The story behind the box.

It could be the coolest thing anyone's asked me to do.

Some friends of mine are expecting a baby. The mommy-to-be wanted to do a gender reveal photoshoot, and she sent me an idea on what to do.

It involved me decorating a box with gender appropriate decorations. We hung the box from a tree. When they opened the box, the decorations fell out, which told them what they were having.

That sounds like fun. Sign me up!

A week ago, they handed me a sealed envelope. In it was a sonogram photo that said the sex of their baby.

I ripped open the envelope in my car, but I decided not to read the results. I wanted to read the results in my house, because I wanted to have that memory in a house I (finally) own.

I got home, sat on my kitchen table, then opened the envelope.

I screamed.

I mean, I screamed!

I had dreams it was a boy. I knew it was a boy. I knew!

Sidenote: I don't know anything. Don't ever listen to me.

Next, I went shopping. I bought all kinds of stuff, including rose petals, glittery tulle, ribbon, and streamers. This was the best part. People kept asking me if I was planning a birthday party.

I didn't know what to say. Um, I'm kind of sort of planning something, but not really.

The mommy-to-be swore me to secrecy on the project. I couldn't tell people what I was doing and break that promise!

So with my armload of pink stuff, I went home and got to work.

It's tricky, box building. The bottom was supposed to have a trap door, but I couldn't figure it out.

When I tested my trap door, everything just fell out.

Well...shoot.

And when you're working on a top secret gender reveal project, you can't exactly call someone and ask for back up, you know?

I decided the daddy-to-be was tall enough to cut the bottom of the box with a box cutter instead of having a trap door.

It wasn't perfect, but it worked.

I ran out of tape that night I was making the box, so I went to my mom and dad's house to get some. They knew what I was making.

My dad looked at me.

"It's a boy, isn't it?"

I looked away and didn't look him in the eyes.

"I knew it! You can't lie. I'm telling your mom it's a boy!"

(Well, I thought, you can tell her, but you're going to be wrong. I later got a compliment on how good my lying skills are. Um, thanks?)

The next night, I took the decorated box to a park in town. It was the same park I took their engagement photos in, which is nice.

Before they joined me, I drove around the park a few times, got out, and looked around for a good tree.

I found the perfect tree in the perfect spot. With their help, we got the box hung up and ready to go. There was beautiful light that night, and I loved all of the leaves on the ground.

It was perfect.

Testing to check the light. Beautiful!

Pink!

Well, everyone knows what the outcome was now.

I had a blast doing this.

They're going to be great parents.

Not a taco.

Last night some friends asked if I wanted to go out to eat. 

I haven't felt good recently. I've had bronchitis for about a month, which has left me a sneezy and coughy mess. 

I've felt good enough the past week to do stuff, though. I went shopping out of town (sorry, shop local people). So I decided that yes, I absolutely wanted to eat at a restaurant last night.

I've had cravings for a local Mexican place. I didn't feel like a hamburger and fries, so I pitched that idea to my friends. They were game.

The thing is, I really wanted a taco. Three tacos, to be exact. But my mind was on other things, and apparently I can't think and talk at the same time.

They say you're supposed to marry the person who gives you the same feeling you get when you see your food coming at a restaurant. Guys, I've never been so disappointed in my life last night when I saw my plate of food.

The very nice waitress sat my plate down in front of me and walked away. I looked at it for a minute, then asked my friends a question.

"Do these look like tacos to you?"

The response was something like, "Um, I heard you say enchiladas. You didn't order tacos."

But I pointed my finger at tacos on the menu! Don't get me wrong, the enchiladas are fine, but I just had my heart set on a taco.

This is one of the only times I've eaten out in the past month, because I've been coughing and hacking so much. 

I wanted tacos!

Sigh. 

Taco night will be another night, I guess. 

Update

I haven't been posting much.

Things I've been up to:

- I tore cat carpet out of my house over the weekend.

- I have bronchitis and slept about two hours last night. Boo.

...and that's about it. My life consists of coughing and house repairs at the moment.

Sigh.

September notes

Random notes:

• September is a pretty good month. It's not as great as October or April, but I think it's my third favorite month.

• I'm working on a side project that involved finding and taking photos of sunflowers. I made a road trip last night. I'm not going to say my photos are award-winning, but they're decent. I feel so Kansas right now.

• I roadtripped to Nebraska a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure the entire state is under road construction.

• I joined a gym (again) yesterday. My foot issue is fixed, my hip issue seems to be better, and my mouth no longer feels like it's trying to kill me. Let's do this! The last time I lost two dress sizes after six months of working out. That's my goal this time around as well.

• My house is never clean. I clean it and it just...gets dirty again. Sigh.

Always meant to be mine.

The process could not have been more frustrating.

