Just Lauren

This past Monday I got to finally video chat with my friend, Katie. It had been way too long since we had a proper chat. Getting to talk with her lifted my mood immensely. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until we got to talking and I remembered how much I enjoyed our monthly chats. I appreciate these kinds of friendships so much, the ones where, even if we don’t talk all the time, we pick up right where we left off the next time we get the chance. I know Katie and I will always be in each other’s lives in one form or another. And hopefully one day, when prices are cheaper, we’ll see each other in person again.

So I learned recently, thanks to Shari’s awesome research skills, that spider plants are slightly hallucinogenic to cats. This explains why Pippin suddenly got an interest in my spider plants – he’s getting high. Hahaha. It doesn’t appear to be addictive or harmful, thankfully, but it is slightly annoying as he climbs around my plant shelf trying to take nibbles and bites out of my plant babies. I tried to stop him for a week but sometimes it’s just easier to ignore him. I think it’s a sign I need to grow some cat grass again this year.

Other than chatting with Katie, my week has been pretty relaxed, honestly. Which is both good and bad. Good because relaxing is useful for everyone, but bad because I’m not great at relaxing. I have a hard time just sitting and doing nothing. I took that Enneagram test a few weeks back and I got a 3, which is an Achiever. And while we all know I don’t prescribe to quizzes that tell me exactly who I am, each quiz has some truth in it, something that one feels drawn or connected to, something that one feels, “hmm, this does sound like me”. For me, I felt Achiever had a ring of truth to it. I do always like to do something, to have more personal accomplishments. Career-wise I’m not an achiever in the sense that I don’t have a career path, but I have received awards and I am a high achiever when it comes to each position I’m in. The whole point being, that relaxing is difficult for me because I feel like I should always be doing something that is blog worthy or picture worthy. Yes, I know I have value and worth solely for just existing. But knowing that and implementing that in my daily life are two different things. So having a week where I don’t have many plans is a challenge for me. What do you all do in the evenings?!

I painted some more this week and finished the hill piece I was working on, I’m quite pleased. I was going to have dinner with my friend, Meseret, tonight, but family happenings prevented us from getting together. Hence, here I am blogging. Haha.

I changed my smoke detector’s battery today. I feel like there have been at least three smoke detectors that have gone off in my building in the past three weeks and I thought, “If they’re going off, maybe mine will go off soon”. I hate it when a smoke detector goes off. It beeps every 40 seconds. And it always starts in the middle of the night. Why is that? Why?! Could we not have smarter smoke detectors that would text me when the battery is low and give me a week to replace it before it starts the every 40 seconds beep? That would be lovely. So I got ahead of the game and replaced my battery. No beeping at 3am for me, take that you horrible (but also life saving) device.

Tomorrow, Shari and I are taking half days and are jet setting off to Cheyenne for Easter weekend. Shari’s mom’s birthday is in a few days too so we’ll celebrate that while we’re there. I’m sure we’ll have an enjoyable time and I’ll catch everyone up on that on Monday.