It is 1:03 in the morning. I've been desparate to go to sleep since eleven. First I had to make sure I handwrote the husband's invoices which have to get sent out tomorrow morning so that we can get paid. The husband is in Kazakhstan getting paid to babysit a couple of designers and such at an advertising agency. He promises to come home every two weeks to see us. I told him I might be able to put up with this until I'm done with school in June but that's that. After June 20th, the only plane I'll be boarding will not go to Kazakhstan but somewhere with sandy beaches and turquoise waters.
After the invoices, I had to do laundry. In fact, I'm waiting for my third load to finish up so I can hang it on the drying rack in my bedroom and hope the smell of fabric softener won't tickle my allergies. I have had a hell of a weekend with not even a minute to waste on Facebook and I'm quite content with what I've accomplished. Yes, nevertheless.
You see, so much has happened since my post-hospital days of doom and procrastination. In short: the husband quit his job (because we didn't want to move to Dubai and they were going to make us) and started his own business (because he was already working a full shift on freelance work and making me crazy hogging the home office). I got frustrated at school (though I'm thinking about going back for another year) and started looking for a full-time corporate job. After interviewing at a single company, a drug manufacturer, I decided I can't do 9-to-5 ever again. Somebody's looking out for me up there because out of the blue I get two magazine jobs, both of which I can do freelance and mostly from the comfort of my own (or that of a shopping mall.)
My first project is a 40-page supplement for a shopping magazine. I'm editing and producing a KIDS version which involves a lot of shopping for cute clothes and accessories, styling photo shoots and writing snappy copy. Apparently this little supplement might in fact be a free-standing magazine by September, fingers crossed.
The other magazine relationship is with a company that shares my daughter's first name. And they publish the Turkish version of one of the magazines I had the "pleasure" of working with while in New York. I will be developing custom publishing opportunities for them and once again, hopefully rarely set foot in their offices.
That's a quick update for you. It suddenly got very quiet around here. It's 1:20 am. The washing machine is silent which is my cue to say goodbye, at least for now.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Waiting for Laundry
Friday, February 6, 2009
Procrastination
One of Maya's friends is at our place for a sleepover. It's already 5:09 pm so I need to start thinking about dinner and start setting up the ingredients for the cookies I promised them we'd make. In the meantime, the translation I'm working on is on the verge of being overdue (considering the book is almost 300 pages long and I'm still on page 45 with a deadline of February 15th) and I'm terribly hooked on Tetris Friends on Facebook. Can you spell procrastination? I can. I pronounce it really well too.
Recently I was reading author Gwendolen Gross' blog about writing and came across an assigment she suggested to fellow writers. She suggested making a list of things I never want to write about and things I need to write about.
So I said:
Aha, so that's why I'm having a hard time posting. After all, the new blog is not at all about lists. In fact, I think it's more about freeing me from my lists than anything else.
Nevertheless, this blog post is every bit the procrastination tool as the tea I'm about to make and the cigarette I'm about to smoke. (GASP!) Toxic Parents shall wait...
Recently I was reading author Gwendolen Gross' blog about writing and came across an assigment she suggested to fellow writers. She suggested making a list of things I never want to write about and things I need to write about.
So I said:
The assignment is too easy.
I never procrastinate making lists.
In fact, my love affair with lists alone is the reason why my fridge is never fully stocked, my IKEA shopping not completed, my light fixtures are still not hung, my laundry is sitting next to my bed (over which I have to leap every morning) and the birthday cards I bought in January are neatly tucked away in a closet along with the pretty journals and the overflown photo boxes. Making lists relaxes me and once relaxed, I no longer worry about finishing what I've started. Or start anything for that matter. It's been over a month since I stopped writing at midlifecrisisat33.blogspot.com (since I turned 34 on September 11) and I'm thinking my next blog might just be on lists.
I never procrastinate making lists.
In fact, my love affair with lists alone is the reason why my fridge is never fully stocked, my IKEA shopping not completed, my light fixtures are still not hung, my laundry is sitting next to my bed (over which I have to leap every morning) and the birthday cards I bought in January are neatly tucked away in a closet along with the pretty journals and the overflown photo boxes. Making lists relaxes me and once relaxed, I no longer worry about finishing what I've started. Or start anything for that matter. It's been over a month since I stopped writing at midlifecrisisat33.blogspot.com (since I turned 34 on September 11) and I'm thinking my next blog might just be on lists.
