Side note: I hate August. August is traditionally one of my worst months for not only luck, but for mental health as well. It'll be hard to top July this year, so I'm just gonna come out and say it pre-emptively: August can eat a bag of dicks.
Just getting this sentiment out of the way now.
Saturday, August 1:
Day off. There's a Black Lives Matter protest on the west side of Omaha that Daisy wants us to attend today. I tell her that while it's probably the safest one possible (West-O is where all the rich white people live and where most of the country clubs, golf courses, and generally affluent folks in Omaha exist and congregate, so I don't expect cops teargassing people there), protesting at pretty much any event nowadays is dangerous and an unnecessary risk to our lives and well-being. Also, keep in mind the wife is still recovering from a broken tailbone, so it's not like she can turn tail (pardon the phrasing) and actually run if shit goes down. I do not want to go for multiple reasons, and secretly hope it's called off and canceled/rescheduled as severe storms are supposed to hit this afternoon. I got a few more comics in the mail yesterday and from my informed delivery it appears that I'll probably get a few more today. At this point I've gotten most of the Marvel books I should have, but there's a large chunk of DC stuff I should've gotten that is legit just missing. I don't think there's a whole lot I can do about that now -- some of the missing books shipped in the beginning of June (per their records) and just, I dunno, vanished on their way to my mailbox someplace, I guess. Whatever happened to them, or if I'll ever get them in the mail (say, like seven months from now, like when I got my aunt and uncle's Christmas card returned to me) remains to be seen. Mentally I am not doing much better than I was yesterday. I still feel empty and broken and none of it is really getting any better or changing. I'm just so sick of feeling bad, so sick of feeling unheard, unimportant, and un-obeyed. So sick of nothing ever really going right. Sick of this country, sick of our president, sick of Covid-19, sick of no news actually being good news anymore. I'm sick of nothing making me feel happy or fulfilled. When you hate yourself and hate the world, it's really hard to like other things or other people. And my generally positive attitude has taken a big hit recently. When it is implied or one is outright told "you're not necessary" or "I don't need you" enough, especially as much as I have been recently, believe me, you start to believe it and agree with it. Most of the time I can push these thoughts/feelings out of my head in order to go about my life, but it's getting harder and harder to do so as of late. I fear as time goes on, it'll become impossible to do so unless things start getting better.
The wife receives a text from the "secret society" organizing the protest saying that it starts at 3, and is actually in the large, very white-people centric shopping plaza that her workplace is also on the edge of. I change my tune and tell her that I absolutely want to go, because I'm just angry enough at the world that I'll totally put on a mask and go punch a cop.
"I don't want you to punch a cop," Daisy tells me.
"Oh, but what if I really want to?" I respond.
"I don't want to go to jail."
"That's fine, you wouldn't, I'd be the one punching."
This does not go over as well as I expected it to.
The protest is fine. It remains very peaceful and the cops (who show up very quickly) keep their distance. Daisy and I spend over two hours there, as we get rained on hard at least two or three times, and she films/livestreams everything. I separate from her for a bit to help an old lady who had taken a fall, and I am also assisted by two other younger women around Daisy's age -- one who, I later found out, was one of the protest's organizers. The lady who had fallen called us her "Saturday Angels," which I thought was sweet. But I will always help anyone in need when I have the ability to do so. When we leave, we do our shopping, return home just as another thunderstorm hits, have dinner and watch two episodes of Shameless, and then Daisy goes to bed. I pass out in the chair for a few hours.
Sunday, August 2:
Working from home, day 76.
Judging from the 100+ text messages I have from internal back-and-forth chatter with my fellow leadership from the Saturday overnight hours, apparently last night at work was a shitshow. I'll administratively take care of the fallout for it tonight once I'm on shift and it shouldn't take too long, but reading through the texts and the emails I am constantly rolling my eyes (not at the people, but at the situations involved). It's becoming more clear to me every day that the company I work for is so cut-rate and so dismally thrown together that it's a wonder all of us still have jobs. I now have seventeen people reporting directly to me -- fourteen agents under my program, an agent under an offshoot program that reports to me in name only, and two Team Leads (the second accepted his offer, finally, on Friday). It looks great on a resume when I have members of leadership reporting up to me, a higher-level member of leadership by default now, but if the fundamentals of the job itself don't really change, well...you know what I mean. This month I "celebrate" six full years with that company -- I started there when it was owned by a different company and I have changed/upgraded my job four times in those six years. I've been a member of leadership there longer than my wife -- who also used to work there -- worked there period. I am a damn good employee. I tow the company line, I make good judgment calls, and I do the best possible job of running my team -- to the point where I'd more than likely be in the top 10% of management in that line of work were any sort of polling among the staff were to actually ever take place. Higher ups in our parent company don't grill me or bother me because they know what I'm doing, and I've even gotten considerably less questioning over the course of the past few months from my own higher ups, as they know the same thing. I feel as if at the moment I'm at a point of job stability -- as in, the dust has settled for the most part and we're trucking along pretty well -- that I haven't really felt for the past year or two. With all of us working from home now, and with our machines from our office(s), the overhead cost of having a physical building to work from has been negated and has likely helped to extend our contract far more than anyone knows. Still, with but a word from our parent company, our contract could end tomorrow and we'd all be out of jobs. While I don't think this is going to happen, it will happen sometime down the road. It's not a secret, my team knows and knows to prepare for the eventuality. My job is partially to keep everything running as smoothly as possible and to weed out the stragglers to cut overhead costs for the program as much as possible. While I've done this a lot over the years (I would need more than both hands to count how many people I've fired over the past several years, every one of them justified), there is always more to be done. I've never gotten so complacent or feeling invincible to the point to where I know I personally can't be replaced, either -- because I can be. It would be extremely difficult, but I can be replaced. But would it throw almost everything in the program into absolute chaos for weeks, if not months, on end, if I were fired or otherwise removed from our program? Yes, absolutely. Does everyone else in leadership know that if the team lost me (or, conversely, if they lost my second-shift or weekend-shift counterparts) that a large chunk of our program would collapse? Also yes, absolutely. So yeah, I feel a little stability. Even for the people who may not necessarily like me (and yes, there are a few of those, I'm sure) I'm more than likely known as a "necessary evil." And I'm okay with that. Necessary evil pays my bills and my mortgage.
