Apparently I can update my blog from my phone nowadays. I'm trying it out now!
c-jo

I've gained...

...some weight. Not much. About 5 pounds, but I can certainly tell it's there. I'm not sure why it appeared, other than the meds I was on earlier this month, the stress I've been under, and my increase in sweets that conversely correlated to my decrease in meats.

No idea at all, really.

I bring it up only because I can and because I'm thinking about it as I eat lunch. It's been bugging me for a couple of weeks, though not enough to give me the gumption to really fix it.

And, ironically, today I don't care. I'm happy with the way I am, and I just choose my clothes so that they fit wherever the scale lands. Which, most of the time, means I'm in dresses. I love them anyway...it's hardly a painful ordeal.

No big change necessary. I'll just keep eating (mostly) healthy and (mostly) vegetarian, and I'll continue with my (intentions to) exercise.

And I'll enjoy it.



P.S. Much to my surprise, sprouts are fabulous. I've been putting alfalfa sprouts on a lot lately. Yummmmm.

My puppy is...

...gone. She was hit by a car tonight. The car didn't even stop -- it just left her and drove off. She died soon after, and my mom called me right away. She was with us for nine years, and now she's gone. She won't be there when I go home at Christmas. I can't take her into the back yard and run around in the snow like we always used to.

I still remember holding her in my arms the day my dad brought her home. I was fourteen, and she was so tiny. She curled up against my chest with her head tucked under my chin, while I sat cross-legged on the living room floor for nearly an hour. It was a good thing nobody claimed her; I was in love.

Not a good start to the week.

It's 2:17am, and I'm...

...still up. No surprise for a Friday night, really.


I had an epiphany today, as painful as it may be, after having yet another conversation intended to clarify my role in the BC-LTRC. See, for the past four months I've been holding the weight of the Committee on my shoulders, and acting as the backbone for the organization, in a sense. It's partly my fault; when tasks weren't being completed and initiative not taken, I stepped in to save the day. It was fine until I began to feel the burden in very real ways. And then I started to realize the detrimental situation we were in. As long as I, or any other one person, was carrying the load, there was no reason or need for the others to step up and take charge. The result was the direct opposite of what was intended -- rather than supporting and building the committee, I was participating in its decline.

So I raised my concerns. Unfortunately, it became very real when I relayed the thought of leaving my post far earlier than the year I committed to. Two and a half meetings later, there's no full resolution to be had. I have, however, let them know that I'll be scaling back and focusing specifically on the support and capacity-building roles I was brought in to fill.

I know that when I step back, one other individual fills in. Like me, she has the drive and the tendency to meet the need, to see a gap and to fill it. I wish she wouldn't. Either of our work in that aspect actually allows the committee itself to become inactive, to deteriorate into an ineffective, unproductive body of names on a sheet of paper.

However, as I drove home I realized one thing -- I can't control that. My desire is to empower the volunteers who have willingly joined this committee in order to continue the work long after I, or any other person, have left. But if another person isn't willing to engage in that same mission, that same purpose, then there is nothing I can do.

And that's okay, I suppose. I can do what I do to improve the committee. And the rest? I don't know. Does it satisfy me? Not at all, but it is what it is.

Okay, now I need to go to bed. 2:27. Those ten minutes left me irrevocably sleepy.

I'm super duper excited...

...for this weekend.

Today: Off work at noon, beach with Lauren and maybe Angela, then to the island.
Tonight: My Sister's Keeper with Maggie, Josie, and maybe Luke and Omar. I bought a box of tissues. The book is my favorite novel of all time. I know what's coming, and I'm still going to weep like a little girl.
Tomorrow: Haircuts (maybe? we still haven't found a place or worked out the details), Ikea, and TIGERS (& Astros)!!
Sunday: Church, Picnic at Shy Pond, Discovering BrazosPointe class, then Sugar Land or Houston or Pearland for suuuuuuuuushi with Amy, Lauren, Tamara, and Angela.


Are you excited with me yet? It's going to be uh-mazing.

It's 12:40am, but I..

...don't want to go to bed. I want to stay here and stay awake because a little irrational voice inside my head says, "If you never go to bed, then tomorrow will never come, and you won't have to face your issues."

The last time I felt this way was nearly two years ago now. It was the night before my Grams passed away. I didn't want to go to sleep, I didn't want to go home. I knew that she would still be there on that bed, in that hospital, losing the battle for life.

I was reminded of her tonight, and saddened by the remembrance. In the movie we saw, "Gammy" gives a necklace to her future granddaughter-in-law and says, "Grandparents love to give gifts to their grandchildren because it makes them believe that they'll still be part of their lives after they've gone." My Grams, or "Grammy," as I called her growing up, gave me more gifts than I can count and she is, and will be, always a part of my life.

