Inhale, Exhale, and Repeat Ad Infinitum

We had a fire drill today at work. I knew it was coming. They sent us emails telling us exactly what time it would start, where to go, what to do.  No big deal, right?

Today we were also asked to wear red, white, and blue in honour of those who lost their lives and loved ones on 9/11/01, and we all stood for a minute of silence at 9:11 this morning.  I was very moved, and felt for that minute that I was a part of something much greater, and it was a good feeling.

And then I sat down and went back to work, trying to get as much done as I could before the fire drill.  My heart started pounding a little faster, and I obsessively kept checking to make sure I had my handbag and everything I needed inside it. The ubiquitous they said we shouldn’t stop to grab our things. Well, having recently been through a fire where I didn’t grab my handbag made me determined that it, at least, was going out the door with me.

The alarm still managed to startle me when it went off, but I got my handbag, went out the door, and walked to the far end of the parking lot, where I plopped my backside on the grass and realized I was in the middle of a full-fledged anxiety attack.  It was about 2 hours, long after I was back at my desk and working, before my heart rate finally slowed to normal.

It’s been a really rough day. 

The vet said that Scout’s levels have improved somewhat, but not enough for him to be able to come home yet. So they’re continuing to flood him with fluids in the hopes that the kidney failure was because he got into something toxic, and that he can recover as much as possible. But if it is chronic kidney failure, his kidneys are (as of about 8:30 this morning) working at only 30%, which is not good.  We’re continuing to pray, of course. The thought of losing him is just not to be tolerated right now.

And as I sat to write this post, my heart rate sped up again, and I’m feeling not my best. I’m glad it’s Friday. I need a good weekend, and I need my little Scout boy to heal.

In Case You Were Wondering—

It is absolutely possible to be both insanely busy and terribly bored at the same time. 

I know this first-hand because I’m engaged in a long task that keeps me very busy, but it doesn’t really have to engage my brain. So I’m bored. And busy.

That is all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled life.

A Very Mondayish Tuesday

Mondays can be rough days anyway, what with having had a presumably pleasant weekend away from work. If the weekend was less than pleasant, that can affect the Monday.

Month-end can be a really rough day. My month end is always the first working day after the last day of the month. A lot of changes were made last month, and some of the reports did not come out correctly.

Today is both Monday (I know, I know, technically it’s Tuesday, but trust me, it’s the Mondayest Tuesday I’ve ever seen) and month-end. And true to form, it’s a disastrous one. I began it by oversleeping. When I woke up at 6:44 this morning, I got a mad case of the hiccups while I was racing through the house trying to get dressed and out the door in negative 10 minutes. I hiccupped half the way to work, as well, but they did finally subside. Knowing that I needed a dose of caffeine, I hit the coke machine, which refused uncategorically to take my totally legal $5 bill. So I raced into the mailroom, where the lovely Nancy gave me change. I was only 7 minutes late for work, which is a major record, considering not only the lateness of the hour but the hiccups as well. Dude, I don’t get dainty little feminine hiccups. I get the kind that shake your whole core and echo and make total strangers giggle madly at me. Nasty things.

Oh and we get a jeans day today. Normally not a huge deal anymore, and I do have jeans that fit. What I no longer have is an unmauled pair of trainers. Scout got the last pair last night while I was drunkenly watching an episode of Inspector Alleyn on Netflix. Okay, not drunken as in alcohol, but drunken as in I had taken my meds and was about to fall asleep at any time, hence my not noticing that he was going to town on my last unmauled pair of trainers. If you saw the shoes I’m wearing today, you’d laugh. You could totally tell my dog ate a goodly portion of one of them.

And true to form, the reports didn’t run properly. People are asking odd questions including why today’s report didn’t come out right, but the date on the report she gave me was from two weeks ago and I got very confused. And I have 3 new reports to possibly create if I can’t get someone else to do them. Not that I’m not happy to do them, but if the other person can get them created they’ll automatically run off every morning. If I create them, it will entail a lot of manual extrapolation from other reports, thus drastically increasing the opoprtunity for error.

