Marching to the beat of a different mandolin

I'm going to blame my lack of energy today on shingles, and try not to do too much of the self-loathing thing. I went to the gym for the first time in a week yesterday, but just had a very easy workout on the elliptical and came home. My plan was to go back today, but that hasn't happened, and is unlikely to at this point. I had an open house this morning, and I think I got several good contacts out of it. One guy even waited for me to close it up so I could show him some more properties in the neighborhood right afterwards, so I'm hoping he'll continue to work with me and I'll be representing him in a purchase soon. I have learned not to count on any of these things, but I am doing the work I need to do, and I'm proud of myself for that.

But I was exhausted by the time I got home, and crawled into bed around 4:30 for a nap. Woke up at 7:30 and pondered just sleeping through the night, but decided I'd at least get out of bed and do SOMETHING, even if it just meant bringing my computer downstairs and being online from the couch instead of from bed. Hey, it's sorta progress. (My plan, though, is actually to do some tidying, once I'm done blogging about how little else I've done today.)

I have another open house tomorrow. It's a bigger, more expensive place, so we don't expect as many visitors as I had today, but I'd still love to snag a lead or five if I can. Then Toby and I have plans to go to the gym, so I'll get at least one more workout in before the weekend's over. My last dose of shingles meds is tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be feeling back to normal really soon.

Real estate is moving so slowly for me this year. Last year I sort of just lucked into a lot of good client situations. This year I have things going on, but nothing has closed yet and it's all moving at a snail's pace. I've had one short sale deal pending for six months now. I have a handful of clients in the "I'll be ready really soon" stages. I have one active listing in a small community that's not very busy. And even Toby's deal, which is a private transaction without Realtors, is taking forever. I'm not officially working for him -- he's buying the place he has been renting for the last three years from the previous landlord, who is offering it at a discount price since neither party is using Realtors that charge commissions. FSBO's (For sale by owner) are notoriously difficult. There's a reason most people hire Realtors. We're fucking worth it. If that doink had hired me, this shit would've been closed months ago. If Toby didn't have me advocating for him, he'd have signed off on a bad deal months ago. Basically the landlord is trying to get out of making any necessary repairs on the basis that he's giving Toby a good discount. Um, no. The discount is based on what you'd get if the house were in perfect condition. He keeps threatening to pull the deal and just list the place at the price he wants, but I told Toby to call his bluff. If he does list it, any buyer who comes will come with a Realtor who will advise them the same that I'm advising Toby: either get the repairs done or demand a lower price. And that Realtor is going to ask for 3% commission. So it's in the landlord's best interest to stop dicking around and make the repairs, but he's trying to wring some extra dollars out of it. The annoying thing is that he's making a big profit on it anyway. What's $3000 in contractor work when you're pocketing a $30,000 profit? I mean, 10%, okay, but still. And actually I have no memory of what his purchase price was, other than that it was much lower than the sales price. Anyway.

I'm doing some work, though. I'm a lot more active in real estate than I was earlier this year, and hopefully that will begin to pay off. It's just a slow kind of thing. Buying and selling houses are not decisions made in a day, so any relationships I cultivate now aren't going to yield a closing for many months at least. Sigh. So I'm doing other things in the meantime. Uber driving. Trivia hosting. Airbnb renting. Flipping tickets on Stubhub. (I just bought my first Timbers tickets to sell and I feel so DIRTY.)

One of my favorite colleagues at Windermere is also in WW, and this week we started going to the same meeting and hanging out after. She's younger than me and got licensed about a year after I did, so she's just now getting going. We have some things we're working on together, and I'm looking forward to what that may yield, too. I had a really nice time hanging out with her yesterday afternoon. She's very like-minded and I just love her. She's also the first person I consider a peer who calls me Margaret. Heh.

