Sometimes, even when I'm trying to work at work, it still doesn't happen.

I have a lot of strange conversations in my head, partially because I'm strange and partially because Captain America works at night and so there's no one at home for me to talk to. Also, there's no one at home to tell me I shouldn't post things like this.

At work today, I accidentally asked excel to calculate a fuck-ton of data, when I only wanted a shit-ton calculated. And so the whirly blue circle of aggrevation whirled and whirled and whirled for over an hour. And while all of this was going on, I caught up on my bloggess reading. And so I read her bit about the death of Alan Rickman, which still cracks my heart just a little every time I think about it.

And in it, her husband reminds her that she had sort of created an Alan Rickman fan club, and also included him on a list of hot men that husbands don't understand why women think they're hot. So of course I HAD to go find this list, but unfortunately she wrote it for her sex blog, which is some sort of community publication for a sex toy company.

All of which is fine with me. I don't care what two (or more) consulting adults do. But I'm at work, and so I'm blocked. (Sometimes the things that are blocked are so random. I was totally able to see nudy pics of people that were part of an artistic project a photographer friend was working on, and it wasn't like some of the pics were nude and some were not. FULL FRONTAL OF EVERYONE! But to see a list of hot men, that's a problem? Corporate America is so weird sometimes.)

And so I came home and searched for it on our home computer, and it was still a bit of a struggle to find, but I managed. But I'm now working on my work computer and so I can't find it again. But there was also a list of people who men assume women will have sex with but women don't actually want to, like Tom Cruise.

And this reminded me of a Tom Cruise-ish conversation I had with a guy friend who insisted that every woman on the planet wanted to have sex with Nicole Kidman's new husband (is he still her new husband? I can't  even keep track any more)--the one who is from Australia but is a country music star. As if that makes any sense.

And the coversation went something like this:

Friend: Chicks dig [whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is]

Me: Nope. I can't handle that terrible hair.

Friend: Chicks dig the hair.

Me: He does have amazing blue eyes, but that haircut is awful.

Friend: You don't know what you're talking about.

Me: He has terrible hair. And he's kind of skinny. I do not want to have sex with him.

Friend: You're wrong.

Me: The only vagina in this conversation is mine!

Friend: Then why is he so popular with the ladies?

Me: I can't fucking figure it out either. Maybe because he has a shit-ton of money?

Friend: Women want to do him.

Me: You're fired.

And as I was reliving this conversation, I was growing increasingly annoyed that some guy thought he could tell me who I was and was not attracted to. And then I remembered that I rarely see this friend anymore (not entirely because of this conversation), and then I wondered if my husband would care at all that I totally want to join the Team Rickman fan club.

Probably not. He's probably worried about what my company is going to do when they realize what's in my search history.

Why I never get anything done: Adulting gets in the way

I am so ready for some utter nonsense.

I work for a company that is pretty flexible in allowing people to work from home, or at least my manager is. Which is a good thing because I needed to be home to wait for the installation of our new washing machine. It would be even better if the washing machine was now washing part of the mountain of laundry in the garage, but it's not. Because the installation guys aren't allowed to work with corroded pipes, and evidently the pipes in my garage are corroded. (I feel like this is the beginning of a dirty joke, but it's not. It's just my life today.)

So I called our plumber ("where did you find this guy?" Captain America asks me. "From the business card on the fridge," I tell him. "It's going to cost us an arm and a leg," Captain America tells me.). The plumber cheerfully offers to come over tomorrow at 4:30. It's not perfect, but then this whole thing isn't perfect. But I can make 4:30 work because I have a flexible and understanding manager.

I open up outlook to send my manager a calendar notification telling her that I'll be working from home again tomorrow afternoon due to this plumbing debacle only to find that my internet is no longer working. I go into the office (I've currently taken over the dining room table for work because we've recently had a heat wave and the dining room has a ceiling fan but the office doesn't) to restart the router, and I press the restart button. And nothing happens. The lights don't blink on and off, there's no clicky sound of a button being pressed. Nothing.

I decide to use our old wireless router (we've very recently changed wireless service providers), which for some reason is still plugged in and working just fine, despite Captain America's cancelling the service. The old router is working just fine on my phone, but not on my laptop. It wants some sort of 8-digit all-numeric pin that the laptop is claiming is on the router. There is no 8-digit all numeric anything on my router.

So I unplug all of the routers, plug them back in, and track down about 95 different passcodes, Meanwhile, I've checked that we don't actually have a laundry emergency (Captain America has exactly one clean uniform left, so we don't need to go to a laundromat tomorrow), and I go to text him this information. And there's some sort of weird voice text bar sitting over my text box. So I can't actually see the words I'm texting. Which of course would be fine if the words I'm writing actually ended up in the text, but as autocorrect can be quite the bitch, I really can't rely on that. Fortunately, I'm just texting my husband and he already thinks I'm nuts.

I give up and call Captain America. Captain America asks me to reschedule the installation of the washing machine for Friday, and to call our internet guy to see if he can figure out what the problem is. Then some garble comes over the radio and he says "I'm at work. I have to go." I'M AT WORK, TOO, I want to shout. But of course, by this point, he's off saving the world and I'm only yelling at a bunch of uncooperative technology.

Fortunately, by this point the internet is working again, and I'm able to google my iPhone problem. And the solution is to power off my phone. Of course it is.

While my phone is powering on/off I email my manager to explain to her a) why I haven't actually accomplished a single thing since I left the office, despite being on line for 5 hours, and b) why I'll need to work from home again tomorrow afternoon. She writes back and says, "Oh. I forgot about you."