And I was supposed to go to the library at lunchtime with the lovely Jehara; however, in my mad dash out the house, I didn’t have time to collect the library books from the living room and the bedroom and the bathroom. So she graciously agreed that we could go tomorrow.

Okay. So now I’m going to take a deep breath, a long slug of Coke, and hit it again. Have a good day, all. Peace out. (ha!)

Embarrassing Work Moments, Part 89,463

I just learned I can’t listen to Bob Marley while I’m at work.

I may have previously mentioned that my job is extremely boring. So when I’ve got a stack of work, I usually listen to my iPod. It keeps me conscious when the job itself is trying to bore me to sleep. So I had it on as I was finishing up the credit bureau requests. And I printed some anniversary certificates. And then Exodus came on.

First I started lightly tapping my wrist rest. Before I knew what was happening, I was pounding away playing virtual keyboards and drumming on my wrist rest with great enthusiasm. And then one of the managers walked by my office and looked in with a funny grin on her face.

:blush

I’d already gotten caught jamming; a manager told me to “rock out.” I didn’t think I was being that obvious. Guess I was.

 

Another work annoyance

I’m the queen of reports. About a week and a half to two weeks ago, I was given an assignment to run a query every morning and send the report from that query to a manager at another location. I have faithfully done just that. So yesterday she contacts my VP and whinges that she hasn’t been getting any of the reports.

I have to clean out my sent-folder every day because I do massive amounts of emails, so the one I still had a record of was yesterday’s. So I sent it to her again with a note asking her that if she doesn’t get the report on any given day to please call me. But this time I sent it requesting a delivered receipt and a read receipt. It was delivered to her mailbox yesterday.

This morning I had a “deleted without being read” receipt. That pissed me off. So I’ve been sending them to her every day, and she’s been deleting them without reading my e-mails. So I sent that receipt to my manager, and she got it to the VP.  I received a halfassed apology and she said she’ll work our accounts from now on.

The word bitcah just isn’t strong enough here. That annoys me greatly. I do a damn good job, even though I am bored out of my skull in this position. They have always had two people working this office, and that was before we got the extra crapload of accounts we have that keeps me so busy. When I leave it will definitely take 2 people to replace me. So how dare that woman just not even look at my emails, and delete them, and then try to make problems for me with my vp? 

Grrrr Arr

Grumpety Grump Grump

Joe called me this past weekend with a great idea. Take two days off either before or after Labor Day, and fly out to San Jose to spend a little mini-vacation with him there. Yay! I figured there’d be no way I could realistically expect to take off after Labor Day, because I have all the usual month-end reports and month-beginning CBR rushes. But the last two days of August? Sure.

Fast forward to this morning, and a big ol’ fat pin to burst my balloon. I can’t take off the last two days in August because I have to be here to do my job. They need me. I should feel flattered, but I just feel blue and grumpy.  My boss offered to let me take off a day and a half after Labor Day, but I know I would seriously regret it when I came back to see the mounds of CBR requests that would be waiting here for me.

So I don’t know. At first Joe said he’d just come back here that weekend, but then I asked him to see if he can find a flight for me that would leave Friday after work and come back on Monday. I’d only be able to be there for two whole days, but it’s better than a kick in the pants, right? Of course, I don’t know if he’ll be able to find a reasonably priced flight, so it could still end up not happening.

And I’m crazy busy at work (thank goodness for breaks), and it’s the weirdest sensation to be simultaneously frantically busy and hideously bored.  So I’m just kind of a crabapple today, which sucks, because I had a fantastic weekend and was feeling great today until my vacation balloon got popped.

It’s Wednesday

And Joe’s leaving this morning for another few weeks. It’s the first morning I cried when I had to say good-bye, so I guess this is getting to me a little bit.  He’s planning on coming home every two weeks for a long weekend, and I almost don’t want him to do that just because saying good-bye is getting harder. But I don’t want to tell him not to come home when he’s the one miserable because he’s away. So I’m just going to deal. But if I leak a few tears this morning, you’ll have to bear with me.

