Things that have nothing to do with work
I got on my bike trainer yesterday, did a solid twenty minutes at a rapid pace while listening to a Marketplace podcast on 1.3x so I could finish it while on the bike. I feel doubly proud of myself: working out, working at a face pace, and getting a podcast consumed.
I hired a realtor today to sell the office building. The realtor neatly took over where I'd left off on the marketing, including taking my piles of marketing materials off with her, cleaning up a corner of my workroom/diningroom. Wuhoo!
My house is AMAZING. We sat in the "conversation area" in front of a roaring fire while we worked on the realtor's contract. The lighting illuminated the art. The fireplace warmed the room. The realtor had been in the place 17 years before, when we bought it, and recognized what I'd done with it (which is basically *everything*. Not a single square inch has been left unpainted or wallpapered, there's new lighting, floors have been refinished, trim has been deleaded, windows have new window treatments: new roof, new heating system, warm and bright and beautiful. People keep telling me that I do a lovely job decorating. I just know that I've spent $2000 at Pier 1 over the past two years and it takes me four gallons of water (with miracle grow in it) to water all my plants.
In my new home office I have an old bulletin board with things I put on it from the 90's, moved to this building when we moved here in 1998 and I just never got around to redoing it. They're just little things, nothing momentous. But they remind me of being me. One is a picture by the science fiction artist Cortney Skinner of some proto-humanoids climbing a tree on some African savannah to reach for the full moon. Next to it I have a picture of the Space Shuttle Columbia during a routine launch in the 90's. (A client brought me it as a present to apologize for having to reschedule their appointment: they were filming the launch and it got postponed due to weather and they got stuck in Florida until it launched. Best excuse ever to blow me off.) There are a number of other small momentos of who I used to be. A picture of me holding my three year old and five year olds on my lap in my office. A couple of things too difficult to explain. I've cleaned up the board a bit to use now, but left maybe half of it filled with stuff from me twenty years ago. I want to go back and visit her. I liked her in many ways better than I like myself now. (In others, I'm better now, though.)
Last night I'm lying in bed looking at my phone (which I wouldn't even have brought to bed but B. wasn't home and I wanted to be sure to hear if he called or texted) and I see a picture of B. of Facebook with Ray Bourque. Oh. Well, I forgot where he was (if I ever knew) but apparently he was at Boston Gardens watching a Bruins game last night. I'm happy for him that he gets to do such things.
Meanwhile, last week-end I decided to FINALLY go contra-dancing. I've been meaning to do it for, oh, three years? My husband totally refuses to go dancing with me so I found a "gender free" contra dance and decided to go. My son had a dance of his own that evening so my husband was going to be left home alone. When I told him what I was doing, going early enough to make the instruction period, he suddenly decided to go, too. I was pretty gob-smacked: after YEARS of him refusing to go, when I finally decide just to go by myself he ends up going? Whatever, it's a free country. So we get there and I'm *terrible* at it. The "instructor" totally didn't help, using words I don't know and can't even spell in rapid succession while I'm still trying to figure out what he means by "partner on the left". Facing the stage? Facing the door? Left of each other? Left of the speaker? I just have no clue. We whirl around a bit and I do everything wrong and disrupt the dancing for pretty much everyone there, maybe ten people, with my ineptness, not having a clue of what to do. I dropped out and went and sat by the edge of the room nearly in tears. A kind woman came over to try to get me back in. I got tearier - kindness does that. I sat and held it together until a friend of mine came in the room. She was super kind to me, too, but more brusque (she's a good friend) and she danced with me several times until I got the hang of it. Meanwhile, some guy came over and asked my husband to dance (turns out "gender free" means "mostly gay", which I should probably have figured out from knowing which of my friends were going but rather didn't care) and my husband went off and had a good time. There was one waltz we paired back up for, but mostly we danced with other people and that was a very very good thing since he was nearly as clueless as I was and no help whatsoever in guiding me. Anyway, it was a rough start, but I got better at it and enjoyed myself for minutes at a time. It was sort of small room and I was a bit overcome with whirling and constant direction changing, though. Perhaps another time I'll go to the bigger grange. Perhaps.
