Mi Vida Loca?

I'm a busy girl this week.

Until my meeting tomorrow night got cancelled, I had something to do every night this week. That's right, from Monday unti next Sunday not one night without an event. That includes a drive to Philly on Thursday for my writing class. It makes me tired, but it's kind of refreshing, too. Look at my full life! I'm busy!

But it's not really "full" as much as it's busy. Full has a pleasant connotation. I have a full life. Busy . . . well, it sounds like I'm trying to distract myself from real issues. Like my lack of any kind of life plan. Or whatever else I'm not doing that I should be doing.

To-Do List:
--develop a life plan.
--save a lot of money for retirement.
--have a grown-up relationship.
--return library books.

Small goals, people. Small goals.

"There's No Ego in Yoga"

That’s what my yoga teacher says. I like my yoga teacher, she’s blond and freckled, probably in her mid-thirties, and she told me after my first class that she was surprised I hadn’t taken a yoga class before, because I looked pretty good. She’s also pregnant, which she told us two classes ago, and I’m curious to see how she continues to do yoga as the months go by. Especially chaturanga push-ups.

But I think I am a bad yoga student. Our teacher is always telling us that there is no destination, and that the class is about our own personal journey . . . that we shouldn’t worry about what everyone else is doing, and only what feels good to us. Lots of Zen stuff like that. And yet I find myself looking around at everyone anyway. “That girl’s so good,” I think. “I want to try that crazy hand-bind. You can tell she’s been practicing forever.” And of course I look around to see who’s “worse” than me at all the poses, and who can’t stay in them for very long.

Just to see how I’m doing in comparison. This is wrong.

At my last class I set myself up on the side of the room and tried not to look around. I partially succeeded.

Still, though, there’s a girl who’s really bad, and if I stand near her, you can forget Zen.

Because all I can think about is the fact that she can’t straighten her “top” arm while in Triangle pose.

References

My blog needs a subtitle.

So that at the top of the window (the very top, not the top of the blog page), it will say NimbleSixpence: and then something else. Instead of NimbleSixpence with the pointy parentheses, which is what it says now because I still don't deal well with html.

People are horribly clever/obscure in their subtitle choices. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they are an inside joke. My absolute favorite is the current one at Que Sera Sera: Give us Barrabas. I laugh every time I see it.

If you have an interesting subtitle idea, preferably an obscure biblical reference, I'm taking suggestions.

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On another topic altogether, I could write a post on anxiety/obsession, but Em at Pretty Crabby has done such a good job that there's no point. She's summed me up nicely here and here. I don't even know her, but I love reading things that make me say, "that's it EXACTLY."

Talkin' 'Bout my Generation

I returned last night from a trip "home" to Florida for a long weekend. I was there because my brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Alberta, and because of the big fundraiser at the school I attended from kindergarten through grade 12. I expected to see some of my old high school classmates, but the only classmate I saw (and she didn't graduate with me) was the girl who prompted my first diary entry ever, along with her two kids. We didn't have much to say to each other.

I did see some of my old teachers. I was always a teachers' pet (and that's not necessarily a good thing), so they always want to know what I'm doing. When I was a secretary, it was a little harder to bring myself to tell them, but now I can say "I'm an Operations Manager at a non-profit" which sounds a little better, even if I'm a glorified secretary. I feel like I haven't quite lived up to what they imagined was my potential.

School looks a lot different than it used to . . . more buildings, lots of changes. Everything feels smaller. But the strangest thing was seeing people living in 2006. I left that place in 1997, and so it seems like it should still BE 1997 . . . someone mentioned American Idol, and it weirded me out for a second. AI doesn't BELONG here. Neither do cell phones. When I was in high school, no one had a cell phone, or text messaged anyone. We did email a little, and chat on IM a little, but it was all very new. Nobody had ever heard of Myspace (or My Place, as my mom calls it), or blogging, or internet dating.

Oh, the good old late 90s.

I tag myself.

I think this is uncool on so many levels, but I'm stealing a meme. This one has been floating around on other blogs I read, and it's not even that creative. But I want to do it, and I can't wait around to be tagged, because it will never happen.

So, here goes.

Four jobs I've had:
Bath & Body Works associate
emailed prospective students (for my college admissions office)
nanny
high school secretary

Four movies I can watch over and over (and I have!):
Good Will Hunting
The Sound of Music
Back to the Future
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ("only the penitent man will pass . . . only the penitent man . . . ")

Four places I've lived:
Boston, MA
Sarasota, FL
Houghton, NY
London, UK (for two non-consecutive semesters)

Four TV shows I love:
The Simpsons
Seinfeld
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Arrested Development

Four places I've vacationed:
Saskatchewan & Alberta
Australia
Oregon/Northern CA
Prince Edward Island

Four of my favorite dishes:
pizza with thick bread-y crust and mushrooms/tomatoes
tacos
bistro steak salad from Panera
something italian, with lots of sauce and cheese (basically anything with cheese)

Four sites I visit daily:
slate.com
multiple blogs
multiple email sites (yahoo, hotmail, etc.)
nimblesixpence.com (yes, I look at my own blog every day)

Four places I would rather be right now:
Hidden Acres, summer, 1985-1992, by (or in) the creek
Dan's cabin
London, Spring 1998
on the road somewhere at twilight, in the summer, with anybody I love

Now, I'm supposed to tag four people. But I won't . . . it feels too much like an annoying chain letter. If you want to do this, and you're reading my blog, consider yourself tagged.