It started on Saturday. My Dad and I went to get a sander, went back to my house, and started to get to work. The room I wanted to work on in particular has a wood floor that’s been painted green and white in a checkerboard pattern.

Maybe the previous homeowners played chess on the floor?

Anyway, I was excited to start on this room. Except we ran into one little slight problem.

The sander didn’t even touch the paint on the floor.

And then my shop vac didn’t work. And then I went to get another shop vac and got a ticket in the process (oops).

It was not a good day.

It turns out that the sander we got worked really well for the other small bedroom in my house. We got that room ready to go, all nice and smooth, and took the sander back.

At that point, I wasn’t planning on staining. The wood was beautiful enough that I just wanted to varnish it.

There’s one little catch. I decided to have a party over the weekend.

Meaning, there can’t be two queen sized beds and box springs in my kitchen, there can’t be kitchen chairs in my bathroom, and there can’t be nightstands and dressers blocking my hallway.

Once we got another sander, the process went a little smoother.  It was still frustrating. I mean, what color do you think sawdust is from a green floor?

It’s all over my house.

Not to mention, I ripped six sheets of sandpaper with the second sander. I was angry. I was angry enough that I didn’t want to see that stupid sander again, so I hauled it out to the curb next to the truck I was using.

I thought I could lift it out of anger. Get out of my house, stupid sander! I never want to see you again!

The thing is, though, that I couldn’t lift it.

So I sat in the back of the truck, by myself, watching the cars go by. What people in the cars saw was a very sweaty woman in her pajamas covered in sawdust. Just, you know, hanging out until help came.

That was also not a good day.

But let me tell you about the day that was eventually good.

I went to a paint store to get stain the next day. I took a sample of laminate with me because I wanted to match the color (in the rest of my house, the previous homeowners put laminate on top of hardwood.).

I thought I picked out the stain color perfect. But they wouldn’t let me buy it. They told me they were going to custom mix the color for me. They said they’d call when the stain was ready.

A few hours later, they called and I went to look at the stain.

It was beautiful!

I went home and started staining.

I started in one corner of the room. After a small section was on, I stopped and looked at it. I wasn’t really impressed. But I kept on going, and when I got about a third of the room done, I stopped and looked at it.

It was beautiful. Like, I wanted to weep.

I love wood that has a slight hint of red in it. The stain they custom made for me matched what I wanted perfectly.

It’s so beautiful, I can’t believe it’s mine.

My house buying process was messy. But when I was staining and seeing the potential in my house, I kept thinking something.

This house was always meant to be mine.

Pretty, right?

Getting to work.

Look at those pretty floors!

The other bedroom. Pretty!

Same shot as above, put with stain.

Ta da!

Pretty.

Up in flames (kind of)

Last night when I went to bed, I smelled something burning.

I checked all around my house. The oven was fine and off, nothing was off in the basement, my flat iron was off and my curling iron wasn't plugged in.

What's that mysterious burning smell?

I thought someone had a fire pit going in my neighborhood, so I fell peacefully asleep and decided not to worry about it.

The smell woke me up at 3 a.m. It was right in my face, and I immediately knew what it was.

It was my fan!

I unplugged it, felt the motor, and it was very, very hot.

This is where having an anxiety disorder is not fun.

I don't have dumpster access from my backyard. I'd have to walk through a neighbor's yard to throw the fan away.

But if I were to do that at 3 a.m., I'd probably be murdered or get lost and die.

If I put the fan on my front porch, it would catch my front porch on fire and the rest of the house would probably catch on fire, too.

If I put it outside on my grass, the grass would just catch on fire, which would lead to my house catching on fire, which would lead to other houses catching and fire and that's just not cool at 3 a.m.,  you know?

I thought about putting it in my car, but that scenario eventually lead to my probably dying as well.

My solution to all of this anxiety at 3 a.m. was to just stay awake and make sure the damn thing didn't burn my house down.

On a sidenote, having a fire extinguisher in my house seemed like a really good idea this morning.

I started dozing off around 5:30 a.m. I felt the fan. It was cool and didn't smell like rotten, burning corpses anymore, so I figured it was safe.

I'm okay with my life serving as a warning to other people of exactly what not to do.

If you smell something burning by your head, don't go to sleep!

Oops.

I've had that fan for a really long time. When my 4-year-old dog was a puppy, she decided she wanted to eat electricity one morning and chewed the cord to the fan.

She was fine. My Dad fixed the fan and put two layers of hard plastic around the cord. It's the same plastic people put in fields to make sure mice and other critters don't eat cable.

So, this fan has seen better days. The plastic around the cord is bright yellow, which doesn't exactly scream, "I'm a strong, independent woman!"

The fan is going to fan heaven tonight. It has lived a good, long life.  I'll fall in love with another fan sometime this weekend.

Oh, the joys of being a homeowner.

(Also a good reminder - shut off your fans before you leave your house!)

