Loving:

• It’s Friday.
• It’s sunny!
• Until I moved to Tennessee, I had no idea there were so many different colors of green.
• Things are blooming.  Something smells fabulous in the backyard.
• Tonight my husband is joining me at Dinner Afare to make yummy dinners to freeze.
• Did I mention the sun?
• Indiana is feeling good enough to be a butthead again.  He ran away from me today and all I could do was smile.  Six months ago he couldn’t run! {Go, meds!}
• Banana Republic Outlet + 30% off Friends and Family discount from a sweet blog friend = two skirts, two dresses and three pairs of pants for $200.  I swear. {Thanks, Mrs. Gilmore!}
• Being married to someone who hates shopping but goes with me to be nice, then goes hog-wild finding “deals that are just too good to believe!”

Hating:

• We can’t sleep.  If one of us is asleep, the other is tossing and turning – unless the non-sleeper decides that yelling, “Shut up!” to the whiny dog is an acceptable outlet for frustration at 2 am.  {It’s not.  It is, however, a really great way to make your wife very angry – yet another reason not to be able to sleep.}
• The curtains I thought I’d love are… meh.  If we don’t make a decision quickly, we’ll be stuck with them because they’ll be dirty and unreturnable.
• We don’t have a fence.  We need one, soon, because dogs should not be inside laying around in utter boredom when they could be outside napping in the sun.
• That we’re STILL not finished with the other house.  We are getting closer, though. If only I hadn’t convinced Joey that we (ahem, I) should paint all the trim.

What are you loving/ hating today?

Yowza.  Being on the road just exacerbates my couch potato ways.  That plus days spent on heels and hours spent on planes and money spent on dinner adds up to a weight-gaining, back-aching, not-sleeping me.

*whine*

But I love this job.  {Well, except for the moments I hate it, but it’s not real hate, it’s more like exasperation.}

This is good, since I have something like 14 different meetings tomorrow.  What’s going on for your Friday?  And what are you doing this weekend?  Ooh, and most fun of all: what are your bad travel habits?

I get inspiration and guidance from women via a variety of sources.  Some of them are pretty typical – my mom, my grandmothers, my sister, my friends – but others are a little less typical, though (I’d bet) increasingly more common.  Some of these characters (all fictional in one way or another) have been more quiet influences, reminding me to be myself and I’ll still be okay, while others quite literally helped me get through the day.

C. J. Cregg

My first big job at the Very Big Corporation where I work involved a lot of explaining of things to unhappy customers, and without actively trying, I learned a lot about how to speak publicly by watching C. J. Cregg.  I literally swelled with pride the day she was promoted to Chief of Staff; the episode about her first day was one of my favorite episodes of The West Wing, ever.  When I need to feel inspired, I watch that episode, because she was just as lost on her day as I feel every time I change jobs (which is often).

Brenda Lee Johnson

What can I say?  The woman is decisive and opinionated and crazy and undoubtedly female, yet she is loved and respected and admired.

Lisa Cuddy

She dresses fabulously (if a bit provocatively) and manages a self-centered, ridiculously crazy House while maintaining her credibility.

Dooce

She made it okay to blog about life and Crazy and things not being okay. And she has style.  And quite honestly, the cutest damned baby with the bluest, bluest eyes.

Penelope

She made it okay to be yourself.  In fact, she is the best example of how you can (only) be successful if you are 100% yourself, regardless of how crazy you are.  Embrace the crazy.

Your turn.  Who influences you in unusual and somewhat embarrassing ways?

No, not via Formspring, which seems to be all the rage, but answers nonetheless.  In the past few posts you’ve asked me a couple of questions and I can’t sleep at night unless I know I’ve answered them (um, really, that’s really true).

