jMcJohnson

I’m so glad you asked

Currently I’m:

-Busier than ever with work, shockingly. I have a pretty full schedule, and that is totally awesome. I am teaching an acting class, heading up an after-school program called “Creative Minds,” performing (YIKES!) for kindergardeners in various schools around town, beginning a creative writing residency at a local Montessori school, and am going to be the PA for a really cool theatre project involving military kids on an army base. Whew!

-Falling in love with my newest invention: The Snack Plate.
Basically, it’s a kid’s plate (the sectioned off kind, mine has Clifford all over it) filled with my favorite snacks. Right now that includes:
*Kashi Heart to Heart Cereal
*Blueberries
*Greek yogurt with honey
Seriously, if you have not tried Greek yogurt, you are late to the party that could be happening in your mouth if you tried it. YUM.

-Having a dessert renaissance…thanks to microwave s’mores. Wow. Two graham crackers, two squares of Hershey’s chocolate, and a big puffy marshmallow. Microwave until melty/near marshmallow explosion. Eat in a disgusting way that drips chocolate on your fingers and sticks marshmallow to your face and makes your husband gaze upon you with disgust. Thank god we are already married, or he would break up with me over this disgusting NIGHTLY sight, for sure.

-Needing a new, interesting book. I finished “American Wife” which I absolutely ADORED, and now, nothing I start matches up, and I give up reading it. Now my pre-bedtime is filled with a magazine or Man vs. Food. Sigh.

-Working out! I bought the new Jillian Michaels DVD called GET RIPPED! or SHREDDED!, or something like that and it hurt me. It really hurt me. I did the Level 1 modified for infants or whatever it was and it made me feel like I was 99 years old the next day. I screwed me up so bad that I had a sore throat the next day due to extreme out-of-shap-ed-ness. My body rejected fitness on such a level that it gave me a cold. So sad.

What are YOU doing?

Last night I dreamed I was in Salina, driving in a car behind a man and a woman who were walking in the street in front of me. They turned around and were holding what looked to be about a 2 year old child. The kid had a kid-size orange traffic cone on its head and its legs were stuck into two other small traffic cones. The kid also wore a sandwich board that read :

“A Child Is Not A Traffic Cone.”

?

Today was so tremendously satisfying for me. I hope it was for you too.

However, as time passes, you may start to ask yourself “Is Obama really the president?” “Can I really be this giddy about a politics?” and “Did all this really happen or was it just an Ambien induced dream?”

If so, click here and worry no more.

You’re welcome.

I had an evening this weekend where I felt sort of…bored. I had been working on a project and had kind of hit a wall. Ryan was working. My few pals in town were busy. TV was annoying me and my book was making me feel kind of blah-I didn’t even want to like, make and eat a cake, it was THAT serious. They whole day just felt so…ordinary.

I started to feel that uncomfortable crunchy feeling that goes hand in hand with feeling restless. I looked around and started to feel like my apartment sucked. My clothes sucked. My hair sucked. My feet felt hot and I could not be bothered to reach down and pull off my socks; that level of grumpy discontent. Why are my stupid friends all busy? Why can’t Ryan ever have a weekend night off? Why can’t something exciting happen?

But nothing remotely exciting was happening.

As I sat in the chair, feeling as bitter as a week-old lemon, I had a thought. I thought about how happy and grateful I should be for ordinary days.

Because exciting days are, well, exciting (duh) but they are also exhausting. They lift you up and spin you around and make you forget about everything else in the world. They flip you upside down, and rush into you. And you can’t keep up that level of adrenaline forever. The excitement is wonderful and then it fades. Back to another ordinary day. And, of course, awful days happen too. Those days that just yank you around by the collar and steal your lunch money. Days that make you want to crawl into bed and forget that they happened. They too, are exhausting. They are sometimes heartbreakingly sad. And then, thankfully, it’s back to another ordinary day.

Whenever I am tempted to get angry at Ryan or at my family or at a friend, I try (notice the operative word is TRY) to think about how the day will come that I will wish I hadn’t wasted a minute of my life with this person being angry. How, if I could go back and add up all the minutes I had spent stewing about some perceived slight, or writing and angry email, or just saying something nasty to this person, it could amount to another hour with them. Or another day. Or even another week.