Aha, so that's why I'm having a hard time posting. After all, the new blog is not at all about lists. In fact, I think it's more about freeing me from my lists than anything else.
Nevertheless, this blog post is every bit the procrastination tool as the tea I'm about to make and the cigarette I'm about to smoke. (GASP!) Toxic Parents shall wait...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
I Can Barely Make Past Eleven
Really uncool chicks would shuffle out of their rooms and into the hallway to complain "Quiet hours started at eleven!!!!" and somehow I was always the unfortunate one who would come into eye contact with one of them, get uncomfortable although I was one of the cool chicks, my drink in hand, leaning against the wall, talking to some guy.
Eventually coed parties of the first two years of college gave way to girls only drinking fests held in our singles, but the scolding didn't stop. Again, I was always the one to care, ssshing my friends to please keep quiet--I was supposed to be a role model to the first-years on my floor. As the floor's student advisor, I was supposed to enforce the rules and yet I somehow always found myself in the midst of all the late-night chaos.
Nowadays I can barely make it past eleven without falling asleep on the couch. My current job, a preschool teacher, requires me to clock in at 7:45 am. Once again, I seem to have found myself in a situation where I don't remember consciously making the decision to commit to signing away my night life and signing up to a rise-before-the-sun-does existence. Yet here I am, getting paid pretty much nothing to do something to which I really didn't give much thought.
Making conscious choices and giving these choices the time they deserve is really much harder than I thought. At 34, I thought it would be second nature. After all, I got married, had a child, chose a career, decided to end it, begun another one. It is surprisingly difficult to live life consciously.
Then again something happens and your entire body is jolted out of the fog you live in and emergency landed into the frigid Hudson. Someone you barely know dies but because of what you lived with them, through them and around them, you are touched and changed forever inexplicably.
Mom's been recovering from a pulmonary embolism attack this past week. She was hospitalized last Sunday, exactly a week ago, and I have been staying with her at the hospital since. Her first two nights here were in a shared room. On the second night, they brought in an 86-year-old who was suffering from pneumonia. Her son accompanied her and kept her company throughout the evening. When night came, he crept out for a nap on the stretcher in the hallway so I was the only one left awake in the room. I spent most of the night taking cat naps on the chair next to my mother's bed, getting up to check the levels on her oxygen tank or the numbers on the machine that measured how much oxygen was actually going into her lungs.
The 86-year-old, İsmihan Teyze, moaned most of the night. Once I noticed she was uncomfortably slouching on the raised bed so I tried to lift her up into a better position. She was so small, so frail, opened her eyes a couple of times whenever I went over to stroke her hand or fix her pillows, but was clearly in a pneumonic daze.
The next morning, she seemed to be doing better. Having been tube-fed fluids, she greeted her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters with visible enthusiasm. They were clearly happy to see she was doing better and seemed to understand exactly what her stroke-induced-garbles meant.
Mom was transfered to a private room that day but I kept visiting İsmihan Teyze throught the week. Her son and daughter stopped by to say hello to my mother a couple of times as well, the bonds established that night stronger than anything we had experienced before. When I came back from spending time with the kid today (they don't let children into this unit,) mom told me they stopped by again and that I should go over and say hello to İsmihan Teyze at some point.
I couldn't right away. Mom needed to use the bathroom, have her covers fixed, her medicine prepared, her food heated, her water bottle refilled, her arms massaged, her hands lotioned--the endless requests of a bed-ridden patient on the road to recovery. She wanted to watch a movie so I put "Shall We Dance?" on the laptop and started watching with her.
After the movie I walked over to İsmihan Teyze's room to find her bed empty. At the same time I asked where she was I remembered hearing the noisy rattle of the stretcher being rushed towards the elevator at some point. We were watching the movie and I remembered thinking someone must have died. It was İsmihan Teyze.
I came back to mom's room and couldn't keep the tears inside as I told her what had happened. I can't stop thinking about the old woman we came to know in seven short days. We heard snippets of her life but it was clearly filled with so much more. I'm watching mom sleep right now--I think of her life. I watched home videos of the kid earlier tonight--I think of the life she will make. I think of my grandmother's--almost 78 years of ups and downs--with hopefully, another decade or two to go. Scientists are saying that the majority of our generation will live through 100. We seem to have more time than our ancestors have had to try to figure this out.
