Inane Chatter

I worked from home today.  And I’m going to work from home again tomorrow.  Breathing sucks.  (You’re welcome.)  Well, it does, no matter how you look at it, sick or not.  You can’t run from the truth.  I have had a fuzzy head all day.  John had hopes that really loud music might vibrate all the crud out of my head last night, but it didn’t work.  It was cool, though.  We went to see Eric Johnson play in Alexandria.  We weren’t more than 40 feet away, and I picked the right side to sit on – he was angled towards us most of the night.  Crucial, in his case, ’cause you have to watch his hands fly.

Sorry – no brain, loud music in the basement (the band is rehearsing), and I want some soup.  Wonton soup.  (I had egg drop last night – no, two nights ago.  Love that stuff.)  I lost my train of thought, realized I have nothing left to say about the Eric Johnson concert, and then stared at the screen until it went out of focus.

Oh, you know what’s really totally not cool?  Wearing cologne to the gym.  It’s so unnecessary.  Yesterday, I was on one of the machines, and the guy on my right smelled like he had bathed in the stuff.  It was very irritating to my already irritated nose.  He moved on after 10 minutes or so, but the scent didn’t.  Dude.  It’s okay if you don’t smell like roses.  You’re at the gym.  You’re getting sweaty.  And nobody cares.

And there goes my brain again.  Lost for another 20 minutes.  I need soup.

I started a post today on my work laptop when I didn’t have internet access.  To get it, I’d have to turn on my work laptop, wait the half-hour for it to boot, and then wait another five minutes for Word to open.  Not worth it.  It wasn’t that great anyway.  Something about getting up early and being sleepy.  It wasn’t done, but still.  It can wait.  But I really did get up early and I really am sleepy.

For the Doctor Who fans (who are up to date), here’s a neat timeline (from here via The Daily What).  I’m being careful not to look at the very bottom.  Still not caught up.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting old(er).  Maybe it’s because I was never very good at multi-tasking.  I’m not handling doing lots of things at once very well.  Not at work, not at home, not combining work and home (where home = school and fitness and oh, right, grocery shopping and cleaning and playing with the dogs…).  Something is always getting neglected.  Which something changes day to day, except for grocery shopping.  That gets neglected every day.  Which means we’re eating SO much crap.  Pop tarts for breakfast today, guys.  I can’t remember the last time I even saw a pop tart.  I went to CVS this morning to get more allergy medicine, needed something for breakfast, and grabbed a box of strawberry pop tarts.  Yum, sure, but not good.  Yeah, I could have picked up a box of nutri-grain bars or granola bars.  Or those milk and cereal bars.  Frankly, the milk and cereal bars both fascinate me and gross me out.  They say they’re made with real milk, but who wants to eat cereal with solidified milk holding it together?  It’s probably more like frosting, and frosting for breakfast doesn’t sound all that appealing either.  Anyway, yes, I took the easy, junk-foody way out.  And that was dumb.  But it was quick.  This morning, I’m trying to learn how to solve higher order homogeneous linear differential equations with constant coefficients (before I have to go to Baltimore for work) so I can finish my quiz on time.

Cold weather = dry air = dry skin = can I just spend all day every day in a bathtub full of moisturizer?  That wouldn’t be weird, right?

Here, have an insane puppy.  I’m tired.  Too many interrupted nights for sick puppies.  But yay!  No incidents last night or all day today!  I think we might be able to sleep through the night tonight.

I’m going to regret saying that, aren’t I?

I didn’t think it through.  Tuesday afternoon – dentist appointment that leaves me with a temporary crown on the left side.  A little tender.  Can’t bite down hard.  No problem, I think, I’ll just do most of my chewing on the right side of my mouth.  But wait!  This morning, I had an appointment with my oral surgeon. Time to expose the post that was implanted so my dentist can screw on a fake tooth in a few weeks.  But doesn’t that mean I’ll have stitches and be sore and tender?  On the right side?  Yes!  It does.  Mushy food it is.

I could have scheduled this better.

I cannot begin to describe how worn out I am.  We were up way late (for us – like 1am) last night and slept in as late as we could before work today.  Not long enough.  So we were dragging when we woke up.  I worked from home today, and while the morning was fine, the afternoon was frustrating and what little energy I had from my morning tea wore off pretty quickly.  I went to the gym this evening for my strength class, and the instructor tried to kill us.  She had us jumping from exercise to exercise, targeting two muscle groups at once, no breaks.  Our heart rates were up and I was STILL yawning.  It’s almost 7:30.  If I’m not in bed by nine, I might not make it through tomorrow.

Even with all that, I don’t regret last night.  We had dinner with friends we see less than once a year, friends who were just passing through on their way south, and if it means a day like today, well, okay.  Worth it.

