And she returns...

*swipes dust off of everything, sneezes*

Okay, then.

The winds of change have started blowing around here, and I can actually say I think I've gotten to a point where I'm looking forward with more good feelings than bad. Honestly, right now I'm fighting the urge to just take the quickest exit route I can find, damn the loss of potential income, and get ready to face the "next big thing," whatever that turns out to be. However, I've got a metric crap ton of stuff to deal with at the store, and I mean that in a literal sense. Piles and piles and piles of fabric and art supplies that don't have a place to go just yet. More supplies than merchandise, actually. And right now my mind is on other more pressing things, timeline-wise, so I'm going to just have to stick with my gradual exit strategy.

In the meantime, my third and very last NIN show is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I'm super pumped. The setlists have been looking AMAZING (please play The Becoming!!!!), and even though I would have liked for there to have been a pit, I'm kind of glad we don't have to sit in line all day. In the sun. Getting sunburned and dehydrated. In the sun. Have I mentioned I don't like the sun?

Anyway, in anticipation of the last tour (and mostly because we finally sold the Jetta and thus came into the amount of expendible cash that would allow us to do all the stuff we've talked about doing for, like, months) Kourt and I got new tattoos and NIN-ed out her Beetle:

It had been over three years since we'd gotten inked, which is longer than I think I've ever gone between tats before, so we were long overdue. We didn't intend to get two each, but they charged way less than we expected for the large ones we got, so we decided that while we were already there we might as well get those tambourine tats we'd been joking about getting ever since last November.

Kourt's been talking about painting the stripe from The Slip down the side of her car for a month or two now, and although I have zero experience in painting cars, I agreed to give it a go. It's not the most professional paint job ever done, by any means, but it didn't turn out half bad. Granted, now we've got a shit ton of red car paint in the garage that we don't know what to do with, but the quart container was the smallest amount we could get.

Of course, now we kinda look like psychotic fangirls, but whatever. At least we're not slashing our wrists over Trent's engagement or gnashing teeth over Jane's Addiction closing the shows or whatever else is now the fangirl crisis-of-the-moment.

Then, after the NIN show is past us, I have to get ready to attend the KD National Convention in Orlando at the end of June. I got to go to the National Leadership Conference in Boston last summer by virtue of being the only alumna who could get off work for that many days, and it was a lot of fun. I'd been to one NLC while I was in college, but I've never been to an actual Convention (they only happen every other year). I was afraid somebody else would be able to go this time around and I'd have to play fair and let somebody else be the delegate, but since all the other alumnae have inflexible job schedules and/or children and/or impending births, I get an almost free trip to Disney! I'm way more excited than I probably have a right to be over the fact that I have to get a formal gown and a cocktail dress for the festivities. It's been ten years since I really, really dressed up for anything.

However, now that I'm actually looking for nice dresses to wear, I'm completely disgusted by how much weight I've gained over the last four years or so. This is the fattest I've ever been in my life, and there's just no way I'm going to feel good in a dress when my body looks so horrible in one. I tried on what would be a really adorable black cocktail dress tonight, and looked so insanely horrible in it that I can't even put it into words. It's not that I ever expect to be skinny, but I was actually pretty happy with how I looked when I was around 200lbs and still shapely. The past three years, especially, I've kind of let myself go.

So it's time for drastic measures. No more crap junk food at the K&G while I'm working. No more big meals. I'm cracking down over the next seven weeks, for my own benefit. I think this might be step one in concentrating on myself again, instead of expending all my energy focusing on so many other things.

Okay, enough words for the night.

Gave up

Got one thing off my plate today, and passed the presidency of the sorority alumnae association off to somebody else. I've been doing a crap job at it for at least the past year, despite any nice words anyone has to say to try and smooth over that obvious fact. It all started off pretty well, agendas and communication and all. But I've obviously got more on my plate now than I can handle, and some things have got to go.

I didn't plan to take on the presidency to begin with, but agreed to it thinking that it really wasn't going to take up that much of my time. And to be honest, it's not that it would have taken that much time to do a good job. I like to say that I just don't have time for everything, but in reality I think the problem isn't dwindling time as much as it's dwindling capacity to keep everything straight in my head.

It used to make me feel really good to have a lot of things going on in my life at once, lots of things to juggle. But I'm increasingly realizing that there's a limit to that, and priorities have to be set. The store has to be my main priority, and it's hard enough to keep all the pieces of that in the air, much less all the other things I've taken on in addition.

So now it feels really good to pass that off to somebody else. It's not like I'm abandoning the alumnae stuff altogether. I just need a little bit more mind space and, well, a little less guilt. Every time a meeting rolled around and I found myself unprepared yet again, I felt really bad about it. Self-induced guilt is not conducive to productivity at all.