I’m not sure why so many of you, my dear readers, are INFJ’s, but I have a few ideas.  Blogging is an internally-focused activity and my blog, in particular, leans toward the navel-gazing.  You value order; I strive for it.  You apparently know things intuitively “without being able to point out why”; in my posts, I tend to focus on figuring out why.  I put into words what we all feel; you are systematic and organized in a way that I wish I could be.  We complement each other!

~~~

I mentioned wishing I could ask candidates for my two open roles to take a personality test and some of you asked what I was looking for.  I’m looking for something different in each role.  First, I need an organizer with a meticulous nature who doesn’t mind creating order out of mountains of details.  We track software bugs at the most technically discrete level – and by customer – and I need someone who can keep track of our commitments, progress, and risks without wanting to crawl under a desk.  In a former job I did that, but I can’t do the forest and the trees at the same time (personal limitation), so I need someone responsible for the trees.  And I need that person to be able to run a quick query or build a quick pivot chart (shoot me) when I want to know the answer to questions like, “Is our incoming rate of bugs exceeding our fix-rate, and by how much, and why?”

Then I also need someone with a technical background who can make sense of both engineer-speak and customer-language and translate between them.  Again, I’ve done this in a former job, but I need someone better than me this time; I need someone with real engineering credibility.  Like the first role, they need to handle the trees, but they also need to see the impact on the forest.  I need an engineer who will take sides, have an opinion, communicate clearly (and gently) and still maintain respect.

So, at the risk of oversimplifying, I need an ESTJ, ISTJ, ISTP, ESTP… basically I need the S and the T to balance my N and F.  A J would be nice, too.  I’m less worried about the E versus I, figuring our jobs have a pretty good mix of internal/ external focus, but an E might be happier dealing with customers.  Worst case, customer management skills can be taught.

So there you go.  TMI?  Sorry… but this was helpful in thinking through precisely what I’m looking for, so thanks!

~~~

Anonymous asked if I could write a bit about how I keep business travel bearable, but I think I’m going to do that in a separate post, hopefully tomorrow.  For now, I need to get my stank-*ss off to the shower so I can get some stuff done today.

One last note: I love this planner system I’m using.  Can you believe this morning I actually got up and came into my office just to look at my plans for the day?  This is unheard of, people.  Usually I stay in my warm bed as long as possible (Blackberry and laptop make this possible for much longer than is strictly healthy, I think), but not this morning!  This morning I was looking forward to a day with no meetings – not so I could blow off the day and go shopping with my bff, but so I could get things done!  Make progress!  CHECK OFF A TASK!

