T minus--ooh! That's shiny!

We leave Wednesday morning, and I've already got Shiny Object Syndrome. I get distracted by anything and everything. I can hardly focus, which is not usually a good thing because my projects have had a few issues here lately. The owners of the little nuclear medicine remodel decided to redo everything to get costs down, which isn't as bad as it sounds since the contractor had not yet taken the plans to the city for review. Meanwhile, the city is giving my contractor fits about the radiology center at MHRC--they saw the MRI and decided that we had to submit two sets of plans to the wastewater department to make sure that we're not flooding the city's sewer system with radioactive isotopes, thereby causing small turtles in the sewer system to become human-sized pizza-eating turtle ninjas. To which I say, "Hey city of Denver, where's your sense of adventure?"

I'm supposed to be packing, but I got online to check the weather for the Caribbean, then had to post a little snark/comment from my mathematically-challenged sister, then started writing this post--ooh! I should bring that necklace I bought in Boston! It's got pearls in it and looks kinda sea-faring-ish! Damn, there I go again.

Faded asked in the comments how old we were. Guy is 38 and I'm 31, seven years apart to the day. My mom is 58 and her husband, El Seebeno, is 49 (koo-koo-kitchoo, Mrs. Robinson). None of us are terribly old, per se, but I hear that cruise ship crowds are skewing younger and younger these days. Mom said last time, for example, she never really got in the pool on the ship because it was filled with "drunk-ass young'uns", meaning tanked college students eager to take advantage of the lower drinking age at their port of call. But that was in June a few years ago, and something tells me we'll have a few more grownups aboard this time, being late September and all.

[Pointer Sisters dance] I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it! I'm about to cruise with Mom and I think I like it! [adjusting legwarmers]

It's (almost) our birthday, get busy

All the drama of the past few weeks had me forgetting that something was coming to which I could look forward. First of all, I should mention that Guy and I have the same birthday, seven years apart. This makes celebrating our birthdays easier, as it means we can take a trip and do something fun together for the occasion. We do trips instead of exchanging gifts because a) we like experiences more than stuff and b) vacations are nice. We almost got married on our birthday, except I told him I wanted two trips a year and I'm not letting him off that cheaply. After all, I let him off the hook for an engagement ring. However, it could be said that that's how I got an Elvis wedding in Vegas and two years in a row at the Venetian--combined, they're the same cost as a decent diamon solitaire.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, birthday. So our birthday is not this but next Monday. My mom and stepdad (Mom and El Seebeno of Educated & Poor fame at my sister's blog) came up with the idea of going on a cruise together, and Guy readily agreed. Yes. He agreed to go on a cruise with my mother and her husband. This is like going on a cruise with Bette Midler and Randy Quaid a la National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. If nothing else, Guy is intrepid. So, for four days, we're going to traipse around the Carribean with my fam.

I've finally had a chance to get excited about it this weekend. Mom and I are back and forth on the phone, figuring out what to wear, what to bring, what to do on the ship, etc. Mom's actually excited about going to the ship's gym with me.
"What'n'na hell you goin' to the gym for?" hollered El Seebeno in the background while Mom and I were on the phone. "You goin' on vacation! You ain't s'posed to be exercisin'!"
"How often do I get to work out or take a yoga class with my daughter?" she shot back. Like I said, she's actually excited about it. As am I. Just hanging out with her should be a lot of fun.
"What're you gonna do on the ship, hon?" I inquired of my beloved. "Hang out at the pool with El Seebeno and get lit?"
"Hell," Guy replied. "I'm gonna get lit in my room! I'm on vacation!"

This should be a bonding experience for Guy and El Seebeno.

A (photo)sensitive subject

My sister Miss Kitty has posted kind of about this recently, so I talked to her and to some of my colleagues/peeps about it as well. By "this" I mean a feeling of slight malaise, not quite depression per se, but a little lowness that can only be sensed in the afternoons these days. It's this weird mix of feeling a little down, like something's ended, but at the same time a kind of relief.


