wandering sails

word consumption.

i consumed a book today. i read about 12 pages last night to get started, and once i picked it up again this morning, i didn't want to put it down. so i didn't. i'm not entirely sure why i impulsively picked up the book yesterday afternoon, but i'm glad i did. i know it has something to do with wanting to see the movie that was based on the book, but i hadn't planned on getting it. i laughed out loud today at lunch while i sat by myself. in true glass cage of emotion style, i cried at my desk. i smiled at the thoughts & feelings words evoked. this, this was a good book. it being the first of a series, i took a 15 minute break and went out to buy the second one. tomorrow, i will have to work, as i haven't done much that resembles it today. but i have tonight. i will likely skip the reality show with the foul-mouthed chef that has somehow sucked me into it's viewership. i will likely make a rather simple dinner. and it's quite likely that i will thoroughly enjoy myself. because i seem to not be able to quench this thirst for more of the lives of four girls who share a pair of pants. that little gate in the front of your brain that tells you when you're full is out of order. it's not so unusual that i get in the reading mode... unable to get enough words and sentences and images. and when i find a new author that has the ability to get inside my mind and my heart, i will seek out all that i can until there is no more to be had and i must be satisfied with what i have received. until that point, though, i read with a hunger i wish i could muster in other areas of my life. the book? the sisterhood of the traveling pants. the author? ann brashares. enjoy.

posted by julie @ 4:16 PM 0 comments

who needs sleep?

i've been tired. very tired. just on this side of functioning tired. so tired some days that i really ought to have just stayed in bed and taken care of the tired thing. but i haven't. because i've had things to do. and just what have i been doing for two weeks, you ask? let me tell you, because i'm still fairly tired and have been having a hard time thinking about what to write, and this gives me an answer...

two weeks ago, i'd just been given some really hard news, which reminded me of some other hard stuff i had chosen not to deal with. i was forced to deal with things at least a little bit, because my back burner was getting pretty full and threatening to make a pretty big mess if i didn't deal. so i did that.

i played with a couple of my absolute favorite girls one night, so their parents could go out. i did that.

i hung out with my friend, kathy, another night. we were going to work on something, but she was so tired that we just watched a movie. i cannot remember which movie, but i'm pretty sure i was awake for the whole thing. i did that. i also got a really good night's sleep that night on a couch, which was good, because i was going to need it.

last weekend, mama jean picked me up from work and we headed up to timber bay. i'm always so thankful when i don't have to ride in the van with the girls. not that i don't love them and enjoy them, it's just that they're so loud. and it's a small space to be in with so many loud teenage girls. i spent the weekend running around with these girls i have come to call my girls. i swam for about six hours or so. and i do mean swam. at the shallowest part of the area we swam in, if i stood on my tippy-toes and tilted my head back, i wasn't sucking in water. so, i was treading water or swimming in it virtually the whole time. it's a great workout. especially when you have three or four girls with lifejackets on that think they're going to drown if they don't hang on to you and push you down to keep them up. that's fun. and i love it. how empty my life would seem without these girls in it. we shut lights off at or after midnight every night and i was up by six or seven each morning. it was great. so i did that.

monday, we had a storm in the middle of the day that took our power, so they sent us all home early. i layed. that's all i did the entire afternoon into the evening. then i made dinner, did the dishes and some laundry, went to bed.

tuesday, i left work and by the time i was five miles down the interstate, i was soaked. it was so hot. so i stopped and bought a new shirt and then met my mom for dinner at this great little corner cafe. after that, we met her friend at their church and scrapbooked. i mostly organized my 2005 stuff, but i did get a couple of layouts in, which feels good, since i haven't had time to scrap at all lately. so i did that.

wednesday, i met my friend lyndsay and we drove down to edina. organized living is going out of business, we discovered, so we paid the store a visit. then, we walked around the little park behind my lab, i don't actually know what it's called, but we did that for a few hours, took some pictures and just caught up with each other. so i did that.

yesterday, i had to run a few errands after work, so i didn't get home until about 8, then i made dinner, watched a bit of tv and went to bed by 9:30. it was a good night.

tonight, i am agendaless. it's a wonderful feeling. in fact, most of my weekend will be spent gardening, cleaning and relaxing. and i will do that.

