bugged

The English language is such an interesting thing. How does one three-letter word have so many uses and meanings? How does anyone foreign ever get a grasp on a language with which its native speakers so often struggle themselves?

Today I am bugged in several different ways:

1) How did I go from such a busy week to such a boring one? I've literally wasted three hours of my life this morning. I've answered about 6 emails, swept, and now I'm twiddling my thumbs, wondering if I can get my boss's tv to work or if this street is too crowded for me to go sit outside and sun bathe a bit. I'm annoyed that I worked so hard last week "just in case" something happens this week. I'm half-way through and the most important thing that's happened is that my boss lost his confirmation number for the hotel and I had to get it to him right away. Wow.

2) Our new software is full of problems. Just tiny little bugs like misspelled words and uncommonly used links that go to the wrong place. Luckily I'm not in the tech department. They are busy this week. 

3) I swept because the bug man came yesterday. When I walked in this morning there were dead bugs everywhere, tiny roaches and beetles and centipedes and spiders. Yuck. I just shivered. So now after sweeping them all back outside, I feel covered in bugs myself. Every time a hair tickles my shoulder or I get an itch on my knee, I think it's a bug and I slap at it. I'm grossed out.

My biggest decision yesterday was lunch, and it looks that way again today. It's silly that when I'm busy I'll eat whatever you put in front of me (even McDonalds "fish" filet...) and when I'm bored I agonize over what to eat, what to eat. Pimento cheese with tomato from the deli down the street? Thai fried rice? Sushi? A veggie plate lunch from the diner in the town center? Decisions, decisions. sigh

leftovers

My office is empty except for one other person, the new guy, here to answer tech questions. I'm here for all other questions. What was a whirlwind of activity this morning suddenly ceased at 10 a.m. when everyone pulled away, off to New Orleans to an industry convention. I feel a little left behind, passed by, a little left over, like day-old casserole pushed to the side. But it's ok. Some casseroles are better a day old. And someone has to watch this place. They all call me the Momma around here (meaning I clean up their "messes" and prevent them from happening in the first place), so who better to watch the house while the children go out to play? 

My coworker's office is all the way in the back, and I'm all the way in the front. Occasionally I hear a squeaking chair or a cough. Otherwise nothing but the sound of my fingers tapping away here, the boop noise when my husband sends me an instant message, or rarely the chirp of a new email. I do have to lead a software training at 1, which should be interesting as it's not something I normally do. Fully capable, just not practiced.

Husband and I started our tiling project last night. I will add a post full of pictures when it's done, start-to-finish. We're not very good at the whole measuring thing. When we added a brick border to our flower beds last spring, we over-bought and now have about ten extra feet of brick just sitting in a pile at the back of our house. These tiles were even harder to measure, in 13" x 13" sheets, going in odd places like 4" wide and 3' tall sections on either side of the fireplace. How many sheets does that take?? Apparently not as many as we ordered as it looks like we will have two full sheets plus a few random bits left over after we're done. We figured we would have just bits of one left when we bought them. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

I can't decide what I want for lunch. Fast food? No. A cheese sandwich from the fridge? Boring. A smoothie? Not enough. My coworker/friend brought mac and cheese, homemade, and left it in the fridge for me. Other people's leftovers are always better than my own. I think I should go heat some up.

the colors of Saturday

Cannas, gladiolas, and hydrangeas all blooming in my yard. They make me happy.

transparency

The new guys says he avoids confrontation.

"So do I," I nodded in agreement, not able to say more with a mouth full of taco. I avoid it at all turns in my life, knowing that confrontation only makes me feel weak and silly while to others it imparts strength and assuredness. I'm uncomfortable with arguing, whether I'm involved in the argument or not. I prefer everyone to be happy, peaceful, and serene, like I am most of the time.

Life isn't that pleasant or easy though. There are people in all of our lives who create drama and pick out our pet peeves to grind them in our faces, people who thrive on making others miserable, people so miserable themselves, or anxious, or tired, they don't know or care that they're like beacons of unhappiness, shining their dull light on the rest of us. 

I have two such people in my work life. In work, you can't pick with whom you associate. They're there and you have to deal with them. In my private life, I cut out these people like coring an apple-- carefully but ruthlessly. Even if they're blood. I only get one life; I have to keep it sane. Luckily I don't work closely with either one of the two drama queens at work, and luckily all the new additions are great. 

"Yeah, but I wouldn't want to be on your shit list," the other new guy says to me, glancing up from his plate. I ask him what he means, not understanding how transparent I am, how within a week he has pinned me down, analyzed and dissected me, and understands how I operate from within. 

