The Many Ways I Don't Have My Life Together
Photo by: Gino Crescoli
If you tuned in last week, I shared a little bit about
the ways that I keep my life organized and gave a glimpse at just how analytical
my brain is. In the spirit of being human, I thought it only fair to also share
the many ways that I don’t have my life together (and maybe never will), my
quirks, and the many ways I don’t actually make sense. At the end of the day,
we all do the best that we can with the time, energy, and resources that we
have. And reflecting on the many ways I
don’t have my life together serves to remind me that I am still here, the world
hasn’t ended as a result, and that God’s immeasurable grace is more than enough
in my failings.
1) I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables and don’t drink enough water. It takes a lot of conscious effort for me to remember to drink adequate amounts of water. I usually start the day well, but after lunch, it’s all downhill.
2) I can’t walk in heels to save my life. I live in a country with rocky terrain, and I also live in a country where Latinas with beautiful, shiny hair and gorgeous skin walk on that rocky terrain in 6-inch heels. It baffles me. I often think high heels are pretty, but practicality and the health of my ankles always wins out.
Photo by: Apostolos Vamvouras
3) The house we live in has a leaky faucet that my husband has tried to fix numerous times. We’ve changed parts and added sealant and caulking and the whole nine yards. Nothing works. Now, our sink has a permanent friend below, named “bucket.”
4) I am a sucker for condiments and sauces. My husband also has a jam obsession. Needless to say, our refrigerator holds far more condiments that any two people need.
Photo by: Calum Lewis
5) Raúl and I both hate washing dishes. It’s our most shirked chore.
6) I am one of those people who would rather make one trip from my car to the house (down the hill) to bring in groceries…even if that means carrying six bags on each arm. Blood vessels have been broken.
7) I have very little depth perception when driving. My biggest issues of hitting something or other cars haven’t occurred on the road but rather in parking areas. In my defense, driving around here is just tighter in general. Everything is closer together. I have been known to sit in the road waiting because from my vantage point, I can’t pass another car or an obstacle. Meanwhile, all bystanders and other drivers are looking at me like I’m an idiot because I actually can get through. I am also not above asking random people around me to direct me because I know my weaknesses all too well.
8) I am a pen snob. Ever since my aunt introduced me to the world of different kinds of pens and ink when I was younger, I cannot be content with a ballpoint pen. I hate them. I try to keep it low-key and at least a little less high maintenance, so my compromise is pens with gel ink—usually Pilots.
9) I can’t keep track of all of the laws here in Honduras. I only recently discovered there is a Honduran version of the IRS. Thankfully, I don’t have to pay taxes here. In general, unless it shows up in the newspaper, which I often don’t read, there aren’t a lot of ways of knowing about stuff. But, for that reason, the government usually gives lots of periods of amnesty. They’re also known for changing their minds after they’ve set unrealistic goals. (A la “Hey everyone! You have three months to change your license plates! Oh wait, we ran out of license plate making materials. Just kidding. You can wait longer now.”)
10) I have some guilty pleasures—watching clips of late-night talk shows, buying chocolate milk as a reward for doing grocery shopping at all, and crossword puzzles. I also may have a large bag of chocolate chips that I bought for making cookies at Christmas that is almost empty now and was never used to make cookies.
11) I still haven’t found a good exercise routine. It shows. Thank you, chocolate chips.
12) My inbox has far too many e-mails I should’ve deleted long ago.
13) I don’t always make my bed. I always feel better when I do, and it takes maybe a minute maximum, but on days when we probably aren’t going to have visitors at the house, I sometimes let it go.
14) I hate making phone calls. Those kinds of things can be on my to-do list for ages. If I can send a message instead, I’ll have it done in 30 seconds, but making phone calls takes so much more social energy. So I put it off for as long as I can.
15) I still struggle with saying no. I’ve improved greatly over the last two years, but I am much much braver in my head than in real life (unless I am defending someone else).
16) When I get very invested in a story, I have a one-track mind. If I’m incredibly invested in book or TV show characters, I want to see their story through until it’s done.
Photo by: Walter Bichler
1) I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables and don’t drink enough water. It takes a lot of conscious effort for me to remember to drink adequate amounts of water. I usually start the day well, but after lunch, it’s all downhill.
2) I can’t walk in heels to save my life. I live in a country with rocky terrain, and I also live in a country where Latinas with beautiful, shiny hair and gorgeous skin walk on that rocky terrain in 6-inch heels. It baffles me. I often think high heels are pretty, but practicality and the health of my ankles always wins out.
Photo by: Apostolos Vamvouras
3) The house we live in has a leaky faucet that my husband has tried to fix numerous times. We’ve changed parts and added sealant and caulking and the whole nine yards. Nothing works. Now, our sink has a permanent friend below, named “bucket.”
4) I am a sucker for condiments and sauces. My husband also has a jam obsession. Needless to say, our refrigerator holds far more condiments that any two people need.
Photo by: Calum Lewis
5) Raúl and I both hate washing dishes. It’s our most shirked chore.
6) I am one of those people who would rather make one trip from my car to the house (down the hill) to bring in groceries…even if that means carrying six bags on each arm. Blood vessels have been broken.
7) I have very little depth perception when driving. My biggest issues of hitting something or other cars haven’t occurred on the road but rather in parking areas. In my defense, driving around here is just tighter in general. Everything is closer together. I have been known to sit in the road waiting because from my vantage point, I can’t pass another car or an obstacle. Meanwhile, all bystanders and other drivers are looking at me like I’m an idiot because I actually can get through. I am also not above asking random people around me to direct me because I know my weaknesses all too well.