With the relative stability I feel at the moment, and because I know she won't read this for at least a month, I will say that I've already purchased Daisy's "big" Christmas gift this year. It arrived last week and I immediately stashed it away. Christmas this year, in the time of Covid-19, is going to be a very muted affair anyhow. It's not like we'll be able to get together with family -- and family is the most important part of the holidays for me -- so aside from time I'll take off around my birthday and the like, because of the way the days fall this year, I may only take an extra day or three of PTO. I've got that much in my PTO bank right now, but obviously can't submit it four months out. I think I probably have enough to cover that AND the long Thanksgiving weekend too, in fact, not even taking into account that between now and then I'll basically double what I have in the bank now. I hadn't expected this, of course -- I had expected to burn a full week's worth of time to go visit my parents in October, but obviously that's not happening now. But, I mean, it is what it is.
When I wake up in the evening, the wife is out in the garden and has already picked what appears to be almost another bushel of tomatoes, which she says she's going to cook down into sauce. I'm fine with this, she can do whatever she wants with the produce. I make a small dinner (a vegan cheesesteak with vegan cheese and soy curls) and we watch an episode and a half of Shameless. I then come back upstairs and take care of some admin and upkeep stuff not pertaining to work before I go back downstairs to start my night. The night itself looks busy at the outset, but it's a Sunday so I don't expect it to be crazy (generally, Sundays are now the most chill nights of the week, Mondays are the craziest, Wednesdays make me want to shoot myself, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are average). I've been sleeping disjointed hours this weekend but I'm pretty okay going into the evening at work. As expected, the night is very quiet, and I am able to take care of a lot of the admin stuff I need to do and leave on time.
Monday, August 3:
Working from home, day 77.
I should mention that it is unseasonably cool in Omaha for August -- the high temperature today is expected to top out around 75 degrees, which is generally about twenty degrees cooler than I expect for August. It's the perfect weather to actually go outside and work in the yard and the like, and isn't supposed to get up into the 90s again for about another week, roughly. I start a load of laundry in the morning to stay ahead of the week, because I know I'll need it, and begin silently asking myself my list of mental health questions as I do so.
How are you feeling today?
Fairly normal, I suppose.
Do you feel like you want to harm yourself or others?
No.
What are your energy levels like?
Fair to middlin', I guess. I don't want to run a marathon, but I could also take a nap. It's a toss up.
Do you want to be social?
No more than usual, really.
Do you feel lucky and blessed?
Yes.
Are you happy?
Not really.
I can't be the only one who does this on a semi-regular basis. In the era of Covid, I'm sure a lot more people are going down a mental checklist like this every day -- some of them in an attempt to stay sane, others in an attempt to realize how much they've really lost their hold on reality. This weekend I did engage in a little retail therapy, as much as I probably shouldn't -- I bought Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a new t-shirt, a massive knife, and some CDs. No, not another batch, just a few Stevie Ray Vaughan albums I didn't have. And how massive of a knife, you may ask?
Is there such a thing as a "home defense knife"? Because if so, I think I bought one.
Anyway, do I feel better? Meh.
I had the thought at work last night that maybe I need to spend like, $5-10 on something on Amazon or the like every day, something small, something useful or something I'll enjoy as a form of mini-retail-therapy, to give myself something to look forward to. I could limit it to $15, or only allow myself a $15 item once a week, or something like that. I could do it, it would be doable. I just have to do something to keep me going, to give myself that excitement of looking forward to something new. The every day part would be key, would be the driving factor -- if I couldn't do it every day there's no point to it as a psychological experiment. And it couldn't be something I needed anyway, like toothpaste or cat food or the like -- it would have to be something fun, something I wouldn't otherwise purchase. The online retail equivalent of the impulse purchase in a grocery store. Some incense one day, a used book the next, a box of tea the next, etc. I'll think about this and see if it's something I actually want to try as a social experiment.
When I wake up in the evening I feel slightly worse. I don't know how much of it can be attributed to being forced to, you know, be awake. I'm generally in a rotten mood in the evening hours because I have to work, and because I feel like I never get enough time to myself. The night at work is fine, and mostly quiet; I introduce my second Team Lead to the team, making the formal announcement to all of them as I get the blessing from my Director to do so. It's good that the night is quiet, because I have pretty nasty intestinal distress all night that forces me to run to the bathroom at least five or six times. I work almost an hour late doing a favor for my Executive Director, as a) that's my job, really, and b) I do feel I owe him basically a bucket of favors and good deeds for all the things he's done for me over the years. Even if I didn't have generally positive feelings towards the man (which most of the time, I do), it is because of him and him alone that I've had relative financial stability for almost six years straight now.
Tuesday, August 4:
Working from home, day 78.
My "home defense knife" and a few other items arrive in the mail today, as well as another Marvel book, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra. I got the last issue of Aphra the day we had the wall outlet/breaker replaced and the drain snaked out, so it's roughly a month apart (which is good, that tells me Marvel's stuff, at least, is releasing on schedule and mailing on schedule). DC is a trainwreck and I never know when, or if, I'll get the issues I am and was supposed to get. It's incredibly tiresome to try to track and plot shipments of all of this stuff and I am very dissatisfied with their mailing schedules and procedures. Tomorrow is recycling day, so I take out all of the recycling in the house, all of the trash, and two more bags of yard waste (we're limited to two of those every week) from the day that Daisy broke her tailbone. It is likely I'll finish taking those out to the curb by mid-September, at which point the damn leaves will probably start turning and falling, so I'll never be done with it.
