Can't talk - working!

Is anybody else drowning in work these days?
No relief in sight?

If I have one more person walk past my desk or send me an e-mail that starts "Oh, by the way" I think I may actually start to spit nails - machine gun style with no concern for casualties!

SO I've been pseudo promoted at work. I call it a pseudo promotion because it hasn't officially happened yet - I'm still technically suppose to be doing what I have been doing up to this point (in reality I find myself trying to juggle 2 full time jobs instead).

It comes with a pay raise of $0 - yes you read that right, $0.
Possibility or a raise in April.

And magically once it was announced, what people seemed to hear was - everybody call ME all at once for absolutely anything and everything.

The fact that it's year end doesn't help - because it seems to be that everybody else is feeling the same sense of drowning in their TO DO lists.

Currently mine is about 3 months worth of stuff to do, that I somehow have to complete in a couple of weeks, while continuing to do my old job, and oh yeah, train my replacement. If I can't train my replacement fast enough, that's just the more time I spend in my old job.

Plus it's not like my home is a haven, and I come home to a peaceful place to regenerate. Remember my Mother the catastrophizer? Yeah, the daily ins and outs of that can be demanding.

So I've decided that I'm going to go on strike. Yep, that's right a Strike from my life. Anybody want to join me? While I can't physically go anywhere, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize my new job (which by the way, I am actually excited about, it should be a great role for me)I plan on in my head floating on an inner tube in the middle of the ocean for the better part of most days. With the exception of eating , bathroom breaks, sleep and TV - that's where I'll be. We could turn my inner tube into a raft - I am a social person, and would prefer to do nothing with someone else than all by myself anyways.

The Sky is Falling!

DO you know anybody who is a catastrophizer?
You know what I mean, a person who makes mountains out of molehills.

My Mother is a catastrophizer to the nth degree.
Ever night before going to bed she is compelled to watch the weather forecast. And if the forecast is something like "tomorrow there is a 80% Probability of precipitation and we should receive about 3mm of rain". She interprets that as a storm of hurricane proportions and says "Ohhhhhhhhh, oh boy!" "What am I going to do tomorrow?"
"Why Mom, what's the matter?"
"There's going to be a storm tomorrow! I'm sure that the water on the ground will be so much that tires will spin and I will get water in the engine and the car will break. Then I will be late for work and will probably get fired. So then I will have no job and no money and no car, and no money to buy a new car, because my car broke from the rain".
**sigh, long slow exhale**

Or like for example when I put the first scratch on my new car. Yes, I put the first scratch on my own new car about a month after I got it. I did it with a snow shovel while shovelling the driveway. So I'm bummed about it and I tell my mom, and instead of giving me a soothing word "It's ok, just a small scratch, it was bound to get scratched eventually, no big deal" I get:
"Oh my God! What have you done! Now it will rust, probably tomorrow, then the rust will spread, and your entire car will fall apart, probably in a few years, maybe before you've finished paying it off!"
"Mom!! That's not helpful to me!"
"Oh, sorry, well maybe you could get it fixed. How much would that cost do you think? Probably more than the car cost you in the first place, so now you've paid double what your car is worth, but at least you'll still have a car."

Sometimes, when I'm in a very mischievous mood, I wonder what it would be like if I just fuelled the fire.
In my head the senario plays out like this:
"Mira, I think the sky is falling"
"Oh yeah Mom, didn't you know?"
"What? You know about this? Explain it to me!"
"Well, just like you said the sky is falling, scientists are predicting that the world is going to end next Thursday."
"Oh my, Thursday. What are we going to do?"
"There's nothing we can do, we just have to sit and wait to die"
"Well, if we're all going to die at once, then there's probably going to be a line-up at Heaven's gate, and what if I have to go to the bathroom! Then I'll loose my place, and have to wait even longer. I will probably end-up at the back of the line waiting to get into Heaven for all eternity!"

Poor Mom, for her the sky is always falling.

I'm Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

Ugh!! I am so sick!
I can't breath through my nose.
I probably look like a Neanderthal gulping for breath with my mouth open at all times.

I feel like the guy in the dristan commercials rummaging in his basement for a power drill to "help" with his congestion.

I got sent home from work yesterday. Yep, my first day back from a whole week off, and my manager let me talk for a whole 5 minutes and discussed me going home. I worked from home for the afternoon yesterday.
Too bad I was too sick to enjoy it. There is something to be said for working from home.