Clearly my job is impactful.

Not yet

I am a chronic over-scheduler. In general, I say it's because there are so many interesting things to do, and my job isn't one of them. But, alas, I have bills to pay! So I try to maximize my "free time" to the point where I literally fall asleep on the floor mid-post-run-stretch.

This is maybe not the healthiest approach to life...especially since I'm no longer in my twenties, when you can still conceivably beat up your body and get by. So, I'm practicing making "not yet" decisions.

To be clear, this is not a form of procrastination (like my constantly changing outlining of my novel may or may not be). This is for stuff that I'd really like to do, but there is no realistic way for me to do right now. This is not something I get to say about making credit card payments, going grocery shopping, or even scheduling dental appointments. That would be procrastination.

"Not yet" is for great ideas: we should go to Peru! It will be amazing! Yes, I'd love to go to Peru, and I'm sure it will be amazing (I mean, hello, llamas!). But, not yet. Let's put that on the 5-year plan.

"Not yet" is for decisions I don't have to make right now. Would I like to be a life coach? I think so, but I'll need to look into it a lot more. Is this something I can realistically take on right now? No. Well, then not yet. I cannot become a life coach yet.

"Not yet" is about realizing that there is a time/money/energy gap between many of the things I'd like to do, and my current availability to do them. It doesn't mean I can't ever do them, it just means I can't do them YET. It means I'm actively deciding to postpone decision making on things that don't need a decision YET. It means I can relax about some of the nebulous anxiety around ALL OF THE AWESOME THINGS I COULD BE DOING IF ONLY I WASN'T STUCK AT WORK!!! I'm just not doing those awesome things YET. It is not about giving up, or quitting; it is simply about acknowledging limitations, including that I can't possibly be doing everything all of the time.

Energy Drain

At least once a week, you'll see an article on Facebook about getting rid of "toxic friends." But I have sort of the opposite of a toxic friend.

I had a friend who was nice, and sweet, and generous, and always up for anything. When she asked "how are you?" she actually wanted to listen to an answer, instead of just exchanging a brief greeting.

And somehow, I found her exhausting. I would spend a day with her, and I would come home completely depleted, despite the fact that everything that had happened had been fun and pleasant and nice and enjoyable.

For a while, I felt guilty about avoiding this friend. I couldn't pinpoint what the problem was, and I felt bad about not wanting to spend time with someone who was so nice.

In the end, I decided it mattered less WHY this particular relationship was exhausting, and more that it simply was. I would never suggest to someone else that they should spend time with someone they found exhausting, even if that person was nice, so why should I?

I haven't seen this person in over a year, and sometimes I still feel like I should tell her why I "broke up" with her, although to be fair, she hasn't contacted me, either, so maybe the feeling was mutual. In the end, the conclusion I came to, was it was exhausting for me to be around her because I always felt like I needed to be patient, and sweet, and nice, and basically not me. Pretending is exhausting.

I HATE having to do other peoples' jobs for them

This is a letter I composed to the billing office of the physical therapy group where my husband went for a shoulder injury. I think it was very mature of me to not include things like "Get your head out of your ass and do your fucking job," "the incompetence of your billing department is only overshadowed by it's persistence in such incompetence ."

The name of the group is Synergy Specialists and Captain America wasn't even that impressed by their services. I highly don't recommend them. 

To whom it may concern:

Please check your records. Our HRA has paid both the $107.92 patient portion from Captain America's visit on 3/20/14 (payment #PH4339xxxx paid on 4/8/14) and the $107.92 patient portion from Captain America's visit on 4/22/14 (payment #PH4370xxxx paid on 5/9/14).

UHC has verified that these checks have been cashed, so perhaps they are sitting in your unapplied cash account?

Feel free to call UHC at 800-718-1299 to discuss this issue further. However, as my husband and I do not owe any payments, we will ignore all future requests for payment. 

Not enough experience

This is a picture of Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

In the past week, I've had two different sets of disappointing news at work. The first is that I will not be going to India to teach business skills to women in rural villages (how awesome is that opportunity!), and the second is that I'm not being considered for a position in our Finance department because they are looking for someone with more experience.

I understand. I really do. They want someone with 5 years finance experience. I have about a decade of accounting experience. That sounds like the same thing to someone not in the field, but it's really not. It's really actually a fundamentally different way of looking at data.

There are a few things about this decision that trouble me. The first is that when I looked over the job description and talked with the managers, everything sounded like stuff I can do. Because I'm smart. And I have a degree in Finance. And because the accounting work at my last company was both more complex and more analytic-based than what I'm currently doing.

This is a picture of a disappointed boy. I think it looks like Sad Christopher Robin. 

The second troubling thing is that I really want out of accounting. Accounting is dull. (I'm sure people in finance might argue that finance is dull, but that's not the point.) The point is, I never meant to become an accountant. I meant to use accounting as a way of getting a job after college, and as a way of getting into a good company so I could eventually do something useful. Well, I've had no problems getting jobs. I'm at a good company. It's apparently the next step that I'm struggling with.

To be fair, I've been at my current company less than two years. It's just that I've been an accountant FOREVER. When I went to grad school, I had no idea that almost 5 years after graduating, I would still have the exact same title on my resume than I did before grad school. Somehow that seems to miss the point of all of those classes (and all of that  money we spent).

As I understand it, the people who don't want to hire me for their finance roles do want to use me for some project work, which is both good and bad. The good side is that they'll get to see how amazing I am and that will hopefully make them more inclined to hire me when another role opens. The bad side is that I'll essentially be doing finance work for free. Sure my hours and my salary will stay the same, but there is a definite pay jump between my level in accounting and the equivalent level in finance.