My mental state today is semi-okay, I guess. I'm more fatigued than anything else. The intestinal distress is gone, and I tell the wife that this weekend, I want to get my hair cut, very short on the sides and back (like, down to the skin) and in the punk rock style that I had it done before, and the part I leave long I want to dye a deep sapphire blue, or like a cobalt-glassware blue. Midnight blue. Sonic the Hedgehog blue. Something like that. I have to do something drastic, something that will be like a fundamental change from the norm in order for me to feel...alive, I guess? I don't know. I've never colored my hair before. I bleached it out blonde in the early 2000s when I was in college (the early 2000s were a weird time, folks) but that's about it. The wife 100% supports this idea and says she thinks it'll look good on me, and adds that now is as good a time as any to do it, referencing the fact that it's not like I've got job interviews to worry about or anything but forced isolation in the wake of Covid-19. I may hate it, but I'll probably end up liking it a lot. As I can't get any more tattoos at the moment (that would require me and the wife to take time off work and schedule it well in advance with the artists, because, y'know, Covid), this is the next best thing, I guess.
Because of this I've decided to postpone the retail therapy psychological experiment for another week or two, just to see how the hair thing affects me, and to see if it helps my mental state any. If it does, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Before I start work, and again on my lunch hour, I start batch 15; no, I didn't order another batch, but I do have four Stevie Ray Vaughan CDs I need to archive, and they don't really count as batch 14 (especially as I've already backed up batch 14 on my portable hard drive, so it's "locked," so to speak). Doing it on my lunch hour is a welcome reprieve as the night is so busy that I am barely able to step away from my desk longer than to pee and go right back to work. This in itself is depressing because I barely have time to breathe or think before I'm roped into doing something else. The night remains busy after I return to my desk, and I end up working another half an hour late (bringing my grand total of "overtime" this week to +/-100 minutes or so).
Wednesday, August 5:
Working from home, day 79.
I get the next Batman book in the mail today, and find that Batman is apparently bi-monthly now (which means at least that book is shipping on time and on schedule). No idea where the other DC books are or when/if I'll finally start getting them on a regular schedule.
This week has been a long one. I'm very tired, and while I'm not overwhelmed, there's still two more days to go -- tonight and tomorrow night -- to get through. Wednesday nights are my hell nights, where I have 16 of my 17 in the office and on shift all at once, and I have to keep track of everything they do. While I do have ALL of my support staff in tonight -- including both Team Leads, both directors, and my escalation manager buddy -- this is still a very difficult task when and if the night is a busy one. My executive director has legitimately told me that he knows I can't read or keep track of everything no matter how hard I try -- it is a near-impossible task -- but the fact that regardless, it's not even low-key but high-key expected of me to do so can be crushing.
I re-upped my order of vape juice today from my normal supplier; I make an order about once a month these days, roughly. I've always said that I want to quit vaping entirely (and I probably will eventually) but a big part of it is that I've spent so much money over the years on devices, batteries, parts, and peripherals that will literally end up being wasted with no return on investment if I just stop cold. It'll take years for me to wean myself down and then off completely if I were to just use the materials I have now before I run out, but in the long run that's basically the goal. The problem is, of all of those things, juice is the thing I have to keep spending money on as none of the other stuff, well, works without it. So it's sort of a continual cycle.
The night at work is hard. I deliver some admin disciplinary action to one of my new employees, and she doesn't exactly take it well -- I can't do much about this, as she is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) problem children on my team, and even if I wasn't under a directive to do what I can to get rid of these people and push them out of the system, I'd want to do that anyway as most of management ends up having to do the vast majority of her work for her. None of us have the time or patience for that shit; again, I have a massive team to run that can't be bogged down by people like this -- so anything I can issue corrective action on, I'm doing it, and I'm building the case that she needs to not work with us anymore. It may sound cruel or petty, but it's not; it's simply business. I like to think that I'm ushering people off to the next step in their career paths to better themselves, but also so that they don't end up clogging up my own operations.
Thursday, August 6:
Working from home, day 80.
My mental state is not good today. I feel exhausted and defeated, and just sad.
I tell my few friends and colleagues I have at work that over the weekend, I want to shave most of my head and dye what's left blue. All of them think it's a really neat, fun idea and that it'll be a good thing, a nice change for me, except for my boss -- who says that he does not think it would be a good idea for job prospects in the event that our contract ends in four months or so (which it 100% might, and we won't know until a few weeks before it happens).
My boss, by the way, is a friend, and he and I came up through the ranks together at the same time -- he actually started there a few weeks after I did (though he'd worked for the company before, in a vastly different department, a few years prior). He was a manager a month or two before I became one, and then when the director position came open, I urged him strongly to apply for it, which he did -- and he got it. For the most part, he has been a decent boss. He has his flaws, as we all do, and he can't hold a candle to my previous director, who taught me a good chunk of what I know, but he is, for the most part, a good dude. And when he has something to say, I listen. He has frequently been told things in confidence that he can't share with the teams until he's been given the go-ahead, but in the interim he's never exactly been completely secretive with me because of our long friendship and work history. Most of the stuff he mentions in confidence I can generally take as gospel, because it eventually does come to pass. So, when he says something like "our contract may end in four months" I take things like that seriously.
I ordered the dye and bleaching kit on Amazon only to cancel the order out of depression and frustration a few hours later, well before it charged me and well before it would've shipped. I still feel sad and defeated. I tell the wife that I canceled it and that I didn't think it was a good idea, and left it at that.
