Articles

Aug 16 2024

Overthinking Overthinking

Author: Jamie DeBree

Hi! I’m Jamie, and I’m an “overthinker”.

It sounds like it should be some rare, mysterious ailment, doesn’t it? It’s not, of course…just ask any anxious or control-freak person out there, and they’ll tell you. Why do we tend to overthink things? I can’t answer for anyone else, but in my case it’s simply fear. Not really fear that the worst might happen (because trust me, I have a plan of some sort for that), but more than one of the myriad smaller things that require more time and effort (and money, sometimes) to resolve will spin out of control.

This actually serves me well at work, where testing and retesting and thinking and thinking again makes all the tech I deal with run better and I end up with less technical “misses” that result in panic-type situations (it happens, and it always will on occasion, but it’s the exception rather than the norm).

Not so much at home, where the top two things noodling around in my head are getting the van ready for our first overnight trip next week, and what to do with the dogs while we’re gone. The van is already way, way over-provisioned for the one-night trip we have planned, and my parents will be coming over to watch the dogs for us, but the details are spinning about the dogs and the fact that I’m very much a night person (it’s nearly midnight as I write this), and my dogs are used to that schedule, but my Mom is not.

I also get up to feed the dogs around 6:30am every morning (I go back to bed on the weekends), which is not something my Dad, who is a night person, would appreciate having to do. My dilemma is whether to have the morning person stay over and possibly have to let Athena out at 1am (when I’m normally headed to bed), or have the night person stay over to make sure they get their late-night snack and another potty break, but also have to get up at 6:30am the next morning to give the dogs breakfast too?

Or should I ask my dad to cover the late-night snack/potty break, not have either of the parents sleep over, and have my mom cover the breakfast shift.

I’ve been going round and round about this in my head, and still haven’t come to a decision, because the consequences of getting it wrong could be nothing, or they could be torn up couch cushions & doors, to say the least.

The truth is, both schedules will probably work just fine, and I just need to accept that I can’t control everything and I am really looking forward to getting out for another drive, some more bookstore shopping (and a museum!), Pokemon in different places, and our first night spent in the van. Oddly enough, the one thing I don’t overthink (and probably should) is travel (though as I mentioned, the van is over-provisioned just because we both like our creature-comforts).

Are you an overthinker? Is it situational, or general? What do you do to talk yourself out of or around it (if anything)?

We are leaving Thursday and back Friday, so there probably won’t be a post next week, but after that, I think it will be time to settle into a more set routine. And I’ve figured out my blockage with my Magpie heroine (who is not an overthinker, to her detriment), so that is moving onward again too!

Until next time,

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Mar 06 2024

New Store, New Perspective

Author: Jamie DeBree

In case you were wondering, setting up an online store from scratch is a pretty intensive and time-consuming process. I suppose if one uses Shopify or one of the big pre-packaged store builder services, it would be somewhat less so, but I did that when I first started selling books (in 2011), and ended up not making enough money to pay the rent, so to speak.

So this time, I decided to be smart, use my web developer skills, and set up a store (check it out on my BSB site here) that wouldn’t cost me more than it will possibly make back. If I eventually start making enough money on a regular basis, I’ll move to a “prettier” solution, but for now, it’s free WooCommerce and a few choice plugins. Plus PayPal as the sole processor, because they’re the only remotely affordable processor willing to process transactions for the more adult ebooks my Trinity alter-ego writes (if you’ve noticed her site was down, yes, I know – it was my mistake, and I’m working on it. It’s back online, but still needs some backend fixing.).

Yes, I know lots of people just ignore the Terms of Service, do what they want and hope for the best. I’m risk-averse, so I’d rather have permission before anything bad happens, thanks.

Anyways, that’s where all my blogging energy has gone lately. Setting up the store has required a lot of futzing and learning new things from taxes to shipping to order fulfillment and just managing to create and list products. Plus securing the store forms, and testing, testing, testing everything. And now that most of that (not all, but most) is out of the way, there’s the tedium of simply creating and listing all the books – and testing the delivery for each ebook to make sure it works. I’m trying to list at least two books per day (I have about an hour each night to work on this). Once I get all the ebooks up, then I’ll work on print.

In the meantime, I’m still writing, and I have several micro-fiction stories that I really want to make into bookmarks and story cards. I also have several little bits that need to be slotted into larger works-in-progress, and still more that will make very nice short stories and novellas as they’re expanded.

