Average Jane

Average Jane Cleans House

Over the past couple of months I've been taking a look at things that are bothering me about my life that would be easy to change. Among them was the terrible state of two rooms in our house that belong to me: my office and my dressing room.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I tackled my office and made significant progress getting it tidied up. I still have two big stacks of papers to deal with and I should probably clean out all the file drawers, too, but I've freed up a lot of floor space and made a spot for Kaylee to sit and look out the window, so I consider that a big win.

Yesterday I targeted my dressing room. In fact, I took before and after photos. Here was the view from the front door:

That suitcase on the floor? Yep, it had been there since my trip to Sweden in September. The cardboard boxes are Christmas gifts. The junk all over the bookcase and jewelry cabinet had been accumulating since 2010, according to the dates on documents in the lower strata (the top of the dresser to the left had a similar accumulation). And, as you can see, I'd also gotten pretty lax about putting away shoes and clean clothes.

Here's a peek at the state of my game shelves before I started:

Beyond the haphazard arrangement of the games, keep in mind that everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Here's what the top shelf and dresser top looked like:

So, I jumped in and started putting laundry and shoes away. I also started a bag for clothes and shoes to give away at the next clothing exchange party I attend.

I took piles of stuff off every surface and examined each piece to determine whether it needed to be thrown away, shredded, taken up to my office (I know!) or tidied away in the room. I now have a little jewelry box full of thumb drives.

All of the Christmas gifts I've purchased went into a big bag so I could look at them in one place and make sure I actually have enough for everyone. I meant to wrap them all, but it was too late and I was too tired by the time I finished cleaning.

I took down all of the framed photos from my high shelves and dusted them thoroughly. That's something that hasn't been done since the last time I painted the room. I can't remember exactly when that was, but it was 2006 or before. 

I'm not gonna lie—it was a horrible project. I kept wandering away and having to force myself to go back and keep going. I went through a zillion Swiffer duster cloths and it took almost every clothes hanger I own to hang up all my t-shirts and jeans at once.

Finally I finished tidying and mopped the floor. I still need to clean out all the drawers and the small closet, but the visible part looks better than it has in a very long time.

Here's how my game shelf came out. Notice how much darker the room is in the "after" photo. This took a long time.

There weren't that many surprises hidden in the room, but I did run across my favorite stuffed animal from childhood. Meet Koala Bear:

When I was about three, my parents brought him back for me after they went on a trip and left me with my grandparents. After stuffing started leaking out, my mother patched his left ear with a random piece of fabric that had been in our barn. Once his eyes and nose disappeared, there wasn't much more to be done. He lives in a little wicker purse that fits him perfectly. I dusted it carefully and put it back on the shelf.

The other thing I found that made me do a happy dance and fist pump was an extra pair of fresh contact lenses. That means I can put off a trip to the eye doctor until after Christmas, which my budget will appreciate.

Say what you will about feng shui, but it really does make a difference to clean out a couple of terrible, cluttered rooms. It's one fewer thing I have to worry about and it just makes using the rooms so much more pleasant and hassle-free.

Next on the agenda: cleaning the rest of the house and decorating for the holidays. I'm ready!

Average Jane Visits A Distillery

I've become a fan of bourbon in recent years, so when a friend mentioned on Facebook that she had one spot open for a tour of a local distillery, I jumped at the chance to go along.

The evening got off to a late start at a local Thai restaurant; three out of the four of us were delayed by terrible rush hour traffic. After I was seated, the waiter said I looked familiar and asked if I sang in a band. It turned out that several of the restaurant staff had been at a bar nearby for one of my band's gigs a month or so ago and they recognized me and even showed me a photo of my band on someone's phone. It was the first time that kind of thing has ever happened to me. Naturally I invited them to see us play at that same bar again next month.