I should not be allowed in the kitchen.  It was the site of my fall the other week, and now I’ve gone and sliced my finger instead of the tomato while making a caprese salad.  On top of that, a Jason Mraz song has been going through my head most of the day, and while that’s okay occasionally (depending on the day), it hasn’t been okay today. Stop already with the scatting. I’m not in the mood. I have two quizzes to take, and your silly lyrics are not helping. Now go away, Mr. Mraz.

I woke up this morning a little crazy with anxiety.  The worst thing about it is that I woke up with a list of all the things I should be doing on a loop in my head, and then I froze.  I could have gotten up right then to get started on the list, but did I?  No, I stayed in bed.  Because I could put off all the hard things.  I do that all the time (procrastinate).   Of course, that gives me less time overall to get everything done, so all it really does is ratchet up the anxiety a little more.  Not exactly helpful behavior.

Instead, let’s a play a game (courtesy of Mom) called “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Anxiety Causing Thing #1: Quiz #4 for vector calculus and the midterm I have to take on Thursday

What’s the worst that could happen?  Well, I could get all the answers wrong on my quiz, but that doesn’t affect my grade (just makes my professor think I’m an idiot), so there isn’t anything to worry about there.  Of course, my performance on my quizzes is an indicator of my performance on the midterm, so if I don’t do well on my quizzes, I may not do well on my midterm.  And I could fail my midterm.  So what if I do?  I won’t have a very good grade in my calculus class.  That would be a blow to my ego (something I could survive), and it may put me on the road to failing this class.  What if I fail the class?  I’m taking it online at a community college because I need the prereq for grad school.  If I fail it, I’m out approximately $350.  If I fail it, I can retake it later.  Will I fail it?  Probably not.  I may not get an A.  I may not even get a B.  But I probably won’t fail.  I submitted my quiz this morning (confident that I got three out of four right), so that’s out of my hands, and I still have today, tomorrow, Wednesday, and part of Thursday to study for the midterm.  Breathe deep.

Anxiety Causing Thing #2: Work

What’s the worst that could happen?  I could get fired.  Or laid off.  Or whatever.  That could happen, but there’s nothing I can do about it (and there’s no immediate indication that it’s coming), so that’s not what’s making me edgy.  There’s nothing specific about work that’s bothering me.  No major deadlines, no one is asking me to do anything I’m not capable of, I don’t have any issues with any coworkers.  I just don’t like it.  I don’t want to come here every day.  (I know, whine whine whine, most people don’t actually like going to work.)  I want to do something with flexible hours where I can work from home and have more time for me.  The math that’s stressing me out is the first step in that direction, so this is more of a low-level, back-burner, always-bugging-me sort of thing that every once in a while jumps up and says, “Hey!  Loser!  Worry about me!”

Anxiety Causing Thing #3: Army Ten-Miler

Did I tell you about this?  A few weeks ago, John registered to run in the Army Ten-Miler this October, and I caved to the very mild peer pressure and registered with him.  So what’s the worst that could happen?  I’ll be so slow that the bus that picks up the slowpokes who aren’t going to finish in the required time will pick me up.  Humiliating.  I have 17 weeks to train for it.  I had more, but I didn’t use them.  I can’t procrastinate on this one, so every day I don’t start this training plan gets under my skin, and I didn’t run today.  Well, I kinda did.  I sprinted around the block (up the hills) a couple of times with the dogs this morning.  My math anxiety trumped my race anxiety this morning – I spent the extra time on my quiz.  (SuzRocks sent me a link to a half-marathon training plan.  I figure if I’m capable of running a half-marathon by the time I finish training, ten miles should seem easy.  Ish.  I just need to start the &^$* training plan.)

There are other things that bug me (there are always other things), but those are the three I woke up with this morning.  Peace, serenity, lots of gym time tonight, some studying…I’ve got it under control.

Happy thoughts!

Catalog Living makes me laugh.  Here and here.  (I’m catching up.  You should have seen how many tabs I had open for Tom and Lorenzo.)  Then I wasted about an hour on The Daily What.  Who am I kidding?  That was not a waste of an hour.

Did you come here for original content?  I’m terribly sorry.  I seem to have misplaced it.  Let’s look over here….nope.  Not under my desk?  In the closet?  No.  Under the dog!  No way.  Part of my problem (or the handiest excuse I have right now) is that I’m fighting the itchiest  bug bites I’ve ever had.  It’s like chicken pox.  I’m fairly certain it isn’t chicken pox, and my memories of chicken pox are pretty old, but that’s what it’s like.  I think.  I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since Saturday night.  I’ll get through most of the day not really noticing the bites, but they burn like fire in the middle of the night.  It’s awful.  The last few nights I’ve gone to bed after taking ibuprofen and benadryl and after dousing my legs in caladryl lotion.  Hasn’t helped.  Today I tried neosporin and band-aids.  Not helpful.  Tonight, though, I have a plan.  First, this anti-itch lotion that smells like the worst mentholated cough drops you’ve ever tasted.  So far so good.  Then a bath with epsom salt.  If those two things don’t work, I’m going to cut my legs off at mid-thigh and hobble around on my stumps for the rest of my life.  It’s that bad.