The new perspective I’m really trying to cultivate with all of these projects is one of not having to do everything “right now“. Being able to be okay with working on things in small chunks that don’t require a lot of focused brainpower for long periods of time. It’s very much a workflow and mental shift for me – all my life I’ve preferred to start and finish a project in as few “large chunks” of time as possible, and as quickly as possible, so this doling things out in a trickle is new and somewhat uncomfortable for me.

But that’s how we grow, isn’t it? By doing uncomfortable things, and allowing ourselves to change and flex depending on where we are in our lives at the moment.

I’m mostly just happy to be making the time to be creative. Even if it’s not as much time as I’d like, and it’s still somewhat frustrating to work in such small chunks, it’s better than being frustrated at not doing anything creative at all.

I’m also happy to be working on the business side of things again – something I haven’t done in a long time just because it was just too daunting, and often overwhelming to even try. If I wait until I “have time” to sit down and do the whole thing at once (whatever that “thing” happens to be at the moment), it won’t happen.

So I’m working on tiny pieces at a time, and accepting the fact that it’s not work that will ever actually be “finished”. It will just go on until I decide it’s time to stop.

Hopefully that won’t be anytime soon. Oh! I almost forgot. Smashwords is having their “Read a Book” week sale, and some of my books are on sale over there until Saturday. If you like cheap ebooks, check it out! You’re sure to find something interesting and entertaining!

Also, my apologies for having to add Captcha to the comments. The amount of spam written in Cyrillic was just seriously getting to be way, way too much to keep up with. And since most readers comment more on social media than here anyways…I figured it would affect a minority. Please do let me know if it gives you problems, and I’ll see what else I can figure out.

That’s it for this week! If you have a favorite thing to share, or want to recommend a book, TV show, video or podcast, comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

Feb 11 2020

Thoughts from the Kitchen

Author: Jamie DeBree

I recently ordered a couple of aprons. Full-length ones, that cover from chest to mid-thigh. I’ve never been a huge fan of aprons, mostly because I’m not fond of skirts or a lot of fabric flowing around my legs. But so many of my t-shirts (even the black ones) are dotted with grease stains (and no, I haven’t washed a chapstick in quite awhile), I decided it was time to do something.

I need to find somewhere to hang them that they’ll be both easily accessible and very visible (pantry door? Hook on the very limited wall space somewhere?). And I need to make putting one on before cooking a part of my routine. Not that I really have a “routine” to cook, per se, except for on Sunday mornings when I divvy the vitamins for the week into pill boxes first. So, I can make putting an apron on the thing I do next right after that, and most importantly, right before I start cooking bacon. Which is probably the majority of my grease-stain problem.

In the evenings, it will just have to be a “thing” – as soon as I go to the kitchen to cook, I put on an apron. Maybe I’ll make myself a “nag” reminder. That might be easier than forgetting more often than not and never really building it into a bonefide habit.

In other kitchen news, our local Lucky’s grocery store closes this week, and I was bummed out at first, because there are several things I’ve gotten used to being able to get there (like organic worchestershire sauce, strange as that sounds – I actually just really like the taste better). When they announced they were closing (just a relatively short time after my favorite local “mainstream” store closed), I knew there were only two other stores in town that carried mostly natural, healthier-type foods. Both are on the smaller side, one being *much* smaller, and the other one sells only organic products, which excludes several local products. I decided on Natural Grocer’s, the “organics only” store, just because they’re a little bigger and though I’m not fond of the location, I definitely like the store itself better.

Interestingly,the change has been a good one, and I kind of wish I’d done it quite awhile ago. I can get all the items I used to get at Lucky’s there for less money, and I’ve discovered some other things that Lucky’s didn’t carry, but I’m happy to be able to find in healthier options than our local Albertsons has.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to a conversation I had with an acquaintance I ran into in Natural Grocer’s last weekend. She was picking out some non-dairy creamer because Lucky’s was the only store in town who had carried milk from our only local dairy (a town a few hours away), and she feels very strongly about buying local dairy. Natural Grocer’s won’t carry the local brand because it’s not organic. So she was passing up all the “grass-fed/free-range/humanely kept” organic milk simply because it wasn’t local. And it got me wondering how I felt about that myself.

I buy local meat all the time – and I know our beef is grass-fed & well cared for on my friend’s country property before it gets to us. Pork I’m not so sure about, and chicken is generally frozen from Costco in packs that we can’t eat fast enough or a rotisserie chicken from…well, Albertson’s I guess, since Lucky’s is gone and Natural Grocer’s doesn’t have them.

