Nerd extraordinaire

I wear prescription contact lenses for distance. I have worn them many years and over those years the prescription has gotten stronger in order to correct the vision. This has caused me the small problem that if I am wearing my contact lenses for distance, it blurs my reading. If I take off my contact lenses to read, I can’t see past the end of my feet. Well, that would be if I was stretched out in bed reading. I don’t know why I’d need to see past my feet if I was standing. That would mean I would be looking down, right?

Anyway - in order for me to wear my contact lenses for distance and also read, I wear reading glasses. You know the ones…the cheap magnifiers that they sell everywhere now a-days. They actually come in some nice styles. I had a great pair that I wore everyday and liked very much. Being the inexpensive item there were, they wore out. They wore out even more quickly when I dropped them on the concrete floor at lunch and cracked the lens frame. I was able to keep wearing them but the right lens would pop out every now and again.
I knew I needed to replace them. I meant to go and replace them. I should have replaced them.

I was meeting with my boss in his office to go over my mid-year review. He was going over my accomplishments and letting me know all the details I had taken care of during this portion of the appraisal period. He was letting me know how I was able to keep on top of things and so on and then the lens popped out of my reading glasses. It fell on the paperwork and tried to spin there for a second. My boss stopped and expressed his concern that I would need to replace an expensive pair of prescription glasses. I grabbed the frames off and explained they were only reading glasses-magnifiers, but I was so embarrassed I started to stutter how they were already broken and I’d been meaning to go to Wal-Mart or Target to replace them but hadn’t done it yet…and blab, blab, what was I going on about?!?! I caught myself, stopped stammering and hid the frames and lens in my tight fist that I dropped down by my side furthest away from my boss.

Geez…what a great display of professionalism and competence on my part! I had admitted they were broken, yet I was still wearing them. If I was so good with the details wouldn’t this be one of the things to take care of right away? I should have considering the fact that if I didn’t have them to wear I couldn’t see, so then I wouldn’t be able to do my job? Was there any saving grace that I hadn’t actually taped them!?

You don’t think it will show up on the next review, do you? I can see it now. Needs to improve decision making (if your glasses are broken) and time management skills (find time to buy new ones)!

Cripes.
TT

Add eight

Sometimes I have to change things up. Sometimes I have to break from my routine, get outside my comfort zone and do something that is out of my norm.

I changed my hair appointment today.

What? That’s it?! That’s the big getting out of my comfort zone, breaking routine? I can almost hear you say...she is kidding, right? Nope. Not kidding. I have had a hair appointment every 7 weeks for two years. Yes, I believe that time frame is about right. It was about two years ago I decided I was going to stop using hair color.

It seemed that no matter the hair color I used, it no longer resembled any natural color to be found on the face of this earth. I don’t know why that was. I tried different brands and different shades but the un-reality of them all were obvious (to me anyway). That meant if I stopped, and even though I never strayed too far from my natural color, I was older. That meant when it grew out I would have dark hair with gray.

But who was I kidding by covering the gray with a color that only looked natural in the test labs of a company? A company that was in the business of selling you whatever you would allow them to make you believe. I didn’t believe that by covering my gray with an alien hair color that no one would know that I wasn’t older. It just made me look more, it made me seem more, more…alien.

So I stopped with the concession that I would have my hair cut and styled regularly – every 7 weeks. I found my hair grows at an alarmingly snails pace so the process took at least a year and a half where I sacrificed a lot of length but finally had it completely grown out. So now I have shinier, healthier, dark hair with gray, but I want my length back!

I mentioned it. Out loud. I was told to move my appointment out 8 weeks.
Eight? That much? It’s already been more than seven since I moved it out four already! Eight more? The answer was yes. I thought about it.

Then today I called and changed my hair appointment. I moved it to the third week in November. I changed it up. I broke the routine. I got out of my 7 week comfort zone.

(Sigh) I know. The making me seem alien had nothing to do with the hair color.

TT

Stable shopping?