8) I am a pen snob. Ever since my aunt introduced me to the world of different kinds of pens and ink when I was younger, I cannot be content with a ballpoint pen. I hate them. I try to keep it low-key and at least a little less high maintenance, so my compromise is pens with gel ink—usually Pilots.
9) I can’t keep track of all of the laws here in Honduras. I only recently discovered there is a Honduran version of the IRS. Thankfully, I don’t have to pay taxes here. In general, unless it shows up in the newspaper, which I often don’t read, there aren’t a lot of ways of knowing about stuff. But, for that reason, the government usually gives lots of periods of amnesty. They’re also known for changing their minds after they’ve set unrealistic goals. (A la “Hey everyone! You have three months to change your license plates! Oh wait, we ran out of license plate making materials. Just kidding. You can wait longer now.”)
10) I have some guilty pleasures—watching clips of late-night talk shows, buying chocolate milk as a reward for doing grocery shopping at all, and crossword puzzles. I also may have a large bag of chocolate chips that I bought for making cookies at Christmas that is almost empty now and was never used to make cookies.
11) I still haven’t found a good exercise routine. It shows. Thank you, chocolate chips.
12) My inbox has far too many e-mails I should’ve deleted long ago.
13) I don’t always make my bed. I always feel better when I do, and it takes maybe a minute maximum, but on days when we probably aren’t going to have visitors at the house, I sometimes let it go.
14) I hate making phone calls. Those kinds of things can be on my to-do list for ages. If I can send a message instead, I’ll have it done in 30 seconds, but making phone calls takes so much more social energy. So I put it off for as long as I can.
15) I still struggle with saying no. I’ve improved greatly over the last two years, but I am much much braver in my head than in real life (unless I am defending someone else).
16) When I get very invested in a story, I have a one-track mind. If I’m incredibly invested in book or TV show characters, I want to see their story through until it’s done.
Photo by: Walter Bichler
17) I cut my own hair, which is why when I finally do get a real haircut, I’m going to hear all about how uneven it is. I have wavy hair, so it’s pretty forgiving. I was afraid to cut my own hair for the longest time. But, after several haircuts that turned out awful, I said, “Well, if it’s going to be awful, it might as well be awful without paying for it.” Usually, the issue is that hair stylists here cut my hair as if I’m going to wear it straight. I almost never wear my hair straight as my straightener doesn’t work and as I live in a country with a rainy season. Seriously, 25 minutes of my life down the drain after just two drops of rain. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
18) I have a terrible sense of direction. My brain takes pictures, not video. I can tell that I’ve been somewhere before, but I can’t tell you how to get from A to B. I am, however, capable of reading a map and following step-by-step directions.
19) We have a table in our house covered with towels where all the clean dishes go to live. We’re often washing dishes in large batches, and our kitchen is tiny. So, rather than spending lots of time drying dishes to put them away, they end up on the table where they drip dry before being put away.
20) The majority of my “Tupperware” is just leftover ice cream and yogurt containers. It’s the new generation of the Country Crock mystery tubs in from my grandmother’s refrigerator. We have yogurt?! Uh, no. It’s diced zucchini…sorry.
21) My husband and I have an ongoing battle—he’s always trying to bring more junk into the house while I’m constantly trying to get rid of it.
22) I came back from the States last year really wanting to start a little garden. We have no yard, but I had great ideas for vertical gardening and just having some nature surrounding our house. It’s been a year—I have a concrete slab (to maybe someday put a lawn chair). And half of the existing flowers I did have in front of our house have died.
Some aspects of life here has its own quirks that can end up feeling like a Honduran version of lyrics from Alanis Morissette’s song, “Ironic.” Such as:
1) Neighbors burning garbage when the grass is so dry it’s brown, and there are non-stop forest fires being battled all over the country.
2) An unplanned power outage on the one day I make dinner in the crockpot or when I have a Skype meeting or when I need to pay an online bill.
3) When the cooking gas runs out in the middle of cooking or baking something.
4) When it takes an hour and a half to get to somewhere that normally takes half an hour to get to all because it rained, and somehow, this always greatly affects traffic.
5) When I’m told to be at a kindergarten graduation at 2pm, and it doesn’t start till 4pm…and doesn’t finish until 6:30pm.
Photo by: Matthew Everard
6) When my beloved time blind husband thinks he’s going to get done more things than will fit in the time available…on our date night.
7) When I haven’t bathed in two days, and every dish in the house is dirty because the water truck still hasn’t come.
8) When one neighbor is blasting heavy metal in English, another neighbor is blasting reggaeton, and another neighbor is blasting the Honduran version of bluegrass/country worship music all at 6am on a Sunday morning.
9) When the bank tells you your debit cards will be ready next week, and when you go to pick them up, they haven’t even ordered them. Or, when the person at the bank is literally holding your identification card in his hand and still spells your name wrong on every single form (and has to go back and fix each one).
10) When you go to the immigration office to renew your ID card but the electricity goes out multiple times, so you wait in line all day just to talk to a live person when their computer system comes back online only to discover that they don’t have plastic to make the cards and won’t for weeks.
There are way more that I could think of, but the bottom line is that it’s an ongoing adventure that seldom makes any logical sense. Oddly enough, the longer you live in such an environment, the quicker you get at anticipating exactly what will happen even though it still makes no logical sense. It’s a series of curveballs that keep you on your toes, which on the best of days can lead to laughter and the “oh well” hands and on the worst of days can lead to eye rolling, deep sighing, and cussing. The great news is that in the midst of life quirkiness or the ways I don’t have life together, God is constantly giving me amnesty. He doesn’t ever change the rules on me or abandon me in the midst of it all. He offers grace to me and to the government that boggles the mind sometimes, to the neighbors burning garbage, and to the culture that sometimes turns up the heat on my refiner’s fire. I’m so grateful that while none of us have it all together, that He does.
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