Deca-dent

I found this on someone's blog ages ago. I don't remember whose it was, but I saved it for just such an occasion (the occasion being that I can't get my head together enough to write a good post). Feel free to steal.

Deca-dent
Ten seconds ago I was taking a sip of coffee in my new office.
Ten minutes ago I was making a pot of coffee in my new kitchen.
Ten hours ago I was sleeping in my new bed in my new bedroom.
Ten days ago I was preparing to move in to my new house.
Ten weeks ago I was house hunting.
Ten months ago I moved back to Jersey to be a teacher.
Ten years ago I moved back to Jersey to be a professional chef.
----- ----- -----
Ten years from now I hope to be as happy as I am now.
Ten months from now I will be about to obtain my Master's degree.
Ten weeks from now I will be starting summer break!
Ten days from now I hope to actually start blogging on a regular basis again.
Ten hours from now I will be having Chinese food for Passover.
Ten minutes from now I will head out to spend obscene amounts of money for my new house.
Ten seconds from now I will take a sip of coffee in my new office.

I am a Busy Bee!

I am! I am! I am so very busy these days! I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. Than a crack dealer on payday. Than a Mormon at a wife swapping party. Than a ...OK I'm out. You get the picture.

So why am I so busy? Well, my new job is taking up a great deal of my time. I'm learning a whole new curriculum. I've got whole new set of rules, regulations, and policies (ie: bullshit) to figure out. And then there are the personalities of dozens of co-workers as well 18 little rugrats to get to know. Couple that with the fact that I am now in my second class for my graduate degree - A in my first class! - and you can see where I might be too tired to do anything else.

Funny thing about that though. I'm not. Too tired to do anything else I mean. In fact, I have more energy than ever. I have gotten more accomplished this past month when I have had absolutely no time than I did all summer when I had all the time in the world. I'm going out every weekend and finding that I have more friends back here than I even realized. I'm filling my days with things to do instead of lying around waiting for things to happen. I wake up early on my days off because I don't want to sleep my day away. I could be wrong, but I think I have become a productive member of society.

Lucille Ball once said, "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it." Busy people get things done, which is almost redundant if you read that out loud. This is why I committed to blog every day this month - because I am busier than ever. It's why I will look to finally buy my first home even though I barely have time to breathe, because there is no better time than now. It's why this is the time for me to find that special someone, because I simply don't have the time for someone else - yet somehow I will. It's why I feel happier than I have in a very, very long time.

Life is good when you're a busy bee.

I love my mom. I really do.

And so I'm living with my mother again. I haven't mentioned it much because A. it's humiliating, and B. it's mortifying. My mother and I, like most mothers and daughters, have an interesting history. My parents divorced when I was 13, leaving me to live alone with her full time. My mother quickly established our new roles - she would revert to being a teenager, and I would be responsible for her daily happiness. In other words, complete role reversal. It was an excellent arrangement for her.

Not to say that I didn't get to be a teenager - I worked very hard to meet every underachieving teenage stereotype ever invented. My primary goal during my adolescent years was to get as far from her as humanly possible without ending up in juvi. I rebelled against our role reversals with every fiber of my being. It was no coincidence that I moved out the day after my 21st birthday. And then went on to travel around the world. Twice.

Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. I really do. In many ways she is my best friend. Perhaps we are just not meant to live together. We get along swimmingly when we have our own abodes. Living at home again seems to be bringing out my inner teenage rebel. I find myself trying to sneak out without her knowing. I tiptoe around the apartment so she can't hear what I'm up to. I close the door to my room even when I'm just sitting around watching my goldfish troll for food.

At first I felt guilty for doing this, but then I realized why I was behaving in this manner. My mother was, and still is, the ultimate master in getting others to do things for her. After 30 some years, I have come to dread the words "While you're up, do you think you could...." with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.

"While you're up, do you think you could
- do my laundry. And make sure to separate the colors.
- bring me a blanket. No not that one, it doesn't match my socks.
- fetch me my slippers. No not those. They don't match my blanket.
- change the channel, no I don't like that show. Keep going. I don't like that either. Go on.
- get my book I'm reading, it's around here somewhere.
- give me a ride to this place. I don't know where it is. Where are your directions? And gas up the car while you're at it.
- carry this 100 pound thing around for a while so I can figure out where to put it.
- work out today's prime lending rate.
- find that thing, you know, that thing I was looking at yesterday.
- and my all time favorite: get me a glass of ice water. But not too much ice!"

You get the idea.

It's harder to get annoyed now that she is using a walker and is getting -
dare I say it - old. But being that this is how she's been since I could navigate stairs, it's now one of those old wounds that festers with age. It's hard to keep a smile on my face after so many years of indentured servitude. I try to be sweet when she interrupts my homework* so I can help her figure out the remote control yet again; or so I can search around the apartment for her glasses only to find that she is sitting on them; or so I can get her yet another glass of water; but it's not easy. I've fetched more water than an African village girl.

I'm hoping she will calm down soon. Perhaps she's just making up for lost time. It's been many years since she's had me here at her beck and call. I still remember her first words to me when I came home from Australia after two years. There she stood waving wildly at the bottom of the escalator at JFK - I had been traveling for 28 hours from Sydney - I had spent the better part of the last two years driving on the wrong side of the road - and her first words to me were, "Welcome back! Here's the keys to the car, thought you'd like to drive us home."

