Rochelle's Blog ::: Subtitles Included

I have this lovely plant that I inherited from my old boss when she quit. Sad she didn’t want to take it with her. I think maybe she had inherited it too. I took over it’s care, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not the best plant owner, as you’ll see later in this post.

Well…over the past eight years it’s had it’s good days and it’s bad days. Mostly because I forget to water it. Poor thing. There was a really great period of time when I used to share an office with one of my student assistants. She had tons of plants and so she kept her eye on this little guy too.

Since then, I’ve been up in my own office and the plant just chills in the window. I would water every now and again and it was doing pretty well. Then a couple of months ago I noticed something odd. Not only did my plant look amazingly alive and well, but there was a mysterious bottle of water next to it.

Ok….

I figured I must have placed it there. I am notoriously bad at bringing drinks into my office and letting them fester.

But I wasn’t sure. So I left it there to see what would happen.

Sure enough, the water in the bottle would deplete and then I’d come in the next day and it would be refilled!

So somebody, I don’t know who, is sneaking into my office to water my plant. I’ve asked around and there are no answers. Perhaps it’s the cleaning staff? But I sort of doubt it. They are are really short staffed and just overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s a secret watering gnome?

Maybe it’s my plant? Could it have magical powers?

Anyway, I know there’s got to be an explanation about it, but truthfully I want to stay in the dark. I love coming in each day to see the water bottle and my very healthy plant. I feel like the answer may disappointment me.

So if you’re out there secret plant waterer…THANK YOU!

And since we’re talking about plants, I thought I would come full circle with the Bamboo saga. Read this post to familiarize yourself…

Basically, Amanda got me the bamboo as an engagement present. The plant thrived, until Brian and I broke up, and then it dwindled. Mostly because the cats kept getting at it. So I brought it to my office and tried to revive it, but there was no hope. It was gone.

So I kept the dead plant around (am I a hoarder?) and decided that once my divorce was final I would put the plant to rest. How dramatic is that? Sure enough, I somehow remembered that little idea, and so the day after I got my divorce papers I did just that. Goodbye bamboo. I think I’ll replace you with another bamboo.

Well….it’s official.

I’m divorced!

Is it bad that I put an exclamation point after that? I never wanted to get divorced in my life and my Catholic upbringing is trying it’s best to make it seem bad to use exclamation points.

But honestly, I don’t care. I’m divorced!!!

Anyway, I got the paperwork yesterday. I was initially scared of that moment when I would open my mailbox and find it waiting for me. But that was so not the case. I can’t tell you how truly free I feel. In a way, I’m glad that it took this long to complete because the emotions just aren’t there. Instead, I feel like it’s a big item checked off the to-do list.

Coincidentally, I talked to Brian last night on the phone because I’m helping him with a little web project. He hadn’t gotten his papers yet, and so I broke it to him. He was a little bit sad about it, but nothing major. We’re both happy that we can walk away and be friends.

Now that this weight is off my shoulders, I feel strangely less guilty. I feel no regrets. There’s no wonder about if I made the right decision. I know it was the right decision. And I think that’s all I was hoping for.

OH! And to anyone who is wondering, I am not changing my name just yet. It’s a long complicated story, but for the time being you can still call me Rochelle Scott.

Reflections on 2009 and the decade as a whole.

Sure I’ve done my “best of” list, but it’s time to put this year, and for that matter this decade, to rest with some final thoughts.

Every year I love to go on and on about what the year meant to me and all that. Somehow, I’m not quite feeling that.

What I do know is that this year was good. I loved this year. Sure it had it’s hard parts, but that’s to be expected.

Let’s summarize shall we about my goals for this year. They were to:

1. Finish my book.
2. Get divorced.
3. Go to Europe.

Well I’m proud to say that I’ve pretty much completed those goals.

Finish my book...

I didn’t do this exactly as was intended, but that’s ok. I made so much wonderful progress and I’ve learned so much about writing this year that I feel great about where it stands. I think I’m in a better position to begin a second draft! Also, I participated in NaNoWriMo and completed the challenge on a whole new story. That also makes me feel like I completed this goal.

Get divorced….

Well I think you know all about that. Any day now I will be signing the papers, but for all intents and purposes this is done.

Go to Europe…

How about England? This is the one goal I thought would be hardest out of reach, but I made it happen and I am so happy.

