Day 7, 2021 – Upgrading my mindset

I woke up this morning and made the mistake glancing at a news site enroute to checking the weather. It just feels like the “tone” of the world is so negative and so dark. At least that is my perception of it.

My boss was in the office yesterday, the first time I have seen her in person since before Thanksgiving. We are in a transition period right now with CEOs, and the communications have been weak. Only part of that can be attributed to the ongoing shutdown of non-essential businesses. The other components are politics and the transitioning of one CEO to a new CEO. It felt really good to have my boss in the office, to just have a conversation about all that is going on and blow off a little steam.

I have the great priviledge of working for a smart and accomplished woman who is very no-nonsense and practical. From staff people I hear complaints and emotional wishes for the perfect workplace, and I have really had no outlet to express my own burnout and fatigue. My ability to change that is very limited, hamstrung by their own managers and their own job classifications and performance. Many of the complaints are valid, and a sympathetic ear and suggestions how to adapt to their circumstance are not necessarily what they want to hear. Many of the complaints are also shutdown fatigue and anxiety about the future manifesting. Whether real or imaginary, the 10+ months of hearing this remotely in email, text, zoom or phone calls has just worn me down. I feel myself giving in to the negative mindset.

Fighting back from that – I am not sure how to do it except to just choose to not give in and allow that dark despair overwhelm me. That sounds so dramatic, but after COVID descended and the chaos in the country at large, I am not sure how else to express it.

But I am trying.

I do believe my lack of exercise contributes to my negative mindset. I do not (yet) feel bad from lack of regular movement, but from my days as a non-exerciser I know it is coming. On day 7 of 2021 I am doing pretty well on my intentions for the year, but the exercise is a point where I must kick-start my motivation and – as the commercials say – just do it.

On my commute I am listening to The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. I suppose it is the true trait of a master class procrastinator that I did not even realize procrastination was part of my struggles with organization and time management. Not all the time, not with everything, and it is not crippling my life. There are periods, slices of my life, where I know I could do better at being more productive. But as he goes forward describing the traits and manifestations of procrastination, I see myself with certain projects and instantly recognize the qualities and consequences of my own negative self-talk. The fact that I am excited and hopeful about using some of his strategies is a welcome boost for me.

Today I have an employment law update training, then a goodbye staff meeting for our outgoing CEO, plus a desk full of work that needs to get done in the few hours leftover. As much as I like and respect and will miss our outgoing CEO, I really hate the ceremony of saying goodbye. Perhaps it is just change that ripples through my world in a semi-negative manner. I know this week has been a crunched-up transition between old CEO leaving and the new CEO starting next week and very little communication regarding plans and logistics in between.

Despite my almost cranky feelings about my life and times, I am grateful life conintues with more posiitves than negatives. Yet the negative has the megaphone in my mind right now, and wrestling control away from it takes varying degrees of enormous effort.

I will prevail.

Day 5, 2021 – Back to work in earnest

Yesterday was back to work and a regular work week. It was not overwhelming, but it was also not without its own set of headaches and issues.

I still have several hundred emails to go through. I have a stack of invoices to approve. I have publications orders to process and payroll reporting to complete. This is what did not get done yesterday in the swoosh of getting through a week of emails, voice mail messages (I had 28), and other day-to-day stuff that comes with the end of the year.

On top of which there were a few urgent messages from our offsite storage manager. Only when I called her back, I got voice mail. And it bugs me wondering what is ‘some urgency” means to her. Was there a break in? A flood? Other damage to the unit?

We are in the midst of our head honcho change out, with one leaving and another starting on Monday. I have the politics of human resources and how much COVID-related policy knowledge must be shared and by whom. I definitely note the differences between the way my priorities align and the way others who are far more riddled with anxiety and fear align. There are three staff who have approval to work in the office during this entire shutdown period. If one of them travels across the US via plane, that peson must quarantine at home for 10 days. Policy was communicated to her, but then she shared with others who felt it should have been announced company-wide. I disagree, because (1) I cannot control what people do in their non-work time, and (2) if you are already working remotely, you are effectively quarantining in not coming to the office. The HR side of me having to shutdown a friend reminds me of the perils of promotion from the ranks to management.

