theology&geometry

I just saw the comment “datz ma last day of skool” on the Facebooks.

I had to physically get up and walk away before I replied, “Oh yeah? What fucking horrible school would that be?”

Old, old, old.

While dinking around online a while back, I saw a 30-before-30 list at Making It Lovely. It got me to thinkin’ about how I’ve got a smidge more than a year before I hit the dirty thirty myself, and I set about making this list. Over-achieving? Under-?

1. Begin composting kitchen and outdoor waste.
2. Lose 25 pounds. Again.
3. Stop drinking soda. Again. (I’ve gotten a head start: No soda in two weeks!)
4. Grow something edible in the garden.
5. Do round three of Project 365.
6. Buy my beloved 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens.
7. Pay off both credit cards.
8. Start saving for retirement.
9. Volunteer some time with an organization whose mission I feel good about.
10. Go on a road trip across either rural Arkansas or rural Mississippi.
11. Start selling stationery I’ve designed in the Etsy shop.
12. Be a better, less frazzled, more organized and proactive manager.
13. Go to art trolley tour on a non-zombie night.
14. Have a date that ends with a night spent at the Peabody.
15. Acquire and integrate some salvaged historic Memphis artifact into my home or yard.
16. Attend Sunset Symphony. (I’ve never been because I always have to work.)
17. Get handsy at the drive-in theater since I never got the chance as a teenager.
18. Start planning meals and taking my dinner to work with me at least three times a week.
19. Paint the hallway so that the weird peach-colored sponge treatment never has to be seen again.
20. Record some of my family’s stories for an oral history project.
21. Get off of the demon nasal spray.
22. Get a bicycle and learn how to get around town on it.
23. Read three classics I’ve never read before.
24. Meet all of my neighbors.
25. Learn how to use chopsticks.
26. Go honest-to-God camping.
27. Start saving money with coupons.
28. Learn how to make cheesecake. Good cheesecake.
29. Get my first-ever manicure and pedicure.
30. Finally unpack the few remaining boxes that I never really dealt with when I moved into the house in 2009.

• Woke up before my alarm went off at 6:30. No snooze buttons were harmed.

• Went to the Campbell Clinic way out east to get pictures taken of my bones and let a resident feel me up (just my arm!). The doctor told me these elbow shenanigans amount to classic bursitis, which is a pointless and insulting affliction, in my estimation. That’s right, America, I got injured FROM SITTING ON MY ASS AND LEANING ON MY ELBOW A BIT AWKWARDLY FROM TIME TO TIME. The doc hooked me up with the sweet little elbow maxi-pad-in-a-tube-sock you see up there and a prescription for some anti-inflammatory medicine and told me to lay off the elbow checks. Just kidding, he totally didn’t say that, so watch your tone with me, mister.

• I drove out to Bartlett to catsit Stinky and Sammy, who, for the first time ever, were actually more than marginally interested in my existence.

• Drove back in to Midtown to pick up my (mercifully generic) pills.

• Drove back toward the U of M to make it EARLY to my tire rotation/oil change appointment at Firestone. Decided that sitting in their waiting room might not be the best use of my time, so I left my car with them and darted across traffic to the Fantastic Sams, and was delighted to find myself their only customer. Snip snip. $20 later, I feel much much much lighter and less Pentecostal. Sadly, they only took off six inches and apparently you need ten to donate to Locks of Love.

• Hopped across traffic in another direction and hoofed it to my gym. Former gym. Where I was told that in order to reinstate my membership (which expired in May 2009), I’d have to pay $205 to get me back on track, and then another $130something to renew from May 2010 until May 2016 or something. Unable to wrap my mind around that horse shit (are all gym memberships this borderline criminal? there are only four ways out of this one: Moving to an area not anywhere near this chain, paying off the $700 two-year balance, terminal illness with doctor’s note, or death), I had them sign me up for a new membership. Because my ass? Has gotten way out of hand. They were all butthurt (god, I hate that word but I need it in this instance) when I balked at scheduling a time for my complimentary fitness assessment. It’s just that I know better than to try to get motivated by having some muscle-bound dude watch me huff and pant on a treadmill, and then tell me that I just need to spend more time on the treadmill. I’ve got it, dudes. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, and then I’ll get fat again, and come pay you even more money to re-re-join!

