- Spiders. (Though, really, that should be SPIDERS!!!!!!!!)
- Crowds in enclosed spaces. I was at a restaurant about a month ago and freaked out so badly that I started to cry. Usually it takes more than that, but not always.
- Falling from a great height – this includes roller coasters, elevators, and other “safe” methods of falling. Sometimes, it includes looking over the railing at the top of the stairs in my house.
- Videos of sharp or living things going toward people’s eyes or other orifices or through skin, like in the Matrix and several Star Trek movies and many other films.
- When I wake up and Justin is really cold beside me because my first thought is always “Oh, please don’t be dead!” I have in the past shaken him awake to make sure he was okay and then covered him in blankets so he could go back to sleep. (He got grumpy when I did that, so now I try to see if he’s breathing first.)
- Jellyfish. I have never been stung, but I’ve seen it happen to Justin and it didn’t look pleasant. And they’re hard to see! So I worry that I’m going to go face-first into one and get stung in my eyes. I will not swim if there are jellyfish in the water.
- Being in the dark while outside somewhere I don’t know, like stopping on a dark road in the middle of nowhere or walking in the woods. I’m irrationally afraid of urban legends coming true, spiders or other insects crawling all over me, and wild animals with sharp teeth and claws coming to tear me apart.
- Really big waves, which is mostly funny because I’ve never been close to one. The ones we get here are tiny compared to the ones people go surfing on off other coasts. But I have trouble with the ones here sometimes. They knock me around and it makes me panic.
- That TV show about women who are pregnant and don’t know it, who even give birth and don’t realize what’s happening. I mean, can they not tell the difference between their pooper and their hoo-ha? Really?!
- People in mascot costumes or big furry animal/cartoon costumes where I can’t see the face of the person inside. I am apparently not very trusting of people when I can’t see their face.
- Roaches. They’re disgusting. I hate having them in my house. This is why we have dozens of roach traps scattered around the house.
- Getting lost at sea, which, again, is something I’ve never had reason to fear not ever having gone out past sight of the shore before. But I start to worry when I can’t touch the bottom when swimming because I’m afraid of being swept out and unable to get back home again. (I know that it makes no sense. This isn’t at all a list that makes rational sense.)
- Changing plans at the last minute, especially if it involves more than two people and food. I have gotten much better at this over the years, but it used to be really bad. And sometimes, if I’m already stressing out about the situation, this can drive me to tears.
- Wind at night. At its worst, I genuinely fear that the wind is going to sweep through my home taking everything important away from me, including Justin. During the day, I can see things blowing in the wind and if I can “watch” the wind, then I can make sure nothing of mine is blowing away. At night, wind is sneaky and I can’t see what it’s doing.
- Airports. They combine my problems with crowds and my problems with changing plans and then add on the bonus of being scanned and analyzed and potentially losing luggage and the stress of making connecting flights with the delightful interlude of being crammed into a noisy flying sardine can for a couple hours. The flying part doesn’t bother me. It’s all the rest of it.
Archive for September, 2011
Random
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011I ate homemade bread and drank sweet, black coffee for breakfast this morning and it reminded me of Europe. The bread is an indulgence that I made over the weekend because I missed it so much. And the coffee is sweet and black because I’m out of the sugar-free mocha mix that I’d usually put in as creamer. But I learned to really love sweet, black coffee while on choir tour in Europe. I miss wandering those old, cobbled streets and listening to the bells in Salzburg. Of all the places I’ve been, and I’ve been to a lot of places, Austria is the place where my heart felt most at home.
Happy birthday, Audrey!
Stuff ‘n’ Things
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011Since I got my hair cut on Saturday, 1 person noticed at church, 1 friend noticed when she came over Sunday evening, 1 person noticed at work, 2 people noticed at the chiropractor’s office. That’s right — more people noticed at the chiropractor’s office where we go a handful of times a month than the people who I work with 40 hours a week, every week, for the last couple years. This makes me surprisingly grumpy at my coworkers, but very fond of the people at the chiropractor’s office.
Justin is sick. He caught something Sunday and has been down for the count Monday and today. Which means he’s slept most of the day, up for about 3 hours during the day, and then he’s up in the evening for a while. The sheets are in the washing machine as I type this. They were smelling distinctly “slept in,” if you know what I mean.
