e-m-j.

Here is a picture of the sky when I left work today, looking all seething and heavy:

Here is me looking at the sky making what Mr. Bff called my “wtf nature” face: 

Jesus rides beside me

ashtray floors, dirty clothes and filthy jokes

Unrelated to my sudden listening to the Replacements and the wonder that is “Can’t Hardly Wait”, but maybe not entirely unrelatedly, my bff pointed out to me that we’ve known each other for ten years this month. We haven’t been bff that entire time, of course, and hardly spoke for a few years, actually, but still. Ten years. Weird. I’ve been rolling that over in my head since he mentioned it.

In the meantime, Team Jameson is breathlessly awaiting a big ol’ snowstorm due to arrive this evening here in fabulous Omaha, Nebraska, and I’m okay with it. I mean, it’s the weekend. Poor Mr. J has an all-hands meeting at his store in the morning but my plans are pretty much to kick it and look at the purty snow while drinking copious amounts of tea. Maybe we’ll build another snowman. 

I’m trying to think of interesting things to tell you but it’s been an uneventful little bit of time here. I’m sloooowly getting over the Death Plague that I had for a while. Will’s boss was in town the last few days and we’re buddies so that was fun. Other than that, I’m just waiting out winter. I’m going to St. Louis for President’s Day weekend and there’s been a flurry of planning around that. Mr. J will not be joining me since it’s a big sale day at work on Monday but that’s okay. I think he thinks it can get a little silly, anyway, and I think he hates the way those weekends are structured. When we go visit his family in Arkansas, it’s pretty chill. We just hang out. When we visit St. Louis, every single minute of every single day can feel pretty jam-packed and that’s just not how he rolls. Sadly, I think he feels obligated to hang with me so I don’t know if he has as much fun as he could on those little whirlwind trips. Me? I’m psyched. It’s TWO WEEKS.

Which kind of illustrates that I’ve been 30 for a little under a month. So let’s review my goals: I stopped eating meat and lost a few pounds, I’ve been better about work lately and I haven’t really purchased anything for a while. Also, I don’t feel like a complete jackass, which is saying something. I feel like I spend a lot of time feeling like an idiot sometimes and I haven’t for a while. That feels like progress.

So happy snomageddon, I suppose. And hi. How are you?

Well, actually, it’s okay, that’s just a mangling of a British band’s silly lyric. Anyway.

Isn’t it weird how your friends have talents and you don’t know about them? Most of my friends are writers and a lot of them write for playback with me. But I’m just not used to seeing them write and write so beautifully and interestingly and skillfully. My writing’s decent but rambling and my friends are rocking out these little bite-sized fascinations and I’m impressed by them. But I hardly ever think about it until I read something particularly good and then I’m like “Holy cow, my friends are really awesome.” So maybe I should take more time and appreciate my buddies, yeah?

The beginning of the year has never been about New Year’s for me. I mean, New Year’s is nice and all, balls dropping over a crowd larger than the urban area of the city I live in and Lady Gaga (or that year’s equivalent) being all tongue-tied and weird. It’s refreshing. It’s nice to see all of those people throwing off the shackles and mistakes and issues of the year before and dashing headlong into new mistakes, often on national television. There were also lots of fun jokes about the impending Mayan non-apocalypse.

(Dude, it’s a calendar. Time doesn’t stop because we had to swap out Robert Pattinson’s 16 months for the Beatles.)

But for me, New Year’s has always been the run-up to the year’s true start.

I’m talking about my birthday, of course. January 8th, smack in the middle of winter but in the part where the days are getting longer, not shorter. My friend, Robin, referred to it as my First Saturday party this year. I’ve added the capitalization but it’s become kind of a thing amongst my friends. Last year, I had a dance party in my basement, complete with disco lights and iffy punch. It’s the final event of the holiday season before we start furtively planning summer events and saying things like “the first day it hits 75, let’s…” I keep my tree up until after my birthday. I don’t get the post-holiday blues until the second week in January.

And, let’s face it, I’m usually relieved that we’ve all made it through the festivities without murdering someone.

I digress, though. In between the pre-birthday anxiety and the lead up and, yes, the careful application of glitter, there’s always that mix of anticipation and dread. It’s my birthday. The next year of my life is about to start and what am I going to do with it? Do I have a goal? What is it? Last year’s was to survive, to land on my feet in whatever situation I found myself in. I think we did okay with that so it’s a win.

This year is dual-purposed. I intend to both have as much fun as I possibly can but to also be responsible like a Real Grownup. Pay off some credit cards, figure out the deal with the house in St. Louis, maybe shift some weight and other assorted iffy habits and finish unpacking here in Omaha so it looks like we actually live here for real and aren’t just hanging out for a while. See if I can transfer into something a little less irritating here at work. Leave behind some of my more childish habits and grow up a little. But also go back to St. Louis a few times and visit some family and friends and generally do fun things, too.

And I want this year to be the year I find balance. I want to learn how to say no to some things and yes to others and to choose the right times for both. I want to learn how to live a life without the need for damage control. I want to conduct myself with some small amount of grace. Honestly, I understand, it’s some small part of my charm, the headlong tumble I seem to take through life, catching myself every once in a while and smiling up at the world around me. But sometimes it gets so tiring, the tumble. I want to learn how to proceed this year.

So, yeah. Hello, 30. Let’s see how this goes, shall we?

So I found out one of the bars I liked back home is closing. And I’m shockingly upset about it. I mean, I’m allowed to leave but everything there has to stay the same. Everyone else will be able to find themselves a new bar, they’ll traipse through Maplewood and South City and downtown finding whatever it is that’s out there to find and I won’t ever know what they’re finding.

And I guess that’s the problem with moving. Because nothing will stay the same. Except me and I’m so very far away.

