Made in Richmond

It’s currently 1:54am. That’s in the morning. I’ve been trying to sleep since about 10:30. I spent most of the evening fighting off yawns, apparently to the point where all of my adrenaline kicked in and I’m now a nervous wreck. It doesn’t help that this song is also stuck in my head. I’m going to try and stay out of bed until 2:30, hoping by then I’ll be tired again and therefore able to get about 4 hours of rest before getting up for work. Awesome awesome awesome.

Because here’s what happens EVERY TIME…

1. Meet guest of honor.

2. See that guest of honor is a complete brat.

3. Watch the guest of honor go through his/her yearbook and determine who they think is cool enough to come to his/her party.

4. See guest of honor’s parents hand over a large wad of cash to guest of honor to buy party outfit.

5.  Watch guest of honor’s parents take guest of honor to a car dealership to “just look around.”

6. Witness guest of honor cussing parents out and/or throw a complete temper tantrum for some stupid reason (not that there’s EVER a reason to throw a temper tantrum once you’re over the age of 6).

7. Hope and pray that the parents will cancel the party.

8. Watch them not cancel the party.

9. Watch the events of the party unfold which will undoubtedly involve people trying to crash the party, a performance by a mid-level recording artist, and the guest of honor receiving a car so expensive that most CEO’s couldn’t afford it.

10.  Die a little bit inside.

Repeat steps 1-10 if it’s a marathon.

…will be moving to France soon.

More to come later.

I can remember the prescription number for my birth control pills off the top of my head, but I haven’t been able to remember to get dish-washing detergent for the last 5 days.

I meticulously scrub the upstairs bathroom sink almost every day, but haven’t vacuumed the bedroom floor for 2 weeks.

I read the Internet every chance I get, but can’t seem to find much time to read the Bible.

I complain about being tired, but here I am writing a post when I could have gone to bed an hour ago.

I need to get myself back on track.  These things aren’t huge issues, but it starts to get to you when you notice several examples of your flakiness and lack of follow-through all in one week.

First, let me start by saying that I am incredibly grateful that this is the only (seriously, the one and only) complaint I have about my new job.

With that, allow me to share some numbers with you. The seat of an office chair is typically about 20 inches deep (believe me, I’ve researched this). Meanwhile, the distance from my rear end and where my knee bends is approximately 14 inches. If I sit with my back resting completely against the chair, the my knees cannot bend and my feet don’t touch the floor. If I rest my feet on the floor, I have almost 1/2 a foot between my body and the back of my chair. So, throughout the day I must choose to either have numb legs or a crippled back. Something tells me that the chair won’t be shrinking anytime soon, so I need to figure something out.

Any suggestions?

*UPDATE*

Upon reading this, my boss came to me and insisted that I figure out which chair was most comfortable for me.  I had a new chair in about an hour.  The power of the Internets, friends.

Currently 53% of Richmond City’s children do not graduate from high school. Meanwhile, Richmond City spends 60% more per pupil than the surrounding counties of Chesterfield, Henrico, and Hanover. Granted education is not a business - it’s an animal all unto its own - but it’s hard to ignore those numbers.

Read Mayor Wilder’s most recent Vision Newsletter. While I typically see Wilder as kind of a loose cannon (which is probably exactly how he *wants* me to see him), his insight is worth reading.

I felt more down today than I have in a while.  I’m sure it’s from coming off a hectic week and weekend, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

Usually the biggest indicator that I’m slipping down a bit is the desire to nap.  I came home and slept for an hour, something I haven’t done in a really, really long time.  Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I took a real nap (other than on vacation, but you can’t really count that).  To counteract that, I made sure to go to the gym tonight to balance my desire to be sedentary during these lower spells.

The new job is probably part of it.  My personality makes new situations with new people a bit rough on me internally.  But, patience friends.  I’ll be fine.  Nothing a hot shower and an early bedtime can’t fix.

It looks like my dresser threw up in our bedroom (keep in mind that my dresser isn’t even *in* our bedroom).  There is a visible layer of dirt and dog hair covering every hard surface in the house and I don’t even want to think what is covering every soft surface.  I need to call the carpenter back to actually *do* the repair work on our upstairs porch.  I need to go to the UPS store to send my Vans back to Zappos.com.  Both dogs need to go to the vet.  The bathrooms are crazy dirty.

If you want to help me do all of these things, please contact me.  I will pay you in love, respect, and all of the blog shout-outs you want.

Thank you.

I was at work from 8:15 this morning until 6:15 this evening.  Since we will be out of town for our long-planned and much anticipated anniversary trip to Ft. Lewis, I am not going to be at work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Consequently, I had to get myself together for various end of the year hooplah.  I also had to do some major purging because I am not bringing four years of accumulated elementary school junk into to our house.

Today was a typical June day in 5th grade.  Children going insane, forgetting how to behave.  Teachers ripping out their hair and banging their heads against the wall.

After getting home I rested for about 10 minutes and then went to the gym.  We have a church meeting tomorrow night, pot luck Wednesday night, and much eating a drinking planned for our long weekend, so I knew I needed to get some time in so I can avoid a nervous breakdown when stepping on the scale next week.  I did almost an hour of cardio because I was watching some of the Democratic presidential candidates on CNN.

I came home and took a shower and  I am utterly exhausted.  AND I GET TO DO IT ALL TOMORROW!!!!!!

We discovered Zapp curled up in a trembling ball on our bed yesterday evening.  Of course we automatically thought she was having a seizure because of Shooter’s history.  But, she was responding to her name and the trembling stopped from time to time.  We think she has just developed a really bad fear of thunderstorms.  Just to make sure nothing was really wrong, we had her stay with us in the bedroom.  It turns out that this dog dreams like crazy.  And by dreaming I mean twitching and kicking ALL NIGHT.  I got about one hour of semi-decent sleep while the rest of the night was spent in that annoying state where you’re not completely with it, but you are fully aware that you are not sleeping and guaranteed a rough day come morning.