On the bright side, until they decide what to do with me, I have time to blog at work.

Sometimes there's just no way to win

I bought a 20-ounce, or venti, travel mug. I though this was a great idea. I like venti lattes, and I feel guilty about throwing away a paper cup every time I get one. Plus, when you bring your own cup, you get a small discount.

However, 20-ounce travel mugs are rare. They usually come in a 16-ounce size. I had to order mine through Amazon. Which was really no big deal. Except that, because they're rare, no one actually believes me that it's 20 ounces. Even though I tell them it is. Even though I do actually have a 16-ounce travel mug by the exact same company--and shockingly--it's smaller than my 20-ounce cup. I get questioned about it so often that I actually measured 20 ounces of water and poured it into the cup, just to prove to myself that I wasn't the crazy one at Starbucks.

I go to two Starbucks coffee shops. One by my house that I like a lot and one on the way to work. (I usually don't go to them both on the same day.)  My travel cup is metal, which is awesome, because it keeps my drinks hot even longer than plastic travel mugs. See, what happens is, I go to cross-fit in the mornings, then I go and get my latte, then I go to work, where I shower off the cross-fit funk. So it's really important to me that the latte stay hot because I won't actually be drinking it until about a half hour after buying it.

The Starbucks near my house doesn't seem to have any problem with my 20-ounce travel mug (but I only go here when I'm not going to cross-fit), but the one on my way to work is constantly giving me a grande latte even though I paid for a venti. Which means I have to explain to them that they need to give me another four ounces. (Which I thought would be easy, because it's just steamed milk--a grande and a venti both have two shots of espresso, but no, they apparently have to remake the entire latte because they're artists.)

Part of the problem, I am sure, is that the cup doesn't say "20 ounces" anywhere on it. And I haven't figured out a good way to respond to the baristas who ask me if I'm sure it's a 20-ounce cup. Because it's never a conversation where they say: are you sure this is a venti and not a grande? And I say: yes, and then we all just move on and get our coffees. It always turns into a bigger conversation, and I always feel like saying, if I'm going to pay for a venti coffee, could you just make me one and put it in my fucking cup? I have shit to do and discussing this with you isn't on my list!

The other part of the problem, I'm sure, is that I just don't drink that much coffee. This routine normally happens at the beginning of the month when I'm working crazy hours. So I'm not a "regular" and they aren't used to me coming in with my 20-ounce cup. So every time I do, it's like a totally new, surprising experience for the baristas.

So, in order to save myself the aggravation of this whole fiasco, I've decided only to use my 20-ounce travel mug when I go to the Starbucks near my house, where apparently it doesn't present any sort of crisis. It's a silly waste of paper cups when I go to the Starbucks on my way to work, but it's a battle that is exhausting to me, and I don't have spare energy to be exhausted before I get to work...if I did, I wouldn't be getting the latte in the first place.

The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So you know when you read a book, and people keep talking to you, and you want to turn to them with your best eight-year-old-older-sister-I'm-right-because-I-said-so-voice and say "But I'm READING" because clearly there is nothing more important than reading THIS PARTICULAR BOOK, RIGHT NOW, EVER? That's how the last third of this book is. And people kept interrupting me.

About halfway through the book, when I figured out what Dolly's plan was, I thought, this is stupid. This isn't going to work. It's petty and childish and it isn't going to turn out how she thinks it will. Well, I was both right, and so far from being right I can't believe I was disappointed to figure it out with 200 pages to go.

Kate Morton has an enviable use of language. She describes things in ways I wouldn't have dreamed up, but that are still crystal clear. She does change character voice a lot (which is something I have been noticing more and more after a friend pointed it out to me), but even within chapters, I didn't find it distracting.

The book is broken into a couple of sections that seem rather arbitrary to me, as the sections neither fully focus on, nor are fully described by, the character they're named after.

All-in-all, this is a really good book.

View all my reviews

Oh, the joys of home ownership

I recently started reading Happier at Home, and the first chapter deals with possessions. (Gretchen Rubin is always dealing with her possessions ) For a while now, I've been trying to figure out why I dread using the laptop in the office, and I had the suspicion that it had more to do with me than the machine (the laptop works just fine). There's something about our office that just doesn't feel homey to me (I realize it's the office), but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Then, two weeks ago, Captain America and I moved the expensive, gorgeous chair we keep in the office into the living room, and the significantly cheaper Ikea loveseat into the office. (I had read somewhere that there was value in rearranging your belongings...something about being cheaper than redecorating, and that just moving them around stimulates that "something new" part of your brain. Or something along those lines.)

Anyway, we finally concluded that part of the problem with the office is that it feels cluttered, at least to me. (I'm sure most people would walk in and think it was uncluttered. This is my house, after all.) We decided that what we had was really the wrong furniture for the room. For instance, the drawer-unit on which we store the printer? I NEVER open it, if I can avoid it. As far as I'm concerned it is a cluttered mess and contains nothing useful. Ironically, this is also my husband's set of drawers. Apparently his organizational nemesis is office supplies.

Also, we have a bookshelf in this room that can only store large books because it has open sides. I bought this bookshelf because I liked how easily it folded up, which was a useful characteristic in my twenties when I lived in apartments with roommates, but it's really no longer useful, or at least not as useful as it should be (case in point, we have a much larger bookshelf in the guest room that looks a lot more chaotic, but doesn't feel more chaotic, mostly because everything fits in it just fine, and we can adjust the shelf heights).

