over it, and grieving

After work, my coworker, Emily, and I went and got a margarita and bitched for an hour. Funny how tequila and whining put everything in perspective. Actually, what really helped was the email I sent later that night (after I'd sobered up) to my boss, explaining why I was so frustrated that day and listing the things I think we are doing wrong. He wrote back and said I was "100% right" and thanked me for the feedback. We're supposed to talk about it later today. That's one thing I will say for him-- he's always open to feedback, even if it's negative. He knows that I have the best interests of the company, and him too, at heart, and I feel a bit renewed today.

Today is also my maternal grandmother's birthday. She is 79 years old. Mom is supposed to call me from her room at the dementia ward later today so I can wish her a happy birthday. She only has some time left where she'll remember my name over the phone. I'm going to see her in two weeks, going to take her to eat catfish.

My maternal grandfather's birthday would have been tomorrow, and he would have been 80. She was one day less than a year younger than him.

In honor of my grandfather, and also because the last paragraph of this post is pretty much how I was feeling yesterday, like every little thing was a splinter in my hand, I'm reposting today "grieving" from January 13 of last year.

"I grieve more than most people, I think. I'm still grieving my grandfather who passed two and a half years ago. There are days it catches me so off guard-- I'll be doing something as simple as washing my face, and a random thought or memory sweeps over the top of my brain and I feel this ache, a deep, gnawing ache, trapped behind my rib cage above my stomach, like a scream I swallowed a long time ago that's now begging to be released. It hurts so completely I double over and being to sob. I miss him so much sometimes. I'd give anything just to hear his voice again.

Does everyone do this? Two and a half years later? It doesn't happen often, maybe once every couple of months. Right after his death it was once every couple hours, then every couple days, so I guess it is fading.

Part of me doesn't want it to fade. Maybe that's what's wrong-- I think if I stop grieving, all that I have remaining of him will be gone. 

I wasn't done with him yet, I wasn't done learning from him and loving him and being in his presence. When my great-grandmother died at 98, it was hard. She was a very important person in my life and influenced who I am greatly. But she was so old and I felt so blessed to have had her that long. She was ready to go. Maybe that makes the difference. Granddad fought the dying of the light to his last breath, fought the cancer with everything he had. I don't have anyone else in my life that was like him-- so strong and masculine and yet caring and joyful and loving. 

I just realized that describes my husband perfectly as well. Huh. And I've taken parts of my grandfather and internalized them; I do things that he would appreciate, like digging in the dirt with my bare hands, using a hammer and screwdriver with confidence, telling people the whole honest truth. So obviously if I stopped grieving him I wouldn't lose him completely. It just feels that way.

I guess this is just a part of my personality. I grieve dead animals on the side of the road, I grieve days lost to migraines, I grieve every soldier and civilian killed in the mid-east, I grieve every argument and harsh word I've had and spoken. I'm not a sad person. I'm actually very happy in my life. Content. I just feel things so deeply, and I don't think other people understand this. I know they don't. Because I don't either, at least not completely."

the smell of paint fumes in the morning

I never wanted a job like this. I never wanted stress or to have to be in charge of anyone or to worry about the company for which I work going under. I don't want to be looking for work again.

To try and calm myself down and put this in perspective: I have a job, which is more than a lot of people can say right now, and I have a job that pays pretty well too. We're ok financially if I were to lose my job. I just checked our savings last night, and we have six months worth of expenses saved up. I like the people with whom I work, for the most part, which again is more than a lot of people can say.

When I finished graduate school, we debated, upon leaving London, to where we should move. New York? Chicago? Atlanta? Nashville? We kept creeping closer and closer to home with the darts thrown at our map. The problem with big cities is that I'd be expected to get a big-city job, like at a fancy auction house or cold, imposing museum. I'd be expected to climb that corporate ladder, pushing past others, leaving them in my dust, or else suffer as a pee-on on the lower rungs of the ladder for the rest of my life.

I suppose I could have made myself happy there, on those low rungs. See, I've never been interested in being a VP or any kind of middle management. I just want to be left alone, and those people are never left alone. I need to run my own life. But I also don't have the drive to try and open my own gallery in a big city. The problem there is, again, you have to strive to be better than you are, cut throat, grow or die. In a small town, there isn't that problem because there is so little competition. A new gallery in this town would be welcome and appreciated.

