Who needs sleep?

Ever find yourself constantly looking at the same numbers? A house number, a route number, the time on a digital clock – all places you can repeatedly see the same digits – unless it’s all nines, then you probably won’t see it on a clock – but still, the repetition becomes uncanny. I keep checking the time when it is exactly 12:34.

I’m not catching the clock as it turns to or flips from; it’s exactly 12:34 and will be for at least another ten seconds. I caught it again last night and had to laugh because it just. keeps. happening.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night (not back to “normal” yet after last weeks rollercoaster) – Or, if I did, it wasn’t good and restful in the least, so I decided to get up and do some of the work left unfinished from the weekend. The last of the Christmas gear is piled up and ready to go back into my basement for storage. The living room area rug was cleared off and adjusted so it no longer curled up under my desk. The bathroom got a thorough and exhaustive bleaching; I purged through the drawers of make-up, small soaps and first aid. I tidied the kitchen and cleaned out the fridge and pantry. The only things I didn’t complete involve power tools that I don’t have access to – nor should I be using – at 2 a.m. and my upside-down bedroom. Amazing that, through all this, nothing wore me out enough that I could fall asleep in between jobs.

In the midst of last weeks heart hub bub, I got a notice that the landlord had finally – FINALLY – decided to bleed the radiators and make the heating in the house more uniform – hence the upside-down bedroom. No more loud tuba sounds in the house as steam rises; No more freezing bedroom and tropical heat wave living room. I hastily moved everything away from the radiators and went about my week. I don’t know if the contractors ever came into my apartment as promised, but my bedroom looked like a wooden furniture puzzle, all pulled out and moved about. If I had known I’d be awake long enough I could either a) finish everything else or b) put my bedroom back together, I would’ve chose the latter, but I figured bleaching the bathroom would make me tired enough. Wrong.

So today you get a blog post about why I’m sleepy and not on my game. Though I think it would be cooler if I had sleep-cleaned my apartment. Sorta like this guy.

919 days to go

For kicks and giggles, I figured out how many days until I turn 30. I don’t know why I felt the need to know this – but I did – and in doing so was quite surprised. I was thinking I’d have around 1,000 days left – though if I had paused only a second I would have realized that math couldn’t possibly be correct, as I’ve already turned 27.

I’ve got 919 days to go and, well, today really is pretty much over. 918 days left; I think I need to re-examine my priorities.

• I’m not out of the debt I set to eliminate last February, though I am a lot further along than I thought I would be at this date – happy dance!
• I’m still renting. Grrrrr.
• I’m still unsure of what I want to be. Period. I can’t add “when I grow up” to the end of that sentence because, at this point, it’s knocking my maturity, which I think is one of the best things that I have going for me. But for purposes of grad school, it’s quite important to actually decide what I would like to be. MFA. MBA. PhD. MD. UGH.

I looked into med school and have found out the following:

• One year of Pitt Med School costs a whopping $58,145 – and that’s if you live in state. Now I understand why my parents said State School Only!
• I need more Math and Science courses before anything can happen.
• Those basic courses could take me 2 years – 730 days.
• With the cost of education going up, $58k will be a bargain in 2 years.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor, but as I grew up I let little things deter me on my path to med school. I even seriously attempted pre-med in college. So what the heck do I do now that I’m six years into a career path, with ongoing education and an MFA at stake, but start to ponder a life change? This can’t be mid-life crisis. I want to live longer than 60, erm, 54.

I know it wouldn’t be easy. I know it wouldn’t be cheap. Hell, I don’t even know what it would really and truly entail in its entirety. But I do know that I’ve got to figure this out and fast. 919 days is a lot of time, but it’s also really not.

Nursing my options

This past week has been interesting. I’d say boring or stressful or tiring or odd, but interesting is more encompassing.

Every once and a while, my mother succumbs to the pressure of late night work (or temptation, rather) and has a bit of coffee or chocolate – something with a small amount of caffeine in it to keep her awake – and if all other conditions are right, will send her heart into an irregular sinus rhythm. ‘All other conditions’ meaning low potassium and/or magnesium and her personal heart history being prone to a-fib among other factors.

Long story short, she found herself dozing at work last Thursday and had a half cup of coffee. (enter Hallelujah chorus: MISSSS-TAAAAAKE!) Saturday morning – 30 hours later – she was ill with a migraine and, according to A.K., yellow. No good.

Why it took her body 30 hours to figure out it needed to reject something I don’t know, but it comforts me that her doctor – top class cardiologist – didn’t have the foggiest either.