Back home the boy called for a ride home from his high school dance. His father drove to get him and apparently my husband bragged to his teen-aged son that he danced with boys all evening. Son was amused at his 61 year old cishet dad's coming out.
I hired a realtor today to sell the office building. The realtor neatly took over where I'd left off on the marketing, including taking my piles of marketing materials off with her, cleaning up a corner of my workroom/diningroom. Wuhoo!
My house is AMAZING. We sat in the "conversation area" in front of a roaring fire while we worked on the realtor's contract. The lighting illuminated the art. The fireplace warmed the room. The realtor had been in the place 17 years before, when we bought it, and recognized what I'd done with it (which is basically *everything*. Not a single square inch has been left unpainted or wallpapered, there's new lighting, floors have been refinished, trim has been deleaded, windows have new window treatments: new roof, new heating system, warm and bright and beautiful. People keep telling me that I do a lovely job decorating. I just know that I've spent $2000 at Pier 1 over the past two years and it takes me four gallons of water (with miracle grow in it) to water all my plants.
In my new home office I have an old bulletin board with things I put on it from the 90's, moved to this building when we moved here in 1998 and I just never got around to redoing it. They're just little things, nothing momentous. But they remind me of being me. One is a picture by the science fiction artist Cortney Skinner of some proto-humanoids climbing a tree on some African savannah to reach for the full moon. Next to it I have a picture of the Space Shuttle Columbia during a routine launch in the 90's. (A client brought me it as a present to apologize for having to reschedule their appointment: they were filming the launch and it got postponed due to weather and they got stuck in Florida until it launched. Best excuse ever to blow me off.) There are a number of other small momentos of who I used to be. A picture of me holding my three year old and five year olds on my lap in my office. A couple of things too difficult to explain. I've cleaned up the board a bit to use now, but left maybe half of it filled with stuff from me twenty years ago. I want to go back and visit her. I liked her in many ways better than I like myself now. (In others, I'm better now, though.)
Last night I'm lying in bed looking at my phone (which I wouldn't even have brought to bed but B. wasn't home and I wanted to be sure to hear if he called or texted) and I see a picture of B. of Facebook with Ray Bourque. Oh. Well, I forgot where he was (if I ever knew) but apparently he was at Boston Gardens watching a Bruins game last night. I'm happy for him that he gets to do such things.
Meanwhile, last week-end I decided to FINALLY go contra-dancing. I've been meaning to do it for, oh, three years? My husband totally refuses to go dancing with me so I found a "gender free" contra dance and decided to go. My son had a dance of his own that evening so my husband was going to be left home alone. When I told him what I was doing, going early enough to make the instruction period, he suddenly decided to go, too. I was pretty gob-smacked: after YEARS of him refusing to go, when I finally decide just to go by myself he ends up going? Whatever, it's a free country. So we get there and I'm *terrible* at it. The "instructor" totally didn't help, using words I don't know and can't even spell in rapid succession while I'm still trying to figure out what he means by "partner on the left". Facing the stage? Facing the door? Left of each other? Left of the speaker? I just have no clue. We whirl around a bit and I do everything wrong and disrupt the dancing for pretty much everyone there, maybe ten people, with my ineptness, not having a clue of what to do. I dropped out and went and sat by the edge of the room nearly in tears. A kind woman came over to try to get me back in. I got tearier - kindness does that. I sat and held it together until a friend of mine came in the room. She was super kind to me, too, but more brusque (she's a good friend) and she danced with me several times until I got the hang of it. Meanwhile, some guy came over and asked my husband to dance (turns out "gender free" means "mostly gay", which I should probably have figured out from knowing which of my friends were going but rather didn't care) and my husband went off and had a good time. There was one waltz we paired back up for, but mostly we danced with other people and that was a very very good thing since he was nearly as clueless as I was and no help whatsoever in guiding me. Anyway, it was a rough start, but I got better at it and enjoyed myself for minutes at a time. It was sort of small room and I was a bit overcome with whirling and constant direction changing, though. Perhaps another time I'll go to the bigger grange. Perhaps.
Back home the boy called for a ride home from his high school dance. His father drove to get him and apparently my husband bragged to his teen-aged son that he danced with boys all evening. Son was amused at his 61 year old cishet dad's coming out.