Getting it right enough.

I recently started using an RSS feed reader, and my reader of choice was Google Reader. Why? Because it was just another link from my Google Mail inbox, and it seemed easy. And so then once I started using Google Reader I needed to find some blogs to track. I heard about Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist from Cavity-Packed, subscribed to the RSS, and here I am, a full-fledged fan. And her post from today confirms my fandom.

While I do believe that in order to be really great at something you have to have some kind of innate ability, some kind of natural talent, I, too, also believe that you can be great at something by just working really hard at it. Most people want to be really great at something, and so most people do, and should, work hard at what they want to be great at. What I am finding, the older I get, is that a lot of people who cross my path tend to work really hard at work. They want to be really great at their job and their career. And I applaud that, especially if they know that their current job, the one that they're working so hard at, is the one that they really want to be doing - or at least will lead them to the one that they really want to be doing once they're great at their current job.

What I would really like to know is when one knows that one is working too hard at something. When does one know that one's all, one's whole being, all of one's energy and positivity, is spent on that one thing that one wants to be great at, and when does one decide to either a) give in and stop trying to be great, or b) refocus some energies? I feel like I am trying to be good at my career (despite the fact that I'm certain that my current job isn't the one I want to be in long term (or even short term, but that's not something I choose to get into here)), and I also feel like I want to be great at all of my outside interests, but I don't feel that there's enough of me to go around. There's not enough of me and my time to focus on all of these things, to practice at them, to give them enough attention to be great. Or to be what I consider great. You know, it's that whole work-life balance thing, except that in this case it's just a life balance, I guess, because when you boil it all down it all is work, really.

This must be why people try to turn their "outside interests" into their career. How else can you do it all and do it well? Actually, I'm more convinced every single day that there is no way that any one person can do it all well. And by "it" I mean great career, great primary relationship, great high-level secondary relationships, great hobbies, great volunteering, great parenting, great communicator, great health, great passions, great... yes, great everything. There's just so way. So what do you let be good, or good enough, or even not so good, and what do you choose to make great? For me, I think that I would like my primary relationship to be great, also my career (which I'd like to be dealing with one of my outside interests in one way or another, just so I don't have to feel like there's such a disconnect between me and my work), but also my high-level secondary relationships. And my hobbies. I could live with just those four. But four? That may be too much.

This may be the age-old question of learning to know when to say when. And that takes practice. Which means tweaks and modifications have to be made along the way. I just feel like there's not enough time for all the tweaks and modifications necessary to get it right. Which is why I can't strive for perfection, because I don't think I'll ever really get it right. Just right enough. So please bear with me while I'm learning to get it all right enough.

A watched pot never boils.

Because I decided that I was wasting my time by sitting in front of my oven watching the cheese on my homemade Boboli pizza begin to soften and bubble, I decided to do something a little more productive with myself and so here I am writing a blog. I don't really have much to say, so bear with me on this one.

I actually had half a blog written about my love of to-do lists, what was currently on my to-do list and what I had recently scratched off, but that's saved as a draft. Today, at 9:35pm when I'm only just now home from work, in my pajamas, with food in the oven for dinner, I'm not much in the mood to talk about all the things I want to get done. I'm more inclined to let my thoughts wander towards doing nothing. Towards getting Mini Gray back from the dealer, sticking her key into the ignition, and driving her up to a quiet, secluded house on a lake for a bit of escape. But that will come in time.

Instead, tonight, let's think about the things that occupied this past weekend. Getting my hair cut (note that if I have time to let it dry properly I don't get that stupid shelf that the layers that are now in my hair tend to make), finishing six more bibs (only four more to sew!), and moving our authentic artwork from the art room to the dining room and my parents' '70s art from the dining room to the art room. I saw in last month's Real Simple a bit about decorating with purple and I was inspired to get a little more dramatic with our purple dining room. We like the effect, and since the dining room is where the painting was in the Sheas' house, I feel that this is where it belongs.

We also took another (all too short) jaunt up to Maine to visit Chris, Chris, and Ruby. Ruby's getting so big! She smiled a whole bunch for Doug, who enjoyed bouncing her again. It's hard to resist wanting to pick her up and squeeze her. She's a cute one, that little Ruby. We did a lot of looking at her (still a great way to pass the time), but we also got a preview of what she might look like with more hair. Ruby's such a good sport. The things babies have to put up with to amuse the adults!

