You're Doing It Wrong

I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels. Forever.

This is not a new feeling and seems to run in cycles where I feel more and more mired in the routine every day crap until finally something comes along to shake me out of it. Then life rolls on again until the next cycle of stuck. I should probably be careful about complaining about this because there are all kinds of bad things that could shake things up and that’s not what I’m going for.

I thought the NYC trip would stir me up a bit more but not really.

I’m having a hard time articulating myself this morning. This week has been extra long. With one car I’ve been leaving earlier and we’ve had something going on after work every night this week. And I have a couple of huge projects at the office that require a lot of brain juice that I’m trying to keep reeled in.

What happens on these longs days is I start to think about all the things I want to get done on the weekend when I have time. Then when the time finally rolls around I’m tired and my brain is squeezed dry and once I’ve run an errand or two and run the laundry then my motivation vanishes and I end up organizing my envelope collection in front of the TV.

I was going to go into a thing about the big rocks first and blah blah blah being productive. But really, productive compared to what? I have too many internal rules. I should spend all day Saturday finger painting. (Even just joking about it is giving me a small coronary. Finger painting? But how will all the stuff get done?)

Just now when I plugged “big rocks first” into a search engine to find a link to that story I got a bunch of hits on productivity articles. Does anyone else find it funny how many online sites are devoted to ideas for productivity? You could spend all day doing nothing except keeping up with the latest on productivity.

The reason I bring up productivity articles is that I can never resist the urge to read an article that promises to teach me the secrets to be more productive. It’s sort of like all those articles I read between the ages of 15-35 that promised to teach me the secrets of losing weight.

I already know: There is no secret. You have to do it. Weight loss? Burn more than you take in. There is no secret formula of grapefruit and cauliflower that’s going to make it easier. It’s not like pie crust where there might actually be a secret like chill the butter or roll it out between two sheets of wax paper (which totally didn’t work).

I already know if I want to get stuff done I have to do it. My big productivity tip, which I have trouble implementing: want to do less stuff.

1. Paranormal Stories. I loved stories about the Bermuda Triangle. The missing air patrol – how could they have just vanished? And I loved the stories about abandoned ships that were found with warm cups of coffee sitting on the table and bacon frying in the pan but no sign of people. I also read everything about UFOs, Atlantis, ghosts, Big Foot and the Abominable Snowman, and Loch Ness monster. I also had a book that told about unexplained mysteries like people who walked under a ladder and disappeared. But sometimes you might hear their voice if you stood near where they disappeared.

2. Bible Stories at the Dentist’s Office. My family never went to church when we were growing up (or ever). My sister and I went to Sunday School a little bit with our babysitter but overall my exposure to Bible stories was minimal. My dentist office had these big books of illustrated Bible stories which I loved and looked forward to reading every time I had to sit in that waiting room. Of course now I’m drawing a big blank on the stories I liked except Androcles and the lion. The other part I remember is when Jesus floated up into the sky to Heaven. This caused me a bit of worry because I wanted to know how far he floated and was he scared when he got up high and could this happen to me and what sort of outer space/heaven transition was there and how long did it take to get there?

3. Guiness Book of World Records. Is there any kid who didn’t LOVE this book? I always wanted to find a record I could break. Remember the photo of the guy with the crazy long curled fingernails? I also remember The Who had the loudest rock concert. I was always fascinated by the oldest living people and the oldest lady who’d had a child. One of the editors was on the Daily Show and he was funny. He said people send them all sorts of weird stuff like huge pieces of skin or stuff he didn’t even want to talk about.

4. 1972 World Book Encyclopedia. We had a set of encyclopedias that were handy for homework projects. No Google in the Seventies. There was a human body section with several clear pages with a slice of the human body so you could see bones on one page, muscles on another page, guts on another page.

I’m not sure how this happened, but it’s only first thing Monday morning and I’m already feeling a bit frazzled. I hope I can shake it off otherwise this is going to be a long week.

I forgot to mention earlier that I enjoyed Jonathan Lethem at the lecture and also officially gave up on his book and put it in the “to return” pile. He has a non-fiction collection and I’m going to give that a try someday.

