Tag: me

Resolution 2010.

I’ve read, and observed in my own life, that the interest in sewing skips a generation. My grandmother was an excellent seamstress. My mother tried, but I can still picture her exhaling sharply as she set out to rip another mis-sewn seam. She once made me a pair of pants for Christmas. Suspecting that something wasn’t right, we agreed that I would wear a blindfold and try them on. She laughed when they didn’t fit, and I took off my blindfold and laughed too.

My sewing talents don’t approach my grandmothers, and I’m in a “not sewing” holding pattern, but my homemaking gene is strong.

Similarly, my resolutions seem to go in an every-other-year success rate. In 2008, I resolved to write a letter per day and before burning out completely in late November, pretty much kept to that. Last year, I pledged to stop eating while standing. On the surface, a much easier task to fulfill, but I failed miserably at it.

With the every other year success rate, this year looks good for resolutions. At the New Year’s Eve party I attended last night my resolution was greeted with raspberries, general jeers and calls of “boring!” But I’m pretty excited about it.

Resolved: in 2010, I will spend 15 minutes per day working at my desk. In priority order my tasks will be: checkbooks, in box, blogs.

All three of those things are not really in my control. My checkbooks/money management system is admittedly a labyrinth process that could perhaps be streamlined. But I like the way I have set up its many processes, and checks and balances. When it is caught up, it gives me a sense of security.

It is rarely caught up. When I attack the to-do list monthly, it takes two or three hours and causes much shallow breathing and sighing. I also have a vague sense of unease throughout the month that I could bounce a check at any time. When I neglect the money management for more than a couple months, it takes the better part of a day to dig myself out. After the move, I didn’t catch things up for about six months and spent eight hours setting things right. A bit of daily attention would prevent this, and the resolution is designed to do just that.

My inbox is a sorry mess. I caught a reference to it in a previous blog post mentioning something about it’s geologic layers. I think I had it down to one object a few Christmases ago, but that was it. I would love to clear out that sucker, and now that my checkbooks are caught up, and presumably easy to maintain, I aim to do just that.
And oh, the blogs. In my mind, I work on them all the time. One of my friends lists my blog on her site. The listing also notes the last posting. I remember the first time I saw that my last posting on the list was three or four months old. I was surprised, then realized that just because I think about the blog daily, doesn’t mean that things are published. The thing I didn’t realize is that there are so many steps. Taking pictures, prepping pictures, making the blog post, writing it, letting it rest, editing it, editing it again, actually posting it. And I have so many damn interests. All those steps just don’t get done very often. It’s disheartening.

I don’t expect the blogs to get much better any time soon, for right now the money and the inbox promise to eat up that fifteen minutes. But perhaps the blog will move along a bit.

As for implementation, I have printed up calendars for the year and posted them on the door to the office. Each day I do my fifteen minutes, I will make a check mark of some kind on the day. I plan to prioritize this task and do it as soon as I come home from work, or first thing in the morning on non-work days.

Wish me luck.

Positive!

I’ve not been feeling well. It’s a busy time of year at school–although when is it not–and I’ve been feeling run down and my throat hurts. Strep is going around school. But I’ve googled all the symptoms and everything says that adults don’t get strep. Still, I’m not feeling well. I call the doctor and the nurse orders a strep test for me. At Nurse treatment, she tells me that while adults often get sore throats and infections, it most likely is not strep. I tell her I know. I walk the culture over to the lab and wait 30 minutes. I’ve got a limited amount of time because I have to take my Calculus final soon. The technician calls my name, “Patricia Collins?” I approach him. “Are you Patricia Collins?” he asks as he holds shut a pink piece of paper. I affirm that I am. He opens the paper to reveal that my test came back…
“Really?” I gasp. I feel like I won the lottery. “But adults rarely get strep throat!” I tell him, repeating what two nurses and the internet have told me.

“Well, you’ve got it.” he assures me. Still feeling like I won the lottery (I was right! It was totally worth it to miss the December fire drill to get a strep test! I will soon feel better!) I make my way to the pharmacy, get the drugs required and run to catch my train making it to class just in time for my final.

Laundry

A rare sight in my laundry journey. An empty laundry basket. I’m pretty good at doing laundry on a regular basis, so dirty laundry never really builds up. But clean laundry? Often times the laundry basket is holding the clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away as the dirty laundry is piling up in the closet in the space where the laundry basket goes. Interestingly, in the summer, when I can hang out the laundry to dry, I don’t have any trouble putting away the clean laundry. I think it is because I can fold it as I am taking it off the line. The other problem I have is that in the winter time, I’m mostly headed for bed when the dryer buzzes. So I’ve moved past chore mode to rest mode.

License

Years ago, living in Massachusetts, I went to get a new official Massachusetts driver license.  It all went well, I showed my current Idaho license, paid my (exorbitant) fee and brought along my other documents.  Then, I went to take my Idaho driver’s license back from the clerk and the woman snatched it out of my hands.  It seems that I had to surrender my current license to get the new one.  There would be no holding on to this half-profile under-21 snapshot of my life.  So I let it go.