The wife knows I'm depressed. She'll ask me if there's anything she can do, and I can tell that's genuine concern on her part, but I always tell her "no, not really" because realistically, there's nothing she can do, and whatever requests I'd make of her would not be feasible.
She once asked me, long ago, if there was anything she could do to improve herself or our relationship. My snap response (which was, and still is accurate) was to say "Yes, be about 30% more submissive." She took great offense to this and was mad at me for most of the day afterwards, and it later became a running joke -- much to her chagrin.
I am a control freak by nature, with everyone and pretty much everything else in my life -- but not with my wife. I don't want to control her; it is not my place, and I married her because she was fiercely independent and outspoken about her beliefs and desires and wants (among many, many other reasons). I've never done anything to control Daisy nor do I want to; we are equal partners. But, on the other side of that coin, I do want to be able to have a say in our interactions, I do want to have a pleasant life, and sometimes I do want to be able to command "do this" and have it be done without question, argument, or attitude. And as of late it really feels as if I've gotten a lot more argument and attitude about everything. I don't know if this is just my perception, my depression talking, or both.
Maybe my viewpoint is skewed, maybe I can't effectively look at our interactions from an outside perspective anymore because I never leave the house and so rarely actually go outside. Maybe being isolated for so long because of this pandemic is completely deteriorating my mental state while hers is still thriving -- after all, she still sees and interacts with many people in person every day at her job. All I have is her, who is constantly home and in my space whenever I'm awake and not working. I am fully aware that I'm going a little nutty, and she's clearly trying to help in the ways she knows how.
Anyway.
The new bath towels arrived today, and because I know it'll immediately get dingy or off-colored just from normal wear, I threw in the bright white USPS t-shirt I bought a few weeks ago to wash with those deep-midnight-blue towels. I don't know if you know much about towels, or know much about how their colors bleed, but for the first few washes, towels bleed their colors like someone murdered them. It's horrifying how much they bleed. So, after I wash these towels two or three times to get all that excess dye out, I'll have a medium-blue USPS shirt that'll stay that color, well, probably pretty much forever, and I'm okay with that. While I support the shit out of the USPS, I wish they'd make more shirts in my size and in other colors than white. Think of it as the poor-man's tie-dye.
At work, I started already knowing I'd be down at least one person due to bereavement leave. Luckily, I am not down any more than that, and the night is...super quiet. This is good because I can't tell you how much I just needed the peace and quiet of an uneventful night. I miss it, I miss the days where I could literally play on my phone for most of the night or just browse the websites I read or just relax a little. I don't get that very often anymore.
I text my parents and ask where they'll be when their birthday (yes, both of them have the same birthday, ten years apart) rolls around later this month, as Hurricane (now tropical storm) Isaias made landfall in NC only a few miles from their beach house, and pretty much wrecked the town. I need to know where they'll be so that I know where to send their birthday stuff, which I have chambered and ready to order as soon as I find out. Tomorrow is payday for the wife, and if I want their birthday stuff to get to them before their actual birthday I need to get it this weekend and get that shipping underway.
In the night I also begin making a to-do list, since my brain is so addled that I can't really think straight anymore. It's the first time I've had to make a to-do list in literal years.
1. Clean toilets
2. Tighten toilet seat upstairs
3. Do Daisy's laundry
4. Wash bedsheets/blankets
5. Unload, reload, and run the dishwasher
6. Wash couch blankets
7. Clean and refill cats' water fountain
8. Clean and refill essential oil diffuser
9. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
10. Refill prescriptions
11. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
12. Do my laundry
13. Shave
14. Reload/recharge mp3 players
15. Replace liner/litter in one of the two cat pans downstairs
16. Mow grass/do trimming
17. Clean out used vape tanks
18. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
19. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
20. Balance checkbook
21. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
22. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
All of these things just off the top of my head, just now. It's so hard for me to remain energetic and organized these days. And I'm just so, so tired.
Friday, August 7:
Day off. Payday for the wife.
1. Clean toilets
2. Tighten toilet seat upstairs
3. Do Daisy's laundry
4. Wash bedsheets/blankets
5.
6. Wash couch blankets
7.
8. Clean and refill essential oil diffuser
9. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
10. Refill prescriptions
11. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
12. Do my laundry
13. Shave
14. Reload/recharge mp3 players
15. Replace liner/litter in one of the two cat pans downstairs
16.
17. Clean out used vape tanks
18. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
19. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
20. Balance checkbook
21. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
22. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
23. Order and mail parents' birthday presents
I wake up after 6pm, making today one of the longest days of sleep I've had in a while. When I've been awake barely five minutes, Daisy returns home. She's talking to someone on the phone, I don't know who. I go to the bathroom. When I'm done, I don't hear her talking anymore. I call out to her and she doesn't answer me. I figure she's in the garden, but she's not. When I go downstairs to get the mail I find that she is outside mowing the grass, in the same clothes she wore to work.
My arm/elbow is locking up again, similar to when it did before. It started bothering me this morning and slowly started getting worse throughout the day while I slept. I'm down to about 90% movement/mobility in it already. There's not a lot of pain involved, though it does ache a bit. It's more of the loss of mobility without a ton of pain that worries me. If it's gout related -- and I've never been sure that it is or isn't -- I'll have to spend the weekend pounding water and taking my anti-inflammatories pretty much nonstop to see if I can get it to wash out of my system. The last time this happened, the pain slowly got progressively worse and worse until it was legitimately one of the most painful experiences of my life, and the pain and swelling in the elbow joint wouldn't go away until I'd done two (not one, but two) full courses of Prednisone. I'd really like to avoid that again if at all possible, for obvious reasons.