Speaking of WW...down 18.4 pounds total. My goal weight is just 7 pounds away, but I set that when a 25 pound loss seemed monumentally difficult. Now I'm thinking maybe I could move the goalposts a little farther away. Bodies are funny. I don't remember what I weighed when I started my sophomore year in college, but I do remember that I was a size 12, and my roommate mentioned to me that she weighed 142 pounds. And that sounded really high to me then. I was not fit at all, and I had a bit of a belly roll, but I'd guess my weight was like 130 at the time? That was also the year that I started gaining weight like crazy. When I was at my heaviest, at age 22, I was 199 pounds. I wasn't going to let it tip over to 200. But I was still just a size 16 then. I am really tall, after all. It was spread out. But anyway I started working with my first trainer then, and she got me down to 166 over the next two years. 33 pounds lighter, and I went down to a size 14. One size down. (I was lifting weights and doing cardio that built my muscle up, but I hadn't changed my diet yet.) Then I joined WW and set my goal weight at 142 -- that number that had once seemed irresponsibly heavy to me. And I did get there. It was from a solid combination of exercise and diet, and at my smallest, I was a size 6 in most clothes -- 3 sizes down from when I'd been 130 in college, and a size I'd last worn before I hit puberty. I weighed 105 the last time I squeezed into a size 6, at age 14. Today I weigh 162 and I'm wearing a size 12 again. I imagine I can get down to a size 8 or so, but I'll be surprised if my weight ever dips below 150 again. Muscle. It makes a difference. (Also, that self-righteous 19-year-old who thought 142 was heavy? She can go fuck herself. Except she won't because she was afraid of vaginas back then.)

I am busy. I think it's good for me to be busy. It can be overwhelming and I still have lots of sadness lingering, but I am doing things that are good for me.

I listed a property yesterday and I already have 3 offers. I'm psyched because this one is way out in the far 'burbs and I wasn't sure how quickly it would move. So that's a weight off, knowing I'll get paid at least once more this year. I've also had airbnb people pretty regularly at my place for the last few months, with reservations continuing through November, so that's a nice supplement, and motivation to keep my house sort of tidy.

I volunteered to coach YMCA basketball this fall. Actually, I sent an email asking about it, and then today I got an email with a roster of little girls and practice and game times telling me this is my team. Well then! Luckily the time commitments don't interfere too much with what's already on my schedule, so I can go ahead and take on this team, but the first game is while I'm away for the Ragnar race in California. Hopefully I can work that out. If any locals want to co-coach with me, let me know. Definitely looking for someone who can at least sub that first weekend.

This morning I went to the pumpkin patch with Shanon and her kids. All the pumpkins there were kind of rotten and gross, so we didn't get any, but we had a fun time playing on the farm, and then I bought some Halloween decorations at their shop. I'd like to do a pumpkin carving thing in a couple weeks, maybe, if some friends would be into that. I'm pretty terrible at this sort of thing, but it could be fun anyway. I'm proud of myself though because my house looks kind of festive. I planted mums in the toilet in the back yard, and I strung some lights back there. The inside of the house is coming along slowly, too. I'm definitely no housekeeper, but for some reason Shanon likes to do this sort of thing, so she's been helping me get things cleaner around here.

Mandolin is going really well. I've been taking private lessons once a week and also attending a beginning bluegrass class called Taborgrass for 3 hours each Saturday. It's all kinds of instruments (though 3/4 of the room is guitars -- there are also a couple other mandos, some fiddles, dobros, banjos, and a bass) and the format is very easy to follow. It feels like we're actually making real music in there, and that's empowering. It encourages me to keep at it, anyway. Emily came down from Vancouver and did a class with me last weekend with her guitar. It was great.

All these activities and positives help balance out the very difficult things I've been going through, too. I hope this isn't one of those things where I make myself so busy that I can't process the hard stuff and then I eventually collapse under the strain of it all and have a real meltdown...I don't *feel* like that's coming, but I'm on guard, anyway.

I've been really absent from here for a lot of reasons. One, I'm really busy all the time lately. I don't spend much leisure time on my computer anymore. Two, I've been depressed and one of the manifestations of that depression is neglecting this community that is really important to me. I'm sorry. I don't mean to do that. Thank you to Michelle for reaching out to check on me. I'm okay. This depression isn't crippling in the way that many past iterations have been. It's just taking me more offline. Which isn't the worst thing. But I do miss the fuck out of my little lj community.

I'm currently at the gate in Chicago waiting to fly to Burlington for my friend Helen's wedding. I've known Helen since sixth grade and will be reuniting with several old friends for this happy occasion, so I'm really excited. I'm also somewhat concerned about how being at a wedding will affect my emotions. It could be not at all. Or it could put me in that omg what have I done with my life kind of place that makes me cry and drunk dial McKenzie until I pass out in a pathetic heap of sorrow while my horrified childhood friends wonder what to do. I mean that probably won't happen, but it's not impossible. We'll see!

I miss Z like crazy. We haven't spoken in over a month. It's not hostile, I don't think. It's just what he has requested for his own healing. And it's probably good for me, too. But I miss him so thoroughly and intensely that I wonder if I'll ever not regret the path I've taken. Which is...a fucked up thing to feel. We were so unhappy in our marriage and we worked as hard as we both could to fix it. So I don't miss the marriage and I don't want it back...but I miss him. So fucking much. And maybe the real reason I haven't blogged in so long is that this is the only thing I want to write about...and at the same time, I really, really don't...I don't know. I'm sad. About this. But mostly things are good.

