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Tired Amy = Top Ten List

Really, Really Tired Amy = Top Five List

I recently gave a good friend a couple books I had around in hopes she’d find a good one out of the bunch.  Turns out I have a pretty good taste in books; she likes all of them so far.

So…here’s a quick list of five books that you may not have heard of, but I can safely recommend make for a good read on the beach, in an hammock, on a plane or just if you’re looking for something to stare at other than a TV.

1. The Washingtoneinne by Jessica Cutler – A fun, kinda trash read written by a woman who really did served as an intern in Washington and started keeping a blog about her sexual exploits.  The books is a “fictional” account of her Washington days, but probably not all that fictional.
2. But Enough about Me by Jancee Dunn – A previous Rolling Stone magazine writer mixes up essays of memorable celebrity interviews she did with true tales of her growing up a teenager in the 80s in New Jersey.  A fun read from a fun girl.
3. The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian by Phil Doran – Phil was a popular television screenplay writer whose wife decides to buy an Italian villa and restore it.  The book is about his letting go of the LA lifestyle and accepting the Italian way of life.  It’s kinda like an Under the Tuscan Sun, only written by a man letting go of his career as opposed to a woman letting go of her broken marriage.
4. Sweet Ruin by Cathi Hanauer – hmmm…this is a fiction novel about a woman in your everyday marriage with a husband who works in the city and a new baby who she decides to stay home with.  It’s a little bit about how a woman loses herself in her role as a wife/mom and ends up having an affair. I liked it because I thought the writer did a great job of making the story about this woman and her loss of identity and not a superficial account of a woman having a fling on the side.
5. In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant – AWWWW…this was a great book about a Venice courtesan and her midget assistant/helper guy (I know, that’s not my best book jacket summary).  This book is GREAT.  It pulls you in and keeps you reading.  I loved it.  Loved it. Loved it.  All the characters are so interesting and you really start to feel along with them.  Definitely recommend this one if you’re wanting some good fiction.

No Comment

Our neighbor is driving my husband bonkers.

This week, she has two cars—neither one her regular, day-to-day driving car–parked squarely in her front yard.

“How do we discreetly ask her not to park cars in her front yard?” This was the question he posed to me at dinner tonight. My reply: “We don’t.”

First, we are not trying to sell or house nor do we have any plans to invite people of a prominent nature to our street. Second, there’s a weird unspoken history with this neighbor. We’ve endured a few run-ins with her where she did not get what she wanted from the conversation (we said no to watching her children and to sharing our wi-fi access).

The third and most significant reason: there is a rumor floating around our neighborhood that she has accused us of standing on our roof at night and shining a bright, flood-light type flashlight directly at her residence. This story has come to us through two separate neighbors. The first time I heard it I made a family rule that we would have no contact with this neighbor. Even if it means having to grin and bear where she parks her cars.

Fortunately for us, many of my neighbors have known me since I was five. My husband and I have a fairly decent reputation as far as neighbors go. We have no beefs with anyone, wave to everyone, and do our best to keep our house ’s appearance unproblematic. The neighbor who has accused us of spying on her is the newest neighbor on the street. Before I go any further, I should state that her accusation is totally untrue. Neither I nor my husband have ever climbed on our roof to shine a light at anything or anyone. I’m willing to bet both of our cars that none of neighbors believe we have.

I think it’s in the Universe’s best interest to refrain from any commentary on this neighbor. If you are reading this, then you know me well enough to know the likelihood of me standing on my roof to spy on people.

I must say that I am both a bit amused and concerned by the story. The amusing part: imagining my husband on top of our roof shining a light into someone’s living room. Or even more amusing, me trying to get on our roof. The concerned part: what in the world would make someone say something so…outlandish?

There is the possibility that the accusation never happened and that it’s just a rumor (of course, rumors always have a start somewhere). Or maybe there was something that caused it to look like we were on our roof shining bright lights. Maybe a falling star above our house. I like that idea, it has a romantic, poetic nature to it. The Falling Star that Fell on Our Roof.

My way of dealing with such situations is to avoid the situation and the people involved at all costs. I don’t like conflict of any kind and believe it to be unnecessary and truly a choice. As far as I’m concerned, conflict of any nature is people projecting their own insecurities, their own neurosis, their own shortcomings onto the people they are in conflict with. (And yes, I do have insecurities, neurosis, and shortcomings that I sometimes project on other people…I’d like to be perfect, but conflict is still a part of my life too.)