Today will be a good day, despite still playing catch up and facing whatever our storage unit manager defines as a “matter of some urgency.” Whatever has happened, I will have to deal with it. Trying not to obsessively self-flagellate or replay highlight reels of failures in my work systems (both real and imagined) is another story. I will continue to work at it.

Day 3, 2021 – Buying in bulk?

M and I routinely shop at Costco and Sam’s Club for groceries. We eat our fair share of fresh fruits and vegetables, and our volume of consumption supports buying big this way. We also have adequate storage for “warehouse size” of consumable paper and cleaning products.

We buy our membership fee’s worth every year in groceries and other household-related products. The fuel costs are also significantly less than any other gas station in our neighborhhoods, so we do save money there as well. Rewards from premium membership are covered in full with a few dollars leftover every year.

For a household of 2, this seems a little suprising. But it’s working for us.

The problem issue I am weighing today is the perception of need and “running” out of products.

It’s never things like lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, eggs, or other perishable food items. Nope. If anything, we’re scrambling to ensure we eat everything up before it goes bad or past the “best buy” dates on the packages.

But toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste? Yeah, maybe we have a problem there.

Just quick glance through my stash of stuff, we have more than 30 rolls of paper towels and at least a dozen 9-roll packages of toilet paper. There are 2 tubes of my toothpaste (M now uses a different brand) and 4 bottles of deoderant. In our defense it has not been so much panic buying as lack of planning and communication between M and I. In the last few months we have both purchased warehouse size packages of our preferred paper products, thinking we were getting low. M uses a different toothpaste than what I use, so the 2 tubes in my drawer will last me awhile. Same situation with floss – and I use it routinely every single day. We made a conscious choice bulk buy of 5 units of deoderant toward the end of 2020, so at least I thought about it. Now it feels as if we are stocked up through 2021.

There reallly is nothing wrong with the being well stocked on household products, and I do not feel like a hoarder for having an entire shelf-plus in my hall closet filled with TP and paper towels. However, I also recognize that we are mindlessly overbuying because we are not organized in our purchase planning.

I ponder this because M and I differ so much in our attitudes toward stuff. M has a broad, vivid imagination that proposes use for every empty container or reasonably durable consumer product. Me, I am a serial waster and landfill supporter. I think microwave meal dishes are meant for one use and tossed. Anything that is recycleable goes into the recycling can. And any available storage space does not need to be filled with future use items.

If 2020 was a year of decluttering, 2021 needs to be the year of more decluttering as well as using up and not recluttering.

I started an inventory in my phone of what we have in the freezers, what is in the pantry, and what is in our stockpile of household needs. Hopefully this helps.

We have noticed our food tastes have changed through the last few years, with a firm nudge toward less processed and less convenience-oriented food. In 2020 we got rid of stuff I know we will never eat, and if it was not expired it went to the food bank. January we will be eating down the freezers as much as possible, while restocking with bulk cooked individual meals. The paper and personal care products will get consumed over time, and hopefull we will not add to the stockpile.

Today has been a laid-back, stay-at-home sort of day. I did some reading, some research on updating our wifi system, and some cooking. There is beef stew, lasagna, chicken tenders and marinara sauce with meat. It feels like not that much, but it is a good start.

Day 2, 2021 – Reading rebooted

I am on a quest to read more. I have been on this quest a few months now, an alternative to improve my mental health by stepping back and away from the deluge of news every day. My first foray with the library was with audio books, seeking something to listen to on my commute every day. While I like the new normal traffic patterns, I still live far enough away from easy freeway access that my 22 mile commute takes about 35 to 40 minutes every morning and evening. That is a solid chunk of time to be listening to a book.