And so the year comes to an end and I’m here at work, like almost every other New Year’s Eve (becoming a tradition). I thought about listing out all the highlights, but I think I’ll pass. This blog is a testament to everything good and bad that happened this past year. If you don’t know, then you haven’t been reading.

And also the decade comes to a close. It was the first decade of my life where I was an adult the entire way through, yet I’ve grown up so much since it started! It’s not hard to remember where I was ten years ago at this very moment. I know for sure that I looked good! Velvet dress, adorable hair style. The world didn’t end, and we were all drunk and high and happy.

It started off so strong, and we were all so confident, and then everything changed on September 11. I’ve stopped seeing that as a time when we all united, but instead the start of when we all divided. The political climate of this decade has been horrible and angry and intense, and that’s what I will remember most about it. To me, it was some of the darkest years in our history. My hope for the new decade is that we can all start acting rationally again.

Technology has changed so much during this decade. I worked at ITS for this entire decade and it’s crazy to think of how technology was when I first started here. But the pendulum always swings and I feel like we’ve exhausted so many unnecessary technologies, I think we’re headed back to the basics. What’s funny to recall was when I heard a “futurist” speak at a conference in 2002. He said that handheld devices were the future and that people will one day soon expect to have it all on their mobile phones. I doubted that then. It just didn’t seem possible, and yet here I am today with an iPhone that does it all and that I’m never far from. He was completely spot on.

And love has been crazy. I started this decade heart broken and in love with someone who had just dumped me. I fell for a couple of other boys, and that didn’t work out, but that was okay. And then I got on Match.com. Got to date a yummy European boy, but he dumped me too, and then I met Brian. It’s crazy to think that in this decade I met someone, fell in love, moved in with him, got engaged and married, and now divorced. I would have never predicted that. Now I’m in this crazy good place that I think will only get better with time. My heart has calmed down and I’m confident and happy. It’s been a decade of love and heartbreak and that’s exactly how I would have wanted it to be!

This past decade has been all about indulgences. I don’t think that’s terribly unexpected for an American girl in her twenties. But as the new decade starts, I crave simplicity and control. Less food, less stuff, less spending. True and real maturity. I crave good health and good financial health. I feel pretty confident that I can shed the past decade and transition into a healthier more refined space.

So I welcome the next decade! I cannot wait for tomorrow.

So I read in a scrapbooking magazine years ago that one should try and document even the rough times. When you hide your real life, the scrapbooks can lose their meaning. Life is rich and complicated. And so the same should apply to my Project 365. The most important part of my day is going to be that Brian came over to fill out the rest of our divorce paper work and petition. Then we went to find a notary and sign all the documents. I told him I wanted to take a picture, and he didn’t find it that strange.

As for the for the rest of my day, I’m just sticking around home, I plan on doing some scrapbooking and I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy. I just started from the beginning and so I’m in episodes from 2005.

So much paperwork, ugh! I can't even imagine how hard this would be if we actually had something to split.

It was a Labor Day I’m sure to never forget. First the bad good memorable news. Brian came over today so we could fill out our divorce paperwork. It was a pretty harmless visit for the most part, and the task wasn’t too challenging. We had nothing together. It did cross my mind that I should make him responsible for the debt I incurred for when he was laid off from his job and from the wedding. I only entertained that thought for a moment.

After divorce-o-rama, I scored 87,000 points on Bejeweled, which was awesome. Then I went to pick up my sister to see The Time Traveler’s Wife. I had read the book back in 2005/6, and it’s been stuck in my memory ever since. I didn’t overly enjoy the book, and at times struggled to get through it. But I like the concept and the story a lot. So once again in my life, I enjoyed the movie a lot more than the book. I think I’m the only person that happens to. My sister sobbed through the whole thing, but I knew what was coming and so I held back pretty well. As a result of holding back my tears, I got a massive headache though.

After the movie we went to the mall, and that leads to today’s picture. I have been saving up and planning on getting a whole bunch of new clothes. I haven’t bought clothes all year, and so I was definitely due. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I bought so much. It definitely turned into a shopping spree and I went with it. I got plenty of clothes for my trip to London that will also be great for work.

Lots of blacks and greys, and a few bits of color.

Another day at home, another day of distractions. I watched more Dexter, and then Grey’s Anatomy. I also played tons of Bejeweled Bliz on Facebook. But by the end of the day, my sadness had passed and I was feeling much better.

Look at my score!

