I'm Tired

You know what proves to me that I'm definitely not ready to have kids? I haven't been sleeping well for about a week now and I am so pissed off about it I can barely function.

Seriously, I'm tired, I'm cranky, I've been tearing up over nothing.

It's pathetic. And that's after one week. I don't even want to know what kind of constant rage I would be in if some tiny little person was waking me up before I was ready all the time.

It wouldn't be pretty. And neither would I. (For real, the dark circles under my eyes make me look like a rejected extra from Twilight.)

I think I just have some residual stress built up in me. Nothing a vacation can't fix. And since I have a 4-day weekend coming my way, I'm feeling pretty good.

Speaking of my 4-day weekend, my dad and step-mom are coming to visit tomorrow. They'll hang out in Williams and see Route 66 (it's really a sight to behold), and then we're all going to drive down to Phoenix where it is 100 degrees and there's a pool. And Mizzou is playing at ASU. It's going to be awesome. Missouri meets Arizona- a collision of two of my favorite things.

So, that's going to be great. And I'm going to be relaxed and sleep well and get rid of the ridiculous farmer's tan that I still have left from this summer.

I'm relaxed just writing about it...

Song of the Day: Soldier by Ingrid Michaelson

Desert

Update: I did not cry at work once on Thursday or Friday.

That's more like it.

But it did snow on Thursday and that made me want to cry. Because, seriously? It was April 29. It can't snow on April 29.

But now I'm sitting in the coffee shop with my iced soy green tea smoothie (delicious) and Lisa Loeb's Stay (I Missed You) is playing and all you can do when that happens is think about how great life is.

And it is.

I have one day off this week and work is insane and it's still cold outside. But life is grand.

Here's my attempt to share the joy...

Childhood Terror

I have a question for you, blog friends.

Do you have something that happened to you in childhood that should not have been a big deal but ended up putting an irrational life-long fear into your heart?

Or is that just me?

When I was about 5 years old, I saw 2 minutes of an episode of Picket Fences and it legitimately scarred me for life.

Yes, that's right, Picket Fences. I didn't even know what Picket Fences was about until I just looked it up on IMDB. Because I've only ever seen those traumatic 2 minutes.

Let me take you back.

It's approximately 1990. I'm sitting in my dad's room in my pink nightgown with the bear in a tutu on it while my dad mills about, doing some busy adult thing. He left the TV on and the show we were watching ended. I sat sucking my thumb as I wondered what would come on next.

Cut to the TV. A little girl is at Show and Tell in her elementary school classroom. She begins to tell the class all about this incredible object she found in her back yard. The background music begins to swell. She pulls out the object and it is a human hand floating in a jar.

At this point, I am paralyzed with fear. The theme song comes on, the credits roll, and it cuts back to a sheriff discussing the little girl's hand with his deputy. They explain that there is some kind of criminal on the loose who is cutting off people's hands as souvenirs of his criminal activity.

At this point, my dad turns off the TV and tells me to go to bed.

It was a while before I got to sleep.

Now, to preface this, I was under a few wrong assumptions at this point. One, I thought that being put under amnesia and simply falling asleep were the same thing. So, I thought someone could perform surgery on you while you were asleep as long as they didn't jostle you around enough that you would wake up. Two, I thought that it was possible that someone would want to just cut off people's hands and keep them. I now realize that the criminal in the show was most likely killing the people and then taking their hands, but that is not what I assumed at 5. I thought that there was someone out there in TV land, breaking into people's homes, cutting off their hands and leaving them to wake up handless.

I went to bed that night with a plan. I decided to sleep with my entire body covered by my blankets, except my head. If they had to move the blankets to get to my hands, I would obviously wake up. And since this fictional criminal only wanted my hands, not to kill me, he would run away when I woke up. (I kept my feet covered as well, just in case.) My plan was full-proof.

I never woke up to a hand-stealing mad man, but I carried the fear with me. I continued to sleep completely covered. Years later, when I rationally knew this was all idiotic, I still couldn't sleep if my hands or feet were not under the covers.

Nearly 20 years has passed since this incident, and I would like to say I've moved on. I understand that nobody is going to cut off my hand. But I still sleep completely covered by the blankets. Because it's comfortable, and a little piece of that anxiety hangs on.

Thanks a lot, Picket Fences.

Still Concernced

I may be going slowly insane.  Here are two stories from the last 24 hours that demonstrate why I fear this:

1) Yesterday, I took my weekly Sunday afternoon nap.  It was awesome.  I woke up because the dog was barking really loudly.  I was, of course, burning up.  (Does anyone else always wake up from naps really hot?  This doesn't happen to me when I'm sleeping normally, only when taking naps.  I find this weird.)

Anyway, I was warm and really thirsty.  So I got up, extremely disoriented, grabbed my water glass off of my nightstand, and then stood in the middle of my room for a good 30 seconds trying to figure out how to get to the kitchen.  I contemplated walking into the bathroom and then finally it came to me.  The door of my bedroom opens directly into the kitchen.

Whew, problem solved.