I'm admitting it now because I feel like I've been lying to myself. But maybe this isn't the complete truth, maybe this is just me freaking out this morning. I don't care about my job. I mean I care about keeping it, I care about my coworkers, and I care about my position in HR and the affect I have on others here and on their professional lives. But I don't care about the industry we're in. It bores me. And the way this office is managed is so frustrating because I have no control over it. I see things that can be fixed but have no way of fixing them. Helpless.

I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated because:
-People (the bosses) don't think about things before they do them
-We moved into our new office before the toilets were even set up and went Thursday last week through yesterday peeing at the gas station next door. We still don't have running water in the sinks.
-No one thought about the fact that open ceilings on these offices mean we might as well not even have walls or doors. I can hardly hear myself think. The trainers have set up in the conference room because it's the only quiet place. I want to find them earphones of some sort but it wouldn't matter because we can't afford them right now. We can't even afford to buy our new employees email addresses from our webserver or new computers to work on. Why do we have new employees?? Because we are all so overwhelmed we can't get the work done, but now that we have new employees we can't get them set up so they can take the load off of us.
-We launched this software without even having our server farm set up correctly, and the boss signed a contract that said every so-many minutes we're down we owe thousands to our franchise client. So this morning when it was down for 10 minutes, who knows how many of our clients saw that weird error page and got frustrated too, and who knows how much we owe now.
-The boss tries to charge people for their software without consulting the sales team to find out what kind of deal is made, so he told our controller yesterday to charge someone even though sales had agreed with them not to charge til Feb. 1, and even though the controller was told that, he's either too spineless to say no or too dumb to remember. All because we need the money.
-It's freaking cold in here, and it smells like paint.

So what do I want to do? I want to own my own antique store/art gallery. I was so close about a year and a half ago, I had a lady wanting to sell hers to me, but she backed out at the last minute. Talk about heartbreak. I had worked at her store for over a year in hopes of buying it from her. I was practically running it-- all I wasn't doing was signing the checks. So I know what it takes. To be able to make my own decisions, to know when I say something, that's what's going to happen, not that a boss will toss my words to the side. I know what I'm doing, what I decide is right, at least in comparison to him, because I see the way I run my household and the way I ran that antique store, the way I increased her profits and solved issues. I'm not perfect, no way, but I don't have grand ambitions like he does, gambling with the professional lives of 20 people. I would only be gambling with my own, at least until I was stable enough to bring other people on. Stability. I need stability, and order, and solidity.

I care about art. I don't care about construction. I care about this community and improving it, about helping local people, but all our clients are elsewhere and so many of my coworkers are from somewhere else. I'm scared to leave though, and too busy to leave too-- I'm here 9 to 6 or 7 most days. Plus I do like the people and would leave them in a huge lurch if I left. I've always said I don't care about what I do as long as I like the people and the work, and I suppose that's true, but the work is taking its toll on me-- long days, poor conditions, stress.

Most things I worry about never happen anyway. Most of the time I remember this. Most of the time I'm content even with a tornado swirling around me because I know three things:
If I lose my job, I will be ok financially.
If I lose my job, I will find something else.
If I lose my job, even though it will be tough and I will mourn for a while, I will find my way through it and will be better off in the end.

Something about this morning is keeping me from remembering those things. Something is making me want to run away screaming. I suppose it's fear of seeing everything I've worked for this past year crumble in front of my eyes. But in reality, I have nothing to lose. This job is not me, I am so much more than this.

weekend thoughts

I think I have poor circulation. My toes are freezing even though I'm wearing socks and boots and am inside at my desk. Of course I also have my coat thrown over my shoulders because it's cold in here to me. I also think I have diabetes, which is funny because I'm underweight, if anything. Maybe I'm just a hypochondriac. I think it makes sense that only hypochondriacs would ever think "I'm a hypochondriac." Think about it.

I'm working late tonight, watching the software support line until 8 so one of my coworkers could go relax. He's stressed. I do not like being in this office alone. Things creak, people outside at the gas station next door suddenly laugh, breaking the otherwise creaking silence. The only noises other than that are my fingers on these keys. I'm cold and lonely. But I didn't fire anyone today, so that's a step in the right direction.

