Femme Flavor

There are many awesome things about having dinner with friends who are parents of a small baby child, a preacher, and a seminarian. I think my favorite is the number of ways I can deliberately misinterpret innocuous phrases that come from the iPod app that teaches animal recognition, or directions on how to feed a fussy baby. Lil G, my chosen-family niece, is gonna learn all kinds of fun things from her Auntie K – if Mamas J don’t disown me before she’s able to pick up on my subtleties.

I am all kinds of sleepy from a day that has involved many things that encourage full-body exhaustion, and also so full of love from so many sources. It has been a pretty fan-freaking-tastic Friday, and the weekend has only just begun. It’s gonna be a good one, I think.

My brain is taking the night off, so I will conclude yesterday’s post tomorrow. In the meantime, I am going to be in my bed by 10:30pm again, and hopefully asleep by 11:30pm again. The multiple wakeups throughout the night aren’t my favorite, but at least they’re not the anxiety-dream-prompted high alert bolts out of bed of a few months back.

Actually, I’m pretty rarely on high alert these days. None of the people in my day-to-day life create in me that hyper awareness, that need to be ready for crisis out of the blue, that has often been present. It’s kind of awesome not to always be in self-protection mode.

Since otherwise this will feel hugely unproductive, I am going to leave you with my to-do list for the next few days. Or at least part of it. Just the fun parts, really; you don’t care that I need to do laundry. Though one of the stories associated with that is fun. But I digress. The list :)

• Follow up on the almost-vom-inducing email of Sunday night. From the correct email address this time, dammit.
• Buy a zillion groceries because the boy has, once again, eaten everything not nailed down in the kitchen. And maybe a few things that were. But I do love payday grocery shopping; it makes for lots of awesome cooking over the weekend.
• Repot my jungle plant wannabe. She is a beast and is taking over the living room; I went in to water her today and I swear she had wrapped a dime I’d left on the table in one of her little tendrils all nonchalant-like. Thieving lil plant.
• Make an appointment with USM Admissions. My CCSF stuff is nearly all fixed, and I need to wheedle them into some reasonable exception to the HS transcript thing. I wonder if the admissions officer I’ve been emailing with is into cleavage. I will consider this carefully when planning my outfit.
• Be excited for a visit from my lovely Femme friend Heidi! We have been online friends through her partner for a bit over a year, and are finally meeting face-to-face. No hurricane or winter storm this time, pleaseandthankyou universe!
• PAY ALL THE BILLS.

Okay, so that last one wasn’t fun, but one can never pass up an opportunity to give a hat-tip to Hyperbole and a Half. Because that shit is just plain awesome.

My organization offers Dale Carnegie training sessions every quarter. I attended “Interpersonal Competence for Career Growth” in June, and one of the takeaways was Dale Carnegie’s “Golden Book,” a pocket guide to the fundamental principles these courses and Carnegie’s books address.

As I was setting up shop in my new workspace, I decided to give the golden book a more prominent focus, and to fold it open to a new page after really taking some time to think about and incorporate the principles on the page I’m on. The first page I chose contains principles from How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

Fundamental Principles for Overcoming Worry

1. Live in “day-tight compartments.”

2. How to face trouble:

     a. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”

     b. Prepare to accept the worst.

     c. Try to improve on the worst.

3. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health.

The last one in particular reminded me of my earlier post about neglecting and abusing our emotional selves, and the physical manifestations of the workings of our mind alone. At an impromptu meeting this morning, we received some data – just information, no concrete plan for change, but still, the atmosphere was thick with worry and anticipation. “What ifs” began flying, and with them, heart rates and anxiety levels and muscle tension.

If we keep these few simple principles in mind when faced with information that causes worry, if we can bring the focus in to the “day-tight” view, consider the worst and turn it over in our heads with logic rather than fear, and breathe deeply to keep our bodies from running away with our worry, then we can move forward with some confidence that we are prepared for the next piece of data.

Take it all in stride, baby. That’s what we gotta do.

I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes tonight and realized that I am really not a film snob. I’m just not, and I’m okay with that. I’m not a book snob, either, which bothers me a bit more, but that’s for another post.

I can see why a lot of people say this Sherlock Holmes is crap, that the plot is nowhere near as good as the first one, that the only decent parts are the interactions between Holmes and Watson (which are absolutely the best parts, I can’t argue that), but I don’t think Guy Ritchie was trying for a masterpiece to rival Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary portrayals – I can think of plenty of films with less going for them that have also been enjoyable enough to justify seeing them in a theater. The script is witty, the cinematography impressive, and the costumes (though probably not historically accurate – sorry, Melissa, I know that’s a peeve of yours) swoon-worthy. There were slight twists that we were able to guess, which is fun, and bigger ones we had no real way to see coming, which keeps it engaging.

While, as a writer, I feel like I should dedicate my reading time to studying the craft from the literary greats, I think it’s okay for me to indulge my love of fluff when it comes to movies. I have a not-so-secret passion for superhero films – almost all of the Batman movies, Spider-Man (he’s always been my favorite), Superman, X-Men, Iron Man. I have little guilt about the pleasure of watching Bring It On, 10 Things I Hate About You, and pretty much any dance or music-related teen flicks – Drum Line, Save the Last Dance, Center Stage. Then you have your garden-variety cult favorites, some with more of a following than others – The Princess Bride, High Fidelity, Cruel Intentions. I even have the occasional desire to watch an action flick with some redeeming quality – The Negotiator, The Rock, XXX (in case you were wondering, my cats were named for Xander Cage and Yelena from that movie).

So, after seeing Game of Shadows, I want to re-watch the first Sherlock Holmes, and maybe The Matrix, and I want a traveling suit with a bustle and a brocade corset dress and a castle built into a Swiss cliff with a thundering waterfall. Except maybe not, because Switzerland is freaking cold, and I would have an even harder time deciding what shoes to wear out for an evening in the winter there. I’ll rethink where to put my castle.

Moving is such a weird experience. Right now, I’m just moving my office, from this cubicle to a new, slightly less cubicle-y cubicle in a new building. But in the year I’ve been here, I’ve created a little timeline of stuff - cards and quotes and flowers and drawings and stories and one stuffed pink flamingo. What’s interesting is how I react to each item as I contemplate its fate. Some things go in the trash without a second thought, and good riddance, but some of them require quite a bit of thought – not about whether or not to toss them, that never crossed my mind – but where they will go from here.

I could re-create what I have here, using the same things that have been on my cubby walls for however long I’ve had each one. But I could also bring those things home and start with a clean slate. It seems like a silly thing to spend so much time considering, but it’s representative of a whole lot more than cubicle design – it’s about moving forward, letting go. And, the part that makes those hard to do sometimes: it’s about believing that new artwork and flowers and stories will fill the walls before too long.

So, I’m going to take my treasures home and look forward to the first one that will find its way to my new office. It’s like… a birthday, except not knowing which day it’s on! Wheeeeee, so exciting. Happy Friday, all :)