The refinance on our house is almost complete; we will e-sign the final paperwork a week from today. Both of us approved everything else this afternoon, so now we just wait for all of the processing to flow through. Daisy says we'll likely have to sign some paperwork in person, just as we did when we bought the house, but isn't sure whether that'll be the case now because of the Covid stuff. We'll see.
I wrote this post tonight on the social medias because I'm fed up:
My tolerance for other peoples' bullshit has hit critical mass, all. There's no reasoning with people who refuse to follow logic, science, or even common sense -- people who see the news and ignore it. People who see the president's actions and ignore them, or even condone those actions. I just can't anymore. I can't fathom it, I don't understand it, and I can't trust those people. I don't want to associate with those people.
Saturday, August 8:
Day off. Magikarp Community Day.
1. Clean toilets
2. Tighten toilet seat upstairs
3.
4. Wash bedsheets/blankets
5.
6. Wash couch blankets
7.
8. Clean and refill essential oil diffuser
9. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
10. Refill prescriptions
11. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
12.
13.
14.
15. Replace liner/litter in one of the two cat pans downstairs
16.
17. Clean out used vape tanks
18. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
19. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
20.
21. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
22. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
23.
The parents' birthday presents have been ordered and shipped to the mailbox in WV. As I know they won't read this before their birthday (if ever), I'll relay that I got each of them a nice plain t-shirt of high quality (they like these), some vegan jerky to split between them, and a book I know my dad will read though my mother probably will not. Nice and minimalist. Comfort things, things that won't clutter up the house.
I spend the early morning hours doing laundry and finally getting some good, solid alone time, some decompression time. I ignore and avoid my work email (reading it would cause stress no matter what), I make sure my pills are taken on schedule, I make sure I'm properly hydrated. My arm/elbow feels a little bit better compared to yesterday, with perhaps a little more mobility and almost no pain. This tells me that the hydration is helping, hopefully. Once it gets light outside, I shave and take a shower. When I shave, I give myself a mustache -- and just a mustache -- for the first time in at least ten years. Surprisingly enough, it looks...actually distinguished now that I'm older and that my facial hair is mostly gray. I look like Sam Elliott. I could get used to this.
Daisy let me know last night that this weekend she plans to devote 60 minutes to whatever one task I'd like her to do -- whether that's unfucking the kitchen, unfucking the dining room table, unfucking the spare room upstairs, unfucking the walk-in closet (noticing a pattern here?) or something else. I immediately picked the closet without hesitation, partially because I know as soon as she gets started on it, she'll work on it for probably several hours, not just one hour. And, also, because the closet is driving me crazy. If she devotes about three hours of work to it, it would just be done and taken care of.
We have some errands to run today; we're dropping off tomatoes from our garden for two different friends (practicing social distancing while doing so, of course) and I have to get another Brita pitcher from Walmart or someplace similar because Daisy dropped and shattered ours last night. As I use the pitcher every day to refill the Keurig, to give the cats water, and to filter most drinking water that I don't get out of the fridge, it's vital to the household. It's also Magikarp Community Day in Pokemon Go, so there's that too.
I got two more DC books yesterday, the next issues of Batman and Action Comics I've been expecting, and looked up their publication dates -- the Batman book was released quite literally two months ago. The other was well over a month ago. So, they're slow. Painfully slow. It is what it is, I suppose. At least they're shipping.
My mental state today is mostly okay. I'm tired/fatigued, but it is what it is. The heat index this afternoon is supposed to be well over 100, so this morning I went downstairs and turned the air conditioner on when I fed the cats. The house was stuffy and hot, which makes me more tired and makes me have to poop more (don't ask, it just happens).
When we finally go out and run our errands in the afternoon, we are waiting at a stoplight behind a large SUV when inexplicably, it goes into reverse and, well, smacks us hard. The impact crushes our car's grill, does some damage to the bumper, and slightly bends the hood to the point where we can't open it. Everyone is fine -- the driver of the SUV is a 17-year-old girl who I'm pretty sure was having the worst day of her life after the accident. I did what I could to calm her down, which seemed to help.
"Shit like this happens," I said. "Everything will be okay. At least it's an old car, right?"
We exchanged information and the like, and as our car is mostly fine (though it sort of looks like it got punched in the mouth), we drove it home with no issues. We are lucky. The damage could've been far worse, there could've been injuries, etc. But we're fine. Daisy is understandably upset by the incident, as even the small amount of damage to our 11-year-old car will more than likely total it out. I told her if that's what happens, it's what happens -- we can't do much about that. I say just to file the insurance claim and we'll see what the repair folks tell us. If we have to total it, we have to. It'll jumpstart our search for used SUVs before the snow hits this winter, and we have to keep looking on the bright side of things. A car is a car, it's just a thing. It can be replaced, and accidents happen every day. While it's not an ideal situation, it is what it is.
Again, though, I take you back to the picture I shared at the beginning of the month:
Right?
Also, did I mention that the hurricane last week probably fucked up my parents' beach house too? Luckily, they're not there, but, August.
Sunday, August 9:
Working from home, day 81. Payroll Sunday.
1. Clean toilets
2.
3.
4. Wash bedsheets/blankets
5.
6. Wash couch blankets
7.
8. Clean and refill essential oil diffuser
9. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
10. Refill prescriptions
11. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
12.
13.
14.
15. Replace liner/litter in one of the two cat pans downstairs
16.
17. Clean out used vape tanks
18. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
19. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
20.
21. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
22. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
23.
At around 6am, a soft thunderstorm rolls through the area. I've been so tired and barely aware of the world that it's a wonderful reprieve from everything else currently going on. My stomach has been a mess in the overnight hours, mainly due to the wheat/bread/gluten/whatever I ate earlier; the longer I go without eating bread/wheat, the worse it affects me when I eat it again. And last night, the wife made a flatbread pizza for dinner to go with our zucchini noodles (which we affectionately call "zoodles"). So...yeah.
