Putting out Fires

I realized this morning that yesterday was probably the first day in my entire life that I didn’t see a single person that I knew.  I woke up, went to the gym, went to a bookstore, went shopping, did some house work.  Alone.  This is a totally new thing for me.  I went right from high school, to community college (living at home), to university (living in the same dorm as two of my best friends), to Seattle (with roommates I’d already made friends with over email), to my parents’ house again, to my home with my husband. 

My husband has a job where he is gone a bit.  I’m not good about being alone.  I sit in the house.  Unmotivated.  Unexcited for the day.  Lazy.  I know plenty of people who would fill this precious free time with chores and errands and projects.  Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of chores and errands and profects, but I can’t bring myself to do them. 

How did I become so dependent on other people for my happiness?

So here’s my New Year’s resolution:  I will make a real effort to spend my time wisely.  I will learn to be on my own, and love doing things I want to do.  I will not depend on other people for my happiness. 

Isn’t it horrible when you discover such a terrible weakness in yourself?

(Side note:  this website PISSES ME OFF.  This is now the SIXTH time I’m typing this.  Partially due to my drinking at an office Christmas party, I am ‘happy’ enough to have hit the touch pad on my laptop enough to COMPLETELY ERASE everything I’ve written before now.  Anyway…)

My husband was once a shy person.  When we first started dating, he didn’t even attempt to kiss me until the FIFTH date.  Once we started dating seriously, I discovered that this man had a severe phobia to even using the phone to order a pepperoni pizza. 

Right now, on the first day in THREE WEEKS that we’ve had any time together, he is GOSSIPING on the phone with one of his fire buddies about fire life.  Oh how the fire department has changed our lives.

You spill wine on your laptop and instead of freaking out about the laptop, you try to figure out how to suck the wine out from under the keys. 

I went to engineering school for two reasons:  1.  I was good at math (and let’s be honest, what do you ACTUALLY do with math?), and 2. the boys.  The latter wasn’t really a reason, but it was a nice perk.

The really cool thing about being a WOMAN engineer is that there’s really not very many of us.  In fact, I am the only woman engineer in my entire building, and in meetings I am usually the only woman period.  The greatest thing about this is that I feel this huge sense of accomplishment… 

Until I have meetings like the one I had today.  I understand fully that other parts of the world have different views on the roles of women, but I am a firm believer of the fact that if someone comes to the United States, and works in the United States, they should be accepting of the way we accomplish things here. 

I am the lead engineer on a program for a Middle Eastern country, and coincidentally the head of that program for my company is from the Middle East.  When I ask him questions, he answers faced away from me directing his replies towards other people.  When I write him emails, he doesn’t respond.  When I tell him we have a problem, he laughs like I’m a little girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Interestingly, this is the same guy who, on a business trip to London, drank a bit too much and slobbered all over my hand.  Ewe.  Really, being a woman sucks sometimes. 

Every year my group at work collects money to adopt Salvation Army Christmas Angels.  What could be better than giving in a way that allows parents to give wonderful toys and clothes to their children when they might not otherwise have been able to?  We were able to collect enough money to buy for 7 children this year. 

After lunch my cubemate and I loaded up all of our bags full of goodies on a cart and drove over to the lobby of our plant to drop them off.  I was shocked to find the lobby filled with a sea of bike handlebars sticking up over piles of white bags with wrapping paper rolls sticking out of the top each.  We stepped over all of that Christmas cheer to find empty places for our own Disney Princess bikes, race cars, and Barbie houses.  When we were done, I looked up and noticed busy people coming into the building, stopping, looking at all the presents about to go to grateful children, and smiling.  Then they smiled all the way through the building as they made a path through the bags and bikes on their way to the next meeting.  I’m sure meetings all over the plant were a little more lighthearted as a result.  After ringing the bell on the closest bike to me, I went back to my desk feeling a little lighter too.

If you’ve never felt the joy of changing a child’s Christmas, please visit this website:  http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

Happy Holidays! - Amanda

If you like these words:

marathon, mulet, merlot or mugwump (yeah, its a real word, look it up)

then don’t come play Scrabble at my house.  One of our ‘M’s came to a very sad demise in the mouth of a puppy.  I expect we should be seeing it again by about tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure you’d not want to use it. 

So I’m in this Thinking and Creativity class (and by ‘in’ I mean I am currently writing this blog during lecture), and I learned the most interesting thing today.  Divergent Thinking is the ultimate creative thinking, where your mind is completely open to any interesting idea.  They’ve done studies and have found that children aged 3-5 score a whopping 98% on teh Divergent Thinking scale.  By the time you are 24 this number has dropped to 2%. 

One of our assignments in class is to do something totally new to us every day.  Isn’t that a great idea?  Today I managed to order something other than Turkey Bacon Guacamole at Quiznos.  People, this is a BIG STEP for me.  I learned that TBG is still my favorite, but at least I really know it now by comparison.  Tomorrow I might do something crazy like sleep on my husband’s side of the bed (maybe with him still on it, I do know), or I might watch the news instead of the Simpsons when I go to bed.  Who knows!  Anything can happen!  Its just crazy like that.

So I challenge each of you to try this for one week and see what happens.  Park your car backwards in the garage, listen to the Spanish station instead of Howard on the way to work, or really step outside your box and watch the history channel instead of The Amazing Race.  OK, maybe that is going too far, but you know what I mean!  Write a comment if you figure out something fun and new to do!

Our kids have been acting up lately, and I feel like I’m losing my mind.  The little one is still a toddler, so its understandable, but our older girl is totally out of control recently.  She has been destroying things in our house, and two days ago even got into our hiding spot and opened one of her Christmas presents.  They are constantly fighting, loudly I might add, making it completely impossible to relax when I go home.  And they are stealing each other’s toys all the time!  I don’t know how other mothers do it.

 

My solution:  I throw the little one in her cage and lock the older girl outside.  Solved.  Phew.  Dogs are SO much easier than children.