We got a free jeans and sneakers day at work, always something to enjoy. Furthermore, they’re actually letting us wear tee-shirts. So I’m wearing my lovely MoMentuM tee-shirt. I can’t resist the sales pitches–”You like my tee-shirt? Thanks! You can get your very own from Cafe Press, and support MoMentuM at the same time!”  Poeple will be actively avoiding me by the end of the day! It really is very comfortable; I foresee it becoming my gym shirt.

So Joe’s gone again; it’s going to be at least 2 1/2 weeks (if not longer) before he gets home next time. So beyond my wanting to completely veg out tonight (but I am going to the gym before I veg), I’m asking myself what I can accomplish in his absence. The smell is almost gone; the only room that still stinks is the bathroom. And if I leave the bathroom door shut and the window wide open all night in there, it is tolerable enough that I can manage to take a shower. So I’m not going to be doing a deep scrub of the bathroom until the stench is completely gone. But I can get the kitchen and dining area cleaned up the rest of the way. The kitchen is mostly clean, but he’s been storing all kinds of stuff in our dining area.  I wanted to get it out the last time he was gone, but didn’t know what to do with it. I asked him a few days ago, and he was quite vague about it. So I made an executive decision. Anything that doesn’t belong in the house itself but that we do need, I will go ahead and box up and put into the SUV so he can haul it off to our storage unit when he returns. Or hell, maybe I’ll enlist the strong arms of Izzybella and Soleil, and get them to help me haul it off. Either way, I’m so tired of not being able to eat in our dining area because it’s full of all kinds of crap that shouldn’t be there. I think I can get that done while he’s gone for this first period. It’ll be quite a chore, but it’s doable.

You know, he always tells me that old saw about many hands making light work, but I find it very annoying to try to clean house with him. I’d rather work fast and sort and clean and junk, and he questions everything I do. Maybe that’s why it’s annoying. He thinks I should use a different cleanser or he wants me to put something somewhere else or he wants us to work on one room when I want to do something different. So as much as I loathe doing housework, I almost kind of look forward to doing it while he’s gone.

I’ve got a couple of rooms that need painting, but I’m really sucky at painting. They’re not going to get done right away, but I can see working on it after I get the cleaning done. My robins-egg-blue kitchen walls have GOT to go. I’m not a robins-egg-blue-with-picket-fence-and-birdhouses type person anymore (never was, really, but that’s when I was trying desperately to fit in).

I’m looking forward to autumn and winter. I love the cold months of the year, the holidays, all the fun things about it. It’d be really nice to go into the holidays this year having the house already cleaned.

I can’t believe I’m such a slob that I have to set these types of goals. It’s embarrassing to have to admit to myself. But even Joe agrees with me that it’s less slobbiness (although that’s definitely a factor) and more that we still have way too much crap in the house that we don’t need. I’ll be making plenty of runs to Good Will over the next few months. And I’ve got to get more bookshelves so that I’ve got places for my books; makes them easier to find when they’re shelved than when they’re piled up all over the floors in various rooms.  And I’d like to find some way to organize his music room.

I’m having to work a fair bit of overtime this month, but otherwise I’m planning to spend a lot of time between the gym and housework. And movies. And the Buffython, whenever that happens. So staying busy, but trying to remember to have fun, too.

I know it’s been forever since I did any writing, but I have a new post up on Seduced by the Muse. And there are a couple of new posts up at Faith’s Journey as well. Stop on by if you’re interested!

Stuff

Tags

Books

First of all, two of my friends have gotten some really bad news. Please keep them in your thoughts. I know they’ll appreciate it.

