Attack of the Killer Slog

I haven’t had much time to write lately, and I still don’t have many answers to all the questions lurking in my future.

The living situation is still hit or miss. The landlord did let another set of new neighbors move in with a dog. He told us that since the dog is old and sedentary, it shouldn’t bother Dan’s allergies (?). Then Dan had an allergist appointment and something is in fact bothering his allergies. For now, the allergist said it could be the pollen and/or the dog; the house is very poorly sealed. Once the pollen dies down, Dan is supposed to reassess, and then we find out whether we need to move or not. He tried going off his steroid, though, and had to go back on it. So that isn’t good news, but since it is already the end of July, we might make it until our lease is up. We wanted to either move this summer or stick it out until next summer so we wouldn’t have to change our daughter’s school midyear, though. I may end up driving her if we move.

Speaking of moving, I’ve been at my new job for nine months now. We aren’t sure about buying a house until my job situation stabilizes. Some changes are taking place in September that might improve things, but I won’t know until I get there. Meanwhile, I upped my dosage. That helps me get by with my OCD but it also helps me make more mistakes and forget things.

A troubling concept to me in my adult life is that large parts of it are always going to be a slog. Mostly the parts bringing in income and supporting all the other non-sloggy parts. Isn’t “slog” a great word? Even if it sucks as an actual course of action? But seriously, being an adult requires a lot of slogging. Then you get to a bright spot and go “Woohoo, a bright spot, this made the slog all worth it…this will last me through the slog to the next bright spot.” And off you go slogging along again.

I see all these stress-relief techniques being promoted to help with this kind of thing, and I’m suspicious. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time doing nothing and relaxing. But does it really work like a pair of snowshoes, helping you slog a little less, or is it just a way to pretend you aren’t slogging? If you pretend you aren’t slogging, will you ever stop?

There are some great things going on in our lives. We’re awaiting the arrival of a new grand-niece. I can’t wait to hold her and huff the new-baby smell. One of my best friends is coming to visit in August and I’m knitting us bat hats. I’ve been knitting a lot more lately to keep from stress-eating across every bakery in town (but when I do want to stress-eat, damn, there are some good bakeries around here!). Dan and I are quietly working on alternate career plans in case the job situation doesn’t improve. I have my first poetry class starting in August. And of course, my family is awesome, even when trying to keep up with the toddler is pure insanity.

I just wish I could spend more time enjoying the fun stuff instead of “sticking it out” and waiting for something to change (again). But the trees are already starting to turn color, Halloween (my favorite holiday) is right around the corner, and I won’t be stuck at my freezing cold desk in Slogville for the rest of my life.

 

 

Life: The Version of Record

I had a pretty bad meltdown this morning over having to leave my son. He was being extra-snuggly and clingy, and when he started crying so did I.

My job has been really stressful lately. And by lately I mean for months. I didn’t know what to expect starting out new after being in the same place for 17 years, so when things seemed difficult in the beginning, I figured it was just me adjusting. But I’m not adjusting very well. To make a long story short and vague, I am in a situation where it is exacerbating my OCD, and that in turn exacerbates the situation. I’m taking steps to get help, but it seems like a lot of the steps involve appointments which takes more time, and time is the currency where I always come up short. Continue reading “Life: The Version of Record” →

Fast Food: The Team

At all the restaurants where I worked, most of the time we really did function like a team. Sometimes it was a team of miscreants if we didn’t get along with management or had to deal with difficult customers, but still…when it came to moving customers through the line and filling orders, everyone did their part.

Aside from the shared goal of “Get the customer in, fed, and back out the door,” there was an unspoken agreement I quickly picked up from my restaurant peers. In a nutshell, it was “Do your job, don’t interfere with anyone else’s job, and MYOB.”

Continue reading “Fast Food: The Team” →

OCD Illustrated

A picture is worth a thousand words, right?

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This is my window sill covered in cinnamon.

After it rained, some ants tried to scout out my kitchen. I found them early in their explorations when they were beginning to come in at the back door and window. We have a little mud room out there where we keep the recycling, and the kitchen sink is right by the inner door too, so all those yummy recycling and dirty dish smells waft out and invite the ants in.

