Going "crazy"

First thing this morning, I woke up to Liz Taylor stepping in my mouth. Then my alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. The experiences were about equal.

All week I've been waking up early to go to Columbus for Mental Health First Aid training. Not 5 o'clock early, usually, but early enough that I feel like a rat in the race. This morning I was up early to work on my presentation.

That's right, I had to do a presentation. On Panic Attacks.

My back-up plan, should I do something Jamie-esque like drop my note cards, was to demonstrate a real live panic attack, which would have been no trouble. But instead, I kind of rocked it. Which means all the maligning I'd done of how "tough" my teacher was being on everyone makes the victory that much more sweet.

I'm also pretty excited that I've had the opportunity to go to the training for free, when the average person is required to pay $2,000. God bless grants.

I'm super excited to apply my skills to the field. Tools in my life-skill tool belt?? Oh. Heck. Yes.

There is a rumor that they're thinking of hiring my co-worker and I on full-time soon. "Full-time" where I work looks like 50ish hours a week.....on a slow week. I'm not sure I'm ready for all that. I've really been examining why I feel so tense about replacing the life I have with my job. I think it's because I actually like how things are turning out for Ollie and I and I don't want to miss enjoying all our blessings in the vain attempt to earn more. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Totally possible.

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.

Let me die in my footsteps before I go down under the ground

Isn't there something that's timeless about Bob Dylan? No matter where I am in life, his songs always find me and illuminate my path.

So I got a job. After all that drama last weekend, the local ADAMH Board called and offered me the PR position. I'm excited to jump in, since it's going to be a challenge and I'm also a little terrified thinking of the levy next year and all the work to be done. Would I ever be able to dust myself off if it failed? I'm trying not to think of it that way and instead getting excited about my new office (it has a door!! and a wooden desk!!) and my new schedule (part time, so I still get to play happy housewife) and my new mission. It doesn't come with any of the perks of being a state employee, but I'm hoping maybe someday I'll get those too. Besides, health insurance and retirement savings are for wusses.

When I told my dad (who's always felt like he best connected with me over such safe topics as "politics" and my "career"--ha!) he said, "Move over mayor, you're on your way up!" But the truth is, I've never wanted to be the mayor or any other high up official in town. I see myself more as the politico's wife, holding all the power and none of the notoriety. (I think dad despairs that I'm not much of a big dreamer)

Stress, Planes, and True Romance

It's been a rather emotional week. I planned and executed a funeral meal for 150 people only to have 250 show up. I went on a job interview I wasn't sure I wanted, and then didn't even get a call back! (Don't ask me why, but the lack of call back on a job you don't even want tends to be more insulting than not getting a job you're actually excited for.) It came to my attention through a series of misadventures that I haven't had health insurance in 8 months, and then had the completely thankless job of finding an alternative. Of course, maternity coverage is going to cost us $500/mo + my normal health care cost, and we have to carry that for a minimum of 18 months. This all ushered in a brief time where every time someone said "baby" or mentioned family or even loudly thought about either of those things, I'd burst into (seemingly random) tears. As I told Dawn last night, I was my own depressing party trick.

Olls thought it would be a good idea to self medicate with an afternoon at the Dayton Air & Space Museum. I'm not a huge "plane" fan unless I'm boarding it and it's taking me to Bora Bora, but it was hard to throw myself a pity party there so I guess it was kind of the perfect place. I also took this picture, which reminded me of Jeff Foxworthy's "Here's Your Sign" routine.
(Note: this was posted on the doors that open at the bottom of a plane to release bombs.)

Darwinism: Further complicated by warning labels

On the way home from Dayton, we were following a minivan that advertised "True Romance" on it's back window. Of course, Ollie's wanting to know what kind of business would use the tag line "Laters Baby." So I said, "They sell sex products like tupperware." Ollie said something like "Whoa, that tupperware stuff IS really versatile." Of course, what I meant was that it was also a pyramid scheme that SAHMs get in to. But, that was the moment of levity where the entire week's worth of stress and disappointment started to break up and let me breathe.

Last weekend I made Ollie take me to the Ohio State Fair for the greasy food and people watching. We got to see the butter cow! (Is it just an Ohio thing that we sculpt life size things out of butter??) I also got to see new born piglets and baby chicks hatching. ODNR had all kinds of owls, squirrels, fox, and beavers on display, which was neat. For some reason seeing those in a cage is more fun than seeing them in your back yard, though I'm not really sure why. There was a booth set up where Scientologists would use their E-meter to evaluate the amount of stress/Thetans you had. Ollie insisted that he wanted to do it, which somehow equated to us BOTH doing it. A very nice paraplegic gentleman administered mine by having me hold the handles while he asked me a series of questions that were meant to illicit a stressful response, which then made the needle on the machine jump. The first question he asked me was about my family, and that one made the needle go crazy, but everything else he asked the needle stayed stationary. He couldn't believe it and was trying all kinds of crazy questions to get me to crack. I knew the drill so I slowed down my heart rate and answered slowly and thought about kittens and kites and things that made me smile. The most revealing thing I learned about myself from the exercise is that I could probably pass a lie detector test if I had to. Ollie tested pretty high, which he attributes to me using him like a "Thetan lint brush" to catch all of my extra aliens. Tee-hee.