To date, I have been listening primarily to books on productivity, business practices, mindfulness/meditation type self-help. The pandemic and resulting shutdown have been isolating and forced me to revisit old hobbies and try out some other ways to pass time and keep brain and body active. So much time at home has also tended to make me feel lazy, like I have all the time in the world to do whatever needs to be done. Not. I have the same amount of time as everyone else. I still go to the office every day, but I have fewer distractions and outlets to explore and feed my desire for change of scenery or new experiences when not working. I can only binge watch so much TV, and for me that’s maybe an hour or two daily, so it is back to books while doing other things.

For this month, I have The Now Habit by Neil Fiore on audiobook and Atomic Habits by James Clear on my kindle. I love that my library books appear in my kindle app. I am hoping another audiobook selection I have on hold becomes available within the next week or so, because if I am disciplined about listening to books while commuting, I get anywhere from seven to ten days out of a book. However, if I am disciplined about listening while driving, I am usually enjoying the experience enough that I tend to continue with headphones while at the gym or doing domestic engineering type tasks.

Since one of my hopes for 2021 is to read more, I splurged on an actual kindle e-reader. While my phone and laptop have the kindle app, I found myself avoiding reading on either unless I was waiting for something and had nothing else to do or to read. The kindle ereader – this is my third or fourth one in the lifetime of ereaders – does only that: display books for reading. It does not ping my texts or emails or anything else, so my focus is solely on the reading. Plus it feels easier on my eyes after a day of screens. I gave up my last kindle at the end of 2019, when I ceased taking public transport to work most days. That also coincided with my losing interest in reading in my available free time. During the pandemic I have done a lot of zooming with friends and family as well as reading/responding to texts and emails.

Reading that explanation/justification for replacing the kindle I released back into the wild, I wonder why I am so compelled to explain or justify my purchase. M asked me why I got another one, and I told him. He nodded in acknowledgement and said no more. M tends to hold onto things “just in case” he wants to return them to service in the future. Me, with all things electronic, if I have not used them in awhile and cannot envision a reason why I might pick it up again, I will sell anything that retains value or donate it if it does not. While this kindle is brand new, I would typically choose a refurbished or used if available. After all, those are simply someone else’s returns for lack of need or use or desire to retain it.

Anyway, I would like to read more. My current preoccupation with productivity and self-help mindfulness reflects life and times as I perceive them. I would like to be better at my job, in that being more positively productive makes me happier and more positive overall. The isolation and continual sense of bad news from the pandemic makes meditation and mindfulness a natural avenue as well.

Plus to date I suck at meditation. My mind seems to rebel against the idea of applying brakes and slowing down, which could mean I am not quite ready to embrace the mindfulness adventure. I would like to find a non-woo-woo way of learning the skills and putting them into practice, but I am enjoying the stories of other people’s journeys to where they are right now. That alone is enough to continue seeking out different books on the topic.

Day 1, 2021

I was asleep by 10 pm last night, yet awake again at midnight because some moron decided to blast fireworks to celebrate the new year. Continually. For more than an hour. And we’re not talking those whistling type that you purchase in July and set off in the street in front of your house. No, these were the booming, scare-my-cats type fireworks.

In California people are harrassed for not wearing masks and businesses fined for trying to remain open enough to make a living. Yet some idiot can blast illegal fireworks for 40 minutes and nothing happens. If I did not live on a greenbelt and have a clear memory of the wildfires that happen each year I might not be as irritated as I am about it. But I do so I am. And my cats hid under the bed and are still claw-on anxious this morning.

I did not want to begin the first blog of January with a complaint. It happened, it’s over, and no one (in my house) was maimed or traumatized for life from the experience. My kitties are resilent and will survive.

My love of January 1 is tied to the new calendar I get every year. For Christmas the last several years, my children create a personalized calendar with photos of the grandbabe throughout the year as well as of her parents and aunt/uncle. It hangs above my desk here at home and came pre-labeled with everyone birthday, their individual wedding anniversaries, and other significant dates throughout the year.