There are days when the internet is no fun.  Sure, I can still keep myself occupied (for hours, if necessary), but sometimes I find hilarious and interesting and share-able things, and sometimes I don’t.  It’s probably me, not the internet.  Maybe I’m not in the mood.  I need new fun websites to explore.

My oral surgeon told me I had to lay off the exercise for a week to ten days after my tooth thing.  I did that.  Today is ten days later, and I went back for a follow-up.  Know what he said today when I asked if I could go back to normal exercise?  “Stay off the stairmaster for another two weeks.”  What a strange thing to say.  Was he kidding?  So I asked.  “Are you kidding?”  “No.  You bounce too much on that thing, it’s part of the motion.  The bone around your implant needs to harden, and if you bounce, it could move around.”  Well, crap.  “So no running?”  “Nope.”  “How about light jogging?”  “Wear soft shoes.”  Again, what?  So now I’m paranoid about bouncing.

The government didn’t shut down.  Yay?  I mean, yay!  Definitely yay. Definitely yay because it’s less selfish.  Just because I would LOVE to have a couple of free days off (even if they are without pay) doesn’t mean that everyone this affects is in my position.  But the irrational (and not as nice) part of me wants to whine.

The rest of me wants to whine because we have to do yard work tomorrow.  We’re going to cordon off the holes the dogs have been digging, cut the grass (that will probably be first), weed, and rescue the damn rose bush again.

My skin is dry, I look tired (I AM tired), and my hair is awful – all staticky and flat in weird places.  Let’s go get on a plane and make all of that worse!  Woo!

…for things to get stuck in trees.  At the corner of the park down the street, a kite.  Makes sense.  Kites, trees – there’s a connection.  A few streets over, a tree in somebody’s front yard has a football stuck at the very top.  About halfway up in the same tree, a tennis ball is wedged in the junction where a branch meets the trunk.  As I walked by, three boys came tumbling out the front door with a mini Nerf football, arguing about whose aim was better.  Now I know how the football and the tennis ball got stuck.  Tomorrow, I’ll probably see the Nerf football up there, too.

I’m trying to get through my to-do list, but I don’t have the motivation.  I tried today.  Called the insurance company to check on coverage.  Got frustrated and wasn’t able to mark it off my list.  I understand the necessity of menus and options when you call companies, particularly on weekends, but I really hate the ones you have to talk to.  I had to go through three minutes of “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.  Did you say medical or help?” just to find out that my insurance company’s customer service center is closed on weekends.  Tell me that up front!  I much prefer using the keypad.  Actually, I’d rather do it online, but I can’t get to that level of detail online.

Grumble grumble work grumble grumble.  I had a nice afternoon all planned out.  I was going to be home from DC a little after four, take advantage of the nice weather to walk the dogs, all the while relaxing and enjoying myself and NOT thinking about work, and then I was going to go to my Muscle Blast class at the gym.  Instead, on our drive back from DC, the world exploded (where world = system I support for work) and I spent my pleasant two hours at home on the computer, on the phone, planning out how to contain the explosion.  I did still go to my class, where from the minute I walked in, it didn’t even occur to me to think about work (which was an unexpected bonus – I didn’t realize my head was so clear until I got back home and remembered work).  Unfortunately, because the world exploded this afternoon (see previous definition), I have a conference call at 8:30.

Dinner will have to be quick.

I’m not allowed to blow my nose.  Ridiculous?  Yes.  Am I following that rule?  Yes, because the oral surgeon convinced me that if I blow my nose before the hole in my gums has healed, my head might explode.  Or something.  But being forced to sniffle for a week is seriously irritating.  And I keep forgetting.  I’ve found myself on the brink of blowing my nose at least four times, and I’ve actually done it three times.  Followed by “SHIT!  I’m not supposed to do that!”

On top of that, work is getting on my nerves (look at your own damn calendar) ,and it’s COLD outside.

And no, Jell-O, frown is NOT a four-letter word.  Now leave me the hell alone.  (That was directed to Jell-O, whose pudding and gelatin products I’m thoroughly tired of, of course.  Not you.  I didn’t realize that was possible.  Of whose pudding and gelatin products I am thoroughly tired.  And up with which I will not put.  Anymore.  Likewise.  Never mind the furthermore, the plea is self defense.)