So as far as I’m concerned, her cars can stay wherever she wants them to stay. It’s her stuff, not mine.

No RUNNING Allowed Walkers

It’s Saturday night and I’m struggling to come up with something that has happened to me in the past week that would make a good story.

I’ve got to get out more, do more social activities, spend more time with friends. Being a pregnant recluse is really working against my blogging. How many times can I write I’m tired so I’m going to bed ? Even if sleeping is all I feel like doing, it’s working against my bigger goal. (Although, it’s right in line with my immediate goal of moving as little as possible.)

I did do a 5K this morning in Charlestown, Indiana. We were a small group of walkers three minutes behind the joggers. There were maybe forty of us at most. I stayed in the top ten throughout the entire race until the last quarter of a mile when just enough people passed me to knock me to number eleven.

The first one I didn’t mind, she and I had been side-by-side most of the race. The next one was a bit more bothersome, an older gentlemen who obviously did a lot of walking but was wearing jeans with a red mechanic’s rag sticking out of his back pocket. Getting out-walked by someone in jeans is defeating.

And then the last person to pass me just flat out pissed me off.

First off, I could swear I heard her jogging up behind me. If I wasn’t six month’s pregnant and could rotate my body easily, I would have turned around and gave her my look–the one I save for my husband when he changes the channel while I’m watching Gilmore Girls. When you sign-up as a walker and pin on your yellow numbered tag, then you walk. I’m pretty sure this girl decided to speed up at the end to pass the pregnant lady. The worst–she passed me as we turned into the parking lot just feet from the finish line.

Ugh.

I had zero umph left to push past her her. If anything, I went slower. From now on, no more competitive walking for me. I’ll keep doing the Saturday morning 5ks, but I will not get caught up in who finishes before me–no matter if they’re wearing jeans or flat out cheating.

Stormy Weather Just Can’t Get My Poor Self Together

There’s a spooky comfort in storms for me.  Not sure if that makes much sense, but I like them.

I like the way the wind feels wrapping around our house and through our tree branches.  I like the way the lightening looks–both the lightening rods that strike down and the far-off bursts that light up the entire sky. I like the big cracks of thunder that still make me jump.

Tonight, I’m going to get this down quickly because there is a good chance that we won’t have electricity through the duration of the storm. No electricity, no router, no Internet.  Just candles.  We’ll sit in the living room in front of our living room portrait window and watch the storm pass through.

How Many Bethel Roads Are There?

Tonight, my husband and I drove around looking for a house we saw for sale online. We’re not looking to purchase a new home and our current house is in no shape to be marketable. But sometimes it’s just fun to look.

The address was Bethel Road. We never found the house. We found Bethel-Freiberger Road. If you go to the opposite end of this road, it’s Freiberger-Bethel Road. (I can’t remember if I’m spelling Freiberger right–I don’t think the i-before-e-rule applies to old-school Floyd Knobs family names.) I knew this had to be the road. I’ve lived up here a long time and it is the only Bethel Road I know of. Surely there couldn’t be three Bethel Roads…plain Bethel, Bethel-Freiberger, Freiberger-Bethel.

I kept saying, “Will the real Bethel Road please stand up.” I was the only one in the car laughing, but I nearly peed in my pants from it.

My husband’s commentary: “I can’t believe we can’t find the right Bethel Road. I can, however, believe neither of us brought our phones to Google it.”

We were on the right road. We google-mapped it when we got home. The house didn’t have the for sale sign up and we went right by it–twice.

There are a lot of roads up here that can be a bit confusing. The Bethel-Freiberger Road is really two separate roads that have no distinct end. One simply becomes the other. This happens with Banet Road as well, but it’s not named Banet-Roberts Road. Instead, there is a sharp 90 degree angle right-hand turn when you’re on Banet Road. You would think you’ve turned onto a new Road, but just the opposite is true. If you stay on the straight-away, it becomes Roberts Road.

I do know that there is a part of Freiberger Road that ends in a wooded empty area. We used to go there in droves when we were in high school and drink beer we stole from our parents.