Meanwhile, I recently found Shorpy which is “a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating.” It’s very cool and I highly recommend checking it out.

It’s hard to feel good about yourself when every time you walk out the front or back door you see a giant pile of ants staggering around in crooked circles. Whenever people charge me a large sum of money to solve a problem I’ve diagnosed myself on a matter I have zero experience with I’m always worried I’m getting hosed. Not this time. I didn’t realize there were piles of giant ants living around the front door or back door. The ants I was calling about are (were) on the side of the house. How close they came to conquering us.

The sun is out but I see clouds and I have some work to do out there so I’m going to cut my planned post short.

I finally finished my book, Annie Proulx, Accordion Crimes which brings me up to 4 for this year.

Years and years ago I started a notebook where I write authors, titles and notes about books I wanted to read. Most of them come from book reviews but also from recommendations, best books lists and books mentioned by guests at Arts & Lectures.

This morning I went through the notebook to see if any titles sounded good right now. I also make notes if I decide not to read the book. Maybe I picked it up at the library and decided upon closer inspection that it doesn’t look like something I want to read. Or I make a big check mark if I’ve read it and write what I thought of the book which ranges from “awesome!” to “okay” to “dreadful.”

I found that Entertainment Weekly was consistently unreliable and even the starred reviews were books that I could barely hold in my hands for 5 pages. Esquire Magazine once printed a comprehensive list of books everybody should read and most were literary classics but the kind of literary classics that you’ve barely heard of and I was rarely tempted by the list.

After I finished Accordion I started a book called The Leopard which I’ve seen mentioned in The Week numerous times and so far I like it. That should keep me busy until I have time to go to the library with my new list.

So did I mention I’m now apparently a member of AARP?

Uncle Marvin and Aunt Marvin thought it would be fun to buy Bob a membership for his 50th bday and me, as the spouse, also gets to enjoy the “benefits, advocacy and information on again for people age 50 and over.” Yay!

That was sarcasm if you missed it.

You know when I’ll be ready to join a group of old people? When I get to be a tribal elder. They always get to eat first and younger people bring them a plate. They also get to sit in the front all the time. I’m going to make sure they also always bring me a drink.

But I’d like to enjoy a few more years of middle age in the meantime.

Also, I’m glad Antman warned me about seeing more ants in the house right after the treatment because there is a major giant ant convention going on by the front door — not even the area we’d originally called about.

They aren’t looking like the happiest ants in the world and I really do hate killing things but at some point you have to draw a line around the living space. They can live out there in front foliage as much as they want but inside the house is off limits.

I am finally taking care of the bumper damage from the uninsured lady who hit us in December. I figured while the car was going in I might as well take care of the other ding (not my fault) and scrape (my fault!) so I did a bit of back and forth with insurance and the body shop and all I can say is this is a big incentive never to hit or be hit again.

I am car-less for 8 working days. I know zero about car body repair but it seems like an awfully long time. Since my person at the body shop asked me at least 10 times whether I had rental car coverage and I never once made mention of needing a rental car I suspect some rental car kickback incentive to drag the repair out as long as possible.

We can live on 1 car for a week and a half and have developed a highly complex program to trade off the car along with various combos of walking/picking up/dropping each other off, public transportation and/or relying on kind colleagues for rides.

I’m short on time this morning but I have to mention the most fabulous dinner I had last night at the Salmon Creek Brewery. It was a chef special called something like Shrimp Diablo which was grilled shrimp in a creamy, Cajun-y spiced sauce over pasta and was so delicious I haven’t stopped talking about it. I wanted the hoover the whole plate but save enough a little taste when I get home tonight.

I think I wrote about this last Fall. I phoned our heating oil company then to see if they could top us off so we’d go into the cool weather with a full tank. The woman who took my call got sort of bent out of shape about this. “You want fuel, now?” she said like it was a crazy idea.

I won’t get into it but I’ve had run ins with this woman before about our service plan. I’m not sure what her deal is but I would argue that she’s not striving to provide her customers with superior service and products… on time… every time… and always with a friendly smile.

I told her that on autofill they always got us at Christmas and tax time when we already had a lot of other expenses. At current rates it’s in the range of $600 to fill the tank.