And it's a good thing that nothing else happened over the weekend. My smoke alarm is now going off, which means that the softened and bubbled cheese on my Boboli is burnt to a crisp. Yum!

Surfacing.

This past weekend we had Uncle Bruce's funeral. Not a happy occasion, but it was actually more uplifting than I expected. There was a real celebration of Uncle Bruce's life, and life in general, at this memorial service. There were photos of Uncle Bruce all over the place, his hat, a trophy from one of his tractor pull wins. You really got the sense that Bruce enjoyed himself. So many of his friends came out, too. These were the people who spent the most time with Bruce, so it was nice to meet them. And Father Larry, the monsignor from St. Pius in Fairfield, gave one bang-up eulogy. He weaved in some religion, saying that Jesus had reserved a special place for Bruce, but he also kept the service very human. Our loved one who is no longer with us on Earth is not gone. This person lives on forever through those who live with memories of that person, those who share stories of that person, and those who have love for that person. As long as those memories, stories, and love remain, the loved one remains. How comforting and warm those thoughts are when you think of something as so seemingly permanent as death.

Here's a photo of Uncle Bruce and Doug's father; Joe is on the left and Bruce is on the right. This was taken at Christmas in Monroe, maybe two or three years ago. Not that long ago, but long enough to know that things do change. Joe looks a little more haggard now, and Bruce, well, Bruce is no longer here in bodily form. Enjoy the moments while you have them, but always cherish the memories.

Moving on from my Hallmark moment... we have begun to surface from the cloud of sickness and death that has been around us for this first half of the month. Doug had a show last night with his new band Hot Molasses. This was the CD release show, in honor of their EP Molassachusetts. The show was good. They filled the room again; it seems the other band members have endless supplies of friends who are willing to stay out late on weeknights. I was proud of myself for going to this show, but I know I won't be going to many other weeknight shows. Just don't have the stamina. However, if Doug continues to channel his inner Slowhand and rock the sexy professor look, I may have to become a loyal groupie.

We're also reading a bunch here now. Invigorating our minds. Seems a bit of the reading bug is going around! I've decided that a pretty accurate way to gauge the success of a vacation is the number of books purchased while away. For two reasons. The first being that if you purchase books it means you spent time in a bookstore, and that's always a good thing. The second being that if you purchase books it means that something piqued your interest, that you were free enough from the constraints of your normal routine, your every day life, to open your mind to the possibilities of learning, of exploring new things, of exposing yourself to new ideas. Doug and I purchased a combined total of eight books while in Washington D.C. (have I raved yet about our love for KramerBooks and Afterwords Cafe? Easily one of our favorite book stores, because whoever is their purchaser and their collection developer is doing one heck of a job), and this past weekend purchased four more. Here's a selection of our new titles: We are definitely going to run out of space soon, and when that happens maybe we'll get Nooks.

If you're interested, right now Doug is reading two books, simultaneously, in typical Doug fashion. He studiously pours over John Adams, taking notes, looking up context on ideas and events that need more clarification, and then takes a little break from the intensity by reading American Sphinx, itself hardly a beach read. Thank you, Washington D.C., for reigniting Doug's passion for historical scholarship.

For my part, I just finished up House of Splendid Isolation, and have shifted gears to read The Good Soldiers. Doug has a problem reading one book at a time, and I have a problem focusing on one type of writing. First I want a novel, I want fiction, I want to lose myself in another world, and then I want to learn, I want to learn about my world, the world in which I live, I want reality and a view into the reality of the people around me. I rather enjoy non-fiction, but it's such a commitment. I can float through the prose of a novel quite quickly, but often trudge through the thickness of non-fiction. There is always a reward, though, if I can make it through. Books fill me up and make me satisfied in a way that food or work really can't. Maybe that's what TJ meant when he said, "I cannot live without books."

One fish, two fish...