After a hearty Thai dinner we were off to Dark Horse Distillery, a family-owned, small batch distillery that produces bourbon, rye, white whiskey and vodka. I was surprised to find a distillery in Kansas at all considering their oppressive liquor laws. 

The facility is about 50% distillery and 50% event space and it was already beautifully decorated for Christmas. As soon as I walked in the door, the smell of the fermenting grain was immediately apparent and quite pleasant.

We started the tour with a short video about the company and then got to walk around and see how they actually make their products.

Dark Horse produces liquor on such a small scale that their bottling equipment only handles four bottles at a time, they cork them by hand, and the master distiller signs each bottle and writes in the batch number on the label. 

After the tour we got the chance to taste each of the four liquors. I'd already had a glass of the Reserve Bourbon Whiskey before the tour and that remained my favorite. However, the vodka was very nice with a very vanilla-like flavor that they said came from the wheat variety they use. They also had a white whiskey that would make a good tequila-like mixer for fruity drinks. 

I'd love to host a party there sometime. The event space is gorgeous and it's conveniently close to a major highway. If you have any interest in whiskey or vodka, I'd say sign up for a tour. Now I'm trying to decide who might enjoy a bottle as a Christmas gift...

Average Jane Plans Ahead

I remember being a kid and thinking it took SO LONG for certain days to arrive. My mother always cautioned me that the older I got, the faster time would seem to go, but it didn't seem possible when I was impatiently waiting for my next birthday or Christmas or summer vacation.

Now I know exactly what she meant. Weeks are over practically as soon as they begin. The little things that mark each month—fresh pairs of contact lenses, new furnace filters, etc.—recur unimaginably quickly.

Even the span between holiday seasons seems so short that I can now almost understand those people who throw up their hands and just leave their Christmas decorations up year 'round. (This year my Halloween decorations were up for less than 24 hours. I got home that evening and put up just enough stuff to signify that we had candy, then quietly removed it all in the morning.)

This year I sent my first Christmas planning email to my sister in mid-October. The following week I started discussing Thanksgiving options with A Librarian, who joined forces with me for last year's dinner. Heck, I've made dinner reservations for Christmas Eve already because I decided that would be best for this year's circumstances.

That might sound like jumping the gun, but I know what my schedule is like. Between work every weekday, gigs most Saturdays (lately) and just the tiniest amount of breathing room on Sundays, I need to think these things through as early as possible.

For Thanksgiving, I'm actively searching for a humanely raised turkey to prepare. This year's Christmas Day food offerings are going to be chock-full of vegan and gluten-free options, which takes extra planning. That doesn't even count shopping for gifts, which will be part of this year's celebration after several years without.

Oh, and did I mention I'm planning both an anniversary party and a cookie exchange party in December? The cookie exchange party pretty much takes care of itself, but I'm tempted to make my husband do all the planning for our anniversary party.

Don't think I'm complaining. I love all this stuff or I wouldn't do it. I just know that I need to have plenty of time to get my plans in place so it all works out smoothly. Then it'll be time to start planning for 2014.

Average Jane's Weekend Beverage Tours

My sister and I spent the past two Sundays taking part in activities that involved going from place to place by bus to sample various drinks.

Last Sunday it was a winery tour. We drove to Atchison, Kansas and enjoyed an afternoon sampling various wines at Riverwood, Jowler Creek and Pirtle wineries. Due probably to the climate and soil qualities, Missouri wines are more limited in scope than, say, California wines. In general, the best wines are the dry and semi-dry whites. The dry reds are usually pretty terrible and the sweet reds are way too sweet for my taste.

I had been to two of the three wineries in the past and I was interested to see how those two had started branching out in ways that sidestepped some of the grape "problems," mainly by making wines from other fruits. Riverwood has recently started making wine from the Asian pears they grow and I bought a bottle after my sister suggested that it would make a very nice white wine spritzer.

Pirtle's apple wine has always been one of their better varieties but they also had a very nice blueberry wine. Their mead was better than I expected as well. It was a long, but fun day and we extended it with dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant on the way home.

