Saturday, July 28, 2007

Tagging Myself

Jean posted this on her blog yesterday. I cannot resist things like this. Too bad my other 2 readers aren't bloggers. I know f0r sure that their 8 random facts would be a very good read.

I've been tagged by “You-know-who-you-are-and-you-know-what-you-did!”

Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Random Facts and Habits about Liz:

1. I seriously contemplated being a mortician when I was too young to even know what goth was. I wasn't even trying to be cool, I actually wanted to do this until my father told me that he couldn't live with the idea of me washing a dead man's penis.

2. I have gone on to wash more dead men's penises than I can remember...for, like, way less money than a mortician.

3. To me, the best smell in the world is the smell of amniotic fluid and newborn baby all mixed together. I wish they made a perfume that smelled exactly like it.

4. Once in nursing school, I had to pick up an obstetrician's yarmulke and put it back on his head when it got knocked off by a forceful jet of amniotic fluid. That was kind of wild.

5. When I was a child, about 8 or 9, there was a good 6-month period of time where I became obsessed with even numbers and symmetry. I would tap one leg and be compelled to tap the other. I would move one hand and have to do the same movement with the other hand. I would think a thought, then think it again to keep everything even. I guess I was stressed out or something.

6. I enjoy cleaning up really big, bad messes-if they don't belong to me. I have often thought about abandoning my career for work in cleaning up really awful messes-the kind where you need to don biohazard suits. I could also see myself successfully running a very nice ice cream parlor.

7. I love every fruit and vegetable known to mankind.

8. Like a true Scorpio, I thrive on change. I enjoy creation and destruction. Beginnings and endings. I get bored in the middle.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Resolutions

We've all hear of New Year's resolutions, and yeah, I made a few this year that I've loosely adhered to. They include:
  • Gossip Less-I've kind of failed miserably at this
  • Lose Weight-I've done this, thank you very much, but I'm not done yet
  • And something else that I can't think of at the moment

How about some relocation resolutions?

  • Exercise more
  • Reach my goal weight within the next year
  • Read more
  • Write more
  • Get a new tattoo over my old tattoo

Today was a great day. I wasn't nearly as productive at work as I should have been. It's hard to concentrate. I get side-tracked easily. I get wrapped up in conversations that I don't want to bring to an end. I want to cram every bit of friendship and dialogue into each moment that I possibly can. Chances are high that I might not see any of these good people again.

I have a goal for one day next week and I hope to fulfill it. For years now I've been wanting to photograph certain areas of Hackensack that I feel really attached to, places I don't want to forget. They aren't necessarily the most beautiful sights in the world and my camera skills are very much limited to pointing and clicking. Still, these places have a special meaning to me and I should capture a few shots before I go.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

More Reminiscence

This week is turning out to be quite manic. Not only in the running around like crazy sense, but in the swinging pendulum of emotion sense. I have been talking too much, but not enough. I have been missing New Jersey as I stand in the middle of it. I have been thrilled with the idea of basking in the warmth of Florida, yet in the back of my mind have been terrified of the hurricanes I am bound to endure.

And I've been using the word "I" way too much.

Explaining to my clients that this will be my last week has been very emotional for me and for some of them too. They're used to staff turnovers, but that's no consolation. Some of them seem genuinely upset to see me go and they've been letting me know. And I can't help but feel a pang of guilt when I explain my situation, that I'm going to go live happily ever after with my beautiful family 1000 miles away so we can all be together. I feel so incredibly fortunate to be able to do so, but it feels kind of awful explaining this to people who, for the most part, have very strained family ties. In many cases this agency is the best family they've ever had and it hurts to leave that.

*******

On a different note, I dug up some goodies from the past that I'd like to share:

From PA with Love

A little too into fire-building, perhaps? Bet you didn't know that I was more than a novice fire-starter.


I will always be very proud of this fire creation. We used a huge cardboard tube to craft this baby. Save all the big cardboard tubes you ever come across and wow your friends with a fire tunnel. Go ahead, take the credit for the idea!



Sisters-in-law gone wild


A cool pic of me and JH


Running at approximately 25% capacity

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Recalling and Building Intensity

I've moved around a bit. It all started when I was an infant. We moved to Washington State when I was a baby so that my dad could attend Gonzaga Law School. I don't remember that move because I was so young, but earliest memories start to take shape there. I do remember leaving and a few subsequent visits that followed.

We came back to New Jersey shortly before kindergarten began. Relatives who remembered me and not necessarily vice versa welcomed us back, acted like people who knew me in a past life. I think that might be where my fascination with reincarnation began. Surely I had seen this kind people before, but where? when? Answer: my infancy.