"You're the type that lets things boil below the surface and then finally one day explodes, aren't you? It doesn't happen often, but I bet it's scary when it does. I hope it never happens to me."

I raise my left eyebrow at him, wipe the smile from my face, and tell him he'd better just watch his step around me. I let that linger for a second, and then laugh at him and with him. 

Grateful Thursday

1) The little down time that I've gotten this week-- I've really appreciated it more than I usually do. An hour doing a jigsaw puzzle with my husband? Heaven.

2) The power of a good movie. I just saw Gran Torino. I hope I have the strength to recognize when someone needs my help and that I have the ability to lend an ear and a hand without expecting anything in return.

3) I'm glad tomorrow is the last day of this hell week, and that I can count down the days to some real relief in a trip to the beach for nearly a week in mid-August.

4) Two friends told me they were pregnant this week, one due Jan 1st and one Jan 5th! What are the chances of that? One is young and just starting out, the other older and having probably the last of theirs. Despite my quandary over whether to have kids of my own, I'm always happy to see other people have their wishes for children fulfilled.

5) My boss told me I'm due for a raise very soon. That will be nice-- I plan on putting more in savings every month, equally between retirement and our Italy trip fund. Because what's life without living?

I've got a couple posts brewing in my head, things that have occurred in the last week or so that need to be more deeply explored. I wonder when I'll ever get to them. At work I have no time, and when I get home I'm sick of looking at this laptop and my husband gives me the evil eye when I reach for it. I just need to learn to condense my thoughts a bit... ha.

busy busy me

I think I'm going to have to break from blogging for a while. It was going to happen whether I wanted to or not. Work is keeping me so busy lately I hardly have time to think. I didn't get home until 7:30 last night. This won't last much longer, but for now it has to be this way-- we have to get certain processes in order to save all our souls in the long run. I imagine I'll check back in on Thursday.

I am worried about my closest co-worker, the only other full-time female in the office. She's not handling the stress as well and says she wants to quit and move away. She's not from here and hasn't been here long, so she doesn't have many friends. She drives to her parent's home almost every weekend though, so I don't know how she expects that to change. I think I finally convinced her to stick it out, telling her that she's going to start going out with me and my friends on the weekend. But how do you help someone else manage stress when you see it affecting them? I'm pretty good at managing my own, but I don't know how to help another there. I brought cookies to work today and am planning on having a quiet lunch with her out of the office. Those were my only solutions.

Everyone have a great week!

hot

I'm HOT. This has been a HOT weekend. It's over ninety and I sat in the sun for four hours yesterday, four hours today, just to watch our team lose the tournament. Oh well, we tried. And I only got a tiny bit of sunburn. We were invited to eat catfish tonight but we're just too hot to eat right now. I even took a cold shower and then chugged some ice water, but my skin seems to be radiating heat. I'm too hot to even finish this blog update. I need to sit on the edge of this couch with no limb touching another and the fan blowing directly on me until I get so cold I can't feel my toes anymore. Then maybe I'll be alright.

the great debate

I bite my tongue. I keep the words inside, the anger and contempt, the adoration, the disagreement, the celebration. I live in my head, rehearsing some play that will never make it to the stage. Am I afraid? I cringe when people touch me. Don't hug me. Don't pat me on the back. I don't know how to react, bristling quietly at the intrusion. I'm awkward and shy, not knowing how to return the gesture, not knowing where to look or what to say. I think I keep that anxiety hidden, not letting the toucher see, but maybe I don't. I'm not touched often.

I'm angry, so angry, so hurt and annoyed and pained, at my brother. So angry because now years-- decades-- after the initial hurt, that wound has been reopened. I still can't bring myself to call him, the master manipulator, or his little brother. My mouth would not be guarded. I can't even put it properly in words here. I'm cut to the core of myself, and the slightest twist, the lightest laugh, the quietest cough of a memory of him and I cry out in agony, the hastily-done stitches pulling at the edges. I am betrayed and thus singular.

I am not a debater. My thoughts get tangled up on my tongue and spill out disarranged. I sweat, my voice shakes, and I'll cry if you let me, or even if you don't. I dislike confrontation of any sort, academic or personal. I don't speak up anymore, not like I used to. I wonder sometimes what happened to that raging girl, the one who didn't give a damn about contrary opinions. Now I'd rather remain a mystery, a quiet enigma, than be deserted. Most don't agree with my pacifistic, inclusive, and empathetic way of being and seeing.  