It is also a new year for finances. While in planning and budgeting every month is a new period, the new year is bigger picture stuff, where I dream about and jot down ideas for home improvements we might make in the coming year. The past few years we have had no big-ticket items on the agenda, because financially remodeling the kitchen in a pandemic did not seem realistic with most restaurants and places to go closed. It is also going to be major league expensive, and the how to pay for it is still murky to me. I am happier being debt free and not refinancing to update a kitchen M and I have not yet agreed upon how we want it updated. It seems 2021 will continue to be a savings year, for the remodel we want to do someday.

I am a-okay with that.

However, I am thinking hard about an upright freezer. There is an availability shortage in the size I would like right now, which is actually a good thing. I need the chest freezer we have to cease functioning so M will be more agreeable to an upright. Frankly I could care less about how less efficient it is than the chest freezer. I am sick of having to dig to the bottom of the freezer every single time I want something out of it. No matter what item I am seeking, it seems to always be on the bottom, where good food burrows and dies much of the time.

As I sit here at 5:30 in the morning seeking inspiration and waiting for my cat to be ready to come in from the garage, I am realizing how normal and uneventful living my life on a day-to-day basis is anyway. I absolutely do not mind! It does not make for grand or dramatic blog fodder, but it does feel safe and stable. Shortly after I press publish I’ll make my protein shake, check on #1 kitty to see if he wants to come in, and then make my way to the gym. I expect it to be crowded that late in the morning, but I will make do and get it done. I want to get back to consistent, so I will make myself go even if it’s suboptimal to my own terms of a great practice. I know I will be happier I went than I am if I do not try.

After that, we have no particular plans. I may help M with backyard clean-up, or I may leave that to him and deep clean the kitchen. My options and possibilities for productive and satisfying housekeeping tasks feels limitless.

I’m grateful for a mostly at-home 7 days of Christmas holiday/vacation, 2 days of work spread over 4 days, and now another 3 day weekend. My firm has a ridiculously long holiday schedule, and my plotting to add a day of vacation to Monday or Friday holidays rather than taking a week off all at once means 4 day weekends for the next 3 months and taking only 2 days of vacation. I will work very hard in between and do my best to keep letting go of work when business is closed, so I can feel and appreciate the breaks.

Welcome to 2021! My best wishes for a peaceful, productive, and happy new year for all of us.

What to hope for in 2021?

I hate New Year resolutions and/or any sort of personal goals that may come attached to them. I am okay with hopes and dreams. I am okay with intentions. This year, I particularly like hopes and intentions. But resolutions and goals? The terms inspire visions of failure – no thank you.

Consensus in my world (and very likely well beyond those limited boundaries) is 2020 has been a massive dumpster fire. The virus has been bad, but the shutdowns and the changing information about what to do and the election and the politics have exacerbated and expanded fear and loathing into competitive sports. This is not to say or even suggest the fear and anxiety are not rooted in genuine reality of what could happen if we do not work together to put forth our best efforts to protect the vulnerable populations and ourselves. I do have hopes for better in 2021, but I am not holding my breath in eager anticipation; I would likely turn blue and pass out, potentially die of oxygen deprivation. Mostly I think I am striving to do what I can for myself and my tribe to keep us healthy and mentally/emotionally stable until the rest of the world catches up and things return to something akin to the pre-March normal.

Yet I do not think the old normal will ever return. In some ways this is as it should be. We have gone through a pandemic and a massive economic shutdown. Whether it is necessary or helpful, whether it staved off further disaster or ruined our economy and brought premature death to thousands is an ongoing debate that should stay well outside this blog. But the reality of 2020 has had a powerful impact and impression upon all of us. Let’s acknowledge that and take the best practices with us forward into the future.

In 2021, I might like to finish a few projects I started and stopped in 2020. I have a half-finished embroidery project for my grandbabe. She celebrates her first birthday in April – I am shooting to have it done by then. A couple of weekends of focused effort and I could have it complete and into the shop for framing and presentation.

