Pickles & Dimes

Hey, parents! Do you have a snotty teenager grumpily stalking around the house telling you how they CAN’T WAIT to move out so they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT without anyone telling them what to do and it’s going to be SO AWESOME?

Well, I give you permission to give them a sneak peek into a typical week in the real world, and how it sometimes is the total opposite of awesome.

Sunday
- Use garbage disposal for its intended purpose.
- Watch sink back up and disperse clog to parts unknown.
- Spend majority of evening plunging sink. Fail to fix.

Monday
- Get up early to fix sink. Fail.
- Drive to work. Discover car has a flat tire.
- Have work project completely blow up (deadline is shortened but information needed to complete project is AWOL).
- Receive phone call from mechanic saying tire is not repairable.
- Pay $250 for two new tires.

Tuesday
- Get up early to use newly purchased drain auger to fix sink. Fail.
- Get call from vet about ancient kitty’s weekend test results. Need to bring still-angry kitty back for further testing.
- Pay plumber $280 to spend nearly three hours cabling drain line before finally clearing out clog.
- Due to extended plumber visit, eat dinner at 9 p.m., like New Yorkers. (Only, as husband points out, “Most New Yorkers probably don’t have to get up at 4 a.m. to go to work.”)

Wednesday
- Give work client email ultimatum: Send needed information or deadline won’t be met. Get ignored.
- Find out running route assumed to be 3.1 miles is actually only 2.8 miles, making running time officially pathetic.

Thursday
- Drop off grudge-holding kitty at vet for additional test.
- Accompany city assessor around house, presumably so she can lower property value to the point it needs a minus sign in front of it.
- Work from home. Get last-minute request that completely derails other last-minute request.
- Pick up demise-plotting cat from vet with instructions to redo all testing in six months ($250).
- Squeeze massive amounts of productivity in between 3,047 interruptions.
- Go to dentist. (Sadly, this will be the highlight of the week.)

Friday
- Completely erase all memories of week using a combination of pet therapy, cribbage, and grilled meats.

So.

I don’t know if I want to continue writing here. It started out as a fun little hobby where I vented about everything and anything (and I mean anything), but now I’m in a place in my life where things are really good. And nobody wants to read about things being really good. It’s human nature. Besides, I write for 8 hours a day at work and the last thing I want to do once I’m home is go on the computer. (I have my Kindle to snuggle with, anyway.)

It’s not like I still don’t have things to write/complain about, because I do (like how nearly $1,000 floated out of our bank account in the span of 48 hours when Jason’s vehicle needed repairs and we needed a brand-new garage door opener after our existing one startled me out of my morning meandering by dying a bandsaw-sounding death after opening 1/8 of the way).

And it’s not that I no longer have deep thoughts to share; I do (very rarely, I assure you). It’s just that I want to experience these thoughts as they are: fluttering, beautiful butterflies to be enjoyed. I don’t have the desire to chase them around with a net to be pinned unceremoniously to this blog.

I’m not quite sure what my point is anymore. Just thinking out loud, I guess. If I had the inclination, I’d shut off comments because I’m not looking for people to tell me to keep writing (or, on the contrary, to do everyone a favor and STOP writing).

So.

So, remember that race Jason bugged me to run on my birthday? And remember how I resisted, and bitched and moaned and basically made Jason’s life miserable?

Yeah, well, here’s my public apology: Jason, I’m sorry I complained so much. I ran the race, and it was a blast.

My main worry was that it was going to be cold. HAHAHAHHAHA. It was so warm that morning (like, 65 degrees at 9 a.m.) that I ran in just shorts and a t-shirt — and even then my face felt like it was going to explode and send melted pieces of my nose everywhere.

Nearly 8,800 green-clad people were running the race, so we were at the end of the pack at the starting line. We were running with about eight others that we knew, and they started singing a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” to me. Pretty soon, hundreds of strangers also joined in. That was pretty embarrassing/awesome.

From the time the race officially started to the time I actually crossed the starting line and activated my chip, 20 minutes had passed. Jason took off at his much-faster pace while I turned on my iPod and just went with the (slow-moving) flow. I ran for about 17 minutes before I stopped to walk. Every single time I run, I’m fine until that first time I stop. After that, it’s like I’ve given my body the go-ahead to stop whenever it wants, despite trying to force myself to run for a certain amount of time before stopping again. Unfortunately, that strategy went out the window pretty quickly.

I was trying to keep myself on track by watching for the flags signifying I had completed another kilometer, when I noticed that it had been a loooooong time since I’d passed the 5k flag, and the 6k one was nowhere in sight. Consulting my stopwatch, I realized I was waaaaaay off my pace, and in fact, was probably going to take a good hour and six minutes to finish. I had no real goal for this race since I was planning on never running this distance again, but I ran it once inside on the treadmill in 53 minutes, and once outside the weekend before, where I did it in a very windblown 56 minutes.

Berating myself for walking too much, I slowly started jogging, feeling the burning anger of two blisters that decided to present themselves. Then, I turned a corner and only a few hundred yards ahead of me, saw these glorious words:

GET LUCKY 7K FINISH LINE.

I sprinted to it like a rabid monkey on crack.

I finished in 55:50, well behind the 50 minutes I had hoped for, but better than the 1:06:00 I estimated. (Jason did it in 43:09.) How I ever missed seeing that 6k flag, I’ll never know, especially since I was inspecting every flag, sign, placard and banner in sight (one of our friends also missed seeing it).

All that matters is that I finished.

And that I’ve agreed to do it again next year.

This is going to sound insane, but I have a sneaking suspicion that one of my recent sweater purchases is making me feel bad. Not because it was an outlandishly expensive sweater – quite the opposite, mind you, since I paid $5 for it at a thrift store – but because my mood is always so bad whenever I wear it.

It’s not due to it fitting terribly either. Believe me, I have plenty of too-tight pants or too-short shirts that jump at the opportunity to slide raucously across the xylophone of my self-esteem, thank you. This sweater fits fine. It just…affects my mood negatively.

That sounds crazy, right? I mean, I buy into the whole thought process of certain clothing making you feel great about yourself, so why can’t I entertain the idea of clothing doing the opposite?

For example, whenever I wear my favorite dress with my red shoes, I feel fantastic. I get compliments, which make me feel even more fantastic, which further fuels this happy cycle of looking great and feeling great. (In fact, when Shorty jumped up and ripped the dress, I went out and bought an exact replica.)

I also have a “lucky” black blazer. It pains me to admit this, but this blazer is from at least 1995 (complete with shoulder pads!), but it still looks fashionable and nice on me, and I wear it whenever I need to perform well, such as for job interviews or public speaking engagements. It boosts my confidence for some reason, and I don’t question it.

But…this sweater. I don’t know what to think. It’s a pretty pale yellow sweater from Ann Taylor, and I get compliments on it, but every time I wear it, I just feel…off. Blah. Down. Annoyed ever-so-much at Everything. It doesn’t matter that I have super-cute jewelry to wear with it, or that it’s my favorite color of buttery yellow. It just doesn’t make me feel right, you know?

Am I nuts? Do you think cute, well-fitting clothing can affect your mood negatively? Did I inherit the previous owner’s bad karma? I thought about wearing my lucky blazer over it to see if the “good” overcomes the “bad,” but that would look stupid, making me feel even worse and defeating the whole purpose.

What do you think? Should I get rid of the sweater?