This week is going to start off at a run, but I think it will be less stressful than last week by far. Tonight my inlaws are taking us to the Buckeye Lake Winery, and I'd saw that's a rather successful way to start the week :)

Escape from Cowcatraz and the squirrel who faced the electric chair

So yesterday was scheduled to be a pretty chill relaxing no-sweat day. I decided to make a couple of loaves of zucchini bread while the plants were producing in full swing so I could share a loaf with my grandmother. Now, cooking in a house with no A/C is kind of a trick. You want to be dressed in as little as possible while still meeting the sanitation codes and you want to have the oven on as little as you can manage. Obviously, out here on the compound, that doesn't usually pose an issue -- there's no one out here to care that I'm bakin' in my skivvies. Which is why it was really strange that during my Annie-Get-Your-Clothes-On routine there was a furious banging on my front door followed by repetitive doorbell ringing. The incessant door bell ringing is kind of my mom's hallmark since we moved in next door. I'm not going to lie, it's 100% as annoying as it sounds. I threw down my spatula and ran to the door only to find myself greeting......the treasure hunter. No joke. There's a guy from the other end of town who comes to our properties and uses a metal detector to find indian head pennies and old Civil War-era buttons. (This is his "job." I couldn't even begin to make this stuff up.) Anyway, I don't think that treasure-hunter-dude (THD) even noticed that I looked like a naughty hilljack June Cleaver, he was that panic stricken. In a long rush of full-on freak out he tells me, "Old man B's cows are out!" Now, hold the press while I roll my eyes. This guy's cows are ALWAYS out. And before it was cows, it was horses. Before the horses were peacocks. Before the peacocks, back when I was 3 and still took an afternoon nap, it was pigs strewn out all over the back yard. For obvious reasons they didn't ask this guy build the Berlin wall. So I thank THD for his diligence and call my mom. She answers her phone with, "Whatt'd he want?" That's right, THD had tried knocking on her door first and, get this because this is actually funny, she didn't go to the door because SHE WASN'T WEARING ENOUGH CLOTHES. Yeah, I've decided not to dig too deep into the co-clotheslessness. So I relay the cow news to my mom in a completely monotone voice (because really, these cows are ALWAYS out). My mom says a word I've elected not to use on my blog and hangs up without further discussion. 15 minutes later I get a wailing call from across the street when she discovers that those green bean plants which were not trampled, were eaten. But my mom, being hard-core like she is, rounds them all back into the fence and shuts the gate. Crises averted......

....until the squirrel explodes.

Okay, so we have a gaggle (herd? murder? pack?) of squirrels that spend their lives dancing on the power lines that hang over the road. I'm not sure what this little bushy guy did to the line, but the pop from outside and the immediate loss of power was proof that it was fatal. So I throw on public appropriate garments and walk out the front door to survey the damage just as my mother is walking down her porch steps in the same endeavor. It really struck me in that moment that (a) I am my mother (b) I live a pretty weird life when the excitement for my day is scouting the remains of an electrocuted squirrel. 

All of this eclipsed the failure that was my zucchini bread effort, so there were some silver linings. 

Block Party and the Crazy Cook Corral

The block party was a success last Saturday. Since Olls and I hand delivered each invite I was hoping for an overwhelming turn out, but we had about 50 people and it seemed like the perfect number to fill up the front yard. We had so much food that we kept having to bring out more tables to hold it all! God bless whomever brought the fruit pizza, because I had never had it before and now I'm a woman possessed with the overwhelming need to make it.

I didn't post pictures of the people who came because I didn't obtain permission and I don't feel confident that all of them would be okay with that. Probably not a great idea to offend my neighbors after having just met them! (As if our lack of blinds wasn't issue enough, ha!)

As I was looking up photos on my phone to post, I realized that we have some pretty crazy things go on at our house on a normal basis. So here you go, "As Seen In The Cook Casa:"

This is Ollie sweeping our front steps in his boxers.
Dares in our house are pretty hard core.

Drama-cat telling you how she feels about having to take her
nap on the chair rather than the couch.

If I fits in it, I sits in it.

The #1 reason I'm paranoid about turning on the dryer

Half superman / Half Upper-Crust

It's kind of a long story.......