Little Bursts of Happiness

I knew it had been a little while since I'd been on the blog, but I was honestly a bit shocked when I finally opened it up this afternoon and realized it had been almost three weeks since my last post. Not sure how that happened.

Lately the best description of my life and state of mind can probably be described in one word: tired. We are at the peak of tax preparation time at my job, which I find to be rewarding (and even fun) work but which takes 15-20 hours per week of my time, without any unloading of my typical full-time responsibilities. I've been coming home late a lot and skipping lunch. And, believe me, you do not want to be around me when I have skipped lunch. Jenn + hungry = bitchy monster.

On the upside, there have been good things keeping me busy, and many little bursts of happiness. Plane tickets have been purchased for our trip to Arizona in May, and I am so stoked to be taking a trip and seeing the Grand Canyon that I am already daydreaming about packing my suitcase. I decided to make a (rather impromptu) trip to Georgia in March, so a ticket has been purchased for that also. I'm a little ashamed to say that I haven't been to Georgia since Thanksgiving 2009; I'm excited to see my family and friends and have to admit that I might even be equally excited about fries, feta dip, and a veggie BLT at The Grill.

Also in new happy news. . . regular girls' nights appear to be in my future! I am SO excited about this. The last time I really had a local group of girlfriends was in 2006 before they all completed our graduate program and left St. Louis. After that, Dan and I were sort of in friend limbo while waiting to make our next move across the country. For our first couple of years here, we've spent a lot of time with couples, but I've been pining for some real girl time, especially since Dan's two best friends are here and they have regular guy outings. Much to my delight, a group of girls from my church gets together regularly for craft nights and I've been invited to join them. I had my first craft night a couple of weeks ago, and I could hardly have been more excited if it were a first date. In fact, I've been so excited about making new friends that I've been worried about coming across as being in a state of friend desperation, so hopefully I've managed to convince them that I'm (relatively) normal. I'm so happy to have girl time, especially time that inspires me to be creative--a perfect combo! I'm really looking forward to more of that and really excited to be surrounded by inspiring and amazing women!

Business stuff is humming along, though I've been too exhausted with my day job lately to put much effort into it. I feel like, at this point, I have really crystallized my concept, and I've finally settled on a name, almost finished my logo, and even purchased a domain for my website! The actual website is still a hot mess, but I'll be sure to share the link with anyone who's interested as soon as I have a chance to get it into a state that doesn't cause me extreme embarrassment. Once the site is up, the logo is finished, and the business cards are ordered, it will be time to actually start getting my services out there! As a bit of an impromptu trial in being a professional organizer, this weekend a friend e-mailed me with some pictures and a request for suggestions to help her friend get organized. I realized as I was responding to her just how excited I am about this work, and how much I've really absorbed in researching it over the last several months. I feel that I was able to really answer her questions with confidence, which for me is about 90% of the battle in my efforts to get this going. Very exciting.