A day in my life

I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to do this. When Jill wrote the challenge it seemed like a fun idea. Unfortunately I’m afraid my life is rather dull right now. At least compared to when I’m actually flying.

But when I thought about it I realized I may like to look back and see what a regular day was like too. So here it is, a day in my life as seen through my iPhone and Instagram:

7:00am- Joel’s alarm goes off. I nudge him to turn it off and doze back off while he gets ready for work.

7:45am- Joel kisses me goodbye for the day. I wake up long enough to kiss him and then again fall back asleep.

9:00am- I roll over and see this adorable face staring at me. Check Twitter, email, etc from my iPhone.

Good morning sunshine.

9:15am- I finally stop cuddling Phoebe and checking tweets and make the bed.

Phoebe seriously freaks out about bed making.

10:15am- Breakfast eaten, showered, dressed and out the door.

Bye Phoebe.

10:45am- Laser hair removal appointment. Ouch.

11:00am- Out to lunch with Joel.

We’ve been wanting to try out Labriola’s cafe for awhile. It does not disappoint. Yum!

12:00pm- Drop Joel back off at work. Long day for him. Bummer.

12:30pm- Home again. And somebody is ready for her walk.

It’s kind of rainy and gross though so it’s a short walk.

12:45- Phoebe naps while I catch up on blogs and twitter and stuff.

2:00pm- Phoebe’s batteries are recharged and she would like for me to play with her.

She starts polite but if I don’t oblige quickly she goes into attack mode.

2:05pm- I give in and we run around and play with her new favorite toy.

Kill it!

2:30pm- I decide to sort laundry so it’s all ready to do tomorrow.

2:33pm- I grumble about how somebody always forgets to empty their pockets so it’s lucky that somebody always double checks because otherwise somebody’s flashdrive would’ve gotten washed. ahem

2:35pm- I almost kill our hamper because it. always. falls. off. the. freaking. hooks.

Laundry makes me grumble a lot. ahem

2:40pm- Laundry is sorted. I could wash it today but… yeah... So I read a book instead. A book and Phoebe cuddles are so much better than carting laundry up and down three flights of stairs.

Happiness.

5:00pm- Time to eat something for dinner.

I get kind of lazy about dinner when Joel has to work late. What?

6:00pm- Jazz class

7:00pm- Water break

7:10pm- Hip hop

8:30pm- Classes over and finally time to pick up Joel from work. P.S. Longest work day ever, right?

9:00pm- Home at last. Time to get a little quality time with Joel, watch some Psych on Netflix and enjoy a little post dance treat.

I’d say I earned it.

Now I want to know about you. What does a day in your life look like?

The Clothing Assassin

Joel is a wonderful person and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. One thing about him that baffles me is how hard he is on clothes. I have clothes that I’ve owned since 1997… not that I should be especially proud of that. And also not that I actually wear those clothes (ahem) often. But I still own them and they’re still in decent shape.

As far as the clothes that I haven’t kept for their sentimental value, they generally last me a long time. They either go out of style or I grow tired of them. Some of them that I wear really often get that pilled up look after awhile. (Which makes otherwise perfectly good clothes look rather ratty by the way. If anyone has a solution to this me and my wardrobe would be eternally grateful.) I have one pair of jeans that I got from a friend who bought them at a thrift store. After wearing those jeans for seriously years they finally just got a hole in the knee. That is the only pair of jeans that has ever gotten a hole in them without already coming home from the store that way.

Joel is a completely different story. I swear the man goes through clothes like you wouldn’t believe. It’s been about a year and half since the last time we bought him jeans and he just informed me that of a dozen different pairs he has one pair left that doesn’t have holes in the knees.

What. the. heck. people?!

He isn’t a five year old rough and tumble boy who crawls around. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I saw him crawl. He doesn’t play sports. He has a desk job for heavens sake. How does sitting at a desk 40 hours a week wear holes in your knees?!

It’s the same with shoes. Today he was complaining that his feet hurt after walking around all day. After taking a look at what he was walking around in it wasn’t hard to see why.

These shoes are about a year old. One year old!

Holding them up to the light. You can see through them completely!

How does this happen? Just, how?!

