Too Many Books

What I've done today: * Made a list of things I still need to do * Drank my daily allotment of coffee (sadly, 1.5 small cups) * Organized the baby loot Bath Items. Kitchen Aisle. * Ordered a few a massive amount of baby things from Target online What I should be doing: * Completing the tape-the-nursery-walls since my mom and mother-in-law are coming over tomorrow afternoon to help paint! And since I told said mother-in-law that we've already finished taping... whoops! Remember the M & M people?! They've been primed-over. Hubs cried. He said the yellow one ended like Old Yeller. * Finishing the cleaning of the living room, then obsessively scrubbing the laundry room to complete my deep clean. * Spot cleaning the rest of the house, as to keep it clean now that my "deep clean" is basically complete. * Taking the final--ish load of giveaways to Goodwill * Going to the daycare I chose... to pay my deposit and, also, begging to God I ...

This afternoon, I lulled away the day. Yes, I'm off work again... I have to be there this Saturday, so I was entitled to the shedding of a few hours today, an attempt to keep overtime to a minimum. That's just fine with me. I meant to come home and take a nap. (That's always on my agenda. Clearly.) Instead, I caught up on my google reader -- or at least made a hell of an attempt to do so -- read a bit of a novel, watched obscene amounts of a three-hour-long, DVR-ed episode of Big Brother After Dark on SHO-time . (This was, in fact, so mind-numbing that it was almost like napping.) So is the story of my life: watch hours tick away while I make little progress: maternal, writerly, or otherwise. It occurs to me that I probably need to learn how to do things, like, I don't know, install a car seat. Or perhaps start a babyspice-registry. Or scope out day-care centers. Instead, I just made a king-sized Snickers my bitch and poured myself a Sweet Tea. Ahh, m...

Yesterday, I made a promise. I promised my husband that I would do the dishes tonight. This is not awesome. The sink is full to overflowing and I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of the dishes and utensils may be best described as crusty. The predicament is that I have not done dishes in um, over a week. Granted, that's only 4 or so actual meals in the Murphy household. Typically, we eat at least one frozen pizza per week, which requires minimal cleanup. We never cook breakfast (unless it's at dinner time!) and when I do come home for lunch, I heat up something lean-cuisine-ish and dirty only a fork. Then there are the nights -- like tonight -- when I bring home Qboda and chew away stress. (Chicken nachos > antidepressants.) I'm procrastinating... there are several items that are daunting me more than a little: there's a casserole dish from shepherd's pie which is soaking at the bottom of the sink like long-buried treasure, certain to be alg...

Oh sweet baby Jesus. I am exhausted. I have power-shopped the last two days away, and I am still not finished. My calf muscles are throbbing, what with months and months of general unuse, and though I shopped in sneakers, seem to be screaming at me that it is unfair to sideline them all year and then demand they work overtime around the holidays. My feet ache in agreement. I'll be honest -- there are one and a half shopping days to go and I am not quite sure I am going to be able to finish without beating my head against Wal-Mart shevles or just plopping right down in the middle of Barnes and Noble and sobbing. Um, I'm yet to buy one single gift for my husband, and also have not completed one iota of bagging  thoughful gift wrapping. You might ask why I am sitting here staring at my monitor, pounding out a blog entry. How can I sleep at night? With all there is to do, where do I get off taking leisure time this evening? To you I respond with this: suck my balls. I...

Where's this snow the weatherman talked about? Today there's nothing but a cold December rain here in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm supposed to be cleaning the house and wrapping my grandmother's Christmas gifts, as we are leaving for Bloomington, Indiana in a few hours. So far this morning, I have puttered around facebook, caught up on my google reader, smoked four cigarettes, and had two diet cokes for breakfast. Oh, I started a load of laundry. I'm on task! My husband is working -- he'll finish up around noon thirty -- and when he gets home at 1:00, I plan to be packed (and have him packed) and showered and ready to go, and I'll inevitably stamp around as he sits on the couch and takes forever to claim that he is ready to leave for our road trip. This is how we operate when preparing for travel. If we're going to visit my side of the family, like today, he won't be ready to go on time. If we're going to visit his side of the family -- well...

