I spent quite a lot of my day working on paying work and now, I’m not sure…but…I think my brain might be broken. I mean just a little broken but… I’m starting to think in Lolcat, if you know what I’m saying.

My brain, it looks like this: NO MOAR THEENKIN!  YARN TIME NAOW OTAY?

Wow. That needs to be a Lolcat graphic.

Internet photoshop creative types, activate!

Oh also, I made a vlog today and I kind of like it. You should go watch it!

My ex-roommate’s room is still stinky.

I feel like I have to keep calling it my ex-roommate’s room until I get that…SMELL…out of there. I am hoping that cleaning the carpet will get the job done becuase if it isn’t… well I already feel like it is moving time anyway but this is planting my feet more securely in the “go right now!” column.

Speaking of columns and moving and stuff… Internet, I do not know what to do.

Now that this apartment is, technically–in spite of the smell, all mine and only mine and did I mention all mine? the urge to flee it has waned considerably. Part of me wants to just stay here for a while. Put some work into the place and actually make it my own instead of what it has felt like for the last lots of months: a place to store my stuff and sleep while I figure out my next move (literally. Darn it, I was hoping to avoid the pun). I have lived in what feels like a constant state of transition since…well, if we’re being honest, at least the last year. It is wearing on my soul a little bit. I just want to be done. I just want to be settled.

And I already live here. And here has lots of space. Space is nice right?

But it isn’t downtown. And oh man, I want to live downtown. Every time I go into downtown Portland it gets harder to leave. I just love walking around it. My favorite neighborhood is still the Southwest Business district, with its taller buildings and wide sidewalks and the South Park Blocks and the Art Museum and the Central Library and Pioneer Square and many MANY food carts (and farmer’s market and Saturday market when those are in season).  I want to live there and never ever leave.

Which brings me to my next dilemma.

Studios are available all over the place down there. I toured one last week (I think I wrote about that). One bedrooms are harder to come by. Obviously I would prefer to have a one bedroom, just becuase well… it’s extra space. It would let me separate, however slightly, my working area from my sleeping area. It wouldn’t make me feel like I had regressed all the way back to living in a dorm room… I do not like the idea of being able to see all of my stuff all of the time (the idea makes me a tiny bit claustrophobic), etc.

At the same time… studios are available NOW. And if I get a studio I can rid myself of 99% of the furniture I currently have which, if we are being honest, I really don’t want to have to move. Part of me loves the idea of finding a small studio, selling almost everything I have now (exceptions: clothes, books, movies/DVDs, computers, some kitchen appliances…what? I REALLY like my bread maker) and starting all over almost from scratch. Building a home exactly the way I want to build it with no “ghosts” of dwellings past. The idea of making a fresh-ish start is really appealing.

But then, you know–space issues, claustrophobia–no space for having people over, if that is something I want to do, etc.

I…can you have a tri pointed metronome? between these three options: staying here, staying here and holding out for a one bedroom which could take a WHILE, scrapping it all and doing the studio thing downtown so many times every single day. I am starting to drive myself crazy…er than I already am.

I realize that I don’t have to decide right now, I can take my time, but I am so tired of living in a state of transition. It is wearing on my soul. I just want to be done. And decided. And done with it.

Thoughs? Advice? Insight? Please?

It’s been a weekend of getting things done. Yesterday I did a bunch of work that pays me. Today I did a bunch of work to clean my apartment…including scrubbing my floors. There hasn’t been much rest or relaxation–even though that is what weekends are for…but there has been productivity and I like that quite a lot.

It feels good to get things done.

Viva la back to work tomorrow!

Today I woke up and thought “I’ll go to the store, do a little bit of laundry and then maybe read.”

Instead I went to the store and then got a bunch of work done.

I have to say that I feel better about myself having gotten this work done than I would have if I had actually taken the day to read and do laundry. Of course, there is always tomorrow for laundry (and some cleaning) and reading (and potentially playing with yarn). Or working. We’ll see.

I kind of like working.

I spent my Friday night out at a pub. I mean, okay, I’m a nerd and I’m old so I’m home early and I guess I should say: I spent my Friday evening out at a pub. You know, like normal people do. Almost.

