Surprise!

Back from the dead, I am.

Nobody much blogs anymore do they? Facebook and IRC have taken over my blogging time, not to mention that whole job thing.

Oh, job? Why yes, thanks for asking!

I don't have one. Nope. My organization closed its doors last week, victim of piss poor management after the director left.

Thankfully, I saw the writing on the wall and began looking about a month ago, when they cut my hours back to 80% of full time. So far I've applied for 6 positions and gotten interviews for 4 of them. The last two are at the same organization, and they haven't invited anyone in yet. I have connections at all the places, so I'm not entirely in the dark about what's going on. One position was a stretch (at best) and I didn't get the job, which is fine. The other 5 I'm still in the running for, and are great fits with my experience.

So there's the backstory.

Now for the meat of this post. I'm bored and unmotivated. I've been like this for a while, actually, but with work I didn't have to worry about the boredom except on weekends. Now every day is a weekend. That's what I'm here to change.

I need structure. When I was last unemployed, I did tons of projects and it was fun, if stressful because of money. I have projects I could do now, but I'm lacking this motivation, which sucks. This is why I am going to put some structure in my life, and this blog is what's going to keep me honest.

Here's the plan, which I will likely revise as time goes on.

Wake up
Drink coffee, check FB, computer fun. (One hour)
Blog my schedule
Shower
Work
Lunch
Work
Make dinner

Here's my schedule for Day 1:

8-8:30 Shower
8:30-9:30 House cleaning
9:30-11 Get driver's license renewed.
11-12:30 Make and eat lunch, do dishes.
12:30-3 Look for jobs and apply
3-5 Garden

Garden in the afternoon isn't ideal, because it's going to be hot, but it's wet out there right now.

OK, ¡Adelante, Stew!

Something to do

I'm trying to figure out a small project that I can complete today without going crazy that will help put me in a better frame of mind. Any suggestions?

Yesterday was pretty much a write-off as far as accomplishments go. I spent a lot of time doing sudokus and napping on the couch.

The house is a mess (surprise!) in part because we're still rather overcome with boxes from the recent move-in. The other part is that we need to make room for much more *stuff* I also have a few pieces of furniture I'd like to be rid of. Actually, there's a lot I'd like to get rid of. I've been considering a yard sale for a while now. I'm living in an environment that's about 15% comfortable.

The yard is a mess as well. However, I think cleaning something might just be the winner in my plan to deslothify. The problem is, I think, that once I start to clean, I tend to get distracted and move my focus on to other projects, resulting in often unnoticeable dents in many different areas.

Total change of subject. Does anyone else feel self-conscious when wearing a red top and khaki bottoms? I once got mistaken for an employee when checking out at Target in such an ensemble. Problem is, that combo is really really common and fits well with my default fashion technique: mix and match neutrals.

That's the way....

SO.

I think I mentioned earlier today that I'm a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bit stressed out. Well, it's getting worse. I know I'll get the things done that I need to do, but I've been left feeling absolutely wrung out. I've been on the edge of tears all morning, and a couple of times have even tipped over that edge.

No weeping or anything. Just a quivery voice, a need to look down, lump in my throat, and then a few tears have escaped onto my salmon-colored shirt. I put out a few feelers to friends just to vent a bit, and set my chat status to "woe-is-me."

---><--- This close to tears That's what my chat status says. A friend of mine that I don't talk to often, a friend who lives just far away enough to make visiting enough of a pain that it doesn't happen, a friend of mine whom I've not seen in person in over a year----this friend saw the passive "be nice to me" cry for help. Sweetheart, he is. Gave me a bit of "Tut Tut, turn that frown upside down!" attention, and then we commiserated a bit. All of a sudden all my stress and all my "Waaaaaaaaaaaah!" emotions turned around and focused on this friend. Y'all, you could hear my internal soundtrack change from The Smiths to KC and the Sunshine Band.

Poor lad didn't know what had hit him, but he rolled with it. "Stew, it really HAS been a long time since we've seen each other. I miss you! And we're both SO STRESSED!! We should really do something STRESS REDUCING!" (There's history there. It's not an out-of-the-blue offer/suggestion.)

Gotta love subtlety. And hormones/weakness.

