It feels like it’s been a million years since I’ve had the
chance to write a blog, and yet the days since my last blog each passed so
quickly that weeks slipped by before I even really realized it. The new job
gobbled up my life with such stealth that just now, as I reflect on it, I
realize how thoroughly I’ve been consumed. I love what I do – I love the hours
and hours of meetings, being paid to be creative, closing the door of my office
to do my embarrassing happy dance after a big win. What I’m not completely
enamored with is how few people speak to me. There are days I don’t talk to
anyone and I feel like my own little island. I’m terrified that they assume I’m
in there designing genius, when in actuality I’m in there trying to quickly
re-teach myself the four years of college I’ve managed to forget since 2009.
(Newest Windows Publisher…..whaaaaat?) So each day I come home like a stress
zombie having faked a days worth of bravado for the Board, and now having 2-3
hours of more work ahead of me on my home computer.
And also, because I’m half masochist, Ollie and I are in the
process of closing on a house this week. Typical “Jamie fashion” is laying low
for 6 months and then cramming all the life events into 90 days. (One time I
decided to tear out our main bathroom a week before 30 people came to our house
for Christmas. Christmas Eve morning I still didn’t have running water in
there. It’s my pansy rendition of “living on the edge.”) There’s really nothing
as major as writing the. biggest. check. ever. to clear your bank account (and
I’m not kidding when I use the word “clear.”)
Life would also be less complicated if people stopped dying
– which I realize is a broad truth but also is specifically germane to the type
of August I had. I don’t remember if I mentioned it previously, but I’m in
charge of our church’s funeral meals. We serve grieving families finger
sandwiches, relishes, cookies, etc after they bury their loved ones. It’s a
task I do with as much love as an uptight consummate over-organizer can muster
(which is sometimes not as much love as I would like to admit. Why can’t we
plan these passings on a day that isn’t already a scheduling nightmare?
Whyyyyy??) Last week I did a funeral meal for a really cute little old lady who
died in her own bed in her own home at the age of 100. I know it’s sad when
anyone dies, but the real truth is – that’s the kind of death most of us hold
out hope for. We had her family back to the church for a meal after the
internment which was a mistake as the air conditioning broke the day before and
I was stuck in a small 100 degree kitchen with a gaggle of little old women who
smelled like something you’d order on discount from Miles Kimball. You know
what I’m talking about right? That cloying smell of potpourri and death that
reminds you of funerals you attended as a kid where a well meaning family
member would call you by your mother’s name and smush you into their wrinkly
bosom to gain an eye-full of a plain gold cross and a topographical map of skin
tags heralding where they’d been in life. (Just me? That might just be me)
Anyways, last night I received a call that someone else died and we’re to do
another funeral meal on the same day and exact same time as
my closing. I swear to you, this is why my hair is going prematurely gray.
Flash forward 24 hours since I wrote the above:
Now we've closed on our house and are official homeowners.
Now I've lived through the 2 hour planning meeting at work.
Now the funeral meal has been prepared, served, and cleaned up.
I feel like an old dish rag that someone used up and wrung out and hung over the faucet. I keep telling myself "November will be better. I don't have anything planned in November and I can get a grip then!" Yesterday a coworker told me that she needs me to publicize and plan a big Gambling Addiction workshop in mid-November.
I will pay $5 to the first person who comes in my office and bangs my head against my desk until I pass out.