No Matter Your Sign

My FreeWillAstrology horoscope from Rob Brezsny was so enlightening today, that I thought it would serve everyone well—not just Leos:

Welcome to Part Two of your outlook for the second half of 2008, Leo. We’re checking up on how you’re progressing with the challenges you were given near the end of last year. As I suspect you’ve guessed by now, there’s one potential accomplishment that’s more important than all the others. If you can pull it off, it’ll change your life forever. I’m talking about the determination to take full responsibility for your own happiness. How? By studying in exquisite detail all the things you need to feel great, and taking aggressive steps to make sure they happen consistently.

This reading I love–I’m all about taking full responsibility for my happiness (and pissiness as well). Not that I’m always good at it, but it’s a central belief in my life. Only I can make myself happy, sad, angry, annoyed…looking to blame other people and externalize situations only works against my true direction. I always have a choice. Always. No matter what the situation, if it is not pleasing, I have a choice to do something different. We all do.

So to take even more aggressive steps toward my happiness, here’s a quick top ten list of things I need to feel great:

1. walk
2. meditate
3. do at least one thing every day (besides writing this blog) that gets me closer to my full-time writing gig
4. listen to music more often
5. be more mindful
6. stop impulse shopping/buying
7. go to bed earlier
8. eat healthier breakfast (i’m on a small coffee and half muffin (usually the top half) kick
9. stop checking my email every ten minutes (i’m addicted to email, and yes addiction is the appropriate word. it exists and i know some of you reading right now suffer as well. don’t be ashamed–put your blackberry/treo/iphone/laptop down and admit you have a problem.)
10. keep my house clean

Alright, your turn. Come up with ten things that you need to feel great.

I Do…I Think; Tell Me Again What I’m Supposed to Do

One day I’m going to write a book about my marriage and the first line will be: There’s no such thing as a good marriage, only a long one.

That is if I can stay married long enough to get away with such a line. I’m betting my chips on having a long marriage. I’d like it to be a good one, but how do you measure that? What is a good marriage? Ideally, to support and nurture your spouse with every turn of every day. To help your spouse reach their full potential while doing all you can to reach your own. To evolve together, helping each other resolve past issues while doing your best to keep your children from suffering through too many of their own issues. And to love. To love them and learn better how to love yourself.

Oh how rosy it sounds.

But the truth in marriage is that part of the evolution of your self can easily cause you to project a lot of crap onto your spouse. Over reacting when dirty dishes get left in the sink for more than 24 hours, when clothes stay in the dryer without being folded or in the washer without being dried.

My favorite thing to do is to get really really mad and then not talk to my spouse for days. “I want him to come to me,” is what my ego is defiantly pronouncing with every walk through the living room I do, not uttering a syllable. My husband’s favorite thing to do is to talk at me like a drill sergeant. It works as well as my silence.

See how dysfunctional we sound? So again I ask, how can you measure a good marriage, because on the days that he’s not yelling and I’m not silent, I think we’ve got a pretty good one. But then there are the days that inspire such quotes as the, “…no such thing as a good marriage, only a long one.”

I may have used this in a previous post, but the following idea fits here: A friend of mine once told me that it helps to think of marriage in an existential way. Consider the idea that you and your spouse met up before this life as our souls were traveling through time and space and said to each other, “I’ve got this ongoing flaw I need to correct and I need your help fixing it. So when we meet up in this world, please do all you can to teach me whatever it is I need to learn to fix this flaw.”

Of course, when you’re mad as nails at your spouse, it’s EXTREMELY difficult to sit back and think, “hmmm…how can what he’s doing that’s pissing me off beyond control help me fix my flaws.”

What’s More Dry Than the Desert?

I feel dry as a…I can’t even come up with how dry I am—a desert (boring, wow a desert, how original), sand (doesn’t work, some sand is wet, plus it’s just another version of the desert comparison).  I’ve got nothing.  This is an ongoing struggle as a writer. Unique ways to say the same old thing.

Last night I dreamed I was staying in a really nice hotel room and left for a few seconds and someone came in and moved all the furniture around.   But, I didn’t even think that someone had come in; I was too busy trying to straighten all my stuff up.  It was all mostly work stuff, lots of paperwork.  And lots of lamps. It didn’t occur to me to be paranoid that someone had come in my room without my knowledge until the hotel people came to check on me and told me it had happened.

Dreams are important to me.  I think they hold all the answers and all the stuff you try not to let anybody know about.  If the right person has the right interpretation tools, they can easily see inside your subconscious. But, like I said, I’m dry as a, um, a WHAT AM I DRY AS??? Whatever, I have nothing to write about and this dream has been with me all day. I can’t make heads or tales of it.

