Everyday Observations

So here I sit. As I do every Thursday. It’s dancing day. And we have dancing from 2:30-5:30 with one thirty-minute break in the middle that requires mom supervision. It’s my least fave day because I feel like I “waste life” each week as I try to quickly dash to run an errand here and there with three year-old in tow and get back before jazz class ends. Then four of us cram into the car (we have a friend with us) and munch snacks and watch about fifteen minutes of a movie, swap shoes, and run back in for ballet. It’s so fragmented and chaotic, headache-inducing, and unproductive. I take a healthy overdose of Extra-Strength Tylenol before we leave the house and try to roll with it.

Today we ended up with two overturned cans of soda, one monkey who scrambled to the back of the car refusing to get out for ballet, and one sitting helplessly in the middle totally unable to find her shoes (yep, she’s mine).

There’s really nothing that awful about it; it’s just that everything about it is so contrary to what I prefer.

So today, as I wait, I half-heartedly mourn the untimely death of my desktop hard drive. Frizzled. Frazzled. Fried. Though its unexpected passing has me concerned about my i-Tunes library, hundreds of pics, and many Word documents that have not been responsibly backed-up, the hubster’s flippant mention of a laptop has me not so heartsick after all.

‘Cause then I could blog and stalk during the dancing wait. Though my posts might turn into the dancing doldrums every week. So, consider yourself forewarned. If the laptop comment does come to fruition (doubtful at best), you may want to skip reading on Thursday 🙂

So, what do you really do when you have to wait and don’t want to “waste life”?

I may have stepped into an antbed of controversy on this one, so restrain your knee-jerk reaction as I delve into the essence of gray. I know, I know – touchy subject. At the root of gray there are two fundamental controversies that divide people the world over:

1) Is it even a color (since it is born out of the non-colors black and white)?
2) How in the world do you spell it (I actually prefer grey, but what do I know?)?

I know, now you’re all hot and bothered that I went there; stick with me.

I love gray.

I don’t really wear a lot of gray, and I don’t really have any gray in my house, but it’s my favorite time of day. I love the gray of day – just before dawn and right at dusk. One of my favorite, favorite things is to sit in my house during the gray with blinds open. No lights burning. No sound disrupting – except the whir of the heater (I never notice the air conditioner running during the summer, but my heater speaks comfort into my morning). Everything in the room looks gray and nondescript – even me. I can just fade into my surroundings and ponder and pray and disappear for a moment.

I usually miss the gray at dusk, and I don’t always catch the gray at dawn, but when I do, it’s always a little something special.

Highly recommend that you schedule some gray into your day sometime soon!

What a cool, cool privilege to go out as a country and cast our votes today! I do love voting although I have to admit it only took me about thirty-five minutes at 2:00, so that may have something to do with my sustained enthusiasm. I don’t know though, because there was such a neat vibe among the voters as we queued through the interior of the fire station: two lines to check-in and one line for voting. One of my favorite parts of the experience was that whoever was the last person in the voting line had to hold up a handmade sign that read “END” for others to be able to easily find the end of the line. As new prospective voters lined up, you passed the sign on down the line. So cute and humble and brilliant, I thought.

As a high school teacher, I taught a class called Strategies for Success. It was required for all freshmen, and it was a super duper (dooper?) class. I’ve taught in places where the required freshman class was a bad joke, but this was the real honkin‘ deal. The class curriculum was built on Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (phenomenal book!), and we spent a concentrated chunk of time on Myers-Briggs personality testing. It was through my preparation for this course that I learned a ton about myself – I am an INFJ if that means anything to you.

The I in INFJ means that I am an introvert – a borderline introvert. I remember being surprised by the results, but my introvert/extravert numbers were very close. An introvert (as described by M-B) may really enjoy being with people, but he/she is left drained by a lot of interaction. Conversely, an extravert is energized by interaction. As a speaker/teacher I am loud, animated, and constantly moving, and nothing in all the earth energizes me like that! But that is still limited interaction. When greeting at church and in certain social situations I can be charged up by interaction, but for the most part I derive energy from being alone.