Milk, however, I’ve been buying from Albertson’s, because there are only two of us, so if it’s not ultra-pasturized, even a half-gallon of whole milk will go bad before we can drink it (or more often, eat it on cereal & cook with it). The organic brand that Lucky’s sold wasn’t ultra-pasturized, and honestly, it just didn’t taste all that great. Our local milk wasn’t ultra-pasturized either, and I wasn’t impressed with the taste of that either.

Natural Grocer’s does carry a line of organic milk that’s ultra-pasturized, so I picked up a half-gallon to try. We’ll see how it tastes, but if it’s good, I’ll probably switch to that even though it’s more expensive. Natural Grocer’s is actually cheaper all around, so I can afford the extra.

Naturally, that got me thinking back to meat again. We buy local, as I said earlier, but is that really the best criteria for meat that I’m not sure on the growing/raising conditions? I was looking at bacon in Natural Grocer’s and the labels were all similar. Free-range, grass-fed, humanely raised and “harvested”, uncured. The latter two made me pick up a pack just to try, expecting a rather bland or insanely salty pack of bacon. But it was actually delicious, and I think we’ll be adding it to our rotation at least once a month (possibly twice).

They have chicken thighs in packs of two, which in the long run, is probably better and less expensive than throwing out half a pack of frozen thighs from Costco. And again, raised, cared for and killed humanely. Honestly, I think that might be more important to me than how local the meat is, even though I’d be very happy if I could get local meat responsibly raised as well.

So, interesting thoughts from the kitchen this week. The one other thing I’m excited about is the red lentil pasta I found at NG. I love pasta. Pasta sticks to my fat cells like glue. I’m really hoping some of these alternative pastas that are more protein and far less carbs will be the happy medium to my love-hate relationship with flour-based pasta.

One can hope, right?

Dec 04 2018

Elevators & Returns

Author: Jamie DeBree

This past weekend I watched five movies (it sounds far more impressive than it actually was). Saturday night we watched Gnome Alone, which was hilarious and a nice break from the serious stuff we’ve been watching/playing. Then later when I was doing my nails (around 2am or so), I watched The Holiday Calendar on Netflix, which was cute (and predictable, but holiday romance movies all are). Then Sunday while I was setting up the tree and decorating the front window, I watched three “love-in-an-elevator” themed movies. The first two weren’t too bad, the third should never have been made. And they all three made me wonder a couple of things:

– Did Aerosmith get royalties for the whole elevator meet-cute idea?
– Who hangs mistletoe in an elevator? Because I’ve never seen that in my entire life…but then again, I tend to use the stairs when I can.

Regardless, I have to say, if I were single, I might ride the elevator more during the holiday season. Just to see if there was mistletoe in there. And Jason Momoa. As you do.

I think I mentioned going on a virtual shopping spree last week. Well, the thing about “sprees” is, they’re unfocused, and shopping like that tends to lead to a lot of returns (I don’t do it often). I now have three packages that need to go to a post office just as soon as I can remember to pick up some packing tape to affix the return labels with, and one more package on the way that I’m certain I’ll have to exchange two items from (because in my Black Friday shopping haste, I ordered the wrong size…and realized it too late to get the orders changed). Dang it. I hate returning stuff, so this is a good reminder to shop more carefully next time.

One good thing from my “spree” – I found a pair of ankle boots that I absolutely adore. And they’re in European sizing, which means one size fits *both* of my feet! That’s exciting, because they’re expensive, and I couldn’t afford to buy two pair just to fit both feet like I often have to do. I’m going to budget for several more pair over the course of the next several months. This particular brand (L’Artiste) has a bunch of fun and funky styles and colors. They’re fun, and maybe if I have several I won’t feel compelled to keep wearing them with holes in the sole like my last pair (I discovered the holes when I tossed them after the new ones got here).

So what did we learn last week?

– Gnomes are always cute, and sometimes heroic
– Beware of mistletoe in elevators, unless you’re single and looking for mistletoe pretty much anywhere
– I should always buy UK shoe sizes
– Shop with purpose, rather than blindly
– That craving for butter cookies isn’t just going to go away. Just buy the tin, already. Do it! (I haven’t yet, but payday’s Friday.)

