The Here & Now

I have been so busy living my life this summer that I haven't written since my birthday.
I am very negligent.
But I've been having an oh-so awesome summer.

1. We were forced to move out of our adorable little cottage into an even bigger cottage. (Will post pics later and tell the horrific story of the moving-out situation ... or maybe never; I'm trying to forget the trauma.)
2. Progress towards my MBA is moving right along.
3. We went to Cancun and -- literally -- did nothing. We just read and read and read and ate a little and drank and met fun people and swam in the ocean and snorkeled and played beach volleyball. Best. Vacation. Ever.
4. The puppy turned 3.
5. Tom turned 29.
6. We celebrated 9 years of marriage. Go us!
7. With the bigger house we've been enjoying lots of company. Movie nights, dinners, parties. It's fantastic to have the space to entertain ... something we didn't have in the old house.
8. My favorite person moved back to the USA.
9. My brother and I had an awesome sister-brother date.
10. I got kinda fat ... working on it!
11. My wonderful friend C gave birth @ 41 to a beautiful baby boy. I cried when she called with the news. I never do that but her story is an amazing one.

And -- I hate to say it -- I didn't blog AT ALL. Too busy reading and watching gobs of trash TV, and good TV, and just loving the awesome weather and all of my ultra fab friends and family.

So sorry if you've been missing me. Chances are if you read this blog, we were actually hanging out so you weren't missing much.

Coming up -- fall and winter. Gag.
But!
I am working on a new blog for the puppy which is part of a whole move to exploit/market my little dog.
I am working on an update to this blog ... possibly an actual .com address.
I am working on my body for my up and coming 30th birthday (AAAHHHH!).
I am now getting eyelash extentions. It's one of the most wonderful things to happen in my cosmetic life.

XO.

The End of Leisure

My my. Fancy seeing you here. It's been a month and in that span of time I've been up to no good.

I applied for a different position at work. It sounded SO exciting and challenging and I wanted it. But I wasn't really qualified and I could tell that my application was weak. I was not selected for an interview. It's a bummer but I am absolutely not surprised. Looking on the positive side, I am valued at my current office and with school starting I may not want to be learning a brand new job and going away for training.

I stopped going to the gym and started being lax on my diet. I gained three pounds before vacation but, GOOD NEWS, I only gained one pound while on vacation. I think the healthy eating and activity really helped. For the most part I ate apples and toast and salad; can't go too wrong there. The last night, however, we went to dinner at O Bistro. We had mussels in garlic wine sauce, delicious bread, and scallop and shrimp fettucine. In addition to some seriously gourmet food, we had a tableside magic show. It was amazing. He performed sleight of hand right before our very eyes, right on our table. Amazing.

The beachy time was wonderful. The first few days were nice and sunny -- I got burnt knees and a few tanlines despite numerous applications of 50SPF. We played beach volleyball, basketball (at which I suck), rode bikes, and frolicked in the sand and sea. My husband would boogie board for hours each day. He was definitely becoming a pro; catching the really big waves and riding them all the way in. It was exciting to see. I'm a humble boogie boarder myself. I catch smallish waves and to me, they are thrilling. The first day I banged up my knee (later to be sunburnt) and developed a nice scab. As an adult I don't have too many opportunities for scabs and I'm enjoying the itchiness that comes with healing. Plus, it looks kind of bad ass.

In addition to engaging in beach activities a la Baywatch, we also went on a tour of the Midway -- an air carrier, now decommissioned, and floating in the harbor near Coronado. Me and the hubs, we love tours and museumy stuff. He got to enter a flight simulator with my brother in law and they "flew" and "gunned down" enemy aircrafts. I can't believe that pilots are able to land and fly planes from a boat. And of course, we went to Sea World. It was bittersweet because of the whole captive-animal thing; I cried a little. We did buy the puppy a stuffed squeaker baby penguin. She is trying to eat the eyes out of its head.

But all that rest and relaxation is at an end. Tonight I start graduate school with a four (that's right FOUR) hour Teams Class. And on Thursday I do another four hour stint of Finance (ick times eleven). I love that school is only two nights a week. I hate that the classes are four hours a piece. My hope is that they will fly by because they're so interesting/hard/I'm-so-fucking-awesome. I've got my stylish bag packed with post-its, pens, highlighters, legal pad, texts, and laptop. The department actually distributed each of us a backpack but it's too manly (and functional) for me. No no, I need something to lug all my crap around that's sort of impractical and chic: enter black crocodile tote. Of course, my latop only weighs three pounds and I only have one textbook until the mid-semester break so fashionableness definitely won out.

I'm also back to the gym, back on a somewhat diet, and back to my same old job. And back to blogging.

