Sheetrock, Spackle, and Paint, Oh My!

After much sheet rocking, spackling, painting, and new flooring, we’re finally almost at the finish line. For a while there, our house looked like shit; bare walls waiting for new sheetrock, and floors/stairs stripped of their smelly, old carpet. Now it’s starting to look like a home. I’m pretty sure we’ll never fully reach the finish line, as house projects seem to be endless, but at least we’re making progress. We have to be moved in this weekend, as I will NOT be paying another month’s rent at the apartment. We still have to paint one more room, fix up the stairs, get a new back door and replace a few windows, but I guess that will have to wait. I just can’t wait for the day that we’re no longer surrounded by dust, both regular and sawdust.

With all the work on the house, we haven’t had time to shop for a new bedroom set or washer dryer, so we NEED to make that a priority this Labor Day weekend. I want my new stuff! And I want to buy a few decorations here and there, since decorating is the only fun part about having a house. I am NOT looking forward to cleaning out our apartment and packing everything up, but we’ve put that off long enough, and now it’s GO time. I hope we accomplish everything we need to this weekend. I’ll have a 5 day weekend, which is good, though it won’t be nearly as relaxing as I’d like it to be. I would much prefer to pay someone to help us clean and move. Oh well, such is life.

That’s my update for the year month. Hope all two of you reading this are doing well. And P.S. – where the hell has this year gone? Goodbye to the summer that barely was…

P.P.S. – Damn you, WordPress, for publishing my post yesterday, when I had it set to “Schedule” and I hit the button which also said “Schedule” and not “Publish.” What the F is wrong with you? This is why I don’t pay for you anymore…

~Lily~

Why I Am How I Am

The below post was originally published on Lillian’s blog, High, High, Higher! as part of her “In Transit” series. I decided to post it on my own blog as well. Why? Because I can. But mostly because I have nothing else to say. Has anyone else ever suffered from writer’s block for more than 6 months? Should I see a doctor?

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Change is rarely ever easy. No shit, tell me something I don’t know. Alright, you don’t have to get nasty. Middle school was all about change for me. Before middle school, I was a happy, talkative, relatively normal kid. I had a group of friends and life was good. Teachers nicknamed me “the chatterbox” and would constantly have to scold me for talking during class. Then one day, my parents were informed that my brother and I would need to switch schools. It turns out that everyone in my small town was being moved to a nearby school, because our current school wasn’t going to pay for buses to pick us up anymore. (This was years ago, so I can’t guarantee 100% accuracy with the details.) I was pissed that I would have to switch schools, and lose the group of friends that I’d known for most of my life. But alas, I was 12 and couldn’t do jack-shit about it. However, my life would never be the same after that. I know, that sounds soooo overly dramatic!

Nobody likes being the new kid at school. I absolutely dreaded it. No longer the confident chatterbox, I was now awkward and terribly shy. It seems silly to say that from that moment I was never the same, but that’s the truth. I didn’t want to become a different person, it just happened. If you knew me now, you would find it hard to believe that I was ever a chatterbox; it’s like pulling teeth to get me to talk now.  At my old school, my friends used to fight over who could be my partner. At my new school, group assignments were an absolute nightmare. I was too shy to walk over to anyone, and of course, no one was fighting to be partnered with me. I was seriously uncool and always misjudged. There were several times I heard people whispering about me behind my back. I remember a specific comment someone made about me. (You tend to remember the hurtful ones.) Someone started a poll of who they thought would be most likely to blow up the school. Guess who they picked? Me! Because I was shy and antisocial, they immediately assumed I was capable of hurting others. Ouch.

If I could go back now, I would have tried harder to stay in touch with my old friends. (I don’t know why we lost touch, but I guess it’s mostly my fault.) I would have told myself to loosen up and introduce myself to new people, rather than shying away from my new environment. I wouldn’t have let my new situation overwhelm me the way it did. If I had more confidence, maybe people wouldn’t have judged me the way they did. I used to enjoy school, but after the move, I dreaded it every day. Most people were sad as our graduation date approached, but I couldn’t be happier. I didn’t go to prom because I figured, why subject myself to that torture? I couldn’t stand crowds, and I knew no one would dance with me, so I didn’t bother. I was told I’d regret that decision later on in life, but so far, so good! I didn’t have a graduation party either. I left high school feeling relieved, and never looked back.

