On Our Way To Crazy

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT MY JOB

Free soda and snacks
My giant Mac
The TV in my office
Whispered office gossip on the phone
Flexible start time
Two weeks off at Christmas
The fun events I’ve gotten to attend
The creative projects
The good-kind-of-crazy people

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT MY JOB

Uncomfortable shoes
Every little thing turning into a crisis
Office gossip you think might be about you
Free soda for breakfast every morning
Rushing to beat the FedEx deadline
Buying gifts/medicine/magazines for people I do not care about
Covering the front desk at lunch
Having to think things are more important than they are
The literally crazy people

A word of advice.

If you have some big life changes, and you want to tell your extended family about them, it’s a good idea to give them a call. But be warned… if you leave them voicemails saying you have big news, you will get about fifteen messages in response that say, in effect, the following.

OH MY GAH ARE YOU PREGNANT THAT IS SO EXCITING IT’S ABOUT TIME I WAS WONDERING WHEN YOU GUYS WOULD HAVE KIDS BABY BABY BABY I HEART BABIES WHEN ARE YOU DUE WHAT ARE YOU NAMING IT OMG BBQ COOCHIE COOCHIE COO WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME SO WE CAN HAVE A SHOWER AND MAKE YOU EAT MELTED CANDY BARS OUT OF DIAPERS BABIES BABIES YAY

Then, when you tell them your news is actually house- and job-related, and not at all baby-related, you will get a half-hearted, fully-disappointed “Oh, congratulations. That’s… great.” Then you will both feel bad. And you will also feel annoyed and frustrated and glad you don’t live there where they can bug you about babies ALL THE TIME.

Good grief, people.

So. Lot’s of stuff going on this week.

1. I quit my job. Scary. I wrote last month about the church talking to me about doing youth stuff full time in the fall. Well, apparently some things shifted around on that front and they’re ready for me to come on board now. So starting April 1, I am in charge of the youth program at GracePointe. Whoa. I am really, really excited, and also slightly terrified. The church has never had a full-time youth person before, and I can’t wait to get started. There are so many things I want to do that I haven’t been able to as a volunteer. There are a lot of really exciting things going on at the church, and I am so glad I get to be a part of it.

2. We bought a house! We’ve been looking and looking and looking, and on Sunday we found something. We were driving around the neighborhood going to open houses, and we went to one that was amazing… and way out of our price range. It was a typical house for the neighborhood, but a master suite and den had been added onto the back. The house next door was also for sale, and appeared to be the same size as the first house was before the addition. So we went to see it, and y’all, I fell in love with it. It’s adorable. Huge yard, big trees, updated fixtures and appliances, 50-year-old refinished hardwoods. So we made an offer, and they accepted it! We close at the end of the May.

Big changes around here! I am exhausted. This has been one crazy week.

Today I quit my job.

Also today, we made an offer on a house.

I am going home to drink a bottle of wine. My nerves are completely shot.

Giant, scary, life-altering decisions should be limited to one per day.

Who brought sexy back Friday night? That’s right. I did.

Well, technically Justin Timberlake did. But I was there. In a seat ten feet from the stage. That I didn’t have to pay for.

Apparently Aaron knows someone who knows someone who just happens to be a billionaire. Said billionaire has a niece at Vanderbilt, and he bought said niece TWENTY-TWO tickets to the concert. But she could only find nineteen of he closest friends to attend, and the someone who knows someone called to see if we wanted the other two. Which we totally did.

That boy, y’all. He knows what he’s doing. The whole show was amazing. I could try to describe how the different platforms on the stage moved around, bringing the band up to the top level to play in the round with Justin on the piano; how these sheer curtains came down on either side when he was on the opposite side of the stage, and the image of what he was doing was projected to ten times its actual size; how he had these four incredible backup singers who seemed to be everywhere at once and rocked all four corners of the stage. I could, but I won’t. I can’t do it justice.

The best part, though, was the dancing. I’ve talked before about my love for So You Think You Can Dance… this was like that times a thousand. There were nine of them, five girls and four guys. They were FABULOUS. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It’s like I got to go to the SYTYCD tour, only way bigger and better.

It’s not a show we would have ever paid to see, especially from the seats we had. But I am so, so glad we got to go. It was pretty much awesome.

The scene: An office on Music Row, late afternoon. The phone rings. A sleepy, zoned out marketing coordinator answers.

MARKETING COORDINATOR: This is Brandi? (said in office greeting form, where one is not actually asking a question but intones like they are, inviting the caller to respond with whatever they heck they are looking for from you)

CRAZY LADY: I wrote a song.

MC: … okay.

CL: I’m not crazy, I’ve lived in this town for ten years and it’s really hard to get a break.

MC: Can I help you with something?

CL: I wrote the sequel to Fancy. I want Reba to sing it.

MC: *long boring speech about publishing deals and company’s inability to take submitted material from individuals*

CL: I’ve lived here a long time. I know a lot of people. They all think this is a great song.

MC: I’m sure it is, but I can’t accept it from you. It has to come from your publisher. Do you have a publishing deal anywhere?

CL: I should! This is a killer song. It’s really hard to get a publishing deal in this town. How do you get people to take you seriously?

MC: *wanting to say, “Don’t write sequels to Fancy, for starters”* I don’t really know the answer to that, ma’am. There are several songwriter organizations in town that can give you more information.

CL: I just want her to hear this song. It’s about what happens to Fancy later in her life.

MC: I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do to help you.

CL: But this is my dream! Are you trying to tell me that you are crushing my dream?

MC: Yes, ma’am. Crushing your dream is exactly what I’m doing.

