monday

What a good day! I had a vacation day to use up…and so did a friend…so we were able to go into the city on a weeknight when it’s generally less crowded…AND it was raining AND indoor-dining just closed…so we were really able to get up close and personal with the fun NYC Christmas lights and decorations without the usual mobs of people.

Magically, the rain stopped just as we were getting there AND we got a great parking spot (always a challenge in the city) AND it was right behind a police car with two cops who were our parking angels making sure we didn’t get a ticket for being MAYBE too close to a fire hydrant. AND when the rain stopped there was a beautiful cotton candy sky. AND we found an empty, clean, homeless-person-free ladies room to use.

AND I felt so good walking (I think living room jumping around is paying off) AND my hips didn’t hurt AT ALL. I feel like I could have jogged a bit (!!!). Or maybe skipped 🙂

It was magical.

tuesday

Oh Happy Day. I found my lipstick. It’s down to next to nothing but at least now I have it for color matching purposes and don’t have to start from scratch with All The Wrong Colors.

What A Week This Is!!!

wednesday

This is not a review. This is a warning. Do Not Watch This Series: Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol. It will seduce you with its quirky, charming, lovable characters and stories and then IT. WILL. RIP. YOUR. HEART. OUT.

You’ve been warned.

Oh! I got to see a sneak-peek of the updated website today, whee! I like it! Very Big Pictury! It will be a little different format than the current “one post scrolling down after another” (weird sentence but YKWIM), but I think it’s good.

AND, a thing that feels a LITTLE weird to me, but I understand its purpose, is that January will have a month-long series of “About Me” types of posts, about, well, ME 🙂 Which oddly enough makes me a little uncomfortable, which is weird cuz almost ALL my posts are “about me.” But I just wanted to give y’all a heads-up that THAT’S coming in January.

That “weird, little bit uncomfortable” feeling is like how on YouTube I can yammer on and on about nothing – my clothes, my messy hair, the dirty carpet, etc…but I can BARELY bring myself to speak on InstaStories. I’m perfectly comfortable talking on TikTok also (I started doing a 1-minute ootd video there every day at tiktok.com/@bettyerainwater). Those just feel like “my people.” Which is, again, weird, cuz I know literally NO ONE there. IG just always feels like I’m trying to sit at the cool kids table.

The one year I went to Southern Seminary Jr College in Virginia, was like that. I went cuz they had THE BEST horsemanship program in the country. So I was so excited to go. But…when I got there, it felt like 99% of the girls there came from tons of money, had perfect preppy clothes, sleek hair, shiny cars, cute boyfriends, $100,000 horses. And then there was me. Ha ha. And I tried, but…it never felt good. I never felt like I was with My People. And I came home for good at the end of the first year. Instagram feels kinda the same.

Anyway.

thursday

Current situation. Realizing that thanks to covid (thanks a lot, covid), snow days are a thing of the past. Snow Days are one of the most glorious gifts of life. Getting a text at 6am saying, “shhh, go back to sleep little bunny, we’ll pay you to stay home today in your jammies and drink hot chocolate.” Sigh. But now with everyone set up to work and continue classes remotely…no more.

And, a new word: nival (rhymes with rival): characterized by, abounding with, or living in or under snow: of or relating to a region of perennial snow. Seemed appropriate for the day.

friday

 

Office-mate text at 7:50am: blah blah blah

Me: Oh, you’ll have to tell The Other One, I work from home today

Office-mate: Uhm, I think The Other One has a vacation day today. I think you’re supposed to be In The Office

Me: OH CRAP!

In hindsight, I realize I was told this a few weeks back, but between alternating days, vacation days, snow days…DON’T THEY KNOW I CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED WITH THAT SORT OF INFORMATION? So another morning of mad-dashing around to get to work an hour late. Boo. Ugh.

I’m making plans to have no plans this weekend. Got catching-up to do and a Christmas tree to get and decorate. Another ugh, I feel like I JUST put the Christmas decorations away! It was July, but still. It was JUST July!

If Katie wasn’t coming, I think I’d skip a tree this year. I love it…and am sad without it, but I feel like I have nine-million things on my plate right now and to squeeze Christmas Tree time in there just seems…like a poor use of my time.

OH!  I have achieved LaughCry Nirvana! I no longer need Kim Namjoon gigglesinging to Butterfly (though I will not stop watching it daily) or Jung Haein in awe of Every Single Thing in NYC (WHA!!!) as I can now make MYSELF LaughCry! A fact I discovered while playing a little car game I like to call: Sing the Song Even Though You Don’t Know the Words (OR the Tune)! It’s a Laugh Riot! And by that I mean *I* am a Laugh Riot! Ha. Seriously though I was cracking myself up the whole way home from work. I was…yes…LAUGHCRYING!!!

