Man. I got alot going on. My most important task is finishing the website for our landscaper. At this rate he’ll have the entire backyard fenced and planted before I finish his site. He asked if I could have it done by the end of February. I thought I could. I really did!
I tend to take twice as long as I think I will with everything. It’s a running joke between me and my husband. When I’m getting ready to go out he’ll yell up the stairs, “How much longer, Kate?” and I’ll reply, “Oh, 15 minutes at the most.” He knows better than me. He knows that my 15 minutes equals 30 minutes normal time.
Andrew works with a few designers at his job. He says they are the same way. When he asks for a time estimate from a designer he takes what they say and doubles it. He proclaims this technique to be 100% accurate.
I have a few creative friends that I used to work with at a previous job. These girls and boys were some of the most talented eggs in the business. But damned if they didn’t show up for work 30-45 minutes late every day… just like me. Which in my mind is really only 22.5 minutes late.
Why is this so? Is it the whole right vs. left brain theory? Andrew is a creative guy. I swear if he would just learn how to Photoshop and Illustrate he’d be a creative genius. But he’s very content with his organizational duties, forming budgets and timelines and such. He’s so much better at it than I could ever be. Believe me, I’ve tried. When I first took my present job my duties were to be 60% organizational and 40% creative. Bah! Humbug. God I hate Excel. Nothing bothers me more than a big, wide open empty spreadsheet. It is the antithesis to my way of thinking. Why can’t I ever get those stupid things to print out right? Why can’t they look nicer? Why can’t I just create my spreadsheets in Illustrator? That’s how I create my invoices. Illustrator is the bomb.
While we’re talking about bothersome things, where did this belly come from? Do my 3 visits to the gym each month count for nothing? Maybe I need a gym spreadsheet. Actually, a big calendar with pretty pictures in it would be much better. My calendar at work has Beagles on every page. My calendar at home contains botannical prints.
This must be why I like picture books so much more than regular books. Pictures are so important! I remember reading picture books up to about 3rd grade. After that the books had alot more words than pictures. Such as the Cheerleader series of books. I wish there were more photos than just the ones on the covers. I needed to see more of what these people really looked like! And the book Seventeen. God I really wanted to see what that boy looked like. What was his name. Brad? I think there may have been an illustration on the cover the boy wasn’t cute enough and the girl didn’t look enough like me. 😉
Did you have a book club in school? Do you remember being handed a flimsy newspaper print catalog of all the newest titles and their order numbers? I can remember the smell of those catalogs and the feel of the newsprint. That’s where I bought the Cheerleader series, Seventeen, The Karate Kid Part II and at least one Sweet Valley High. I didn’t get into SVH like my friends who had to have every book in the series. The characters in those books seemed too snobby to me.
One of my favorite books in grade school was A Wrinkle In Time. That would be a great movie. I thought I heard something about that possibly becoming a movie soon. Maybe it was in my dreams. But when I was in 7th grade my favorite teacher would read a chapter of that book every day at 2:30. We could all put our heads down and just listen to her voice and imagine the surreal story and its characters in our minds. I can still remember hearing her read about the turkey dinner. The kids are given a hot turkey dinner by the “aliens.” To one of them the dinner was simply delicious. To the main character it tasted like dry sand. I should read that book again. It will bring me back.
Other favorites from my childhood:
1. The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
2. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. – Judy Blume
3. Strawberry Shortcake (I don’t remember the real title)
4. The Snowshoe Rabbit
5. The Sesame Street series of books that they sold at the supermarket which included the adventures of “Penelope”–aka Bert dressed like a lady to Ernie’s amusement
6. Rapunzel
7. A big gigantic book of nursery rhymes with loads of illustrations
8. Barney the Beagle (I must have borrowed it from the school library 1000 times)
9. Morgan and Me – Stephen Cosgrove (A Serendipity Book)
10. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
How about yours?