So today, we went looking for a more useful bookshelf/storage option for the office. Which was a total bust. I've discovered that what I thought I wanted is called barrister bookshelves (my mother has some in her house, and I like how they close up), but they are ridiculously expensive, and work in my mother's house because she lives in a Victorian confection, but we live in a cookie-cutter 1950's era I-don't-even-know-what you'd call it.

What I'm somehow hoping to find is a low-ish, long-ish bookshelf that has some doors on it, so I can hide the unsightly office crap I'll have to put in it, but will still let me display the books. But everything we've found that is practically priced is way too tall for the space we have in mind.

And we now have six green chairs in the dining room and living room. That's a little bizarre, but we're going to work through that some time in the future.

Enough already!

So there's some sort of problem with Blogger right now, related to not being able to edit things on a blog. There's a forum to log your problem (presumably so the people at Google can better rectify it), but once you log your problem, you get an email every time someone else logs their problem. This would be fine if everyone were just answering the three questions asked, but instead people are using it as a means to complain about Blogger and Google. Yes, it's totally irritating when something doesn't work the way it's supposed to, but IT'S A FREE SERVICE, PEOPLE!

Give it a rest. Google will get it sorted out.

And I thought I was grumpy!

Is this how life is supposed to be?

Or, I'm crabby because I don't get enough sleep because I like to do so many other things.

Someone once commented that "I don't have the time to x" is really just an excuse, and what you actually mean is that you're not willing to make the time. I don't disagree, but it always seemed to me to be a half-thought. It implies that you're doing a bad job of managing your time, and you would completely be able to fit in a new activity if you had your priorities in order. What this further implies is that someone else's priorities should be yours. This drives me crazy!

Example: studies indicate that people who volunteer are happier and have more fulfilling relationships than those who don't volunteer. This suggests that we should all spend some time volunteering. Except, I don't like volunteering. It always feels like one more thing on my to-do list, one more obligation, and I don't come home feeling fulfilled or better about humanity or anything like that. I come home tired and crabby and feeling like I now have to squeeze whatever else I need to get done that day into even less remaining time. And I have pretty incredible time management skills.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what's a time priority for me, because for me, and probably for a lot of other people, time is the biggest limit in their life. Like most people I know, I work hard, so when I'm not at work, I don't want what I do with my precious free time to be hard. For me, volunteering is hard. It's unpleasant and unrewarding, and I always wish it didn't take up so much time. Of course, we all have to do unpleasant stuff in our free time sometimes, and we have to spend time doing emotion-neutral things like laundry and grocery shopping, but I don't want to spend what's left of my now decreased free time doing things I don't enjoy.

Here's what I enjoy doing: reading, spending time with family and friends, writing, baking, exercising, and watching movies.

I'd love to do more of all of these things, but then it would be at the expense of, well, some other of these things (I could read more and exercise less or vice versa), or at the expense of sleep, which I already don't get enough of. I suppose I could work less, but that would likely mean a lower-paying job, and that's something I'm even less willing to compromise.

So this has all been slogging around my head when a friend of mine invites me to a Landmark Education open house thing she's hosting. I originally thought Landmark was like Bridgepoint, or National University, or any other for-profit school. Then I read more about it an thought it sounded suspiciously like a cult. Then I did a Google search to see what I could find out about it from any other source than it's website. Mostly, people  have been saying it only appears cult-like, and it's really a program for figuring out how to get the most out of life. It sounds self-help-y/inspirational speaker-y, but it's apparently all about you.

But I still don't get it. I don't understand specifically what it does. There's no clear cut definition of what the program means by "living an extraordinary life," and the syllabus doesn't outline specific steps or actions. So while it sounds like the kind of thing where everyone would say, of course I want an extraordinary life, of course I want more fulfilling and deeper relationships, it still feels a little bit like a scam to me.

So, on the one hand, if this is helping my friend be happier and have a better life, I want to support her, but on the other hand, I don't want to go to her open house and be the one who's all, but I don't get it. I feel like that would make me even more of a target for all of the Landmarkians, because clearly I'm in even greater need of this program, since I don't understand it at all.

But what it really comes down to is, I don't want to go. I like my friend, but I don't really feel the need to meet a bunch of her other friends, and I'd rather spend my time reading, or sleeping.

I feel like my life is already very full, and at the same time, I'd enjoy it a lot more and be less crabby if I got more sleep, but then I'd have to cut down on something I enjoy doing. Who came up with this system?

The sad tale of cleaning out my email

Periodically, the threat level from an overflowing email inbox reaches impending doom level and I have to force myself to go through and clean it out. This, for me, is anytime there's more than, say, 78 emails in my inbox. I'm pretty sure I have a low threshold for impending doom, but I also try really hard to practice the "touch it once" rule with my emails. Anyway, inevitably, there's a whole bunch of stuff that can be deleted because I've already done it (like library reminders), a whole bunch of stuff than can be filed (like stuff I bought at Amazon that's arrived and so everything's fine), and a whole bunch of other stuff that I should either delete or file away for when I have copious amounts of free time (does that every happen to anyone? because if so, c'mon over to my house--I've got a whole bunch of blogs to read, cats-doing-strange-things videos to watch, and double-chocolate-brownie recipes to try).

So here's something I'm trying to come to terms with: I had a ton of fun with NaNoWriMo and I'd really like to write on a regular basis. But I have bills to pay, so I go to work. (And I have a pretty awesome job...too awesome to give up and embark on being-a-writer-for-a-year type projects.) I also exercise a lot because it keeps me from going postal on the freeways in Southern California, helps me sleep through the night (you're welcome, Captain America), and because I really want to fit back into my old pants. Finally, I read a ton. And, push come to shove, I like reading more than I like writing (full disclosure: I like reading more than I like doing ANYTHING else).