This Sunday was Caffeine Crawl. Last year I went by myself (and happened to run into friends), but this year my sister agreed to go with me so I bought two tickets. As the weekend drew nearer, she was ready to bow out due to a cold, but when I couldn't find someone to take the ticket she decided to come anyway. 

As we had the previous week, we started off with a hearty breakfast. I could tell my sister didn't feel great, but I brought her a nice megadose of Vitamin C and a packet of tissues for the road.

This year's route was Homer's Coffee House, Parisi Artisan Coffee, Revocup Coffee, Latteland (Kaldi's Coffee), The Roasterie and Black Dog Coffeehouse. As with previous events, there was a big focus on coffee education. Six stops made for a long day (and a lot of caffeine coursing through one's veins), but I enjoyed myself quite a bit.

Now I'm just crossing my fingers that I didn't catch my sister's plague. Here's hoping that ignoring the time change and going to bed early will help.

Average Jane Goes to the Zoo

Today was the day that they feed pumpkins to the zoo animals at the Kansas City Zoo, so I rounded up someone to go with me and spent the late morning and early afternoon there.

The zoo covers a lot of ground but we managed to see almost everything before our feet got tired and we got too hungry for zoo concessions.

Here are some of the photos I took.

Capybaras are my favorite.

The otters were definitely playing to the crowd and they were very cute. However, I can't appreciate their cuteness quite as much now that I know about their dark side.

After several years of penguin-themed fundraisers, there's a big new penguin habitat at the zoo. It was especially fun to watch them swim around underwater.

These birds had a very impressive double nest going. We wondered if they had built it themselves and quickly got our answer when we saw other birds of the same type gathering additional feathers and sticks to add to the pile.

Look at meeeee!

You should be glad there's a fence here, delicious-looking humans.

Naptime at the meerkat habitat.

Are you sure you don't have something tasty you might want to accidentally drop down here?

Average Jane's Halloween

I've finally reached the age where my desire to participate in Halloween activities has certain limits. For example, I'm fine with parties but I don't want to wear a costume at work or anywhere else in public. I'll buy candy for trick or treaters at my office and in my neighborhood, but I don't want to cook anything with a Halloween theme.

This year with Halloween falling on Thursday, Saturday was the big party day. My band had a gig at a bar that was having a costume party, so we all dressed in costumes as well.

I'm kind of glad I chose the outfit I did because otherwise everyone would have been dressed completely in black. Come to think of it, that's pretty much the case for most gigs.

Big thanks to Hip Suburban White Guy for the loan of the phaser and tricorder. He also let me borrow a communicator, but it was hard to stand around holding all of the accessories at once.

Our keyboard player had the best costume, in my opinion. I know it wasn't very comfortable, but it paid off.

For actual Halloween night I bought a couple of small bags of Twix and Kit-Kat bars knowing that we wouldn't have more than a handful of trick-or-treaters. We ended up having exactly a handful: five. That's actually pretty typical for our neighborhood, although I expected more because our neighborhood party last summer gave me the impression that we had more kids in the area than we used to.

I'm not mean enough to put Toby in a costume, but I did have him wear his sweater to watch the door.

We gave up a little before eight o'clock and went out to dinner leaving the candy in a basket on the front porch. No one took any while we were gone.

So that's my 2013 Halloween. I didn't do much, but it was just enough.

Nobody Makes Average Jane Bleed Her Own Blood!

Yesterday was marked by a series of minor incidents that resulted in small quantities of my blood being displaced from its proper place in my circulatory system.

My company has an annual volunteering day where employees get on buses and go to various pre-selected nonprofits throughout the area to do hands-on work for most of the day. I chose an animal charity (surprise!), so I joined a group of co-workers to walk dogs for most of the late morning and early afternoon. 