When I went to renew my Oregon driver license I remembered that incident and took a picture of my old one before I went inside.  Above you can see my first license in Oregon.  When I got it, I was astounded that I didn’t have to renew it for eight years.  “Eight years!” I exclaimed to more than one person. “I’ll be 35!”  I didn’t mean, as many people assumed, that 35 was so old, just that it was so far away from where I was at that point.  Eight years was a very long time.

And now those eight years have elapsed.  I’ve lived in four different homes/apartments in my time here and I’ve gotten rid of that striped turtleneck and jean jumper.  My hair has gone through many incantations and my weight isn’t what it says there.  However, it wasn’t when I got the license, either.  I’ve had three jobs and one boyfriend and a host of friends.  It’s been a good eight years, and I wanted to keep a memory of my first Oregon driver license.  According to this calculator (http://www.livingto100.com/) I have about seven more Oregon Driver Licenses in my future.

And guess what?  After they had done all the paperwork for my new license, they punched holes in this one and gave it back to me.  So I have it anyway.

A tragic day for my favorite pair of sandals

I bought these sandals when I was preparing to go to Hungary and Romania in 2005. I love them. They have cute swirly designs on them, they look fashionable, I can walk for miles in them, they give me an extra inch or two in height. They are the perfect sandal. Today, they did what they have been threatening to do for months now, split open in the back. I love them too much to discard them outright, so I will take them to the cobbler to see if miracles can be worked. But I’m not very optimistic. It may be time for us to part ways.

The best intentions.

Things I had in my mind to do today.

  • Deal with the greens harvested from the garden
  • Start at least one round of cheese, if not two
  • Make some salad dressing
  • Work on my scrapbook
  • Work on the roman shades

Things actually done today

  • Five loads of laundry, washed, hung to dry, brought in, folded and put away.
  • Finish fiction book
  • Finish non-fiction book
  • Start fiction book.
  • Take two naps
  • Pretty much laze about.

I think I’m feeling a bit paralyzed by my unfinished projects. Blast!

Bands

The location of my work is near several live music venues, with one of them large enough to get moderately famous acts able to have a painted truck and a fancy tour bus. Sometimes when walking to work from the train I see the various tour buses and vans that make up the gypsy train that is modern music touring. Once in awhile, when I am on recess duty in the park across the street from my school, a van with a tow-trailer will pull up and park and out will tumble a pack of grungy musician-looking people. I once saw someone brushing his teeth right there at the edge of the park.

I’m guessing I will always remember that guy brushing his teeth. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, back in the day I wanted to be one of those modern-day minstrels. I knew I wasn’t good enough to actually be a band member, but I had hopes of moving equipment in fifty different states and around the world. In my current life, the roadie lifestyle is my idea of hell. Charles Cross’s Heavier Than Heaven painted a very clear picture of life on the road: selling enough t-shirts to get to the next town, choosing between food and gas, sleeping in horrible motels and no time to yourself. The kind of things that would make brushing your teeth at a city park in the middle of the day an entirely normal act.

Though I will never experience that lifestyle, I love that I wander by it during my daily routine.

Administrative Professional’s Day

Did you remember to thank your Administrative Professional? My co-workers did. It was a great day.
Flowers from gardens, cards, an itunes gift card, a shrinky dink Buddha, and KALE! What more could a girl ask for?
Not much, but that incredible generosity was compounded in the afternoon when FES, the parent group at school brought in this jaw dropping flower arrangement.
Thanks to everyone. It was a magical day.

Test results are in!

It had been more than four weeks since my Praxis test, so yesterday I called to see if the reports had been mailed. They were mailed on Tuesday from New Jersey. I was thinking I would see it Friday at the earliest, but today they was waiting for me. I was thinking I needed a 169 to pass the test in Oregon, so I was thrilled to see that I got a 176 (of 200 possible). But it turned out I only needed a 156. So I hit the ball out of the park. Or at least had a double play.

No more frantic studying in addition to my math classes! Good job me!

Included in my test results were the other Praxis tests I’ve taken. I was thinking this was my seventh Praxis test, it turns out to be my ninth. Thanks Praxis, for making me a highly qualified teacher. Even if I’ve never taught a day for pay in my life.

Things I love right now

It is still cold here and my toes freeze a bit in the evenings. Enter the hot water bottle! It looks exactly like the one we had when I was growing up and it is a low-tech way to keep my poor toes tosty warm before I fall asleep. Though it kind of reminds me of chin hairs and nursing home smells, I still like it.
These jars have changed my life! They are normal 4 oz jelly jars that are available at every Fred Meyer in Portland that I’ve been to, but they have transformed my brown bagging experience. I take breakfast and lunch to work with me every day and I tend to have a variety of different things. These tiny–actually they are normal serving sized, but they don’t seem it because our collective portion size is so bloated right now–jars let me take a bit of this or that. I eat less and still get all my options. They come with the rings and lids on the right, or you can buy the plastic lids that screw on both these and the half pint and pint jars.