It's really December. We're really two weeks into December. Oh. I suppose I should start my Christmas shopping. I swear, I'm worse than the stereotypical man. I have bought one gift so far -- I ordered the book my mom wanted from amazon, since it isn't in stock (or even available for reorder) at B & N. As I window shopped around the internet (ha - is it just me or is the idea of "window shopping" online seriously fitting and funny) I thought about how I could so easily become one of those introverts who does all her shopping from the comfort of her couch. No crowded parking lots to nagivate, no canned Christmas music blaring from speakers, no greedy little children shouting... update: By the way... I totally hit the   publish post tab before I meant to...

I had never heard of Nano ( National Novel Writing Month ) until this year. For those of you who don't know, you better ask somebody. Well, since you asked, I'll tell you. It's insanity, that's what it is. The goal is to write 50,000 words - the equivalent of 175 pages -- in the month of November. I didn't sign up to officially participate, but figured I would write the approximate 1500 words per day in an attempt to finish my manuscript before Christmas. I thought it would be such great motivation, knowing that other writers out there were sitting at their laptops and pounding the keys, forming sentences and paragraphs and scenes. But I'm behind already and considering the wave of a white towel. I'd written 1500 words by this morning and proceeded to quickly delete the crappy half this afternoon. I think that November is a sucky month for writing - November 1st, particularly, is really not the best day to start doing anything. Whether you were in a ...

Last month, I stopped taking my birth control pill. No, it wasn't because I've already started to design a nursery in my mind, plotting color schemes and stocking up on diapers and onesies and burp cloths. It isn't because I'm ready to get pregnant. I am required to order my contraseptives in three month supply, and I ran out. This has happened a few times before. Normally, my husband just grumbles a little and then makes a trip out for condoms. This time, he said, "I really don't feel like getting condoms. Wanna just see what happens?" I concurred. It isn't because I'm ready to get pregnant. (I'm aware that I already said that.) You see, I always wanted kids. I started babysitting when I was eleven, for a family that grew to four little girls. I wanted to have four little girls of my own, and wanted to name them Emma, Claire, Alexis, and Nora. I vaguely remember this dream. It was a dream shattered by adult life choices, the ones that ...

I consider myself pretty driven, career wise. I graduated college in four years despite transferring schools twice. I've moved up the bank-ladder to reach a management position in three short years. I certainly push myself to excel. I am trying to understand my lack of motivation in nearly every other area of my life. First, there are the friendships I have all but abandoned. Yes, I've gotten better about trying to have monthly get-togethers with my college/restaurant and highschool/girl groups of friends. However, I've always been more of a one-on-one type. There are two friends, in particular, who I haven't seen since January. I keep promising myself to remember they are only a phone call away. I need to recognize that being a little emotionally exhausted after work isn't an excuse to come home every night and plant myself on the couch, and that weekends were created for more than just football and loads of laundry. Next, there's my house. There are pile...

I wonder if it's against the rules to blog on Sunday. It seems that no one really does, or at least not with regularity. Where are you, blog world? You must be attending church or football games or spending time with your family or catching up on housework. Where I am? Right here, at my laptop, surfing the internet, writing, popping my head up over the screen to catch a minute or two of the 1:00 football games. Per usual, I am avoiding the housework like the plague. Really need to start laundry, though, and complete it before my girl's dinner tonight at the Tequila Factory. We're celebrating the birthday of one of my teacher friends, who swears the evening will be tame, as she has to be present at middle school math classes in the morning. It is my last day of my staycation, and the thought of heading into work tomorrow has my proverbial panties in a bunch... especially when there is Tequila in my near future. Nothing says "I'm ready to get back to wo...

Lately I find I procrastinate more than ever. This life is difficult to lead. I used to claim I worked well on a deadline. However, older and wiser, I know now that I work well on someone else's deadline: self-imposed deadlines are harder to meet, and its easy to give oneself an extension. I procrastinate daily. I wait until THE very last minute to get in the shower and start getting ready for work. I wait until THE very last minute to Christmas shop, assemble and wrap gifts. I wait until THE very last minute to do dishes. (That only means that I do dishes when the sink is full and starting to smell a bit off, and my husband is making snide remarks about not being able to cook in our dirty kitchen.) Let me be fair to myself: I don't procrastinate at work. I have been deemed a workaholic, but I don't take actual work home with me. I'm paid hourly; I don't work for free. The only work I bring home is the mental and emotional baggage of the work day. That's even mo...