Hobbit Event Pics

This is not a proper blog post. I'm trying to transfer photos to another computer and my connection isn't allowing me to attach them to email (lame!), and I left my thumb drive at work. This is the best solution I could come up with. I will probably take it down when my need is gone.

For now, enjoy a few photos from the Hobbit event I had at the library a couple weeks ago...

Call Out

In about four and a half hours I'll be picking up the phone and calling work to tell them I'm not coming in. Between now and then I'll think up the excuse; it has to be a tad more elaborate than "I'm sick," because I do intend to work my shift the day after tomorrow. I didn't come to this decision lightly. I don't enjoy screwing other people over, and would certainly never do so just because I didn't feel like working. No... this is about balance and perspective. I've been seriously lacking both in the last eight months. It's a late start, but I'd like to try gaining some back.

I took the Target job to help pay off my debts. It was never supposed to be my main job. It was never supposed to be Important with a capital "I." I do need the money, and I still do. I'm significantly better off than I was eight months ago, but I still have a ways to go, and I made my summer plans (Charleston this weekend, St Louis 3 weeks from now, etc.) with the knowledge that I'd have that Target income to help pay those costs back. But somehow work has come to dominate my life, and that has never been the goal. Ever. It's one thing to work hard and pay back debts; it's another thing to allow your life to be consumed by stress to the point that you literally don't have a life anymore. Just work and sleep and driving to and from, and some television or reading slipped in between.

Tomorrow I have a hobbit program at the library. I get stressed sometimes with my library job, but I really do enjoy it. It's rewarding. It's fun. When I take the time and put in the energy to the do the job properly, it's really special. And let me tell you now what I was planning to do. I was planning on staying up the next few hours finishing cutting out the circles for my hobbit-door craft I have planned, then getting about two hours of sleep, then waking up and going in to work my scheduled shift at Target from 4am to 12:30pm, then driving straight to the library for my shift at 2pm, and scrambling to set up the room, make copies, gather supplies, etc, etc, for my event at 3pm. And this was an event that when I planned it ages ago I thought, "This is going to be so much fun." But no. Not if you do it that way. On 2 hours of sleep and after 8 hours of physically demanding labor... no.

This is it. Hobbits are helping me get my priorities straight. If I lose the job because of it, fine. I'll survive. I'll pay off my debts a lot slower, and not get to move out as quickly as I'd like, but I'll make it work. I want to be able to enjoy tomorrow. I want to make it special. I don't care about shelf heights and peg hooks. I do care about kids and stories. And I do care about my emotional health and mental well-being... both of which are threatening to take a nose dive if I don't get a little balance (and a bit of a vacation!) soon.

So there's my justification. Now pardon me while I go cut out some hobbit doors...

Happiness

Happiness is a little white house. It has a smattering of rooms, wide open with high ceilings and many, many windows, all of them shutterless and curtainless to let in the light. It has a wide green lawn out back. There's a gazebo in one corner, and a tiny little garden tucked into another, with a couple benches and a fountain shaped like a woman pouring an urn into a pond. She looks so peaceful, this woman. Happiness is the sunlight streaming down on the little white house, pouring in those huge wide windows. A house full of light. There are old wooden floors and fireplaces and murals painted on the walls. There are doors and doors - some of them real, some of them false, some of them locked, some opening to more rooms, with more wide windows and always - always - light. Happiness is a glassed in porch out back and flowers lining the pavement leading to the front door of the perfect little white house. Happiness is this house filled with people, all laughing and smiling, hugging, talking, eating, dancing, together and alive and - again, like the house - so open and full of light.

It was Christy and Ryan Miller's wedding today. They had it at the Reid House in Matthews. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the wedding that much (it was lovely, but I was there more to serve than to experience as a guest) but I fell hard, "head over heels" if you will, for that house. It's the kind of house you'd want to grow up in and grow old in. One day I want a house like that.

Family

You know what? I love my family, and I'm grateful for them, and all that stuff you're supposed to say (and that on many other days I truly mean), but today I just have to be honest...

My family can be such assholes.

I've been out of the house for literally 12 hours today, running from work to meeting to other meeting and back to work, with about 40 things on my to-do list, and the literal second thing my father says to me after I walk through the door is, "Are you going to watch TV with us tonight, or do we have to watch one of the other shows?" Literally. Not even in the house thirty seconds. He says hello and then he's guilt-tripping me about watching shows with them. I ask them to save three shows to watch with me: Castle, Good Wife, and Call the Midwives. Good Wife is finished for the season, and he's saving the three or four Castles for later in the summer, so it's not like me not watching with them is keeping them from this huge plethora of viewing they could otherwise be doing. What the fuck!? Asshole.

Then I go upstairs and go to the bathroom. Not to be gross, but it's a sit-down kind of thing. I've been gone 12 hours and only been to the bathroom twice, both of those quick trips. Bowel movements are just a fact of human biology after 12 hours.  I've been in the bathroom not two minutes when Wesley arrives home, and I hear him in the hall downstairs muttering to Mom: "Oh, of course she's in the bathroom. She should just move all her stuff in and live there." Fuck you, Wes. I can't help it if I arrive home five minutes before you every night. I also can't help it that the other day when I made you miss your shower I had just come home from working for 6 hours and had one hour in which to shower, change, and head out again to go to my other job. And I didn't feel bad for you at all because you'd kicked me out of the bathroom the night before to get a shower. Why do you need a shower in the morning after taking one that night? Are your sheets seriously that dirty? So yeah, fuck you too. Asshole.

Mom is the only one not on my asshole radar tonight, but by sitting there quietly and not doing anything she's kind of an asshole enabler. Maybe I'm an asshole too. Maybe it's a family thing. I don't fucking care. I just want them to leave me the fuck alone.

#JustBeSatisfied

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In the rush I wish for rest.
Sitting still, I long to go.
"Grass is greener," so they say,
but I have my own lawn to mow.

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V8

First it was the Dido CD(s) a few weeks ago, and now it's V8...

My mom bought a six pack of V8 for Wesley to get him through the week until she could get to Sam's Club and buy in bulk like she usually does. She bought it on Saturday and says she left it in front of the black chair by his computer. He was out of town, in Baltimore, and when he got back Monday night he says the V8 wasn't there.

I didn't even know about it until tonight. Dad didn't move it. Wesley wasn't here to have moved it, and didn't even know of its existence until Mom asked if he had gotten it.

There are two options here. The first option: there is something or someone in the house without our knowledge, who is moving or taking our stuff. The horror-story-writer part of me subscribes to this theory. In fact, after Mom had said goodnight and gone into her room, closing the door behind her, I stood for a moment on the silent upstairs landing and whispered: "I know you're there. I'm going to find you. I will."

(Yeah, melodrama. I know.)

But I would rather believe that creepy thought than the alternative: that my mother is slowly losing her memory or her mind...

:(

Pep Talk

Let me make it abundantly clear to you:
No one is searching for your heart.
No one is hoping that the tides will change,
That the clouds will part.

No one wants the empty seat beside you.
No one's lips seek out your syllable or sound.
You're as alone now as you will always be
Until you're buried underground.