I realize that I own easily twice as many clothes and shoes as he does so it makes sense that his clothes would wear out a bit faster. But this seems really excessive. Do other men destroy their clothes in record time like this? Or am I seriously married to the clothing assassin? Is there a way to prevent the massacre? I’m pretty sure I see pants and shoes alike shudder in terror as Joel walks by. Send help people. Future clothes depend on it.

Popcorn and Cake… wrecks

I grew up in the town where Orville Redenbocker developed his famous and delicious popcorn. Hence, the annual Popcorn Festival. With the exception of a few adult years where I was either living overseas or had to work I’ve been going to the Popcorn Festival since I was a little kid. It starts with short 100 meter dashes for kids 2-10. It’s so cute to see my nephews carrying on the tradition.

Winners. Yay!

After that there’s a parade in which a float = anything with popcorn thrown on it.

Or people dressed as popcorn. Whatever.

As a kid I remember the floats being these elaborate creations made entirely of popcorn. Not sure if I was just little and thought everything was cooler or if people got lazy because the floats aren’t all that impressive anymore. Oh well, it’s more about spending time with my family anyway.

See how my brother is leaning back in his chair? Despite warnings he continued doing it.

He learned his lesson though.

Once the parade was over we walked around a bit, ate some junk food and listened to the bands that were playing. Normally we’d look around at the booths as there are always some really cool crafts and things. This year it was so insanely crowded that we quickly decided it wasn’t worth it and headed home. I made cake!

If you follow me on twitter you may remember tweeting about my cake wreck. See, in my head I’m this fabulous baker. Unfortunately I have very little experience and so things don’t tend to turn out the way they look in my head. Remember the asshole cake? Yeah.

I do learn from my mistakes though and did not come close to losing a finger or throwing cake across the room. Win!

That’s kind of where the win ends though.

What I learned this time is whipped frosting, while delicious, does not hold layer cakes together well.

Whipped frosting kind of likes to be all airfull and slidey and before you know it your beautiful layer cake looks like this.

That hole in the frosting is from me trying to push the layers back into place.

Top tip: that doesn’t work. At. all.

We all got a good laugh out of it though and the really cool thing about the cake wasn’t revealed until I started serving it.

That was the reaction I was hoping for.

Ta da!

Hot mess on the outside. Awesome on the inside.

Kind of like me.

Insignificant Details

I remember the stupid details of that day.

Getting ready to go to school, hearing something on the radio about the twin towers being hit and thinking they meant the Petronas Towers. Even at 15 I was probably too globally minded for my own good. Plus, they couldn’t mean in New York. Things like that don’t happen in America.

Getting to school and sitting in huddled, quiet, tearful groups watching the the live broadcast of the horrible events of the day play out.

It was a Tuesday.

I’ll never forget that because we had youth group that night. It wasn’t canceled. Instead it was a long prayer meeting.

I remember a catholic friend of mine joined me at youth that night. She prayed not only for the living but the dead. My youth group was nondenominational and charismatic and I remember someone saying something to me about how it was wrong for my friend to pray for the dead because she couldn’t help them anymore.

I wanted to hit them.

Even on that day stupid, insignificant religious details couldn’t be put aside. At that moment I knew that the sudden surge of patriotism and camaraderie was only temporary.

That naive 15 year old me was right. Unfortunately. We are more divided than ever. Our worlds were turned upside down by truly evil people and instead of rising above it all and taking it as a wake up call people used it for profit. People, American people, profited off the horrific deaths of innocent Americans.

It makes me so sick and sad.

We let the terrorists win.

Their goal was not to kill people on that one day. Their goal was to divide us and change the way we live every. single. day.

They did.

We let them.

As a flight attendant I’m reminded daily just exactly how different our lives are. How much they continue to change.

I wasn’t going to write at all today. There are so many who have put this day into words so much better than I ever could.  I don’t pretend like I have anything unique or special to say. It was on my mind though and wanted to be written. I’m disappointed in our country right now. I know it could be so much better.

While this post reflects that disappointment I haven’t lost hope. I know that this country could be great if we could start focusing on what matters. People matter. So many details are just so insignificant.

Puzzled

This is the puzzle we put together Labor Day weekend. About halfway through we got the video framed better and it looks pretty cool I think.

