Good Thing Friday (81)
September 4, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just remembered to inch up our twice-monthly savings rate a little bit.
2. I’m really enjoying PiC’s version of the gluten free turkey and cheese burgers he’s been making for us on Friday nights.
3. We had a brief outdoors masked and distanced no hugging meet up with a couple friends we haven’t talked to for months. It was maybe about ten minutes but it was a nice tiny visit. I can handle socializing in those small increments.
4. I made the mistake of saying that I was a bit more relaxed this week because a lot of the balls I’m juggling are in other people’s hands and that felt like I invited some chaos but I think honestly it’s just the normal ebb and flow of stress, isn’t it? I found myself somewhere on the spectrum of mildly to moderately annoyed without spiraling into anxiety and grouchiness over the bad turns and was able to enjoy that minor moment of peace without spoiling it with looking for something to fuss about. That’s a new thing for me. Brain therapy is good!
Challenges this week: I don’t typically pay attention to celebrity news but the passing of Chadwick Boseman was shattering.
Minor frustration: we’ve only had two pieces of mail go missing in the past several years and both times, it was a check. Both times, they made it as far as being scanned and in our Informed Delivery email but never made it to us. The mail from the IRS telling us we owe them over $5000 found us, though! I guess given the interest they’d charge if we didn’t get that mail, we’re better off getting theirs than not. We’re both still juggling a TON of extra logistics because we’re trying to make time to help a friend and get some home maintenance on the road.
5. We had to make some decisions about furniture this month and we got through all of them without any conflict! We usually have such different tastes and desires and needs that I’m usually at least a little disgruntled by how much time we’ve spent on it but two things made a difference: having a timeline helped force focus and narrowed our choices. And our strategy of having me tell him what my priorities are, him going off shopping and giving me links to look at, and then narrowing it down together is working smoothly these days.
I made the same mistake of saying, out loud, that I thought we’d turned a corner on work stress. And right on queue, the job made sure that I had that mindset corrected right quick.
That missing check thing is just so strange. I know it’s a weird time to critique the USPS, but I’ve had envelopes with checks go missing, too, in both directions.
That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Complaining about problems doesn’t make them go away, how come celebrating the few quiet or good moments does seem to?
Yeah I generally am a big fan of USPS, they normally do quite well here, but I know that’s not a universal experience (and the DeJoy situation now makes it ten times worse), and it’s annoying to lose checks of all things.