Here’s a little backstory to the game (which is almost like a little game in itself and one I have been playing for MANY many years): I’ve always wanted to play piano. When I was growing up and spending summers in CA with my aunt, uncle, cousins, grandparents (that’s a whole lotta people in one house) I would spend quite a bit of time on my grandmother’s piano, both as a bit of escape from people (always the introvert) and as something to do when everyone else was living their lives.

She had those “teach yourself to play the piano” books and I would work my way through them…well, maybe through the first 3ish. ANYWAY. The pleasure of making MUSIC happen never left me. But the timing has never been right for making a piano happen in my life. They’re expensive, you need to have a place to PUT IT, and if you’re a renter, you need to be in a situation where you’re not going to be torturing the people upstairs or on the other side of the wall.

I’ve got piano news coming up shortly, so don’t @ me.

Anyway, so when I hear a song I like I always do the “Is This A Song I’d Like to Play on the Piano” game. Some songs are suited to being played by only a piano, but MOST current songs have accompaniments to the piano, supporting the whole tune (I’m not a music person so I don’t know if I’m explaining this well). So the piano part might just be a secondary part to the song, and if that’s all you heard you wouldn’t really hear The Song at ALL. Like, you wouldn’t be able to recognize it. Does this make sense?

OKAY (are you still with me?) so, I hear a song I like, I think, “yes, I would like to play that song on the piano,” BUT when I listen to JUST the piano part it’s…not complete. And obviously I don’t have other band members I can invite to join me in my music-making…so I realize I would have to SING the song along with the piano part so the song would be recognizable. Is this making ANY SENSE AT ALL TO YOU?

HENCE (phew, it was a long way around but we’re almost there), the “Sing the Song Even Though You Don’t Know the Words (or Tune!)” Game! Now I’m singing just to practice in case I ever get a piano and have to provide my own accompaniment to the song I want to play! Phew! 

But anyway, the game is fun, you should play it sometime.

saturday

I’ve had sort of a slow, introspective morning (she said at 1:40 in the afternoon). I have a to-do list a mile long but sometimes you just need that time to let your mind go places. Most days I only have enough “free brain time” to let it go an inch deep on multiple topics. It’s good to allow yourself time to let your brain go a mile deep in just one direction. That’s how you get to new places.

I did take a little blogging time off this past week. Unplanned. I just hit the wall early in the week. I think going out on a school night (ie, into the city Monday night) threw me a bit out of whack and finally I just decided to go with it and skip a couple blog posts. Which seems nice but there’s always a cost to that. Now I have so much catching up to do.

I’m like halfway through my time with the blogging consultant/coach and I feel I have really not made the best use of our time together. I’ll really be kicking myself if when our time together comes to an end I feel like I didn’t contribute enough. I don’t want to let myself down like that. I’m very easily distracted and have a hard time staying on task so…I’m not sure I have a solution other than just to keep letting each day be a new start where I can try again.

Ha. I just re-read the paragraph above and feel like it’s a metaphor for LIFE.

sunday

Ran (well, drove…why do we do that?) to the deli for bacon egg & cheese sandwich, pulled into driveway, checked phone before getting out of car.

Text From Katie: Welcome to Georgia (she’s on her way home by car)

Me: Yay (insert all the happy emojis here)

Also Me: bursts into tears

🙁  🙂

You know…while I love time by myself, time to myself, with myself…sometimes I am struck that I am alone here. I have a couple good friends. But my family is all so far away, I so rarely get to see them. And nothing is like family. I know to them I may not seem very…I don’t know if there’s a word for “I may seem aloof like I don’t care if I see you or not but I really am happy to spend time with you and I miss you when I don’t see you for a long time” but, yeah, that. And especially Katie. This is the longest I’ve gone in 30 years without seeing her. I know people all around the world are missing “their people” because of covid. But…I may seem like I am always okay by myself, but I get sad about it sometimes, too.

So I’m glad she’s coming home.

WHAT I’M WATCHING

See “Cruelest Series Ever” (aka Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol, which, incidentally, means Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) under “Wednesday.”

Break the Silence documentary following BTS’ last worldwide tour in 2018-2019. There’s behind the scenes and interviews with each individual member which are delightful and moving. In the interviews they come across as very thoughtful, introspective, and appreciative of all the gifts in their lives. It’s nice to see.  They are really lovely humans.

The obsession continues.

WHAT I’M READING

The side of the Minute Rice box. How many times should one person have to read “equal parts rice and water” before they can just freaking remember it?? 

Peace.