So ordinary days are good. Ordinary days mean all is right with the world. Nothing to get too excited or too down about. Nothing to fear and nothing to plan.

If only every day could be so boring.

It is 11:45 PM. I am currently fretting about having insomnia and I haven’t even tried to sleep yet, which pretty much ensures that I WILL have it once I try to go to bed because I will remember that I thought about it earlier and now, here it is, just as I predicted.

Did I mention I have to get up early tomorrow and PERFORM for children?

Aaack.

This crappy cell phone picture does not do it justice and yet!
Behold!

Maybe the most perfect bag ever-leathery (faux), big enough to make my butt look small(er), lots of inner pockets, and best of all…$14 at Target! Yes! FREAKING FOURTEEN DOLLARS!

They had a red one I was tempted to buy too, but decided to show restraint and keep it to one giant perfect awesome bag per trip.

But if I go back this week and it’s under $10, I am totally buying it.

Ryan is in wonderful Wichita this weekend teaching with Nathan at the Kansas State Thespian Conference. I could have gone with him, but I decided to stay home and have a weekend to myself. The plan is to get a bunch of stuff done this weekend and then be ready to kick ass come Monday; as January is shaping up to be pretty busy.

However, since he’s been gone, all I have managed to do so far is make a new dessert recipe, catch up on blog reading and watch 3 DVR’ed episodes of Oprah. I am such a stereotype.

Sadly, I have called/sent him eleventy billion text messages in the past eight hours or so, because every time I see something funny or remember something amusing or see our neighbors do something weird I feel that I have to tell him immediately. I am co-dependent like that.

Tomorrow, I get in gear.

Hopefully, Oprah will be a re-run…

I want to be free and yet totally rooted
I want to be adventurous and completely safe
I want surprises and crave routine
I want to stand out and also to fade into the background
I want to be svelte and eat the entire world
I want to be others to be patient with me even though I have no patience for them
I want to take a risk and still protect myself
I want to be my own person and hide behind other people
I want to be proud of my accomplishments and downplay them to others

I want to change and never feel discomfort

“Nice Jugs”

photo by Joe Hagen

So my intestines revolted and then it was Christmas, and then it was New Year’s and then I got a wicked cold (which I am blaming on The Paramount) and then it was all over.

Just like this strange year. It passed quickly and mostly without fanfare. Good things happened, shitty things happened and I kind of sleepwalked through it all. I hate to say that, but it’s true.

However, the wheels are turning in my life and some brand new adventures are about to be embarked upon and I am happier for it. There is just no excuse for the excruciating boredom that I felt in my life this year (only boring people are bored, right?) I need NEW scenery, NEW people and a NEW attitude. I need all the not-new scenery and people too, but I need to see them in a new way, I think.

One of the biggest realizations I have had this year is how boring it is to get drunk. How watching people when I am sober has inspired so much drunkenfreude (taking delight in watching people embarrass themselves in their drunken state) that I have realized that getting hammered is just not for me. I have been drunk. I have been embarrassingly drunk (fairly recently). I still enjoy a glass of something now and then. But I have the strong feeling that my days of drunk dials and “honesty sessions” and crying and just making a general ass of myself (uhh…due to alcohol. I will still make an ass of myself in other, sober ways) are in the past. It’s just for me, really more than anything, not something I’m interested in anymore.

So, to my friends who love getting drunk, please keep getting drunk. I am cool with that. I promise not to have a stick up my ass about it. I will try to laugh at you less. I will give you rides. But can we do more non-alcohol-centric activities too? I would love that.

Also, being sick for one reason or another for the past month has made me value my health more than ever. I need to do what I need to do for myself, or I will reap the punishments in the form of feeling like crap. That is not acceptable. Here’s to lovingly letting go of bad habits.

I have lots of pictures and stories and holiday recaps to come. Ahhh, holiday season 2008…you were a good one. Here’s to a 2009 that is drama-free and adventure-full.