For 2021, structure, routine, schedule are back on my agenda. It has been so easy to let go of things important to my overall health and welfare this year. Sometimes it feels like the sky is falling so why do I even care if I go to the gym or pursue a healthy eating regimen when I could stay in bed and sleep. I should care; I do care. The strong desire to shake off and escape the vacuum of bad news, worse news, hateful news is evolving into a motivation to be free from that negative noise and seek out and embrace the living daylights out of anything positive and pre-pandemic normal. Things I took for granted – eating in restaurants, getting a pedicure, possibly going to a movie, meeting a friend for coffee – I will not do that again. For me, there is a driving need to set aside or shut out the endless stream of bad news that has been dogging me and dominating my attention for too much of the last year. I need to focus on what I can do, what I have control over.

I think, starting today and into 2021, I need to regain my mastery and vision of all I do and can control in my life, practice more gratitude, be more mindful in day-to-day decisions and choices.

While business is technically shutdown, my job continues and there is a lot to be done to keep the rest of the firm running. There are areas of expertise and responsibility I want to delve into and explore in more detail. I would like to get back on track for improvement and growth, rather than absorbing the resents and stress complaining of my collegues working remotely from home or other locations further afield.

There is a small local gym I have joined that is open 24/7 and that I like using. While I miss the anchoring sessions with fab trainer J twice weekly, I can continue putting the skills he has spent literally years teaching me into regular service again, versus the haphazard “if I feel like getting up and going” method I have been employing the last few months. Should I ever get bored or need something to switch it up, I can always ask him for help. We are close friends, we both use this little club now, and we do try to work out together when our schedules align. If I feel guilty or as if I am taking advantage of him, I could pay for his time.

I often wonder what is my problem asking for help? Embarrassment? Shame? Unworthyness? This is a whole other post and will have to wait for another day, when I am more inclined toward dissecting my own “needs work” personality traits.

Monday I had greek takeout with a friend. It was a local place that I had never been to, but it was nearby and a favorite of my pal and we got our food and ate in a local park. I live in northern California, so while it was a little chilly by our standards – we were both wearing jackets – it was a glorious day outside. Since we were sitting on opposite ends of a picnic table to maintain social distance, we did not wear our masks, even while not eating. We are such rebels, surrounded by others walking alone with their dogs and wearing their masks. We both agreed we should do this meet-in-person thing more often, and that I should learn to replicate the salad I ordered at home. It was serously delicious, but that could partly be because it was the first take out in months that was not pizza or a cheeseburger, my standard junk food fare when I am alone in the office and feeling stressed.

Cooking and food preparation are not tasks I enjoy. The range of foods and flavors I like and will willinging consume is limited (tastebuds of your average 4 year old is how it has been described), but I can see where doing more bulk cooking and food preparation would benefit me. M mostly prepares his own meals, because with work and retirement activities we are almost never eating at the same time, so we rarely share meals together where we are both noshing during the week. But if there were prepared meals in the freezer he would eat them, too. Batch cooking is something I need to motivate myself back into sooner rather than later.

As for the rest of it – save more, spend less, give more, floss more, lose weight, practice gratitude? I already floss regularly. Often times these things tend to fall into place on their own. Smarter choices on things within my sphere of influence naturally lead positive results in the bigger picture realm. Better diet and consistent exercise means fewer health issues and continued good control of my type 2 diabetes and natural weigh loss (if I apply myself to portion control) or at least no weight gain (if I don’t). Less eating out could equal saving money and calories, because my periodic sprees into junk food lunches are bad for both my wallet and my waistline. This is one activity I must curtail when I get back to regular work schedule next week. When it comes to gratitude, I believe we can all do better.

All in all, I think my hopes are pinned on 2021 not being a bigger, badder, backdrafted dumpster fire than 2020. I’m still thinking about what other steps to take to make it happen – perhaps concerted effort in meditation, reading interesting books, listening to educational or happy-ending entertaining audiobooks rather than news of all stripes, maybe even trying yoga again. I will definitely step outside more often, thereby increasing probability of encountering flowers, even if I do not stop to sniff them.