I feel like I've been MIA from my blog lately. Work has taken over every minute while I'm here, and since so much of my work is done in front of this computer screen, I can't stand to look at it at night when I get home.

Someone just clicked our live support button, but by the time they got connected to me they had, happily, answered their own question. Those are my favorite.

So anyway, "home" has been nothing but laying on the couch or finding some friends to share a drink lately. Not that I'm complaining. Last night we had dinner (bbq chicken, hashbrown casserole, creamed corn, salad, and king cake) with friends while watching Brett Favre lose. I don't care about football in the least, but Go Saints.

We did actually get off the couch yesterday before the game for just long enough to spend way too much money at Home Depot. Our plan is to build two eight by four foot raised vegetable gardens in our yard. See my plan below:

A little rough but you get the point. So in order to accomplish this, we needed to build the walls. Bricks or stones are too heavy, especially when you take a look at the half-acre hill in the backyard you'd have to get them down. You can't use treated lumber, like those rail road tie things or any kind of landscaping timbers, because those are treated with chemicals that leach into the soil and thus into your food and thus into you. Your options are 1) buy treated lumber and seal it, which means handling all kinds of chemicals and waiting for wood to dry, never really knowing if it actually worked, or 2) buy untreated lumber that will resist rot-- namely, cedar.

With big plans, we headed to the cedar plank department (yes, there is one, and it smells good) at our local Home Depot. The 8 foot x 6 inch boards were $10 apiece, so we figured the 8 foot by 12 inch boards were probably around $15. No other board in the whole store seemed to be any more expensive than that, but because the price tag was missing from that particular area, we didn't find out until we got to the register, after we had had a couple sawed in half to make the end boards, that these particular beautiful cedar planks were $28.90 a piece. Times six. So with the brackets we picked out to connect the boards at the corners, our total was a whopping $215. Luckily we had $75 in gift cards, but these are turning out to be expensive vegetables.

Husband put one of the boxes together after we got home, and we'll fix the other one up and place them in the yard next weekend after digging up the grass underneath. We may wait a bit to buy the dirt though. The pocketbook needs to recover. I wonder how much dirt that will actually require.

Crap, someone with an actual problem this time. Maybe it will take up most of the time I have left. I'm ready to go home.

Grateful back-from-Miami

I feel like years have passed.

Isn't that weird, how a trip to a new place, even when you're with the people you see every single day, can make you feel like somehow time is passing more slowly, and when you return to your "real" world, you can't decide if this is actually reality and you dreamed the trip, or the other way around. That's how I felt last night, riding with my husband over to Sonic for dinner after he picked me up at the office.

Of course it probably didn't help that I had been up until 4 a.m. the night before and had a 7:30 breakfast meeting that day with a client. I don't do well on 3 hours of sleep. But I had to stay up because I had to find out how long a coworker, Stacy, was going to stay out. The night before she was downstairs at the hotel bar with a couple of male clients until nearly 2 a.m. The boss had a conversation with her the next day about how inappropriate that is, what with other people (aka potential clients) watching and with never knowing what someone's true intentions are. She proceeded to go out again that same night, which was fine at first because she had other female employees with her, but when they left and she insisted on staying by herself with no one but male clients, she made herself again into a liability for the company.

So I fired her today. Or, rather, the leadership team met, discussed how to fire her (because is it really a question at this point?), and then after coming back into my office was approached by Stacy who said, "Are you going to fire me now?"

This woman and I have never gotten along. She's loud, pretentious, immature, and loves to be the center of attention. She creates drama wherever she goes, making her practically my exact opposite, and not in a good way. I was planning on at least slightly enjoying this firing, because truthfully I get no joy out of it even when I don't like the person, but she took all that away from me by being completely understanding and cooperative. Amazing coming from someone who previously has shown so much immaturity. But I'm glad it's over and the best decision was made.

And so, today I'm grateful for several things. I'm grateful to still have a job, to be smart enough to understand that when the boss says something it goes whether I completely agree or not, and that the actual firing was painless for me and at least somewhat less painful for her.