The one seriously interesting bit here is that this is the first time in AGES that I've interacted with a man and considered him as a *man* rather than just another person. I wonder if the stress put a chink is some armor I wasn't even aware I had.

Decapitated Chicken

That's me. The day after tomorrow I leave at the asscrack of dawn to head up to the Great Lakes State for some R&R, good birding, and familial bonding.

Somehow, though, every single type of deadline possible is also this week, both at work and in my personal life. I have so many things to do that it's been keeping me awake at night, with all the to-do's running through my head over and over. What if I don't remember to do X before I leave? What if I can't get in touch with Y person? What're these other unexpected time-consuming work tasks that have a deadline while I'm gone? Must do! Must pay rent! Must document all car problems! Must water neighbor's garden by hand with her cistern water and free any Brown Thrashers that managed to break through the netting to get to the sweet sweet blackberries and then can't find their way out! Must make homemade fruitsnacks with a handful of blackberries and two dozen underripe peaches! Must do sinkload of dishes! Must deal with housemate pas de deux! Must clean out car! Must complete and hand over certain things best not to mention here but that take way too much time and are inordinately important and that are due before I go! And that I just found out about yesterday! Must pack ahead of time because I'm going straight from work Thursday to Chapel Hill to take my car in and then spend the night at Emily's so she can get me to the airport at said buttcrack of dawn! Must prepare my bathroom for new roommate to use before old roommate leaves! Must harvest and figure out how to take produce on the plane! Must get medicine refills, because I might run out, but who knows if I can because of the damned health insurance limitations?????????

Argh!!!!

Funny to me, anyway

Email to Boss.

Subject: Momentary, mild venting/freak out,

Body: Don’t stress. I’m just having a moment of “OH MY GOD CAN I GET THIS WRITTEN!?” angst. The answer is yes, and the answer is also “not as well as I would if it were my graduate thesis and that’s just going to have to do because this is not a master’s thesis it’s just a grant.”

Thank you for listening, and peace be with you. And me.

when all else fails...

....take a picture!

I was caught unprepared for the cold this morning. Luckily, I don't often clean out my car. A while back, our girl Pinky had given me a hood that I had sworn didn't belong to the jacket she gave me last season. It's been languishing in the car. No longer. I'm going out for a walk. I really like the fashion statement of wearing just the hood. It's kind of like wearing a hairnet out in public like my sister does, or like the safety glasses Suze let me wear a couple of weeks ago.

I got all sorts of laughs in the car on the way to work this morning, thinking of how weird I look!




(p.s. I'm dying of stress.)

Bleh

I'm actively not looking forward to tomorrow, but at least I'll be out of the house. And it has to be better than my weekend has been.

Oh, and my roommate's birthday is on Tuesday. Any suggestions on what I should do? I feel bad that I've been being so solitary and messy of late.

Overworked....(underpaid goes with the territory)

I wish I just didn't CARE about my job sometimes.

I'm on the edge these last couple of weeks. My schedule at work is really busy with normal responsibilities (October is apparently the crazy month for this position), and to top that off, I keep finding out about one-off activities (grant planning, fund raising events, receptions, day and night-long retreats, and homework for all of the above) that I'm required to do. It's hard to prioritize, since the regular work is what my performance review will be based on, but the other things are at the direct request of my boss, or else are really only things I have the particular expertise to do. I'm juggling all these things, and I'm sick. I feel like I can't skip out of anything even though I'm sick, because they're all. so. important. THE LIFE AND HEALTH OF THE ORGANIZATION AND MY CAREER DEPEND ON THESE THINGS!

Pardon me while I keel over, mmmkay? I've been on the verge of tears all day long.

Wallowing so much I'm making myself laugh!

How is it that I'm both bored AND stressed out? Naw, don't bother answering.

:::shuffles back to bed:::

WAIT!

I just remembered there's a fucking FREEZE warning tonight. I took as many tomatoes off the vine as I think will actually ripen inside. The others will just have to fucking DIE.

Freeze Warning from 4:00 a.m., Oct 30 until 9:00 a.m., Oct 30

Damnit. I just remembered that I have some plants outside that need to come in.

I'm annoyed that when I type this computer is now so slow that there's about a 10-15 character lag. Pain in the ass for typos.

