Ten on Tuesdays: About Me

When I was a teenager, my mother read an article in a women’s magazine about multiple intelligences. She picked one that she thought described me perfectly. It was “Intrapersonal Skills” – meaning, I know myself. Now, at age 36, I can see that as a compliment, especially for a teenager, since that seems like a rare thing. At the time, I was a little offended that she’d overlooked my other considerable intelligences, lol. The truth is I’m just an introvert and I enjoy and need to spend time alone – which is not always easy as the mom of four. Summer is especially hard on me. There’s no naptime and school time for me to recharge. It’s funny, but it seems working is actually when I get a little time to myself.

Things I’ve learned about myself this past year:

1. I’m an artist. Seriously, not a way I would ever in a million years have described myself prior to now. I can’t draw or paint. Put such tools in my hand and you’d wonder if I’d lost my mind describing myself as an artist. But give me a computer and drawing program and I’m not bad. And something I’ve always known, even when I didn’t think of myself as an artist, I have style and taste. My style is not everyone’s style, which in the past has had me doubting myself, but I’m learning that’s it’s okay and nothing personal.

2. Possibly pursuant to number 1, I love color. Not just in my house, which I already knew. I love to wear bright bold colors and design with bright bold colors.

3. Again, probably related to the first item, I am a sucker for red shoes. I just bought another pair yesterday. This might also have to do with a lifelong love for the Wizard of Oz.

4. I’m ambitious. I tend to think of myself as a slacker, but only because I could be for so long.

5. I’m becoming a leader. I’m actually in charge of our local Girl Scout organization (not the council, just our service unit, which is entirely volunteer) and have been president of our local arts council. My mother has long told me that I have a strong personality, but I’ve never really understood what that meant, since I consider myself quite shy.

6. I’m still shy.

7. I’m still unfocused in terms of long-term career goals. I have way too many things that I like enough to do for a living. I want to be a graphic designer and librarian and photographer and web designer and…

8. I have trouble saying no.

9. I want things done right and I’m willing to do them myself to get them done right. Sometimes this is not good. I need to let others do things and trust that they will and even if it’s not done my way, it will be done and no one but me will know the difference. This is advice relating to volunteers as well as my household and marriage. Sometimes this refers to planning an event for the Girl Scouts, sometimes it’s doing the dishes, sometimes it’s putting the kids to bed.

10. I still have a lot of rethinking to do. Sometimes I still think of myself as a painfully shy, painfully self-conscious fifteen year old with no self-confidence whatsoever. I’m not. I haven’t been that girl in a long time, but it’s still how I would first describe myself to people.

I need a rewind machine...

I think I deleted some of my very favorite pictures of Baby V without backing them up to my external hard drive. Of course, I told myself I'd backed them up, so it was okay to delete them. Not just delete them, but empty the recycle bin. I'm a freaking genius. All because digital scrapbooking has taken over my life and I wanted everything together and as much free space on my internal hard drive as possible to make my computer run nice and fast.

Now I have to check if I deleted my favorite picture of my four kids all together. And some other really cute ones. Kick. Kick. Kick.

I'm having a really crappy week...

On Monday I realized that we might not get a direct deposit stimulus check like I'd planned our budget around (just extras, like T's birthday, 10th anniversary gift for Tom, etc.). Not a huge deal because we're not counting on it and except for T's birthday, everything can wait.

On Tuesday, it got cold enough to kick the heat on. Except our heat wouldn't come on. It just made loud noises and started up and then stopped again. So we might be replacing a heat pump right before we sell our house (if that all goes down - which is up in the air right now).

On Wednesday, they finally hauled away my dead minivan. I was sad to see it go, but the oil it spit out as they loaded it onto the towtruck reminded me taht it's just a very, very, very big paperweight at this point.

And on top of all this, I've caught a lovely cold from my oldest child. Thanks, Mr. T. Love elementary school germs. Right now I'm miserable, which is probably why I'm whining about this stuff in the first place. I don't usually harp on the bad things, just deal with what I can, plan for what I can't immediately deal with and put it out of my mind. But I'm sick, I can't breathe, my head feels full of cotton, my ears are ringing and I just want everything else to be fine without my having to deal with it. You know?

Just when I was starting to sleep...

I had finally gotten a few things taken care of that were keeping me awake at night for a month straight. I could fall asleep easily, but I'd wake up around 1 a.m. and not be able to fall back to sleep. It got to be a pattern after a week or so. Then I just got used to it and felt like crap when I woke up if I actually did manage to stay asleep. But I got over it and was sleeping every night, the whole night through, for at least a week.

Then Tom calls me and tells me the job at his old middle school is open next year and how did I feel about making the move that we'd talked about a few months ago, though not seriously. Turns out I was much more into than I thought I'd be. It would mean moving two hours from where we currently live. From my spoiled suburban existence to a rural small town. I foresee some culture shock. If I don't see what I want in stock at Target, well, I can just drive five miles to the next one. Neither one is more than 3 miles from my house.

But the big thing is leaving my family. I have a huge, very, very, VERY close-knit family. And we'll be moving two hours away from them. I just don't know if I can handle that part. But we will have the support network of my husband's family, at least in theory.

There are very few bads and so many goods to this situation that I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. And it freaks me out. I hate the idea of moving, especially with the kids in school. But all signs seem to be pointing us in that direction.

Please tell me small towns aren't as nosy as television makes them seem. I'm an anonymous surbanite and I like it that way.

As the stomach turns...

Ugh. Evil stomach virus hit our house on Monday. I'm guessing Miss G brought it home from preschool. Then Miss S drank from G's juice cup Tuesday night. She got it Wednesday afternoon. Not surprisingingly, after cleaning up two kids' puke, I got sick Wednesday night. Yesterday I could barely pick my head up off the pillow. So far Tom and Mr. T have been spared (knock on wood). Today, I'm full of energy - well, sort of. I have lots of mental energy and physically enough energy to do what needs to be done, but just folding the laundry made me so tired I had to lie down for a few minutes. Still better than yesterday when just walking to the bathroom was too much effort. I actually went to bed with my teeth unbrushed. Um, ew. I don't do that. Ever. The few other times I've been that tired, I woke up halfway through the night because I needed to brush my teeth.

I was so sick yesterday I couldn't even knit. My head spun every time I picked up the needles. Here I had such project enthusiasm for my baby blanket and couldn't even take advantage of it.

The worst part of being sick? I couldn't drink anything with caffeine in it (the very thought made me sick). I had such a caffeine headache. Actually, I still do. I could probably keep down some Excedrin today.