Sunday - 6:58pm
I am just now getting back from replacing the bathroom vanity at the home improvement store. I have a brand new one in a box waiting to replace the one that managed to break a corner off the porcelain top.

Let me explain. I had sat down hours ago (many hours ago) starting to work on my book. I was going to spend the afternoon adding to what I have. I was going to spend my free time continuing the story. It was a good day so far, I ran this morning (and yesterday) so I was feeling fairly good. And I was going to write.

It was an unexpected pleasure (even if it did interrupt) to have Jay’s nephew show up with an electrician friend of his to finish the upstairs bathroom project. They were going to install my lighting fixtures, complete the piece they were missing from the sink plumbing and install the mirror lighted cabinets above the sink. Since they were working upstairs I was too distracted to continue writing but I thought it was going to be great to have the bathroom finished!

So lighting fixtures all were installed including the lighted mirror when they went to glue down, (or caulk or whatever they do) the sink countertop. There must have been a hairline crack in the triangle of a corner because somehow it broke. Of course. I’m not spending my time writing but I am thinking things are going so fine and well when this happens. The countertop now had a chuck of the corner broken off. Now it needs to be returned. Now all the plumbing of the faucets and under the sink has to come out because the countertop sink and cabinet were sold as a combo. I can’t just exchange the top but I need to exchange all of it. So we do. We exchanged it and we are now home with a new combo to install. I am using this time to let you know while Jay’s nephew drops off his electrician friend and then returns since he plans on installing it all over again tonight.

I lost my writing time.

I almost wish I wouldn't have people in my house till late tonight but its good that he wants to finish. I was wishing the next time I brought up the bathroom it was to say it was all done. I was wishing I would be able to say I had written so many more words on my book. I was wishing.

If wishes were horses I’d need a stable!

TT

Nothing wasted

This picture was not staged. I didn't pull out my notes and pages from my book and throw them carefully across my keyboard and desk stategically (so you couldn't read too much of what was written). This index card stays propped up in the box on my desk the way you see it. Posting it now so you could see it...well, it just seemed to fit.

It's another tool.

It is a reminder to me to stay on track. Stop rambling...do I have a point?

I have questioned myself quite a bit lately about this blog. I have felt like I needed to break it down. I wrote down these words when I asked myself what I was going for...what was I trying to accomplish?

• Practice
• Consistency
• Discipline
• Improvement
• Enjoyment
• Challenge

They aren't in any order of priority but just a list. It was another exercise to show myself I wasn't spinning my wheels or wasting time. If I were to run down the short list I would be able to check each one off. I have accomplished each item. These are items I hope to continually check off again and again. They are also things that could be applied to different things. I could apply it to my job or my running. Simple. I validated.

The tools are working. The blog, the index cards, the writing. I am not saying I wouldn’t like to be able to bounce some opinions around about improving my writing. I think I could benefit from hearing another voice besides my own. But that isn't something that can always happen and yet I haven’t given up. In the past at this point I would have written…I should give up. I don’t have anything else. This was as good as it will ever get and there is nothing else to do but move on to something else I can do better. Finished, done, don't look back.

But I haven’t and I don’t even feel that way for more than a few moments. Okay, I’m not delusional. Things don’t always go as well as I would like. I know that and that's when I question myself. The difference is I have kept plugging along. The difference is now I am not listening to myself discount me. The difference is I will find a way and hopefully sooner rather than later I will make another small break through and find all these wasted words lately got me to another, better point.

Did I say wasted? Strike that.

TT

At the end of the rainbow

I had every intention of getting up this morning and painting the rest of my upstairs bathroom. I was not going to allow the original carpenter to return even if he decided to show himself again. He didn't, he hasn't and so all I had was half the bathroom painted, a beautiful floor and the washer and dryer operational.

