With so much going on it's easy to blame things on not having enough time. Things like the fact that I don't write enough, that I don't keep in touch with people in my life who aren't right in front of my face enough, that I don't put enough effort toward nourishing certain parts of myself. I don't feel like I do enough for other people, I don't make enough earth-sustaining lifestyle choices, and I never did get around to painting that giant spool we got out of an industrial dumpster when we first moved in. It's easy to use lack of time as an excuse for all of those things, but it's just that - an excuse. And to that end, I find myself questioning why I'm even making an excuse in the first place. And who am I making it for?

There are other things I make excuses for - my body, that I have yet to accomplish a bachelor's degree, my moods. But why? Who is keeping score, exactly?

It might be interesting to examine the things I am making excuses for a little closer, to probe a little into what it is precisely that I am avoiding. Oops, no time! Just kidding, but seriously. My life is full and I have so much to be happy about, both big-picture things and also smaller daily gifts from the universe that remind me to smile. I get to be around kids eleven hours a day, and I get to spend the rest of those days in a city that [overall] I absolutely adore. Even as I keep telling myself to engage in the present, to be here now, there are things I'm looking forward to. And there are also a lot of things that I need to figure out. Some I'm sure I'll make sense of on my own, while others I know will require, uh, outside help. And that's okay.

Blogging is a lot like talking to yourself, right? Maybe that's why I keep coming back to it. I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by the fact that it is COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT now. You know what else might be interesting, if I examined why I am so turned off by any kind of social networking. Which this kind of is but not really because I don't have to interact with whoever reads this if I don't want to. I go off a lot about Facebook and smartphones and sadness leprechauns robbing us of organic human experience and how the need ability to share where we are and what we're doing at all times is... I don't know what that is but I seriously doubt that you're able to process and appreciate whatever experience you're having if you're busy checking in or thinking of a cute caption. Could just be me, though; I already get the feeling sometimes that I'm doing some things because other people enjoy them, ergo, I should too. Like, my day will have been well spent if I can show or tell about something I have done that other people like to do. The older I get the less I give a fuck, though, so here's to gray hair. (Which family tree research shows I will not get until I get myself knocked up. Neat huh?)

So here's where I could stop rambling and share specific things I've done recently, like how I visited the Hetrick-Martin Institute and toured the Harvey Milk High School. Or I could tell you about when I met Wyclef Jean and his daughter during team fun at Dave and Buster's. And that one time I shook Chelsea Clinton's hand at what I was told would be a "Women's Breakfast" but what was actually a fundraiser, sneak-attack style. (Shameless, these nonprofits.) I could, but it's been so long that that would make this even longer and more boring than it already is. Plus I forgot a lot. Plus I'm really tired and I have to go to bed because I might go to the beach tomorrow but it might thunderstorm and/or be too hot for me to want to celebrate soldiers by sitting on sand and so in that case I'm going to go to my friend's apartment in Queens to make customized pencil cases as goodbye presents for my kindergarteners because there are only eight of them in my after-school class and the third-grade class I support during the day has like twenty-eight kids and who has money for twenty-eight pencil cases plus sparkly things to put inside of them so I think I'll just bake something for those rugrats and I just remembered I promised my fourth-grade lunch club boys we could eat McDonald's for lunch on Tuesday and I really hope it isn't hot which it will be because anything above thirty degrees is hot when you are wearing high-waisted khaki pants and Timberlands. Pluuuuus, what you really want to see is a picture of my new red hair and then a bunch of random pictures from my computer! which isn't really my computer it's my mom's old netbook that she so generously bequeathed unto me so that I could continue borrowing wireless from my neighbors to pay ConEdison and watch Arrested Development while I clean my bathroom when I had to retire my haggard laptop to a closet in her house because I don't think the old gal has much juice left (the computer, not my mom) and there are documents and pictures on her hard drive that I definitely kind of need and so I'll eventually have to persuade her to boot up one more time in order to get them. So okay, you talked me into it:

My locks are much, much more Ariel-like than this picture would lead you to believe. 

Also, observe my giant bedroom. Lap of luxury, people.

 

 

 

 

(Getting a little fast and loose with the whole posting-pictures-of-kids thing here but the important thing to take from this is that usually there are at least six more tiny people piled on top of me and or flying toward me from all directions. Also how flattering that uniform is on women of all sizes and shapes. YOU ARE JEALOUS.)

fin.