If you have any interpretation ideas, shoot ‘em my way.

And if you can come up with a clever, unique, metaphor for how dry my writing well is, please send that too.

Cold Weather Foe

Because of my husband’s TV viewing habits, I see a lot of programming that is filmed in Alaska (Alaska Experiment, Ice Road Truckers) and I always think, who wants to live there?

I can’t imagine anything worse than living somewhere that always has snow. How do you get anything done? How do you leave your house? The only thing I want to do when it snows is stay tucked in my house with a good blanket and book.

And what would you wear? I mean, you’re always going to have to go out in layers so you might as well just wear long sleeved t-shirts and sweats under your knee-length parka every day. How depressing is that? When do dress up? It’s not like strappy heels are going to work in 3 feet of snow.

Even if I got to live in the make-believe Northern Exposure world and hang-out with a pre-receding hairline John Corbett, I’d still choose Southern Indiana over any part of Alaska. And I loved Northern Exposure.

Runner’s Delight

I did the 3K Barnyard Dash this morning along with two friends. They are both runners and did the 10K run. I did the walk and was very happy when I did not come in last.

The path starts at Huber’s, which I would say is in the center of Starlight, Indiana. Of course, I have no idea what Starlight’s geographic boundaries are so it’s possibly on the edge or maybe next to it. Regardless, Starlight is one of the more appropriately named cities as it has the clearest night time viewing for stargazing. The daytime is just as gorgeous.

A lot of years ago, my husband and I did a 5K on the same path, only in October instead of June. I’ve always wanted to be a runner—until I’m actually running and then all I want is to walk. Before I decided to let myself be “just a walker” I would go back and forth with it. Jogging for a few weeks here and there.

During one of my infrequent running periods, I signed myself up for a 5K. I had been running regularly for nearly a month to get ready for my first real run. I’d get a t-shirt and have other joggers to run beside. Oh how excited I was. So excited that the Friday night before the run, I went out with our usual crew of friends and spent the majority of the night drinking heavy, heavy imported beer.

Smart? Right? (That’s part of the reason I quit drinking–not because of running, but because I make really stupid decisions when I drink.)

Anyway, if you’ve never drank 10+ pints of beer that is brewed across the ocean, I don’t recommend doing it the night before you’ve made big plans to run…or simply make it through the next day. But I did and when the alarm went off at 7:00 a.m. the next morning I was not budging. Not until my husband woke me up to have the following conversation:

He: Amy, get up. You gotta get up for the race.

Me: I’m not going

He: You’ve got to go. You’re going to regret it if you don’t get up.

Me: I can’t move my head.

He: C’mon. Get up.

Me: No.

He Yes.

Me: Will you run it with me?

He: No.

Me: Please?! PLEASE? I can’t do it by myself. Please?

He: I can’t run 3 miles this morning.

Me: You don’t have to…I’ll walk it with you. Please go with me.

He went. We were late and had our race numbers safety-pinned on as the last runners were leaving the opening stretch out of Huber’s parking lot. It wasn’t a big race. I don’t think there were more than 40 people running and they were all ages: 7 to 67. By the time we hit the path we were so far behind that I was fearful we wouldn’t know which direction to go. There was no one directly in front of us and I was sure that the racing officials who direct runners would probably leave their posts before we’d make it to them.

Once I got my pace going and started sweating, all I could smell was the beer I’d spent the night imbibing. It was coming out every pore in my body. My husband was hurting worse than me. He never stopped to walk it; he did stop once to throw up, but he went right back to jogging beside me afterwards. I don’t remember anything we talked about, but I do remember us laughing a lot. In fact, I think it was our laughing that caused his puking (that and the marathon drinking that had happened the previous evening).

We did finish the race. We were not only dead last, but I’m guessing a good 15 to 20 minutes behind everyone else. When we came up the last stretch, a group of the younger runners had come down to cheer us on. There is nothing like a group of 10 year olds clapping and yelling, “YOU CAN DO IT!” to make you both humiliated and hysterical with laughter at the same time. I thought my husband was going to take a swing at one of them. I just grinned and bared it.

Once we crossed the finish line, my husband went directly to the table with the big orange igloo cooler and small green paper cups with the gatorade symbol on them. Before I could take a drink, he immediately spit out the first gulp he drank. It was apple cider.

That was the last race I ever ran. Now I stick to walking them.