Next, this was truly the weekend of movies for me. I saw Harry Potter on Friday night with my hubby (he wanted to see it with me before he heads out of town again); then on Saturday afternoon I went to see the Simpsons movie (laughed my ass off–unfortunately, not literally); on Saturday night I went to see Harry Potter on IMAX (loved the battle scene in 3-D); and yesterday Joe and I went to see the Transformers movie (definitely not my style, but okay, I suppose).   I shall continue my movie binge when Joe leaves again on Wednesday–there are a couple at the dollar movie that I want to go see, as well as some still at the regular movies.

After the HP movie Saturday night, we went to a new restaurant (well, new to us, anyway) right by the theatre. I forget the name, but it’s a lot like Chipotle only with more variety. S. and I shared a really tasty black bean & rice burrito with mango salsa on top. The mango salsa had these really huge chunks of mango. I like. I need to get Joe over there so he can decide he likes it better than Chipotle. Nothing against Chipotle, but this place is a little more vegetarian-friendly.  And then we went to Borders, where we spent a lazy hour or so. I ended up leaving with a beginner’s aromatherapy kit, a cute skull & crossbones 3-ring binder and pencil case (which I am using for a make-up bag, since the zipper broke of my last make-up bag).

I’m caught up at work–finally–from my beginning of the month rush. It’s always a relief when (and if) I get to that point. Some months it seems like it doesn’t matter how hard I work, the work I have to do just rolls in faster than I can get it accomplished. But there are other months where I get to a definite point where I know I’m caught up. Doesn’t mean I don’t stay busy, just that I’m not a day behind.

Well since the show’s all over now, and I don’t have anything coming up, I’m focusing on working again to start losing weight again. I have gained some back, but not even close to everything I lost. My goal is to go to the gym at least 3 times this week. I’ve been cutting back on the cheese and focusing more on other proteins. Last night I even had tofu, and it didn’t taste too awful. The texture is what I have the hardest time with. This was at Genghis Grill, and it was the only non-animal source of protein they had. So I got some, along with plenty of veggies and fruit, and brown rice. It was okay, just a little soft. I had added honey-soy sauce with my bowl, so there was plenty of flavour. On the comment card, though, I remarked that it would be nice if they had more vegetarian-friendly protein sources, like tempeh or seitan. Of course, unless they get a lot more comments like that from other people, I know nothing will change. And it was good, even with the squishy tofu.

The smell. You might be wondering about the smell. Well, fortunately (or unfortunately–depends upon your perspective), it finally got good and hot here. So the smell peaked I think on Friday. By Saturday it was slightly better. When S. came to the house where we were all meeting to carpool to the movie on Saturday night, Joe let her in. I couldn’t believe it, and immediately suggested that we go sit on the front stoop until Izzybella got there. It was slightly better yesterday. Still rank, though. Joe actually managed to fall asleep in the living room last night; just the thought of that made me want to gag. He came to bed about 5 minutes before my alarm was due to go off, so I lazily stayed in bed an extra 20 minutes. I mean, he is leaving on Wednesday for another 2 and a half weeks!Disgusting. Joe will have the back door open while he’s home today to let it air out. I’m hopeful that by the time he leaves on Wednesday, perhaps it will be tolerable enough that I can start cooking and cleaning again. We’ll see. If not, I’m fully prepared to spend every evening this week at the movie theatre or the book store.

Book store! That’s what I did on Saturday morning. I went to Barnes and Noble and read for hours. I started off with Being a Vegetarian for Dummies, and then bought the last Charlie Bone book (I’ll talk about those in another post). Breakfast was a whole-grain bagel and cream cheese in the cafe, along with a De’Peach Mode Jones soda (okay, not the healthiest choice, but it tasted great!). And then I went back into the store and read some more.  I tried reading Peeps by Scott Westerfeld. He’s a superb writer, and I can tell it’s a superb book, but it squicked me out too badly. If you like vampires and don’t have a rodent or insect phobia, I can strongly recommend it. I made it halfway through the book before I realized that I was going to vomit if I read any more of it. And I finished up with a book by Mary Stolarz that was so-so-ish. Not as good as her colours books but not bad.

Here’s a little more photo fun:

This is L-squared wearing Norbert’s teeny sombrero.

