Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: May 2019

  • 138 // Just Two More Months

    Well, I didn’t make the 6:00 AM weekend writing wake up time exactly on the dot, but being only 15 minutes late or so after forgetting to set the alarm entirely is quite an accomplishment and I’ll take it.

    This morning I’m posting early because a very busy day is on the way and after it starts, I won’t have any time for me until I’m too tired to think anymore.

    Last night we found out there is a place giving discount vaccinations, microchips, and registration for dogs so Lola is going to a surprise vet visit this morning, poor thing. After that we’re going shopping for more wedding things, then meeting with our officiant, who is also my cousin, to discuss the script over coffee, and then well go back out for more wedding shopping.

    This week will mark just two more months until our big day. I’m starting to believe the hardest part of marriage is being “almost married”.

    P.S. Lola did great getting her shots. She’s quite a nervous dog, and I worried she would bark or whine the whole time, or worse try to bite other dogs or people, but she turned out to be one of the most well behaved of all the dogs there. I’m a very proud fur mom today!

  • 137 // I’m so Proud

    Finally, the true Friday has arrived. I’d planned to take the day off from work but I felt guilty knowing I only really needed the afternoon, plus I wanted the extra hours of pay, plus I secretly kind of wanted to be there for our annual end of the year party, so I agreed to come in for half the day.

    My little sister, the youngest and last of us all, is graduating from high school tonight. She’s the reason I took off early and the reason I’m feeling so good. I’m proud of her and, I will admit, a little jealous. I’m somewhat jealous of all my younger siblings.

    I know in reality they are living their lives the first and only time the same as me, but in my heart, it feels like they are getting the second chance I will never get. They got to learn from me, while I had no one to make my mistakes first. *

    I’m so happy for them, but damn does it sting for me.

    *Well, I had my parents, but somehow the more we resist them the more we become like them. Parent’s live the nightmare of watching their worst mistakes made again no matter how hard they try to teach, protect, or control their children.

  • 136 // This is a Home

    Where the rain of last week made every day a repeat of Monday, this week’s sunshine is giving us perpetual Fridays. I’m not sure which is worse. Mondays are bleak, sure, but having to keep on remembering over and over again that freedom is not, in fact, just hours away is rather more disappointing.

    I didn’t write or read as much as I had hoped to and spent too much of the day walking around and socializing, a big change from yesterday’s feeling though by the afternoon I’d had my fill.

    I’m happy to be home now with my fiance, our dog, the cat, and, yes, even the snakes.

    This is a home.

    This is a family.

    This is peace.

    P.S. I did some more blog things today. I cleaned up the more recent personal posts at Zen and Pi and am preparing to revive it soon and the accompanying newsletter. Now all I have left to do is the actual writing :/

  • 135 // Working Well With Others

    I’d gotten too used to solitude at work and now as the end of the year is getting closer and as we begin moving over to our newer, smaller building in preparation for a renovation I am forced suddenly to suffer the presence, the gaze, and the sounds of other people.

    I must respond in the appropriate ways to their small talk and their probing personal questions. I have to laugh at their jokes and listen to their complaining and I just…don’t want to. The slightest unplanned or unsought social interaction has become an instant and severe irritation.

    To be fair, though, it may not be the people—or how ill acquainted I’ve become with the rigors of working well with others—at all, but simple hormones. I’ll know for sure in the next three day or so.

    P.S. I’d like to share my shiny new sign-up page for my new wholly personal “every now and again” newsletter. I’ll write a formal post about it at some point but for now I’m just inviting people with faith to spare to join the list and trust that I will come up with something good to share, eventually.

  • 134 // Reinforced Connections

    And suddenly it’s summer. The heat today feels oppressive and the knowledge the worse is yet to come is worrisome. The upside is I can finally get back to taking daily walks which will soon become jogs and will soon after that become my morning runs. The downside is I am sweating and I hate sweating.

    Tonight I’m spending time with my family celebrating a belated Mother’s Day. So much must be put off now that the end of the year is approaching and work hours are (paradoxically) extending but I’m glad we made time to be with people we love. I sometimes forget how revitalizing laughter can be, and how the reinforcing connections can strengthen us for the return to life’s chaos and confusion.

  • 133 // An Audiobook Experiment

    Today was a good reading day. I finally made it through The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but I still have to make it through Notes from Underground and the “Other Stories“.

    I purchased and began my very first audiobook today as well, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin. My sisters and my mom all “read” by audiobook and have been trying for a long time to convince me of the method’s virtues, but I know myself and my comprehension cliff dives whenever I am listening to rather than reading words. Hell, I can’t even read well from a screen! Old fashioned ink on paper is the only way for me, I guess.

    But! Times are changing and I’m watching the stats of other readers climb to numbers that I know I just cannot attain through traditional means. Plus, Google offered me $5 toward a purchase so I thought, why not give it a try? Perhaps practice is all I need.

    I’m enjoying how quickly I can move through “reading” by simply listening, but my habit of reading with a pencil has become another hindrance as well. With audio, I cannot mark the margins, insert my opinion, underline, or argue with the author! I cannot move through a book smoothly without being able to get my thoughts out along the way.

