T13: Thirteen Things I Should be Doing Instead of a Thursday Thirteen

1. Reading. As much as I love There’s a Wocket in my Pocket and Goodnight Moon, I bought Twilight as a supplementary Mother’s Day gift (when I say supplementary, I also include the Rebel XTi with a 50 mm 1.8 lens) for myself – in May, not March (UK) and I’ve only managed to pick it up twice. I also have seven other books I bought in the UK that I need to read too.

2. Domesticating. There’s wash to do and a carpet to hoover/vacuum. I could also empty the dishwasher, stock the pantry with my bulk buy green beans and corn and put away clean clothes. Life’s so short, why bother?

3. Photoshop. There’s so many things still to learn and relearn, I’d rather hone some sweet skills.

4. Homesickness. As much as I’ve been trying to overlook it and even ignore it, I still get bouts of homesickness from my recent trip home. I hadn’t been back in 5 years and had successfully managed to remove myself from everything. It’s only been 3 months, and I already need to go back. I can relate to the episode of Spongebob Squarepants (the first one I ever saw in 2004, incidentally) where the squirrel, Sandy Cheeks, felt like she belonged back in Texas and not in Bikini Bottom. Listen to her song of lament.

5. Paper and cardboard. I like to do drawrings and make stuff. I also like to make jigsaws. We just bought Ian a 70-piecer, made for a 5-year-old. I’ll sit and pretend I’m helping him just to see how far he can get by himself. I’m itching to get myself a huge one now. Family parameters don’t allow this ideal (read: we have a destructive wee (almost) 18-month old).

6. Pet watching. The Memorial Day Parade we went to where Ian won like 5 prizes, including 2 goldfish? Well, the first one, Shane, up and died a few days later. Ian, noticing his fish was gone, said, “where’s the other fishy?!” I panicked. “Go ask your dad!” I blurted out without thinking. He then ran into daddy who was in another room and out of earshot, incidentally. He came out of the room still worried. “It’s OK Ian” I empathised, “great-granny’s taking care of him…” I offered in a calming, understanding voice. “What?! Nooooo, I want fishy back! He didn’t die!” Oh, for all that is sweet and holy, what did I say wrong?! I ran into the room where Bryan was. “What did you tell him?!” “I told him I took the Shane to the fish doctor, that he needed medicine. Why? What did you say?”

Shawn has the dark mark now too. I give him 2 days at best. Lesson learnt: It’s always good to confer.

7. Leafy greens. We just bought a 4-pound bag of raw, washed spinach. Now I need a smokin recipe to use most of it with. Hot spinach and artichoke dip only goes so far…

8. Windows. Contrary to popular believe, we don’t own a dog. Although, first glance at my living room window might infer otherwise. It’s toddler prints, and sadly it looks like wet nose dog goo. I need to seriously clean them. But as Winston Churchill once said, “Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls. And it would serve us all better to let us husbands clean the windows.” Never a truer word was spoken.

9. E-mails. I used to be a prolific letter-writer, with much thanks been given to my (late) Gran. She wrote to me profusely throughout my teenage years from Australia. It was one of the things I thanked her for the day before she died. She said, “oh, it was just a small thing–” I conceded, “yeah, but it’s the small things that matter.” With the introduction of amazing technology connecting thousands of people together, I, amongst others, I presume, have forgotten the lost art of sitting down and penning a letter. With this, I have also become lackadaisical in responding to e-mails if I don’t do it as I’ve read them. I’ll formulate responses and I’ll forget about it. I have two waiting for me like that.

10. Money. Of the 120-something dollars I’ve had in my Amazon account since December, I still have $33.47 to spend. I need to get to it.

11. Clips. I need to watch more of these to help with No. 4.

12. Hair. Sadly, this almost made the (to-do) list. Every day 1 o’clock would roll around and I’d say to myself, “I’ll phone Jody after lunch.” Or “I’ll do it in a minute, I’m in the middle of something.” FOUR MONTHS later, I get a haircut. This is very out-of-character for me. I’m usually go 7-8 weeks at most. I would have taken a before shot, but it was ghastly. I now have a much shorter style that enables my ideal to not have to wash and style it every day. I didn’t even dry it yesterday and it almost fell into place. One minute with the hairdryer fixed it up sweet. I love this woman.
Point to note: It takes a full 20 minutes to dry my hair, long or short. It retains water better than a post-HRT woman on steroids and Dr. Pepper.

13. Me time. How long has it been since I have done something for myself? Uninterrupted? Too long. Sadly, I can’t even count blogging. This post has taken me 5 hours.

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You may also care to know, today I have been with WordPress for exactly 6 months (after leaving MSN Spaces – one of my fave sarcastic posts), and what a great time I’ve had already. Here’s my first official WP post from 10 January 2008.

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