I'm also grateful to be home. Miami is beautiful but it's no place I'd want to live, at least not unless I owned a private key somewhere off shore. I was so happy to be back in my bed and back with my husband. There's nothing better than your own bed after a long trip, especially when it has clean sheets. I will be grateful to have my suitcase unpacked and my clothes clean tonight as well. We're planning a quiet night, catching up on Tivo-ed tv from the week, maybe with a delivered pizza or Chinese take out. Tomorrow I don't plan on leaving the couch very much either.

no rest for the weary

I'm going to Miami at 5:30 in the morning for a conference. I'll be back Thursday night. The boss is mostly just bringing me along for fun-- I'm lucky in that I don't have to go to the Detroits or the St. Louis's or the Nashvilles, the places with little to do after the show closes. I can pick the couple I want to go to every year. Last year it was Vegas, this year Miami and probably Albuquerque in the fall. I've never been to Miami so I'm excited about that.

I'm not excited about the traveling. I hate to fly. I don't actually mind the physical act of taking off, cruising, or landing. It's the anticipation of having to be somewhere at an exact time, of checking in, of going through security, waiting and waiting, finding a cab, etc. It's too much work.

But after the week I had, I'm looking forward to being out of the office for a while. The leadership committee came to a very tough decision to fire one of our higher-paid employees. He'd been with us for about 6 months, and although he hadn't really done anything wrong, he hadn't done anything right either, and that department is going through a restructure. After spinning in circles, mostly because the boss is nice to a fault, we voted and the majority (all but the boss) was for firing. A clean break. I dreaded it all night Thursday as it's my responsibility to both hire and fire. But the actual act, done on Friday afternoon, wasn't that bad. It was quick, like ripping off a bandaid.

He told me he had been expecting it for a while. I don't understand this. If you're making that much money a year, why wouldn't you fight for your job? If you felt yourself on the edge, why wouldn't you show up every day half an hour early and leave every day an hour late, ask anyone and everyone for work to do, and find a way to make yourself indispensable? He didn't-- he rolled over and died months ago, sitting at his desk doing nothing, not showing up for extra trainings. It's odd.

So you won't hear from me again until Thursday, not that I've been posting a lot anyway. There's been no free time for me. No rest. Maybe I'll get some sleep on the plane.

Grateful Thursday?

I'm grateful this day is over.

I would be more grateful if tomorrow was over too.

I have to fire someone. Details later.

these boots are made for walking

I got new cowboy boots over the weekend, dark brown suede, slightly pointed toe, two inch stacked heel. Been a long time since I've had some shit-kickers. Yes, that is what we Southerners like to call our boots, the ones we wear to get dirty in the yard or stomp around town. Got them half-price and had a gift card to pay for them, plus I got a new scarf and brown tights on that card as well. Doesn't really sound like it goes together-- shit-kickers, tights, and a scarf. But somehow they all work in the same wardrobe, just not on the same day.

There's something about having a pair of stomping boots that makes you want to kick ass. I came into work today with a kicking-ass attitude. I don't even feel like stopping to take names.

My office door was unlocked and wide open-- someone had fished the extra key out of the reception desk (no one is supposed to know it's in there but the boss and receptionist). Turns out the boss was the culprit, but I was on a rampage for about thirty minutes trying to find out who did it, and he'll get an earful when I get ahold of him too. The controller and I share an office-- lots of financial and HR related stuff going on in here.

I eat when I'm stressed, and it's been stressful around here lately. I weighed myself over Christmas at my in-laws, and I'm the same 140 I've always been. I just feel... flabby. I'm eating McDonalds right now as I write this. Probably doesn't help. But I have been told three times today that I "look tall" or "look thin." It's amazing what a new pair of boots will do for you, and a new attitude.

Husband joined a gym, says he wants to firm up, lose about 10 pounds, and get back to his "fighting weight." Like he ever fought anything, other than maybe a barstool after a few too many. But he went both Thursday and Friday after work, cycled and used an elliptical that told him, in all its digital wisdom, that he worked off 265 calories both days. If nothing else it's given him a new appreciation for the amount of calories in food and how much it takes to work off that one extra coke or that one little candy bar. He even asked me over the weekend how many calories were in diet Dr. Pepper. "Zero," I gladly told him, and he was happy as he cracked it open. Like I buy diet soda because I like it.