Work is going really well. I'm done at my claims job, full time Realtoring now, and doing really well. I have my second listing, and a third in the works. I've closed four deals and have a big one coming up. I still wonder a lot if it's really for real, but it sure seems like it. My colleagues tell me that my principal broker brags about me all the time.

And then there's my social life...the other reason I'm never online anymore. It's full. It's busy, it's fun, my friends are wonderful, I'm having a good time. But being that busy is stressful, too. I don't have enough down time these days and I need to work on finding balance. It's a process.

I mentioned before that I don't like the idea of resolutions -- you should try to better yourself whenever you can, not just because the calendar says it's time. That said, a lot of changes I'm trying to make sort of line up with the turning of the calendar, so, what the hell, my New Year's resolutions for 2015:

Drink less soda -- not sure if I am going to cut it out completely, but I need to cut way back for sure. I'm going back to my policy of not stocking it in my fridge or at my office. When I have a case of it around, I tend to chain-drink them. So I'm going back to what was a successful policy of purchasing no more than one soda at a time. If I need another, I have to go back to 7-11 or whatever. I was sticking to this really well for the first part of the year, and then I thought I'd reduced my intake enough that I had the addiction side of it under control and it was just being wasteful/financially unsound to buy them one at a time, so I started buying cases again, and...whoops. So anyway I'm weaning off. I'm letting myself drink what's left at whatever pace, but when it's gone, it's gone. I thought I had close to a whole case at my office, so I figured I'd get at least a few days to taper off. But then when I got here this morning, there was none. So I guess the weaning will be less gradual than I thought. Here's hoping my caffeine withdrawal headache doesn't send me into a murderous rampage before lunch.

Reduce screen time -- I have this terrible habit of going to bed with my laptop and then playing Netflix all night, which means I never get good rest and there are a million studies that say how bad screen time at bedtime is, so I know, I know, it's gotta stop. I'm sure the combination of my poor sleep and my soda binging has a lot to do with my constant fatigue.

Get seahorses -- The tank is THISCLOSE to ready. There was a leak that I had trouble fixing, so that was kind of a setback, but I was able to make the repair yesterday and I'm pretty sure everything is back to functional. The problem is that the water sat stagnant for a while, because I couldn't run the filter system until I fixed the leak in the sump, so the salinity is way too high right now. I have to top it off with fresh water and let it cycle a little more until it's back to a normal level. THEN I can put fish in. SOON!

Sell houses -- Anyone want to buy a house in Portland? The market is great for investors right now. Rental demand is very high, so it's a great place to be a landlord. Seriously. Call me.

Lose weight -- I'm such a cliche. But the combination of all my bad habits has really caught up to me in a bad way, and I'm not happy with my body right now. So this one is twofold: eat better/smarter and work out harder. I'm signed up for a 5K at the end of January, and I intend to do a 10K in February. I should probably go ahead and sign up so that I'm committed to it. But I need to do a lot more than just running. That's not enough to keep a girl in shape. I went to a yoga class yesterday, and I'm back to seeing Ertan weekly. I need to get back to regular Pump classes, and there's a new class I want to try called GRIT Strength, but I'm afraid it's going to kill me. But I'm gonna try.

Be a better wife and partner -- Something I've been working on all year. I'm making progress.

Keep my house and car clean(er) -- Keeping it cleaner won't be hard. Keeping it clean...eh. I'm really hopeful that I'll make enough money in real estate to hire a regular cleaning service...

So that's what I'm working on. Encourage me? Thanks!

One of the pins inside the lock on our office door broke, and we needed the lock replaced. Building maintenance came by and put a whole new lock in -- all new mechanisms and even a different brand from the one we had previously -- but our old keys work in it. Makes me wonder how many doors in this town I can get into with my office key. Probably all of the ones in this complex and any others with the same property managers.

Okay, this is not funny. But it is. It isn't. But it kind of is.

We got a claim today where a truck rear-ended a van. Upon researching the accident, our adjuster discovered that it wasn't just any van...it was a bus full of handicapped...wait for it...children.

I know, I know. It's not funny. But doesn't it sound like something that would happen in a Ben Stiller movie?

Seriously, I know it's not funny.

I'm a little irked with myself over how much work I left for myself to do this week. I'm only here Monday and Tuesday, then it's off to Dallas, so it'll all be behind me soon, but I was kind of lazy last week. And of course I'm dealing with it all right now by ignoring it some more so I can write in my blog. What any reasonable adult would do.