Blog of No

It's Monday night.

I'm channel surfing (Monsters vs. Aliens again) to pass the time and the puppy is snorting and attacking the sofa next to me to pass the time. I'm waiting for Tom so that we can watch "Salt" which we rented from Redbox on Saturday night with "Easy A" and we really need to return it so that we don't pay a gazillion dollars for renting a movie that is only supposed to be a dollar. We are consistently bad at returning things on time. Case in point, Netflix. We have had the same DVD, unopened, sitting on our coffee table since April of 2010. 2010. At least Netflix doesn't charge a late fee. Or what about "Flight of the Conchords" Season 1 that I borrowed from a coworker approximately three years ago. We still haven't watched it.

But I digress.

In addition to channel surfing I'm checking up on various websites, one of them being Blogs of Note. I don't always love them but I still enjoy the suggestions and occasionally I find fantastic blogs that I immediately cherish. This is how I found Bugheart and Diary of an Indy Grrrl. My point? Well, while I don't always find a new favorite, I rarely find things I hate. And then this beauty was granted "blog of note" on January 28th.

The Tiny Leaf
(Did you click on the link yet?)

See the problem? There are no posts. The author has had them all removed. And then, in the solitary remaining post, she declines being a blog of note, expressing her with to "remain small." I find this ironic. Does this woman not know that she is writing ON THE INTERNET? A place where anyone and anything can find what you're writing and read it to their hearts content, with or without your approval or knowledge. She is concerned enough about readers to say her text and photos are copyrighted but her wish is to "remain small." I can't help but wonder, if her true desire was to stay unknown, why wouldn't she make her blog private? She notates that occasionally her posts "will come and go" which strikes me as schizophrenic. Is she just trying to tempt us into checking back on a semi-regular basis in hopes that we will finally be able to read all those super special secret posts that were deemed worthy by Blogs of Note? Well I'm not biting. I hate all that shit. Any people I meet in my life -- including internet people -- that play hard to get or try to be cool by being aloof are immediately filed under persona non grata. Blogs are about open expression, free access and sharing of thoughts. If she doesn't want to participate, I'm not going to play by myself.

And Blogs of Note: I recommend removing The Tiny Leaf from your list. After all a blog is by definition "a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also: the contents of such a site." (Thank you, Merriam Webster.) Considering that her blog now lacks all of the above, it has essentially negated its own existence.

Delete.

Who's Blog is This?

I fell off the planet after October.
So, to sum up.
October: boring.
November: stopped dancing.
December: started dieting again.

It's January 1st.
Time for resolutions:
I resolve to ...

1. start graduate school
2. meet my goal weight
3. start an exclusive monthly book club
4. start a novel
5. keep up the love

What's new with you?

Following You

I've been checking out all of your blogs, fellow thinkers.
One by one, a bit everyday.
And I started thinking --
Wouldn't life be terrible without the internet?
I wouldn't get to see into any of your lives.
Anonymity provides personal knowledge.
It's quick and easy.
Whether that's good or bad, it's the truth.
Personally, I love it.
It's plums in the pudding,
Cheese on our potatoes,
the spice of life.

Hold Please

Been away on vacation ...
New posts are on their way.
But you know me, I'm a procrastinator;
So they're half finished and un-polished.
Hold, please.
They'll be here soon.

Hope you'll wait for me, loves.

Flames on the Side of My Face

Dear Iongge,

You are a worthless piece of shit. I'm sure you're not even a real person, but I must refer to you as something, so I will use "Iongge," your username on Blogger. Thank you, new stranger-I-loathe, for leaving a spam comment on 80 something posts. I appreciate it no end. Because, really, what my readers need are reminders to purchase Viagra and Louis Vuitton bags. And I absolutely enjoy opening up each individual comment so that I can delete it.

(Note to Blogger: you need a better way to manage comments ... in case this ever happens again.)

But it better not happen again. All fury and hell will break loose, I guarantee. Of course, I have no way of loosing said fury and hell on the offender, so instead my friends and family will get to hear me complain about the wrongs of the internet and the debilitating power of capitalism. Honestly, if a humble blog is not safe from unsolicited solicitations, what is? Next people will be jumping out at me whilst showering or sitting on the loo. There is nothing I hate more than shit littering up my blog. I work hard to make my blog sleek and simple. And comments, yes, bring on the comments; those are fabulous. But this trash, this litter of nonsense, does nothing but cause me a lot of work. Iongge, I will never buy Viagra and now I will never buy Louis Vuitton. Whomever you are working for, please tell them that they have caused the companies a lost customer. And I could have bought a lot of LV in my lifetime.

Event

You are all invited to attend Folio Friday.