• Hopped back across traffic to pick up my car. Which wasn’t ready. So I sat in the waiting area. At some point, some dude came out to tell me all the shit supposedly wrong with my car, including something about a PCV valve and my alignment being borked. Which is insane, since Sig’s minions fixed up my alignment, like, a month ago. And I haven’t hit a single moose since then. Not a single one! So I don’t know. I told them no thanks and then sat there for another damn half hour so they could wrap things up and come get me to check out. I got sucked into Jerry Springer for a while. Then, while getting a cup of coffee, I noticed that my car was outside, ready. No idea how long it had been there. I stood and waited for a desk dude to help me, at which point he realized who I was and called me before I could be all “WHAT THE HELL, DUDE, IT’S 12:30 AND I BROUGHT THIS SHIT IN AT 10:45!” I noticed that my janky-ass hubcaps seemed to be in the same position I had left them, and I asked how they had rotated my tires — diagonally or front to back. Front to back, I was told. I paid up and went outside and I began to continue to kind of be suspicious, because the tires didn’t appear to have been moved; the front passenger side was hubcapless and looked low. Just like I’d left it. I went back inside and told the guy that, and said, “Are you sure they rotated them?” He was annoyed, of course, because I am a stupid girl with an AWESOME haircut, and went to ask the mechanics. There was some confusion, with one mechanic even accidentally being all “well maybe not” before another one jumped in and was all “I helped him do it!” I don’t know. They told me they moved the hubcaps so they would be in the positions they were before. I wish I’d marked a tire with a grease pen or something so I’d know for sure. The only way I’ll be able to tell is if my right front tire shows a slow leak. That tire (which, incidentally, that same shop was supposed to have patched several weeks ago, but it still leaks) should be the back passenger side now. We shall see. Oh, we shall see. God, I hate getting my car serviced. Hate hate hate.

So, that’s it, really. I’ve now been awake for a really long time, and my day hasn’t even really begun yet. I’m just inside that window of time where taking a nap would be a bad idea, but I can’t go in to work just yet because people will look at me funny.

Guess it’s fat pants and coffee ’til then.

The elbow thing I referred to earlier? I thought I’d get some photos of how weird it looks in case anyone else had had this happen and wants to pass along any knowledge for me to chew on between now and the day I can actually get in to see an orthopedic doctor (my mom’s suggestion; she doesn’t think, based on my symptoms, that it sounds quite like carpal tunnel, even though that runs in our family and both my mom and dad have had both hands operated on).

Check out this magnificently weird swelling action:

I haven’t injured it in any way that I can recall. I have not, to my knowledge, wrestled anyone and done an elbow drop. It hasn’t been bruised or anything. But it’s getting progressively more uncomfortable (which could be just because now that I’ve noticed there’s a visible problem, I’m obsessing about it just a bit). Today as I was using my left hand to hold the phone to my ear while I typed with my right, I noticed my arm getting tingly and numb incredibly quickly. And now, even at rest, there are weird tingles and an odd sensitivity to my skin. Typing for long periods of time hurts.

Something bad is happening in there. I’ll get it straightened out soon enough. I have to! My left arm is, like, my second favorite arm.

Nick, Kristin, and JR came into town for a visit over the weekend. We had drinks at Ernestine & Hazel’s (sadly, there was a private party going on, so we got stuck in the restaurant part and couldn’t go hang around the bathtub upstairs) and then went back to my place for Summer Brew and silliness with some local yokels that left me and some others with weird inexplicable bruises and scrapes and pains the next day. We are old, apparently, and cannot breakdance and climb trees and hide under tables without paying dearly later. Also, my refrigerator door handle broke, but I found it, thanks to Ashley jogging my memory. There is more, I’m sure. There always is.

[Project 365]

I just turned down an invitation to a social gathering because, ahem, “I’m already in my PJs.”

Sweet Jesus. I am eighty years old.

• I woke up yesterday with a brand new grey hair. Funny thing is, I can probably pinpoint the exact moment it sprouted Thursday night.