I saw them in the window first, and cinnamon is supposed to deter them, so I sprinkled a thin line in the crack of the window sill. That drove a few that had collected in the crack out into the open, and that is when I went ballistic with my cinnamon shaker flinging pie-scented murder all over the place.

I painted around the doors and inside the recycle bin with clove oil. They hate that too. That held the little bastards off until I ran out and got some terro traps.

Fast Food

I just went through eight hours of management training (which wasn’t so bad, surprisingly), and some of the activities required me to go tripping down memory lane to jobs I’ve had in the past.

All through my undergraduate years, I worked in fast food. I probably shouldn’t name the names of the places for fear of being sued, but one of them was THE fast food place, then there was one of the big-time pizza places, and finally there was one of the big-time ice cream places.

While some of my coworkers were high school or college students, some were career fast foodies. There are some really interesting characters in fast food. Some of the managers were awesome, and some were asshats. It’s about like anywhere else I guess, but then again, in some ways it’s not.

The customers are one way it’s not. While working in an office gets boring sometimes, I will say I am thankful for one major feature of office work: The door. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, can walk into a fast food place.

Continue reading “Fast Food” →

The Marriage that Almost Wasn’t

Today was my 17th wedding anniversary.

Since we are heathens, we were married in a civil ceremony at the Durham County Jail in 2001. The magistrate worked at the jail instead of the courthouse on weekends, so we packed up our witnesses and trekked to the jailhouse to get married.

Before that, we lived together for almost a year. But how it all happened is the story I want to tell now.

Dan and I are both dumb as bricks when it comes to love.

We were friends for years before we started dating. We met in karate class when I was 14 and he was 17. We didn’t always get along so well, particularly since I was the teacher’s pet and Dan thought that was unfair. We also had some pretty severe rivalry going on when it came to video games (he called me button masher) and Magic: The Gathering (I called him you cheatin’ bastard).

I went away to college for two years and then transferred back to the community college in our hometown. We were both seeing other people by then, but not really liking them all that much. I saw him at karate and on campus, and we ran around with the same gang of nerds.

By the summer of 1997, we ended up hanging out together more and more often. We liked a lot of the same things: hobbies, music, movies…often we complained to each other about what we didn’t have in common with the people we were dating.

I knew by then that I was attracted to Dan, but I didn’t want to screw up our friendship by acting on it. It took one if my girlfriends stabbing me in the back to get me and Dan together.

She had the same birthday as him, so on their birthday I took them out drinking. Now one thing everyone knows about Dan is that he’s a cheap date. A few beers and he is in lala-land.

On the way home I stopped to go into a store for snacks, and Dan was asleep…er maybe passed out… in the back seat. When I came out this hooker was trying to put the moves on him. She knew I was interested and tried to poach my future husband, the bitch.

I drove home in a fury, and the next day I had to explain to him what happened and why I sent my ex-friend home early and was not speaking to her. So that was how we ended up dating.

Fast forward three years later: Dan graduated in December and I was set to graduate in May. Both of us were looking for jobs. I was interviewing with just about anywhere for practice, but by the end, I had job offers in three different cities.

Dan accepted an offer in North Carolina. When he was weeks away from moving, we had a long-overdue talk about our plans. I thought that because he hadn’t asked me if I wanted to join him in NC, it meant that we were either going to try the long distance thing or split up. He thought that since I was interviewing all over, I was going off to do my own thing.

In this talk it became known that of course he wanted me to come to NC with him and of course I was perfectly willing to turn down three job offers. Like I said, dumb as a brick.

I moved my stuff down that May into his apartment where he had one chair and a cardboard box for a TV stand. We got married the next March and here we are, 17 years later.

I don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates or any of that nonsense. But I do believe I ended up with the one person I want to spend the rest of my life with. We make each other laugh and get each other through the hard times. We’re comfortable together, like that favorite chair with your butt imprint, the one that makes you give the side-eye to any guest who tries to sit in it.

I’m not great at being romantic, obviously, but somehow I ended up with an amazing husband, partner, and best friend anyway.

Happy 17th Mr. F! With all my crazy-ass love.