Kelly's blog

Cut

I never remember how much of my identity is wrapped up in my hair until I cut it all off.

Freeze

A free tip from me to you:  when you are on your way out the door for a much-needed, greatly-anticipated three-day weekend of lounging and doing a whole lot of nothing but being out of your house and your town, make sure you close the door all the way on the deep freeze. 

A second free tip from me to you:  you will be really really REALLY glad that you put that frozen sausage in a ziplock freezer bag rather than just chucking it in whole.

Space

How is it that I can only remember roughly three of the people from my high school who have shown up on MySpace?  And how is it that I only know the last name of one of those people?  What the hell was I doing for those three years? 

Or maybe the real question is why I give a shit at all, 16 years after the fact.

Peek

What does it say about me that the biggest tragedy to befall me this year is the devastating brokenness of my stupid camera?

Eyes

Just when I think I am okay with not ever having a baby, and just when I think that all my friends are right that even acquiring a baby by some other means is a Really Bad Idea, someone asks my husband if we have children and the look in his eyes when he shakes his head no tears me in half.

Bah

I am migraney and pukey and typing an entry here instead of whittling down the piles of work on my desk.  But it is after 5 p.m. and I only took half of my lunch today and I've been here until 6.30 the last two nights and I am the boss.  So while normally it is unwise to admit to blogging on the company dime, the company has gotten more than a dollar's worth of work out of me this week, so a dime it can spare.

And just now, I got interrupted to do even more work, so I really cannot win.  I am tired and hot and griping a whole lot, but it is weeks like this, where everything happens at once and I am both incredibly behind in some areas while being ahead of the game in others ... it's weeks like this that remind me why I am doing this work in the first place.

I'm trying to be a good boss.  I'm naturally bossy and controlling, which --shockingly-- are not qualities that conducive to supervising people, I am learning.  I am learning so much about being diplomatic and politic, while protecting the best interests of the people I supervise.  It's a constant balancing act and I am so grateful that I have some really fantastic (and female!) role models to learn from.

Summer

I hate summer, mostly.  I don't like being hot, I don't like the sun, and I don't like that I am no longer a creature of leisure for June, July, and August.  I forgot that the only people who actually get relaxing summers are teachers--and even then, not so much.  Those still in academia or education but not teaching don't actually get all that much of a break.  Not that I am complaining, but ... okay, I am totally complaining.

This summer was pretty awesome, all things considered.  We had a houseguest for the first month and it was both incredibly fun and almost unbearably sad.  The fun was when she was here and work and home were a delicious blend of fun and gossip and work.  The sad was how empty the house felt for those first few weeks she was gone.  Our house is entirely too large for just two people, and having someone here to fill the extra space was a lovely, if bittersweet, reminder. 

The heat was nearly unbearable and the floodwaters rose a little too close for comfort, but we've survived and persevered none the worse for the wear.  And now, Labor Day approaches and with it, the unofficial end of summer.  The daylight is already noticeably shortened in the evenings, and soon the heat will begin to abate at least at night.  I am excited about the year ahead, but terrified at the same time.  This past year has been so good and has passed so fast that I scarcely had time to appreciate just how much has changed.  I suppose that is part and parcel with growing older and becoming more and more satisfied with my life and my place in the world.

Circumstance

Last night, I attended my school's GED graduation ceremony.  Our offices are in the same building as the ABE/GED program, and since many of the graduates will go on to enroll here and qualify for the services my program provides, I was there to recruit and congratulate the graduates.

If you're ever feeling down about the state of the world, go to a GED graduation ceremony.  There you will see a lot of people who have been knocked around and who have made bad decisions or had bad decisions thrust upon them.  If the program is like the one here, and the people on staff work as hard as the ones here do, then maybe you will also have a group of young men and women from a prison camp who have come out in uniform and who stand in straight rows with grins on their faces, who can barely zip their gowns because their hands are shaking with excitement and nerves.  You might see families gathered near -- families who have not had much to celebrate in the past few years -- and see the evidence of pride. 

I actually couldn't watch the ceremony because the theater was full.  Standing room only and the room for standing was out in the temperature un-controlled art gallery that serves as a foyer.  Out in the hallway, I could only hear the applause.

At the reception afterward, I congratulated and recruited.  And thought how lucky I was and how proud I was of these people whom I'd never seen before, but for whom I wanted the very best out of life.

Too late

I'm up way too late for a school night.  But it's hot and my stomach is achy and I am both thirsty and too lazy to go downstairs and get more water or soda.  Woe is me.

I miss writing and cataloging my life.  I kept it up for most of five years, and while a lot of that shit and drivel that I pumped out into the electronic ether makes me grimace at how fucking stupid I was, I am at the same time incredibly grateful that the most tumultuous years of my life are recorded for posterity.  I was reading back on my graduation entry from just a few months ago, and I'd already forgotten most of that stuff.  I have been at my new job for five and a half months tomorrow and I have written next to nothing about it.  Which is wise, because I don't want to get fired from my new-as-of-five-and-a-half-months-ago job for being incredibly stupid.  But, you know.  Lots of things have happened to me in the last five and a half months and maybe it would be okay if I looked back on all that in the next two years and thought god, just how fucking stupid can one woman be?

So I'm going to try to write more.  To put more of myself out there, out here where no one is really looking but me.  I'm going to try to remember what it was like to have the same reaction whenever anything really big happened in my life:  I'd start mentally composing the journal entry.

Here and now

Our House

We're here now.  I am not sure how I feel about that.

After ripping out carpet and painting and cleaning and cleaning some more and tossing gross blinds and washing years of grime off of windows and woodwork and emptying the basement of gallons of left-behind cat shit (oh, how I wish I were kidding), I am starting to hate this house a little less.

My job is really good, I think.  I am still somewhat terrified that I will wake up some day and figure out that I am no good at this, but that hasn't happened just yet.  I am pretty good at it so far, and I think people on campus like me and if they don't, they are being very nice about hiding it from me. 

Something is missing, though.  I am not sure if it is money or happiness or general life satisfaction.  But something.  We live in this big old house and we have no friends but each other and there is a gaping hole somewhere that needs a patch.  Or a plug.  Or maybe a baby.