I read a parenting article a while ago that said that kids can basically handle three things, and you have to count school as a thing. So if your kid is enrolled in scouts and little league, that's a manageable amount of stuff in their life, but if you throw in choir  they've now got four things (because, remember, you have to count school), you can expect a lot of meltdowns. I don't think adults are so different. If I go to work, and then make exercising and reading my two other things, pretty much everything is fine. But when I add in writing, like I did last November, it was at the expense of the other two (remember, you have to count going to work as a thing, and since it's what pays the bills, I didn't think it was prudent to allow that to be the thing that suffered).

So what does this have to do with cleaning out my email? As sad as it is, currently, the prudent thing for me to do is to sort of put writing aspirations on hold, which means that all of the emails that are links to tips or agents or whatever that would be helpful need to get filed away. This isn't a crisis, but it's still sad to acknowledge that I really don't have the time to try out this particular hobby right now.

But don't despair! I fully intend to participate in Script Frenzy in April and NaNoWriMo again in November!

Why I think the Mayans might be on to something

Sometime around Halloween-ish both my cell phone and my car battery died within two days of each other, making it very difficult to call AAA to have them come fix things, and to get to the store to get a new phone. The car battery had never been replaced, and was probably due to die, but the cell phone was a total fluke because NOTHING EVER HAPPENS TO MY CELL PHONE. I don't accidentally put it in the washing machine. I don't leave it on top of my car and then somehow back over it. I don't wear it running, so it gets neither sweaty nor dropped. I don't give it to small children to keep them entertained.

Okay, so fast forward about a month. Randomly, the GPS thing for my running watch stops working, the keyboard on our PC gets all persnickety IN THE MIDDLE OF NANOWRIMO no less, and one of the mice we have also stops working (that's mice, as in plural of mouse, the computer thingy, not mice as in a whole breed of vermin...I mean pets).

I kinda hope the world hurries it up and ends soon, because these little things portuning Armageddon are so damn annoying.

P.S. Somehow blogger is okay with "persnickety" but not with "portuning." Have I totally made up a word here?

On raising kids, or not.

A few weeks ago, I read this article about a woman who put a child in a closet as a form of punishment: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/19/children-shut-in-closet-as-punishment/

I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of grief for this from my friends with kids, but I don't really have a problem with this, per se. I have always thought that finding effective ways of punishing children is very difficult because, in my opinion, the punishment should fit the crime, but it also has to have meaning for the child.

I'm not saying I'm in favor of putting kids in closets, but the article states that it was for a few seconds. That's not a very long time. I know of a teacher who would use her coat closet as a "time-out" room. The closet had two doors that could not be locked, and a window, for pete's sake! It also had a chair. This teacher, who routinely had 30+ children in her elementary-aged classroom found it an effective prophylaxis for kids who clearly needed a break before they actually stirred up trouble. More often than not, the child would either rejoin the class a few minutes later, in a much calmer mind set, or the child would fall asleep in the chair.  (Really, I have no idea why there's not more nap time in elementary school).

My first grade teacher would ask kids to leave the room, count to some number that she specified, and then return. Generally, this would be enough to calm the kid down (I mean how many 6-year-olds are going to remember whatever it was that got them all riled up if they had to leave the environment and count to 30?). Yes, technically, the child was unsupervised for the x number of seconds/minutes (depending on their counting skill) they were in the hall, but it still seems like a better solution than waiting for the child to reach his or her limit and disrupt the entire class.

Growing up, there were times when my sister simply couldn't behave at the dinner table. She would be given the option of eating on the back porch. She would take her little plate and go out there and mutter to herself about whatever perceived injustice she was suffering from, and then come back inside when she was done (either eating or muttering; either way she was a much calmer person). No, she wasn't sent out there when it was raining or snowing or anything like that, but she didn't seem to mind it and it prevented a number of arguments at the dinner table.

Now, the article doesn't discuss what the child had done that required punishment, and I think day care centers should probably have some sort of time-out room or area built in because it's inevitable that it will be needed, but this sort of sensationalism of something that we don't know all of the information about drives me  bananas! Has anyone actually asked why the teacher did it, or if it actually bothered the children? (Although this is California. Much like the sexual harassment laws where even if it doesn't bother me that someone calls me dear at work, if it bothers someone who overhears it, it still counts; probably it's considered child abuse even if the kid doesn't think he or she is being abused. But I digress).

From my years of babysitting, and now that my friends have kids, I've learned all sorts of methods of punishments, some of them more traditional, and some more creative, but sooner or later, parents figure out what works for their kid.

Likewise, experienced teachers can tell when a child is about to have some sort of meltdown, and they've probably come up with some effective techniques to handle it before it causes a chain reaction with all of the students. It seems to me that the reasonable course of action would be for parents to ask about this before they send their kids to daycare.

You know what's not reasonable? Baby heads on a shelf. That's just creepy.

Further proof...

that my life is a little more stressful than normal right now.

Today I went to the DMV because we couldn't find my registration. Mind you, we had the stickers on the plates, and when I called, the guy confirmed that my transaction had been processed. Captain America thought he must have thrown out the registration. I thought we just never got it. It's not the kind of thing we would have thrown out or lost.

