dianaschnuth

A lot of times, there will be one or two tasks on my Teux Deux app that keep rolling over to the next day, and the next, and I just keep ignoring them. But I also know they need to be done, so I avoid putting anything in front of them, priority-wise.

It’s a little surprising how declaring to-do bankruptcy, dumping that last task onto the “someday” list instead of letting it keep rolling to the next day unfinished, can boost my productivity. Just by moving one last task out of the way, I was suddenly OK with making a real to-do list for the evening, with tasks that I’m fine with allowing to roll over to subsequent days (as long as they get done this week). I got half a dozen small tasks done, just by putting them on the list and moving the last hanger-on off the list till later.

What was this horrible task that kept me so shackled? Nothing bad; I just didn’t ever really feel like sewing up the hole in the pocket of my winter coat.

Yesterday, just before lunch, I turned 39 years old.

It’s honestly been quite some time since I gave two shits about my birthday. Once I got past a certain age, birthdays kind of lost their excitement — with some exceptions, of course. For my 29th birthday, Sheryl surprised me at work, then Amy came to visit for the weekend. I had kind of a minor freak-out when I turned 30 and realized that I was one-half to one-third done with my entire existence — Aaron tried so hard to cheer me up, too, but I was all hormonal and weird on top of being 30. We went to the Star Trek exhibit at the Detroit Science Center for my birthday weekend in 2009, and we spent my 2010 birthday in Mexico. After my son came on the scene, though, birthdays were just kind of extra-special normal days. Nothing to write home about — or to write in the blog about.
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Those of you who have been playing along at home know that February and March really kind of sucked.

In the middle of dealing with the gutter that was torn off the roof by an ice dam, buying a new refrigerator, and having the appliance delivery guys hit our house with their truck — in the middle of all that, I hit a pothole on the highway on my way to work.

I was actually on the on-ramp from one highway to another, and was preparing to merge, so I didn’t expect to need to be on pothole recon at the same time. I didn’t even see it coming. Right before the yield sign, right when I was turned around checking traffic over my shoulder.

It was one of those impacts where my eyes immediately darted to the tire pressure idiot light — did I spring a leak? No? Whew, OK. Carry on.

By the time I got home that evening, the idiot light was on. Or was it the next morning? Either way, it wasn’t until lunch hour the following day that I really, really had to put air in the tire. It was obvious. I found a gas station on my way to the chiropractor, and fed the air compressor all four quarters we had stashed in our center console. (I could have used my credit card, but it would have cost me an extra 25 cents.) The front driver’s side tire had gotten all the way down to 17 PSI. Yikes.

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I find that when I can remember my dreams, they tend to have a particular theme or setting over time. This winter, for example, I was having lots of drum corps dreams, mostly of the unpreparedness variety — can’t find my horn or my uniform parts, or I have to play a weird instrument (a valve-rotor bugle instead of a three-valve, or a woodwind instead of brass), or I get lost on the way to or from rehearsal, or I can’t get my gear packed up in time and the tour bus leaves without me.

Lately, I’ve been having lots of college dorm dreams, mostly involving moving my stuff in or out, and either not having enough time or losing track of time. The most recent one was me having to move out of two dorm rooms at the same time the day before graduation, and me having no idea how I was going to get all that stuff packed up and loaded into my Mom’s car in time. There was another one where I moved in and was trying to connect with my roommate, Amy, but kept getting held up by one thing or another and missing her by a few minutes.

What does it mean? What is my brain trying to parse?

I know I’ve been thinking about my clutter lately, and my growing list of tidying-up and cleaning-related activities, so it’s probably related to that. But why would my brain put that in a collegiate setting? Maybe because I felt so behind the 8-ball during my entire college career (except maybe one or two semesters), and that reflects how I feel about getting stuff under control now.

But why would I also have a dream about bringing Snoop Dogg a bottle of marshmallow-flavored rum in bed, then him asking, “But what else can you do for me?”

My brain is a weird place.