another Friday in this girl’s life

This week has been so interesting for me with regard to my sleep issues. The thing is… there’ve been no issues! Can I get an amen? For months I’ve struggled with topsy-turvy schedules, late nights and all-nighters, and total insomnia for 40 hours at a time, and suddenly, this week, I’m sleeping and waking like normal people. Even when my nights ran long (there were a few 3am bedtimes), I still woke in six-to-eight hours and felt fully refreshed. Unless you’ve experienced this, you simply cannot know how glorious it feels when things seem to settle down. This week has felt glorious. No doubt!

After waking much earlier than my alarm this morning I decided to go ahead and watch the CreativeLIVE workshop about street photography, even though I’d pretty much talked myself out of it the night before. [I couldn't bear sitting in a chair at the computer for 7 straight hours again today.] When I woke I wasn’t really planning to tune into the workshop but I also wasn’t excited about anything else, so I just put the workshop on anyway and let it run in the background while I started checking email. An hour later I got a phone call from K2 asking if he and the last boy could come over for another swim day. My first reaction was not excitement, but very quickly I decided that sitting out in the sun was exactly what my body needed. Not to mention how refreshing it would be to have the change of scenery. In half an hour I was poolside, waiting for the boys to arrive.

Now, I haven’t swum in years. I don’t even remember the last time I owned a swimsuit. But lately I’ve been wishing I had one, and on one recent pool visit I realized it was time to just get over myself. There was a woman at the pool that day who was near my size and shape and was wearing a bikini with absolutely no inhibitions. I was at once shocked and impressed. She was completely comfortable with her mushy, curvy body rolls, and it got me to thinking how my own body issues have been holding me back from doing some things I once enjoyed. I decided that day to start investigating swimsuits so I could join the boys on future swimming adventures. I’ve no interest in exposing that much of my body to an unsuspecting public, of course, but I do believe I can find a suit with decent coverage that would also allow me to feel comfortable enough in public. Until then, I’m content to sit poolside in shorts and a tank top (also a huge step for me, as my arms are one of my worst features) and soak up some sun on my pale and freckled skin. Just getting to hang out with the boys and dangle my feet in the pool is actually pretty cool. For now.

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday in this girl’s life

There’s really nothing worse (or worse for a personal project) than feeling crummy. I still felt pretty green around the gills when I first woke around 9:00am on Thursday, so I just turned over and went right back to sleep. When the alarm went off at noon (yes, noon!) I was still lethargic and completely uninterested in being productive during the day. I lazed around right there under the sheet, checking into Twitter and reading through some of the other Week in the Life postings, until finally I felt decent enough to change rooms and try to salvage some portion of the day. I didn’t have any work deadlines, so I figured I’d just take advantage of the no-pressure atmosphere and do as little as possible all day. Maybe just read blogs and brainstorm for next week’s scrapbook pages. I wasn’t even planning to shower. It just seemed like the perfect day to do nothing at all and avoid responsibilities.

But then I started moving around. And I felt like I should take a shower, especially since I hadn’t done so the day before. [Just... ick.] And then, though I didn’t feel all that much better when clean, I went one step further and checked into work email. Which led to tabulating votes for our student photo contest, which led to a phone conversation with a former co-worker, which led to taking on a design project for her ministry, which excited me and made me feel so much better. Little by little the day turned around. I didn’t take many photos but I did find my joy in the midst of all the little annoyances. And that’s all I can ever ask.

Yes, I woke at 12:16 P.M. It was a rough night.

 

my 'morning' Twitter check-in

 

Decided to shower even though I wasn't feeling it. I still look a fright.
And my (barely there) eyebrows are completely invisible. LOL

 

Today's soft clothes. That shirt is 11 years old and will soon fall apart, but oh how I love it!
My one memento from the Chicago Blues Festival, 2000.

 

a Wednesday in this girl’s life

I knew I’d be spending all of Wednesday at home so there was no rush to get moving in the morning. Thankfully, I’ve been sleeping better at night and waking earlier in the day… or, at least, I’ve been waking in the morning instead of late afternoon. I’ve even been waking before my alarm, so that’s a huge blessing! Still, I never really jump right into morning, and this one was no different. I spent the first couple of hours lying in bed with the iPhone, checking in with Twitter and purging my email (so the junk doesn’t get downloaded when I finally get online). This has become my ritual lately. I like having the phone serve as a second computer so I can take Twitter breaks throughout the day without being tied to the laptop, and, thus, be able to walk away from the same sitting spot where I spend far too much time at once. I’ll miss this when I go back to working in an office.

After I finally got tired of stretching across the bed and felt fully awake, I decided I should do some documenting of how the morning was going to go. I’m never a big fan of self-portraits — as I’ve wrestled with body image issues for most of the years of my life — but recently I’ve been learning how to just get over myself. Ha! I’ve decided that it’s important to document myself as I truly am, which means (while at home) no makeup, sometimes unshowered, and always in what my parents call “soft clothes.” On this day I just turned on the camera’s self-timer and let it capture my reality. Like it or not.

Wednesday had been set aside for my only paying job, but it was late afternoon before I even got to that point. Being mostly unemployed really has toppled any schedules I may have once had, and I haven’t been disciplined enough to get out of those habits just yet. So, as has become the norm, I didn’t start my “work” until it was nearly time for the rest of the world to leave their offices! I knew that would take me into the evening, but I also knew that there were only a few hours of work to be done today. Wednesday’s primary task was editing photos from students for a contest sponsored by my employer. Tuesday had been the submission deadline, so I spent Wednesday putting the final photos into the website gallery and sending out the voting instructions to the rest of the staff (who will be choosing the winning photos). It’s not difficult work, but it is very tedious. Lots of resizing, cropping and uploading photos, plus some HTML coding to make the photos visible online. This year we had more submissions than ever before (nearly 300), and over the course of the contest I’ve really enjoyed watching the photos come in. All but a few were submitted by teenage students, and the subjects and composition on so many are truly amazing. Building the gallery from scratch is always a lot of fun for me, too. Now it’s just a matter of having the staff vote for their favorite three photos and handing out cash prizes! I think it’s my favorite thing the company does all year. And it’s definitely rewarding to the students.