    So, I’ve already decided that when I finish I will simply have to buy a physical copy and read it again.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 132 // The Weekend Writing Plan

    It was a good writing day, I just wish I’d had more of it to devote to writing rather than to chores.

    The goal going forward is to wake up at 6:00 AM on both Saturday and Sunday and give 4 hours completely to writing. If there is anything to do later in the day, that’s fine. I’ll have written for four hours and justified doing anything else at all for the rest of the day. If there is nothing else to do I’ll have hit the ground running and earned a mid-morning nap before beginning again.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 131 // So Much Pressure

    The fitting went wonderfully. The place wasn’t especially welcoming but it was professional and sometimes that, for me anyway, is much more comfortable. She pinned everything in all over and even said the suit was cute. She said it will be a lot of work but it will be done and soon.

    We’ve just gotten home from dinner with friends and I’m doing that thing again where I overanalyzing every single word I said and action I took and coming to the same conclusion again and again. I am an idiot. I am an embarrassment. They are laughing at me, talking about me, they all actually hate me.

    I know deep down none of that is true. I know my friends like being around me and that any social gaffs of blunders I’m guilty of are not only understandable but completely normal! I know no one will remember that weird response or me dropping my fork. I know no one cares if I laugh too loud or make a dumb joke. I know it’s all okay.

    So, why do I put so much pressure on myself? Why do I punish myself this way?

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 130 // Stress, Terror, Exhaustion

    The stress is getting to be too much. Were nearly two months out now and I’m still not even sure what we are doing or what we should be doing next. I’m designing menu cards and ceremony signs and she’s putting together centerpieces but it feels like we should be doing something else, something more.

    Tomorrow I’m supposed to head to the first tailor on my list for suit alterations but to be honest I don’t want to go. My anxiety is through the roof! I’m scared of being turned away. I’m scared that the suit can’t be fitted or that no matter what they do I will still look bad in it. I’m afraid of the price too. I’m fucking terrified to end up back at square one again.

    To top it off things keep changing too. Sometimes it’s what we can’t do, sometimes its something we realize we have to do, and other times it’s realizing finally what it is we want to do. Staying on the same page is difficult, and the patience we show for one another, though exhausting, is only further proof we belong together.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 129 // Dragging Days

    The weather is still shit but the forecast only gets better from here.

    It continues to be a long week but I’m trying to remember that time flying is no blessing. Dragging days means a long life. It means I’m not just alive but present. Time flies when your mind is somewhere else in some other time. Time flies when you aren’t living your life.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 128 // Mourning Weather

    We’re mourning yesterday’s loss and tragedy and the weather is certainly giving permission for us to do so. The clouds are thick and low, and a steady drizzle has been falling all morning. The cold has crept back into our bones and no one feels much like smiling, not outwardly, not in public.

    Home is the safest place right now. I’m craving comfort food, big blankets, and an early bedtime. Tomorrow probably won’t be much better, but at least it won’t be today.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 127 // Please, Wake Up

    This morning we woke up to the news that a teenager had died in a shooting near our work last night. Last I heard the shooter was still at large.

    Later in the day all of our schools went on “secured perimeter” lockdown as a school shooting happened in the next district over with reports now of 8 injured and one death.

    Two shootings in a day. Too much death for one day.

    Working at a school district in this day and age when guns are glorified and these tragedies are sensationalized is heartbreaking, confusing, and terrifying. We fear for our lives and we worry over our ability to assist and to stomach carnage, we might encounter one day.

    Some of us have already been impacted by gun violence in the past and some of us have lost loved ones in mass shootings already firmly in the public memory by now. For them, and for all of us who feel like we are only waiting our turn, the cycle, the horrific repetition of death, drama, outrage, prayers, forgetting, and then more death, can feel like a nightmare we cannot wake up from.

    I just want us to wake up now.

    Please, wake up.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 126 // This Is My Fault Too

    Today we made up for the lazy weekend and vowed to one another never to put off to weekday evenings what is best and most easily done on our days off. Lazy Saturdays are decadent and Sundays do encourage sloth but we have to stay strong and focused.

    We have too much to do in just two short months before the wedding.

    So, we had to rush around while exhausted from work doing things we could have had done already but it’s nice to have grown enough together not to blame or to lash out in frustration but to say instead “this is my fault too and this is what I will do to help us do better in the future”.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 125 // Better but Not Best

    This was one of my better Sundays, though it wasn’t the best it could have been. I woke up late, but I stayed away from the couch and I tried my best to write though I was easily distracted. I spent too much time on small blog things and not nearly enough time on big projects.

    I had a lot to do around the house too. A lot of cleaning I’d been neglecting and small things that needed fixing. I marked some domestic to-dos off the list but the list is never ending so the satisfaction isn’t really there. Still, it feels good to focus my attention on new and novel problems for a change.

    In the evening I got ready for the week and did it more efficiently than ever before. I’m going to bed weightless and without the usual dread and despair. I’m almost looking forward to Monday now that I’ve gotten ahead of it somewhat.

    P.S. I have a new social media menu up here that includes a link to both my Ko-fi and Patreon pages. There isn’t much I have up on either and not much I can offer supporters yet but take a look, follow, and check back soon. I’ll be adding and updating often.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren