September 15, 2012
Doggle is finally learning to play a little bit.
- I’ve been chasing him around the yard when we travel to places that have yards, and he chases me in turn. Hilarity.
- He is crap at visual recognition. He couldn’t figure out that he’d knocked his toy under a piece of furniture and in his panic to find a toy, any toy, he ran to a pile of towels and tried to pick them up. No, dear, those aren’t for you.
Once in a while, I fondly look at my husband and wonder: how did we end up together? We’re so different.
- He loves Groundhog Day. I haaaaate that movie. I didn’t have an opinion on Bill Murray until that film and to this day, I have a near-allergic reaction to his character’s smarminess.
- His love of Coming to America baffles me just as much. But it doesn’t bother me.
- He’s a compulsive cleaner. I’m comfortable with cyclical cleaning or cleaning as stress relief. I did grow up stomping about barns, after all.
The new horizon is so bright and shiny. It was hell on the innards traipsing my way to the conclusion and Things To Come. But so worth it.
- A new thing to learn: pacing myself. I am so very bad at this.
- I have added at least one, sometimes two! walks to my day. That’s pretty good for a new routine where I could have backslid into none.
Finances feel neglected. Not like they’re dwindling while I’m off playing or working necessarily, just that I’m not 100% on top of every detail.
- This is true because I missed a credit card bill. Called to have the late fee waived but not within minutes.
- Karen, regular reader, tells me that HSBC notified her of intent to implement a $12 inbound transfer fee which we both think is crap. I’m not a customer though I was considering opening an account there – wonder if they followed through.
- Very happy about the salary bump though not ready to start the calculations of how far away we still are from a refinance and a small yard.
I suspect I just have brain overload at the moment – too many commitments and for the first time, my survival doesn’t depend on knowing where every penny lives. My gut still doesn’t love that idea though so it’s taking note.
November 23, 2008
I’ve been MIA for a bit; life has been a blend of all kinds of hectic, stress, and demotivation.
My doctor hunted me down, or his nurse assistant did, and made me come in for an appointment on Friday. This is how you know we’re grown up now: I may avoid the doc, but I’ll still take a day off, and go in knowing that I’m going to get poked with a needle. Back in the day, you couldn’t even get me in the car if I thought a doctor’s visit was in the offing! So yes, I’m all mature now. And I’ve got a quarter sized bruise where the phlebotomist more interested in gossiping with her fellow labbies jabbed me for several tubes of blood, and my left arm is still sore from the flu shot. They’re covered by my insurance, but I didn’t know that until this year because I avoid unnecessary shots like the plague. I still have to see the optometrist and the dentist.
On the way home, I dropped in on a girlfriend who has a brand new baby: only 6 weeks old! She was tiny. And very cute. I meant to spend an hour with her and go get some work done but she invited me to her girls-only lunch, so we sushied until one pm. [$18.50] My share should have been less as the other girls got $2 drinks each and I drank water, but s’ok. I haven’t seen them in many moons, and the opportunity to play with an itsy-bitsy baby was worth the detour.
Since I’m never in town on a weekday, I stopped into my salon to have my unkempt eyebrows groomed, my lady says that business is down about 50%! For folks who rent their station in these salons, that has got to hurt. [$12]
Last stop was for 4 hours of Scan-a-thon. Whoever “they” are, they’re right, by the way: no one works harder than a lazy person to avoid work. As this may be the last major batch of scanning, and the files have all been transferred to my laptop, and organized to boot, that was the most diligent effort I’ve ever made to justify not doing my actual work. But, I can now shred another huge sack of paper.
I was determined to make the most of Saturday: take the truck in for appraisals, get a haircut, get my work started/done, and finish a load of laundry all before a semi-formal dinner event that night. Then I changed my mind: just get all the work done at home (work and laundry) and work on the truck on Sunday. The change of plans did me in. We had an unannounced power outage “for maintenance” starting at 8:30 and scheduled to end in the evening. This meant no laundry, no computer to work on (my laptop can’t sustain life on battery for more than a minute) sooo ….. change of plans again. Running errands earned me $4 for dropping off a big bag of stuff at my friend’s garage sale, I got a very little work done, dropped off a ton of books for a friend. That was about all I could manage before getting ready to go to the dinner.
