stupid houses

another sleepless night... i'm so ready for vacation. got up about an hour ago because i was tired of tossing & turning. i keep thinking about this house & i can't seem to turn it off. it's one that we saw last weekend & i was very much unimpressed by. it's small, has a bad layout, looks completely goofy on the outside & needs some serious updating (i.e. tear out the wood paneling & carpet, make a real kitchen, build a small addition on the kitchen...) so why do i keep thinking about it? many reasons, but mostly because i'm crazy. i've worked & reworked the floorplan for the past week. for some reason i think that dan & i could handle doing the majority of the work ourselves - which in theory is probably mostly true. but i admit, we're lazy people. he more motivated than i on our days off. i can't even be bothered to unpile the stacks of mail, newspaper, books & netflix videos from our kitchen table. nonetheless, i believe we are capable. that in & of itself is exciting to me. a project! but any house is a project, right? i mean, anything in our price range, which after today, i've realized is either very small (approx. 1000 square feet) and in need of updating, is a total piece of crap or some combination of the two. so it looks like our best bet would be to buy a small house. i can dig that. we don't need a lot of space.

this particular house though goofy on the outside & inside at the moment has potential. the houses across the street (same style) are very cute. with a small addition, it could have a very functional kitchen instead of a postage stamp. the house is on a corner lot on a quiet street. fairly low crime, compared to our current neighborhood. it's walking distance to the main street of shops, restaurants & stores. it's about half-way from both of our jobs. the neighboring houses seem to be in good condition, which is a plus. there's plenty of parking. oh, this house has a garage - it needs work, but it's a garage. the yard isn't as huge as other yards in the neighborhood but there's plenty of space for gardening & enjoying the outdoors. it has a front porch & back porch. the length of the house is facing south, so it would be fairly sunny. dry basement that dan can stand up it - pretty unusual for houses built in the '20s around here.

of course the whole place probably has no insulation, so we'd need to take that on or pay a bajillion dollars a year to heat & cool it. it's got oil radiators that i'd like to get rid of... um... oh yeah, someone started a fire on the back porch last week & burned a big hole in the back of it & ruining the porch. i know that seems terrible, but we wanted to make some changes to that wall anyway, so it doesnt seem like that huge of a deal. plus, we should be able to get it cheaper cuz it's got a black hole in it, right? that's what i keep thinking - except it's listed at an auction house & our realtor can't seem to get a hold of them. guess we'll just have to see what happens.

i can't wait to go on vacation & stop thinking about all this crap.

Challenged & defeated

after today i can surely say i don't know enough about communication. i know very little, actually. it's funny that most people spend more than ten years in school, learning all kinds of things that people deem important and yet there are so many life skills that are passed over. the ability to communicate effectively is just one such skill. without it, life is pretty rough.

i'm no fantastic communicator by any stretch of the imagination. dan and i were together for several years before i started taking chances & actually expressing my deepest thoughts & feelings. it feels like such a risk, you know? i'm sure some of it i learned from my family - but the rest i think is society. it's impolite...

long story short, i had to do some "conflict management" between two of the people i supervise at work today. it's a situation that's been festering for a while & they had been unsuccessful at making any headway. it didn't seem like that big of a deal - just some unspoken frustrations that weren't communicated over a period of time. i was actually kind of excited about it - because i like challenging myself with new things, i need to feel challenged at my job & i think this kind of thing is really interesting. (it might just be that the idea of doing it well is interesting...) so i got some advice from an HR person (we don't have one on staff) & did my best. everything was going well for a while but things took a wrong turn at some point, which i wasn't able to see at the time - of course. it ended up that one person felt really terrible & kind of ganged up on , upset & crying. i can't stop thinking about the whole thing. if only i'd stuck with the original rules of engagement, the discussion would've ended on a much more positive note, i think. i feel nauseous and terrible about the results of my "facilitating". oh communication, why is it so damn difficult sometimes?

coming soon...