T-minus three and a half days until my December Week of Debauchery (or “vacation”, whatever) begins…

Nov 13 2018

Untwisting the Knickers

Author: Jamie DeBree

A popular euphemism, yes…but I have actually been thinking about underwear lately. Specifically, the fact that what I have is wearing out, or doesn’t fit right, or both, and that my storage “solution” at the moment currently…ah, isn’t. I’m not fond of shopping for clothing, and that includes underwear, so I do it as little as possible. But, the time has come…

It is kind of symbolic, in that I’m finally starting to get several pieces of my life organized that had sort of fallen by the wayside during the “brain fog/midlife crisis” years when my proverbial knickers were pretty twisted, so to speak. Seriously. If I’d known then what I know now about minerals and magnesium… *sigh* But, live, learn, and clean out your underwear drawers, apparently.

In any case, men, you can read along or sit this one out, as you wish. I know plenty of guys who could not care less what their underwear drawers look like, but just as many who I suspect would tell me (if I asked them) that they keep their skivvy drawers far more organized than I ever will. Actually, those same men probably keep their whole houses cleaner than I do…but whatever.

In any case, after dealing with ill-fitting bras (and the resulting discomfort every single day) for far too long, I finally forced myself to go looking online for information on how to figure out what exactly my problem was, and how to buy a better bra to fix it. After several videos and articles explaining how to properly choose a bra (yes, I’ve read them before, but obviously did not do it “right” last time…also, bodies change over time, and…gravity, damn it), I think I figured out how to choose a better-fitting bra for my body, and ordered a couple to try. They should be here sometime this week. If they fit better and are comfortable, I’m going to order a few more. I’ve been living with just two (boring, nude) bras that “work okay” for years, and since I refuse to spend a million bucks on one bra (seriously – I do *not* get why the supposedly high-end ones are so frickin’ expensive. It’s not like they’re whalebone corsets, right?!), I’m thinking I should own more than two so I can rotate them and not wear them out as quickly. Like shoes (which I should also buy more of and rotate, but whatever).

While I was doing that, I decided, heck, I should just order some new skivvies too. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but the majority of mine are coming apart in some way, or they don’t fit right. Before I purged my sock & underwear drawers yesterday, I had enough skivvies for one week and one day (like I said, I hate to shop). After “the purge” I have enough to get me one day past when the “grab bag” of 20 pair I ordered from Amazon is scheduled to get here, and then three more pair are headed for the garbage.

Of course after I found that “grab bag” for a good price (with good reviews, mostly), I saw an ad on Facebook (because when you spend an evening shopping for bras/underwear online, the FB algorithms figure you need more help) for Knotty Knickers, which, between the name and a pole-dancing unicorn made me snicker. So I clicked the link, and by golly, it’s a subscription service for undies – a Canadian business. You can seriously get almost anything in a subscription service these days.

In any case, they looked like fun (I mean, they have seasonal skivvies!), so I signed up for a bi-monthly subscription. Because…why not?

Anyways, now I have all these knickers coming, and I decided it was time to clean out and maybe even organize my sock/underwear dresser (which is a small cardboard dresser covered with contact paper by the vanity table in my bedroom). There’s no way all those underwear were going to fit with all my socks in that little dresser, so I decided to go completely off the reservation and store my skivvies in a drawer in the bathroom, so they’re right there after I get out of the shower. Genius, right?

Yeah, well. The bathroom vanity drawers were…um…basically glorified junk drawers, so I spent all afternoon yesterday cleaning them out (and decided to use a smaller one instead of a bigger one). Two large garbage bags later, I had more storage than I need, and no time to make the drawer dividers I want for the “drawers drawer”. But, I’ll figure that out later.

Then I purged my socks (because hey, I was on a roll, right?), and still ended up using all four drawers in that little dresser. One for fuzzy socks, one for thin/fun socks, one for lightweight work socks, and one for heavyweight/wool work socks. And then I was sad because I couldn’t figure out how to wear more lightweight crew socks with fun patterns on them, because there’s a subscription service or three for those too, and i want more fun socks (mine are all mostly boring black/gray), but have no idea what kind of shoes I’d wear them with for work, especially in the winter when I wear the wool socks because…brr! *sigh*

You want to know what actually started all this? Someone was selling a vanity table on our local rummage sale that had a set of drawers attached to the left side – smaller drawers on top for jewelry, and slightly larger drawers on the bottom that would work for “unmentionables”. I didn’t get the vanity, but it got me thinking about how my own vanity, jewelry and skivvies were organized, and…well, here we are.

Perhaps one day I’ll pony up the big bucks for a new vanity table like that…or just another large jewelry/lingerie armoire (I have a med. sized one, but it’s full). But for now, I’ll have new undies, and more organized drawers. Which is good enough, I suppose.