So do I keep partying like it's 1996 or do quiet hours need to start at eleven? Or do I, for once, make a choice and be happy with it and stop living a life in a "How did I get here?" haze?
These days, all I seem to want to do is be a witness to the lives lived around me and stop trying to make something out of mine. Is that so wrong?
Eventually coed parties of the first two years of college gave way to girls only drinking fests held in our singles, but the scolding didn't stop. Again, I was always the one to care, ssshing my friends to please keep quiet--I was supposed to be a role model to the first-years on my floor. As the floor's student advisor, I was supposed to enforce the rules and yet I somehow always found myself in the midst of all the late-night chaos.
Nowadays I can barely make it past eleven without falling asleep on the couch. My current job, a preschool teacher, requires me to clock in at 7:45 am. Once again, I seem to have found myself in a situation where I don't remember consciously making the decision to commit to signing away my night life and signing up to a rise-before-the-sun-does existence. Yet here I am, getting paid pretty much nothing to do something to which I really didn't give much thought.
Making conscious choices and giving these choices the time they deserve is really much harder than I thought. At 34, I thought it would be second nature. After all, I got married, had a child, chose a career, decided to end it, begun another one. It is surprisingly difficult to live life consciously.
Then again something happens and your entire body is jolted out of the fog you live in and emergency landed into the frigid Hudson. Someone you barely know dies but because of what you lived with them, through them and around them, you are touched and changed forever inexplicably.
Mom's been recovering from a pulmonary embolism attack this past week. She was hospitalized last Sunday, exactly a week ago, and I have been staying with her at the hospital since. Her first two nights here were in a shared room. On the second night, they brought in an 86-year-old who was suffering from pneumonia. Her son accompanied her and kept her company throughout the evening. When night came, he crept out for a nap on the stretcher in the hallway so I was the only one left awake in the room. I spent most of the night taking cat naps on the chair next to my mother's bed, getting up to check the levels on her oxygen tank or the numbers on the machine that measured how much oxygen was actually going into her lungs.
The 86-year-old, İsmihan Teyze, moaned most of the night. Once I noticed she was uncomfortably slouching on the raised bed so I tried to lift her up into a better position. She was so small, so frail, opened her eyes a couple of times whenever I went over to stroke her hand or fix her pillows, but was clearly in a pneumonic daze.
The next morning, she seemed to be doing better. Having been tube-fed fluids, she greeted her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters with visible enthusiasm. They were clearly happy to see she was doing better and seemed to understand exactly what her stroke-induced-garbles meant.
Mom was transfered to a private room that day but I kept visiting İsmihan Teyze throught the week. Her son and daughter stopped by to say hello to my mother a couple of times as well, the bonds established that night stronger than anything we had experienced before. When I came back from spending time with the kid today (they don't let children into this unit,) mom told me they stopped by again and that I should go over and say hello to İsmihan Teyze at some point.
I couldn't right away. Mom needed to use the bathroom, have her covers fixed, her medicine prepared, her food heated, her water bottle refilled, her arms massaged, her hands lotioned--the endless requests of a bed-ridden patient on the road to recovery. She wanted to watch a movie so I put "Shall We Dance?" on the laptop and started watching with her.
After the movie I walked over to İsmihan Teyze's room to find her bed empty. At the same time I asked where she was I remembered hearing the noisy rattle of the stretcher being rushed towards the elevator at some point. We were watching the movie and I remembered thinking someone must have died. It was İsmihan Teyze.
I came back to mom's room and couldn't keep the tears inside as I told her what had happened. I can't stop thinking about the old woman we came to know in seven short days. We heard snippets of her life but it was clearly filled with so much more. I'm watching mom sleep right now--I think of her life. I watched home videos of the kid earlier tonight--I think of the life she will make. I think of my grandmother's--almost 78 years of ups and downs--with hopefully, another decade or two to go. Scientists are saying that the majority of our generation will live through 100. We seem to have more time than our ancestors have had to try to figure this out.
So do I keep partying like it's 1996 or do quiet hours need to start at eleven? Or do I, for once, make a choice and be happy with it and stop living a life in a "How did I get here?" haze?
These days, all I seem to want to do is be a witness to the lives lived around me and stop trying to make something out of mine. Is that so wrong?
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