...themed blogging. just before Katie's B'more departure, I joined her & her roommate, Rachel, for a walk around the hood. On this walk, we came up with the idea of each of us writing a blog based on the same theme. I'll give the first theme a whirl in the next few days. you can find their blogs listed over in the sidebar if you want to check out their take on things too.

i wish dan wouldn't steal my titles

me at age 3 - a carpenter at heart from way back...

there's a lot to say & nothing to say, all at the same time. i don't know how that's possible. it seems like a lot of things have been going on - but i think most of the goings-on have occurred in my head. not too much happening here on the ground. i realized this blog has made it more difficult for me to process life. i don't do much thinking or journaling about my thoughts anymore. i expect to take more long breaks from blogging in the future to make time for personal writing. i guess that's just FYI. if i'm gone from the blog-o-sphere for a stretch, don't curse me too much (like i do you, every time i check your page & it says the same thing...)

so, what's happened lately? katie moved away this weekend & i was sad to see her go, though i know she'll have some great adventures, learning & time to build her farmer confidence in the next several months. i just wish we didn't have to stay here. baltimore's become this strange place where almost everyone else we know leaves... i've never been in a place like that before & i don't like it. i wish baltimore felt more like "home" - solid & secure, with lots of friends around. it's strange that i had a lot more friends during the first 2-3 years i was here than i do now. i hate this starting over crap. if i have to do it, i should at least have the joy & adventure of moving to a new place.

had a group of folks over from work the weekend before last & totally stressed myself out about it. so, it ended up kinda sucking because i wasn't relaxed. which i knew would probably happen because i don't know any of the people well, they hadn't been over before & i'm at least a little batty. so i went all crazy cooking & cleaning the hell out of our apartment (which doesn't happen often & i was glad to have the motivation for a good cleaning).

i turned 32 last week. it was unusually fun becuase i got to spend time with dan & with katie & we did something out of the ordinary (took a trip to DC & had ethiopian for dinner). the fun didn't stop there - it stretched into 2 days - the day of & the day after because i took the actual day off work. when i got to work on friday, my desk was decorated with lots of balloons & streamers. i felt pretty special. i had to share a baby picture & something about myself, which i'd spent an exceptionally long time thinking about because i wanted it to be funny. i think it went over well.

my brain is melting now & i have to go to bed.

are we there yet??

i was reflecting on life a bit on my walk home from work today. my days have been unusually boring lately & it's left me feeling kinda crummy. my own skin is feeling increasingly uncomfortable. a confidence thing, i think. i have no patience. i'm tired of winter. where is spring? i'm tired of feeling tired & hungry all the time. i need more sunshine.

my passport probably expired, because i was lazy. i think about it every day after work - "oh, i should renew that..." & yet i do nothing. EVERY DAY! why do i do this? same thing happened with the class i wanted to take this semester (just for fun). i made the decision over new years but didn't go to sign up until last wednesday, only to realize the class was already full. of course it was!

also, i don't want to walk to work with M & i wish she would stop asking & calling our apartment in the morning. i enjoy being lost in my own thoughts on the walk. it's funny - i think of myself more as a morning person that an evening person, but only after i have a significant amount of time to myself to 'begin' the day.

wow... i need to go to the gym.

will i even dig out my passport??

the exciting life & times of J.L.A.

last week at work, one of the newbies was looking for some drywall mud. i escorted her to the appropriate area & suggested she open the bucket & make sure it wasn't all dried out since it was leftover from a job 6 months ago. i then went about my business elsewhere, noticing from afar that it sure was taking her a long time to choose a bucket of mud. a short time later, she came & told me she'd driven into the garage door & it was broken... yikes! (this door is my nemesis. you may remember from an insomnia inspired post from Oct '07.) the following day, she told me the first bucket she opened was full of poop... old, smelly human poop.

also last week, dan woke me up in the middle of the night whine-yelling, "do we have a cat?!?!" it freaked me out & i thought a cat had somehow gotten into our apartment & our bedroom. then i went back to sleep.

the end.

it was me

i cut the fart in yoga class

sorry...