Planny Plannerton meets Sister Shoehorn

The girls watching the awards. I'm typing during the parts of the awards I'm not enamored with keeping one ear open on the conversation around me and an internet window open on the library page to place holds on all the movies I haven't seen yet and the ones I want to see again.

A few years back Dallas dubbed me Planny Plannerton and the name stuck. My sister uses it (and happily has adopted it for herself), R. uses it, my Sunday night dinner/Holiday dinner crowd uses it and Rebecca has shortened it to Planny, as in - "Look at me being all planny." Well, I'm channeling a new personality these days and I've dubbed her Sister Shoehorn.

Sister Shoehorn is the extroverted part of myself that seems to be making up for lost time, riding along on the adrenaline of alignment. She's not being very responsible with that energy, but she doesn't care because everything she's shoehorning in involves fun, volunteering, meaningful conversation, singing, ritual, testimony, a handsome boyfriend, a long overdue shared meal or some combination of the several aforementioned important, good activities or events. Did I forget to mention that Shoehorn tends to forget that she has a j.o.b.!

Planny Plannerton likes to have things on the calendar. Why figure out "when" later? We can get that date on the calendar now! Planny had the skill of looking at the calendar and saying I have too many things going on for the 3rd week in June, sorry I'll have to catch you next time. Or Yancey likes to remind me of the days when I would say sorry I already have plans on two nights this week, I need some alone time. Those days are gone.

Sister Shoehorn has been saying "why not?" a lot lately. Or "I miss them, I can sleep later." I'm not at the Sage level of I'll sleep when I'm dead, praise God, but I feel like I'm headed in that direction. I'm tired. I'm like a little kid that needs to go to bed, but doesn't want to miss anything.

R. has been so patient with me lately. He just stands by while I dig my own grave. It's awesome and cracks me up because I love to tell him about himself. We had a conversation lately where I was telling him that nobody outside of our relationship probably knows this, but I know he's the nicer one in the relationship. Sometimes my honesty has a little edge to it. He said "Ya, maybe you could wrap some of that stuff you say to me in Nerf." I think it would help if I got some more sleep too.

RB (Sara named him Brother Benson this week which I am loving!) used some of his hours at the Academy to talk to us about making a personal rule of life, a modern day Rule of St. Benedict for ourselves. The four categories being: work. community. prayer. rest.

I'm taking a couple days in April to write out that rule with SMK. That weekend retreat and one on one friend time can't come soon enough, but I know it will. There are a lot of good things on the calendar between now and then.

Here's a picture of me the Friday before I left for the Academy. Blissed out sitting in my quiet apartment with the day off spread before me, sitting at my table, assembling poems for the week, and gathering up little totems for the daily altars. I didn't leave myself enough time to prepare and still be a nice, rested person for the week. I was too busy doing all the other things I wanted to do the two weeks before. So I asked my boss on Thursday if I could have the day off on Friday because I was unprepared to take the following week off. He graciously said, yes, sounds like a good idea. I was late to work several days this week because I'm exhausted and not giving myself enough breathing room. Squeezing in personal to-do things in between work tasks. These aren't on my timesheet, but that means I'll have to spend a weekend day in the office later this month or get to work at 7:00 a.m. for a couple of weeks. I wouldn't bet on the 7 a.m. start time.

I forget that I don't just love alone time in my apartment and around the neighborhood - I NEED IT! I need unplanned time, unshoehorned time, and so do the people in my life who spend time with me and work with me - I'm practicing, babe. I'm practicing, Roger.

Less Sister Shoehorn, more Sister Sabbath.

Good night friends,

Em

P.S. The funniest damn thing I've ever heard at the jail after I asked the person I was meeting with if they've ever tried yoga - "[laughing] Yoga? No. [laughing some more] I'm sorry, tell me more. It's good for me to hear what square people do."

Ha!!