posted by julie @ 10:00 AM 0 comments

comfort food.

life isn't really funny. it's irritating and frustrating and hard. yes, there are times when the light shines through the clouds and things are good and well. in fact, i live most of my days feeling like all is right with the world, that life is good. then, someone gets breast cancer. and someone is cruelly fired from the job they've held for 35 years. and someone loses their baby. and it knocks you out of the bubble of comfortable disturbances. and nothing else seems important. your life seems so little, so sad. and what can you do? can you take the bitter cancer away? can you heal the hurt caused by long-time friends? can you bring the babies back? no. for this person, this me, who yearns to control the spin of her world, it feels utterly uncontrollable. because it is. and i don't know what to say. and i don't know what to do. so i do nothing. because it scares me. if i say something, if i do it, it becomes so much more real than it was. and life is easier when you live on the surface. when you choose to pretend it's all okay. that's the only thing i can control-and i somehow cling to that, which gives me no real comfort at all and brings on a hoard of guilt from not being of comfort and help to others. i hate surface living-that's not the life i have been called to live. but i find myself reverting to it when something like this happens. it's my comfort food.

posted by julie @ 4:23 PM 0 comments

the great minimizing event.

tomorrow is the garage sale. i have never hosted one before, so this is such a new experience for me. ever since i made the first of 21 moves when i left my parents' house for college, i have accumulated stuff. stuff i thought i needed. stuff that i would, of course, never have to replace or lose interest in, or grow out of. and stuff that i could have just because i could. it's so easy to justify the stuff when you have arguments like that. almost every one of those 21 times that i packed my life up in boxes and bins and bags, i would decide that i needed to get rid of some stuff. simplify. i'm all about simplification. i subscribed to real simple for two years. now i just buy it almost every month. see? i'm all about simplification. i just never get to that point.

but tomorrow is the garage sale. i was motivated by two things. one, i now have a garage, which i haven't had since i left my parents' house. two, maple lake has an annual all-city garage sale. i.e. no need to advertise, people just swarm. other people have jumped on the bandwagon of my garage sale, which seems to have created more work for me. as if i actually had spare time.

my mom, who is quite the trooper, is a big help. a lot of the stuff being stored in my garage is hers and she's been over once to sort stuff. she'll be there all day today doing the same and will be there for most of the day tomorrow. i'm glad she'll be there today by herself, because when she was over last week, she annoyed me. i was plugging away, having someplace to be when we were done, and she was lollygagging over in the corner for, like, 8 years. she'd be going, going, then she'd find a stack of papers and decide to check out each individual paper. since they've been in storage, forgotten, for a few years, they certainly must be worth saving. so i kept getting annoyed with her because i was working and she was slowly deciding. i was all about getting rid of, she was thinking, maybe keep.

last night, i actually started pricing. i have no idea how to price a garage sale. i don't want any of the stuff, so i wanted to price cheap so it would sell. but i didn't really know what that meant. my grandma said a quarter is pretty cheap and you could get away with a lot of stuff being twenty-five cents. most people will part with a quarter, whether they need the stuff or not. but as i started to sort more boxes & bins, i saw my mother. eerie, huh? i was second guessing myself left & right about stuff. i should probably keep this. aaahh, so and so gave me this... can't sell that. doesn't matter that it's been living in a rubbermaid tub for two years, someday i'll want to see this as i'm tripping down the never-ending memory lane. to my credit (and to my mother's), most of the stuff that was hemmed and hawed over was eventually put in the sell pile. but it certainly called my attention to my week-old annoyance at her putzing. oh, to be convicted. this is the fruit of life. one would be surprised to find that i am not a dancer. no, no i'm not. as much as i'm kept on my toes, i am not gracefully gifted.

anything that doesn't sell tomorrow will be given either to this great place in annandale called the free store, which is really like a salvation army, only you don't have to pay to get the stuff; or to my girls down in minneapolis. then all i will be storing are empty bins. for the next time i move.

so tomorrow is the garage sale. finally, after eight years, my dreams of the simplification process will be implemented. how good this feels. and what a great way to keep me away from purchasing more stuff at everyone else's minimizing events. it's like a weight loss program for the home.

posted by julie @ 10:06 AM 0 comments