I could always express more thanks for what I do have and the options for choices available to me. And I will let go of at least some of the negative noise buzzing in and through my head. As I have noted above, there is a big difference between knowing what is going on in the world and overexposure to the inflammatory nature of what passes for news these days.

At the end of this long thought, if I resolve to do anything in 2021, it is to continue to enjoy the small moments in life. Actively listen and participate in conversations and exchange of ideas. Be more present whenever possible. Honor my commitments to read more books, write more blog posts. Step away from the screen more often and for longer periods. Grab a coffee and a friend and get outside for a walk. Live with the cautions that will remain after 2020 ends, but continue living the best life possible.

These are not big, flashy, glamorous intentions as far as resolutions go. But they are aspects of my life that will make me feel and be a better version of myself than I am right now.

Happy New Year everyone! See you next year.

A Glorious Day of not much going on

At 7:30 this morning, I started this post.

Finally, I think I have a whole day at home with a short to-do list, an absent M (for at least 3 or 4 hours), and a cat who will spend time in the garage if properly motivated when I need him out of the way to vacuum and change our bed linens. I need both M and #1 cat out of the way to complete my mission of cleaning our bedroom, changing and washing linens today.

That’s it. The rest of the day I’m free to lounge on the couch and read a book.

These types of days are so rare. Between work (yep, still going into the office every day, where I dwell alone or with one coworker on the opposite side of my floor and others coming and going on the second floor of our suite) and other day-to-day scheduled tasks (gym, meals, tidying up, sleep), most of my chores fall to the weekends. M and I try to grocery shop on Friday evenings, but then Saturday I do laundry and clean my bathroom and my portion of the public rooms and Sunday is my day to tackle whatever decluttering or reorganizing task at hand. Being retired, M does his fair share of house upkeep during the week. However, his idea of clean and tidy and my idea of clean and tidy differ, and if I want items/rooms cleaned up to my standard, I do the upgrades on weekends. In 2020 it seems household tasks consumed my weekends with productive efforts, even if they are not always FUN productive efforts. But what else is there to do when everything has been shutdown?

And that was as far as I got. I did complete my chore mission today, spent some money on desktop organization items online, and started a new donation box of decluttered materials. Plus emails to staff off and on throughout the day. Nothing deep or serious, but everyone is trying to get their time done so I can process payroll tomorrow and get us paid on time.

I got very little reading actually done, but I got other books flagged and added to my wait lists. I also paid bills, so all our 2020 expenses are now a part of history.

It has been nice not having a lot of demands on my time and opportunities to get some relaxing and casual wish-list things done. Like cleaning out my desk and shelving, proving that I have A LOT of paper products, notebooks, pens, markers, and other miscellaneous desk supplies. I have put myself on a no-buying office supplies ban for 2021 if not the end of the decade. Hence my need for desktop organization; I put things away on other shelves in other rooms and fall into an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mindset. Today I excavated everything and now come to the depressing realization that I have way too much stuff for journaling, list-writing, tracking, etc.

I weeded out purchase files for 2020 today and retained anything that might prove useful for taxes, HSA spending, or warranty claims. Everything else went through the shredder. The retention stuff got scanned and filed away, but the actual receipts went into a file for shredding this time next year.

Bonus for me was cleaning out the fridges (we have 3) and inventorying the freezers (we have 4) for future shopping trips. I do not typically do challenges, but it would be nice to eat down some of frozen foods and make room for bulk cook weekend meals. We did not have too much food waste, but there was some. New year, fresh start on managing what we buy and what we eat.

I also have a few bags of shelf-stable pantry food we are unlikely to eat due to changing eating habits and patterns. There is a food closet collection site in the UPS store, so I will drop those tomorrow afternoon while dropping off an amazon return.

I believe we are mostly ready for a low spend grocery month while we eat through the pantry and freezer, now that I have a pretty comprehensive inventory of what we have on hand.