When was the last time you “untwisted” your knickers, literally or proverbially speaking?

Resolution Check-In
Sleep 6 hrs: Most nights last week, actually. Though I didn’t sleep well, but that was a temporary thing.
Goals check-up: Nope. Forgot all about it, because I moved to a new calendaring system and need to set up the reminder. Will do that this week.

Writer’s Notes

Jun 12 2018

She Puts the Lotion on Her Skin…Or Not?

Author: Jamie DeBree

You know how sometimes you need something, but you only think about it when you need it, so then you end up forgetting to add it to your shopping list because the only time you think about needing it is around midnight when you’re heading to bed?

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

In any case, I like to put peppermint scented lotion on my hands before I go to bed. While that might seem like an odd choice, my sinuses are frequently rebelling against…whatever, and when I lay down, I tend to have issues breathing. Brushing my teeth before bed helps (minty fresh!), but having that peppermint scent on my hands helps me keep my airways open so I can easily drift off to sleep.

My husband does much the same thing with Mentholatum on his lips every night, which would make my skin break out just thinking about it (and also, all those petrochemicals? No thanks – he can keep ’em.).

Anyways, I ran out of peppermint lotion a couple weeks ago, and I kept forgetting to even put it on the list, because the only time I’d remember is when I reached for the non-existent lotion bottle at 12:15am or so, and figure I’d “add it to the list tomorrow”. Which didn’t work at all, obviously, or there would be no story here.

This past Saturday I was at our local Strawberry Festival with my mom (celebrating her birthday), and I came across the Lazy Daisy Soap Co. booth. This woman and her husband take in rescue goats, and then use the milk to make all sorts of soaps and lotions to sell. I tried a tester bottle, and promptly bought two lotions and a jar of cream (it’s good stuff, and they operate in a very socially responsible manner, with all healthy ingredients – what’s not to love?). Then I kicked myself for not buying soap as well.

When I got home and told my husband, he asked if I’d gotten peppermint lotion.

No, no I had not.

Which is completely ridiculous. There I was, buying lotions, and I just skipped right over the one I’d needed for weeks. Again. Seriously!

I used the ever-popular crowd-sourcing method of finally remembering to buy peppermint lotion that afternoon by posting my dilemma on Facebook, of course. And in the course of the most well-documented grocery shopping trip in the history of…well, my timeline…I finally bought peppermint lotion.

Of course now I’ve been using my new Lazy Daisy lotions, and they are far superior to what I’ve been buying here in the store, so I wish I’d gotten one of those when I was *right there*. Good grief. Although to be fair, she didn’t have a hand lotion in peppermint, only a body cream, so I didn’t really see it. But I didn’t think to look for it either, even when my mom stuck a bar of peppermint soap under my nose to smell.

I wonder what it is that makes things “invisible” to our brains like that? Things we normally really need and/or enjoy, I mean. It makes sense that I’d block out getting something we’re both ambivalent to, but something I use nightly and that helps so much? Odd. Very odd.

The mind is a very strange thing, sometimes. Annoyingly so.

It’s probably because grocery shopping, for all the stops I make, is a pretty rote thing for me. I make a list, I get what’s on the list, I talk myself out of buying everything that looks or smells good in the store (okay, maybe not everything, but I do my best…I love food, which is a problem), and I move to the next thing. So if lotion isn’t on the list, well…it’s not food, so odds are I won’t even give it a second thought.

And I don’t make grocery/shopping lists in the “normal” way either. I’ve been relying for years on digital lists, the most recent of which is Grocery Tracker (before that it was an app called Out of Milk). On grocery day, I don’t start in the kitchen, I start on my cell. I pull the master list up (which has everything I’ve ever put on the list on it), and start checking off things I know we need, which adds them to that week’s list for the appropriate store. When I get to something on the list that I’m not sure of, I’ll go check the quantity I have (GTracker will keep inventory too, but I’m too lazy to use that feature).

Lotion was never on the list, so while scrolling through, there was nothing to jog my “check the lotion inventory” memory.

Now that lotion is finally on the master list, I’ll probably never forget it again. Unless my cell dies, and I can’t get to the backup files.

Or an EMP kills all electronic devices on earth (or just in my general vicinity).

I dare say if that happens, I’ll have more important things to worry about than whether I have lotion or not…

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Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

Overthinking Overthinking

New Store, New Perspective

Thoughts from the Kitchen

Elevators & Returns

Untwisting the Knickers

She Puts the Lotion on Her Skin…Or Not?