{I’m feeling like you might not believe me because of the whole affiliate link thing, so here’s a link to the website without affiliate links, here’s a link to the free planners, and here’s a link to my original post.  I stand by my recommendation – this system is pretty awesome.  It even got me to make a decision and order pretty paper.}

~~~

Almost forgot: yes, I recommend the book I referenced in my personality types post, particularly if you’re at a career crossroads, but even if, like me, you like your job but want a bit more fulfillment.  Every job (okay, most) has room to be personalized, so knowing more about yourself makes it clearer what will make your job more fulfilling.  Along those lines, I also recommend anything by Marcus Buckingham and “Strengths Finder 2.0,” which I will add to my sidebar later today. 

As I write this, I’m listening against my will to the incessant whining of a dog just outside my bedroom door.  He wants in; I want sheets that don’t smell like dog and aren’t covered in drool.  I have the ability to open and close doors and therefore I win.

Yet, he’s the one driving me up the wall with the whining, so he wins a little bit too.

This all got me thinking about pet peeves.  I could blog all day about the human things that drive me nuts, but hey, here’s a better idea: let’s share our PET peeves!  With five cats and two-and-a-half dogs (I refuse to count the Bonus Dog as a third), I have plenty of fodder, and yet, I’m convinced you’ll have fabulous ones too.

Ready?

Bonus Dog is a whiny, whiny dog, and yet, so cute that I want to give in.  He’s laying outside the bedroom door in a little ball, I’m sure, with his nose under the door so I get the full force of his whining.  When I walk out, I’ll feel the warm spot on the wood floor where he was laying, and I’ll wish he could lounge around on our bed all day, too!

My big lug of a dog (Beau: 100 pounds) puts his wet nose on everything.  You know how you put your eyes on things when you look at them?  He does that, WITH HIS NOSE.  Drives me nuts, but then, he’s so sweet that I feel bad for being annoyed at him.

The dogs have taken over the couch.  My softie of a husband actually brought another chair into the living room because there wasn’t any room for him on the couch.  Swear.  So, we’re buying dog beds and taking back our lives, couch first.  Once upon a time we didn’t let dogs on the couch, but slowly we got suckered into allowing it, and now here we are, smushed together on one side with a dog on our laps and two others squished beside us.  It’s not right.  Not right at all.

Your turn!

{

The food.  Chile with every meal – breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks.  Yum.  Real chile, the kind that takes your breath away and makes your tongue sweat.  I miss September when green chile is harvested more than anything.

Of course, now that I’ve been gone a while, I’m a big chile wienie, so I can’t hang so much anymore.  Very sad.  Very sad.

These go together, so I’m answering them together: I don’t know.  I think I got lucky.  When I got the email letting me know I’d been accepted as a ‘bee, my first thought was, “Oh, shit, now I have to get him to read all this stuff before it posts!”  So we sat together in bed, me biting my nails and forcing him to read every word to make sure he knew what he was getting into.  He read every word, then looked at me and said, “Well, everything you said was honest and as balanced as you know how to be.  And I know blogging is how you work things out, so if it’s good for you, I support it.”

So that’s what guides me.  Am I being honest?  Am I being as balanced as I can?  Am I presenting a picture of myself – and him – that’s fair?  I set him up to have my WB posts emailed automatically, but he didn’t read them and ultimately got a new email account.  Is that a guy thing?  If someone was writing about me, I’d read every word!  But he doesn’t, so I consider it a gift.

And, um, okay, I’m fairly certain that he doesn’t read anymore and that gives me some freedom (gulp), as does the fact that he doesn’t really realize how large my readership is.  When a neighbor (who works with my bff) remarked that she saw a picture of our bonus dog on my blog, he blanched.  When I explained that Jen showed it to people at work, he was fine.  I think it would be worse if this was a small audience made up of people he knows.  A large audience made up of relatively anonymous people-who-don’t-live-on-our-street is fine.

Long story short: I try really hard to keep my perspective tight – this is one place where being self-centered is a good thing – and trust that his past reactions will continue… and then I don’t make a big deal out of it.

And I may or may not have once or twice hinted to my WB friends that comments indicating my hubby’s hotness would be appreciated.  Maybe.

If I were you and my husband was concerned, I’d ask him to read every word, but offer veto power, not editing input.  Slicing and dicing words gets messy; the goal is to make sure that things that aren’t fair game don’t get posted.

I wanted to, but Joey thought I was nuts.  In fact, we fought about it on the way to the therapist. (ha)  But when I mentioned it to my therapist (you know, when he asked why we were fighting), he said it would be unprofessional/ unethical of him to accept. Bummer. So on second thought, knowing that, I wouldn’t have wanted him to think it was a ploy for gifts. 