My friends and I invaded the new Kel’s Irish Pub in Northwest Portland tonight. We went there because we had a big group and this pub… it has booths that will seat up to twelve people comfortably (depending upon your personal space bubble)–and that have doors on them. You can shut the doors and, theoretically, shut out whatever else is going on so that you can have your own fun evening without having to worry about people walking all around you.

This part actually worked out well–the booth was great. It was roomyish (again, depending on your personal bubble), the table was huge and the food was good. Most of us were able to order at Happy Hour prices, which is perfect for my budget. We had a good server, who was like a ninja, appearing and disappearing very quickly but always managing to get our order and bring it to us…until it came time to grab the check. Maybe he just really liked us, but getting our ticket took a little while..which might have been okay if we weren’t really ready to leave.

Again: the idea was a good one. Go, be with friends, eat good food, have good beverages (soda for me) and be able to play some board games peacefully and without taking up so much space that we kept people from being able to have their own fun evenings.

Oh. Did I not mention that our evening’s activity was going to be board games?

Yeah.

‘Cause that’s how we roll.

For the first part of the evening, it went swimmingly. The pub wasn’t all that crowded and the noise level was at a dull roar. As the place filled up, though, it got loud. And then it got louder. And then the people looking for a Friday night date spot/Friday night find a hookup spot started showing up and it got louder.  And that big roomy booth with the beautiful big table and the nice closeable doors…well, its walls didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling so all of that sound still came flooding in. And, because this Kel’s is still new, there wasn’t any sort of decoration on the walls to absorb any of the sound so all of the talking and the chatter and the laughing and the music (which I swear kept getting turned up) just…reverberated off of the walls and crashed into us from every direction.

But we endured. Because there were games to play!

But! Because we are nerds, we left, with any luck, long before the place become more clubbish and less friendly neighborhood pubbish (though, maybe this is how pubs and bars actually are? I don’t know, I don’t typically hang out in them).

It’s 10:30ish and I’m home. I have on my pajamas and I’m blogging. Because I live on the wild side, that’s why.

But my ears, y’all, my ears are RINGING.

And even though I know it’s bad for may auditory health, kind of makes me feel like a rock star.

I have often said that if I ever win the lottery I am going to buy one of the houses on Klickitat Street here in Portland because… it’s Klickitat Street. In Portland.

It just seems like the perfect place to settle for someone who lives in Portland and loves kids books and grew up reading books by Beverly Cleary.

Today is Beverly Cleary’s 96th birthday. Some of my favorite reading memories from my childhood happened with Beverly Cleary’s books:

The first chapter book I read by myself was a Ramona book.

I still remember the description she used for french fries in Ramona and her…Father? The family goes out to eat and Ramona orders a hamburger and french fries and the crispy and golden on the outside, white and fluffy on the inside (paraphrasing to keep from citing the ire of copyright police) is still what I think of whenever I think of french fries.

My favorite memory of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Smith (really, that was her name), is of her reading the scene in one of the Ralph books where he figures out how to make the car back up by saying “Mooooooorv!” instead of “Vrooooom!”

The first wedding I remember having any experience with is the wedding in Ramona Forever.

I desperately wanted to play Brick Factory as a kid but could never get my hands on any bricks or big enough rocks.

I have so many good memories of curling up with Beverly Cleary’s books when I was younger. I made sure to buy Ramona’s World when I was older.

Beverly Cleary helped shape a big chunk of my childhood and I will always be grateful to her for that.

Happy Birthday Beverly Cleary!

You guys. YOU GUYS. My friends are featured in Wired’s Geek Dad column.

For serious.

This makes me SO HAPPY!

Today has turned into an ad hoc sick day. I woke up with a massive headache (again…I’ve woken up with them every day for about a week and a half; I’m pretty sure I need a new pillow), an overwhelming bodily exhaustion and the urge to…do violent things to beings that do not deserve them. The words I used this morning were “drop kick a baby” though things like “punching kittens” “kicking puppies” etc can all be subbed in.

I have a couple of days like this every month. Yadda Yadda PMS, whatever.  Some months it manifests as extreme depression. Other months, like apparently this one, it manifests as spoiling for a fight.

The good news is that I know that it will pass. The good news is that I know that this heightened hormone salad is a direct result of the terrible BCP I’m on (Trinessa, really, for me it SUCKS, but for right now it is all I can afford). The good news is that knowing these things helps me keep myself in check because if we’re being honest (and what better place to be honest than on my blog) when these moods hit I am not completely in charge of myself. During these days I am likely to have wild and knee jerk reactions to things that normally wouldn’t phase me. But knowing what these moods are keeps me from actually letting these reactions inform my actions. If that makes sense.

