The Frazzledom… It Continues

Y’all get a bonus dose of my neuroticism today! I meant to spend this last waking hour working on a work thing but APPARENTLY Windows Movie Maker files don’t transfer between computers, so instead it’s blog-whining and hopefully making it into the office early (whine).

OK, first, semi-related, in case there are readers out there who are DC-based and dabble in the administrative arts, let me tell you about the piece of knowledge which will be a game-changer for your world.  The best kept secret in this town is that there is a super secret NINE P.M. UPS pick-up on L Street between 19th and 20th.  GOD BLESS THE 9:00 PM UPS PICK UP.  Seriously.  Look for the liquor store on said block, walk back the alley next to it, you will find a UPS loading dock with a flock of very kind gentlemen more than happy to throw your shipment on the outgoing truck.  I swear on Chooch’s life that is the absolute truth and not an internet scheme wherein I collaborate with bad guys to lure you into an alley by a liquor store.

After my emergency UPS run I simply could not bear the thought of spending another hour trying to get home via my usual commute.  (Plus I was hysteric thinking of poor Chooch who hadn’t been out in 9 hours).

(Is it possible for me to write A PARAGRAPH without bringing up the darned dog? NO.  OBVIOUSLY.)

Do you ever reach that level of frazzledom where money is no object and you would pay $4,961 to make your life easier for 5 minutes? That was me tonight.  I indulged in a massive diva move and hailed a cab to transport me home.

Omigod my brain was so frazzled by that point.  All I wanted was to tell the person my intersection and space out for 10 glorious minutes.  Except I get into the car and first the guy is like “You can get in but I don’t have any change!!! Ahahaha!!” He didn’t actually laugh me.  He was very professional.  But in that moment, my brain believed that the Universe was speaking through him and the message was 1) How about next time you be less lazy, you imbecilic slug and 2) AHAHAHAHA!

Eff.  See above statement.  This was going to be a $20 joy ride and I was OKAY with that.  THEN I give the guy my intersection and Little Mister says “OK, so I just take the Memorial bridge?”

I DON’T KNOW DUDE! This is why I pay you the big bucks! OK, obviously, I know how to get home but I cannot tell you how worthless my brain was at that moment.  I mean, my brain is generally worthless when it comes to directions.  This is my NINTH year living here and these are the places I can drive to without getting lost: home, my office, the zoo, GW, and The Mecca Known As the Shopping Center Where Target and Michaels Live.

As a rule, I just assume any given cab driver knows everything or at least, like, 100 times more than I do.  Like, if I got into the car and a Ficus Tree was driving it would know more than I do.  So when he inquired about the bridge I was sort of just like “Uhhhhhh yea sure.”  Honestly I cannot keep track of DC bridges.  They all have like 3 names.  It’s such crap.  Here is how they are categorized in my mind:

Roosevelt Bridge=The one on the left
Key Bridge= The traffic-y one
Memorial Bridge=The one with the lion statues
14th Street Bridge=The one on the right
South Capitol Street Bridge=OH GOD OH GOD U TURN NOW

So, of course, he took a weird turn and immediately I knew I consented to the wrong stupid bridge. (The one with the lion statues is not the one that takes me home.  EFF YOU LIONS!).  Whatever.  It was a flat rate anyway.

The story doesn’t really have an interesting ending, I’m sorry.  Then I got home and Chooch was so excited he jumped high enough that he BIT ONTO MY HAIR.  Omigod.  (PS I went, like, 3 paragraphs without talking about the dog).

Tummy ache.  Going to sleep.  Becker out!

Deep Thoughts

Oy to the vey, ppl.  I am a mess these last few weeks, I swear.  On a scale of mental serenity where one is the Dalai Lama and ten is having to put scotch tape over your thumbs because you ran out of bandaids and you picked your cuticles to bloody pulps, you could say that I am the literal manifestation of the latter.  Or basically, I closed my eyes and ever-so-slightly nodded my head up and down to this…

See, I do have lofty rainbow aspirations for a flawless, well-oiled existence.  No really, I have an actual list of conditions that I feel, if met, would make life close to perfect.  For instance, if I can maintain consistent sleeping patterns and keep up with laundry and eat every piece of fruit in the fridge before it goes bad and go to Mass every week and keep a regular yoga  schedule and stay on top of my email inbox (AHAHAHAHA) and return my library books on time… all my problems will disappear.

I’m embarrassed to write this because PEOPLE HAVE ACTUAL PROBLEMS and I am being a whiney brat over my inability to meet basic standards of adulthood.

