Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up...

It's been so long since I've written regularly, that I'm trying to get back in the habit...

Hence, today's excerpt from the life of:

Went to work, immediately got horrendous allergies. In my office we have two "conditions" - the Atypon Knee (several people have had bad knee injuries, including me) and the Atypon Sneeze. This is, I swear, the worst. It seems like it's mostly where I'm sitting - everybody sneezes, and we all say "God Bless". I think it's the air conditioning or something, making everybody sick. All I know is I was outrageously sick last year when I started, and this lasted throughout Spring, and now it's happening again. I walked in to work feeling fine this morning, and ten minutes after I got there, I could hardly breathe. One of my coworkers came in, sat at my desk, and said she could hardly open her eyes, they were stinging.

So I worked like this until 4:30pm, when Jeff and Elise came to pick me up. Elise drew some pictures on my whiteboard - a smiley face heart, as a matter of fact, with the words "Mommy I love you". As stupid and saccharine as this sounds, I really do sit back and stare at these pictures at work and they make me feel better.

It was a pretty good day. Cold as hell, which is so weird at this time of year, but a good day nonetheless. Elise made me dinner tonight, from paper shapes she cut out in red and blue. I was in the bedroom doing my html homework - Java Applets, yah-freakin' hoo - and listening to the soundtrack from "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" - I've discovered in myself a certain leaning towards Bluegrass, who knew? She came in with a "plate" and a "spoon" and some construction paper fruit and vegetables. She proclaimed it a "healthy meal" because she had cooked fish and other healthy things. I chowed down. I then returned the favor and made her two hotdogs, and some steamed veggies. We each had a few sips of rootbeer. I cut out some pink construction paper bats.

We're winding up our night now. Elise has watched "The Cat in the Hat" three times tonight already - welcome to the reality that is childhood. It could have been worse, believe me. At least at seven, she's pretty much outgrown Barney.

Back to the allergies for a moment - plans have been made to rip up all the carpet in our incredibly tiny mobile home. I'm actually very happy about this. It sucks to have carpets and pets at the same time, and the people who lived here before us raised puppies, and not carefully, if you take my meaning. It's much easier to keep a Pergo floor clean,and there's no carpet pad to go moldy. Elise's room will come first - this weekend we're going to clear everything out of it (and piling it in the living room is our only option at this point, so life is going to be hell for a while), pull up the carpet, put down the Pergo, paint the walls, and then Jeff's mom Carol has promised to buy Elise a bunkbed from Ikea, complete with a cute little canopy.

Now fess up: wouldn't you have killed for something like this when you were a kid? We've looked at this thing in the store, and it's like sleeping in a little starry cave. Elise is beside herself with excitement.

Ack. It's late again. I swore we'd be in bed by 8:30pm, and it's 2 freakin hours later already.

Gotta boogie. Ciao fer now...

Things have been rough...

I like my job, but I hate that it takes up all my time and energy. I'm online now, as I sit here writing this, trying to finish a presentation outline and working on an end-user support inbox that's up to 500+ emails. I've got three people to help me, but two of them are new, and the other one has been shang-hai'd (wow, how DO you spell that?) to work on other stuff. I'm sitting here writing this out, on a blog I've made no entries for since freakin' January, and I'm feeling guilty that I'm not still immersed in work crap.

Sigh.

A few thoughts:

You thought the Village People were bad? (Well, okay, not BAD precisely, but bad enough that gays and straights alike hold a soft spot in our hearts for these guys. So bad, anyway, that they've become iconic. More on that later)

Well, here's Gregorius, with his gosh-golly-durn best rendition of YMCA.

(Hint: I'm imagining a big plastic globe in front of me. Now I'm giving it a spin. My finger jabs down. I've chosen the country I wish to carry onward the torch, the banner as it were, for our beloved Village People.

It is NOT Finland...)





Okay, back to seriousness for a moment here. Sorry, but I must. Everything's a struggle lately. Work was bad for a while - we had a manager that, while the nicest person in the world, had no clue how to actually manage people. All kinds of weird shit became my fault, or Samantha's fault, or James' fault, or Eleni's fault. You get the point. There was an emphasis on bureaucracy that bordered on the comical and made all our jobs harder. There were other things I don't care to try and elaborate on. My job consisted of responsibilities for two or possibly even three.

That boss has gone, and we have a new boss, not quite the same as the old boss. He's a young guy, but very good at what he does, and at least capable of listening when we talk and believing that we can't be at fault for things we have no control over. The atmosphere has eased a bit, and may ease further as time progresses. We will have to see. I'm still doing the job of possibly three other people.

I'm probably being stupid. I'm staying for what I can learn. They're paying for me to take XML and HTML classes. I've learned a lot about online publishing. I guess that's worth it.

On the home front, as it were - I've started following the San Jose Sabercats. Yah, yah, I know, how "Prole" of me, and when we go to the games, it really does jar lose an awful sense of being anesthetized by smoke, mirrors, fireworks, extremely loud rock music, and a borrowed sense of glory when the Sabercats score against the other guys...