With the work complete, I spent the rest of the evening reading articles about Google+ and trying to decide if it would be of any use to me. [I'm still not sure about that!] It was 9:00 before I even realized that I’d never eaten dinner, and around that same time I started feeling ill, so I went to my default mode and set a cooker of rice to boiling. This is my standby when (a) I’m not feeling well and don’t really have an appetite but know that I should eat something, and (b) I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to bother with any kind of prep or cooking. Wednesday night was a bit of both, I think, but a bowl of white rice with shoyu was just enough. Unfortunately, it didn’t do me any favors throughout the rest of the night as I began to feel more and more unsettled. By the time I went to bed I was still uneasy and had made the decision to scrap my plans to see a movie on Thursday. I think it was this self-cancellation that disappointed me the most.

Wednesday in Photos

This is my view each morning as I wake slowly while checking in with Twitter.

 

tools of my morning routine — unshowered version

 

 

 

At work. The Yankees theme was totally unplanned, although that is my favorite t-shirt, of course!
(Those cluttered surfaces you see in the background? Yeah, that's normal. Unfortunately.)

 

Just before bed on Tuesday I opened a letter regarding my unemployment benefits which said I was no longer eligible to receive them. My first major task of Wednesday was to call and find out why. Turns out, I simply had to renew the claim. Whew!

 

In late afternoon I finally stopped for lunch but didn't want to fuss with anything. Garden Herb Triscuits with cream cheese plus a sliced nectarine turned out to be a pretty awesome meal.

 

 

Periodically throughout these days I stand up from my laptop and living room chair in order to stretch out and change the scenery. It's nothing more than a short break, so I typically stretch across my bed and use the iPhone to check into Twitter. Some days this is my only connection with the outside world. You'll note that I'm not wearing my glasses. It seems that I've now reached the age where I cannot read up-close without removing them. ::sigh::

 

the completed gallery for the company's student photo contest

 

dinner

 

Most days I leave the bed unmade with pj's at the ready. It's just simpler that way, and then
I get to collapse into bed late at night with no effort on my part. :-p

 

Tuesday in this girl’s life

Tuesday began with a break in the heat — only up to 90 degrees at noon! — and I woke very early but fully rested and refreshed. My thoughts immediately turned to writing so I pulled Writing Down the Bones from the nightstand and read a few chapters until I felt ready to commit some morning pages to my journal. As always, the writing truly takes on a life of its own. I found myself recounting some of my earliest thoughts: a second grader about to begin a new school in a new town. By the time I finished writing I was about to tread familiar ground of that nervous young girl becoming an angry adolescent yet again entering a new school in a new town. But I left those later memories unwritten. They are already well-documented and I simply didn’t want to rehash them again. [That's a huge milestone and just might mean that those years are fully behind me, once and for all!] The morning continued in this same vein of easy-does-it movement with a bit of prayer for a young camper in Germany, a little time checking into Twitter, a leisurely period of making myself presentable for the rest of the world, and plenty of time just lying around listening to the morning’s playlist. I had errands to run today but I was in no rush. And that’s a feeling I like to hang onto!
 

Scenes from a Tuesday

 

 

 

 

K2 and the Pickle asked to come over for a swim at the apartment pool. If I hadn't been in dire need of groceries I might've spent the day hanging by the pool with them!

 

 

 

 

 

another Monday in this girl’s life

The first day of this year’s Week in the Life project began so very early. I was originally concerned that my week’s journals would be the same old tired reporting of insomnia and TV watching, but then my Sunday afternoon turned out a little differently than expected and that shifted the momentum going into Monday.

I’d had only 3 hours of sleep when I went to church on Sunday, so by the time I finally returned home in the afternoon I was ready for a nap. That nap continued through the rest of the day and into the night! It was 3:45 on Monday morning before I came back to life, lying across my bed instead of under the sheet, still in Sunday afternoon’s lounge clothes with old makeup caked on my face. And my hair! Oh, I had the perfect Lyle Lovett hairstyle when I woke. Quite attractive. Naturally, there was no falling back to sleep by that time, so I spent the morning checking in with the Twitterverse and easing into a day of website work. Despite such a long “nap” I still felt a little out of it, so Monday was really a day of stillness and online work. Which, as you know, suits me just fine on any day. And considering the day’s temperature of 105°, staying indoors all day was the only real choice for me!

The state of my bedroom after Sunday's nap turned into a full night's sleep. I didn't even put my clothes away after church!

Monday morning's playlist

breakfast: leftover eggs cha han and orange juice in my favorite mug. Once upon a time I thought my roommate was crazy for eating a rice dish at breakfast but now I get it. There's bacon in it, for goodness sake!

The thing about waking up at 3:45am is that I'm ready for a nap by 11:15. I never did fall asleep, but it was a nice rest in a cool room.

Monday's work task involved photo-editing for an online contest. I can't think of anyone better to keep me company than Agent Peter Burke and his charge, Neal Caffrey (aka 'White Collar').

By evening I was finally ready to place all of the contest photos on the website... after a bit of HTML coding, that is.

If the week's forecast is any indication, I just may stay inside every day after all. (As if that's anything new!)