I wish tonight I could go to their house. I wish I could bounce in the door, blow right past them while saying hello, and open the freezer to find mini Snickers waiting for me. I wish I could play dominos and rummy and marbles with them. And be called "Carolyn Jo" in a teasing scold like I have been my entire life. I want to stop and admire the lighthouse photo I took at fourteen -- the one that I now know is overexposed, thanks to the sun peaking out behind the round white walls -- and comment on it, like I so often did. I want to walk into the office and raid their movie collection, borrow Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and promise to return it, but forget about it for weeks on end. I want to steal the cookies, the fig newtons, the banana bread that always sat on their counter. To play with the lazy susans all around the house -- the one's she painted. I want to hear her scold me for using "one" as a noun that can be pluralized. I want sprawl out on the white and pink and blue couch, the one she recovered many years before with wipeable fabric, and tell her my problems as she sits in the blue rocker and knits another blanket. Then she'll put it down and rest back in the chair, letting me know that all attention is on me. And she'll give me some sort of wisdom, some snippet of advice, some practical encouragement. And I'll find something to laugh about and out the door I'll go again.

I'm sentimental, I know. Some would probably say that it's been two years, and it's time to let go. I won't. Not if letting go means forgetting all those little things. And it was in those little things that I found love.






I suppose I should go to bed now. It's 12:54am. I don't know what tomorrow holds. We never do. It may be good, it may be bad, but it will be whether I fight the dawn or embrace it.

I was teased tonight...

...for wanting a boat, a boy, and a barn. Apparently that makes me "so Michigan." Ah, pure Michigan...




I'm on vacation right now, sort of. I'd consider it more a few days' leave of absence to think, process, and refresh. I told the BC-LTRC this week that I was thinking about leaving. There are some major, persistent problems that prevent me from believing that I can truly be effective in Brazoria County without something changing.

I won't leave without first trying to make that change, though. I anticipate a long week ahead of me, and I'm hardly looking forward to it.

I got a phone call at 5:35 this evening saying, "Come to Galveston. Let's go see a chick flick." So here I am, yet again. Tomorrow I'll be back in Lake Jackson, and I think there may be some Sugar Land in my future (sushi...yum). Busy is hardly how I imagined the weekend, but busy it is becoming no less.

That's not right. I need to take true time off this weekend. For me. Maybe Sugar Land isn't in my future after all.

I ate...

...meat. Shh, don't tell anyone. It wasn't totally intentional. But I did it three times. In a row (sort of?). I'm back to being good now. I promise.



Haha.

I'm a sunblock...

..failure. I put it on, I promise. Yet I burned to a crisp. A very red crisp. A sore red crisp.

Even my legs burned. My pasty-white legs that never do anything but stay pasty-white!!

When did I become the girl...

...who cries at everything?

Seriously. I went 2+ years without crying. Even once. And now, I tear up at literally everything that jerks the slightest little bit at my heartstrings. Like a dance recital when the little girls danced with their daddies. Or a story about a fourteen-year-old girl whose passion- and faith-filled life was cut short in a car accident.

Many tears.


(But much love. :))

I have to...

...work all day tomorrow. And yet it doesn't matter. It's still the weekend.

Maddie's recital tonight, work tomorrow, Houston to see Tracy on Sunday!

I pulled up this window...

...then nearly forgot what I was going to say.

Now I remember.

With being sick last week, overwhelmed with work, and going from the constant companionship that I had in Galveston to being by myself again, I haven't been in great spirits the past few days. I could use prayer to just keep on trucking -- I know things will get better, but this week has been a hefty adjustment period.

The easy explanation...

...would be to blame my dad. I mean, I could stand in my parents' house and point at all the DIY projects he's undertaken -- some of which are finished, some of which aren't. Then I could recount (for hours, probably), the projects you don't see: the beater truck for which I helped him install the engine, the loft bed I stained myself, the kayak with hatches I fit so nicely into for playing out on the lake, the kitchen table made precisely to my specifications.

I suppose we could blame my mom, too. She's the one who taught me to sew at the age of nine, the one who made us those matching lavender Easter dresses (even though I got silly putty all over mine when I fell asleep at the church).

Still, that wouldn't be quite sufficient. I'd have to then tell about growing up playing in the sawdust of my grandparents' wood shop. About sitting on Grampy's lap cutting ghost shapes with a scroll saw. About being put in shop class when I intended to take art in 7th grade -- and finding I was pretty happy there anyway.

Perhaps then we could understand my lifetime membership in the do-it-yourself brigade.