It was really a very pleasant activity. The dogs were delighted to get outside, they were very friendly and most were open to being petted for a long time. As with most shelters there were lots of smiling pit bull mixes, and my volunteer buddy and I mainly walked them.

Minor injury #1 occurred when we went to get a big dog named Captain out of his kennel. He was SO excited at the attention that he was leaping around and it was a challenge to get the lead over his head. Once we got outside I realized that I'd scraped and lightly punctured my arm in the chaos, but luckily it didn't hurt.

After lunch, we walked more dogs and then divided into groups to either wash dogs outside or stay inside to clean cat cages and socialize the cats. I chose the cats, naturally.

There were a lot of very sweet cats and kittens and I spent time petting a lot of them after I tidied up their kennels. Toward the end, my attention was drawn to two very noisy black kittens. They wanted attention and they let everyone know at the top of their lungs the entire time we were there. I opened their cage and picked them both up so that I had one on each side of my chest up by my shoulders.

They were purring and seemed very happy. All was well until one of them reached up and bit me on the earlobe. It wasn't just a quick nip either—the rotten little bugger bit and held on. If I hadn't gotten him unfastened, I might have had a new piercing. So yet again, blood.

I thought I was in the clear for the day after that, but I had a final bloodletting incident while preparing stir-fry for dinner. I was using my zucchini ribbon cutter and somehow I got my little finger too close to the blade. Dinner was a little late while I dealt with the gory aftermath.

I think I can call today a success if all my blood stays in my body. That seems like a pretty reasonable goal, don't you think?

Average Jane's Current Lifestyle

It's interesting how things have changed for me over the past few months. For one thing, I'm keeping my free time freer. Mostly that's because I've found that I need to cook a lot more of my own food, so being home in the evenings is pretty important. Also, I have the two kittens at home right now, so that's a good incentive to spend more time there.

The kittens are doing very well. I decided on their rescue names: Elwood and Jake, the Blues Brothers. They've passed their combo tests and had their first FVRCP shots and "just in case" dewormer doses. I moved them from the basement to my dressing room and after shutting them in their condo cage the first night, decided they weren't in a position to do anything that disruptive, so now I let them stay loose in the room.

They've taken to sleeping in my dirty clothes hamper, thus getting so used to my scent that I've become the kitten equivalent of a rock star to them. Every time I walk into the room, they race up to see me and purr happily. They both eat heartily, use their litterbox like champions, and even let me clip their claws without too much of a fuss. I refer to them as my little marshmallows.

They should be big enough to be neutered in a couple of weeks and after that, as soon as there's room they can be transferred to one of the pet stores that works with my rescue group so potential adopters can meet them. That needs to happen by the end of August because...

I'm going to Sweden for two weeks! My dad's parents were Swedish immigrants but he's never been there, so he and I are leaving for Stockholm on September 1st and returning on the 14th. We have our plane tickets and passports (well, I have my passport and I've shipped off my dad's passport renewal form with all of the extra fees to expedite it). We know someone there who will help us plan our itinerary and lodging. I'm not entirely sure what all we're going to do there (besides fika, because coffee and pastries!), but I'm sure it will be fun.

Beyond that, I'm still performing with my band regularly. We've been booking about two gigs a month and I can foresee that increasing over time. We're still adding songs to our set list and it's been going well.

My new diet is continuing to be just great for me and my husband is now on board with it as well, which makes things that much easier. I got a bunch of fresh produce from a friend's garden this weekend, so I'm looking forward to having that all week. I've lost about 23 pounds so far and, assuming my trip to Sweden doesn't completely derail things, I think my goal of ultimately losing about 12 more pounds is very realistic.

What else am I doing? Yoga. Walking and some running. Role playing board games. Going to movies. Playing with cats. Snuggling the dog. Books, books and more books. 

Life is good.