And there's an $18 fee for replacing a lost registration card. Because as the lady at the DMV office told me, the stickers come stapled to the card. I told her that I know that that's what's supposed to happen but we're not the sort of people to lose things like that. She charged me $18 anyway. You're welcome, California.

As it turns out, I've just been losing my mind because my registration card was in the same envelope where I keep all of my other important documents. I found it because I was getting out my passport. Sadly, I'm not going anywhere, but I'll be starting a new job on Monday and I need it for my paperwork.

*Sigh*

I've got to get it together soon!

Being busy and related ramblings

I'll confess: I read this article on busyness a while ago and don't really feel like re-reading it. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?smid=fb-share It basically talks about how Americans are all saying how busy they are. And I find myself telling people how busy I am, but when asked to articulate what I'm busy doing, I just find myself annoyed. Here's what my typical day looks like:
6:30am-8:00am--breakfast, read the paper, get ready for work
8:00am-8:45am--drive to work (stop and get coffee if I'm super sleepy)
8:45am-6:00pm--work (I'll leave earlier if I have a random appointment, which happens on a fairly regular basis...in fact, probably too regularly to be called random)
6:00pm-6:45pm--drive to the gym or other random appointment (If my appointment is for 6:30, in, say, Hillcrest, then I actually leave work at 4:30.)
6:45pm-8:30pm--gym time, including changing
8:30pm-8:45pm--drive home from the gym (sometimes I have to stop at the library or the grocery store, or something so this takes longer)
8:45pm-10:00pm--make something to eat, maybe watch a little recorded TV, take a shower, do laundry, pay bills, balance my checkbook, do the dishes, etc.
10:00pm-11:00PM--pack all of my bags for the next day, say hello to Captain America, who's just come home from work, brush my teeth, maybe read in bed a little if there's time, and then it's bedtime.

I don't know if this looks like a lot or not because most of the people I know are also busy. Although, I do have a friend who will say things to me like, I think I might go to the beach this weekend. I don't remember the last time I had enough free time to think I might do something. On the other hand, I really am into scheduling stuff, so I'd probably just schedule a trip to the beach if I wanted to go (assuming I had the time).

I would like to have a less busy life, I really would. I dream of finding a cute little neighborhood coffee shop, curling up with a really good chai, and getting lost in a book. Then, I'd walk home, maybe pick up something fresh at the grocery store for dinner. I'd prepare the dinner, and afterwords, Captain America and I would leisurely do the dishes and maybe have a drink on our patio.

But I also dream of paying off my student loans, traveling to Antarctica, and buying a hot tub.  All of this means I have to have a job (not to mention all of our normal bills and expenses require me to work). Which gets me to a maybe unrelated task--Captain America and I need to sit down and review our budget.

But it seems I also need to review how I budget my time.

Gretchen Rubin, over at the Happiness Project, sometimes blogs about busyness. I'm not sure that's exactly how she puts it, but she does discuss it. She's obviously a busy person: she's a mother of two, a wife, an author, a blogger, a columnist, and she's actively trying to be happier, which, to even think about while running a household and holding down a career is a lot to manage! What I like about Gretchen is that her approach to happiness is very, here's what I've tried, here's what worked for me, here's what didn't work for me, and here's what I'm trying next. She never says to be happy you have to do x, y, or z. However, she's a big advocate for eliminating falseness from her life. She's not into being busy for the sake of being busy. She confesses she doesn't like to dress up and go out. She's not a hermit by any means. In fact, she's a member of several book clubs, as an example. But I suspect she'd leave these book clubs when they stopped being useful to her. She also doesn't like false choices, which are not really relevant here, but important to understand anyway. False choices are when you think you have to pick one thing or another, but you don't really. For example, I can make a lot of money OR I can have a job I enjoy. You, at least in theory, can have both, you just have to figure out how.

Anyway, back to being busy. I'm still trying to figure out how to free up more of my time. My commute takes  up a lot of time right now. I have found that when I come in a little earlier and leave a little later, my commute is no big deal. As I'm currently paid by the hour, this is no big deal for me, either, but I could always take a longer lunch. The down side of this is that I'll have to figure out a way to have fewer commitments in the evening.

I had to go to the dentist yesterday and have a root canal done. I apparently grind my teeth despite being a devoted bite-guard user. So I think I'm going to try some mediation. I'm serious. I'd been thinking about this anyway, because I took a class in it a while ago, and it was nice. And mediators sleep better. And I'm currently seeing an acupuncturist and a massage therapist, which takes up both time and money. I'm hoping to determine if I can get essentially the same results from meditation and more stretching. If not, I can always go back to the acupuncturist and massage therapist, right?

Also, despite what Captain America might say, I've stopped recording so many shows that just aren't worth my time. Which should free up time in the evening for stretching and meditation.

The big hurdle to tackle is eating. Everything about eating is time-consuming, especially if you want to eat well. One thing we've started doing in my house is buying those pre-made fruit salads. I'm much more likely to eat fruit as a snack if I don't have to do anything with it. I've got to also remember to get carrot sticks and cashews. I'm pretty good about eating yogurt, and that's a good source of protein and carbs. What I'm still looking for is that satisfying, satiating sweet-tooth item, but one that won't ruin my diet. (If I could lose a little weight and find a way to keep it off, I wouldn't have to spend so much time at the gym.)

And this is why I never get anything done--I'm busy writing blog posts about how busy I am!

Analyzing the Data

It should come to no surprise to you that I love data.

I just received a heart rate monitor/GPS watch for my birthday that is AWESOME!

I can track how far I've run, what my fastest mile is, what my average heart rate is, how many calories I've burned, and probably other stuff I don't know about yet!

