Inane Chatter » complaining

I’m not asking much (just a token really, a trifle)

Zannah — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:01:07 +0000

I had plans for this evening. My plans included homework. My plans got derailed by Homeaway.com. The slightest passing reference to a possible trip to the UK and I get sucked in. Not a good use of my time.

Now I’m watching the clock. I’m doing that thing I do where I start to feel tired a few days in a row (late nights, early mornings), and I know I need to get more sleep, but it’s hard to get to bed earlier. So then, every time I look at the clock, I’m calculating how many hours of sleep I can get before I have to get up. It’s 10 to 9 right now. If I can be asleep in 10 minutes, I could get eight hours tonight (I’m going to Baltimore tomorrow and I have to get up at 5). I won’t even be ready for bed in 10 minutes, let alone asleep, so 8 hours is not happening. And that’s mildly upsetting because it means I’ll be tired tomorrow. Actually, it means I’ll be visiting Starbucks at 6am tomorrow morning, which is not so good for my health. But when I have to drive an hour and a half when it’s still dark outside, you better believe I’m going to allow myself to have a tall skim no whip toffee nut white mocha. Is it too much to ask to be able to sleep in at least until the sun comes up every day?

You know that moaning sound Harry makes in that one scene in When Harry Met Sally? I’ve been making that sound all day.

Zannah — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:29:52 +0000

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.

Going to bed now

Zannah — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:28:34 +0000

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.

Juggling is a skill I do not possess

Zannah — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:39:39 +0000

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.

I probably jinxed it. I do that a lot.

Zannah — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:56:41 +0000

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?

You’ve got to THINK about these things

Zannah — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:49:12 +0000

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 could fall down flat on my face and not notice

Zannah — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:30:22 +0000

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.

Accident prone

Zannah — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:39:57 +0000

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.

Things I’m anxious about today

Zannah — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:30:01 +0000

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!

The itchiest post in the world

Zannah — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:02:48 +0000

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.