... Mini Gray, Mini Blue. Yes, oh good people of the Internet, our Forrester is gone and in its place is a Mini Cooper Clubman, the slightly larger version of the Mini Cooper, the one with the third (suicide?) door. We were sad to see the Forrester go. I was, at least. It was comfortable, never gave us any problems, and we had a lot of adventures in it. We moved Chris and Chris to Maine in it, we moved ourselves to Dedham in it, we got a couple of Christmas trees in it, got married in it (sort-of), drove it to Burlington, VT, Maine, CT, Rhode Island, maybe other places, I don't really remember. But the point is that we had a good time with the Forrester. I have no complaints. And now she can make someone else just as happy as she made us for two years. Because now we are a two-Mini family. Mini Gray is mine (reminds me of my little CRX from years past), and Mini Blue is Doug's (better for carting his gear around), but really we aren't discriminate. We just get in one and go.

Will there be eyebrows raised at our decision to add another Mini to our family? Possibly, but let them be raised. Our feeling is that we had the opportunity to take advantage of a down economy. Mini wants our business, and we want to give Mini our business. Gas mileage is great, the experience is great, the reliability is great, the safety factor is great... and oh yeah, the keys are pretty cool, too. What can we say? We highly endorse the sipping experience, be it gray or blue.

Life, death, and a few things in between.

Here's something about Firefox that I don't like - it seems like every fourth time I open the browser I have to update to a new version. If I had a website that needed to be compatible with each new version of this browser, I'd be driven slowly insane. Thankfully, I can find this to be a mere annoyance and be driven slowly insane by other things, like humping cats.

So what to blog about today. Well, not much has really been happening. Now that Doug and I have been back from D.C. for a week, we're starting to get back into our routines, which means we're not doing a whole lot other than working. Doug's Uncle Bruce passed away, however; he passed away the Tuesday before we left for Washington D.C., and his service will be next Saturday. It's been stressful for Doug, because his parents don't really deal with these kinds of situations well (Well, I mean, who does, really. Uncle Bruce was 57 years old, Mr. Sisko's only (younger) brother, and he had been fighting terribly hard against the ravages of cancer. He lost the battle, and now the Siskos have to pick up their lives again, which will be hard - and is hard.), but he's been holding his own. I feel badly for him. I've lost plenty of relatives before, some of whom succumbed to terrible illnesses just like Uncle Bruce, but I have a weird sort of detachment from death that most others may not have. I get emotional, but my emotions are done with pretty quickly. I move on. Probably too soon. But, anyway. Death has been a bit of a theme here lately.

But only a bit. Because we did join a gym last Tuesday, so that means we're trying to immerse ourselves in the land of the living. Planet Fitness recently opened a new facility in the strip mall right up the street from our house, which makes this the closet gym to us. It also just offered an unbeatable deal - a $1 joining fee, $10 monthly fee, and no annual commitment (meaning no annual contract). So basically it's $1 down and $10 a month, and if we want to quit we can at any time. My kind of gym! Sure there are drawbacks to this gym - no classes, no balance balls, balance bars, or bosus or anything like that, no personal trainers, and no individual televisions on each piece of cardio equipment (man, we were spoiled with Boston Sports Clubs!) - but what do I expect for $10/month? And this way I won't feel like I'm wasting money if I only get there one or two times a week. I'm happy about this gym opportunity.

I'm also happy that we finally hung up the painting that my aunts Anna and Madeline gave to me. They are such generous people. I had mentioned to them a while ago that I really liked the painting, and, because they are slowly giving away (or tagging for those who want them) many of their possessions, they gave the painting to me. I felt awkward about taking it from them before they passed away. They are thinking that they won't be here much longer, what with Madeline at 96 years old now and Anna at 95, but with the Shea genes you never know. Now there is a huge empty space where this painting once hung, and I feel terrible that I caused that empty space, but they assured me that they don't want the painting and that I should have it now to enjoy in my home. And we are enjoying it. Doesn't it look great in our art room? I can now officially call the sun/cat room the art room, since we have some real, honest-to-goodness art in there. The painting is one done by Porfirio Salinas, known for his depictions of vast bluebonnet fields, and who had a connection to President Johnson. My aunts had someone take this painting to the Antiques Roadshow, and while it was only appraised at $350, I think it's priceless, as it reminds me of sitting at their large dining table at holidays, being bored to tears by the adult conversation. I would stare at the painting, hanging prominently in their dining room, for distraction. So thank you, Madeline and Anna. This is a true gift for us.