When I put together a puzzle I have a system. First I find all the edge pieces. Then I assemble all the edge pieces so I have a nice frame to work around.

I also separate any pieces that were already together when I dumped the box out. Because it’s cheating. Obviously

Joel is totally different. He just starts putting pieces together willy nilly. Who needs a frame? And if pieces are already assembled? Bonus!

That kind of drove me crazy. After we had almost finished the frame there was one piece missing. Joel wanted to just start on the rest of the puzzle but I could not wrap my head around it. We I searched for several minutes, until I found that stupid last piece and then I felt okay about starting the center of the puzzle.

The funny part is, once we started on the center we totally reversed roles.

Joel likes to focus on one small section at a time, not stopping until that part is complete.

I, on the other hand, may try to focus on one section but pieces tend to jump out at me randomly as I scan them and I assemble about 12 sections at once.

That drove Joel a little crazy. Mostly because I kept reaching in front of him because I saw a piece on his half of the table.

Joel is quiet and thoughtful, concentrating on finishing whatever section he’s working on at the moment.

I’m chatty and vocal. I also had the world’s most random show tune medley going on basically the entire time. Come on though, don’t put me in front of puzzle of Times Square and not expect me to sing songs from whatever show is on the piece that I’m holding. That’s just mean.

We couldn’t be more different, Joel and I.

And I love it.

Feeding my soul

My mom put me in ballet when I was an awkward pre-adolecent. She thought it would give me grace and some control over my limbs that felt too long for my body.

It gave me oh so much more than that.

In dance I found a way to not just move my body but to move my soul as well. I had what I think are the world’s best dance teachers. They focused on pure technique. They didn’t believe in recitals because they felt it detracted from time in class that could be spent learning rather than perfecting one single routine.

They made sure our form was perfect, from the point of our toes to the tips of our fingers and the tilt of our head. I could have lived at that studio. The teachers were tough but kind. We had to memorize terminology and were frequently quizzed on it. Every once in awhile we had parent’s week when parents were allowed to come and watch a class and we could show off what we learned.

I learned so much in those classes. I truly wish I could have taken classes there forever. Unfortunately our family started falling apart for awhile and with it my stability in being able to commit to classes at any given time from week to week.

I didn’t stop dancing though.

At the time I was blessed to be at a church that had a very active dance team. We had classes and made up routines and performed them during services. Again, I was able to express my soul through dance. It was therapy in an extremely difficult time in my life.

When I turned 18 I moved to the Netherlands and started the next chapter in my life. I didn’t look into taking dance classes there because my life was so full of so many new adventures there didn’t seem like there would be room. I did make time to frequent clubs though and was able to again, dance my heart out.

Europe has the very best dance music. It’s a fact.

Then I fell in love, got married and moved back to the Midwest. While I was gone, the dance group I had been a part of was ripped apart at the seams in a very ugly church split, so it wasn’t there for me to return to. Being a brand new married couple we barely had enough to afford the essentials so paying for dance classes never really entered my mind. Then flying created such a random schedule that it again didn’t seem practical.

And suddenly it’s been years and the only time I’ve danced is the occasional wedding.

I don’t know why I didn’t dance in my living room. I have once or twice and it felt beyond amazing but I never made it a regular thing.

I missed it. I missed it like my lungs miss air in water. You know when you’re swimming and even with your head above water if your chest is covered you never can quite get a deep enough breath? Like that.

So when I saw a LivingSocial deal for unlimited dance classes for $19 dollars I bought it almost immediately.

Last night was my first class and I was beyond nervous. It had been so long since I’d danced at all, let alone in a formal class. Once the class started though it was like inhaling pure oxygen. I moved and stretched and couldn’t wipe the huge grin off my face for the entire two hours. It was a beginner level adult class so the steps were easy to do and remember. I was able to not concentrate on the physical motions and just dance.

I can’t believe how good it felt.

I was made to move. I’m not the most talented person in the world but nothing makes me happier than dancing.

I can’t believe I let myself forget for so long.

I haven’t been fully happy in a long time. I’m taking my happy back piece by piece and this was a giant piece that was missing.

It’s good to have it back.