At least this place is beachfront.


*No, this isn't the teenage me talking, I have homework! I'm a grad student now, thank you very much.

Tuesday Ten #1

I recently saw this blog that hosts a weekly meme called the Thursday Thirteen. Each week people create a list of thirteen things of any topic they can think of, and then they all tell each other about them and read each other's lists. It's all very organized and social. I like the idea very much, but I don't want to do it. For one thing, I'm very superstitious, and 13 is an unlucky number*. For another, I'm usually kind of busy on Thursdays**. But most importantly, I just can't ever seem to make myself follow the crowd. I have an innate predilection to defy the norm. To fight the power. To march to the beat of my own drummer. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

But I do love the idea of making lists. I'm a Virgo, we are natural born list makers. It suits our anal retentive sensibilities. And so I have decided that every Tuesday I will make my own list of ten things. I will call it the Tuesday Ten - for obvious reasons. See how I did that? I picked a day that I'm not nearly as busy. Then I whittled down the list to only ten, a nice round even number that still allows for a nice alliteration. And I'm doing it all by myself with no judgments from the establishment. I am a clever girl.

Since I already exposed my silly superstitious nature, my first Tuesday Ten will be my about that topic.

My Top Ten Superstitions

1. I'm afraid to point out fortunate things - or ways I've been lucky - about myself, as this can bring on the evil eye. For example, I won't ever say something like, "I can't believe I've never fallen off the top of a mountain and broken every bone in my body," or "Thank goodness I haven't gotten that flesh eating disease that everyone else has," or "Boy am I lucky that Viggo is so warm for my form***." These are the kinds of statements that invite the evil eye to come a knockin'. If I do inadvertently blurt out something stupid like this, I immediately shout, "Kin ahora kin ahora, pooh pooh pooh!" which is basically a Yiddish expression meaning "No evil eye here! Knock on wood!" Well, actually the kin ahora part wards off the evil eye. I add the pooh pooh pooh part. It's my verbal knock on wood.
   


2. I also won't say anything that could bring on any type of bad karma to myself or the people around me, nor will I allow others do so. For instance, recently a friend was commenting that I could still get hired before the school year because some teacher could possibly fall off a mountain and break every bone in her body, or maybe could contract some sort of flesh eating disease. Despite the fact that I am desperate for a teaching position, I do not want it to be based on the misfortune of someone else - that's bad karma. Unless that person got what was coming to them for having their own bad karma. Like for being mean to the elderly. Or mistreating small animals. Or voting republican. That's different. Kin ahoras cover that no problem.


3. Besides my verbal knocks on wood, I'm a big believer in the physical knock on wood as well. What's important to note here is that I don't just knock three times after making a seemingly innocent comment that could potentially cause the end of the world as we know it. I knock the entire time I'm making the statement. This allows me to speak freely while warding off the evil eye. It's a little known fact that the evil eye can't hear anything over the sounds of rhythmic knocking.


4. On the first day of each month, the first thing I say upon waking up is "Rabbit rabbit rabbit." It's meant to bring good luck. Some people say "Bunny bunny bunny." I used to say that, but now that I'm a grown up it sounds silly.
   


5. I'm very superstitious about New Year's Day. Anything that can be gotten rid of to make a fresh start for the new year must be done. My house has to be spotless. All trash must be removed. The fridge and cupboards must be stocked. All bills must be paid and filed. I even clear off all the dirty pictures junk files on my computer. Everything must be in its place. It's one big beautiful freak show of a clean slate. I'm all aflutter just thinking about it.


6. I won't ever sit in a wheelchair. My mom has one here since she broke her hip, and the other day my brother sat in it and started rolling around. I screamed, "Get out of the chair get out get out get out that's bad luck!!!" I almost set off his defibrillator, which proves that it is indeed bad luck to sit in a wheelchair.
   
   
7. Purse on the floor - you will be poor. I never put my handbag on the ground. Apparently the money oozes out the bottom and hides in the floorboards. I must have put many handbags on the floor in a previous life to be as economically challenged as I am today.


8. I never put shoes on the bed or a table. I don't know why. This might just be a neat freak thing, but I have heard it's bad luck. Shoes on the table - bad. Shoes on the floor - good. Purse on the floor - bad. Purse on the table - good. I hope you are all taking notes.


9. I will only pick up found pennies that are heads up. They say you are supposed to turn a tails-up penny to heads-up to bring good luck to the next person, but I'm not falling for that one. If that tails-up penny is bad luck, I'm not touching it. You can't fool me three times.
   


10. I never light three cigarettes on the same match - that's very bad luck. Smoking three cigarettes at once is really disgusting anyway.

So that is the first edition of the Tuesday Ten. Feel free to come up with your own list. If you do, let me know in the comments section. You can be a follower and do the same topic that I chose, or you can be a rebel and come up with your own - which I can then steal for next week's installment.

*The number 13 is only acceptable when referring to a baker's dozen. An extra doughnut is always a good thing.
**Thursday is laundry day.
***Shut up.