asleep at the keyboard

I'm working in a fog this morning. I have my multitude of tasks vying for attention in my brain.
"Me next!"
"No, me first!"
"Don't do that!"
"I'm the priority"

And I have a headache.

I haven't read any blogs in weeks. Bloglines is showing that I have 1549 unread posts.

I have two 800-word articles to write that are past due. I was given a short deadline; they're not for my magazine, I'm not getting paid for them, and I haven't written anything that substantial in a long time. Yes, I'm procrastinating.

On Sunday kcprogrammer came with me to help my paternal grandmother move into her new place. We began at 7a.m. and had moved two loads in an hour and a half. But the work wasn't over. We then went to my maternal grandmother's house to assist my mom in sorting through the last of the items and putting them into a U-Haul truck bound for a storage unit. Kcprogrammer got an excellent chance to see how the two sides of my family operate very differently.

I don't know how it happened but the sale of both houses is today.

That's it from me for now. Toodles.

back and busy

I'm back from the Windy City. Had a great time. And most of my favorite magazine friends were there in all of their award-winning glory.

My bed was ridiculously hard. I mean really hard. So hard that it wasn't just me complaining. One person was moved to a different room and wasn't charged for his uncomfortable night. Others just complained. For me in the end, they put a thick feather bed down, and with six pillows around me, I was able to sleep just fine.

On Saturday night I got an amazing chance to see Cirque du Soleil's Corteo. It was one of the best performances that I have ever seen. It had a story line that I think I almost was able to understand. And that's only because they threw in a bit of English. OK, I just read a little more about the story line for Corteo. I need to downgrade my estimation of how much I understood. I got the funeral part and the procession. But I completely didn't catch on that he was a clown!

time flies

I leave for Chicago in two days. There is so much to get done before then. I have a running mental list (and am sure to forget half of its contents).

One thing I didn't forget this morning was finding my flight itinerary so that I could send it to kcprogrammer. He had kindly volunteered to take his girlfriend to the airport for her flight on Wednesday morning. Except when I looked to check the exact time, this is what I saw: 7:05PM. Shite.

kcprogrammer even had to read it a second time before he notice the error. Now what?

My choices:

• Fly out at 7:05pm and miss out on a reception where I'd meet the other scholarship winners, the organizations board members and staff, and conference speakers. There was even a chance that I could go to the national board meeting and talk about my chapter's blog. And I was going to try to fit in a wee bit of sightseeing.
• Pay $151 to change my flight to 7:40am. Um, no.
  
• Fly standby and risk the boredom of a day spent at KCI and the chance that my butt could still be on that 7pm flight.
• Call three hours in advance of the flight I want to get advance standby. Confirmation price: $25. First flight out (and probably the most likely to have open seats): 6:20am. Three hour call ahead time: 3:20am. Ugh.
  

So, I'm feeling understandably brilliant this morning.

a day's difference

OK, so Thursday kinda sucked. Friday in contrast was great.

The family stuff calmed down a bit.

At work, we met with a new hire who's going to be taking over a nice chunk of our web duties. I am so happy. I was about to drown with rolling out three newsletters a week along with my regular duties. And then I found out that it was my day to take summer hours (and leave work at 1pm). I owe my thanks to the editor who took care of a task for me that afternoon. And before I left, our company fed us free pizza.

And it was my nine-month anniversary with kcprogrammer. Cheesy, maybe, but it makes me happy. He brought me some gorgeous roses and treated me to a lovely dinner. And the weather was good, so we walked to Blockbuster.

family wear and tear

It's been a busy week.

I worked 11 straight hours yesterday. My very empty stomach was grateful for the Maui Express my roomie and YellowDancer picked up for me.

I also got a troubling email from my uncle and a call from my mom. It's stuff about my grandma and the sale of her house. But what I think it's really about is power. There's a tug of war for control right now in my family. And I'm sad. Everyone is acting how each thinks is best. But the ideas of "best" counter each other and create friction.

I've been thinking about family a lot lately.

One of the morning shows on the radio was talking about a dating website that is targeted at married people. The host was basically talking about how cool of an idea it was and how he'd love to get with a rich, married woman. And my heart hurt.

My roomie and I watched an episode of Bridezillas the other night. The show followed two brides as they prepared for their weddings. Now the show works hard to cherry pick the craziest of the crazy for the best emotional explosions, but I think these women offer magnified views of our culture's warped sense of weddings and married life. And I'm including both Christians and secularists into this culture, so don't think you're exempt for some reason. We're all warped.

Even if we try not to be, we're still affected by consumer culture. We're hungry for more, for what's different than what we currently have, for what's more expensive than what the person next to you has, for what "better," for more power, for power over others.

And it subtly seeps in to our decisions. We may be able to explain or support our positions without reference to our inner greed, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. And the more we ignore it, the more we hide the true source of our actions, the more difficult we make it to align our goals with others.