She’s been in the hospital since Saturday and, with the impending threat of getting a TEE and paddles, her heart converted back to a normal rhythm at 4 a.m. yesterday during her sleep. Yahoo! Which only meant an additional 48 hours of monitoring. Ugh.

I’ve spent almost every waking hour either at work or at Presby and I’m dead tired, but I’m also liking walking around in the hospital. I wanted to be a doctor when I started out in college but was talked out of it due to the blood and my ability to faint; after watching all the things the nurses have done for my mom this past week, including the blood draws, I’m finding out I’m not as squeamish as I once was.

Getting my masters sounds great, but as I fill out all the applications I can’t help but wonder if I’ll still be interested – or even challenged – in another 6 years.

Stress

I’m a bit stressed right now with my Mom in the hospital – at this point, the only thing wrong is how antsy she is to leave the hospital – so I came into work today with the hopes of getting a few things done and what do I find on the internet? A live video blog of 3 day old puppies. Good bye productive work day.

Live video from Shiba Inu Puppies

On a side note, ustream.tv streaming video to iPhones without “video” capability? Hmmmm… I’m probably the last one to get on the boat, but I think this could be really cool!

Oh, Letterpress

I finally got all of my Thank You cards for Christmas written and sent. Phew! I found an awesome box of r-nichols cards at TJ Maxx (no surprise there) last year in the clearance bin and, though the picture at the right is not the cards I sent out (they don’t have a picture on their site of those that I sent and my camera is crap) the picture is of a current card called “The Climbers” that I think is hilarious.

Cut paper cards are a lot of fun to make and, though mine are no where near as cute or adorable or precise as r-nichols, I still have fun making them. I just never have the time. Hence, clearance bin.

With all the design I do for Joe Appel Photography, I have found myself feeling a bit more creative and interested in do-it-yourself projects. I handed out very pretty, very little packages to my family this Christmas – tight budget this year due to impending grad school applications – complete with homemade bows. Target had awesome velour-ish wrapping paper on clearance the week before Christmas. I think everyone liked the paper more than their gifts – mostly candles. Oh well!

The I Do It Yourself website has a lot of ideas on how to make your own – almost – everything. And I’m kind of bummed I didn’t find the website until after Thanksgiving because of a contest they had for this home Letterpress. All the cool homemade cards and papers I could make with this thing would save me – well, probably not much because once I got it home, I’m sure I’d order plates by the dozen, paper by the ream and inks by the gallon – but it would be so cool to have one of these in my craft drawers keeping my Exacto company!

Blank

Trying to write when you have absolutely nothing to write about is, in my opinion, worse than writers block. Writers block means that you don’t quite know how to put into words – that please you, mind you – your thoughts. Having nothing to write about and a blank page staring idly back at you does not a interesting story make.

The only thing I can think about as I stare at this white page is the snow that is softly falling outside. The pace is a bit of a change from the blustery nights we’ve had the past few evenings in Pittsburgh, though it’s still under 25 degrees outside. What kills me about this weather is that, even with the new windows that were installed in my apartment this past summer, my bedroom is still hovering around 50 degrees. Which lead me to an interesting question as I tried to fall asleep last night – Do Bats hibernate?

I’ve googled it and the answer is yes, they do.

Their bodies can handle a temperature drop to about 10 degrees F which means that, though it’s a comparatively  balmy 50 in my bedroom, my little guest from the Fall could feasibly still reside in my apartment. The other results of the google were less settling; Bats will hibernate in caves, buildings, old mines and hollow trees.

This is the first year where I can safely say I am not looking forward to Spring all that much.

One Year Later

A year ago, Allison and I were exchanging Christmas gifts and rehashing her two month old nuptials to Mr. H. over a set of dirty martinis and appetizers.

Last night, I got to take part in one of Allison’s daily rituals with Adele – bath time. And it was fun.

It dawned on me while the 9-week-old was in the kitchen sink- burritos in both tubs! – How much happy hour pales in comparison to seeing Adele squirm around in the warm water.

O Tannenbaum

I bought a new CD to help make decorating go a bit more quickly. Bing Crosby always gets me in the Christmas spirit, even when I do battle with my tree. It sheds more needles than a real tree and takes twice as long to set up; It’s never balanced and my hands feel as if they’ve been dragged along a rake when all is said and done.

Even though it fell four times during set up and required 300 twinkle bulbs – 3 strands more – than I originally bought – my Christmas tree is finally up, lit and decorated.

And I still have an insane amount of Christmas decorations left in my basement.