Looking at my to-do list above, I got a good chunk of it done this weekend. Some more of it I'll do this coming week. A few of them I can do tonight, as long as the night at work isn't crazy. Some of it I'll require the wife's help with. Some of it I'm not sure when I'll get the spare time to do it at all, and there's more stuff to add to the list every day -- I haven't added it yet because doing so will make me feel overwhelmed.
My arm/elbow is now 100% normal again, so the blast of five ibuprofen I took on Friday morning and the large amount of water/tart cherry juice (incredibly good for inflammation/gout) I've been drinking, along with taking my pills around the same time every day, seemed to knock it out before it became a larger problem. At least, I hope so. I am cautiously optimistic.
Apparently our president signed an executive order that suspends our student loan payments for the rest of the year, and puts a hold on payroll taxes starting 9/1. Or something like that. I'm not sure he can actually do the payroll taxes thing; that sounds suspect at the very least. But if he can get rid of my student loan payments for the rest of the year -- especially when we may have to get a new car -- well, I'm okay with that. It's one of like three things he's done I actually approve of. Shocking, I know.
The night at work is very quiet, but we spend a good chunk of it (and by "we" I mean, myself and my director) auditing a lot of the stuff that came to us over the weekend, because apparently a customer went to our executives about something dayshift (not us in After Hours, mind you, but dayshift) did that made our program look really bad. I spend an hour or so going to car manufacturer websites to price different makes/models in our price range, to give the wife a leg up on some info for options to replace our face-punched Hyundai if it gets totaled out. Not surprisingly, the makes that give us the most options in our price range are Hyundai, Honda, and Toyota. The American manufacturers, ironically, have simply laughable base model prices for their sedans and small SUVs. Laughable as in, for example, a $38k sticker price for a base model Chevrolet Malibu. I've only personally owned Chevrolet vehicles, but lemme tell ya, go fuck yourself with a rake over prices like that for a glorified fleet vehicle, Chevy.
To help my sanity a bit, I've been trying to read a single issue of one of my comics every day, instead of sitting down for hours on end with a stack of books and ending up falling asleep during reading them. It helps, a little. It also makes me appreciate them more. A good chunk of these subscriptions, after all, I'm going to let expire once they run their course; I can't justify multiple renewals of books that I'm ehhh on when I'm trying to stick to some semblance of a budget.
Monday, August 10:
Working from home, day 82.
New, revised to-do list:
1. Clean toilets
2. Wash couch blankets
3.
4. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
5. Refill prescriptions
6. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
7.
8. Clean out used vape tanks
9. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
10. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
11. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
12. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
13. Mail early voting ballot forms
14. Shave off mustache (more on this below)
15. Drain cyst on cat's head
16. Figure out phone upgrade plans
17. Put away laundry
18.
Tonight I put on my retro 70s-style aviator eyeglasses and took a picture of myself. With my almost fully-gray mustache, slight stubble, and those glasses on, I do not look like a 37-year-old man -- I look like a 57-year-old postal carrier six weeks from retirement. While I do think it makes me look distinguished and accomplished, it also makes me look really old. Like, grandpa-old. The gray in it, as well as the gray that's working its way more into my actual hair by the day, does not help this. So, in a few days, I'll shave it off. I figured it was either give myself the mustache or shave my head and dye what's left blue, and only one of those may help me get another job soon. So yeah, the mustache has got to go soon.
In the evening, when I am still mostly groggy and have just stepped out of the shower, the wife arrives home and tells me she's going to go pick up cat litter from PetSmart (which she does) and then I help her bring it in and help her clean out her car. Why are we cleaning out the car? Well, she spoke to insurance today, and they're waiving our deductible for the other party's liability reasons -- she's taking the car to the insurance-approved shop tomorrow to see what they can do to fix it, if they will, and we're getting a (free) rental car while they work on it. We really hope that they don't total it out, but if they do, they do -- we can't do much about it. We just have to wait and see, and we may be doing some, ahem, car shopping this weekend. The last time we had a rental car was the last time the wife got hit, this time in the rear -- hold your jokes, please -- and it was a Nissan Maxima, which I really liked but she wasn't really a fan of. Ironically, the Maxima is one of the vehicles outside our price range to buy new.
"Of all of the vehicles I sent you quotes on last night," I told Daisy, "If I had to pick one and only one to buy new, I'd probably go for the new Accord."
I really like the Accord. The design is simply gorgeous, and Accords last forever.
"Also," I added, "keep in mind that everything I sent you were for new vehicles -- we could probably get some well optioned used ones four or five years old for about $10k less."
We shall see.
The night at work is awful -- our 2nd shift manager was out of office, I have one of my team out of office as well, and my escalation manager doesn't work on Mondays so the only one handling everything falls upon...me. Within 2-3 hours of my shift starting I wish I were drinking on the job. By hours 4-6 I'm secretly hoping for a brain aneurysm or a freak thunderstorm to knock out power to everything. By hours 6-8 I just want everyone and everything to shut up so that I can end my night peacefully.
Tuesday, August 11:
Working from home, day 83.
1. Clean toilets
2. Wash couch blankets
3.
4. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
5. Refill prescriptions
6. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
7.
8.
9. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
10. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
11. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
12. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
13.
14.
15. Drain cyst on cat's head
16. Figure out phone upgrade plans
17. Put away laundry
18.
The rental car they gave the wife is a 2020 Mini Cooper Countryman; it is their crossover/small SUV version of the Cooper, and the largest vehicle Mini makes. It's not a bad little car at all -- it's actually really cool and well-designed, and Daisy says it drives like a dream -- but I wouldn't necessarily want to own one; the gauge cluster on the dash is blocked by the wheel, it's not made for fat/tall people, and it's hard to see out the back glass when you look into the rearview. I might take it for a spin if we have the time, or if we have the thing for more than a day or two. We don't know what the damage to our actual car is going to cost, if they're going to total it out, or what, so it's possible we could have the rental for a while. If that's the case, cool. If they total the car, less than cool.
