racheldirollzack.com

Can someone explain The White Stripes to me?

I was having a conversation with someone whose music tastes I generally agree with, and he was flabbergasted that I didn’t LOOOOOOOVE The White Stripes. I’m constantly shocked at the knowledge that he has no room in his life for U2, but we get along just fine despite his huge and glaring personality flaw.

I get this a lot, though. “You don’t like Such-and-Such band? WHY NOOOOOOTTTT????”

“Erm, because I just… don’t?”

I’ve listened to quite a bit of The White Stripes. I am given to understand that they are pushers of boundaries, etc, but I just don’t enjoy their music at all. So someone needs to explain them to me in 500 words or less.

Spring is coming!

The dog has lately taken to peeing and pooping in the house again, after being 99% housetrained. I am not thrilled with this development, mainly because it forces me to choose between steam-cleaning the carpet that is GOING AWAY when we renovate, starting at the end of March or smelling dog pee ALL THE TIME. Guess which I chose?

I hate the smell of dog pee, but there you are.

Cannot WAIT for this reno to start. I’ve never purchased a toilet before - who knew there were so many options? Also, I know myself well enough that I should NOT watch Moulin Rouge while thinking about decorating ideas for my bedroom. There is a LOT of decoration in that movie, and my tastes are such that someone who spent their entire life in a Russian Orthodox church would take a look at my place and go “yeah… that’s crowded.”

I am still not a skier. The boots are definitely to blame, since I went a size up and my feet did the same damn thing with the numbness and hurty-ness. Next season I will attempt it ONE MORE TIME with men’s boots and if that doesn’t work then I will know that I am not meant to ski and I will then try to kill myself on a snowboard. The upside is that I did get to spend a lot of time in the bar, and I chatted up random strangers for fun.

There are plenty of other was I can kill myself athletically, one of which I will be attempting on Sunday. Oooh, mystery!

I don’t know if the garden is going to happen this year. I suppose that depends on when I have to move out of my house and where I end up. If I end up in Ohio with the parents for a few weeks, I will end up tending THEIR garden, which would be an exercise in futility, much like most things are with them. We’ll see.

Still listening to Editors pretty much exclusively. I got to see them twice in February, once in NYC and once in Philly, both times with friends, which was nice. They put on an AMAZING show and I am more than ready to drop my whole life and follow them around the world. However, I’m masquerading as a responsible adult these days and that is just not possible. Would if I could.

Speaking of live music, Phish is allegedly playing in Telluride this summer. From what I understand there are NOT going to be a lot of tickets available and if I get them, we’ll go but I’m not going to kill myself trying for tickets. We’ll see what Lollapalooza is up to as well as All Points West.

I make people angry on a regular basis. Sometimes even by accident.

I ran yesterday, did pretty well. I am starting to see the top of “the hump” over which I must get in order for this to continue. My biggest hurdle [heh] right now is half my brain trying to talk the other half out of continuing. I have lost 4 pounds in the past 4 days, so… that’s a pretty good incentive to keep at it.

After roughly 10 years of not being able to play it, I took my flute to the repair place to have it looked at. My sister gave that flute to me 24 years ago, and it served me VERY well. She made noises a few years ago about maybe wanting it back, but… she has a lucrative career! She can go buy a new one! [evil] Anyway, the guy said that he’s been fixing instruments for upwards of 40 years and he’s only had 5 or 6 that he just couldn’t save, so prognosis is good. And he said that if it’s completely unfixable, he will give me a deal on a new-to-me flute, but things look good and it’s a huge bonus that my flute is American-made. Apparently that’s rare these days, which is sad. Most instruments, even the big names like Gemeinhardt and such are made in China. But the thing is AT LEAST 30 years old, and was China even a country then?

Once the flute is playable again, I will get out the guitar. For some reason, the flute has always made music more accessible to me. I find if I play it on the flute, then I get a sense of what it’s supposed to sound like and then playing it on saxophone or guitar or whatever feels easier. It’s weird and hard to explain, but that’s pretty much the way I’m made.

My half-marathon training started today. It went about as well as could be expected, given my extreme laziness and aversion to physical exertion of any kind.

Some people are “yay! Running is the best! WOOOO!!” Those people are clearly insane. I am more of a “just do it” sort of person, which I’m sure Nike appreciates because it’s further proof that their marketing works.

But I run in Sauconys.

Still, I did it. 3 minutes of running, 2 minutes of walking times 7. It got a bit icky in the middle there but I KEPT AT IT. I think I need to drink more water before I run because the legs felt a bit heavy. We’ll be testing that theory tomorrow.

Of course, if I could just rewind the clock 20 years and run all freaking day on nothing more than grape soda and Pixie Stix, I would be a happy happy lady. I took that body for granted, man. I would punch a baby to have that body back. Apparently, society frowns upon baby-punching so I will have to get that body back the old-fashioned way.