I didn't recall feeling this last year, don't recall feeling it for a while now, until now. I guess I'm back to being normally busy (as opposed to crazy busy) so I can actually notice the change in light, temperature, and energy. I know what I'm feeling is the beginning of fall and a lot of the reflexive back-to-school depression I'm sure is caused by 20 years of going back to school (kindergarten through M.Arch). On the one hand, I'm a little let down that summer is over. No more cute little dresses and open-toed shoes, no more laying out by the pool, no more sun coming up at 5:30am to help get me out of bed to go for a swim or run. However, I have the kind of coloring that looks better in fall and winter colors, I still laid out by the pool yesterday because it was 86 degrees, and the weather is finally cooperating with my total lack of desire to be really busy.

It must be the change of light, i suppose. I really only feel the malaise in the afternoon, when the light slants in a funny way over the building across the street from Design Associates' office. I also feel it in the way that I'm cold more of the time in the office, I suppose because it's not as warm outside anymore (80s instead of 90s). Derek and I were talking about it on Friday, and he commented that the feeling of fall approaching makes him feel like it's time to batten down and snuggle up, especially now that he has a baby girl. I guess that makes sense, and that I need to stop fighting the snoozeworthy feeling. If it weren't so late already today, I'd go take a nap.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Guy and I did the smartest/cheeziest thing this weekend. We got a hotel room so we could try out a bed. Here's the deal: Guy's back has given him problems for a while, my hips and mid-back have developed more tweaks and aches than they used to have, and the mattress we bought six years ago isn't holding up near as well as we thought it would. Oddly enough, our queen-size bed seems to have gotten smaller as time has rocked on. I roll over to get comfy only to get a knee in the kidneys from Guy. He moves his arm out only to whomp me in the head with a Dusty-Rhodes-atomic-elbow move. Toss a 13-lb sleeping-on-my-head cat into the mix, and you have a recipe for a rough night's sleep.

[And I know the obvious suggestion is get the cat out of the bed. Oh, we've tried. You can throw her off as you're going to sleep, but then you wake up at 3am with your arm wrapped around a furry purring meatloaf. Even Guy has ended up in this blackmail-worthy position. And say what you will about them bugging you, but now and then, they pinch-hit best when the alarm and snooze button fail to work. She knows I need to get up and go to work so I can make money for cat food and crunchy treats.)

We've found that time and again, sleeping in a king size bed seems to help a great deal. We've also been thinking about one of those air-mattress beds, a la the Sleep Number bed by Select Comfort, for whom Lindsey Wagner is always testifying on TV. With the two halves isolating the sleepers from movement, we wouldn't be bugging each other when Guy goes to bed two hours after me and I get up an hour and a half before him. Also, it's inevitable that one of us has a tossy-turney night when the other wakes up in the same position they went to sleep in, and isolated halves of a mattress would reduce that motion transfer as well. And yes, I realize that I sound like a commercial as I type this, but we've actually been thinking a great deal about this lately. I mean, you give a lot of thought to how much you like your job and where you work, and you spend at least eight hours a day there. So why not give your bed and your quality of sleep some thought, since you spend 7-8 hours a day there as well? And we're not just doing this out of the blue. My mom has this bed, and she and my stepdad really like theirs. And my mom doesn not spend that kind of money on a whim.

So last night, off we went to a Radisson hotel to stay the night, have a lovely labor Day night out, and try out a Sleep Number bed before we dropped over $1000 on a mattress. We checked in, and Guy immediately laid down and found his number. We went to dinner and upon our return laid back down on the bed and started fiddling with the remote. Or more precisely, I started fiddling with the remote. I went to 100, then to 15, then to 85, then 35. I finally settled on 50, and I believe Guy decided to try 40 for the night. [Note: a higher number is harder, lower number is softer.]

We awoke this morning just before room service arrived with breakfast. "How'd you sleep?" Guy asked. "Like Lindsay Wagner," I replied. "Really? Can we rebuild you and make you stronger?" Guy joked. Room service saved me from having to come up with a snappy comeback.

