On Saturday I turn 25

There's not much else to write beyond that title, other than I better get busy. I'm now under a week before I hit the big day. Right now, I'm just trying to enjoy my last few days as a 24-year-old. 

With the crazy ice storm yesterday, we relaxed on the couch all day watching Netflix. We finally got around to watching Blue Valentine (I know, we're two years too late to that game), but it was brilliant, beautiful, very blue. Michelle Williams definitely deserved the Oscar nomination she got, though Ryan Gosling deserved from credit too. He's talented—much more than just that pretty face.

We went to Broken City on Saturday with Ethan and Amy—not what I expected. I don't have any comments on it, really. I need to see it about 10 more times before I can even process what all happened in that movie. Some sweet potato fries, funfetti cake, and a few hours of X-Games later, we were home. 

We also finished Sports Night on Netflix. That was a good show, cancelled much too early, I think. Good cast, good writing. Sharp and snappy wit and dialogue. I wish more shows were like that. Plus the Josh Charles and Peter Krause chemistry is brilliant. 

It should be a cold, quiet week now, culminating into the Birthday/Superbowl Weekend of Glory (as Brett is currently calling it). Just a few more weeks of this basketball nonsense and I can begin directing my play. I'm psyched and not nearly as nervous as I should be. Maybe my directing ego is swollen, or maybe I just have unfounded faith in my cast. 

Either way, I'm sure it'll work out. I'll be 25 by then—a real adult—so I'm sure I can handle it.

My pants are hemmed with paperclips

While that title is sort of a beautifully ironic metaphor, it's sadly my reality. Obviously, I need to just get my pants hemmed--especially since my own mother is an excellent seamstress and could easily do it in a few minutes, for free.

I keep putting it off for a few reasons: a) because they are the perfect length for my brown strappy wedges--however; right now it's somewhere around 7* outside, and I am not wearing strappy shoes for at least four more months (and my brown boots don't have high enough heels to keep my hem off the ground). Of course, if you know me at all, you can probably guess my letter b) sentimental reasons.

When I was a junior in college, I lived with Holly. At some point towards the end of the year, we sort of panicked about not having jobs for the summer and set up a ton of interviews. However, if you've been a college student, you understand the over-the-winter weight gain. We snuck over the Eagle's Nest waaaay too many nights for smoothies and deep fried chicken strips. We routinely over-indulged at brunch. We both were desperately trying to use our meal plan to its full potential, so we'd eat as many meals as possible in Naz--including our breakfasts, which were delicious.

We were still kidding ourselves about our "working out"--which consisted of walking to the Erickson center, lapping the track a few times, and then walking on the elipticals on the lowest setting for 30 minutes--while still carrying on a full conversation and watching the intermural basketball games on the court below. It was not nearly enough to combat the pan of muffin bread we made and promptly devoured every night.

Since we were college students, our "fancy" clothes were jeans and a polo. We both wore sweatpants and NWC t-shirts most of the time and had nothing that was interview appropriate. So we did what broke roommates do (and just to give you a sense of our broke/cheapness: for the final three months of school we managed to get by without purchasing toilet paper. Instead, we would just steal loose rolls from around campus and shove them in our backpacks). We made one pair of pants work for the both of us and share them on interviews.

Now Holly and I shared lots of clothes--like shirts, dresses, skirts, camis, hats, scarves, etc. One thing we did not share, however, was pants. Holly was in an inch or so south of six feet. I am barely pushing five. My waist was approximately a size smaller than hers, so the pants fit my middle, but they were those crazy extra long pants supermodels have to buy.

Over the next few weeks, we wore those pants to all our interviews. I hemmed them with safety pins so Holly could quickly lengthen them when she needed, and she pulled that rubberband-through-the-buttonhole trick to make pants a size too small fit your waist. It was honestly pretty ridiculous, but a great memory. And the reason the pants I'm wearing today (I somehow ended up with them during the great clothes divide of 2009) are hemmed with paperclips.

