The Hughes company, a defense contractor, has an enormous “Peace on Earth” Christmas decoration displayed outside their building on 270.
Now that’s ironic (quite unlike rain on your wedding day, which is not, in fact ironic at all. That lyric has bugged me for years, can you tell?)
Lately, I have been a big, fat uncreative slug.
At first, I had no time and no energy because I was extremely busy with work stuff.
Then, I had no time and no energy because I was busy with Thanksgiving related family stuff. And I have to say, in general, Thanksgiving went better than I expected it to go. Although, watch out world, because apparently my father has purchased a taser. This is not good news for anyone. At least he’s a doctor, so if he tasers someone into heart failure, he can always revive them.
By Saturday, I had the time, but not the energy, as Seamus ran a short, and yet exceedingly successful campaign to completely stress me out and exhaust me.
Friday night I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my brother and his girlfriend. The only show we could get tickets for was at 10:35 pm so I didn’t get home until 1:30 am or so. Which meant that when Seamus had his seizure at 3 am, I had barely gotten to sleep. When he has his seizures, we take him outside. It seems to help him recover faster. Plus he tends to throw up after seizures, and it is much easier to deal with that outside. So John walked him around, and then I walked him around, and did I mention it was something like 15 degrees out? And eventually he got better, and we went back to bed.
The next morning, as I was walking him around all bleary-eyed and stupid from lack of sleep (I had to get up, because guess who had his annual vet appointment that morning) his leash detached itself from his collar. By the time my befuddled mind realized what had happened, Seamus had flashed me a look of pure glee and taken off into the woods. And I couldn’t find him. After much fruitless search and calling, I trudged back home to wake John up and share the joy with him. Oh and to call the vet and tell them that we weren’t going to make it to our appointment on time.
So John got up, also cranky from lack of sleep and worry about the hound. Did I mention that the woods back up to the highway? It’s a pretty decent sized stretch of woods, but Seamus can cover a lot of ground, and we were both worried he’d run over by the highway and get hit by a car or something. But anyway, he poked his head up when he heard John calling him, and then took off into the underbrush again – what a fun game! Naturally, the woods are filled with pricker bushes, so John and I are covered in scratches. Eventually we split up and John recaptured our naughty little boy. And then I took Mr. Seamus to the vet, who had very nicely agreed to fit him in after we missed our appointment. Really, my vet is so nice. They were worried about him being in the woods too.
The good news is, Seamus is in excellent health, although they said that his eyes are getting cloudy and his night vision may be worsening. But guess how much blood work to check the seizure medication levels for a doggie costs? $200! And then I spent a bunch of money on a new leash and collar, because there will be no more escaping. Also, Seamus totally peed on a display in Petsmart while I was looking at the leashes. So embarrassing!
So Saturday was shot in terms of blogging. I could barely string two coherent sentences together verbally, let alone in written form. I did make a yummy lasagna though.
And Sunday, I was just tired. Again. Still? It’s hard to say. I think I’m so tired because I’ve been working very hard on getting in shape (one of my goals for my fertility treatment break) and I haven’t hit that point where the exercise starts making more energetic. Plus, healthy=no soda=no caffeine, since I despise coffee and drink decaf tea.
I hope that energy thing hits soon though. Today at work I was so lethargic as to be on the verge of slipping into a coma, and that’s not cool.
Last night, I lay in my back yard with my husband and my dog, watching clouds race across the moonlit sky as a new weather front moved in. There were low, wispy, fast-moving clouds, and higher, chunkier clouds that lumbered behind them. It was really windy, but also still 60 degrees out, so we were quite comfortable. There’s something magical about connecting with Mother Nature and your two best friends, all the while in your own back yard. Particularly at night, when you can imagine that you are the only people in the world.
If you ever get the chance to do it yourself, I highly recommend it.
Why must the weekend go by so quickly? I had an insanely busy week last week, and I’m not feeling rested and ready to go back yet! Sadly, that doesn’t get me out of having to go to work tomorrow. And I have a huge deadline on Wednesday. But that project is all coming together, thank goodness.
As busy as last week was, it wasn’t bad. Just…full. And there was some good news, too. First, my company announced that we’re switching health plans next year. It sounds like the new health plan will cover at least some of the cost of fertility drugs, which is welcome news, since right now I get to pay for it all myself. My current doctor doesn’t take my new insurance, but I wasn’t completely happy with her anyway, so that’s not the end of the world. It actually saves me from having to worry about whether or not I should go see someone else. There is a very well regarded fertility clinic right by my office that does take my new insurance, so I think I’ll give them a shot in January. That’s about as long a break as I was planning to take from fertility treatments anyway.
And after a long wait, I’m finally going to fill the open position on my team! Whoohoo! Soon my days will be a bit less insane. And I will be less tired too. Or at least, I that's what I hope will happen.
I worked from home today, which was great, and also not so great.
Bonus: At 9:00, I put down the paper, walked around the couch and sat down at my computer. Take that 270, you traffic clogged nightmare!
Bummer: By 9:02, I was wondering why the remote login wasn’t working. After getting two people to restart my computer for me (a task that required them to find someone to open my locked office for them), and two calls to IT (who suggested I try logging on under my maiden name, because I’ve only been married for three and a half years now!) I finally got logged on to my computer at work. I still don’t know how I did it. The IT guys are very nice, but I think they think I’m an idiot.
Bonus: With fewer interruptions, I got a ton of work done.
Bummer: With fewer interruptions, I worked pretty much nonstop all day. No chatting with coworkers, no poking around online at lunch, no goofing off at all!
Bonus: Lunch was a delicious grilled cheese sandwich prepared by me, just the way I like it.
Bummer: With the kitchen right there and no distractions, I was tempted to go grab a snack every 15 minutes. I didn’t. But I was tempted.
Bonus: 2:30 belly rub break with one Seamus hound. Don’t get to do that at the office.
Bummer: Tripping over the dog and totally wiping out while running for the phone. See, I was eating my grilled cheese sandwich when the phone rang, and there is no phone in the living room. Just yesterday Mr. Seamus proved that he is not to be trusted with food on the coffee table when he made off with a whole stick of butter (although it was hysterical to see him clutching the butter in his paws and gnawing on it) so I couldn’t just leave the sandwich in the living room. But because I had the sandwich in my hand, he would not get the hell out of the way, and down I went. I did manage to get to the phone at least.
Bonus: I spent the day barefoot, dressed in yoga pants and a 15 year old hoodie, with my hair in a ponytail.
Bummer: There is no downside to that.
All in all, working from home was nice. Dress code joy and my delight in the lack of a commute aside, I don’t think I’d want to do it every day. But today was a good day.
I discovered a new talent today. I’m just full of surprises that way. I attended a team-building workshop at work, and one of the exercises we had to do involved pretending you were on a plane that crashed in the Amazon. You had to prioritize a list of items that were on the plane, and then build a consensus with the rest of your team about where each object should rank on the list. Everyone had a different idea about what was important, but I managed the best score in the entire class. So apparently I’m a handy person to have around in the event of a plane crash in the Amazon. Of course, I was something of a failure at the actual exercise as I had the highest individual score, but didn’t try hard enough to convince my group of my ideas, so we failed to achieve “synergy” which I believe was the whole point. Oh well. At least I have the best chance of making it out of the jungle alive.