DRUGS!

Wait. Can’t afford the sort of drugs it would take. Shit. I guess it’s even more old-fashioned: diet and exercise. The diet part is fine. I suppose I could eat plain baked chicken breast and plain brown rice and steamed cauliflower and all that Biggest Loser bullshit, but life is too short and I’m putting barbecue sauce on all of it. I eat whatever the hell I want but I am trying to be hyper-aware of the volume of my food. Life is too short to eat shitty food, but it’s definitely fine if I eat a little bit of the good stuff.

Overall, I feel pretty good. The Nike sports bra is doing its job admirably, so I think I’m going to go out and purchase a couple more of them. I am probably ready for new shoes, which means I will have to start over since I bought the current pair two years ago and Saucony has had at least two updates to this model since then. The knees are feeling all right (might have to IcyHot my right one, which is a bastard), the hips feel better than they have, and the lungs are still working.

Hmmm, yes. I will have to hydrate better. It’s 10 minutes since I got off the treadmill and my lips are a little dry. Noted!

None, so far. Training plan starts next week and the motivation just isn’t there. It’s a combination of the cold and my natural tendency toward slothfulness, I’m sure. But something has got to change. I have a bad feeling that something is going to be me getting up at 5AM to take the jackass dog out and then head down to the treadmill. Ugh.

However, I am consciously trying to NOT WHINE. On the surface, there is nothing at all to whine about. My family and I are reasonably healthy. We just spent a week in Sunny Florida, hitting the ocean by day and Phish by night. What’s not to love? We have a warm and somewhat comfortable house to live in, which is going to be expanded this year. We have a car that is in fine condition, and one month from now, we will own that truck. At which point it will probably up and die like the VW did in 2006, but WHATEVER. As of this writing, the truck is A-OK. So, not much to whine about. I have everything a normal person could want, and I am trying VERY hard to be grateful and appreciative of these things. It’s going pretty well.

The only obstacle to this is OTHER PEOPLE. I am so fucking sick of people whining and bitching and moaning about how bad their lives are. Okay, sure - some folks have been dealt a shitty hand and whatnot, but it’s the people who are in more or less the same boat as me. What the fuck are they complaining about? Yes, I know I’m complaining about the complainers. It’s my ‘thing.’ Lemme have it.

And even that isn’t a big deal. I just hum and smile and get on with it.

So what’s the deal? I think this weather is fucking me up. Before we left for Florida, I was starting to feel a leeeetle bit unbalanced, like I felt in 2004 when I lost my mind good and proper. Back then, losing my mind wasn’t a big deal because I only really had to worry about myself but now? Not a good thing, you see. I have the kid and the dog relying on me to clean up their various puddles of pee, so I have to be in my more or less right mind to do so.

That trip to Florida was great. Sun! Sand! Water! PHISH! It was exactly what I needed to get me out of that fog and into a good headspace. Of course, we’ve been back for almost a week and with the cold and ick, I’m seeing the fog attempt to return. Gotta do something about that.

Which brings me back to exercise. Tomorrow morning I’ll attempt the early treadmill session and see what happens.

I’m too lazy to look back and see what my resolutions were for 2009. Perhaps I’ll get around to that later. Here we go for 2010:

1. Move more. Am scheduled to do a half-marathon in April, and need to get motivated to train for it.

2. Finish what I start. Half-marathon included.

3. Knit more. How this will mesh with marathon training I do not know, but I will find a way.

4. Manage my time better. This will probably mean less time spent in front of the computer. Probably a good thing.

5. Stop getting coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. See, people RAVE about this shit and I just don’t see it. Yet there are times when I need coffee and a Dunkin’ is the only thing around and I think “hmmm, maybe this time it will be all right” and IT NEVER EVER IS. I don’t know what the hell you people are talking about with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, but it fucking SUCKS. It’s horrible. Tastes like it’s been filtered through my 8th-grade boyfriend’s wrestling uniform and then cut with motor oil. Life is too short to drink shitty coffee.

6. Keep the house a bit cleaner. Ugh. Actually, this is sort of cheating because we’re renovating in a few months so I will have a couple of months where I won’t be able to do anything about the mess. Thumbs up!

7. Make more music. I have three saxophones, a clarinet, a guitar, a mellophone, and a flute (that is unplayable but I can get it fixed). I have really been feeling the absence of music in my life and need to fix that.

8. Have a less-ambitious but more-manageable garden. Last year was a disaster.

9. Love the life I have.

Oh, hi, blog. I’ve been neglecting you, I know. It’s okay. The thing is, this was a place where I could write about my ‘issues’ and my petty grievances and all that stupid inconsequential shit that riles me up from day to day. I felt safe enough, even though I’m totally retarded and publish under my own, real name. Whoops.