CL: *hangs up*

I recently got a Mac at work. The screen is huge – I feel like I’m doing my work on a movie screen. But it is really cool, even if it’s taking me a while to get used to it. The major downfall, though, is that I can’t use Rhapsody anymore. It doesn’t work on Macs. This is a problem, because Rhasody is the greatest thing that ever happened to office dwellers. All the music you can listen to for $10 a month. I’m going into a bit of withdrawl.

The upside is that I recently discovered Peel, a service that automatically downloads the free songs from mp3 blogs and gives you the option to add them to your itunes. My itunes list is slowly growing, and I’m finding all kinds of new artists I’d never heard of before. Current favorites: The Morning Benders, The Go Find and The Wrens.

My ankle is strangely swollen today. It is a little sore when I walk, too. Weird.

Our friend Josh came in fourth on Nashville Star. He was slightly robbed, but gets to go on the top four tour, which is a great opportunity for him. It did end up a brother-sister final two, and the sister won, just like I said she would. Because I am awesome.

I’m currently reading Garlic and Sapphires, a Kari reccommendation, and I am just flying through it. It’s by Ruth Reichl and is about her job as the New York Times food critic. She talks about restaurants and disguises and the business of journalism, and makes them all funny and interesting. But the good stuff is when she’s talking about the food. It’s food that I would probably never eat (rabbit soup seasoned with blood? Bubbles filled with squid ink?) and will probably never have the opportunity to eat, but she describes it beautifully and with so much passion it makes me want to try. So interesting.

I’m thinking of dying my hair next week, but I have no idea what I want to do with it.

I got two fabulous pairs of shoes last week with a gift card at a buy one get one free sale. One is pointy and spike-heeled and black, the other flat and satiny and floral. Love them both.

The weather we’ve been having lately makes me wish I had a big backyard with a hammock. Maybe I should buy a house that has those things.

Someone left a comment on my last post that just about gave me a heart attack when I read it. I literally had to catch my breath. I thought I had a situation on my hands.

It’s 4:23 on a sunny Friday afternoon and my brain has completely checked out.

Three new rules to live by:

1. If I have to ‘get used’ to the taste of something, I don’t want to eat or drink it. This is different from an aquired taste, like wine or even beer. I mean things like diet soda or sugar-free gum. I don’t want to get used to it. I want the real thing. I would rather drink half of a real Dr. Pepper than forty diet ones. That aftertaste is just not worth it. It does NOT taste more like regular Dr. Pepper.

2. If I don’t know you well enough to know that your birthday is coming up, I don’t know you well enough to give you a gift. I don’t always give gifts to close friends whose birthdays I do know are coming, so why would I donate $30 to a big gift for you when I had no idea you were turning 30 this week? No.

3. Gifts require thank you notes. Real ones with paper and a stamp. E-cards and blog entries DO NOT COUNT. (This is not so much a rule for me to live by, as I rule at the thank you note, but a reminder for the general public. Particularly the general public whose baby shower I attended last weekend.)

Last week I was walking into the bank and a guy was standing outside talking on his cell phone. I went in, did my thing, and when I came out, he approached me.

Guy: Excuse me, miss? What is your name?

Me: (checking him out for concealed weapons and/or cultish looking pamphlets) Brandi.

Guy: Well Brandi, I noticed you when you came into the bank, and I just wanted to tell you that you are really beautiful.

Me: … really?

Guy: Really. I’m running late to a meeting, but I wanted to tell you that.

Me: Uhhh…

Guy: Have a great day!

I got into my car and waited to leave, making sure he was really crossing the street for a meeting like he said he was and not jumping into a car to follow me back to work and then maim me in the parking garage.

It completely threw me. Here’s this guy, seemingly perfectly normal, taking time out of his day to pay me a compliment with no strings attached. It was a really nice thing to do, and it made my whole day. But I couldn’t help thinking maybe something was wrong with that guy. Maybe he just hasn’t seen very many girls, and that’s why he picked me out. Maybe he has really weird taste. Maybe he’s blind.

I clearly do not take compliments well.

This past weekend at a laser tag event*, I was approached by our youth pastor with a job opportunity. We go to a pretty young church, and because of that have a small youth group but a children’s ministry that is bursting at the seams. Over the next few years, those kids who are in grades 3-6 are going to become the youth group, and the church wants to hire someone to handle the junior high ministry. It would start immediately as an on-the-side thing, running Sunday mornings and planning one event a month, and would have the potential to become a full-time job in October. Would I be interested?

We didn’t have much time to discuss the details, but we met with him again Tuesday night to figure out exactly what the job would look like. He spent a lot of time talking about why he thought I would be good at the job, and I have to say it was a little hard for me to listen to. I don’t know how to respond to stuff like that. What he was saying was true, about how I have a lot of experience with junior high and have a passion for those kids and am willing to stand up for them, but it throws me to sit and listen to it.

I’m going to take the on-the-side thing, and I am really excited about it. I have never had a job that I actually cared about before, and the prospect of getting to work with junior high kids for a living is really appealing. I can’t imagine it, actually. I’ve spent a lot of time this week talking to people who do or have done similar jobs, and I feel relatively prepared for the challenge.

But people are going to have to stop saying nice things to me. I can’t take it.

*I feel the need to mention that I sustained an injury at said event. Some of the girls and I had decided to pick off a group of guys who were taking refuge on the lowest level. We were shooting down a them from one level up when they figured out where we were. They came running up the ramp toward us and I, thinking the whole section was flat, took a corner running backward. It was after I found myself flat on my back (being mercilessly shot at by multitudes of junior high boys) that I realized I had been trying to run backwards up a ramp. That was five days ago, y’all, and my left leg STILL hurts.