So, the verdict: nice bed. Also, nice pillow. I've slept well on a super-firm mattress and on a fluffy mattress, but I think the pillow has something to do with it as well. I like having a bed big enough that there's some space between Guy and me when we sleep, and not because I think he's a hideous bastard or something. One, we both tend to sleep like whirling dervishes, so we need some room so we can engage in this type of Stage 4, delta-wave breakdancing. Also, Guy has pronounced me overly exothermic, so everytime I try to snuggle up on him he's fanning himself like he's getting hot flashes. Both of us are tired of waking up in the middle of the night sweating like Senator Larry Craig in an airport men's room. We'd like to make it through the night without going Jet Li on someone's ribs by accident. And our experience last night shows that we might just benefit from this sort of thing.

So, yes. We treated ourselves to a night out just to try out the bed. Oh, and to have someone else bring us breakfast. That too.

Princess Crankybuns

That's Guy's nickname for me when I get annoyed with everything and everyone. I'm in that mood right now for all kinds of reasons. First of all, I have yet another 8am meeting tomorrow with CEO Plankton and the ever-twitching Squidwort. I'm also in a cranky mood for lots of smaller things. I had what I thought was a cool idea, but Guy didn't think it was very cool. The pool was really really really cold Monday morning and I nearly froze getting in. It took me 15 minutes to get kinda-sorta warm enough in there--unheard of. And this morning in the gym in our condo building, here's this gal just getting off the treadmill with an iPod and a magazine. I came around the corner into the room, smiled at her briefly, and cut off the overhead fluorescent lights in the gym. Suddenly, her face darkened a little, or maybe it was my imagination.

Why did I turn off the lights, you might ask? Here's why: when I got up there at a quarter to seven on a late August morning to our gym on the 16th floor of a building with two walls made up of windows, you don't need a fucking overhead light on to read. Furthermore, if you're trying to read while working on any cardio machine other than a bike, you're wasting your time. And even furthermore, if you've got a magazine and an iPod, how much are you actually absorbing? It's one thing to have music on while you study--I'm down with that. I've even seen people have the TV on while they work out. But at some point, I, as a 6-year veteran of the gym who has found herself 20 pounds lighter for her troubles, have to lift up my sneaker-sporting foot and draw the line somewhere.

Exercise, especially cardio, requires balance and hand/eye coordination. If you're going to distract yourself with somethign to read, you either have to slow down the intensity of your workout or you have to barely skim or understand what you're reading. Add an iPod or some similar personal music device, and you're not really getting anything out of anything. You're multitasking, and there's been some research here lately showing that multitasking isn't so good for you. And know who really pisses me off? The people who come up to our gym and turn on the TV, then go to one of the cardio machines around the corner from the TV where they can't see it, put on headphones, and start reading while they're on the machine. When the revolution comes, these people are going in my mass grave with Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston, and those God-forsaken gauchos that came out this year.

I get annoyed when I see people lean on the stair machine. i get annoyed when people stop to watch the TV while lifting weights. I get annoyed when I hear that TV on at all, because in my said 6 years of using said gym, I've noticed that people who watch the TV in our gym when they work out don't end up working out for very long. It doesn't really become a habit for them. And that leads me to why all these things bother me. They all bother me because something inside me knows that these half-hearted worker-outers are the same people I hear schlepping this pebble and tsk-tsk proclaiming in the line at Starbucks, "Yeah, I just can't make myself work out. I just don't see any benefits, and it's too early, and I still keep gaining weight even though I'll do it for a few weeks, it's just not working I think I'll just diet instead, blah blah blah." I want to beat these people unconscious with their own shoe.

