Grumpy. And Other Random Events of Life.

I have a headache. I am in my pajamas. My hair is uncombed. TMI?  Let me just add that I don’t plan to comb or dress at all today if I don’t have to—not until 9:30 p.m. when I will put on a clean scrub and wash my face and arrive to work as a nurse’s aide at the Ladysmith Care Community by 10:00 tonight.

I worked last night, too, and came home and slept this morning from 7:30 until 11:30, when I woke up to my parents’ and brother’s loud upstairs talking. I woke with a headache, and so I am grumpy.

Ivan, my business manager, suggested I write a blog post today. Since I skipped last week, he said, I really need to get something posted.

Fine. He is right, and I am grateful for his encouragement. Grumpy or no, I am writing one.

Thinking about being grumpy made me think about the fact that I seldom write my grumpy moments. I write about my joys and my sorrows, the fun things I do with family and friends, my spiritual thoughts. Of the grumpy or graceful mundane moments between—those ridiculously tiny moments that make up the largest portion of life—I write little.

I read a news article recently of a Dutch university student who faked a five-week trip through southeast Asia. She posted numerous photos of herself doing touristy things: snorkeling with tropical fish, visiting a Buddhist temple, eating with chopsticks in Asian restaurants. The reality? She was in her home city of Amsterdam the entire time, taking photos in the local Buddhist temple, at the local pool, in her redecorated apartment—photo-shopping as necessary. Although they heard from her regularly through photos, messaging apps, and video calls, her family and friends never suspected a thing.

Why pull off such an elaborate stunt? She did it as social experiment to fulfill a university assignment. The young woman, Zilla van den Born, explains her reasons like this:

“I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media, and that we create an online world which reality can no longer meet. My goal was to prove how common and easy it is to distort reality. Everybody knows that pictures of models are manipulated. But we often overlook the fact that we manipulate reality also in our own lives.”

Remember that the next time you feel mildly depressed when looking at Facebook posts.

All that being said, I do want to tell you a few of the nice things I have been doing in life, things that don’t include being grumpy.

I visited my old cohorts in Boston:

I visited Maryland and took a short side excursion to attend Ivan’s nephew’s wedding:

I attended the Maranatha Christian Writer’s Conference right on Lake Michigan:

And I spent precious time in between trips with family and friends.

I mentioned to Mom the other day, quite casually, that maybe I would quit my job early, and her face lit up like the sun. “Yes,” she said. “I think you should.” I’ve only been working 16-24 hours a week, anyway, but with my many trips and writing and wedding preparation on top of that, it does seem sometimes that I hardly see my family.

I hadn’t realized Mom missed me so much.

So that same night I put in my two-week notice. I will have one untouched month at home with my family before I marry and move off to Maryland. Maybe, with more sleep under my white-mesh hat, I will have fewer grumpy days; more long, girly conversations with my mom and my sisters; more time to read things I want to read, such as how-to-have-the-perfect-marriage books and my mom and dad’s love letters.

I look forward to it.