An Exorcise

My little revelation for the day: there is no “way it’s supposed to be.”

And, with that in mind, I’ve decided to occasionally use this space to post semi-painful stories about events from my childhood that may have scarred me for life.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

No? Well, I hope it can be at least a little interesting. And cathartic. And these aren’t deep dark secrets. Just childhood crap, most of which involves elementary school pecking orders. In elementary school, the girls badmouth each other. And then, once girls are in middle school, all those elementary school voices are so loud in your head that you can take over and start badmouthing yourself (and others, too).

I don’t remember much about kindergarten. I remember, near the beginning of the school year, our teacher suggesting that we say the alphabet together. I thought, “how dumb are these kids if they can’t do the alphabet? Shouldn’t we be past this?” I remember that my teacher always complained about the “white spots” in our coloring projects. “Go back and color more of that,” she would say. “There are white spots.” Obviously she just wanted the coloring to take more class time. But at the time I thought it was weird. I remember that the first letter we learned was M, and the sound it made, and that the picture that went with it was a girl eating an ice cream cone. Mmmm. Ice cream.

And, even in kindergarten, there was a popular set of girls. Girls who got chased the most by the boys when we played “boys chase the girls.” You wouldn’t think at the age of five that this would happen, at least I wouldn’t have, and yet I know that it did. And some college friends of mine, elementary ed majors who student-taught in kindergarten, have said that this happened in their classes.

Michelle was the popular one in our class. She was a skinny thing, with wispy hair and pointy features. If she scrunched up her face and stuck her front teeth over her bottom lip, she would’ve borne a strong resemblance to a mouse looking for cheese. I don’t know why she was popular, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that she had all the jelly bracelets she could wear. I was not one of the popular girls. I didn’t know how you became one.

Our playground had a short piece of cement tubing, the kind of thing they use for drainage in ditches, with a small hole in the top. One day, Michelle and her crowd decided to let the rest of us play with them . . . if we could pass their test.

“I’m going to crawl into the tube and put my wrist through the hole,” Michelle announced. “I’ll be holding a jelly bracelet. And if you grab a bracelet, you can can play with us.”

We gathered around anxiously. Michelle had fewer jelly bracelets that day than girls who wanted to play with her. Also, I think we would also be allowed to KEEP the jelly bracelet, so we were especially anxious. Michelle’s wrist came out through the hole, her hand holding a black jelly bracelet. Some of the other girls hesitated, because black was not a popular color. Pink, or purple, or maybe something with glitter . . . they were going to hold out. But I wasn’t. I had no pride. I wanted to play with those popular girls. My hand shot out and grabbed that black bracelet with a speed that surprised everyone, even me.

So, not only was I uncool, I was also desperate. And that has always been my problem, I think.

Not that I wasn’t popular, but that I always so desperately wanted to be.

Randomness

I have a bunch of thoughts tonight, none of which are substantial enough to constitute a real blog post. However, if I string them all together, I think I can come up with something. Kind of like that Letterman segment: Is This Anything?

Yes, I think it is.

--My brother is the luckiest person I know. Whether it’s bilking drunk relatives out of money, winning our family poker tournament, or, his latest bit of luck, winning an all-expenses paid trip to the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii, Mark is one lucky guy. I’m proud of him, but also a teeny bit jealous, because my sad little attempts at slot machines and poker have resulted in nothing. But of course, that could be because I have mostly played poker with HIM, and he can always tell when I’m lying.

--Phone books. After yet another was dropped off at my house tonight, I now have five. Why? They keep appearing at my doorstep. Who drops off the phone books, and why do they always do it at night? On the plus side, if any children/midgets come to my house and need a booster seat, I’m super-prepared.

--I’m getting sick. I think. I hate the day before I get sick more than the actual sickness. There is something lurking in the back of my throat. Thanks to the isolation chamber that is my office, however, this might not turn into anything.

--I quietly rooted for the Steelers last night. If I were a real Steelers fan, I would feel guilty about the win, because of all the questionable calls. It doesn’t seem totally legit. But I’m also glad that the Patriots, who are my team, weren’t in the Superbowl this year, because they’ve won too much lately and it’s someone else’s turn. These feelings are one of the many reasons I never played sports.

--This quote made me laugh unexpectedly out loud today. It’s from Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon. (a shout-out here to Nathan, who introduced me to MC by letting me read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in WV). So, the narrator describes his lover (a “big woman—tall and busty with a large behind”) and says: “Undressing her was an act of restlessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.”