Today, for the first time, I wore my heart rate monitor while doing my Insanity workout. I burned 167 calories in 37 minutes. This is very sad, but I'm going to give Insanity the benefit of the doubt and guess that my caloric burn is so low because it was a recovery workout. However, when I log this info into Sparkpeople, it predicts that I've burnt (vt?) 269 calories! I realize there are a vast array of differences between my heart rate monitor and the algorithm in the website, but this is a difference of 102 calories (or, in other words, Sparkpeople thinks I burned 61% more calories than I really did). Ugh.

When I'm in Oregon in July, I'm going to a clinic that a friend goes to to have a VO2 test done to determine my optimal fat-calorie burning zone. In the mean time, I've identified the following four areas of my diet that need work:

1. Consume fewer beverages that have calories. As much as I hate this, I'm going to have to cut out juice and just eat real fruit. I've decided that on days that I've run more than 10 miles, I'm allowed a glass of orange juice (because it just tastes so good!) and a bottle of vitamin water (because it really seems to help with recovery). The jury's still out on whether or not hot chocolate counts as a beverage with calories. I know I drink it, but milk is actually digested as a solid. I am also allowing myself one cup of tea a day because when I tried to give up tea, it made me really sad. The conundrum is, I have open bottles of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages in my refrigerator. Should I consume these and just not replace them, or should I toss them to more quickly align with my diet? I hate wasting food, but I also want to lose weight. (I would like to point out right here that I know I'm not fat. I'm just outside the weight limit of my wardrobe and I'd like that to change.)
2. Consume more fiber. Hopefully a lot of this will be managed by cutting out juice and eating real fruit. I've also discovered that I really like raw veggies dipped in ranch (although ranch isn't exactly diet-friendly). I'm going to see if I can find a DIY recipe for ranch that uses Greek yogurt or something. I still don't really like to eat salads, but there's a soup/sandwich/salad place right across the street. Is it worth the money every day to buy a salad? (One of the big problems with salads for me is that it takes so freakin' long to make a good one, and it's impossible to use up all of the ingredients at the same time, so you nearly always have something random in your fridge that's just about to go bad.) Also, when I lived with The Vegetarian (now The Vegan), she'd cook up a whole pot of veggies, and we'd eat them all week. I should get on that.
3. Burn more calories. I'm running a marathon in October, and I've yet to actually get serious about my training. Somehow, I'm failing to make a consistent exercising schedule. I have a schedule, and I keep updating it as I learn what is not working, but I have yet to discover what will work. 
4. Eat more protein. This is questionable. According to Sparkpeople, I only consume enough protein about half of the time. (This is actually the pro argument for allowing hot chocolate.) How much protein a person needs is a frequently debated health topic. Americans tend to overindulge in protein because we're such big meat-eaters. I am, in fact, the worst vegetarian in the world, but I don't actually eat a lot of meat (this is probably more due to the fact that Captain America gets home around 10pm and cooking dinner for one person is just a waste of time). I do drink milk, eat yogurt and cheese, eat mushrooms and avocados, and eat eggs. I'm going to try to add one hard boiled egg a day to my diet and see what happens. I know that when I don't eat enough protein, I don't have as much energy, but I have yet to figure out what "enough" actually is. I guess I'm going to need more data points!

I've had a day, and it somehow disintegrates from there

I am having one of those days/weeks/months/quarters (yes, I'm an accountant...I think in quarters) where I just can't seem to get things to happen. My April was totally disorganized, my May was insanely busy, and my June has somehow managed to be both disorganized and busy. I have no idea how this happened.

Don't get me wrong. I have a great life.

I'm just going through a period in it where I keep asking myself how did THIS become my life?

I'm feeling very much like I can't MAKE things happen, and this worries me. In addition to the fact that I'm not actually getting anything done, I'm worried about the language I'm using to express my feelings. Whenever I feel like I can't MAKE things happen, it is inevitably tied to my chronic depression. For anyone who's not in the know about chronic depression, it's a lot like any other mental disorder...you always have it...you just learn coping skills to deal with it/keep it under control. And for me, medication helps a lot. I have a physical chemical imbalance in my brain. I'm not imagining I'm sad and I'm not a hypochondriac. You wouldn't tell someone with high blood pressure not to take their medication, would you? Also running and reading help a lot. For me. I'm not a doctor, so I can't prescribe this combination for you.

So anyway, today I tried to go to a massage appointment. Except I could not get there. I'm not kidding. I left work in plenty of time. But then the gas light came on in my car. I have no idea how far I can actually drive with the light on because I've never tested it (and I don't plan to), and while I thought I had enough gas to get there if I was driving, as it turns out, I was driving in SoCal, so I was mostly sitting. In a shit-ton of traffic (Hey, Voracious, I know you love this magical measurement, so I threw it in just for you!). And I wasn't convinced I had enough gas for an hour of sitting. (As it turns out, I probably did). And just for fun, my gas light came on in the only 10 mile stretch of I-5 that doesn't have a gas station you can actually get to before you run out of gas because...wait for it...the fair is going so the traffic situation in SoCal is exponentially bad!


So, I got off the freeway, pulled over, and just waited for traffic to die down enough for me to actually get SOMEWHERE USEFUL.

So in the process of delivering this rant, I found this blog post that made me laugh out loud a lot. And of course, I facebooked it. Yup, I'm verbing facebook and verb. It's been that kind of day. Who knows what wild and crazy thing I'll do next, so watch out.