I stayed home from work today because I was too depressed to go in. But I didn’t wallow. Instead, I kept myself distracted with the TV show Dexter and silly Facebook games. I played a ton of Farmville and Farm Town. It was a grand distraction.

This is my Farmville Farm

After a two year seperation, Brian and I have decided to go forward with the divorce. He wants to move on, and so do I. He’s operating under some urgency, and so it’s coming about it in a way that I wouldn’t have preferred. I’ve been saying on this blog all year that my goal this year was to get divorced. So that’s not surprising. But it still hurts and it still sucks. I was pretty depressed tonight, so I didn’t get a picture. But I did see this image on the Tumblr recently and I thought it was really comforting.

Good advice.

So as I expected this week has just flown by. I can’t believe it’s already Thursday and that it is in essence my last day at home since I’ll be traveling to Pueblo for my brother’s wedding tomorrow.

Tuesday was strange. I woke up way later than I had been planning on and barely made it across town to my mechanic for a car care appointment. My mechanic is awesome. He specializes in Hondas and Acuras, and from what I can tell is a really honest guy. Him and his wife run the shop together and I’m always impressed at how professional and organized they are. That is why I go back into my old neighborhood to get an oil change and not just to my local Grease Monkey.

Sitting in the very tidy lobby of my mechanic's shop.

But going back to my old neighborhood is just weird and filled with memories of my former life with Brian. Not that that is a bad thing, because it’s not. I was obsessed with what was new, what had gone out of business, the conditions of the road, and even the price of gas.

Thankfully, I brought along a book because the service took awhile. I brought The Alienist, which is one of the books I picked for the Chunkster Challenge. I ended up finishing it later that night. I knew that once I hit the last 150 pages I wouldn’t be able to put it down, so thankfully I had the time to sit down and read it. It turned out to be a fantastic book. Caleb Carr is such a great writer. Every sentence was flawless. I did notice he tended to care a great deal about when the characters ate and got rest, as if he felt on the hook for explaining to the reader when his characters took care of themselves. That was probably unnecessary. I’m finding out in my writing that I don’t always have to explain when they rest and when they eat unless it fits importantly into the story. I think readers will grasp that characters will take care of things. I mean, even the television show 24 doesn’t actually show Jack Bauer taking a bathroom break.

What I really admired was how Carr made me smell the setting. New York City in 1896 isn’t going to smell good and he made sure to remind readers of that. Smell is something often forgotten in fiction, so it was a nice element that really made me feel like I could put myself into his settings. Speaking of smell, I’ve owned this book for around five years, and it had that musty old paperback smell, which for whatever reason added to the experience of reading it.

A great way to spend the afternoon.

Anyway, I would definitely recommend it if you like mystery. It was like Law & Order SVU old school and way more intricate. It, of course, would make an amazing movie.

Late Tuesday night we watched the Biggest Loser three-hour finale. I loved seeing Alison Sweeney, who looked divine, and it was great to see all the other contestants. Sadly, I was unhappy with the results for both prizes. I really wanted Tara to win and she only missed by five pounds. Jerry winning the take-home prize was even worse. I would have loved to see nearly every other person get the take home prize, especially Filipe, Sione, or Kristen. Even Ron would have been great. But Jerry? Ugh.

Wednesday was less productive, but nice overall. I woke up at 8, which was what I was hoping for, and then came downstairs and got on my computer where I pretty much stayed all day. I spent the morning editing and then the afternoon working on an EJami mvid (blush), and it took me forever. But it’s a good one. Kind of epic and a little bit emo, but good. I think it made my FL friends happy, so that’s what counts. I like to make my little contributions to that community.

Of course there was fruit through out the day.

I finished the day with some amazing Chinese take out and then we watched five episodes of lost, including the two-hour finale. Holy Jacob! The finale blew my mind and really put the puzzle together in terms of what’s going on at the island, but of course created whole new questions that will need to be answered. I have literally no idea what will happen next season, not even a little bit. Lots of Lost equals lots of strange dreams, so I didn’t sleep well last night. But it was well worth it!

Today has been much more low key. I slept in until 10 and have spent most of the day cleaning and getting ready for my brother’s wedding. It turns out that I will get to light the unity candle with Jennifer’s mom since my own mom won’t be attending. Don’t even get me started on all that drama.

Tonight we’re going to the midnight show of Angels & Demons in Boulder. I’m really looking forward to it, and especially looking forward to Ewan McGregor. He’s always a pleasure to watch.