Get out of my rut.

I am out. We had a wonderful weekend up north…flew a kite, went to a wedding, had a fish fry, cut and stacked wood (one of my favorite chores), and I caught a one pound crappie. Summer is officially here, I’m sitting outside in the beautiful weather…my flowers are blooming, there is just no rut left in me, I don’t think.

Yay!

The weather was perfect. I finished a gazillion little things around the house. I sat outside with my cat and a beer and wrote an email to a friend, sending her photos of my garden so I could pretend that she would out having a beer with me.

The best part…I still have two more days off! AND the twins won tonight!

I haven’t thought about being in a rut, so maybe I’m not in it anymore.

I’ve thought about taking this down a few times, but I think I want to get through this long weekend and see how things feel when I have some time on my hands in the peace and quiet…I’m sure if there are still rut issues they will surface then.

but I’m not ready to count this as done. I need to get a few other things under control on my life. One thing, sadly, is giving up one of my volunteering opportunities. It does not take as much time as the other, but I don’t enjoy it as much, I don’t think I’m very good at it, and it throws a wrench in my schedule. I realized that with it, my day off for homework shrinks dramatically just from driving time… I feel really bad about dropping it, but I think I realize that going there sort of dreading it is not a good situation either. I need to call and ask that they find another person, though I am going to stay on until a replacement is found. Hopefully it will be soon…

If you’ve watched a lot of movies, you’d know the phrase “The first step is knowing…” Well, I know – what now?

I guess you have to know why you’re in a rut. I know that too. I’m in a rut because it feels like all my friends at a different pace (and place for that matter) than I am – making me feel extremely alone and apathetic towards my own life. I’ve got that feeling you get when you miss people so much it’s more than slightly painful. Among other things.

What else one needs to get out of a rut would be… to make a firm decision. I’ve made the decision. But I’m not so sure that it’s firm.

I’ve been so so busy. I usually hate being this busy, but it’s kind of been a different pace for me, which has been good. I’m going like mad the next few weeks, but it’s all stuff that is time sensitive and can’t be pushed out a few months, so I’m just trying to enjoy it. the next thing is that most of the things I have to squeeze in have been really really fun.

We saw some friends this weekend and had a great time just hanging out, playing games (love games!), drinking wine (lots of wine), etc. They are really inspiring though, the way they live their life and think through their choices. They can appreciate bean soup when you’ve boiled your own beans. She is actually the person who inspired me to make my own yogurt (I had some of hers and it was so good!)

I came home from the weekend and the sunflowers I planted have nearly all sprouted. They are so cute. I know that’s how all plants are, but it’s actually really inspiring to see a seed sprout…to see green life come out of a little hard black seed not even one week after you put them in dirt. And knowing that if I keep them alive, they will be 6 to 8 feet tall? Unreal. Maybe I just was missing some wonder from my life.

My good friend’s wedding is this weekend. If I can survive this week (statistics test, work, packing, getting out there and back, and hopefully having a fantastic time), I think I will have done this. My eating habits are back on track. I’m exercising again. I’ve adjusted my expectations as to how much I can actually fit in my life. I have sunflowers growing in my kitchen, 36 that I can give away. It’s almost may, when everything will bud out, there will be early summer barbeques and sandal wearing and flower planting. I’m exciting just thinking about it.

Spring is here, for real. There are flowers at the home improvement stores.

I went to get some seeds for my mom for mother’s day, and I decided to grab some sunflower seeds for myself and a little seedling tray. I’m going to try and grow them (36) and then give them away to friends when they are a few inches high and safe to transplant. Friends, people at work, etc. I figured that I would love to receive a little started sunflower plant (my neighbor gave me a few last year) so it would be something I could tend and maybe create a little happiness for others, too.

I talked about my rut with a friend the other day…she said she had no idea (so I must not have been as bitchy as I thought) but she said she was really impressed with all the thought I had put into it and the changes I had implemented (eating, exercise, my morning routine, etc.)

Sort of a wasted (yet not at all wasted) day off. Volunteered and went to the gym this morning. One of my volunteering things is not a good fit for me and I’m trying to figure out a good way to opt out without creating a void in the service I provide.

It was so nice today, hard to focus on anything. At volunteering (the one I really like) , I kept finding roses in the bok choi. Not literally, but in chopping it, the bottom butt that is cut off usually has a flower type pattern. It was a nice little natural reminder of the beauty all around me.

Our neighbors asked us to go out for happy hour. Two glasses of cheap chard. sort of (heck, not even sort of, TOTALLY) knocked me on my ass and ate up an hour after I got home of couch recovery, but it was worth it. At least, for now…we’ll see how painful statistics gets without me working on it today…

Good Friday and Easter services…both great. Saw friends on Friday night and Saturday. Today we went to my parents’ house for Easter…stayed all day. Had great food, did laundry and was able to hang clothes on the line outside, which is one of my favorite things to do…had more food, did some proactive work on my birthday gifts, and also taught my parents a new card game that is becoming one of our favorites.

I usually shy away from having such full weekends, but even with work and a baseball game tomorrow night, it was surprisingly wonderful to have so much going on.

And my mom bought some tulips from church after the easter service and gave them to me. They are my favorite :)

I got two letters this week. One from a local friend who was just being nice and telling me how glad she is that we’re friends, and one from a faraway friend. We used to write letters all the time…she’s kind of fallen off that wagon, so it was so nice to get something handwritten from her.

Good Friday service last night…it’s always more experiential than normal services…low lights, specific music. Part of it was carrying a rock the whole service and then exchanging it as a symbol of burden at the end for communion. I tried to tie my rut to the rock, but I was still kind of irritable last night when we went out afterwards. Still a work in progress.

However, my new haircut is awesome, very freeing. It’s sort of a sporty mom haircut, if that makes sense. I am neither sporty nor a mom, but the natural wave in my hair makes it maintenance free. Loving it so far.

With the new haircut, I tried a little experiment on Friday morning. I got up at my normal time but tried to get to work a half hour earlier. It was exhilarating! I realized that maybe one of the reasons I’m so tired by the end of the day is that I just take too long to get ready…so by the time I get ready, commute, and am at work for 9.5 hours, I’ve been awake for eons. I think cutting my getting ready time will help improve my mood for the rest of the day…still going to experiment with this a bit.