It feels like a productive period. I am supposed to only work 4 hours tomorrow to do payroll and deposit checks received since before Christmas, but I will neither be surprised nor disappointed if I am in the office much of the day. M and I are not big NYE celebratory folks in the first place, plus COVID there is not much to do anyway. But I will be happy to see 2020 in my rearview.

Vacation addendum

I spent the morning at my desk in the office. Even before I got there, I had a couple of messages about internet issues, which in my non-IT professional head sounded like something different than network server issues. Still, when I got there, I logged in and could still not connect to my network drives. I turned my desktop off completely and restarted – still no drives.

A phone call to our IT support firm and me explaining (with considerable restraint) that the internet was intermittennt, I still could not connect to my network drives, and I am supposed to be on GD vacation!!! No, I didn’t swear (restraint and professionalism) plus the dispatcer person answers the phone and updates the support tickets, not actually doing the technical work. On top of which: she was not the tech who blithely told me to “restart your computer and the drives should come back” the day before.

To her great credit, she could tell I was both very upset and very close to the edge about the state of things. She left me on hold while interrupting a meeting the technicians were participating in during my call. She came back to tell me that the senior technical guy and the owner were both aware of my now high-priority ticket and that there was something going on with our system and the internet. She apologized and told me someone would be getting back to me ASAP.

In the meantime, I had to call my boss and take a scheduled call from my doctor. During that 10 minute period, I had another call from another dispatcher than they were sending someone to the office and could I please wait? Yes, of course!

Long story short: one of our switches failed and will need to be replaced, but the tech was able to get us patched up temporarily and get everyone connectd and the internet working once more.

Somehow in all that, windows locked me out of my own machine. Thankfully technician got me back into the network so I could do the quick job that ended up taking 2 phone calls and 2 file uploads to straighten out. But I was done by noon and on my way home.

Thankfully.

I have spent the afternoon crafting an email to my boss about a salary review and a raise. I feel I have earned it and had specific examples to back it up and support my request. Whether or not I get it is another matter, but the process of crafting the email and submitting it is a huge step for me.

Plus I have been replying to staff emails about various payroll matters and expect to be mostly on vacation tomorrow. Life is imperfect, but I have a job I like, even in circumstances beyond my control, and a short to-do list here tomorrow.

Vacation? Not exactly

I am supposed to be on vacation Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week, for a glorious 7 days of not going to the office. For many in this time of shutdown and remote work that’s not much of a big deal. For me, who has been going to the office every day other than holidays and scheduled vacation days, it is a Very Big Deal.

Except it’s not turning out the way i envisioned and hoped.

On Sunday there was one of those auto-generated emails telling me a routine financial transaction I am responsible for did not upload correctly last week. Because Thursday and Friday were holidays, it went unnoticed until sometime Sunday. I do not have remote access to our network, so I would have to go into the office to access and reupload the file. Inward sigh. Not the end of the world, but I would combine the file upload with a trip to Ikea and then return to outdoor lunch with a friend on my way home.

The best laid plans … by 8:00 yesterday I was getting texts that the VPN was not letting people log in. A phone call to IT would resolve it. In my head, I imagined they *might* have to reboot the server, and my being in the office would ensure someone present in case the machines needed to be manually restarted.

When I get there, IT had restarted the server minutes before I sat down and logged in. What should have taken 15-20 minutes took closer to 2 hours, so in that time I opened and distributed several days of mail while I waited. When it finally got back online, I could not log in from my desk. By this time I am 20 minutes away from having to leave for my lunch with my friend. I call the IT department and have to leave a message. I rebooted my computer half dozen times in hopes it would take: no luck. I finally hear back from IT – with the advice to reboot and my drives should return – as I am preparing to leave my friend’s home.

The whole adventure makes me so angry yesterday I was nearly in tears.