I also feel like the weekend was over before it started. In truth, I got a lot done, and had a great time, but I'm used to my four-day weekends, and this time I just had two. Boo hoo.

I ran over to Shanon's on Saturday for a brief visit, and Jack was being super cute. I had lunch with them, and he invited me to sit in his high chair. Then when it was time to go, I said "Bye, sweetie!" and he said "Bye, sweetie!" back to me. That kid can be a real monster, but he also knows how to melt a heart.

Sunday I did my 7 miles on the treadmill at the gym while watching UVA beat Duke for the ACC title. I have mixed feelings about this. UVA looked seriously legit, and a lot of people I love are really happy that they won and got a #1 seed in the tournament, but, ugh, the last thing UVA needs is something else to be elitist about.

I went down to Salem in the afternoon to have my hair cut and repurpled. I told Angie to do whatever she wanted with it, and she went with a very-layered-in-the-back, longer in the front look. If I can reproduce her work well, it looks like a sassy vintage 'do. I'm not sure how well I'll do it, though, and it remains to be seen what it will do when I let it go curly...but I like it :) And I missed the deep purple. It's so nice to have that back. I keep thinking I'd like to try another color sometime, but I just love this purple so much!

Work today, BodyPump tonight, work tomorrow, helping a friend move in the evening, early morning run on Wednesday and then my flight to Dallas. I'm really looking forward to this NABC. I'm only entering two national events, but I have high hopes for both. Trying not to get too cocky about it, though. I don't want to be terribly disappointed when I don't win everything.

I'm so glad I worked ahead on my NY project this week. Tomorrow is the final deadline and I just have 3 pages left to do. There's a slim chance I'll even do them tonight. But I doubt it :) I'm just so relieved to have this whole thing very nearly almost completely done. It has been such a huge stress for the past month and a half, and I've kind of forgotten what it feels like not to be stressed out, but I'm really excited to start remembering.

Tonight I'm going to an organizational meeting for DI volunteers. Oregon DI is much smaller than DIVA, but they're trying to drum up more interest, so I think most of tonight's meeting will be talking about what we can do to get more kids involved, and probably delegating some responsibilities to volunteers. I haven't met with anyone from the local group yet, but I've emailed with the director a bunch and she seems great. I've told them that I'm game for just about anything. I'll have to make sure I'm not traveling on crucial dates, but I wouldn't mind coaching again, or appraising, or really anything else that they want me to do. One thing I think I would LOVE would be to go to schools and talk about my experiences as a DI alum, and get kids and parents excited about the program. I could definitely do that. It was one of the most fun parts of high school for me, and going to Globals was unforgettable. I'd love to go again as a volunteer with the local program...we'll see...so anyway I'm excited about that meeting. It's DI people, so it's gotta be better than bridge board meetings and that sort of thing, right? Right?

We leave for Hong Kong a week from tomorrow. It's been on my calendar for so long now that it feels strange to have it actually coming up soon. I normally buy my plane tickets just a few weeks in advance, if that, and this trip has been booked for five months now. I am really looking forward to it, it's just that I'm in this surreal place where I don't really have much anticipation about it, if that makes sense...

I have ten pages due tomorrow, eleven next Thursday, and then I'll be done with this freelance project. The last few times I've finished an assignment for them, they've asked me to do a few more things in addition. If that happens this time, I have the built-in excuse of China, so I can accept on the condition that the deadline is far away. Even though this assignment has been sucking my will to live, it's good money and I want to keep working with this site. The other stuff I've done for them has been much easier, so I'm optimistic that future assignments won't be as rough as this one. But I'm also hoping for a lull in the work for a while. I need to just relax for a few weeks.

Z's birthday was last week. I reminded my mom about it, and she had Lucy at the time. She told Lucy they were going to the store to pick out a card for his birthday, and she volunteered to make one instead. He opened it yesterday and it made me cry. She had looked up images of Oregon online, then printed one out and traced it so she could make a card in the shape of Oregon. She wrote all sorts of sweet things on it and we were both very touched. I called Mom to tell her we got it and she told me all about how it was Lucy's idea. That made it more special than if she had asked Lucy to make it. She's just such a thoughtful kid. I'm so freaking proud of her.

Jack and Shanon came over yesterday. Jack is getting kind of good at talking. It's really cute when he tries to say "McKenzie." He's got my name figured out :) He's still quite a little psychopath, but I enjoy him. Poor Shanon has her hands full, but she's doing great. I'm really glad they're here in Portland :)