2)  Just about a minute ago, I started typing this post.  I began with the word "today" except I accidentally typed "toady."  Then I giggled for about 20 seconds.  I don't know why I found the word toady so funny, but I did.

I'm concerned.  

In completely unrelated news, my (creepy) friend Kelly just put up a video of when he was visiting me in NYC.  A bunch of the interns were there, along with Kelly and Gentges.  Kelly, obviously, spent the whole time obnoxiously filming us all and making us look like extreme-o tourists, but I just watched it and it made me really happy.  Because that was a really fun week and I really, really love everyone in it. 

Here it is:

New York City Trip 2008 Part 1 "Too Close" from Kelly Jon on Vimeo.

Much love.

I Was Always Mario, Luigi Sucked

Have you ever seriously wondered if you accidentally stumbled into an alternate universe?

That happened to me today in Leawood, Kansas.  And the alternate universe was World 4 from Super Mario Bros. 3 on Super Nintendo.  That's right, Giant World.

It all started when Ashley and I headed out to Leawood for Liz's bridal shower.  Leawood is a suburb of KC that has a lot of big fancy strip malls and such with every kind of chain you could ever imagine.  

We started out at a Target Greatland which is basically a supersize Target.  We both commented on how huge it was as we wondered through, looking through Liz's registry.

We then had to drive about 15 miles to get to the house the shower was at.  During the drive, we first noticed an extremely large Home Depot.  Then there was a huge Panera.  And then a giant Macy's.  

And it just kept going.  Over-sized Red Lobster, giant Bank of America, humungous Starbucks.  On and on.  Everything was just slightly jumbo sized.  I started to legitimately wonder if I was getting smaller.

It probably would've been more rational to make a comment on the Super-Size It attitude of American consumers, but instead I just kept screaming to Ashley about how weird this was and how I really felt like I was in Super Mario.  I think that's perfectly rational.

Long story short, the burbs are creepy and soul-stealing.  

Maybe this is Why I Connect with Twilight

A fact that you may or may not know about me is that, when left to my own devices, I turn nocturnal.

Seriously.  

Even when I was really young, during the summers when I didn't have to get up at any specific time, I would stay up all night until the sun started to come up and then I would finally drift off to sleep.  I would then sleep until like noon and get up for my day.

This continued throughout college.  

The only thing that combats this is that I need 8 hours of sleep every night.  So if I have to get up at 7:00, I can fall asleep by 11:00.  I do get pretty bad insomnia if I am stressed or worried about something, but for the most part I can sleep early if I have to get up.

This is a much healthier way to live.  It is impossible to feel productive when you wake up in the afternoon.  Also, after you eat lunch and shower, you only have a couple hours worth of business hours left.  Not a lot of time to get anything done.

On the other hand, I relish the night time.  It's so quiet.  It's kind of like winter.  You really can't do anything other than quiet, relaxing activities.  My favorite kinds.

But I have plenty of time to do relaxing activities during the day, so I really don't need it right now.

Since moving to KC, I have been desperately trying to combat my nature and get up by 9:00 everyday so that I will go to sleep at a normal hour.

This is my goal.

My body rejects this.

I will lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling.  This is the most frustrating thing ever.  Because then I just keep thinking about how if I'm going to lay there for hours, I may as well be doing something.  But what can you really do?

It's like I subconsciously know that I have no life and nothing to do tomorrow so I may as well stay up all night and sleep all day.

Does anyone want to hang out with me at like 9:30 in the morning every morning so that I have to get up?  Don't all volunteer at once.

Also, everyone get very excited for the song of the day today for 2 reasons: 1) This is one of my favorite artists and songs, and 2) I posted this video and then realized I was literally at the concert it was filmed at.  That's right, Elizabeth, me, Marc and Dave Barnes at the Blue Note in 2006.  It was great.

Song of the Day: Gavin's Song by Marc Broussard 

Confessions of a Hermit

I talk to myself.

I admit this.  I don't think it's that weird.

I don't talk to myself like I'm a separate person.  Most of the time, I end up talking to myself because I'm acting out some kind of interaction in my head and I get so into it that I end up doing it all out loud.  Or if I'm not actually talking out loud, I'm at least making facial expressions that go with what's going on in my head and not what's going on around me.

This is embarrassing, but it's never made me worry that I need to see someone.

Now that I'm unemployed and officially useless, I have picked up some habits that are beginning to concern me.

No, I'm still not talking to myself like I'm a separate person, but I have begun talking pretty regularly to inanimate objects and I feel as though it's a slippery slope.

First I started talking to the dog.  She kind of responds, so that's not that concerning.

I've been conversing with my GPS for some time, so of course I would continue that.

Next came the Wii Fit trainer.  He's always encouraging and instructing me, so it seemed natural I would answer him.

Today is when things turned for the worse.  I realized that I was talking to just about every inanimate object around.  The book I'm reading?  Not weird at all.  The TV?  Of course.  My heater?  Getting a little weird.  The washing machine?  Weirder.  My shoes?  I'm officially concerned.

I spend a lot of time alone people.  I naturally enjoy this but I'm always aware of the fact that it is only matter of time before I begin collecting cats and forgetting all social norms.  

I need a job.