Even though it wasn’t the best experience, I don’t necessarily regret it. Sure, it would have been nice to have had more friends and have been more popular, but I can’t complain with the way my life is now. I have a wonderful family and a boyfriend who loves me, flaws and all. I might never have met my boyfriend had I been super popular in high school. Maybe I would have been peer-pressured into doing something I’d now regret. Maybe I would have ended up knocked-up at prom, like so many other girls. (Does that sound offensive? Well…) Who knows, maybe my life would have turned out to be a crazy mess. It was a rough transition, but I believe that everything we go through is for a reason. Even the smallest things can have a great impact on us. Maybe some people find me too quiet or weird or antisocial. But I prefer to think of myself as mysterious, reliable, and until someone can prove otherwise, kind-hearted. Okay, so I’m far from perfect, but I’m a good person, and that’s what counts. As for everything else, I am who I am, flawed and perfectly imperfect. Hey, even the most beautiful diamonds have some kind of flaw.  (Not that I’m comparing myself to a diamond. I mean, come on, that would sound like bragging or something.)

~Lily~

Settling In

The tortuous office move, that I was convinced wasn’t actually happening, is finally over. No more packing and being temporarily displaced. And I’m happy to announce that my commute isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In the morning, I can get there in 10-15 minutes. There’s more traffic at the end of the day, but I guess it could be worse. It’s not as fast and easy as my old commute, but all things considered, I can’t complain. Actually I can. (Don’t you know me at all?) The parking lot at this new office is so stupid. Aside from the fact that there’s no garage, they also made the main parking lot for visitors only. That’s right, visitors. So employees have to skip the main entrance, and drive to the second parking lot. Once you park, you have to cross a little bridge to get to the building. Why on earth should visitors be closer to the building than the employees? Rude.

It was a slow start yesterday, what with things not functioning properly in the morning, but once they got all the power working, and the phones and printers hooked up, it was all good. I didn’t stop working all day. I actually skipped lunch because there were so many things to do, especially considering it’s a short week. I usually do everything pretty quickly, but lately I have a bunch of things that are up in the air, and it drives me crazy. I hate when things are pending just because people can’t reply to my phone calls or emails. Get your shit together and get back to me. It stresses me out when I have all these piles of things to do. How dare they make me have “to do” piles. Rude.

I’m trying to get as organized as possible because next week…I’ll be in Oklahoma! No, that’s not excitement you hear. Oklahoma? Tornado country? Only one direct flight on a tiny plane, and the only other options are connecting flights? I’m gonna die. But anyway, if I don’t die, I’ll be with my parents visiting my brother for his graduation from basic training. Yay, he graduated! We’re all excited to see him again. I can’t believe it’s been two months already. I’m proud of my little brother. They’ll have family day activities on Thursday, and then the actual graduation is on Friday. On both days, we’ll be able to go out with him for several hours. We can only go to certain areas, and he has to stay in uniform the entire time. Talk about strict. After that, my brother will be heading to his advanced training in Texas, and we’ll be heading back home…on yet another connecting flight. *Cringes* I wouldn’t mind going to see my brother in Texas next time. That’s actually one of the few states I’d be interested in visiting. But Oklahoma? No offense but…it’s Oklahoma.

So, if you don’t hear from me ever again, it was either a plane crash or a tornado, or I just stopped blogging because I have nothing to say and nobody cares anyway. In all seriousness, I really hope we don’t die. If my mom is reading this, she’ll probably be mad that I’m joking about dying. Dying is not cool. Seriously, I don’t recommend it. Avoid dying at all costs. Have a good one, my fellow bloggers. It’s been real.

~Lily~