Every Friday I will be posting a piece of fiction.

Sometimes a single short story.

Sometimes a piece of something larger that will carry over into next week.

Bring cake for yourself to eat while you read.

Or have a glass of wine.

The best thing about this event is that you don't need to worry about RSVPing,

Or really, attending in general.

I will never know.

So you can save your good excuses for that annoying co-worker party,

Or the neighborhood kiddy birthday.

However, if you want to attend (meaning: read), I will be taking suggestions.

For example: write about divorce/family/mothers/giraffes.

Stuff like that.

I love having a jumping off point from which my mind can wander.

Accidents Happen

Well, accidents are what happen to me when I fuck around with perfection. My blog was looking good and then I decided that I was bored with it and wanted to change the layout. Wrong. I have gone from template to template trying to find something that had 3 columns and represented "my style" (whatever that is) and have, in the process, pulled my hair out AND lost vital information from my sidebar.

Case in point: ALL my family/friend blog links are gone. Do you think I know the addresses to any of those places? Fuck no. I just click on my handy link and blog stalk all of you. Now I have no idea what any of you are doing. It's like the world ended.

Or how about this? I lost the list of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING BOOK I read last year. I don't remember all the books I read; that's why I started a list -- I even wrote a post about the list that I would start. And now it is all gone and what's left is the pathetic one-liner of books completed in 2010. (Yes, I've only completed one book this year; started many, finished uno. Pathetic.)

And don't think that I wasn't smart, well, I started out smart and then became dumber and dumber (love that movie) as the process became more and more degraded. I saved a version of my old template for just this sort of problem. I thought, if anything happens, I have this saved, right here, safe on my desktop. But after all the weird templates and the strange crap they had, several widgets were lost and even though I don't know what a widget is, they're apparently important and NOT saved in your template. Sure, when I uploaded my old template the gadgets were listed as an element on my page -- but were EMPTY.

Fuck. I hate my blog life right now.

So, I hope my layout doesn't piss you off (like it does me) and I hope you still come to read my random thoughts. I will say this about my experience: there is nothing like change to make you re-evaluate what you really want.

Send me your blog links.
And that's Gelsey Kirkland at the top. The best female American ballerina of our time, imho.

One Done

Oh yeah, just wanted to say that my list of Not New Year's Goals is one shorter.

Please cross off "get promoted."

"Become a ballerina again" is in the works, but I don't consider it official until I'm on pointe again.

Now I only have 8 left.

I love progress!

What Procrastination Means to Me

I am a procrastinator in my personal life. @ work -- never. But when it comes to my own goals, I am always late and running behind.

I have ample examples:

*My niece just turned three. I was supposed to make her a baby quilt.

*I have a half finished afghan for my mother ... that was supposed to be given to her 2 Christmases ago.

*A quilt for my bed, 3/4 finished, sits in the closet.

*The whites are still in the dryer waiting to be folded and put away.

*I paid $17 in late fees @ the library.

*My car receives an oil change every 5,000 miles.

*I still haven't bought Christmas presents for my friends.

*This blog. Only 36 posts last year. What a disappointment.

I suppose I delay things because I am a leisurely sort of person when not at work. I like naps and eating in bed and watching tv with my puppy and husband. And the nagging disappointment in myself? I can push that aside, too. However, it's a new year, and while I like to put-off self-assigned tasks, I also am a fan of self-betterment. So.

I will finish projects.

I will love my loved ones more than ever.

I will write and write and write

... and perfection be damned,

I will still procrastinate.

A Note

Dear Blogger:

I hate your formatting. Sometimes I have to re-post and re-post in order to get the spacing exactly the way I want it. Is this, or is it not, MY BLOG? If I say I want a break after each paragraph, I fucking mean it. Shape up or ship out. Let's not let our friendship fall apart because you're an occasional piece of shit.

Turns Out...

...I'm alive after all.

After taking a break,

which came from nowhere,

I am back to here,

wherever here is.

Why the absence?

No idea.

Had love, had friends,

had happy.

Perhaps just preparing

for something new.

Stick around

for the plunge.

1 and 2

Whilst browsing for pics for my post about peeing, I found this: Yes, they are indeed stuffed pee and poo plush toys

which you can purchase.

Apparently Pee and Poo are friends

and live in a color coordinated magical world.

I gather that they are in love -

based on the hearts

and rainbows

and outstretched arms.

Look - Pee and Poo want to give you a hug.

100th

Ta Da!

Welcome to the 100th post,
which is nothing about
the number 100
or posting
and yet is all about both.

Fascinating.