• Our office calendars use the Futurama credit-sequence font for the names of the months. This pleases me to an exceptional degree.

• Speaking of calendars, I still don’t have one in the apartment for 2008. I’ve also decided that I need a datebook so I can write down appointments and meetings and stuff, which seem to be occurring with alarming frequency these days. Actually, I’ve decided I need a smartphone. I realize there’s a substantial price difference there, but I can get a pretty killer corporate discount on several different models of refurbished Blackberries. I’m just not sure that I should get a refurb. Anyone have any strong opinions on that?

• It’s not raining right now. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Just kidding. Maybe we’ll see some sunshine this weekend. I suppose I could check the Weather Channel, but that would require more effort than a throwaway guess, and this is a blog, therefore that’s a big no-no.

• I hate the phrase “big no-no.”

• Yesterday I waited in line at Circle K with part of the WMC-TV crew, including a regular reporter whose name I should probably know but don’t (because I rarely watch the local news; sorry, but I’m usually working during it). I had hoped he was buying scandalous things so I could come gossip about TV reporters hopped up on No Doz and Red Bull and pork rinds, but I didn’t see what he bought so that idea was a bust.

• My managing editor told me they held up my Martin Luther King special coverage front page on CNN yesterday morning. I didn’t see that either.

• I dreamed in Pixar-like cartoon last night. It even involved a kitchen at a restaurant, but there were no rodents or French people. It was quite beautiful the way my brain rendered things (for example, a wax-paper bag of beans … wtf?) and it was almost as if I was kind of floating through the atmosphere, observing the goings-on of the kitchen without actually being a part of the story. Weird. I’ll try to collect the memory scraps and post about it over at NA.

• The Tigers play tonight in hopes of making it to the championship. It’s weird living in a town where there is such vehement and loyal support for a college sports team that actually wins a lot. Murfreesboro, it ain’t. Slowly but surely I’m beginning to understand Tigermania, and I don’t altogether disapprove.

The worst part about being a grownup has got to be the paperwork. A constant stream of it, coming from store clerks and bank tellers and the mailman, pouring in, day after day, filling every pocket, every purse, every drawer, every shelf — paper everywhere.

And I’ve even opted in to paperless billing and opted out of credit-card offers and whatnot. Still, the stuff overwhelms me.

I had a frantic ten minutes today when I realized I’d forgotten to pay my student loan yesterday, and ripped around the apartment, looking for the current statement or an old statement — any freaking statement — so I could call and make my payment over the phone. (My particular loan cannot be paid online, which is so stupid I can hardly stand it.) I pilfered through drawer after drawer and stack after stack and couldn’t put my hands on a single old statement, even though I know I’ve saved lots.

(Those of you readying lectures in your head about how I need to have that information organized and/or written down in an easily accessible place can just feel bask in the notion that you are a better adult than I am. I’m not ashamed.)

Finally, after making up roughly seven new curse words and squawking them all, I found a statement from November under the tray on my coffee table. I made the call, paid the bill, and then cut out the account number and taped it to the fridge. Because that’s the only fucking way I will not lose it again.

I surveyed the paper carnage left in the wake of my hissy fit, and decided it was time to get rid of some shit. And how cathartic it is to excavate drawers full of old bills and statements and mail not even meant for you, and stand there, ripping each and every piece of piece of paper and tossing it to the ground in a symbolic fuck-you to the clutter of meticulously documented adulthood.

Granted, I probably didn’t rip diligently enough to thwart the identity thieves who pilfer through our dumpster every week, but, luckily, I have a very professional shredder on retainer.

I just found my third grey hair.

I’m back home after a day-plus jaunt to see the family and celebrate the oldest nephew’s birthday. I’m hungry, my flea-ridden animals need a bath, the apartment is — once again — filthy, I’ve got lots of e-mail- and blog-post reading to catch up on, I’ve got about 400 photos from the weekend to process, and I’ve got a few actual posts of my own knocking around in my head that I may actually sit down and work on.

Speaking of the oldest nephew, he did me the courtesy of noticing my second grey hair this weekend. What a sweetheart!