The thing is, I used to be on top of life.  When I was a junior in high school, here was my schedule: school till 2:30, gymnastics till 6:30, Dairy Queen till 10:00, AP European History papers on topics such as Religious Wars in the Netherlands (1570-1610) and Their Effect on the Spanish Economy until the middle of the night.  Repeat.  A few short years ago, I had weeks at the White House where I would look at the clock and realize it was 3:51pm on Wednesday and I had already worked 40 hours.

Actually I am more impressed by that history paper.  HONEST TO GOD I wrote that paper.  But then I got a crappy old 3 on the AP exam, meaning for all my efforts I was awarded 0.0 college credits, so don’t go being blown away by my smartz.  They fake.

HOW DID I DO THESE THINGS?! Because lately the overwhelming-ness of blowdrying my hair pushes me close to tears.

So I try to combat my craziness by being a productivity champ and doing productive human things from my list.  Because, ironically, the tasks that stress me the eff out (blowdrying, not a joke) are the same tasks that make me feel WAY BETTER when I do them.  Does that make sense? Is that, like, a documented behavioral thing?

Like, here I am: “Another morning with the bl0wdryer? Srsly? It takes forever.  It’s loud.  I drop it on my foot at least once a week.  Every day I discover new and innovative ways to burn myself with it. Test+reset+test+reset+test+reset.  Auto shut off.  Tediously clean the lint out with a bobby pin.  Blow a fuse.  I just dried it yesterday morning.  And the morning before that.  And that.  That day too.  And that time in 2001.  Every day.  I just… can’t anymore.  JESUS TAKE THE BLOWDRYER.”

But then: “Oh hey look I think it’s dry! I can turn it off!  Now my hair is kinda bouncey and cute! For some reason, it’s much easier to get through the day when your hair isn’t a sloppy wet frizzy misshapen disaster mess that makes you want to hide under a rock every time you pass a reflective surface!”

A confusing and vicious cycle.

The thing is: I can’t do all the productive things simultaneously.  If I manage to find time to do my hair like a person that makes personal care a priority, I probably have nothing to wear because I haven’t dry-cleaned or done laundry in 14 years.  If the plants outside look good and the herb box is well-tended to, the floor inside is probably disgusting and coated in beagle hair.  If I’m finding time to write, I’m probably big as a house from not having exercised in 3 weeks.  If I am doing a great job cooking and eating well, I’m probably behind at work.

It’s like that schtick with the hydraulics.  You plug a leak and it just floods out from another one.  Then you plug that one and out it comes somewhere else.  Et cetera et cetera et cetera ad infinitum.

My other issue remains, as it always has been, over-extension.  The other week my BFF Jordana made the extremely astute observation, which honestly had never occurred to me, that being over-extended with my day job and yoga training and the zoo and everything was sort of the same as when I used to have to work all the time and was stressed to the max over that.  And, actually, it makes sense.  I LOVE doing all these fun things, and it’s nothing like the misery I used to deal with, but I do need to make more quiet time for myself and I have a suspicion it could be my ticket out of the vicious cycle of always being juuust out of reach of life serenity.

Sigh.  It’s hard, because I do know that someday soon, God willing, I will be a mommy and maybe life will slow down a little, and I will have to forget all about my BLOWDRYER COMPLEX and dedicate, devote, sacrifice, prostrate myself at the altar of my little ones’ needs.  Which I am absolutely OK with, and prepared for, and would be honored to do.  But I’ll want to look back on my mid-twenties and know that I always accepted those invitations and said YES I’d love to grab dinner, ABSOLUTELY let’s go to that baseball game tonight, SURE I’ll have another sangria! I don’t want to have squandered these years in elastic pants making sweet love to the DVR.

BUT that is exactly, precisely what I am doing right now and it’s glorious and therapeutic.  I have been home at a reasonable hour, like, 2 of the last 9 weekdays and tonight I made the wise choice to sit at home on the MFing couch, write (obviously, hi), snuggle with Chooch, sip a smoothie, catch up on Idol that I missed yesterday, and generally enjoy a few hours off.  Even though I always go to Thursday night yoga, even though there are any number of things I could have stayed at work late to finish.  All will be tackled tomorrow.

OK.  And now, I go to sleep at a healthy hour! GOLD LIFE ADULT ACCOMPLISHMENT STAR! I feel better having written this manifesto so thanks if you’ve read all the way down to here.  Oh, and I truly apologize to you, and to the universe, for my bit about the blowdryer.  Writing things down helps me put into perspective the ridiculousness of the things I allow myself to get worked up over.  Happy face: