Housekeeping

This is not my strong suit. I mean, I can keep a house clean but keeping organized on all the little things? Yeah, I kinda suck at it. For example, I have needed to buy simple school supplies for a week or so now and I have yet to do it. I have several lists...here are two I just found in my purse and bookbag, respectively:

List #1

- buy: glue stick, scissors, tape, highlighters

- beta read friend's book

- update blog

- clean bathroom

- wash sheets

- return library books, pay fine

List # 2

- buy school supplies

- finish reading Chapter 3 for Lee Meadows

- sheets

- insurance

- beta beta beta

I mean, wouldn't it be easier to have just one comprehensive list instead of several that get lost? Herein lies my dysfunction: ADD. I suck at this stuff. I thrive when organized but find it very difficult to maintain a lifestyle that keeps a routine. I don't really know how I've gotten this far in life with this much dysfunction but I seem to make it work. I've made it through quite a bit of school and good jobs but I'm starting to feel stuck.

One can only hope that I'll get better as I get older, but there's no guarantee. I kinda feel sorry for my future kids.

Two Lives

Tomorrow, my family will celebrate two lives. One has been around for awhile and is always good for a laugh (tonight at family dinner, we had been discussing how ridiculous it was that all the people around the table were unarmed and the ever-present possibility of the beginning of the zompocalypse is looming [Dad would have to run to the back bedroom for his shotgun, my gun was upstairs, Mom's gun was in her office and Kevin didn't even bring his gun in because he figured we'd be well armed], and had been having the discussion for about 10 minutes when Me-maw pipes up and says, "What do zombies have to do with guns? Weren't we talking about guns?") and then other will be born via C-section at 12:15pm.

I truly can't wait to be an aunt. Little Noodle has two onesies (is that how you spell it?) that say "My auntie loves me" and it's so true. I've already started buying her books because one day, you will find the two of us ensconced in a corner somewhere in the house surrounded by fantastical books about far-off adventures and fairy-tale romances. I will teach her all my favorite things, like when to use "me" as opposed to "I" when tagging herself in Facebook pictures ("My boyfriend and I"....really?!), how to hang up all her clothes so she doesn't have to fold them, how to label all the countries in the world, except the 'stan countries and Eastern Europe because those are too confusing, how to read Korean, how to shoot a gun, when it is polite to belch and when it is not, how to make perfect pot roast......so many things! But, you're probably thinking, um Ansley, this isn't your kid....yes, I know. I'm just going to be the best aunt ever.

And Me-maw will teach her how to play Parcheesi. And then I will beat her mercilessly because it doesn't do kids any good to "let them win". So there.

Raw

Here I am...another nameless face stuffed in a computer lab at UAB. I'm surrounded by people and yet feel strangely disconnected from all that's happening here. I just finished a class and honestly don't care about it. I have another class in an hour or so and I just don't care. To quote my favorite YouTube video (and if anyone has been around me lately, you've heard me say this), "Honey badger don't care."

I'm not sure if my lethargy comes from being done with this whole school thing or just the crap going down all around me. I feel emotionally bruised and battered, from a lot of differing emotions and situations. A dear friend of mine is hurting...hurting badly. She and I cried on the phone together this morning, both wondering when there is going to be a reprieve. I was sitting in the halls of UAB and she was probably in the car somewhere, both of us tied by this fragile string called love. An even more fragile string called hope, that may or may not be broken. My heart literally aches for her constantly and I dream of a day when she will have what she deserves.

The good thing about aching for her is that it helps me forget my own aches. So, in a way, sharing her pain is a semi-masochistic way for me to bear my own. I have some decisions to make and my heart is just sore thinking about the repercussions of my choices and how the things I do in this life affect more than just me. I kinda hate that about life. I hate that I have the power to hurt others, but it's a fact that I'm trying to come to grips with.

So, I sit here. Tears sting the back of my eyelids and I have that tight, unreleased feeling in my chest that comes from putting on a polite face for the world. I really want to just sit down and cry in a corner and be left alone, but that isn't how it works. I sit here, trying to remember how to pray. Trying to remember what hope feels like. Trying to remember that there is strength to be found in shouldering each others burdens.

Honey badger is really, really trying to care.