Being very productive and being very unproductive in the same day makes for the perfect balance.

I love those days when you do absolutely nothing, yet feel like you accomplished so much. Today was one of those days for me. There was a showing on the house today, so I had to be up earlier than I would have liked. And when I say I "had to be up", I really mean I didn't want strangers creeping around while I enjoyed what I deemed to be the most comfortable sleep of my life. I deem every sleep that I'm forced to awake from the "most comfortable sleep of my life". It's just the way my sleeps work. I walked into the kitchen and saw the non-perishable bags of Trader Joe's groceries that I left there from the night before since I was in the biggest rush last night to drop off my purchases, change into stretchy pants, and flee to watch one of my all-time favorite movies at one of my all-time favorite people's house. As I begin putting away my groceries I come up with the fabulous idea to organize the freezer...

I take everything out and put it on the counter. Why isn't anything frozen solid? Oh, that's because the freezer was so JAM-PACKED with food that nothing was ventilated and therefore nothing was able to freeze. NO BIG DEAL. Partially defrosted chicken is the best anyway. When did I buy a 4L tub of ice cream? Oh, that was when I MOVED IN. Gross. And chicken wings? I haven't made chicken wings in, well, almost a year. Gross. What are these green cubes in zip-loc bags? Oh right, my failed attempt at cilantro pesto. Gross. Needless to say, after I was finished with the thing it was clean, organized, and ventilated. My 14 individually packed bags of edamame beans are now easily accessible, I discovered I have enough frozen fruit to feed a small country, and I found a hidden pack of BACON! That was the BEST surprise.

After hunks of ice have fallen onto the kitchen floor and melted everywhere, I decided to mop the floor. Not just the kitchen floor, but the entire household's floors. And I did it wrong. I cornered myself so I had NO access to my bagel and was unable to get my Lipstick Jungle DVD's from my bedroom. So there might be footprints across the living room, but they're clean. As I'm mopping the bathroom floor I decide to clean the toilet. Again. I discovered the coolest toilet cleaner ever. It's foamy, it sprays on purple and turns white when it's clean, and it smells amazing [for toilet cleaner]. I'm now obsessed with cleaning the toilet. Is it weird I wish it got dirty more frequently? Or maybe it's more sane to wish I could use this cleaner for other things. Like everything.

So now my freezer is clean and organized, my bathroom's clean, and my floors are clean, and now dry, so I have access to my bagel. That I ate with pumpkin cream cheese. Best decision.

That was the productive part of my day. The next few hours consisted of lounging on the couch, eating frozen Hostess cupcakes, and watching countless episodes of Lipstick Jungle. The only thing better than eight dollar box sets is five dollar box sets.

When one door closes, another one opens.

How exactly is it September already? How come we didn’t get a summer this year? How is it that I only got to wear my summer wardrobe (and by ‘summer wardrobe’ I mean my one pair of jean shorts and one slash two of the 1000 tank tops I own) approximately four times, but had to wear a hoody every other day of the past three months? And how is it that I’m NOT returning to school this week?! THAT is the weirdest of them all.

For the past, oh I don’t know, 23 years, I’ve spent the last week of August/first few days of September preparing for a school year of some sort. From back-to-school clothes shopping to school supplies shopping (is it weird I enjoyed this more than back-to-school clothes shopping?) to getting back in the habit of going to bed at a normal time so I could get up at 7:55 am every morning (in the past few years 7:55 am has become sleeping in for me. It could be aging, but it’s probably more due to the fact that my job requires me to begin at 4 am…so I’m up at 3:15 am…and I enjoy this?). Now, this year, I’ve spent the last week of August/first few days of September living a normal, adult life consisting of working eight hours a day, five days a week. Not buying my textbooks, not putting lined paper in empty binders, not packing my school bag 10 days in advance, and not planning the first six outfits of the school year. It’s completely foreign to me.

I’ve always told people “I can’t wait to be finished school”. I think that was a lie. I miss it.

Remember all the plans I had for this summer? A new car, trips to see K, abundant amounts of time spent with BFF drinking pepperoni caesars…well a few variations of that list actually did happen. I got a new rear window on my car, I saw K when she came to Vancouver, and I spent a good chunk of time with BFF until my bank account retaliated and no longer wanted me to consume anymore pepperoni caesars. That’s fine. I got my revenge by frequenting Trader Joe’s multiple times a week. I went from getting substantial amounts of groceries every time I went, to not being able to find anything to get because I went so often. It was a sign to bring it down a notch.

Now I’m going to force myself to be ready to move forward and get excited for fall. It does mean that I get to wear boots and scarves and sweaters (except I’ve actually been wearing sweaters all “summer”, so that one doesn’t really count). I get to sleep in pajamas with all my blankets wrapped around me like a cocoon. I get to go for brisk walks with a hot drink as opposed to sweating after four steps on my way to get a cold drink.

This fall, however, will be missing somebody along with missing school. OverSharer is taking off to Greece for three months. She claims it’s for educational purposes, I claim it’s to eat food and sit in the sun. WHY ELSE WOULD SHE NEED SUNSCREEN? Over the past few months her and I have become close.  We bonded over work gossip, her oversharing stories, food, and, well, more food. Everything to do with food. Buying it, cooking it, eating it, ordering it, looking at it, smelling it, everything. There isn’t anybody else that understands my food obsession passion like her. She gets it when I describe my dinner and get more excited than me a five year old at Christmas. She gets it when I’ve created a new snack and I squeal like a five year old at DisneyLand. But most importantly, she gets it when I convince her to try it and she gets as excited and squealy as me. True.Friendship.

Work will be less interesting without her stories. I’ll just say "it describes my symptoms ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, I totes have it", and leave it at that. Except I’ll also add "looks the same going in as coming out", and know that she won’t care because I was the one that wanted to witness it. I don’t anymore.

So now she’s gone, but she has an international text messaging plan, THANK THE STARS ABOVE, so she won’t be completely out of the loop. She's really not missing much by not being here anyway. Well, she is missing out on having the privilege of knowing my newfound kindred spirit. You know when you meet someone and you just know you two will be friends and get along like peas and carrots? Like steak and potatoes? Like milk and cereal? (I think you get it.) Well that was our first encounter. I loved him from the start. (He might be scared.) And you know how I'm obsessed with basically everything I like? Well let's just say people are included. 

But don't worry, I've already told him I'm not obsessed in an I'm-going-to-stalk-and-kill-you kind of way. Just in an I'm-going-to-stalk-you kind of way. And he's okay with it. At least he better be. Kindred spirits are always okay with each other's decisions.