So anyway, back in my world where I'm not managing to get anything done...which of course is not actually true. I get a lot of stuff done. I just never get to the point where I feel like, aahhh, I've gotten a bunch of stuff done today and now I can relax BECAUSE THERE'S STILL MORE STUFF TO DO!! Which is sounding an awful lot like this amusing blog. So maybe that's the real problem. Not that I'm not getting anything done, but that there is so much to get done.

And then I got distracted by showing Captain America the words with friends game in which I beat the Professor by 7 points in the last move, causing me to text him (the Professor) Boo-ya! in my excitement. Because the Professor blew a 50 point lead. Because I'm awesome. And clearly in the Double Unicorn Success Club.

So it seems like now is a good time to have some hot chocolate and read about women in jail.

P.S. I realize that this blog post sounds a lot like I have ADD. I don't. Seriously. I've had that tested. (I'm also not schizophrenic or manic depressive, in case you're curious.) This whole ADD-thing is another manifestation of my chronic depression. Really. This is one of those things that acts up before I really feel like I'm losing control and go into a full depressive state. And for those of you who are now beginning to get worried about my mental health, relax. I'm really not to go off the deep end...I don't suffer migraines, but from what I understand, for a lot of people, there are signs that they are going to get one...and if they get rest or hydrate or whatever their migraine trigger is, they can cut it off before it happens. The feeling like I can't get anything done and the ADD-like behavior are both signs for me. But unlike when you're about to get a migraine and should probably do something ASAP, this state for me is fine for a while. (Obviously, since it's been going on for three months). My prediction is, given the events and tasks in my immediate future, that this state will exist for about another month and then it will resolve itself and I'll go back to being my more normal self.

Epic Fail!

Remember how about two months ago, I was totally appalled by the amount of water we use (142 gallons a day), and I said I was going to reduce that by 10%. Well, I didn't.  Not only did I not reduce the amount of water we use, but our usage actually went up by 33 gallons a day! The only good news is, that's still less than the amount we used during this period last year.

Really, the only thing I can attribute it to is that I started this new work out regimen which involves two work outs a day, and therefore two showers a day (I'm still doing two workouts, but I've switched to generally doing both workouts in the evening, since there's no way I'm getting up early enough to do two in the morning, and two showers a day is just a lot of work).

Captain America just walked in and informed me that 1) he's been turning on the sprinklers, and 2) I have scary eyes.  Sometimes when he tells me this, I think of the scene in Toy Story where Mrs. Potato Head is packing Mr. Potato Head's angry eyes, but generally, I just realize that I forgot to take off my eye makeup before doing my Insanity workout.

The toxins in my feet?

A new gym opened up down the street from my house.  It's AWESOME!  It has tons of cardio equipment, including those really cool treadmills that go both uphill and downhill!  It has a whole section devoted to TRX, and it has towel service (you have no idea how much I LOVE towel service at a gym!). It also has a nice, open swimming pool. The swimming pool area includes a hot tub, a steam room, and a sauna. My adventure took place in the sauna.

I don't know how familiar any of you are with this toxin-in-your-feet theory, and I couldn't really find a site to direct you to to explain this theory. (Although I did find this link discussing how it's basically a bunch of hooey.) As best as I can reconstruct it, the theory is basically that, because your feet are the lowest point in you body, all of the toxins pool there. Therefore, you want to detox from your feet.

So, the other day, at the gym, I was sitting in the sauna, minding my own business, reading my magazine, when the woman sitting next to me (wearing a bathing suit and a beanie) started to ask me what my goals were of sitting in the sauna.  I told her I was trying to lose weight (we're not going to get into the water weight debate here...I really like how much I sweat in the sauna, even if it is just water weight). She told me I should take off my shoes and get a pair of flip-flops for the sauna.

She kindly pointed out that I was doing this sauna thing all wrong.  Because I was sweating into my sneakers, all of the toxins that I sweat out today, I would reabsorb the next time I put on my shoes.  Moreover, what I needed to be doing was split my sauna experience: I should take a warm shower in the middle of my sauna time and then come back into the sauna, and then I would sweat even more.  The shower serves two purposes: it washes off all of the toxins that I already sweated out, and it opens my pores.

So let's discuss some of the problems with this theory.  I am aware that your body does absorb stuff through your skin.  Right, wasn't that the problem with PABA in sunscreen, and the basis of the argument that the aluminum in antiperspirants increases the chance of breast cancer? Nonetheless, I'm not sure I should be concerned with reabsorbing toxins through my feet that have settled into my shoes because...

Aren't we really just concerned with the fat-soluble toxins here? I mean, aren't toxins either fat-soluble or water-soluble? This is why you don't worry about overdosing on vitamin C...it is possible, but you have to consume A LOT of it because it's water-soluble and you pee it out (I'm not actually suggesting that vitamin C is a toxin, but you could argue that anything in excess is a toxin, but really, it was just an example).

I'm not concerned at all with the water-soluble toxins because I drink a crazy amount of water.  But the fat-soluble toxins...call me crazy here, but they're probably all sitting in the fat in my midsection...not in my feet. Even if you subscribe to the "gravity is pulling the toxins down" notion, my feet, quite simply, aren't fat.  I'm not sure where the toxins could be hanging out.

So how did my bizarre conversation with the beanie-clad woman conclude? I decided to take the high road and let her prattle on. I've never met a crazy person, who, when you poke holes in their theory, say, ah, yes, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I didn't feel like getting into a debate. In fact, I didn't feel like getting into a conversation (remember, I had a magazine). So I politely let her speak and nodded and smiled as if she was making complete sense and wasn't a total lunatic.