Don't tell him I told you so, but he has gained about 15-20 pounds over the last couple years. Still fit, but soft, and maybe a little on the pudgy side-- he's especially started to fill in on his usually angular neck and checks. I think that was the last straw for him.

I saw a picture of him at his Dad's house the other night, probably from age 18 or 19, and I was reminded of the face that I fell in love with how ever many years ago, those sharp cheek bones and fluffly curly brown hair, all buzz cut now to hide the fact that it's falling out. I love his face now too-- his little gray hairs, the blue eyes that will never lose their youthful mischievous glint, but something about seeing the old him reminded me of those days so strongly, I feel renewed.

Me? I don't think I've changed, but I think that's probably more of a condition of seeing myself in the mirror every day more than the actual truth of it. I won't ask him, though, I don't want to know. I might have to kick his ass if he told me the truth. I'd take off my boots first for him though. That's just how much I love him.

numb, again

Although this is not one I had planned to repost, as I think several of you were following me already at this point, I am in the same state as I described back then again this morning.

numb, from March 30, 2009:

"I can feel my bones. They creak and groan like a rusty door hinge, no soft connections to ease them. My flesh and muscle, my sinew down to the bone is lifeless. I'm a skeleton walking. I'm numb and cold and hard. Pinch me and I won't make a peep; I won't feel it. I look at the world through hollow cavities, colors and light and movement shocking to my slow-motion thoughts, and I struggle to comprehend. I feel rail thin and brittle, but bloated at once, like a cheek after a dentist's injection, feeling swollen and looking ordinary. I poke myself to make sure I'm ordinary, but feel nothing. My stomach, I can feel my stomach, roiling and curdling, protesting its contents. Belches taste like soap and syrup, making the curdling worse, feeling at any moment I could lose those contents, knowing that it wouldn't make it better if I did. My head is full of air. I'm a bubble, a dry bubble ready to pop, releasing nothing but dust. Questions float by me like dandelion seeds in the wind, and I'm mesmerized by their grace but lost by their meaning. I'm surprised I can form semi-complete thoughts, but the surprise is dulled, like a rubber mallet on splintering wood."

It's so hard to function like this. I know several of you out there feel my pain (literally), but it's not even the pain I speak of here, it's the medicine. What's worse-- a migraine that hurts so bad you'd rather poke out your eyes to relieve the pressure and distract yourself than suffer through another minute, or medicine that lulls you into believing that you've gotten rid of the pain only for the pain to be replaced by complete numbness, cloudiness, weird aches, and blank stupidity?

I guess the medicine is better-- that must be why I keep taking it. I haven't had a headache in a while. Winter is usually easier on me. But on a day like today when I really need to focus at work, but instead I end up staring at a sentence like this blindly wondering where the hell it was going in the first place, letting minutes pass by before I can type out another word... well, it's not helpful.

Grateful Thursday

I meant to post several times this week. I had important things to say, I'm sure, but somehow they skipped out of my brain, running for their life as all these work thoughts came pouring in, like a flood. Cat 3 water loss. If you worked here you'd know what that meant.

We've been so busy. We sold our product to a franchise, and January 4th marked the first franchisee to roll-out with us. We're adding two a day now. I don't have much to do with that side, but I've been trying to hire some help for them since they're so snowed under back there. I've had two candidates not show up for their interview. Two. In a row. How does that happen? How do I have a pleasant phone conversation with someone, offer them an interview, schedule it, and then at the scheduled time sit here looking at my door wondering where the heck they are? Twice?

But I do have a lot to be grateful for this week. So here goes...

1) I'm choosing to be thankful for the cold. And when I say cold, I mean freeze the hair in your nose cold, curl your toes cold, frost your eyelashes cold, turn your fingernails blue cold. 18 degrees when I got to work this morning. We are not used to that here, not in the least, and the snow? You'd think the world was ending. But if nothing else, the cold reminds me how much I appreciate warmth. And summer.

My deck this morning. Bub was not a happy camper.

