorrow, i might just flop into my kiddie pool all day tomorrow. and bake some peanut butter candy bar cookies. mmm... just what i need.
beer week fucked my shit UP. i was doing so well, for so long, with my body. leave it to one period, a ton of stress, and beer week to add a solid seven pounds to where i was for months.
i'll get it back off again. i'm kinda glad today that beer week is only one week.
another reason for all the stress yesterday was driving around knowing that i had $8 in my checking account. i put gas on my nearly-maxed-out credit card, bypassed the beer store, which broke my heart a little. i spent three of my last five dollars of tip cash on lottery tickets.
until shaun pays rent (yeah, mmhmm), i am broke as a motherfuckin JOKE.
he was supposed to be home hours ago, but isn't. and my patience is wearing thin... the only good thing is that he is paying this month's rent and next month's. so i'll finally be able to put the supply money toward the slider door to have roof access the proper way.
and then all i have to do is get my dad up here. and then? we'll have a deck. it's exactly the kind of project that he is wishing to do.
so close to having something that will make the past month of not working on the house feel a little bit easier to deal with.
i am wiped out. but i managed to get through the giant box of crap and throw half of what was in it into the recycling bin. the house is officially clean. and i am officially filthy.
into the shower, into clean clothes. laundry into the washer, and i'm off to the german brauhaus with aubree and mike...
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