Today Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. This is a good (or at the very least, acceptable) choice for a number of reasons, the least of which being that when he inevitably dies in office or decides not to run for re-election because he's too old, it pretty much guarantees she'll be president in 2024. I don't agree with her on everything (I don't agree with Biden on everything either, for the record) but I see her as the VP pick being the best possible choice right now to not only re-energize the party, but to help get this country back on track, moving away from a backwards, xenophobic, police state and back into the realm of the respected, prosperous leaders of the world we always were before Trump. I'm actually beginning to have a little hope again, which is something I've not had since 2016. It's a strange emotion to feel once more. It is also strengthened by the fact that I put our early vote-by-mail ballot request forms in the mail this morning before I went to bed. I'm doing my part in every way I can to get that motherfucker out of office again.
The wife asked me tonight if, instead of Christmas presents, if we took the money and bought exercise equipment instead as gifts to ourselves. I laughed and told her no in no uncertain terms.
"That's like me buying you a vacuum and saying 'here's your Christmas present, baby, now clean the floors'...why would we give each ourselves presents that makes us do work?"
Not to mention, we have no space for exercise equipment anywhere in this house. We would've had space in the living room, but that had to be used as my base of operations for my work-from-home stuff -- a table, a chair, my computer -- so we now no longer have that space to spare. The only other space we'd have in the house would be in the spare room, which is so stuffed full of the wife's bullshit that we can't walk through it. I low-key resent Daisy for not getting rid of, really, any of her stuff when on the other hand, I basically sold most of my collected possessions in order to be able to fit what I needed to keep into this house when we bought it. The room needs to be gutted and she either needs to sell, donate, or trash most of what's in it, because it's legit stuff she hasn't touched since move-in day.
As an aside, part of the reason I liked going to the gym was because it got me out of this house and doing something productive for myself. The exercise was just a bonus. Remove the adventure from it and I am not interested at all.
I shaved off the mustache last night with my beard trimmers, leaving me clean-shaven for the first time in a few months, albeit with some stubble. I'll probably clean-shave again tomorrow across the board with a razor, and then let it all slowly grow back out all at the same length.
All I want to do is sleep. Last night at work was terrible and put a sour taste in my mouth for the rest of the week. The car stuff adds stress on top of that. I've been having digestive problems all week. My sister is in the hospital again for heart issues. It feels like I can never keep up with anything/everything going on in my normal life or that I'm just going through the motions of doing so without actually caring about anything going on. I bought Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a full week ago and haven't sat down to watch it yet. Everything seems to be one waking nightmare on top of another. I sleep too long, and when I get up I still have no energy. If all of this is going to be the new normal, the new normal is going to eventually end up killing me.
Wednesday, August 12:
Working from home, day 84.
Revised to-do list:
1. Clean toilets
2. Wash couch blankets
3. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
4. Refill prescriptions
5. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
6. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
7. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
8. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
9. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
10.
11. Figure out phone upgrade plans
12. Put away laundry
To change it up in the middle of the night, I decide to shower on my lunch hour. There's something exciting and slightly illicit/scandalous about doing it at 3:30 AM, on a work night, in the middle of my shift -- like I've just gotten done with some sort of dirty rendezvous and need to wash it off me. In reality, I don't want the first hour I'm awake in the afternoon to feel like a chore because I spend it in the bathroom making myself clean. I'm trying to reclaim time anywhere I can, since so much of it seems to be slipping away all the time. Bonus: If I'm really tired I don't have to feel like I have to get up "early" in the afternoon.
My old, reliable iPhone 7 is starting to become less-than-reliable. When in use, it can drop from 100% to about 60% in the span of about half an hour, and when it's just sitting idle and off the charger, it'll drop to about 75-80% by itself in the span of 6-8 hours even when it's not being used for anything. I have, indeed, had the phone for almost three years now, and use it for multiple hours every day, so it's not like it's not run its course. As mentioned above, I need to figure out one of Sprint's upgrade plans so that I can get one of the newer models. As much as I don't really want to do that, the battery is dying and its iOS isn't going to get many more updates before Apple tells me "welp, your phone is too old now, you can't update it anymore." I would make a comment about living in such a "throwaway society," but I can't, as I'm not a good example of it -- my old iPhone 5C is in a box behind my lounge chair, where it has been since I upgraded, placed back inside its original packaging. I may eventually recycle it if given the opportunity.
I wake up in the afternoon to about fifty text messages from the wife, including some bad news -- one of her parents' cats, uh, well, took a 30-minute ride in the washing machine. During an actual cycle. My thought processes upon finding this out went as such, and in this order:
1) idiot cat.
2) he's very lucky it didn't kill him.
3) I'm glad he's "okay."
4) this is part of why the cats aren't allowed in my room and the door is always shut.
5) ...at least he's really clean now, right?
Mind you, my own cats are my babies and I would be horrified if this happened to any of mine. Daisy said her mother was (rightfully) hysterical, and the cat was rushed to the vet. He's mostly okay, but got the hell beat out of him in the process. He apparently bit his tongue several times in several places, and they thought his shoulder was dislocated (it's not). He was home by the evening hours, wobbly and seemingly fucked up (perhaps from pain meds), but was able to use the litter pan just fine and was recovering normally. Truth be told, the cat probably has at least one concussion or some brain damage, but I'm guessing in the long run he'll be all right. Cats are pretty resilient creatures; having owned three of them for thirteen years now, I can tell you that firsthand.