It turns out a rainbow appears after some hard rains and yesterday afternoon I got a call from Jay's nephew asking if I was home from work and if he could come over. Sure, okay, come on over. This young man is a plumbers apprentice and when he arrived he proceeded to finish painting, installed the toilet, the new sink, cabinet and faucets. He cleaned up after himself and said he would be back to finish with the lighted mirror cabinet and the light fixtures. I didn’t have to do anything and the bathroom is almost complete. Some rainbow, don’t you think?

I probably shouldn't be talking so much about a bathroom but what can I say. It's been a struggle. Once the mirror goes up above the sink it will be almost complete. It looks good, it looks clean, which was something that I have wanted done for over two years. I didn't have to take it all on myself.

Aren't you glad this is almost complete? I sure am!

There shouldn't be so much bathroom talk but with it all falling into place after such uproars during the week really made me feel like I had gotten to the end of the rainbow.

Go figure.

TT

Pages

It's been hard to find time lately but I really have kept working...



Not that I thought you didn't believe me. This might have been just to prove it to myself.

These aren't nearly all the pages. Not nearly. I haven't printed all the typed pages I have saved of first draft writing I've done for the book. It's just a reminder for me.
Look. It is real.

And now it is time to clear off my desk and keep going.

TT

Memory of a Laundromat

I think being without my washer and dryer for so long had me thinking I was going to have to go to a Laundromat. Luckily, that was solved and I’ve managed more loads of laundry yesterday evening while I was writing. What the thinking about going to the Laundromat did was also make me think of a scene I had written on my previous book. That would be the one I ended up pulling and stopped writing after approximately 70 or so full pages. I had a moment (another one or one of many) where I read random pieces and decided all was awful and stopped writing it.

But I had written a scene in a Laundromat and I went back and pulled my hardcopy. I was curious about it so I found it and read that part. My memory of the scene in the Laundromat was how hot I thought I had portrayed it…

Lea and I were slumped in uncomfortable, plastic chairs. Lea was waving a folded newspaper at her face to stir up any air that might be in this god-forsaken Laundromat, as she called it. She had insisted on coming with me. She had wanted to go the gym but I had told her I needed to get this done tonight and didn’t plan on changing my mind. She wanted to know why I had been avoiding her. I hadn’t been avoiding her. Not this time, I just wanted to get this laundry out of the way before the weekend.
“How can you stand this heat,” she gasped, waving the newspaper harder.
“It’s really not that bad, Lea, and I said you didn’t have to come.”
“It IS really that bad, why don’t you sweat!” she wanted to know.
“I DO sweat, you’ve seen me sweat. What are you talking about? I just tolerate it more than most.”
“How do you do it?” She stopped waving the newspaper. She put it her hands between her knees as she leaned forward and turned her head toward me.
I shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess because I always preferred to be outside when I was a kid.”
She sat up and turned more toward me holding the newspaper in one hand. “So you’re parents let you go outside all the time?” she asked.
I lifted just my eyes to look at her. “I said I preferred to be outside.”
She sat straight up and laid the newspaper across her knees turning as far to face me as the bolted plastic chairs would allow. “So they didn’t mind you being out of doors.”
“Who didn’t mind?”
“Your Dad and Mom.”
“They didn’t care.”

I went on and read more and I ending up reading a good portion of maybe 10-15 pages or so of the story. I didn’t remember the actual words and how I maneuvered them. I didn’t remember how I had placed the characters in instances and how I had them work through those instances. They were there and likable and not flat. I can say I don’t remember making them that way. I don’t remember how I came up with some of the things they did and how I wove it together. Lea was originally an unplanned character. She walked into a scene early on almost without my knowledge and became fun to write. She wasn’t the main character and I didn’t always know what she would come up with but it was always fun.

And it turns out, not so bad either. At least that’s my thinking now, wait and it might change again. I know and have known I will go back and finish this story but not just yet. I am planning on going forward with the one I’ve started recently and finish it even if it’s just terrible. I am still going to finish it. And maybe by letting loose of my white knuckled fists a bit, it won’t be such a trauma.

Funny that - Tessa’s Trauma.

TT