It's so painful, this thing that's so close and yet so far out of reach. To act out the rambling world I create in my mind, I could live out loud, expressing every thought that came, but I wouldn't be me. I am quiet now and have chosen a quiet life. I am whole. I do not feel lost or lonely, and I am content. I suppose that's all that matters.

There are moments, though, tangled up in the contentedness, like now, when I want to scream.

Grateful Thursday

1) I received my first blog award! Yippee! Thanks to Harmony at Harmony's Travels who passed this Lemonade award on to me for being a grateful and positive person. I've found her blog to be a source of positivity for me, so I know why she received this award herself. I sure do love lemonade too! I'd like to pass it on to Joy at Red Silk Streams. Her blog always leaves me happy, thoughtful, and content.

2) The software website I've been working so hard on for the last three weeks went LIVE yesterday afternoon. Woohoo! It's not perfect, but for three weeks work it's pretty spectacular.

3) I have gladiolas and lilies blooming in my yard, and my blue blue blue hydrangea is peeking out too. Pictures to come soon, as soon as it stops raining on them.

4) The Official last weekend of baseball. We won the tournament last week, so we get to play again this weekend. If we win, we get to go onto Omaha for the college world series, but that's a long shot. Weirder things have been known to happen! But I am glad this will be it for the season at home-- at least a little glad. It's getting too hot.

5) The sun and the moon, the wind and rain, the sky above me and the earth below, the trees, the flowers, the birds and bees, and everything else that makes this world a beautiful place in which to live. 

heat waves

I feel greasy and dry today. An oxymoron. The hot sun and humid wind has zapped all the moisture from my skin after sitting four nights in a row at the baseball field. No amount of scrubbing seems to remove the layers of SPF 55 sunscreen, so thickly applied to my pale, sensitive skin. The dust and dirt and grass feels imbedded into my feet and hands. It's a good dirty, a restful and happy dirty.

I'm also very hungry. Eating at the field is hard for a vegetarian. We have a grill, and the grill master is good about keeping me sated, but this weekend everyone was more interested in the games than the food and socializing. I've gone four nights without a proper dinner. Last night was a Sonic grilled cheese, overdone tator tots, and a sweet strawberry slush eaten on the fly in the first inning. I was hungry again by the ninth. I don't remember eating at all Sunday night. It's no way to live.

I need to do laundry. If you've never visited the deep South before, let me tell you about our summers. My early May birthday is the gate that opens to a wave of heat and humidity lasting until Halloween at least. At sun-up the temperature has already reached 80 some days, a scorching, melting 95 by noon. Even the shade offers little relief because the humidity can find you there too. Humidity is such a benign sounding word, like the warm air that helps you get over a cold or relaxes you in a sauna. It should be called butter-air or air-so-thick-you-need-a-knife. You're wet the minute you step out the door, if you can step, as the wetness engulfs you, sticking your clothes to every part of you, frizzing and flattening your hair, leaving a layer of dew on your skin that quickly mixes with the sweat the downright sweltering heat has immediately produced from you. It takes your breath away. There is no wearing something twice in the summer here, and after a long weekend of dressing nice but out in the sun, I'm nearly out of clothes.

I'm also a little bit annoyed, but amused. My office phone rings, I pick it up and am immediately ambushed by a gruff, rude male voice demanding my name, position, and physical address. I oblige with my first name and town, eventually my street, but I'm not giving anything else until I have more information from this abrupt man. In an accusatory voice, full of conspiracy theories, he complains about an unknown business calling him and says he will not give out his name or number until he knows who has been calling him. How in the world, I ask, am I supposed to find that out without a name or number for reference? Walk around the office saying "who's used the phone today to call a man?" I have a one-up on him, having caller i.d., but I don't let on just yet. I want to see how far he'll push it. Ten minutes later of going around and around this, me having determined this guy is a complete whack job (I'm going to come to his house and steal his things? Why would I call first?), I say "Mr. Smith (using his name from the i.d. for the first time), I have caller i.d. so I have your name and phone number here. I'll find out who's calling you. Until then I'd appreciate it if you'd let me get back to my work." And I hang up. Turns out, one of our clients was having a hard time with one of their customers, so they passed his name onto our IT manager. I don't know why-- his explanation was "they like the way I handle people." I suppose I get that, he's a down-to-earth kind of guy and this customer sounded like those are the only types with whom he could ever get along. The IT manager had been trying to reach him, leaving him messages. I knew nothing about it. Being the person that answers the phones, you'd think that would be pertinent information for him to pass along.

Greasy, dry, hungry, dirty, and annoyed is no way to be. At least under it all I'm still happy today.