Hmmmmm.

What would Bing do?

It’s a Beautiful day in this Neighborhood

Last Friday, in lieu of decorating my tree, I went to the Heinz History Center in the Strip District. And I shouldn’t say in lieu of decorating. It was more, in lieu of putting the thing up at all. (Don’t fret. The tree did go up last night – after falling 4 times, but more about that later)

The trip was especially fun as I got to see bits from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. His green sweater is there and his iconic sneakers, but best of all, Trolley was there. It was fun getting to take a close up peak at them – especially since you’ve no real idea of scale for things you see on TV. That show was one of my favorites growing up as I very much wanted to live in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood – no one there ever moved away.

The whole day was like getting to be a kid again. And, like any other 3 and a half year old, I like to push buttons and turn everything on to make noise all at the same time, so I get a little miffed when things don’t work at museums – most of the displays seemed to be out of order, but, to my simultaneous delight and dismay, the Pittsburghese speaking robot worked.

Whomever wrote the script for the robot did their homework, citing the beginning of Pittsburghese as the English of immigrants – mainly from Scotland and the like – which, if you listen closely to todays version, you can still hear. Um. YeeeNo. The robot then began to speak in Pittsburghese and went through way more vocabulary than I wanted to sit through, but I heard words such as nebby, arn, dahntan and yinz, prononced in perfect Pittsburghese and followed by an English explanation.

Right there, that tells me that Pittsburghese is difficult. If you need to translate and the originating language is English … ’nuff said. Well, anyway, the robot gave me a new Pittsburghese word I hadn’t heard. Jine iggle. Obviously from seeing it spelled out, I can figure it out, but before the definition appeared on screen and I had only heard the robot, I had no idea what it was going to tell me the English equivalent was – I learned something new at the Heinz! Thanks Pittsburgh.

The other photos are from their ’60s living room – photographed to show my mom was 60’s designs I am not keen on as she hunts for more retro for my apartment.

One thing that kept crossing my mind, though, was how cool the main hall would be for a wedding reception. Earlier this year, Joe and I got to shoot some senior portraits outside the Heinz and the windows the overlook the strip looked like a nice place to shoot from … but being inside, the main hall would be even better.

There’s a 2 story entrance – the Bride and Groom could walk down the stairs for their big “hello!” plus the added benefit of giving your guests some neat time occupiers while they wait for you during cocktail hour! I’d tour the Lincoln exhibit for at least an hour – btw, Lincoln was a really funny and witty guy. Their special exhibit on him is great! But I digress.

I think Joe and I would have a lot of fun shooting – between the classic Pittsburgh trolley and Conestoga wagon, we’d have so many great pictures. It’s only been a month since our last wedding, but I’m anxious to shoot again … and I don’t know if I can make it til Spring!

Christmas Finds

I got to go to my first Ugly Christmas sweater party this weekend and, wouldn’t you know it, I had no ugly sweater to wear (insert: that’s what you think!) So I went down to the St. Vincent de Paul by my house and scoured the racks for way too long. I found a couple of sweaters, but I felt bad buying them because they were still in great shape – relatively speaking of course – and someone might buy them to legitimately wear. Plus I was looking for something more along the .99 cent tag rack.

Just as I was about to cave and buy a sweater that could’ve come  straight from my Baba’s closet, I found this sweater vest (on the .99 cent rack!) covered in Santa faces. I’m not sure how someone wore this legitimately the first time around, but they did, and it was probably in the early 90’s with Christmas Light Bulb earrings.

The other big find of the day was this soup tureen. I’ve wanted one since I gifted a tureen to my mother a few years back, but they’re always so expensive and rarely do they have the plate on the bottom. Sometimes they’re crazed and sometimes they’re chipped, but this one was in immaculate condition. Ok, there is a bit of crazing on the plate, but the bowl, lid and ladle are perfect – yay!

I picked it up off the shelf to double check everything and found the stamp on the bottom – Lenox! I found a $150 soup tureen for $14.99. My inner eBay immediately wanted to figure out if there was a profit to be had when my inner girl said, “Nope. That’s mine.”

It’s pretty and it’s all white – so it’s sure to go with everything I’ll ever own – and this was confirmed by the little old lady who stopped to chat my ear off and wanted to see my find. I think she was slightly jealous, but I’d be willing to bet she has her own pretty soup tureen at home preserved with all her other pretty china just waiting for a special occasion, like, if the Pope stops by.

I can’t wait til the first time I get to serve 144 ounces of soup!

Yeah. I said that.