If one spends the entire day trying to clean up several years of accumulated clutter in one’s house, one will find oneself reaching a calm place where the idea of bagging it all up and throwing it away seems like a brilliant plan.
P.S. This might be the result of being high on cookie fumes. Further research may be warranted.
Today–being my last full day to accomplish the Herculean set of housecleaning tasks I have set for myself before Rejoining The Working Folk–I found myself watching a friend’s 5-year-old daughter for an hour. I was itching to get on with my to-do list and just didn’t think she’d be amenable to tackling the pile of crap on my nightstand, ya know? So we moved further down the list to “make cookies for the very nice people who decided to give me a job.”
I have an unnatural relationship with cookies. I mean, yes… it’s 2005 and I am a grown woman with absolutely no use for the “barefoot and pregnant” stereotype. But what can I say? I like cookies. And when I bake these cookies for people, they like me back. Win-win. Plus? It’s a lovely diversion and makes the house smell yummy. And did I mention that at the end, there are cookies? Because there are.
Did I also mention I’m a wee bit tightly wound today? I’m sure you didn’t notice. (SHUT. UP.)
Anyway, my small friend and I commenced baking the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookies. She was an excellent scooper and pourer and chocolate chip tester. Thank goodness I had her here to help me out. You can’t make cookies with untested chocolate chips and if I eat anything in my current state, it won’t be pretty. So. We baked!
Well, WE baked for a while. Then her mom came to get her, and I’m still baking, because this recipe yields about a thousand cookies. I will probably still be rotating my cookie sheets in and out of the oven at midnight tonight, but it will be worth it. Cookies may not cure everything, but they’re pretty good at making the discerning palate just not care about anything else.
And with warm cookies in the kitchen, everything else should be fine.
What, you don’t think so? Shut up and have a cookie.
Whatever tomorrow brings,
I’ll be there with open arms and open eyes, yeah.
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there… I’ll be there.
(Seemed all karmic and meaningful the first gazillion times it played its way through my brain. Probably still is, but the meaning started to blur around replay number gazillion and one….)
I’ve changed a lot in my years on this planet. The woman I am today is different than the woman I was twenty or ten or even five years ago. People grow; priorities shift, we (hopefully!) mature into finding the things that really matter to us. Some things, of course, stay more or less the same.
I still love chocolate; always have, always will.
I still love singing, being outdoors, making people laugh; all constants from my earliest days.
And I am still just about impossible to please.
It’s not so much that I am never happy as that it is very difficult for me to relax into happiness for any length of time. I am suspicious of it. I mistrust anything that smacks of contentment. Pockets of happiness, sure! There are always pieces of joy to be grabbed here and there in even the most challenging of situations, I find. But overall complacency; it’s not for me.
Needless to say, my friends and family are so lucky to have me!
(more…)
There’s only one thing that will help me unwind after a rough day, and today I did it a whole new way. It started with a special delivery to the house; my pulse quickened immediately. As soon as I was able to shoo the children over to their father’s for dinner I was on that package, grinning ear to ear. Before I knew it I was gripping with both hands and working up a good sweat, murmuring my wonderment and appreciation as things progressed. Sure, I had a take a break to welcome the kids back and get them to bed, but then I picked up right where I left off. Afterwards I was spent; exhausted but satisfied.
(more…)
I deleted the previous post because I am uninterested in engaging in an interblog slugfest. I actually had no idea that the person in question reads my blog. What was meant to be a vent was quickly becoming a “he said/she said” thing and I have more important matters demanding my time and energy.
Now, let’s all get back to discussing my underwear.
Me: So, what are your big plans for tomorrow?
You: I need to go buy some baggies.
Don’t hurt yourself, alright?