Some Things

I haven't done a "Things" list in a while, so here it goes.

Some things I'm currently thinking about:
Our fun Valentine's Day photo shoot scheduled for tomorrow.
My upcoming play.
Adoption.
Needing to renew my driver's license. And continuing to put it off. My current picture is good. The odds of that happening twice in a row—not good.

Something things I'm currently loving:
How warm it is outside for January in Minnesota!
Wearing slippers to work and totally pulling. it. off.
Tricking Brett into meal planning by having him pin new recipes he wants on Pinterest.
My upcoming 3-day weekend.
My second catered lunch of the week. Mmmm. Smells so good already.

Somethings I'm not looking forward to:
Spending this lovely Friday evening alone while Brett coaches an away basketball game.
That the high temperature for Monday's forecast is 0*. A HIGH OF ZERO!
Needing to spend my Christmas money on a new vacuum cleaner.

A little "Weird Things that Happen to Lindsay" segment:
As I posted on Twitter earlier this week (follow me at @llbjork), someone visiting our office approached me at my desk saying, "You're young and tech-savvy, can you help me send a fax?" Um...really? If you need help with a fax, ask someone old. I have literally sent two faxes in my life. And I had to Google how to do it both times. 

Also, one of my co-workers told me yesterday that he had been in a meeting that morning where their supervisor had brought up the subject of who would handle my writing responsibilities if I were to be out on maternity leave. Woah. I mean, I'm all for forward thinking and all, but apparently my work is preparing for me to be pregnant. Without consulting me. Or maybe I just look fat.

Have a good weekend! Please, share some of your own things—including some weird things that happened to you.

Acupunture

I was acupunctured (got acupuncture? got punctured?) on Monday for the first time. It was a strange experience, to say the least. I'm not big on needles, and not big on lying still, but I think I did okay.

She poked my feet, ankles, shins, knees, stomach, hands, wrists, and the top of my head. Turned a heat lamp on my feet, rubbed some oil under my nose, and left me lying there. I refused to look down--I definitely didn't want to see a host of needles poking out of my body, but I just laid there and relaxed. She came back in, flicked all the needles to re-stimulate them and left again.

Finally, she returned, pulled them all out, wiped down the spots that were bleeding (yeah, bleeding. The top of my head and my foot were the worst). Then I left.

A few spots (wrists and feet) hurt for a while afterwards, but after an hour or so, I couldn't even feel it. I'm not sure if it really "worked" yet, or if it ever will. But this is something I've wanted to try since my recent foray into the natural. And yes, I'm getting a ton of crap for it from everyone who thinks I'm a hippie already for not taking pain medication.

Someday I may relay the whole story of why I'm doing acupuncture in the first place. But today is not that day.

Now excuse me, I need to replace the flower behind my ear and wash my tie-dye shirt.

The Honor System

When I was working from home on Monday, I had to dig to find a blank notebook for scratch paper. I was rustling through some of my old college stuff and found my planner from my first year at Northwestern. I always like to save my old planners because they're inadvertently filled with stories--stories I never even thought to write down, but they exist in my homework assignments, my work schedules, in the notes I scribbled to myself during lectures (or notes scribbled to my friends during lectures...). Feeling nostalgic, I flipped through some of the pages. One caught my eye because of the massive amount of purple highlighter circles around the words Tell mom about S.T.D.

Let me preface this by saying I do not, nor at anytime have I had a sexually transmitted disease. Let's just remove that suspense right now. I had just quickly jotted this down in my planner after checking my mailbox and running to class. Later, I left my planner on desk while I went to work, and my roommate happened to oversee it, and circle it a million times with purple highlighter and write WHAAATTT???? underneath it. It wasn't until I came home from work later that night that my roommate confronted me.

Holly: You have an STD!?!?
Me: What? No...
Holly, shoving my planner in my face: What is this!?