Disappearing from relationships

On my Facebook feed, something popped up from The New York Times.

It read: "This weekend's article about people disappearing from relationships drew a strong response online."

Apparently, it's called "ghosting."

I read that story at the end of June. I still have it pulled up on my phone, and I still read the comments to boost my morale at times.

Break ups are harsh. I mean, is there ever a nice way to say 'I never want to see you or talk to you again' to someone's face?

No, there's not a nice way to do it.

But yes, you should absolutely have that conversation. To not even bother to have that conversation, and to "ghost" someone, means you're a shitty human being who's probably not ready to be in a serious relationship.

I almost wrote that in all caps, but I decided against it.

Yes, this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I can't change the past, but I can promise to never do to someone else what was done to me.

Ghosting...I didn't even know there was a name for it.

/rant

Online comments about the original story:

I'm glad there's a term for this -- it's more accurate than "dumped." It happened to me awhile back, in a relationship of 18 months that had grown quite serious. After three weeks of silence, I decided someone ought to issue an acknowledgement, and wrote him a note (by hand, sent via USPS) saying I was hurt and confused by his behavior, but had enjoyed good times with him and wished him well. It felt right to offer a sincere closing on my end, even if his actions were rude and immature. Maintaining my own integrity weakened the sting. In a sense, I, not he, was the one closing the door.

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How about calling it what it is: the right to be rude.

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You know, sometimes we must put on our Big Girl/Big Boy panties
and do the right thing - behave like adults.

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The practice of ignoring those who have invested time and emotion into a relationship with us, so as to save their own emotions when that investment no longer seems worth it, is not at all a new phenomenon. Ghosting has been happening in relationships for eons and is now simply being applied across the capabilities of social media to "unfriend" the undesirable. The impetus is the same as it ever was.

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If it's someone you've been with for more than a couple of dates, it's unfair to inflict the worry. Is she dead? Is he stroke paralyzed in his apartment? Was she kidnapped? Did he lose his phone and contact list? Heck, I'd file a missing person report in some of these cases. For Sean Penn, its different. But for your average Betty from the Bronx, what should a caring person do?

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I, too, was a victim of ghosting. We had been dating for 4 months and he was leaving for the weekend to attend a conference. I told him to have a great weekend and then never heard from him again. I was surprised because he had always been respectful and mature. I never reached out to him because truth be told, I had planned on ending the relationship anyway. I'm guessing he just thought he'd beat me to it.

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Now I see I am well rid of such a spineless liar, but when it happened, I was devastated. No one deserves this kind of treatment.

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Lots of people are saying "ghosting" is cowardly. Funny thing, the "ghoster" doesn't care. They want their comfort above all else.

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"Ghosting" is a non-adult way of avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. With that said, two stories:

Years ago, I had two dates with a man who was lovely but not a match. As I pondered what to do, I received a note from him, telling me that while he was happy to have met me and thought I was terrific, he did not think we were not a match, and he wished me well. I remember thinking what a sweet affirming note and a class act.

Also years ago, I had three dates with a guy who was also not a match. On our second date, he bemoaned how people seemed to need to have conversations when breaking up, and why couldn't people just fade away, wasn't that the same message? Bemused, I stored that note in my head, and after the third date, when I was sure we were not a match, rather than send him a note, I gave him his wish and simply faded away. That's the only time I've ever ghosted another person, and I believe it was mutual.

At the end of the day, "ghostees" are actually lucky in that their candidates disqualify themselves as partners, as they reveal their lack of empathy, not to mention their inability to conduct adult and possibly uncomfortable conversations.

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PEOPLE! Be human. Before you take what seems like the easy way out and just ignore a person you've been connecting well with (even if only online so far), just think about how it would feel for you if it were reversed!

If you thought things were going fine and showing promise; if you had bought tickets for the show you both agreed to see, or ingredients for the dinner you both agreed to make; or if you had showed up at the hour and place you had both agreed to meet… and then you heard NOTHING. Ever. Again.

It's just profoundly inhumane, and paints you as not just lazy, inconsiderate & immature, but really sociopathic.

This has happened to me on a couple of occasions over the years, and I still don't know if the dates who did not show up as promised, or respond in any way after, are in hospital, dead, or married to someone else! I continue to be really flabbergasted at how twisted and tortured their minds must be, to decide to treat another human being so cavalierly, so meanly, so unkindly. And yes, it IS a decision, even though you "ghosters" may be telling yourself, "I just let it slide, I didn't make any decision at all, it just happened by my not doing anything…"

It actually takes LESS psychic energy on your part to text a quick "Can't make it after all. Something came up." and perhaps later, "I'm not feeling it, I'd rather not continue. Sorry." THEN block & disconnect. Be worthy of the word Human, and of being treated as such by the next person you connect with.