My own project list is numerous: the army trunk I bought at the church rummage sale, then covered with so much spray paint I sneezed blue for a week, the broken chair I took the mechanism out of and screwed back together, the discarded dresser I painted, replaced the hardware on, and sold for a 400% profit. The years of altered clothing, half-sewn dresses, and the curtains that still hang in my bedroom at my parents' house.

My view of the world seems to be a little more hazy than most; perhaps it's the project dust that litters my glasses and makes me believe that nearly everything has potential for greatness.

Sure, not everything works out the way I anticipate (Hey Gina and Siew, remember the chair? Talk about a dragged-out project that never came to anything). But I've learned that sometimes, the process is more important than the end result.

Right now, my process involves an antique dress form fished from a trash pile in Galveston. It's rusty and dirty and needs a little love.

Love, I have plenty of. For something like this, I'll even throw in a dash of elbow grease and several hours of time.

I'm excited -- I've been wanting a dress form for quite a while. It's a means to an end; when I have the form fully functional, I can start creating some of the dress designs that are floating around in my mind.

I'll keep you updated. :)

On a more practical note...

...it's been nearly a month and a half since I last ran. Lamezor. I need to get on that again. It's so dang hooooooooot in Texas, though.

I am back...

...in Lake Jackson.

It was hard to leave Galveston this morning. After nine days, it became home, and that's difficult to walk away from.

I have a great place to live in Lake Jackson -- don't get me wrong. But in Galveston, I have people who care, and who I care about. Who will make fun of me when I'm spaced out on prescription drugs, and who will talk about their lives and their hurts and their joys and let me share mine, and who will talk me into large ridiculous hats that make me laugh.

I'm sappy, I know. But I like that about myself.

My grams...

...would have been 75 today. It's been nearly two years since she left us, and I still miss her every day.

The plan to go...

...home yesterday fell apart, as I decided to take today off of work as well. I don't typically accomplish much on Fridays anyway.

And staying meant yummy food and ice cream afterwards.

Today, while incapable of driving, I was tired of sitting around feeling useless, so the kitchen is clean. A girl's got to do something to keep herself occupied.

Now for a message...

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{I don't actually have any sponsors. It would be rather strange if I did.}


When I came to Galveston last Friday evening, I didn't expect to be spending nearly a week here, with two day jaunt to Austin in the middle. Austin was planned, but what wasn't intentional was the extension of my stay, which could be more characterized as a return.

Yesterday morning I called off of work, having developed an angry red rash that needed medical attention. I was still on the island in the morning, and had a breakfast meeting with someone to discuss fundraising, and then could have gone to Urgent Care here, but my insurance card was in Lake Jackson. I had failed to put it in my wallet when I received it. So I finished my meeting, gathered up my stuff, and went home. I found the card and looked up doctors in the area. There was one -- just one -- in Lake Jackson, who wasn't taking new patients until September. Yes, SEPTEMBER. The closest urgent care facilities were in Pearland and Galveston. Cranky, exhausted, and in pain, I spent just two hours (maybe two and a half) at home, then drove back to Galveston.

The doctor at the Urgent Care here was fantastic. He was chill enough to make showing him the rash (in a place that generally prefers to stay hidden) not awkward at all. And he didn't hand me a bunch of lines when he diagnosed it: I have shingles, and whatever pain I was in yesterday was probably only going to get worse. He gave me some reading material, sent me on my way, and called in a prescription. Or three, to be exact.

Too tired to drive home, I went back to Luke and Maggie's house. They had a meeting, but we decided to do dinner afterwards. While they were gone I got my prescriptions and took the first dose of vicodin. I don't think I knew how much pain I was in until it went away. I knew it hurt, but it wasn't excruciating or even fully debilitating. It was mostly stiff and uncomfortable. The vicodin took that away, and made me pretty loopy. When Maggie called to say they were on the way back, she asked me if I was high. On the way to the Strand I made some goofy comments that were not out-of-character, but definitely encouraged by the drugs.

This morning I got up and took the full round of meds -- all three prescriptions. Luke had to come back and let me into the house, as the key wasn't where I'd left it yesterday, and Maggie just dropped me off after breakfast. I got inside and sat on the couch, totally zoned out. My hands were shaking and I stared at them for a moment going, "Huh." Right before Luke left again he asked me if I was all set. I said, "Yeah. I'm just going to sit here for a while." He laughed at me and went back to work.

I spent the next couple of hours just sprawled on the sofa. My mind isn't focused enough to even read a book or flip on the TV (actually, the TV might be WAY more stimulation than I can possibly handle). I need to go home at some point today, but I haven't decided when. I have just a few small windows of opportunity to make the drive drug-free. One is in less than an hour, and there will be another around 5:00.

I'm shooting for 5:00.