This is Humphrey. He’s quite bad-tempered. He’s a snob, too. See how he’s got his nose stuck up in the air? I don’t know if you can see it very well, but his tail is kind of lifted up, too. When he gets mad, he poops on the computer of whoever he’s mad at. Usually me.

This is Norbert without his sombrero, per Gypsy’s request.

Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!

Have you ever heard of A Complaint Free World?  Some pastor somewhere had the idea of how to help people get out of the habit of complaining all the time. He shared it with his congregation, and they started giving away these nasty little purple bracelets. I HATE the nasty little rubber bracelets, but I thought, you know, I do complain an awful lot, and I sent off for one. They sent me three. That was probably a good thing. I’ve been wearing it since Sunday, and haven’t even gone 6 hours, much less 6 days, without complaining.

You put the bracelet on your wrist. Doesn’t matter which one. And if you catch yourself complaining, you put the bracelet on your other wrist and start counting your days over again. Ideally you want to go 21 days eventually, because that forms a new habit of not complaining, yadda yadda.

So I have switched it back and forth ad infinitum, although I will say that about 75% of my whingeing is done silently. But I still know I’m doing it.

Here’s what I’m annoyed about today:

1. One of my best friends got scammed out of a large sum of money. That really has me angry. I’ve been angry ever since it happened, and I’m still angry.
2. The apartment of that same best friend was broken into, and her laptop and last bit of cash was stolen. I’m even angrier. She has been searching hard for a job, but has yet to find one. She’s one of the coolest, nicest, most whatever superlative you can think of people I’ve ever met, and it pisses me off that people hurt her like this.
3. My sister is sick. I know what you’re thinking, but I honestly don’t think she caught what I had. I’ve been over the infectious part for a couple of weeks, even if I still am hacking up a lung at least 10-15 times a day. Nope. She’s got something different. And this is the last week before tech, and we open a week from Thursday. She doesn’t have time to be sick, and she’s so frustrated by the whole thing. And of course there’s nothing she can do; it’s not her fault she got sick. Please. But I’m pissed in her behalf. Because I was so sick for so long, and it really sucks. Of course, she is blessed in that she has reasonable bosses and reasonable sick leave policy.
4. Work is driving me abso-frickin’-lutely insane!!!  There are people who request credit bureau reports from me, only to delete them as soon as they’ve worked them. Lo and behold, they need it again. Do they tell me they need me to repull a report that was pulled on a certain date? Nope, they just do a brand new request. My job is hellish from July through December anyway, and this just makes it worse. I caught myself today furiously noting an account that I emailed the July/XX cbr to Soandso “because I don’t already have enough work to do.” Of course I spaced it back off and just noted that I’d emailed the reprint to Soandso. But you get the picture. What is even more maddening is this particular Soandso was coming in my office every day the first week of the month wondering when I would get to her credit bureau requests. I explained that I do them in the order in which they’re received, and as I’m currently doing over 100 a day, it might take an extra day or so.  I finally got to the bottom of that stack, and realized that Soandso had never even submitted any credit bureau requests to me. When I told her that, she wondered what had happened to her requests, and printed new ones. Of course, as I’ve pulled them, I’ve searched the account and, as I suspected, she’d never requested them to begin with. I’M NOT STUPID!!!
5. Molly is apparently traumatized about Joe’s absence. I came home yesterday to the ripe smell of dog crap in the house. I checked the pad I leave by the back door. Nothing. I check the bathroom (her other favourite place when she’s punishing us). Nothing. I check the bedroom. Nothing. I finally thought she must just be really gassy. But no, the smell was just as ferocious when she was outside. I finally stuck my head inside our home office, and she’d left two gigantic piles of crap on some papers Joe’d left on the floor and the rug. NASTY!  I cleaned it up, and had a talk with her about it. Apparently she’s still stressed about Joe’s absence, though, because when I woke up this morning I found that she’d peed on the floor, right next to the pee pad, by the back door during the night.  I swear she flipped me off when I asked her politely to either come get me or use the pee pad. I know she’s traumatized, poor baby, but there’s nothing either Joe or I can do about the situation.
6. Joe was going to come home this weekend, but he’s decided to wait until next weekend. I think that’s a good idea. There’s a lot of music for him to go see in Saint Louis next weekend, and I’ve got a billion things going on this weekend. Plus, if he comes home next weekend, he’ll be here for opening weekend of the show and can also escort me to our end of season banquet.  So I’m glad in a way, but also bummed.
7. My back hurts. And I’m still coughing frequently, and my voice still comes and goes. And I’m still not off book. And we open next Thursday. Oh, and my house is still a disaster zone and I’m having a bunch of friends over Friday night for the Harry Potter party. And we’re getting out of rehearsal late on Friday night (which is a bad thing) because a reporter & some photographers from the paper are coming (which is a good thing).