And, in other events, we dismantled Christmas. The white tree is tucked back into its box and is in the attic for another eleven months, which makes Doug very sad. I suppose what's most sad is that our Christmas celebrating seems so fleeting, so short. Here one minute and gone another, kind of like life. Except you can't put life in a box and put it in the attic for a few months, ready to take out again to look just as festive as it did last season. That's maybe one of the good things about an artificial tree. There's no death involved.

And, speaking of life, I started today on my second round of bib-making. These will be for my cousin Amy's baby (sex unknown), due in mid-March. I went a little more cutesy with the material this time, and I like it. The bibs will hopefully turn out okay - I am using a thicker material for the backing (terrycloth) and I hope that when I turn them inside out they retain their size and shape. We'll see about these - Amy, I can make no promises except that these will be made with love.

Know what else is made with love? Or at least loved? Doug. The furry ladies love Doug. One hops off of his lap and the other one is right there ready to hop on. He's like a St. Francis for felines. I'll be in the dining room working at the table and I'll hear, "No, Sasha, I don't want you to suck on me right now." And then I'll hear the tell-tale call of Meg, the high-pitched, really whiny cry that only she can do well, and I'll hear, "Meg, come on girl, I just finished with your sister." If I didn't have enough context to know exactly what was going on I would probably get really upset! But let Doug have his cats. Wyatt can't get enough of humping my clothes, my blankets, anything that happens to be near me, and even me myself. So there!

Ringing in the new year D.C. style.

If you read the novel of my last post, you'll know that Doug and I took a few days away from the homestead and visited Washington D.C. over the New Year's holiday. We were there for three full days and four nights. Just enough time to start to feel comfortable there, and just enough time to get enough of a taste to know that we'd go back in a heartbeat. In three days we were only able to see parts of two Smithsonians, the lobby of the Capitol building visitor center, the Lincoln, Jefferson, WWII, and Korean War Memorials, the Library of Congress Jefferson Building, the National Archives Rotunda (where they keep the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution), the outside of the White House, the National Christmas Tree, and lots of other buildings that we walked by, like the U.S. Treasury building, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the USDA, etc. We did eat in the Smithsonian's American Indian Museum, and I used its bathroom, but that's as far as we got there. There's really just so much to see. And I bet if I lived there, which I found myself instantly wishing would happen, I wouldn't see these things nearly as much as I think I would (but would still like to be near them. I could still absorb their karma and history through osmosis, I bet.). Needless to say, we had fun and really weren't ready to come back.

I took many, many photos, and a few videos, but will only post some highlights here. Someday the photos will get to my flickr page and you can see them all there, or else you can see them once I put them in a real, physical photo album (I have one of those for all the trips Doug and I have taken together; it's archival tradition) when you visit Dedham next. Let's start with the White House, the first stop on our whirlwind tour.

Doug stood in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and dreamed of being president. It happened once, so it can happen again!

I stood in front of Julia Child's kitchen at the National Museum of American History and was inspired to be great (or at least not burn so much of what I attempt to make).

We trekked out in the unseasonably chilly D.C. night to see the National Zoo awash in lights. The panda and the reptiles were our favorites (mostly because the other animals were all asleep and because of this rather boring).

Marvin was our restaurant of choice for New Year's Eve. Doug had scallops and I had steak. Doug prayed there would be enough Belgian beer to last the whole night (we managed to stay up until after midnight this year. Amazing!).

In the spirit of eating well in the U Street district, we had a New Year's Day dinner at Ben's Chili Bowl. The chili cheese fries were fantastic (even when I tasted them again the next day).


We became very adept at the Metro, despite getting almost stuck in the door. It's clean, fast, and makes sense. Beat that, T!

And, we marveled at how European the city felt, which makes sense, since it was modeled on great European cities like Paris. But look at this photo and guess where we are - we could be anywhere in Europe, but we're in front of the U.S. Capitol. How cool!

Rents in the city are outrageous, and to buy there we'd have to give up a lot (like all of our possessions and any kind of attachment to physical space or a place to park). But we can dream, right? And we can plan a trip back to the city to see all the things that we didn't get to see this time. Maybe I'll put that on my list of goals for 2010.