I was finally able to explain to her that STD, in this case, did not mean what she thought it meant (if she had been an English major like myself, she probably would have known--there's a surprising number of these stories from English majors).

The STD I was reminding myself to tell my mother about was the International English Honor Society I was being inducted into, in the Greek system: Sigma Tau Delta.

I don't know why exactly I kept that planner, but I am glad I found that page on Monday. There's nothing like a good STD misunderstanding to start out your week.

Weekend Recap

I feel like I am returning to the real world today. Yesterday I called in sick to work in the morning and then worked from home in the afternoon. I picked up some horrible sinus infection over the weekend.

The very fast weekend which included a 12-hour round trip drive to International Falls. Being cramped in Brett's truck for 6 hours at a time is never good, add in a husband and brother-in-law who are carrying all kinds of germs that never seem to make them sick. By the time we got there Friday night, I could tell I was ill, but I was seriously hoping it was just a cold. By Saturday, I was infected. 

But we still celebrated Christmas with Brett's dad and his family, and I napped in a chair while everyone else enjoyed Madagascar 2 and 3. Whenever we make that trip in a weekend, Sunday morning always come around very quickly, and it's back into the truck for another six-hour drive. We made it with only one stop (which was sort of a miracle because I was drinking my weight in Sunny D--name that movie reference!--to fight the infection). 

We are home, officially done with Christmas 2012, and I'm back into the full swing of being basketball coach's wife and getting ready to chaperone a tournament this weekend. So I need to be healthy. Bring on the Vitamin C. 

Here's one photo from our weekend (excuse the quality, taken on my phone). This is the view of my in-law's backyard. That's Canada across the river.

 

Resolutions

Yesterday, the kid bagging my groceries called me "ma'am." Twice.

It was just that kind of day--it's been that kind of week. On New Year's Eve while at a party with friends who were making resolutions, I somehow brought up that I didn't have a year to do everything--I had one month. On February 2, I will turn 25. So now (being January 3), I have less than one month to accomplish everything I had hoped to before my 25th birthday. 

At about 1:30 a.m. on New Year's Day, Brett and I had just returned home from the New Year's party. He asked about my resolutions and I shared with him: lose weight and floss. I know, lofty goals. The same things I say every year (and every time I come home from the dentist with a throbbing and swollen mouth).

There are many things I thought I would do before I was 25. You can see part of that list here. Of course, in the next month I will not become a fun aunt. I will not obtain a Master's degree. I will not live in a foreign country. I will not publish a book.

Those things make me sad, but in a way, they motivate me. I have five more years before I'm 30--and I know I don't want to be writing this same post in five years. 30 is a really scary age, and I do want to have some big things accomplished by then. Which means I should start on those big things NOW, not in January 2018. I already have some friends enlisted to help me graffiti a train.

It's not all sad though. When I think about my life, I can be proud. In 25 years, I have accomplished many great things:

- Finishing high school
- Writing for a newspaper
- Graduating college
- Marrying my best friend and the love of my life
- Coaching a championship volleyball team
- Working at a job in my field
- Buying a house
- Directing a (successful!) play by myself
- Playing on a championship softball team
- Eating an entire Fat Burger

I know I haven't wasted my life, and I know I hold myself to higher standards than anyone else. Among those grand goals I have for myself, it's easy to think I haven't accomplished anything. Even my above list of "Lindsay's Greatest Hits" is relatively short (and includes the words "Fat Burger"). 

Sometimes, though, it's enough to know that in my every day life I am successful. I get myself out of bed every morning and go to work. I manage to make my hair look presentable and put on make up. I contribute to society. I clean my house. I wash dishes. I plan meals and feed my family. I serve on the social committee at church. I wear (mostly)matching socks. 

I suppose it's okay to turn 25. It's okay if the kid bagging my groceries calls me "ma'am." It means I am a functioning adult.







(Even if I may have responded to his, "Have a great day, ma'am" with "Thank you...SIR.")