I don't even like the damn plants that are outside, so maybe I'll leave them out there to DIE MOTHERFUCKERS! KILL ALL THE PLANTS!

And WTF? none of the fall plants I have will even have reached any level of harvest. Oh. Except the radishes. The carrots are mere sproutlings that will be dead tomorrow because I don't give a shit. . I suppose the drought and high temperatures retarded first their germination and then their growth.

Grrrrrrrrr. Hot chocolate and a roommate who is increasingly charming (1st: cleaned the kitchen. 2nd: "Wow, I moved into the right place" when I feed him) doesn't even help all that much.

My bed is piled high with (clean) laundry. Tomorrow a.m. I'll be putting it away, provided I get up on time.

Quick update

Because I KNOW you want to know the minutia of my life and die a little death* when I skip a day.

Most importantly:
RAIN!

Next: Overwhelmingly busy at work. College recs to write, grants to plan programming for (huge task), tons of community education programming, trainings to go to, meetings to go to, fund raisers to go to, paperwork backup to beat into submission....ARGH!

Also: Last night I went out with the boy who called a couple of days ago. I had major reservations, but it was a Good Thing in that I feel closure and a sense of peace. The "what ifs" I'd been mulling over are now satisfied--there would have been exactly no positive outcome. WOOT!

Finally: I met Mary Easley last night at a reception I went to at the Governor's Mansion. She was extremely personable, and I am SO fancy. We talked about the rufous hummingbird that over-wintered at their house last year. It's not yet shown its vibratey body this year, but a rare bird is always a fun thing.

*Not that kind.

There's a first time for everything.

I'm sure it's bad form to say this, but I'm kind of glad that I'm working with visually impaired teens this afternoon; they won't see how badly I've drooled all over myself.

My follow-up dental appointment today, instead of being the tooth-saving, happy, pain-relieving godsend I had hoped for, has turned out to be the beginning of HELL.

I've never cried at the dentist's before today. I've never had the anesthetic completely numb me but still let through the pain. I had to leave without them even doing any work on me. The filling I was there to get fixed is apparently not the main cause of the pain. Just a stream of air on the next-door-neightooth was enough to elicit a full-body jerk away. A second shot farther back in the mouth made no difference. I called the endodonist's office from my dentist's chair. I've an appointment for evaluation Monday. They had an opening Thursday morning, but that corresponds with my organization's big fund raiser; I'm one of the speakers.

Let's hope my mouth un-numbs by then.

Meanwhile, both my tomato-zucchini soup AND my super-protein chocolate shake are mostly wiped from my right chin.

I didn't have a straw.

On stress and poultry

Year: 1999
Setting: Townhouse, College Town, NC
Event: Out-of-Season Turkey Dinner, complete with Fixins (Capital F)
Invitees: Several close friends, and a few of their friends.

Situation: I had rescued a frozen turkey one March, from a man who was carrying it to the dumpster at my doctor's office. It had been in their freezer since DECEMBER! The HORROR!

Problem #1: The turkey was done 2 hours before it was supposed to be.
Problem #2: The guests were an hour later than they were supposed to be.
Problem #3: I hadn't yet learned that not every crisis merits a full fight-or-flight response.

Resolution: Upon the guests' arrival, I shoved a fork and carving knife into the nearest hand (which happened to be a guy I'd never met) and told the lot to "Shut up and cut the fucking turkey!"

Hoo boy!

I felt a little of that same feeling yesterday as I finalized this weekend's camping trip details. All of a sudden the friends accompanying me started to have input into the decisions I'd made in their stead, having lacked much helpful feedback until that time.

Why are we doing it this way?
Why not go here instead?
Is it worth going, if the drought is so bad?
Oh man, we'll have to portage some of it!
Don't canoes hold like, 1200 lbs? Why pack light?

I'd spent way, way too much time carefully planning the best course of action to react logically and calmly to these questions. I hid my irritation as best I could, but did tell a friend that I was having a "Shut up and cut the fucking turkey" moment. He'd been there to see that fabulous moment, so he knew exactly what I meant. He stepped up and planned out a menu for the trip.

It's going to be worth it, right?

OF COURSE IT IS! Whee!