It is not something I had much control over. I was hamstrung by personal plans I wanted to pursue and a year-end sensitive file that needs to be uploaded. Evaluated my feelings when I was calmer, I recognize the cascade of negative emotions raining down from this single event. Feelings of personal failure, because something so routine went wrong right before significant holidays. Feelings of frustration because I have no back-up (he too is on vacation). Feelings of undervalued because of the complicated mess of low pay and being stuck forever in this vicious cycle of low pay and overwhelming responsibility.

When I calmed down, I realized my own choices and personality traits make for a perfect storm when my wants for myself are overrun by what I consider a professional priority. I feel directly responsible for this upload, because no one else can step in and cover it for me. It impacts staff pay, so yeah, it has to be done. And up until now, I have not felt any burning need to have online access to my work’s network. I may have to rethink that in 2021.

And yes, I am underpaid for the work I am doing. I need to write that email requesting a salary review and a raise, and I despise my own dithering about getting it done.

So this morning I’ll take a shower and get myself down to the office, the 5 minute job of uploading a file, contacting the processor to ensure it was received and is readable, and then get back to my regularly scheduled programming. I had no pressing plans for these days off – other than lunch with my pal – but to me, that’s the point. Several days off and no commitments.

I guess that starts a little later this morning.

Happy Christmas to all

It’s midday Christmas. M is out running his 10 miles, kids and granddaughter are visiting other halves of family, and I am enjoying the quiet.

Potentially enjoying it way too much.

Christmas eve was a mild disaster. “Mild” in that no one got hurt and throwing money at the probably mostly resolved it. Finally.

When we purchased our home in 2011, there was this huge digger pine in the back yard. The pine needles were bad enough to make ME want to get rid of that tree, but the dripping sap every time a twig snapped was so obnoxious. M agreed we should take it out, but only the top of the tree. As in he left a “stump” that was 15 feet high.

Late Wednesday night, it finally fell over and onto a piece of fence and into our next door neighbor’s back yard. Our neighbor did text M at 11:45, because it was very loud, but neither of us heard a thing. We actually did not see it until late morning yesterday – our “holy SHIT!” moment.

Thankfully other than the slice of fence and a section of our concrete, no one was injured and no property damage. While it was Christmas eve, I put out an inquiry about getting estimtaes, thinking maybe this weekend or Monday we could figure out how much it would cost to remove the tree and then repair the fence and concrete.

I had an immediate reply and a landscape/tree trimming service here 40 minutes after we discovered the downed tree. For $450, he would cut it up yesterday and return to haul away. But for $250, he would cut it up into pieces where M could load into our truck and haul to the dump himself. We chose the $250 option, because M and I could haul it away this weekend.

We ended up paying him $300 for 2 hours work, because it was Christmas eve. The owner brought his 2 sons came back with a couple of big chainsaws and with M’s help, made short work of the cutting and stacking of that old tree. They went from here to another emergency job somewhere else, so I feel really good about giving a hard-working man a little extra work right before Christmas.

The fence piece is a 4-foot tall piece of wrought iron fencing, likely available from a local fence place that does this sort of work. I did put out a request on a local tradesman network, but I’ll make some calls on Monday. As for our concrete, it may have to wait for even an estimate. The company that installed it for us is busy and behind schedule on other jobs, and our little piece of work may be relegated to a weekend in the spring. It’s okay. We can wait.

While this feels like it should be a sadder holiday with the shutdowns and divisiveness throughout this country, it is not that bad for us. M and I are both healthy, our kids and grandbaby and all healthy as well. Grandbabe is enjoying her first Christmas A LOT and seems to be over her clingy, stranger-danger phase. I saw them last night, and she was happily vocalizing the joy of wrapping paper. The kids liked the unwrappable gifts I got them and will tell me later what they do with monentary portion of our Christmas present.

As for us, we got a calendar with a lot of photos of grandbabe, her parents, her aunt and uncle. It’s a most wonderful gift, one I hope they give me again next year.

But right now, sitting here alone in the house, kitties asleep on our bed, drinking a cup of tea, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.