Who knew being knocked unconscious for an hour could be so tiring?  I did a little light cleaning around the house today, and I was feeling a little better, so we ventured outside on a short errand.

I am WIPED.  Turns out I was not ready for that, and so I think tomorrow will be a couch day.  Despite the lure of seeing friends with a visiting adorable puppy (who we will make sure we see next week).  (The friends, not the puppy.)  Now I’m back to trying to hold pudding down and wondering if ramen or mac & cheese is a better dinner choice.  Probably ramen.  ‘Cause I really do need to eat something.  And the evil doctor has deprived me of toast!  The only thing I really want is toast, and I can’t chew it yet.  (Would you like some cheese with your whine?  NO!  I can’t have either!)

Back to the couch and the TV I go.

Edited to add: Mom warned me.  She was right.  I’ll pay attention next time, I promise! 

I’m having a tooth pulled tomorrow, and I’m a little anxious.  I don’t like pain.  Maybe it won’t hurt.

For a number of reasons, today kinda sucks.  It could be worse (it could be SO much worse), but it’s not what I wish for when I look forward to my weekends.  I’m working, John’s working, we’ve been camped out at the dining room table for most of the day, sitting across from each other with our heads buried in our laptops, and that’s not really the part that kinda sucks.  Mostly, it’s exhaustion. Roxy had another seizure last night, around 11pm, and this time, neither of us could go back to sleep until after 1am.  Out the window went our plans (my plan, anyway – not sure if that was John’s plan, too) to run this morning.  Instead, we slept until nearly ten.  Not good sleep.  Woke up feeling like we hadn’t slept at all, and since we have no milk in the house,  I went to Dunkin Donuts to pick up breakfast.  (Yes, no milk = bagels.  And Starbucks.  It does not equal go to the store and buy milk since you have to leave the house either way, dumbass.)  The Dunkin Donuts in our tiny town is the WORST Dunkin Donuts.  This morning was it – I’m never going to that one again.  This time, before ten am on a Saturday, they were out of plain bagels, out of plain cream cheese, and they didn’t give me the hash browns I paid for, even though they repeated the order back to me three times AND they’re on the receipt.  They’ve screwed up our order lots of times, they make terrible coffee, and they even manage to screw up iced chai.  John tells me (and I know this – I’ve been to others) that this Dunkin Donuts is not representative of the whole company, but still.  This one?  Dead to me.  That, on top of no sleep, on top of the half-hour wait at Starbucks (It may have only been 10 minutes, but it felt longer.  At least they got my order right.), all BEFORE breakfast, with no run to clear my head or make me feel virtuous for exercising when I’m eating a not-healthy breakfast, followed by WORKING makes today not the greatest Saturday.

Also, my head hurts.

Also also, I might feel better if I’d showered this morning.  I swear, that’s happening soon.

Also also also, I didn’t like the book I just finished (finally), The Emperor’s Children, so that may have been contributing to this mood.  I couldn’t even escape into my book!

Why have I been having such a hard time writing lately?  I’d like to blame it on not having much free time, and spending what free time I have reading (although I haven’t been doing much of that), or…honestly, I don’t know what I’ve been doing in the evenings.  Making dinner, eating it while watching some show with John, and then what?  Cleaning up and going to bed? Writing a short paragraph here and then quitting for the night?  The only time I’ve spent reading is before sleep and over breakfast.

Wah wah wah.  Stop whining already.

I took the dogs on my hill workout this morning and let them drag me up the first two.  By the third one, I was dragging them.  You know how, when a dog steps over the leash so just one leg is on the wrong side, they’ll sometimes do a little hop to get free?  Roxy’s pretty good at that, but this morning she managed to get the leash wrapped around her leg, not just crossed under.  She tried to hop out of it a couple of times and when she figured out that it wasn’t going to be that easy, she stopped and picked her little paw off the ground and held it out to me.  SO cute.

Somehow, that reminded me that we need to renew our passports soon.  Can’t believe it’ll be ten years this November.  Must mean I’m getting old.  That’s getting a little close to whining again.  Time to quit.

I need a new 0-calorie drink for work.  A hot drink.  My office is freezing, and I’m already wearing a sweater.  I spend all day drinking water, but water is cold.  I’m trying not to let myself get hot chocolate or coffee or tea (I add way too much milk and sugar to coffee (and tea) to make it drinkable, and I don’t need the calories from either drink), but I don’t really see any other options.  It looks like I either need to learn to drink my coffee (or tea) black (gross – makes me shudder just thinking about it) or I need to start heating up my water.  And that’s just weird.  So maybe I’ll just suffer.