I have other stuff to post about, like a bath stuff purchase and Friendsgiving and the Muppets movie but I think I just vaguely want to sulk. That’s fair, right?

I have finished Big Writerly Project. Actually, what happened is that my cohort got sick and his wife went into labor so I scrapped the whole first draft, which was extensive, and rewrote the whole thing before popping off to the gym yesterday. And I just finished Lovefool for the week so I’m done for a few days.

I actually did most of those things I said I was going to do Sunday, buying things for Thanksgiving and circuit training and finishing Big Writerly Project. I also made potato soup from scratch and threw stuff into the breadmaker so we had some bread to eat with our potato soup and watched an entire movie. That’s all I did, watched a movie, and messed around with my phone periodically when something came through on it. It was so weird, just watching a movie and not doing anything else. The only time I do that is when I’m sick.

Speaking of my phone, I sent my dad a text today, just kind of a ping, and he ignored it. So there was that. I’ll send him another one tomorrow, maybe. I don’t know. It’s so hard to always be the one to make the first move but I enjoy my distance sometimes, if that makes sense. 

Of course, I say that now, while we’re just sliding into the holiday season and before I have to face those without my family and friends and peeps. It’ll be weird having a birthday without 30 of my nearest and dearest stopping by. But I’m surprisingly okay with this Omaha thing so far. By this time in our Fort Wayne stay, I was a complete basketcase. The two situations can hardly be compared but this one is pretty stressful, too. It’s a different kind of stress, I suppose, but still… 

Speaking of, we still haven’t gotten our rent check for this month. I don’t even budget it in. Sigh.

So, yeah, I went to work today and it was completely draining, like every other overtime Monday ever, but they had pie for sale in the food court and I JUST sent Lovefool off to my editor and I’m straight up getting ready to close this laptop and go to bed. We have survived Monday, darlings, mostly intact. It counts.

(The movie was Notting Hill, if you’re curious.)

So you’re probably wondering where I was last night. Well, truth be told, I fell asleep at 10:30 while we were watching a Rush dvd.

Yeah, you wish your life was as awesome as ours. Anyway, I also didn’t have much to say because, frankly, it seems like I can only work on one project at a time and Big Writerly Project has just become, three days before deadline, a solo endeavor. Which is fine, I’ll just rethink the concept and write a much shorter, more traditional sort of review. Which is not a big deal and probably will actually result in a better product. It will be a lot shorter and, therefore, readable. Attention spans just ain’t what they used to be.

It’s pretty weird, though, that I’m not freaking out about not making this arbitrary goal that I’ve set for myself because, a month ago, I think I would’ve completely lost it over screwing this up but, truth be told, I feel like I’m doing well enough at the things that I’ve set out to do in this month – going to the gym, writing more, generally being a better human being – that missing one night of writing this blog is not the thing that it would’ve been. It’s not about the quantity, maybe, but the quality.

And we had a pretty quality night last night. Today, I went to the gym and watched Nebraska (us) start to lose to Michigan and then I went car shopping with a friend and her mother. It started off with interstate driving and iffy directions and a semi-sketchy car dealership but things smoothed out after we grabbed lunch and it was a fun day. Then we had a Friendsgiving planning session with our neighbors.

I have also decided that, when the time comes, I totally want to look into cars. I was pretty sure I wanted a used VW Passat but everything after this year will have a bleh redesign, though it’s unlikely I’d be able to afford anything this year or later, even considering it will be AT LEAST late 2013 before I’m looking. It’s the ultimate car for ladies who may or may not be on their way to growing up. Sure, it’s all zippy and neat but it also will hold kids fairly easily, should that be a thing that is in our future. And, to be honest, it probably is. It’s a little spendy so we’ll definitely wait until Will’s car is paid off before we even consider something like that, but the erinmobile is serving me well right now and I’m hopeful my luck will hold. Honestly, a new car is something nice to think about maybe happening someday but I probably won’t really, really think about it until the erinmobile just refuses to go anymore. I don’t know. It’s scary, thinking about things like that. New cars and other assorted grown up trappings.

In fact, I feel guilty even writing that. I love my current car. But it’s 13 years old and has god knows how many miles on it. (Seriously, he’s the only one who would have any idea since the odometer doesn’t always work.)

Okay. This has been fun, thanks to writtenkitten.net, which is providing me a new kitten every hundred words. But I should probably go work on Big Writerly Project and then go to sleep. I’m fairly excited about sleep. I’m glad I moved to Omaha because it has totally given me Good Habits, like sleeping but not sleeping until noon, which jacks up your sleep schedule, and the gym and other assorted things. In fact, I may go to sleep now in order to get up early to work on Big Writerly Project. I do have to revamp that and also write Lovefool so tomorrow’s a big day. A big, worky day. I should also go get stuff for Thanksgiving dinner and it’s a circuit training day so tomorrow is going to be a hot mess for a Sunday. Thank goodness for a mid-week day off.

(I was totally tricked into working the day after Thanksgiving but the good news is that it’s only four hours. So all’s not lost…)

If I just write about how sleepy I am and that I went to the gym and that all I did other than that was work and watch The IT Crowd and paint my nails, does it count as a day’s entry?

I think that after I’m done making myself prove a point, I will only write when I’ve got something worth everybody’s time. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll keep writing until I’ve got something worth it.

Do y’all have Half Price Books out there? They’re pretty rad.

I am currently reading a book about a Single Female Lawyer who ends up wishing herself from LA to ancient Rome and it’s good but also pretty silly. Earlier, I was feeling sketchy so I skipped the gym and came home and said hi to my neighbor and then Will and I ate Chinese food and watched The IT Crowd, which is very British.

Not-so-secretly, I totally long to be British. Sigh.