There’s too much to do in a day to have to think about everything. Some things have to be committed to habit status or they just won’t get done. If I have to remember to floss my teeth, I’ll never want to, or have enough time, or just plain get around to it. But if flossing my teeth is just the automatic last phase of eating a meal, then it happens all the time and I rarely give it a second thought.

But an odd thing happens when life gets crazy. Just when I need my habits the most, they leave me and retreat to calmer pastures where they can watch from a safe distance as I flounder through the day. Things like taking my vitamins, or flossing, or taking walks, or doing my crunches, or making a salad just fall by the wayside.

Well, I’ve come through a busy patch. Or rather, I’ve come through the worst of a busy patch that began last August and will end sometime in early June (if all goes well). So today I began the process of reinstating all of my good habits. Today, that meant thinking reminding myself to do a lot of things, and I’ll probably be forced to think hard about these little tasks all week, but hopefully by sometime next week I’ll be back to automatically taking my vitamins in the morning and doing my crunches in the evening.

Wish me luck!

A competing rental property in town sent out a handy postcard. Or rather, they sent it to Resident, who apparently lives in this apartment, too. “Need a change of scenery?” the postcard asks. Then it offers the competing company’s rental properties as alternatives to this one, and it finishes up with this promise:

This postcard is worth a great deal bring it with you for $200 off your first months rent for qualified applicants, some restrictions apply.

Yes, I copied that down faithfully. And no, this does not inspire me with confidence that this other management company is any more intelligent than my current one is. My current property manager prefers fonts and colors to clarity and argument, and it prefers to make new rules rather than work with individual residents to correct inappropriate behavior. But so far my current property manager hasn’t butchered the English language to quite this extent.

Getting invited to parties is an inherently stressful occurrence in my life. I know that I’ll have to decide what to wear (is this jeans-casual, slacks-casual, skirt-casual, slacks-formal, skirt-formal, or dress formal?), I’ll have to sit talk with multiple people I don’t know (I live in awe of people who can just pick a conversation out of the air and keep people talking for hours), not say the first thing that jumps to mind (because when I’m nervous, stupid things come out of my mouth), and generally expend a lot of energy looking like I do this sort of thing all the time.

Well, tonight I’ll be engaging in just such a gathering. My neighbor is celebrating her birthday by inviting all of her friends to hang out with her at a local restaurant/bar. And by “all of her friends” I mean droves of people, none of whom I’ve met or even heard of, all of whom have known each other since grade school, and all of whom are actually from this town. I can’t even conceive of what it might feel like to be so very much from a place that you still see friends from kindergarten, and frankly, this freaks me out. Think of all the in-jokes they know!

So I set myself some tasks that would increase my odds of actually going to this party rather than slipping into my PJs and making cocoa. I bought her flowers, I left my car out of the garage, I told a work friend I was going, and I got home and immediately changed into clothes that I will wear and NOT second-guess. Now, if I don’t go, I’ll have flowers to take care of (and keep the cat away from), I’ll have to move my car, I’ll have to tell my co-worker I chickened out when she asked me how it went, and I’ll have to change clothes yet again for no good reason. That all seems like work.

But just to be safe, I’ve got a plan of action for while I’m there. I’ll arrive a little late so I’m not the first person there, and I’ll “have to leave” after 45 minutes or an hour after I get there if I’m not having a good time. I think I’ll probably survive for an hour. Most likely. Maybe.

Update: Well… That was anticlimactic. They weren’t at the place I thought they’d be. So now I’m home, my car is put away, I’ve changed into PJs, and I’ve left the flowers at her door with a card. Time to make cocoa and curl up with a kitty.

I spent the vast majority of my day yesterday cleaning the apartment. I hadn’t done this kind of a cleaning since before classes started in the fall, which is just so embarrassing to admit, especially since I used to do it every single weekend. I didn’t wash my windows or scrub my walls or dust my baseboards or anything like that. This was just routine stuff… dusting, vacuuming, laundry (including sheets and towels and staggered in such a way that I even washed what I was wearing in the morning), kitchen and bathroom floors, kitchen in general, bathroom in general, and all around general tidying.

Pippin did not appreciate this activity. Not one bit. He spent the day under the bed.

As I worked I kept telling myself that this would be so much easier (and so much less gross) if I just did a little bit every day, or every weekend. When did I stop caring so much if the kitchen floor wasn’t swept every night, or if the folded laundry stayed piled on the dresser rather than tucked away into it? When did it become ok for dishes to sit in the sink waiting (of all things) until I put away the clean ones in the dishwasher and made room for the dirty ones? When did the bare minimum begin to pass for enough?

But just as I caught myself saying that 20 minutes every evening wouldn’t kill me I realized that it’s just not that important. Right now other things (like my new Japanese lessons, or my exciting-but-daunting new work projects) take pretty much all of my energy, and I’m ok with that. As long as this place doesn’t turn into a sty, I’m ok with a little dust. I’ll get to it when it absolutely needs it.

Of course, my problems would be solved if I hired somebody to do this kind of thing for me… but that’ll never happen.

Thin tooth enamel, or rather, the decalcification of that thin tooth enamel, landed me in the dentist’s chair this afternoon. But what should have been a quick appointment to drill just enough to create space for a filling to cover the decalcified areas turned into an hour-long ordeal. The first filling went in uneventfully in about 10 or 15 minutes. But for some reason, the novocain just didn’t want to deaden the area for the second filling. He’d tried numbing both areas at the beginning; then he tested the second area after placing the first filling only to find that it wasn’t numb. So he gave me a second shot. And then a third. And then a fourth.

Finally on the fourth time, the area went dead and he could proceed with the 15 minute procedure. I left the office at about 3:30 cursing my luck that the only part of the whole ordeal that I really and truly dislike, the only part that makes me shaky and palm-sweaty, is the part I had to endure FIVE TIMES.

Unfortunately, by this point I was pretty much pickled in novocain, and 6:30pm rolled around without any restoration of feeling. I couldn’t even feel my right ear. That’s when I realized I’d need a new plan to get some calories in me before going in to work from 7-10pm. Eating dinner, wasn’t going to be an option. A friend suggested a milk shake, so I figured out where the McDonald’s is located in town and drove there on my way to the office. What could be easier than driving through the drive-through, getting a shake, and getting to work? Nothing.

Well, first of all, it was still -13 Fahrenheit plus a hefty wind-chill (but I try never to look at the wind-chill because that’s just depressing), and my car window wouldn’t roll down. So I had to open my whole car door to place my order (giggling to myself that I was probably the only person buying a milk shake in -13 degree weather). Then I asked how small their “small” shake was, because it’s been a while since I ordered a drink at McDonald’s and I couldn’t remember if it’d actually be small or if it’d be more like a medium masquerading as a small. The gentleman on the other end of the speaker was very helpful.

“It’s the size of our smallest cup, unless you want the kid’s size,” he informed me.

“Yes, I understand that. I’m not familiar with the sizes, though, so do you know about how big it is?”

“It’s just, you know, a regular ‘small’ sized cup.”

“Fine… I’d like a small shake, please.”

It turned out to be about a 12oz size, which was what I’d wanted (and what I believe used to be a medium size, once upon a time). Of course, then I had to pull around, pay at one window, and collect my shake at the next window, all without the benefit of a car window that would roll down.