I’m having one of those weeks at work where I wonder why I’m doing what I’m doing instead of something that actually might make a difference, like massage therapy. Or teaching yoga. Or running a book store. Something that has a feeling of accomplishment involved, instead of this repeated frustration of doing the same task for every project that has to be checked off the list of requirements but that no one really cares to look through except me. I’m getting really tired of it. And I work for a good company that treats the employees well, with good pay and great benefits and I can’t complain that there’s any hardship involved with what I do at all. It’s just that the whole points of what I’m doing for the company doesn’t seem to make a lick of difference and I’m tired of spending 40 hours a week doing something that doesn’t matter.
And that’s all nothing but grumpiness.
I’ve been really wanting to decorate the house for fall (even though it’s still really hot here) so here are a couple pictures of ideas I saw and liked.
(I actually did these candles last year and they turned out super cute.)
Favorite things: Candle
Sunday, September 25th, 2011When I went out shopping with Justin’s grandma a couple weeks ago, I found this candle at a surprisingly expensive store with fantastically friendly women working the sales. I kept being surprised that the prices were quite so high, and then finding something that was really adorable, and then having a delightful snippet of conversation with one of the ladies working the floor. I found the candle in the back of the store in a section full of things on sale for 50% off. I was looking it over when one of the ladies came over to tell me that she’d bought two of those and she *loved* them. And when I couldn’t find a price on it, she ran over to find that out for me, and when she told me how much it cost and I said I had to think about it a little bit, she told me to think hard because it was a really nice candle.
I bought the candle. And she’s right, it’s a REALLY good candle.
And here’s the fun bit: it runs on two D batteries. Yeah, it’s a completely fake candle. On the bottom of the candle, it has an on, off, and timer function. On and off are self-explanatory, but the timer bit is the really awesome thing about this candle. When it’s turned on using the timer function, it will stay on for 5 hours before turning itself off. And then 24 hours after the time it was turned on the first time, it’ll turn on again. Which means that sometime between 7:15 and 7:30 every night, the candle turns on, and then it turns off five hours later.
It’s AWESOME! I wander into my bedroom in the evening and find a cheery candle burning on my dresser. I go to sleep to candlelight and don’t have to worry about burning the house down. I don’t have to worry about smoke or chemicals being burned into the air of my house. And I don’t have to think about lighting it or blowing it out! It turns on by itself, a helpful, cheery little flickering sweetness.
It is, for certain, one of my favorite things in my house lately and one of my favorite things I’ve bought in a while. And I really didn’t expect to like it so much. I thought “Hrm, candle. Looks pretty.” And now I’m all “Battery powered candle!!! Best invention ever!!!! I want to have more!!!”
And I’ve seen some terrible fake candles, so to prove my point that this is awesome, I’ve made a quick 34-second video showing that it looks really realistic. There’s no sounds — the whooshing sound in the back is just the air-conditioning blowing, and then clicks as I try to figure out how to stop my camera from recording.
(I’m not sure it’s working in Chrome, but it does work in Firefox. And I’m not checking IE because I hope none of you use that.)
Isn’t that great! There’s no way I’d be able to burn a real candle that close to a beloved childhood teddy bear. But it sure looks like I am!! 
Comments Off
Haircut!
Saturday, September 24th, 2011Justin and I went to Savannah today to get his hair cut and I decided, since we were going, that I would get mine done, too. It’s been somewhere between 6 months to a year since I got my hair cut professionally, and the ends were starting to worry me. Plus, it sounded like a nice treat.
So! You get before and after photos. (Ignore that I haven’t lost any weight and . . . do I always have those bags under my eyes?)
Front view: before the haircut
Back view: before the haircut
Front view: after the haircut
Back view: after the haircut
It’s kinda hard to tell, but she took off about 4 inches at the longest part, and obviously much more than that along the front. It’s not showing it great, but there’s feathering along the front from starting under my chin down the length of the front, and then there’s a long layer in the back. I love it! I love the feathering in the front and that the ends are nice and smooth. And it all still pulls back into a ponytail, though I’m sure I’m going to find some hairstyles that I’m used to doing that will suddenly have nice framing locks hanging loose.
And Justin’s haircut was the same one he normally gets — just cutting off all the long bits so it’s not so fluffy anymore. :) We’re both very excited about our cuts!