Cockroaches, Bras, and Family

Today I found a cockroach in my office. Welcome to public service.
I caught it in a cup and took it outside, but I obviously didn't take it far enough from the door since it practically beat me back to the lobby. I encouraged it to occupy someone else's office.
And that entire situation is a metaphor of my short time working for a government run "non-profit."

Also, buying bras is the worst ever. I'm going to start ordering them in bulk. A life time supply. And then I'll never have to spend 2 hours at a mall trying on a million bras. Seriously, I think I have some kind of shoulder strain.

Yesterday at church my grandfather said something kind of profound and I thought I should probably write it down since I'm likely to forget it. He said, "Salvation is the kind of thing you can't work to have and can't stop working on once you get." I thought that was a pretty insightful way of looking at it (insightfully Presbyterian, that is.)

Yesterday we also had a strange quasi family reunion. I think it may have scared my husband straight. One of my favorite relatives came, his name is Dwayne and he's 80. He brought his girlfriend who was "born in hill country" and embodied all the things I wax nostalgic about from Pike County. I loved her. I thought my favorite Dwayne story was about how my grandmother bit his big toe when they were kids and her mother scolded her because "She didn't know where that toe had been. Dwayne had probably been running bare footed through the barnyard." (I come from very practical stock.) But after yesterday my new favorite Dwayne story has to do with him giving his girlfriend's grandson a taste of whiskey and the grandson going to school and telling his teacher that he'd been drinking. I laughed harder than I should have when Dwayne's girlfriend recounted how her kids "don't hold to drinkin" and were somewhat displeased to be getting a call from the teacher who was concerned that they were giving their child alcohol at the tender age of 7. (Which honestly, the fact that the teacher called at all, shows how far the Pike County school system has come. I'm going to call that progress.)

I have Twitter now! They are going to try to force my hand about setting up a twitter for the board, and I thought I should try the whole tweeting thing before I went in to the meeting looking like an idiot. Now I'm a full fledged idiot who even has Twitter. Follow me: @kissthecook2007

House buying, Funeral mealing, New job working

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.