Love, Johanna

Sleepless in Salt Lake

It is said that those who sleep with others (as in married people) do not sleep as well as solo sleepers. I do not believe this. Tom is in Colorado walking door to door for the Obama campaign and I'm stuck here working. I've been trying to keep myself busy by going out late with friends after work, attempting to delay the inevitable: coming home to an empty bed. Once home, I blog, read, listen to my audiobook, watch bad t.v., but eventually I have to try to fall asleep. I lie down, cold and restless - not feeling sleepy in any way. I've been zonking out around 3 or 4 in the morning, waking up around 7 or 8 for a phone call with Tom, then back to sleep before work. Needless to say, I'm tired.

Tom and I have excellent sleeping arrangements. We love bedtime. We don't have a side of the bed so we can always switch it up. We always cuddle so we can be comfortable. And the heat of his body keeps me in a deep sleep all night long. I hear people saying that they can't fall asleep or that they have trouble staying asleep, but not me. Perhaps it's because we've been sleeping together for so long. When we were first married, we both worked graveyards and slept any chance we could get. We've always gone to bed at the same time - together - slowly building up our tolerance for the other's shuffles and shifts.

Of course, now we have the problem of not being able to sleep very well without the other. Last summer when he was in China I would sleep restlessly for a couple hours every night, wake up just in time to rush to class, and then crash for another couple hours before work. I was constantly exhausted. He was only sleeping about 5 hours a night. Luckily he's only gone for a few days this time around. And when he gets home I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep with him so I can catch up on my zzzzzzs.

Catch Up On Your Reading

Dear Blog:

It's true that I've been neglecting you, but don't hate me. I've just gifted you with many posts; posts I've been working on in secret, as a surprise for you. You deserve it.

-- Jo

My Brain Works, I Think

I try to write everyday. But, you know I was totally funked out both before we went to China and whilst there. July has ended, and Blogger told me just how pathetic my writing has been. Only 12 posts for the month. Clearly that is NOT writing everyday. I'm disappointed, but I can't really help the depression of leaving everyone I love, living in China, and then finding out that I'm a little lost in life.


Unlike many writers, I can't write when things are awry in my personal self. In fact, in order to write I need to BE myself. Perhaps it should have been a sign that amongst our prep for departure, I couldn't write. I told myself that the empty blog was due to stress (which is true) and the weirdness of getting ready (also true) but if I recall correctly, I mentioned that I didn't feel like myself. A person should always find their own person familiar, right?

So, a word of advice, if you feel weird, something is weird. If you can't write, your brain probably isn't working. Mine is functioning properly now. I'm back in action and as I am currently unemployed, expect some really exciting posts (insert sarcasm....oh yeah, I'm totally back to normal).

Abandoned Blog

Tom and I started another blog which would be about our experiences in Shanghai. It has pics of what we're doing and all that jazz. And, of course, I have my own. However, neither of these connections with home and friends can be maintained at the moment because our new apartment lacks an essential function.

The internet.

Holy shit. Just try not having the internet. You will die. We are dying. And no one knows that because we don't have the internet to tell them that we're fucking dying. I hate not having access to the world outside of our apartment. We can't speak with friends or family. We can only read our email at the school, which is NOT private. Not to mention that the internet at the school is CHINA internet which means that random websites are blocked - including Facebook (depending on the day). So, our blogs are alone and floating in "cyberspace" unread, unattended, un-updated. If you don't hear from us, you'll know why.

Sad Blog

Doesn't my blog look familiar? It's been looking the same, i.e. no new posts, for an entire week now. Well, I've been busy so don't give me too much shit. However, I feel for you (I think I have like 7 readers...) who haven't had something to love or hate for so long.

I'm officially leaving the country. Everything has fallen into place and we are leaving for real. The following things have prevented me from writing:

1. leaving my job
2. depression at leaving my job
3. anxiety about leaving my job
4. sadness at leaving my coworkers (most of them...MRSA aside)
5. overwhelming amounts of stuff in my apartment
6. taking said stuff and minimizing it to 7 tidy pieces of luggage
7. hanging out with family so we can be sick of each other to ease the parting pain
   
8. crying over my soon-to-be-sold car
9. eating as a coping mechanism

So, you can see why I haven't written. I'm in a total funk. If I thought that I was in limbo before, now I'm in purgatory. Everything is moving so quickly, but I can't remember what day it is so I can't keep up with time so it's (time, that is) slowly slipping away.

This is not to say that I'm not totally thrilled. My friend Conor said Shanghai is "the coolest fucking place in the world" which makes me think I'm pretty fucking lucky to be living there in the near future. I'll feel more like a human being rather than a pack animal when I get myself on the plane and have a cocktail. Until then, I'm hit or miss.

Ahh, stress. It's a killer.