Average Jane's Exhausting Weekend

I took a half a vacation day on Friday and drove an hour to do this for four hours:

It was fun but a little unsatisfying because the crowd was very light. Friday nights at bars always pale in comparison to Saturday nights. Still, for a first gig it went well and at least we ended up with some photos and video.

The drive home was excruciating because I was so tired. I had to keep pinching myself and slapping my face to stay alert and I ended up cruising down the highway with the windows down for most of the trip. Once I got home I was ravenous but too tired to go out for breakfast with my husband, so I heated up some oatmeal and dropped into bed as soon as I was finished eating. 

I only got about four hours of sleep, unfortunately. Then I needed to get up because it was time for the Kansas City Yoga Festival. I couldn't get it together in time to attend the first workshop. In fact, everyone was in savasana by the time I arrived.

I did make it there early enough to set up microphones for the musicians who would be playing at lunchtime and I managed to grab a lovely veggie and hummus wrap to eat. 

The second workshop went well and I was reminded of a shoulder stretch that I should be doing every day. I actually learned it last year but I'd been mostly sidelined with a sprain then, so it had slipped my mind.

I couldn't make through all of the final workshop of the day. During the introduction portion I'd been lying on my mat fighting sleep and my body wore out after about 30 minutes of poses. My bailout coincided with the arrival of a massive thunderstorm that caused rainwater to come into the building through every window and door, so I made myself useful moving things off the floor, out of the way of the incoming water.

That night, my husband and I tried to watch some TV, but I was completely depleted and by 9:00 p.m. I was sound asleep. I slept eleven hours and made it back to the yoga festival a tiny bit late the next morning.

I made it through the entire Sunday workshop and now every muscle in my body is sore. Seriously, every one of them. But they're sore in a good way and I'm glad I had the opportunity to strengthen myself like that. After lunch I went home and slept for another two hours, for a total of 13 for the day. Ahhh.

I know I haven't checked in for a while, but everything is going well with the new eating plan. I've lost about 15 pounds since I started and I'm feeling really good except when I wear myself out through lack of sleep.

So how have you been?

Improving Average Jane

I've hit an interesting convergence point in the past couple of weeks and it's making me stop and evaluate some things and look for opportunities to make changes.

The first thing that happened is that one of my co-workers proposed that we start a Happiness Project at the office. Despite the fact that I'm generally pretty goshdarned happy, I joined up right away. In our first meeting, I put together a list of some things that I think would improve my life. I also stole a few things from other people that I hadn't thought of. Here's my list:

• Health - Start my morning walks again, do one yoga class per week, have as many vegetarian meals as possible and schedule one deep-tissue massage each month.
• Free time - Set aside at least one weekday evening per week and one full weekend day per month and keep them unscheduled.
• Work - Become more engaged with my co-workers and the company culture. I've gotten into a bad habit of just working, working, working and then going home, sometimes with nary a conversation all day long. That needs to change.
• Home - Spend more time with my husband and pets. Get (and stay) caught up on household chores and projects.
• Self - Less time online, more time hanging out with friends and family. Read the ever-growing stack of books on my coffee table. Find more activities to do out in the world. Bring more creativity into my blogging.

One of ones I stole from someone else was: commute in silence. I've been driving without the radio on for a couple of weeks now and it's really been relaxing and peaceful. I'm exposed to enough sound and fury the rest of the time, so it's nice to get a break and have a more visual driving experience.

Not long after I made my list, one of my favorite bloggers, Alice Bradley, offered an online class called The Practice of Writing, designed to "jumpstart your creative life in five weeks." I didn't even have to read the whole page before I was ready to sign up. And I did.

If you're one of my loyal (long-suffering) blog readers, I think you'll agree that my writing isn't exactly inspired these days. When I read back through my early posts, there's just more personality and humor and spark. If anyone can help me rediscover that voice, it's Alice. 

I'm making baby steps toward my goals, but just the mere fact of having them written down makes me more aware of them and more likely to see them through. Let's hope we all reap the benefits.