Since we’re on the autofill program she said it would cost extra to fill the tank in October so I said, forget it we’ll do it your way and sure enough, December 15 we find the bill with notice that our tank has been filled.

Now it’s April. We’ve never got a second fill. We’re at less than a quarter tank. We’re using less but we still need heat. They supposedly use some complicated program based on our usage records multiplied by the daily low temperature and divided by the square root of the full moon on a Sunday after the vernal equinox. I don’t know how it works but I am finding it an astounding coincidence that after I specifically mentioned Xmas and tax time being bad time for fuel delivery that that’s precisely what we’re getting.

Bob decided to call them to find out what was going on and order 100 gallons rather than a full tank. He called me after he talked to The Dragon Lady and said: What IS her deal? The poster child for anti-customer service insisted to him that we didn’t need fuel and couldn’t possibly be that low. Like she would know better than us, right? She said our usage had changed and something about the ratio and blah blah blah. What, were they planning on delivering fuel in May when we don’t need it until Fall?

Bob had to insist and they agreed to deliver this week at the higher price which will cost us a huge extra $8. Our service contract expires in the summer and The Dragon Lady will just have to enjoy not providing customer service to some other people.

Meanwhile, I noticed yesterday I have a nice, slightly swollen gash on my nose. I have zero idea where it could have come from. I haven’t been playing contact sports or falling down drunk. No one has thrown anything at me. My best guess is that I hit myself in the face during yoga on Monday night. Denise kicked our butts.

We did the Star Wars Easter Egg kit wrong because I didn’t read the directions but apparently there was something you put on the eggs before you cook them and it looks really cool. I cooked the eggs in advance thinking I was being a big planner and so then it was too late.

The sandwiches look delicious.

Can it be true that I’ve only read three books this year?

How can this happen? I’m thinking I need to run out and buy some flimsy paperbacks. Maybe a thriller or murder mystery or a young adult book with vampires or dragons. Just to remember the feeling of finishing a book again.

Right now I’m reading Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx which fulfills one requirement in that it’s been on the shelf for years. Besides I love Annie Proulx. I also haven’t totally given up on The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem even though I’ve been reading it (or not reading it) for roughly 2 months now and I’m only on page 67. I took it to NYC thinking maybe that would get me in the mood but I never had time to read on the trip and when I did, I was usually reading the travel book and wishing I’d picked it up earlier.

The problem with Fortress is that I need to quit because it’s just not working for me. Two months and 67 pages is enough. However, Lethem is the Arts and Lectures person on Thursday and if I really like him I may leave it on the nightstand and make one more try. The problem with Accordion is that even though I’m enjoying it, it’s not the kind of book you can just pick up and read a page or two and it’s hard to read when one is tired or has had a couple of glasses of wine which is me at least 7 nights a week.

[Update: I just checked and I wrote the exact same thing about Fortress 2 months ago except I was on page 60. What is wrong with me? I think the NYC trip convinced me to keep it on the nightstand. Maybe I’ll pose this during the Q&A on Thurs: “I’ve been trying to read Fortress of Solitude for over three months and can’t get past page 67. Should I quit trying?”]

On my days off I like to read in bed in the morning but if Bob is around he likes to talk to me and also, reading in bed all morning tends to start the day off on an unproductive note. I then proceed to an uninspired yoga practice that I quit early, daydream during my meditation, flip through the newspapers, catch up on a TV show or two and so on like this.

When I’m in the middle of a fantastic book that I can’t put down I carry the book everywhere and read before work, at lunch hour, after dinner. I haven’t carried these books around. My other problem is almost everything else on my “to read” shelf is a heavy literary tome so I’m not in a hurry to pick up something new. How did reading turn into a job?

I need to finish Accordion, preferably this weekend and then regroup on the reading program meaning I need to find some books I’m excited about.

On a quick side note: Bob and I watched Borat this weekend and I did not love it. Sure I laughed. I laughed a lot. But some of it was uncomfortable laughing. Short review: too mean. Related: one of our favorite food vendors at the Farmer’s Market is from Kazakhstan and they used to have a big sign that said so. This year they have a generic ethnic food sign.