The best thing I can do for myself when one of these days hits is to just…stay away. I stay home, I mostly avoid Twitter and Facebook and blogs. I do my best to just concentrate on work projects and watching reruns of television shows on Netflix (right now I’m having a Eureka marathon in preparation for the new season). Sometimes getting work done and staying productive can help me feel better enough to be amongst the people but if it doesn’t, I bide my time and just remind myself, as I metronome back and forth from furious to despondent (sometimes several times a day) that the moods will pass. That I will even back out.

It’s a lonely couple of days but I’d rather do it that way than venture out and potentially pick a fight with someone I care about over something that feels completely legitimate one minute but that will feel truly stupid five more minutes later.

This was one of those days. This, coupled with the fact that by four I still hadn’t gotten anything of real consequence accomplished, is why I’m declaring it a sick day and giving up. Tonight is for yarn and Eureka reruns and snuggling with the cat…as much as she’ll let me.

Tomorrow will be a little better and in another day or so I should be back to normal.

You know, as normal as I can be.

So today I failed my personal goal for April.

Or did I?

I woke up this morning and looked at the computer and thought, in my most accusing inside-my-brain-voice, “YOU. YOU are the reason work is taking me longer than it used to. I don’t want to write you first. I want to get my work done so that I can enjoy writing you.”

And that’s where I started feeling little inklings of an epiphany… that when I make myself write these blogs first thing in the day they often feel more like work than they should. And they come with the added stress of my paying work staring at me, threatening to not get done if a blog post takes too long to write. So blogging has been much less fun so far this month than it has ever been.

I know, I know: April is only nine days old. It takes more time to make a new habit. Stick with me here.

Because I was feeling so resentful of this blog and this space, I decided to just… put it off. I procrastinated it. I went to the store for some groceries. I did a bunch of paying work. I cooked and ate dinner. I watched a little bit of television. And then I thought “okay, I’m ready to blog.”

I feel better blogging right now than I have over all of the previous eight days combined, even though I’m not doing this first thing…and it got me thinking about the whole “making it a priority” theme because wasn’t that the point of my personal goal for April–to teach myself to think of blogging my priority?

And that’s when that epiphany that had started to tickle at me ran up and punched me in the face.

The truth is that this blog has always been a priority (even when my mojo was gone, it was still something that tugged at me). When I make a commitment to post, I post. Even if it means staying up until the wee hours coming up with something, I do still sit down and do it.  Sometimes it’s painful in my brain because my brain is tired from working all day but I haven’t let that keep me from actually composing a post for months.

I’d say that means I’m making it a priority, wouldn’t you?

Where I’ve been confusing things for myself is thinking that the most important thing needs to be done first. That, because I was blogging after the responsible work, I wasn’t making the blog enough of a priority. But that’s not true. I do the work that feeds me and pays my rent first because I need to be fed and pay my rent. If I don’t get fed and pay my rent I won’t have a place from which to blog… or a healthy body with which to type. That doesn’t mean that I value it over my blog, it’s the thing I do so that I can blog (and vlog).

And that means that I am making my blog a priority, don’t you think?

The problem was that I was turning something into a problem that wasn’t really a problem.

Because I don’t know about you but these “I have to do this first” blogs haven’t been as good as the ones that come later. They’re quick and hurried and not very well thought through. I’m not super proud of them.

I’d rather wait and potentially write something worth reading than something that is little more than a “I said I’d do this and I said I’d do it now so here you go.” posts.

So I think I’m going to reconfigure my “I want to blog first thing in the morning” post. Or scrap it and just stick with BEDA for BEDA’s sake. Or maybe I’m just coming up with a way to justify the reconfiguring of my April goal because right now I kind of hate my April goal.

Thoughts?

First I need to thank the Eagles Lodge in Portland because they not only let us invade their space for another nerd-centric/indie show but they let us do so with copious amounts of food–that we brought in ourselves.  Thanks Eagles Lodge!

Tonight was the first ever (for us) Chocolate Potluck. It was an idea that was generated a few months ago during a session of joking around on Twitter and tonight it became A Real Thing.

And it was awesome.