10 Things Tuesday

Here’s a bunch of random stuff I’ve been doing and thinking. Enjoy!

1. Time is such an odd thing. On the one hand, I feel like June went by super fast. On the other hand, my birthday (near the beginning of June) seems really far away. So the summer is both flying by and yet going quite slowly. I can’t believe THIS is the month we leave for our big road trip, and yet, I’ve been waiting for it for so long, of course it is nearly here and we are ready and excited.

2. I had this thought recently that, yes, this is my life now. I spent so much of my childhood and adult life getting ready for the future, planning, preparing, working hard to get somewhere to do something else, and it takes some time to let things sink in and settle in to: this is it, this is how my life is, and (more importantly) to say, hey this is pretty good. That last part has been a difficult one to get to, but I think on more days than not, I can say, this is good, this is a life I am happy with. Of course, it’s summer, and things are more relaxed and I’m not stressed out…so who knows.

3. I got to play with Weird Al Yankovic the other weekend. It was super fun, though we didn’t get to meet him or anything. One of my former (adult) students said to me, If I’d know I could have played with Weird Al someday I would have practiced harder when I was a kid!

4. The heat of summer is finally here, and it’s been muggy. Over the weekend we still did some outdoor activities, including going to the Opera (can you believe I’d never actually SEEN the Marriage of Figaro even though I’d played it)(and you ask, how is that outdoors, it’s because there was a pre-opera dinner outside in a tent, and post-opera snacks and drinks to do, and I naturally got bug bites), and going on a hike to Buford Mountain, which we’d done before in November, and it was still a nice view, but much harder and more buggy.

Not a bad view for Missouri though. It’s a great hike, but perhaps better in the fall or winter…unfortunately summer is when we have more time, and we like to stay in hiking shape as well.

5. Still no Miles, in case you were wondering. My black cat has been missing since 4/20…

6. I had to make a couple of phone calls to various businesses today, which I hate doing. In both cases I was on hold for 5-10 minutes, and I’m like, with today’s technology, why is this a thing I must do? Can’t they have this online or at least, call me back when they are free instead of me having to listen to loud music or worse, a constant announcement telling me how my call is soon to be answered? I know there are bigger problems in the world, but still, we have enough people to cover this one too.

7. I’ve been doing tons of reading over the summer. There are two great things the public library offers. One is free kindle books, and the other is the ability to kind of order your books ahead of time. Using the website, you can put a hold on any book in the library and then they’ll email you when they have it ready. You go in to your local branch, show your library card, and boom! you have your books. I believe you can even just call when you arrive and they’ll bring them to out to the car, but I think that is more for people with mobility issues (it’s not a drive through type thing, they would have to literally walk out to you, so I would feel bad doing that, but if you had trouble getting around, or had several kids in the car, I can see that being a terrific option!).

8. I haven’t been getting to everything I thought I would this summer. I am okay with that. My house still needs a lot of work, but I am growing to accept that the house is a work in progress, and I remind myself of two things: progress is being made, and yet progress is difficult when Louie is working full-time and pursuing a doctorate and that’s okay. We don’t need to impress anybody (we certainly aren’t) but it just needs to be a comfortable and safe place to live. I am still working on decluttering, but I can’t Konmari stuff that isn’t mine, and I am one of those people that is okay with small, steady changes. Overtime things have gotten more organized and less cluttered, and we will continue in that direction. I did have “finish organizing my music collection” on my list, but I just haven’t felt like it. I’ve made small steps, but I have too much music for the shelves allotted and haven’t quite figured out what to do with that…I might just have to take some music and put it in a closet for the time being and just make some labels for the rest and call it a day for it.

9. Louie and I are running a 5k downtown this Thursday! I’ve been doing a training program for it, and while I have been running really slow (seriously slow, turtle speed) I’ve been doing it. My plan is to run the whole race and not walk, and ideally finish in less than 45 minutes. Truly jogging, but it’s hard for me, so there. I know I used to run more and I was faster, and truly growing old, getting busier, and gaining some weight made things harder. I’ve been enjoying running though, and I do want to be active enough that I can just do things like a six mile hike (like yesterday) and it’s not a big deal. Running has always been hard for me, but I’m looking forward to the race (though of course, not the 7:30 am start and 6:30 am packet pickup). What are you doing on the 4th? After the race we are mostly just going to do some things to prep for our annual BBQ which is on Saturday (generally our neighborhood park has fireworks that day, but this year they are postponing it to a date we can’t do, so we are doing the BBQ nonetheless).

10. My band had a listening party at the Tick Tock Tavern for our CD which is coming out this summer. It was a lot of fun, even though you couldn’t hear the music so well over people chatting. We are putting the finishing touches on the CD and working on the cover and whatnot, and then we have two CD release concerts planned in September. The band is one of those activities that I really enjoy, but don’t actually have the time for! I’ve learned a lot about music working with Meghan and Michael though, and they are two of the nicest and kindest musicians I’ve ever known.