The first time we went with our neighbors, I thought it was going to turn out to be like pro-wrestling. You know, as in FAKE. It turned out, on the contrary, to be amazingly good football, condensed into a smaller space. The game strategy is a bit different - there's less time spent running the ball and more emphasis on passing. A few of the rules are different, but for the most part, it has all the best of football with none of the bad stuff, like freezing your ass off or sitting in the rain - games are played at the HP Pavilion, which is an extraordinary place - there's not a bad seat in the house.

It's usually Elise and I going - we have our tote bag of paraphernalia that we take: the huge ass cow bell for making lots of noise, the gold pompoms so Elise can be a cheerleader, the huge foam Sabercats claws (one for each of us), and our earplugs, because you do NOT want to go to one of these games without earplugs.

Other news: Money is still very tight. Jeff is going to be taking classes in Electrical Engineering, but he has to wait for a DC class in the fall. Meanwhile, he's still painting miniatures as fast as he can, and we're managing to pay bills, but we have no leeway whatsoever. Last week I was at Whole Foods buying groceries with Elise, and the transmission on the truck starting having problems. I couldn't get it to stay in 2-wheel drive, and had to drive home at 35 miles an hour in 4WD. That was not amusing, and Lord knows, I'm scared to death to take it to the mechanic.

Ummm. What else? I'm seeing an acupuncturist now. I fell on my right knee almost exactly a year ago and it's still not healed, so I can't walk to the lightrail without getting very stiff and limping. Still got a bonespur on my left heal, and last week I had a back x-ray that revealed I have the beginnings of arthritis in my lower back. I'm on medication for pre-diabetes, I get migraines all the time, and I haven't been able to lose weight in months.

The acupuncture has helped, it really has. I have more energy now, and I feel better, but still...

When did I get this freakin' old? What the hell is going on? I've had to let go of some plans - I guess I won't ever be going back to finish my black belt now, and I'm not even sure how to keep going with Weightwatchers since I really need to exercise to lose weight, and I can't walk, can't ride a bike, can't do anything that involves bending my knee, and now can't even kayak because the truck is busted and I need the truck to carry the kayak.

Sorry. Whining, I know. This is just the latest incarnation of my mid-life crisis, and I really have no idea how to deal with any of it.

And now my daughter Elise is hungry. What a little bottomless pit she is - growing like a weed, 7 years old, and she never walks anywhere she can run. I've entered her in a kid's race - Pat's Run - which she's going to run with her cousin Katie.

Okay, if I don't get her some breakfast, she's going to rise like a volcano. Ciao!

Holidays are over for another year...

And I just ain't that sad. I so overcommitted this year, to the extent that I had not one minute to myself, I shit you not. It was exhausting and not very fun... Carol and I baked over 600 cookies by the time we were done, and yes, they were a big hit and everybody loved them, but I had no life. I spent almost every day either driving Elise somewhere, or late to something, or not having wrapped something, or not having cooked something... You get the picture. I haven't put fingers to keyboard for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms.

There were one or two fun things we got to do: We got to go see Walking With Dinosaurs:





Which was crazy cool! This was courtesy of Carol, who bought the tickets for Elise and I as our combined Christmas present!

And even better, here's a quick piece on how they made the dinosaurs - REALLY incredible...





With the holidays over, now it's back to Weightwatchers, which has been a bit tricky - losing weight is SO not about the food I'm eating, but about the thoughts I'm thinking, and my head has been sabotaging me right and left. Christmas was fine - I didn't lose any weight, but I didn't gain any either, but now suddenly I've gained back three pounds, AFTER all the candy and crap are gone. Weird. I've gotten recommitted to my diet, and I'm hoping this next week will be better, but we'll have to see.

I think it's because I'm a bit insecure right now. I'm looking at making changes to my life, which always make me a bit panicky - Carol is starting her own company and the process of incorporation is making her crazy. I've volunteered to learn grant-writing so I can get her some funding, and I'm seriously considering this as a career change, which is always a scary thing to do. Understanding that THAT's why I'm eating like crazy is more than half the battle.

This is a bit of a nonsequitr, but...

One of the publishers I support at work sent me a very nice Christmas gift: a Flip Video Ultra Series CamCorder. This thing is so cool! Today I recorded highlights from my Weightwatchers meeting, and I'm going to post it for everybody to share. I'm still learning all the ins and outs, not only of how to take videos, but of how to edit them and make them available and all that. I'm sure my first bits are going to be very rough.

Okay, gotta go now. I've been at my computer almost since I got off work on Friday, and I'm sick and tired of it. I'm going to play for a bit!



more funny pictures

Havin' Trouble

My husband had a long-time server space to store stuff - gone now, as the guy who was paying the bills decided not to renew, only he didn't tell anyone. We just got up one morning and codevermillion was gone. You can try it yourself if you don't believe me.

All my archived photos. Years worth of carefully sorted stuff... Blah! I'm pissed, and Jeff doesn't want to pursue it, which means I'm stuck with the situation, and that makes me even more mad.