2) Growth. I was angry Tuesday morning, angry about something my boss did the night before, angry that I wasn't given more respect in a certain situation at work. As I was getting ready to come in, blow drying my hair and getting dressed, all I could think about was what exactly I was going to say to him as soon as I got the chance. But I had a thought: let me put myself in his shoes. So I tried them on. They didn't fit at first, and I was uncomfortable, squirming around trying to see myself and the situation from the other side. Once I did though, once I came to terms with what I could have done better, once I saw that he never meant harm, not really, by what he did, I decided I was going to be helpful, not angry, positive, not negative. I went to him when I got to work and told him my ideas for improving the situation, and he agreed and I could see a weight was lifted from him. A few years ago, even a year ago, that wouldn't have happened. I either would have boiled over it or blown my top, but something has happened to me over the past year to give me this new perspective on life. Wish I could put my finger on exactly what it was.

3) Basketball games. I got to go to a college game Tuesday night, and we won! It was exciting, especially for me because basketball is my game. I played in high school, know all the rules, and get so into the games I hardly notice that I'm jumping up and down or yelling or whooping. It was a fun night.

continued trains of thought

I think it's tragic that most new blogs, devoid of followers, post some of their best writing in the first few months only for them to go nearly completely unread. That's not to say that a person only has a few good things to say, but I do think it's true that some of the freshest and perhaps most daring ideas get expressed in that time before we have an audience.

Because of that, and in honor of my year of blogging, I'm going to occasionally repost some of my older writing in the next couple months. No, it will not be my sole form of posting, and it won't happen too often (why is there a taboo about this anyway?) but I do want to put some of this back out there.

To start things off, here's one from January 3 of last year called train of thought.

"Does anyone else lay in bed at night, thinking random thoughts, only to wonder how you ended up at the current thought, so you lay there for another 20 minutes circling back to the original idea?

Last night, all in the space of about an hour while trying to fall asleep, listening to my husband snore 2 minutes after he hit the pillow: What am I doing tomorrow? I should use that gift certificate tomorrow. I need a new dress. Something shiny to wear to that charity benefit in February. Then I could wear it to that wedding in April. So it needs to be appropriate for both. Surely it's a dress-up wedding. It's at the country club. I wonder how many people are invited. I wonder if my old friend X will be there. I haven't seen him in a while. I think he lives in DC now so he probably won't come. My cousin lives in DC now too. I wonder if they know each other. Wouldn't that be funny. She just got a new job. I wonder what she does exactly. I wonder what the weather is like there. Wait, why am I thinking about DC weather?... DC... cousin... friend... wedding... benefit... shiny dress... oh yeah, gift certificate. What am I doing tomorrow?

And then for another thirty minutes I laid there making a list in my head of the several errands I must run today, so many since I haven't had a free day since Halloween.

What I should have been thinking about: Why is it so long since I've seen my old friend? We're facebook friends but we hardly talk there. We were best friends in high school, the inseparable kind, knew each other's thoughts before they were thought, a real heart to heart, soul to soul connection. I have very few of those-- just my husband, my friend Karen, and my friend Betsy. I wonder why I let his friendship go all those years ago. Young then, only 18, leaving for college, dating someone who I thought at the time was SO important. That's when things started to fall apart, when I started dating someone. My friend and I were never like that, but I guess he just felt a little replaced.

Come to think of it, I'm not friends with anyone I knew in high school, so I don't really know why I'm going to this wedding in April. The bride and I were close then, but I haven't spoken to her in years. Why am I even invited?? We don't know each other. She wasn't invited to mine.

My wedding was small, only about 100 people invited, 80 attended, mostly family, and very close friends. The best complements I got were
A) thank you for having a short and sweet ceremony that happened to also be pretty (no problem)
B) it was like something from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, a Great Gatsby jazz age Deco ball come to life, but without being costumey or themey (that was the point, so glad you noticed).
We really enjoyed our wedding, except for the part where my grandmother fell down the stairs, but that's another story altogether. And we did it pretty cheaply too, which was great in a town where the average wedding costs 30 grand. Who has that kind of money to spend? I can see easily how it's done, though, with one venue wanting to charge $2000 just for chairs.

Why am I thinking about the cost of wedding chairs? weddings... Fitzgerald... that wedding... not friends anymore... my old friend in DC... train of thought. Oh yeah."