Through various apartments in Central Jersey to our first house in Kendall Park to our last house in Alexandria Township to now, I have had a lot of practice with breaking my life down to it's basic elements, sorting, filing through, discarding, and neatly fitting it all together. I know that books are heavy and they go in small boxes and that you can use your socks to fill in the gaps in between your fragile items. I know how to configure my personal items together like a jigsaw puzzle. I know that it's a really good idea to be liberal with the packing tape and to reinforce the box on the bottom before even loading it up.

After leaving the family home in Alexandria I wandered over to Phillipsburg and back to Alexandria on several occasions. The last residence I had in P'burg was not half bad actually, one of my better apartments. My boyfriend at the time and I had the top 2 floors of a 3 story home with 3 entire bedrooms, 2 whole baths, a cute kitchen, a balcony overlooking our quiet street, an extra loft-type room, lots of closets, and full use of the basement for laundry and hanging clothes. Oh yeah, plus a garage. And the yard was good.

But even all of that space, for $750/month, no less, couldn't save the situation.

I returned home for the last time. We kind of made it work. I enjoyed cooking dinners for my family and being in a very comfortable house with all the trimmings but try living with your parents after years of carrying on your own stupid life and all of your stupid habits and ways and see how well that all fits together. I dare anyone to try it for one day. You'll look for any reason to occupy yourself outside of the house. Anything.

Shortly before 9/11 I met my husband online and then in person. March of 2003 we were engaged. Sadie and I joined him in Lodi in May of that year. We married in August 2003 and spent the next year in that house as I finished nursing school

We moved to this house in Wood-Ridge in September of 2004 and here we are, a baby, a major surgery, and many bouts of laughter and tears later. We have had 2 tenants under our roof. We have hosted many holidays. I have cooked several turkeys, a prime rib, an infinite number of mashed potatoes, and several birthday cakes. Hundreds of presents have been opened under the Christmas tree that magically appears in the corner after my husband wakes up from a nap, a fake tree that I have lugged up and down 2 flights of stairs, even when I was ready to pop with pregnancy. But in his defense his heart was so bad he could barely maintain a healthy pink color, much less lug around a Christmas tree. And I needed the exercise badly.

So very shortly we are going to be leaving New Jersey for good. I can't imagine ever returning. I have spent most of my life here and I feel like I have absolutely made the most of it. I have loved this state like you wouldn't believe, and there have even been times when I thought that I couldn't possibly live anywhere else.

Most of that feeling came from living so close to the Delaware River for so many years. I have loved that river for a long time. I have fished it, swam it, tubed it, thrown countless roaches into it, contemplated it, fallen in love in it, water skied it, driven along it and over its bridges, skipped rocks into it, dipped Sadie's feet in it when she was just a little tiny baby. I will miss it. I hope I can visit it one more time before we go.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

What's another word for update?

Gimme a break, titles are hard.



Next week starts my last week of work at my happy little outpatient mental health center. When I gave notice a few weeks back, I completely broke down during the conversation with my boss. I have poured my heart and soul into this job. And I have had the opportunity to treat myself to some of the most amazing lunch breaks of my career.



I have no idea how I could ever capture this experience somewhere else.



Time marches on. I will find something that brings me great joy in the future. I have to tell myself this over and over to avoid feeling swallowed up by the great, black unknown.



One thing I have decided-if it feels like shit, run in the opposite direction. I had a phone interview that made me feel like shit and I'm not pursuing it. It was not in behavioral health care and it wasn't terrible but it wasn't that typical feeling mommydawg gets when it's meant to be. A feeling that maybe only complete and total flakes like myself feel. Something akin to the stars being in perfect alignment, or the sum of the numbers on my social security card adding up to the address of the future job's headquarters, or some other eerily similar detail that I invent.

C'mon, you know you do that shit too. Everyone does. Everyone looks for similarities, things we share in common with the things we really want.

*****

Sidenote: Blogger NOW will autosave your post as you type it. This is genius. Thank you, Blogger. You read my mind.

*****

Carl Hiaasen writes a very sharp column for the Miami Herald. It's really just Florida news, but Florida is blessed to have such a great journalist and author exposing it's sordid details and making art of it all. If you haven't read any of his books yet, not only should you, but you should also just read one or two of his columns to get a flavor for his attitude and his stance on things. He's definitely one of the good guys. And then you should rush out and get one of his books. They are kind of a quick, easy read but incredibly entertaining without being...I don't know...commercial-novel fluff.

*****

So yeah, we're moving. And this takes a lot of figuring out, but we're getting there.

*****

Next time-pics. I am on the wrong laptop and it's not configured to share files with the other laptop. Which husband is playing Boggle on at the moment. He's sitting next to me finishing a bowl of ice cream. I am finishing a glass of Pinot Grigio. The baby is sleeping. Sadie is talking on the phone. Life is good.