So all my grand plans of moving my Yahoo 360 blog over here are shelved until I have space for my pictures.

Well, not to mention time.

Yesterday my mother-in-law and I baked - I shit you not - 470 + cookies. This is our annual Christmas "Give-cookies-as-presents" cookie blowout, where the spatula meets the bowl, where the going gets tough and the tough warm up their fuel-injected, turbo KitchenAid stand mixers...

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your mixers. Seriously, you DO NOT want to mix dough for 400 cookies without some kind of mechanical aid. Nobody has arms that butch, and if they did, they'd wish they didn't.

Work has just been getting more and more busy - my boss came into my cube the other day and said, "I'm assigning you as account manager to two new publishers. I also want you to help out one of the other ladies with two of her accounts. Oh, and this won't add to your workload."

She didn't even have the decency to frame it as a question: "Oh, Ericka, I'm not inconveniencing you, am I? This won't unduly burden you, will it?"

I don't hate my job. I really don't. I'm still okay with Mondays. The commute is livable. I like everyone I work with - well, all the regular everyday joe's, anyway.

My days are overall tolerable; it's the crushing burden of way too much work for way too few people that depresses the snot out of me and makes me want to run screaming. It's the fact that we need five more people and we're only getting three. It's the fact that we just keep contracting with more and more publishers without the corresponding benefit of adding more people to do the work.

But on the positive side, I can take the light rail to work, and with a little fortitude, I can tell my boss that I'm not her, I don't know what she knows, and it takes me much longer to do the work than it takes her. Which I did, and got her to understand that I needed more time on a project I got committed to do. I know most of my co-workers can't do this, though, and I shudder to think of the amounts of stress they're dealing with. I have medical benefits, my family and I have a roof over our heads, we have food on the table, etc etc etc... Lots of etc's. I guess I'm stuck here for a while.

So, gotta do the Christmas cards today, and I have 100 gingerbread men to bake. The dough for THOSE almost burnt out my commercial-strength KitchenAid - should've used the dough hook. Gingerbread is easily one of the heaviest doughs going.

Laundry is in progress, I need to clear off the kitchen table to roll out the dough, and I have to make dinner. I've got to plan for tomorrow, get Elise a bath, and probably, before it gets dark, I have to go grocery shopping.

And just thinking about all that is exhausting.

Gotta go - duty calls, or perhaps more accurately, a sense of appalling urgency calls... You know, that dreadful spine-tingly feeling you get when you can sense all kinds of hell breathing down your neck, and you know it's already too late to run? Yah. That feeling. I leave you with one of my favorite "I Can Has Cheezburger" pictures:


More I Can Has Cheezburger

Happy November

So if you've read my stuff for any length of time, you know that I'm overweight, disorganized, messy... oh, the list goes on and on.

I've put a lot of time and effort into changing those things about myself that I don't like, and you know what? It looks like I'm making some progress.

Weightwatchers is the best thing that I've ever done for myself. It's not a diet, it's all about lifestyle change, and it's been a good way to do it for me. I've lost 26 pounds over the last six months. Doesn't sound like much? Most of the people in my group don't have that much to lose for their entire goal, and I'm still almost 100 pounds overweight. That's thing #1. Thing #2 - it's been proven that slow and steady weight loss is the only kind that lasts. I fell and hurt my knee and couldn't walk any appreciable distance for several months, and yet I didn't gain a pound back. That tells me that I've accomplished a permanent change. I know how to keep the weight off for the rest of my life. Knowing that, I don't care if it takes me three years to lose the remaining 100 lbs. All I have to know is that I can lose the next ten, and just keep doing that until I'm down to where I want to be. Yay me!

Along with that comes my gripe with my eating habits. When I don't plan meals, we eat out pretty much every single night. In the last few weeks, I've been trying to plan a week's worth of dinners. It's hard to do - I don't need to tell those of you who work how hard it is - you get home and that's it, you have no desire to get up off the couch. I've been using pre-made menus and shopping lists from Saving Dinner. The idea is to shop once a week, bring home the stuff, do all the chopping and preparing then, and just have everything ready to go so that when you come home, you can make a healthy, yummy dinner without too much work.

Last week I made dinner every night, and I ate till I was stuffed, but because I made dinners that had almost no fat in them, I actually lost weight, and had leftovers to take to work the next day.

Example - Salmon with pineapple salsa and brown rice. Now, the original recipe called for a thick spread of mayonnaise over the salmon, then a layer of ketchup, then bacon strips. That just blew my mind - who the hell takes a yummy fish like salmon and drowns it in fat?? So I took some chunky fresh salsa, added a can of crushed pineapple, some teriyaki sauce, and marinated overnight. Yum-ola! I made brown rice to go with it, and it was to die for... And all I had to do was come home, put the salmon into packets, get the rice going, bake the salmon, and it was done.

I'm planning next week's menu now. In case you're interested, here's a week's sample menu.