Dinner was good fun, lots of good food, friends, and a five month old baby needing babysitting. Let me tell ya, I needed that tequila on the rocks after toting him around for nearly an hour. Terribly cute, but he got awfully heavy.
Today? Wasted most of it resting, and am so very overwhelmed by all the things remaining to be done, much like FB was feeling. Just can’t seem to muster the motivation to get started on the thousand things that need to get done. Even though I purged another 30-40 books, there’s still have a long way to emptying the bookshelf, tons of containers under my bed and desk to clear out, the closet is still not pared down enough, I have work to do for the upcoming Monday that’s still not getting done, my tax records need updating and organizing, there’s a friend and movie I’ve rescheduled once already this weekend and would feel flaky doing it again, but there are still job related problems to address and resolve. Escape Brooklyn and the NYTimes are freaking me out with talk of a Depression, news of the continuing economic hardships, woes of public transportion.
It’s not just me, one good friend is going through similar work and family related stresses so I need to support him, another friend is pregnant and requires attention there, another friend is recovering from medical problems and is stressed about her schooling future and career.
And it’s Thankgiving weekend next week. I planned to be done with so much more by now! Or imagined that I’d be much further along. *sigh*
Sorry for the laundry list and venting, I know it’s not helping me get anything done when it seems like I have just over a month to go and more tasks than hours to do them in. And the grocery shopping needs to be done. Gah. Better get cracking. At least I slept off most of the pain in my arms, wrists and hands from stressing them beyond their usual limits while babysitting. Not crippled for a day or two: major plus!
Also a plus: despite all the crazed feeling, at the very least, my financial life is currently holding steady. Might not last too much longer depending on the economy, but for now, it’s ok.
November 6, 2007
A. BoyDucky’s father is still in the hospital, and we’re spending all our phone time discussing his father’s condition and the tens of conversations he’s having with family members, doctors and other medical professionals in the pursuit of consistent, high-quality medical care. It’s been two months after a “routine” procedure, and his dad is bedridden, hooked up to machines unable to eat, drink or get up, and delirious due to an infection that the doctors can’t get on top of. He is NOT getting better.
B. I’m supposed to be editing his letter to hospital administration, taking out the highly emotional language and replacing it with professional Take-Us-Seriously verbiage. Halfway through, I just don’t have time.
C. 8 hours is not enough time in the day to make progress on one of my work projects, much less the ten I’m coordinating or managing. So I’m tearing my hair out, rushing from one project to project, desperately trying to keep up, and maybe maybe maybe get ahead.
D. I still haven’t followed up with MaDucky’s medical appointments.
E. Financially hurting. How to get through the next several months on what I’m making? I definitely don’t have enough in the Expenses fund to cover the next three months of expenses without raiding any of the other funds. I’ve been trying to figure out how, yet again, to pare down those expenses. This means I have to confront the dang truck and insurance issue. One solution: Cut my brother out of the insurance: he’s not paying and I don’t have the money to cover his @$$. I am so frustrated with always having to deal with this, him, stuff.
F. My neck has been hurting for months and the massage therapy works for about ten minutes after the the therapist is through with me. Not a good return on investment, and driving is NOT safe when I can’t turn my head. I’m finally getting a referral to Physical Medicine for medical therapy. Except they’re only open 8:30 am-12pm, and 1pm-4:30pm Monday through Friday. If that’s not the most useless schedule for employed folks, I don’t know what is! Fine, so I could take a half day off, but that’s just going to make Problem C even worse! AND, even if I do take a half day, both Ma and PaDucky work so I have to try to work out a car arrangement so I can get to the doctor, back and to work.
G. Bridal shower invitations are still not done. STILL. It’s on Thanksgiving, and I still haven’t completed the invitations: I need to design the insert cards and address the envelopes, and print on the actual invitations. Recipe cards! I need someone to buy a box with blank recipe cards to go into the invitations!
*silent screaming*
About the only good thing I can see from that list above is that my health has moved up a grand total of one slot from the bottom of the list.
And I blog to get away from it all, except I really don’t have time to blog, I just need to blow off steam and NOT be kneedeep in all of that, all the time.
I know it could be a lot worse. It really could. But … *sigh* Can’t it be better, either?