He gave me a way out by asking me to send him a wedding pic via email, which I did.  Maybe you can do that, or not invite but send a thank you card anyway?

Pet peeves: depends on the day.  Dogs who lick.  Slow drivers.  When my husband and every darned animal in the house is all up in my sh*t while I’m cooking.  People, mama’s got a knife in one hand and a smoking hot pan in the other… WHY MUST YOU BE STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO ME?

Dogs are in transition, but more often than not eat Pro Plan Chicken and Rice.  I sometimes make dog treats, but mostly give them Meaty Bones or Milk Bones, which is like saying I sometimes feed my kids healthy food grown in my garden, but most of the time they eat McDonald’s.  I’m aware of the dissonance, but frankly, we eat McDonald’s, so why should they get stuck with the super healthy diet?

And Indy eats table food regularly, because of the whole failing heart thing and because we’re suckers and because now at least we have an excuse for giving in to his every pleading eyeball.  The others do not, because they’re not dying but also because their stomachs rebel.

Cheesiest guilty pleasure: chick lit books.  I call them “empty calories” because they take no brain to read.

Ooh, good one, and (arrogance alert) I kinda like my body.  But I guess I’d like to be taller and have smaller boobs, so Jennifer Aniston.

My favorite scent is my husband’s neck.  Or any man’s neck, but let’s not tell him that since it’s not like I’m going around sniffing men’s necks anymore.  I’m a one-neck woman. I like the way a man’s skin smells.

Why ARE most pizza options pig-sourced?  Chicken is a crazy new-age-y topping, but sausage is old school, you’re right!  No eggs, either.  Did Italians raise pigs but not chickens?  Hmmmm.

Somewhat relevant: I may or may not have launched into a rather terrible rendition of “Things That Make You Go Hmmm” by C&C Music Factory… and my younger hubby didn’t know it.  He’s only a few years younger than I am, so I think he was just out of the loop. Right?  Right???  Is this thing on? *tap, tap, tap*

Go on.  Anything.  Jenna inspired me, so I’m taking the bait.

Ask and I will answer.  But not today, or tomorrow, because I’m back in the great city of Indianapolis for two days.

{True story: I’m in Indy ordering pizza for a meeting so I interrupt to ask if anyone is vegetarian.  The response?  “We’re from Indiana.”  Yes, I understand that, I reply, but perhaps you misheard me, I’m asking if you want a veggie pizza.  “Yes, we answered.  We’re from Indiana.  We like meat.”  Um, okay.}

Friday, though… Friday will be a good day for me to answer your questions.  Assuming you ask them.  Because if you don’t, I will either feel like a big loser or like an embarrassingly open book (or like a very boring person).  No pressure, though! 

Oh, and questions for my hubby are fair game as well, though I can’t promise on his behalf that he’ll answer them all.  I will promise he’ll at least blush and feel all special.

I suck at finishing things.  I get all caught up in the rush of ideas, buy $150 worth of fabric, then don’t finish.  Okay, in this case, not $150, but because of start-up costs (new presser foot, scissor sharpeners, etc), these baby quilts cost me more than… well, you get the picture.

But I finished one!

It turned out a bit smaller and a lot thicker than I’d planned.  I think we can call it a changing pad or crib blanket – it’s too thick to really wrap around a baby, but the perfect thickness to put under or on top of a baby.

The flannel held up really well in the washer and dryer (cold water, low tumble). 

My biggest frustration, though, was the “binding.”  I thought it would be easier to just roll the thick stuff over and sew it down.  By “easier,” I mean “not requiring another trip all the way across the city to come up with a better option.”  But holy heck, those corners were way too thick for my poor machine.  I broke two needles and my will in the process of sewing them down, then had to hand-stitch them anyway because they came loose in the wash.

Argh!

I had to walk away, do something else, then reassess… because halfway through every DIY I’ve ever attempted, I want to give up and buy something made by an expert.  I want to make things for people because of the sentimentality, but I don’t want them to LOOK handmade, ya know?

Anyway, I wrapped this into a little bundle, tied it with a ribbon, and delivered it (along with freezable containers of homemade spaghetti sauce) to our neighbors.  They seemed to like it enough, I guess, but I could have just taken the food sans blanket and it would have been okay.

Oh, well! 

Now I have one more of these to make for my favorite neighbor baby (oops – my first favorite neighbor baby) for Christmas.  With different binding.

We went to Sears to get a doodad for my quilting project and decided to wander around the appliance department.  Big mistake.  Within minutes, my husband found the biggest, priciest, most tricked out refrigerator in the place and was in love.  Deep, deep in love.  He actually impressed me – kinda – with his ability to spot the most expensive appliance in the place, then try to convince me that we really need the semi-pro gas range with cast iron grill pan, or the convection microwave with removable tray and super exhaust fan, or the Jenn Air convection wall oven.  Evidently we need $12,000 in appliances.