I want to knock sense into these folks because working out does indeed help you out in the long run. Even during the long stretches where I lost little or no weight, I knew I was increasing my muscle tone, my lung capacity, my blood flow. I was reducing my blood pressure, the time it took me to run a mile, the pain I felt when I lifted ten pounds over my head. Best of all, after keeping up the hard work six mornings a week, I'm at the point now where gaining a pound or two over a holiday isn't a trauma. It's a matter of go-back-to-doing-what-you-usually-do-each-day and it falls right off. So I want to shake these people to their senses:

• If you lean on the stair machine while you use it, you're not actually burning the calories it says you're burning. If you need to lean, then you're working too hard for too long. Dial it down for 60 seconds and then dial it back up.
• If you just listen to music while on the treadmill or elliptical, you can use your arms to burn more calories instead of holding the book open.
• If you have to hang onto the control panel of the treadmill when it's at an angle in order to stay on it, it's too steep. Dial it down.
• If you pause only 30-60 seconds between sets and exercises while weightlifting, you'll still get a good rest but you'll have enough time to get a lot done.

Moral of the story: like any other job on the planet, if you pay attention to your workout and your form, you will see results, save time, and actually reap benefits from the activity. Oh, I'm sorry, did I distract you from reading about Lindsey Lohan's latest drunken escapade in US Weekly? My bad. Carry on. I'm sure your beer belly will disappear in no time at 3 mph and no incline. Enjoy.

(Look, I told you I was feeling cranky....)

Lunch with Dame Judith

Saturday afternoon was spent lunching with Dame Judith, my longtime friend here in Denver. Dame Judith is a few decades older than me, a retired educational psychologist and college professor. I gain greatly from her life experience, and I suppose I keep her young by hanging out and keeping her abreast of the latest silliness of modern life. I also occasionally help her troubleshoot her computer, which I think she has me do sometimes to make me feel young. She has an iMac, and I haven't done anything on an Apple product other than my iPod since I was a kid in the early '80s playing Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe. And I could never make headway on either of those damn games. I couldn't make heads or tails of the algorithms used to make the game work, so my meonade stand always went about $50 in the hole, and I could only make it about two weeks on the trail before one of my kids fell off the back of the wagon and the wagon broke an axle and then I died of dysentery. I've never been able to get into video games since. Except for Centipede, which I can only play if Miss Kitty is hitting the "fire" button while I move the little ship around on the ball controller.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, lunch with Dame Judith.

Even when Dame Judith dresses "down" (Eileen Fisher khakis and a cashmere cardigan), I have to dress "up" my casual (satin belted western-cut shirt with Ann Taylor Loft camisole and Bebe denim skirt and heels). We also go out to lunch (or dinner, or whatever) so that she can get me really drunk, which, at this altitude and my liver, means one glass of wine. Sometimes I think part of the reason Guy ever started dating me was because I'm such a cheap drunk, but anyway...
"Oh, honey," Dame Judith said in her aristocratic voice and accent, reminiscent of Greg's mother on "Dharma & Greg." "Nowadays, I can't have but one either."
"How come?" I inquired while attempting to sip a delicious chardonnay.
The Dame sighed. "The Old Boy isn't doing well at all," she replied. Dame Judith's husband, the Old Boy, formerly known as The Prince, has been in declining health for over a year now.
"His hip replacement bothering him?" I quieried.
"It's not bad," she repiled, "but it's not that. He has dementia."
My eyes widened. "Good Lord! Is it Alzheimer's? Is he losing short term memory?"
"No, actually, it's called Lewy body dementia, which involves some hallucinations, like he tries to sit down in chairs that aren't there." She sipped her wine and nibbled on our duck confit flatbread appetizer. "It's better just to play along that tell him there's not a chair there, just say 'let's sit in this chair, it's more comfy than that one."
Dame Judith and I caught up on our lives this summer, me with my change in responsibilities and Guy and me taking the summer off from working and traveling, and the Dame with simply trying to grasp the new responsibilities of having a husband that was slowly, slowly going away.
"Pixie, I just don't have any goddamn energy," she sighed, her long elegant hand brushing back her graceful, swooping white/silver/blond hair. (Nothing about the Dame is ungraceful. Even when her printer abruptly quits working and she unleashes with a string of f-bombs, she does so with such style, as if Kathareine Hepburn were to swoop through a wormhole in the time-space continuum and become Quentin Tarantino's mother.) "I can't teach my seminars anymore, I can't even keep up the house with my usualy house help. I'm going to have to hire a semi-full time housekeeper to spend three days a week doing everything, not just dusting and sweeping. I'm having to get my son to help me with my rental properties, I can barely keep up."
She swilled a bit of wine. "Christ, I'm only 71."
My eyes popped open again. The Dame doesn't look a day over 57. "Hell, Dame Judith! I'm only 31, and I can't do the shit I used to! Last night, I left a pot on the stove for two hours to make tea, and I burned the damn thing beyond use!" I exclaimed.
Dame Judith's eyes lit up and she let out a loud, delightful laugh. "You?! Burned a pot on the stove?" She drained the last of her wine. "God, I do feel better." She waved at our waitress. "Two more glasses, please!"