Another characteristic of an introvert is the tendency to think before speaking; extraverts think and process as they speak. I have often missed opportunities to contribute in conversations or discussions because I was chewing too long on what to say (some of you are not buying it, but it is so…). I have gotten way better at this over time, but there was a time when I could not participate in a conversation with several real extraverts. I wasn’t fast enough. In fact, in college I took a Spanish placement test as a freshman and landed in junior level Spanish. I could read and write the language well, but this was a class where only Spanish was spoken. My professor would call on me to answer rapid-fire questions, and I would choke every time. If I am a borderline introvert in English, I am an off-the-chart introvert in Spanish. I couldn’t think through what I wanted to say quickly enough to answer her questions. I made an office visit in tears, and she was so kind. She stopped calling on me in class 🙂

So all of this has me thinking how great blogging is for introverts. It doesn’t require face-to-face interaction; it allows time to process before broadcasting, and there isn’t competition for getting a word in quickly enough. So, that led me to wonder how many I’s out there are enjoying the accommodations of blogging?

What are you? An innie or an outie?

And one more thing, I find myself becoming more extraverted as I age, and Chris (who was a strong E is becoming more introverted). Any ideas on how that happens?

I’m doing a bit of remote blogging today. I am seven hours away from home – in the mountains of Virginia. The fall foliage is stunning, as you might expect. Hopefully I’ll have some great pics to post next week (only have the camera on my phone and no cable for uploading – bummer!). Chris is working, and I am quiet. I have been alone all day today, and I love it. I am one who desperately needs regular doses of solitude and silence to soften and unzip; the only problem is that it doesn’t happen regularly (my own fault for grossly overscheduling my life).

Today is one of those days where I just want to store up rest and patience and gentleness for weeks to come. Like I would love to sleep as much as possible here and have that translate into two weeks of feeling well-rested. Unfortunately, that’s not the deal. In fact, what usually happens is that I return less patient than when I left because I’ve supped on a couple of days of selfishness and it’s quite difficult to immediately jump back into mommy-mode. There’s just no time of transition; someone needs milk, another needs to potty, this one wants to go to the store to buy something she has seen on TV, and that one wants you to color and read a book NOW, etc… Can anybody else identify? So thankful for my sweetheart girls (I swallowed my heart this morning when I walked in the market and saw a pack of crayons – a momma’s ache, wanting to be physically near my little ones but understanding the value of some time away) and so thankful for this neat little trip, but a little bummed that I can’t capture the fragrance of tranquility and release it from its dainty bottle on a day of chaos in my future.

So this place we’re staying is interesting. It was built in 1766, so – you know – it’s old. I love historic, so that’s cool – but you’re not suppose to wear jeans in the Great Hall (lobby – in case you were wondering). Chris and I arrived in the Great Hall last night at 11:00 pm both in jeans. And guess what the staple of my wardrobe for our stay is – uh, huh – jeans. Chris was like, “People, welcome to the twenty-first century; everybody wears jeans everywhere.” So we’re wearing our jeans, and honestly so is everyone else and shorts. No one’s respecting the Great Hall; people show no decorum these days. Sigh.

And there’s like 30 ladybugs that live in our room. Most of the time on the ceiling. Although one just joined me on the laptop not too long ago. Thankfully they have good manners. And they’re lady-like, not creepy bugs. They call that charm. I guess…

AND – NO VENDING MACHINES! I can pay $3.50 for a Diet Pepsi in a can in our room. Whoa! I like nice and all, but it ain’t nice (and neither am I) when I can’t get a drink. It is not cool to mess with me like that.

We played paintball this afternoon with Chris’ colleagues, and it was so fun. I was awful at it; I did not hit one person in four games. So fun though. Got a great picture of me with a pink paint ball splattered in the front of my hair. Also collected a nick on a knuckle and a hematoma on my elbow. So fun though…

And we rounded out the evening with three games of bowling and room service at the bowling alley. The first game, I had the worst score of the whole group of us, but I got my groove on after that. Shout out to lil’ ole me for breaking 100 on the second game (I scored a humbling 39 the first round), and I definitely garnered the Most Improved Award.

An amusing 24 hours, to say the least…