jeffrey + upstairsloft

What’s cubicle swag without Giants-reppin? brown-sippin (and scattered design goodness)? So here’s a post dedicated to my grind station, where I hold it down as StubHub’s Super Senior Awesomeness. HYFR.

She helps me sleep—even when she’s asleep.

I’m a high maintenance sleeper. Not in the way where I’m sensitive to sound or need eye covers and a white noise machine. But sleep, a simple human necessity, is something hard to come by. It’s years of disruptive sleep, more-so then insomnia (that was during the design school days).

If Kate falls asleep before me, I, for whatever reason, won’t fall asleep until hours later. I’m just up—restless—probably counting the wood grain on the beams of our ceiling. So she reads or forces me to hit the sack so she can help me fall asleep before she does. I’m out by 12 or 12:30.

Every night, I wake up 2–4 times between when I fell asleep and when I need to wake up. Guaranteed. Whether it’s a weeknight or a drunken stupor of a weekend or if I fall asleep at 2, I’ll still wake up around 3. It’s dumb. But it has been going on for years.

I’ve tried different things. Drink herbal tea. Eat ice cream. Have a nightcap. Don’t have a nightcap… the list goes on. And still, I keep waking up in the early hours of the day and I’ll reposition myself, toss… turn… and Kate notices. She then rubs her hands through my hair to help calm me to sleep. And it works! Later in the morning, I thank her, and she doesn’t recall doing it.

So… reason  2,023,421 Kate is Awesome.

I got some dope ass sweatpants from H&M the other day and I can’t wait to wear them on the plane. I’ve said it before, I’m a petit ass dude. I’m lean. I can’t just walk into Mervyn’s and pick out any ol’ pair of High Sierra sweat pants. They have to fit right on me and with my Vans. I can finally be a bit more comfortable on the plane. Noise-cancelling headphones. A handful of Jameson bottles. Comfy socks. And some sweatpants I can wear out in public. I geek on the little shit that matters.

That is all.

I’ve been in and out this B but rest assured, I’ve been living it up. But I won’t lie… the entry I wanted to write about two months ago would have had a different tone. Things are awesome and I’m feeling inspired these days. I put together a mixtape to to play in the background during the last wave of SF heat as we approach Fall (my favorite season). Enjoy my first official, unofficial mixtape.

Indian Summer Album Artwork

I suck at praying. I don’t know what to say. It sounds like a conversation I’m having at a cafe. But when I do pray it’s calming—infrequent, but calming. My brother and Kate pray more often than me. When my brother prays, you’ll always hear me politely toss in a few of my own self-serving prayers.  “A Laker win!” “Good health!” “Nobody loses their wallets!”

So don’t judge me for stealing my wife’s post. She says things I betterer than me.

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Quality, by Kate

I heard a phrase the other day that best describes the last several months—I think stemming back from November.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Yup. That pretty much sums it up. The workload has been a non-stop rager. I know. I know. Without process, you can get lost in all the small things but this is me I’m talking about. I’m pretty damn process-oriented, for as spacey as I get.

The bottom line is, I’m tired. The end.

For as long as I had eyeballs, I had a squeamish eye thing. I called the cops on my dad when he was forcing eye drops into my eyes when I had an eye infection at 5 years old. I can never use eyedrops. I couldn’t watch the Mrs. or the kid brother put on their contacts. But today, yes, today… I am wearing contacts.

The girl at the eye place spent an hour with me, teaching me to put those suckers in. In an hour, I could only take them off. I got home. Forgot about the frustration. And with the powers of ADHD, 5 minutes later I gave it another shot. I successfully laid a pair of contacts into my eyes… Not once, but twice!!! (I thought I flipped the left and right so I had to take ‘em off to see of I did).

Why the sudden urge to engage in an act so vile and so unnatural to me? The Giants. I have 8 fitted caps and now that it’s baseball season, my caps will be in heavy rotation. I admit, I was being a little pansy during the 1.5 months I wore a fitted during the Postseason last year. Caps and glasses hurt a dude’s ear after 12 hours of hood-reppin’ To wear a cap without that pressure is awesome.

And when I snowboard, I can see clearly behind my goggles.

Oh vanity. Oh Giants. But hey… I got over my damn fear.

The sun is up in SF. The “heat” hovers between 65-70. What does that mean for us? Booty shorts and tank tops. On these days, spotting tourists is easier than ever. They’re still bundled up. That’s all.

Can I just take the first contact of a buzz from two fingers of whiskey and prolong it permanently? That first ten minutes is like the golden hour before the sun sets. Illuminating. I think clearer. For that 30 minutes of a buzz, my mind’s pace decreases from a sprint to a warm-up lap. Food tastes better. Jokes are funnier. Good company is great. And for that 30 minutes I have perspective. For 30 minutes I can breathe. Anything more or less, I’m drunk or my mind is playing catchup.

**based on 3 years of casual study.

When I’m stressing out, I eat candy. Sour candy. Sour straws. Sour Mambas. Sour Spaghetti. And Starbursts. Well the Starbursts aren’t sour, but still. Cavities beat smoking. And Kate beats me if I drink everyday. Not really. But really.