This from a man who cooks frozen pizzas and tacos.  Exclusively.

Oh, lordy, shopping for appliances is going to be fun!  (Ahem, not.  My cheap-ass cringes at the thought of a full priced “semi-pro” anything.  Marketing, blah.)

But we did end up talking about kids, something we do quite often lately.  And that got me thinking about all the things I never would have guessed grown-ups could do, which is a roundabout way of saying I don’t think we’re really grown-ups yet.

Things I Didn’t Know Grown-Ups (Still) Did:

Dry off after a shower with a t-shirt because nobody remembered to put towels in the dryer.

Stick the trash can in a closet because they just don’t feel like taking it outside right now.

Leave piles of clothes on the floor in the bathroom long enough that the cats start to nest (it takes three days, by the way).

Find scraps of wood, dog bones, rawhide, and a random sock hidden carefully within the covers of their bed… then climb in and go to sleep anyway.

Wear two different socks because a) they’re clean, b) they’re available, and c) they’re wearing boots anyway.  Same deal with swimsuit bottoms as underwear.

Forget when they last washed their hair.

Drop food on the floor and let the dog(s) lick it up; it’s easier to clean up that way.

Search high and low for their keys, then find them in the door/ on the porch/ in the shower.

Drink beverages exclusively for their caffeine or alcohol content.  Exclusively.

Find a strange kind of satisfaction in sweeping up piles of animal fur so large, the cats hiss at them.  (Note: this happens every two or three days.)

These are not things people with kids should do, especially kids who crawl on floors and lick tables and chew on random found objects.  When our favorite neighbor baby comes over, we hang out outside.  People, it’s safer and cleaner outside than inside!

I’m reminded of this post by Benjamin Wagner (although I suspect he prefers people to read his blog for the rock ‘n’ roll, I read it because of his divorced kid’s point of view on marriage):

Before I met Abbi (the first woman, it should be noted, with whom I’ve shared a roof), I did laundry only when I ran out of underwear. Before I met Abbi, I did the dishes only when I ran out of pint glasses. Before I met Abbi, I swept the floor only when I could see the crumbs.

It’s an interesting thing to be changing my behavior in an effort to be a better teammate. Given my druthers, I’d watch Nova or Frontline on DVR. Left to my own devices, I listening to NPR and blog.

But this marriage thing is my new reality, and calls upon me to step up my game. Accordingly, today I unloaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, ran three loads of laundry and washed the windows (and watched Frontline, and blogged). I don’t relish this new, hyper-vigilance. But I relish being considered a good partner, even if I do mope about it in only half-jest.

Though I must admit, the carpet sure does look nice. And it’s a real treat to be able to get into bed without wiping my feet.

What do you still do that you never thought grown-ups did?

Hi.  Remember me?  I used to blog here.  You know, like, a few days ago when I drank a glass of wine and then wrote a really long post that might have had a point when I started but failed to actually GET to that point by the time I finished.

You know you shouldn’t be blogging when, 2/3 of the way through a post where you still haven’t gotten to your point, you just wanna give up.

Anyway, I am now, at this very moment, sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for my flight, which, if the flight gods are sweet to me, will actually a) arrive, b) allow us to board, and c) not have a cargo door pop open while we’re on the runway. 

{This happened on Monday.}

{But at least I got to feel very executive-like when every meeting – and many, many smarty people – then had to await my arrival.}

{Yes, on the bright side, at least the door didn’t pop open while we were in the air.}

So I’m stuck in an airport for a a few (hopefully) hours and I decide that what I really want to do is organize my shit.  Because I’m a crazy party animal like that.

And then I get stuck.

I’m more of a forest person, people.  Or, yes, it’s true, I can also see leaves.  But trees?  Nope, no trees here.  I see forests full of leaves and absolutely positively cannot imagine what in the heck is holding those leaves together (hi, yes, in this analogy, that would be the TREES).

{Clearly, I’ve had wine.}

So I am asking you, my dear, dear friends, how in the hell do you keep your shit organized?  I’ve tried Franklin Covey (not electronic, not really), notebooks (I lose them or change them or otherwise mess them up), dropping things into my calendar (really great except for when I don’t and then I’m lost).  My current method involves mostly failing at everything and waiting for something to blow up.  Which would be great except for the guilt.

Here’s your chance to show off your (totally fabulous) nerdiness: tell me how you keep track of all those darned things you need to get done.  And please don’t tell me to read GTD, because I own the book but the process is so freaking overwhelming that I never get too far.

I have a Blackberry and use Outlook for appointments (and email, which I no longer bother to organize and just leave in my inbox… thank you Google Desktop).  You get bonus points for digital-ness.

Aaaaand… GO!