I don’t feel safe doing that here anymore, thanks to a small group of giant flaming assholes who can and will use anything I say here against me. Of course, I don’t know this for sure, because nobody has ever, ever, ever approached me about whatever problems they have with what I’ve written in the past. So I can’t be sure, I can only guess. And given that Those People haven’t spoken to me in nearly three years (not a word! Not ONE!), my guess is pretty fucking accurate.

And you know what? Fuck those people. Cowards. I have no time and even less energy to devote to managing other people’s reactions to me. I’ve done it a lot more over the last few years than I ever have in my entire life and it’s unpleasant for me, so I’m going to stop doing it.

In other news, I’m not feeling so hot lately. I feel like my anxiety is getting out of control again, and it’s frustrating because I KNOW it’s happening yet I don’t know what to do about it. I see myself doing (or not doing, as the case may be) things that are a direct result of being anxious/depressed and it sucks because I can’t seem to turn it around. Which is frustrating, which leads to more anxiety. It’s a carnival, to be sure.

Part of it is that my job, as Mama, head chef, chief maid, logistics manager, mechanic, appointment scheduler, taxi service, laundress, et al is starting to feel a hell of a lot like WORK. Before, it was no thang because anything that allows me to avoid getting up and going to an office to work with idiots is Fine By Me. I’ll do a lot of things before I willingly go back to work at a ‘real’ job. But this mommy gig didn’t feel like work. Until recently.

Now, I know what’s going on here. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months, courtesy of the canine child, who gets up anytime between 5 and 7, though usually closer to 5. That’s unacceptable to me, but she’s so cute, it’s hard to hate her. Then there’s the other child, who seems to have given up napping. Sigh. She has also recently taken a step back in potty training, and is currently in Time Out for peeing her pants for the third time today. I no longer have the desire to make her pee where she’s supposed to, so in Time Out she sits. I just don’t care.

In short, I need a break. I don’t get much downtime these days, and my temperament is such that I need a LOT of it. I’m sure this will all pass (it’s not even PMS week) but while I’m in the middle of it, it fucking sucks.

Shut up, lists are cool.

1. Getting ready for a Family Road Trip to Florida. We leave The Jerz on Xmas day and hope to arrive in sunny FLA on the 27th. My mom flies in from Cleveland on the 27th as well, and 28-31 is Phish Phish Phish Phish. Then on the 1st, because we have a much more ambitious idea of ourselves than reality is likely to reflect, our cracked-out asses start the trudge back North.

2. Sports bras! I know we haven’t talked about my boobs here on the blog for ages, but there’s not much to tell lately. They’ve been covered up more in the past two years than they ever have. I have to wear a bra ALL THE TIME (aside from sleeping) because they sort of have minds of their own these days. Genetics and gravity are not a good mix for me, it would appear. I did finally break down and buy a couple of new sports bras, since the ones I previously wore were not getting done. And I have a shit-ton of running to do in the near future, because I am…

3. Training for a half-marathon. I think this is the 2nd stupidest decision I have ever made (perhaps the 3rd), but I am signed up for a half-marathon in April. Oy.

4. Scrimping and saving. We are dropping quite a bit of cash on this Florida adventure. And then early next year we start with the house renovation, which is going to be amazing in many ways. And apparently we’re going to France in July or thereabouts, so we are all going to have to tighten our belts and save some serious cashola. It can be done (yay, no more truck payment), but it’s going to be totally boring while we do it. Oh well.

5. Thinking about the garden. Spring will be here before we know it (hope!), and I want to be ready this year. I have some prep work that needs to get done before I can start thinking about planting, but I have a list of things that I want to try to grow this year. I hope we don’t get tomato blight again, because that was really disheartening.

6. Oven shopping. Even though I just said we’re trying to save money, I think I’m going to have to get a new oven. Mine has broken THREE TIMES in the past two years, to the tune of about $1000 (which doesn’t include what it will likely cost to fix it in its currently-broken state). This is unacceptable to me, since I can get a NEW, CLEAN, FUNCTIONAL oven for right around that same amount of cash. I may do this, depending on deals and whatnot. More research must be done. Presidents’ Day sales look like our best bet.

7. Cleaning. I am waging a battle against all the dust in my house. I have no idea where it comes from, despite my frequent attacks on the furniture with the Swiffer and daily vacuuming (I use the vacuum as a tool to subdue the dog. Plus, she destroys things and makes huge messes). Dust aside, simply owning a dog and a toddler means we have a fairly stable level of destruction in the house. I’m just trying to stay on top of it. Sigh.

8. Not blogging. I just don’t have much to say these days. There’s plenty going on, but nothing that I really feel like sharing. Meh.