Dame Judith did get me to thinking about age, about what-I-used-to-do versus what-I-can-do-now. For example, it's becoming somewhat clear to me that no matter how much I work out and eat well, at the age of 31 I may never see 120 lbs again. At the same time, I also know that I weigh almost 20 lbs less than I did when I graduated high school and I know I'm in way better shape now than I was then. I have abs. No, seriously, I have abs, decent ones. Nothing I'd wear a half-top to show off, but nothing I'd be embarrassed to have peek out accidentally while stretching or while at the pool.

It's not just the obviously physical stuff, either. I've always been a morning person, but especially now, I just can't stay up late anymore. Even on the weekends, I'm hard pressed to make it past 10pm. Spicy foods bother me a little more than they used to. I think less about booze and more about fiber. I still think about nice furnishings and paint colors in a house, but I also think more about retirement and paying off my mortgage early in order to use the Happy Kitten Highrise as a rental property.

In the seven and a half years since I finished grad school, I've gone from I'm-going-to-make-a-difference! to you-kids-get-off-my-lawn! I get cranky when I see new interns come to work in our office in cargo shorts and flip-flops. Dammit, if you wanna wear flip-flops to work, be a lifeguard. We're architects. I'm cranky but civil. What I've gained though is patience. I'm still quick to act, but not hair-trigger, y'know? I've come to understand that, as Martin Luther King Jr once said, the arc of justice is long but wide. I'm not as easily offended as I used to be. I can smell bullshit and crazy much better than I used to, and I suffer neither gladly. I have a very low tolerance for whining and intellectual laziness. Do the work or get out, whatever the work is.

I sense I would do well in Miss Kitty's freshman English classes.

She cleans hard for the money

I spent my entire eight-hour workday today cleaning my desk. Seriously. No exaggeration. Eight hours. Cleaning a space about seven feet by eight feet.

I spent the morning and early afternoon boxing up and thinning out drawings and files from Wheatlands. Now that the project is over, I need to archive the drawings, specs, notes, shop drawings, and anything and everything that might be useful in the next ten years. Usually, I don't save any of the value-engineering (VE) notes and drawings, but since VE was such a huge part of Wheatlands, I made sure to put it all in a box. Thinning out and boxing up everything made a difference in how much space I had, both on and under my desk.

Next, it was time to really clean. I've been slowly thinning out my files, notes, desk knickknacks, etc. on my desk, and today I was finally able to finish that. I got a Rolodex and punched holes in all my business cards, the ones I still had after throwing away bout two-thirds of them. I got rid of product samples and old binders of products I've never used. Finally, about 4 pm, I used a can of compressed air to blow dust and lint off my desk and then wiped each surface with some Clorox wipes. Ugh! Seriously, ugh, y'all! I was amazed at the funk and dust I'd accumulated over the course of nearly two years. Even more frightening is thinking about how many lunches I've eaten (and still do eat and will eat) at my desk on that funk. Anyway, by the end of the workday, I was done, but at least so was my desk.

Okay, it's pathetic how geeked I was to see my desk clean, really clean. Like I can see what color my desktop is (it's a maple wood-look plastic laminate, FWIW). Like I can see where all my code books and spec books are. Like someone can find something if I ended up in a coma, God and Louis Kahn forbid. I feel like I'm ready to take on the world. Uncommunicative manager? Cranky CEO? Surly consultants? Bring it on. My desk is clean enough to handle it.