I have only been home for about a day and half, and I was still working yesterday.
Today, I am sick, restless and bored!
Everytime I think, well if I'm restless and bored, do something, I start moving, exhaust myself in about 10 minutes and have to take a nap.

This is ridiculous!

So I've resolved that what I need is a germ cleansing. I stripped my bed, flipped my mattress, and opened the window. I changed my PJ's, and am going to take the world's hottest shower.
I am smoking these germs out baby - because I am so sick of being sick! (It's been 2 days)

In my delirium, I imagine the germs laughing at me -
"poke her there, ha ha ha"
"wait, let's make her gasp for breath again!"
"This is so great, I love torturing people, we're never leaving!"
I bet they're green and bubbly shaped and wearing army helmets with names like Gleeba and Rhonon.

Plus there's a reason why people work during the day, because the TV sucks! The only thing on is soap operas and daytime talk shows. I don't care if your cousin is your uncle and the father of your baby!
Maybe daytime TV is a government conspiracy to keep unemployment rates down?

So I'm smoking the germs out because I refuse to stay home again tomorrow!

Ah, How the body forgets - TRAITOR!

So this morning I went to my first day of clinic with the Running Room. As some of you may know, I joined the Running Room in May, and have been trying to learn to run ever since.

So I had just completed the 5K clinic in December, and miraculously actually managed to run 5k by the end of the clinic. My first and only 5k was on the very last clinic night,and it took me 37 minutes to complete (doing the usual 10:1 run/walk program). This was a huge accomplishment for me. Most of my clinic mates had been running 5K for a good 3 weeks, but I had never broken the 25 minute barrier.

So I decided to take the 5K clinic again, in the hopes of both improving my endurance and speed. My goal is to finish the clinic able to run 5K somewhere under 35 minutes.

So today being day 1, we start off nice and slow to ease back into things, 5:1 for a total of 20 minutes, that's all. I figured it would be this leisurely run, where I got to know the new people and I wouldn't break much of a sweat or have laboured breathing.

HA!! My traitorous body had other ideas. It has been 4 weeks since I last run, and magically it feels like my body forgot that I have ever used it to run in any shape or form in the past. I was the last person in the group of 11 - last again! I was huffing and puffing and kept calling out to the facilitator "How much longer?" on a 5 minutes interval! How wussy am I??!!!!!

Then we get back to the store, our run is complete, everybody else is smiling, stretching gently, while I'm beet red, puffing vigorously and almost doubled over trying to get some strength back. It was like I was secretly running a marathon, while they all went on a Sunday stroll.

So new goal, just get through the 5K clinic - try to actually run the time allotted each week.

The Knitting Resolution Part Deux, and other 2007 accomplishments

Ok, time for a Knitting Resolution update. Remember how in the original posts I mentioned how come January it would be 2 years that I have been working on this blanket. So the resolution was to work on it everyday until December 31st, in the hopes that it would be completed.

And I am nothing if not resolute, so I diligently carried my bag around everywhere I went - if you've seen me at all into he past 2 months, you probably never saw me sans my knitting.

Well it paid off- sort off. At 6:52pm on Monday January 1st, I put the last stitch into the body of my blanket. I bound off, and laid it on my bed - it covers the whole thing. I called my family upstairs, made a lamo drum roll sounds, and invited them into my room to view the almost completed Masterpiece.

So now all that is left is the border. I spend most of yesterday driving around to 3 different stores in order to find the right kind of circular needles (aparently really long ones are hard to find) and they were ridiculously expensive. I took the whole kit and caboodle over to Joslyn's who's going to teach me how to do the border.

Apparently there is a problem with figuring out how to space out the border stitches, so I had to leave my bag over at her house last night.

Kinda feels weird to be mostly done. I'll post a picture of it when it's completely finished. I'm considering charging admission for people to come and view it :)

So I didn't exactly accomplish my task, but I'm ok with how much I have left.
I also have not stuck to my other resolutions and we're only 3 days into the new year.

I resolved not to spend any money in January (other than Gas, and regular bills) - and I bought those crazy pricey circular needles yesterday along with some wool to make a scarf.

Plus other incidental fees, I couldn't stop myself from spending.


I wonder why people even bother making New Year's Resolutions, it's kind of like purposefully setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.
Like saying "Hey, I think I'm going to pick on something I suck at, and then act totally shocked and disbelieving when I can't manage to become awesome at it within a day or two".

Maybe next year I'll make some un-resolutions, like sucky things, I will embrace sucking at.