I suppose that’s enough complaining for one gripe session. Pretend like I just moved the bracelet back and forth 7 times, and I’ll start all over again. :p

Fark!

Tags

Harry Potter

I’m getting worse again. This is so unreal. My voice is starting to go out again, and I’m horribly congested and have gobs of nasty drainage. I’m still taking the antibiotic and decongestant the doctor prescribed, but I think my allergies are hitting me on top of whatever this crud is.  I’m cranky about it. Although, I suppose, by the tone of my recent posts, you’d think I’ve been cranky nonstop for the past week and a half.  I haven’t been, honest. Just a little.

We had a great writers’ meeting last night on the Juarez show, and we did a quick run-through of 3 scenes. Two I’m in alone, and one I do with Izzybella. It’s really fun getting to do a scene with my sister, and I’m super excited about our mom coming out to see the show.  My dad and monster didn’t come to the last show, and I didn’t want them to, and some of my friends that I really wanted to come couldn’t make it.  It was disappointing, even though I had so much fun doing the show. So I’m really hoping that my dad & monster, as well as the other two friends who missed my last one, will make it to this one. Dad & the monster were griping about having to drive to Addison (really only about a 40 minute drive) until Izzybella said, “Yep, that is a long drive. (beat) Mom’s coming from Utah!”   Have I mentioned how much I love my sister?

In honour of Independence Day, we got a free jeans day at work (yay) and we’re having a spread.  I usually never hear about these things in advance, but my friends took pity on me and called to make sure I knew. So yes, I’m in my jeans. And I actually got to bring some really good cheese & crackers for the spread. Keebler has some really tasty garlic flavoured crackers that have a little well for spreading toppings on. I like them. Not the healthiest things in the world, but very tastealicious.

Speaking of things that are tastealicious, Soleil and Izzybella and I had fun last night planning our various upcoming marathons. We’re watching the first four Harry Potter movies back to back on Saturday after our meeting. And after the Harry Potter madness is over, we’re planning to have a Buffython at least once a month. We were thinking of fun eats for the marathons. I mean, you have to have cheese for the cheese guy, right? And chocolately goodness. And more caffeine and sugar than the body can handle.

Last night for dinner I turned Sunday’s leftover vegetable soup into a shepherd’s pie. I drained off most of the broth, and sauteed some garlic, squash, and zucchini in a skillet. Then I added in the remaining soup mixture and some cabernet sauce and heated it through while I made mashed potatoes. I thought it was really good, and Joe commented only once about the lack of meat. Soleil and Liz ate some too, but I’m not sure how impressed they were. Oh, well. At least I’m cooking again, right?

I bought the Harry Potter movie tickets today for our little group of midnight revelers. It’s actually next week! One week from tonight, at 12:01 a.m.! Squee! And then the book the week after that. It’s almost too much bliss to handle. 

In the meantime, though, I need to get off book for the Juarez show. And I got some of the books for my various reading challenges yesterday, so I’ll be doing some reading. And cleaning, on account of how I’m going to have people over to my house for various events. So I’ll be busy. Busy is good.