This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Monday, December 4, 2023
10:53pm
Me: I will get up early and do all the things today!
Also me: 10AM is good, right?
I did things today.
I ran errands and took like two and a half hours to do them because… well, not because I wanted to, trust me. But I was not rushed. I just did what I had to do and got home when I got home.
And because I was smart, when I went to Target and there was some music blaring out of the ceiling because it is not enough to have background music anymore, you have to feel like you are at a concert when you’re picking out toilet paper, and when the kid in the cart behind me started screeching and this seemed not to bother the mother at all, I put on my headphones, turned up the volume, and played the entire Nutcracker Suite.
I would prefer NOT to blare things in my ears but I will take the Sugarplum Fairy over screeching kids and whatever the heck passes for music these days.
The rest of the day was great… well, except for that one part where I had to post on Google maps for my clients. It was the only time of the day I was aggravated and lost my temper. Because you have to log in but you can’t do that without first getting the secret code on your YouTube app because that’s the thing now. Can’t log into a browser on a computer unless you have a phone with the YouTube app.
And then the post box doesn’t work with my ad blocker which I somehow always forget so I put in all the text and photos and then try to submit it and it blanks out and of course that means I have to do it all over again. Because if Google can’t track you while you’re posting something about a tension pin on your business listing, then what good is it?
So yeah, that aggravated the snowflakes out of me.
As did logging into Facebook to post my brother’s trivia question from last week’s livestream because now Facebook has this thing where EVERY TIME and by every time I mean EVERY TIME I log in, even if I was JUST logged in and closed the window, it pops up a message that tells me someone tried to log in as me.
This is me rolling my eyes so hard they go up into my brain a little.
Then I have to click to see a map and then I have to click to confirm my location and THEN I have to get the code and then I have to choose whether I want it to remember my browser which is a joke because like that has EVER ONCE happened?
24 hours in a day and it only took five seconds for the internet to frost my cookies.
But that’s not what I came here to tell you. Just had to get that off my chest.
I came to tell you that I did my own thing today and none of it involved the internet except for watching the football game, which was fine because every time it cuts to commercial I slam the mute button. And it was great.
After my errands, do you know what I did? I picked up Burger King for lunch.
That is so… I mean… someone check the Mayan calendar, it sounds like the end times.
I never proactively eat Burger King. Sometimes Ralph will want it and I will go along, but I can count on zero fingers the number of times I have willingly of my own accord gone and gotten Burger King.
But I was off the reservation already, what with buying a whole new sweater for this Friday’s Whiskey Society dinner, so I decided it would be a nice surprise to come home with. And lest you think I was being altruistic, there is a side benefit of having Burger King for lunch: neither of us is hungry by dinner.
So as a bonus on this Day of Things, I did not cook dinner. Not even so much as a sandwich.
Also on this Day of Things, I decided to take the fall clings off the windows, because acorns are so last month. For a fleeting moment I considered trying Amazon once more for Christmas clings but then I slapped myself across the face one or twice and got over it.
Still, the windows looked so bare.
But it was my Day of Things, so I had an idea.
Not an hour earlier, Ralph had tossed a tiny little notepad at me because it had come free with something he bought. He said I know you like to keep these things so I didn’t want to throw it out.
Translation: it’s useless but you’re OCD like that, so here.
It really was kind of useless, just a three-inch square, which means to write this blog I’d need about ten thousand pages, but I put it in a drawer because… you never know.
And then suddenly I knew!
I was going to cut out tiny paper snowflakes and hang them on the windows. For free!
And because it was my Day of Things, and I had nothing of urgency to do, I cut out tiny paper snowflakes and hung them on the windows. It turns out that a three inch square is the perfect size to make snowflakes for your windows.
And then I took a picture of it and was going to put it here but the windows were so dirty that it was actually embarrassing. So I washed the windows. Because it was my Day of Things and if I wanted clean windows I was going to get clean windows.
On my Day of Things I decided to start my tea library. It’s something I put on my countdown/count up board when I had a countdown/count up board. Instead of ten random teas in paper bags thrown into a bucket on the counter, I decided I wanted nice little labelled containers. I have a few teas in jars but jars are not good for that because you are supposed to keep tea out of light to preserve its flavor. I really needed tins.
I went on Amazon for about six seconds, and searched for four ounce tea tins and got one ounce tea tins and also candles and coffee. Then I read a few reviews about how some of these things were the best/worst things ever and slapped myself across the face again and went to Simpson & Vail’s website.
Why didn’t I think of that first? They have tons of tins and I’d rather give them my money anyway. I found exactly what I wanted and bought two. I decided to start small and see how I liked the tins before committing. I mean, I have options. You never know.
Since I had already been aggravated by Amazon I decided to make it worth my while and bought a frame for my puzzle. I decided to turn it into art after all. I tested putting it in a frame that I already have with a poster in it, and it fit perfectly. Didn’t even have to glue it together.
So I bought the same one for my puzzle.
By this point I was feeling invincible so I journaled all about it and then realized that all the pencils in my case were teeny tiny. Turns out when you write with them, pencils actually get smaller.
They are too small to write with but they are so cool! And I hate to throw out cool stuff. So I decided, on this Day of Things, to start a tiny pencil collection. I put them into one of my many jars, and since I love jars anyway this works out rather well. Over time as I write more words, the collection will grow and continue to look even more cool.
Who needs art when you have a jar full of tiny pencils?
There is – or was, since they are sadly closed now – a pencil store in New York where Ralph bought me a whole slew of very cool pencils. I used to get their email newsletters and one Christmas they sent out a newsletter with a picture of a tiny Christmas village. It had trees and houses and stores and a little fake snow.
It was made wholly out of tiny pencils.
How cool is that! Maybe one day I will have enough pencils to make a pencil town. If I have more days like this, I may even get around to building it.
After that I painted. And wrote some words. A lot of them, if the word count on this document is anything to go by.
My Day of Things was a great success. It’s amazing how many things you can do when you don’t have to do so many things.
You sometimes hear people say they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they retired. Or how bored they’d get if they were suddenly rich and didn’t have to work anymore.
I’m here to tell you I’d make an excellent retired rich person. And I figured out how I’m going to do it. I’m going to create a lifestyle brand called Life Is Random, and I’m going to start by designing cocktail napkins. Very cool cocktail napkins, with awesome artwork, for every occasion. And then I’m going to put a tiny shark somewhere on every one. Maybe a mermaid. Probably a beehive. You can start placing your orders now.
Photo: some tiny snowflakes on some clean windows.