The wife has been told by the auto shop that the car will not be totaled out, which eases our worries quite a bit. It needs a variety of small parts to repair it, and said parts are being shipped from all around the country, so it's going to take some time to get them in and to get the work done. The total was $1400-something, of which we don't have to pay a penny because it's all covered by the faulty party's insurance. Because of this, the rental on the Mini Cooper was extended to August 25, or until the car is fixed -- whichever comes first. That's also free for us as well, so it's like we get a new car for two weeks until we can get the old one back.
As such, when Daisy tells me in the evening, that the Mini Cooper needs gas (there's a gas station less than a block away) I figuratively leap at the chance to jump into it and take it up there. It is...a fun driving experience, to say the least. It is the most beautifully-driving car I've ever been behind the wheel of, and it handles oh so well. I'm excited to take it out for groceries this weekend and/or to take it on the expressway. And yes, I say I am because you bet your ass I'm gonna be driving it as much as possible while we have it. It's only the second Mini I've ever driven -- the first was a friend's Mini in college just to see what it was like for about five minutes -- and it is the newest car I've ever driven, as well.
The night at work is not overly hectic or depressing, but it is rather steady, and I'm kept fairly busy for most of it. I'm trying to keep my chin up, stay humble, and stay as zen as possible, but sometimes that's harder than others. I don't win the Powerball (I bought a ticket tonight at the gas station), so I have to keep this mindset whenever reasonably possible. Payday Friday can't come soon enough; I have bills to take care of and an entire cart full of necessities on Amazon waiting for me.
Thursday, August 13:
Working from home, day 85.
1. Clean toilets
2. Wash couch blankets
3. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
4. Refill prescriptions
5. Dispose of remaining CDs from archiving project
6. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
7. Charge, boot up, and update Nintendo Switch
8. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
9. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
10.
11. Figure out phone upgrade plans
12. Put away laundry
I did not win the Powerball.
My sister is still in the hospital in the Covid unit; she does not have Covid, at least to my knowledge, but she does have a MRSA infection and she's septic. I haven't heard much else about it from my parents and at the same time am sort of afraid to ask. If she takes a turn for the worse, or dies, it's not like I can galavant off to West Virginia for the funeral, not with Covid going on and especially not now that we don't have our own car to drive out there in. This makes everything harder, and also makes me feel like my hands are tied to actually be able to do anything to offer my parents support.
"Would you get bereavement leave if she dies?" Daisy asked.
"I would," I said, "though it's not like I could do anything with it but be here at home."
The night at work is rather slow, which is now customary for Thursdays and is a relief, because with everything else going on I'm not sure my mental health could take constant idiocy. A break from the idiocy to help slide into the weekend is always beneficial.
Friday, August 14:
Day off.
1. Clean toilets
2. Wash couch blankets
3. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
4. Refill prescriptions
5.
6. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
7.
8. Clean out and reorganize storage ottoman in my room
9. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
10.
11. Figure out phone upgrade plans
12.
I spend the morning hours after work ends finally sitting down to watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with my breakfast. It is remarkably good and roughly what I expected, though I wouldn't necessarily call it Tarantino's best work by any stretch of the imagination (that is a toss up between Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction, in my opinion). The setting, soundtrack, and the cars -- good lord, the cars -- are all amazingly done, however. Also, just like most recent Tarantino films, he does do his bit of "revisionist history" and, well, you know while watching that the movie is building up to it, just like always. It's very good -- one of those movies that will stick with you for a while.
My sister needs another heart valve replacement. I don't know much about it more than that yet. I also don't know if that's going to be something that's scheduled for sometime in the future or if they're gonna put her under the knife like, now.
In the evening, the wife and I go to Natural Grocers for their annual anniversary sale; it is not, surprisingly, super-busy. We watch two episodes of the new season of The Umbrella Academy with dinner, and Daisy is not feeling well, so she asks me before bed -- if she's not feeling better in the morning -- if I'll go get a Covid-19 test with her. I agree to this, of course. It's not that I want to, or that I think either of us has it, but because I am her partner and I want to assuage her fears.
She goes to bed early (like, before 11) and I pass out in my chair sometime after midnight.
Saturday, August 15:
Day off. Weigh-in day.
1.
2.
3. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
4. Refill prescriptions
5.
6. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
7.
8.
9. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
10.
11. Figure out phone upgrade plans
12.
I should note (and update) that the wife cleaned the upstairs toilet a few days ago, and that's the important one; I don't care anywhere near as much about the downstairs toilet, but when I went downstairs this morning to feed the cats and gather the blankets from the couches to wash, I did give that one a quick scrub as well.
Upon weigh-in, my weight is only about three pounds higher than it was before, which is generally what I expected; I've not been eating great, but I've also not been eating like a complete asshole either, so a little weight gain while my body self regulates back toward a state of fairly-consistent normal I'm okay with.
Since I got paid yesterday, I take the opportunity to pay all of my bills from now through September (and for some of them, through October even). It halves what we have in the bank account, but it feels good to not have any current financial responsibility outstanding.
In the morning, once the wife is awake, I go outside and use the string trimmer around the entire house, garden, deck, sidewalks, driveway, etc. I then shower, we eat lunch, and then take a nap together with the cats. I wake up once more when it's almost completely dark outside, and have now fulfilled one of my goals for the weekend -- to spend Saturday without going anywhere.
Two more DC books and two more Marvel books arrive today. Both arrive out of sequence with skipped issues between them, probably still on the way. It's fine, they'll get here when they get here, or they won't.
My anxiety levels are much higher today than they normally are, and I don't exactly know why. My body aches (probably from the yard work and the disjointed sleep), but something feels...off. Something feels like dread is looming on the horizon, and I can't place my finger on it. I'm not psychic or anything, but I do get these feelings that something bad is going to happen. Sometimes it's nothing. Other times, I'm proven right. Daisy occasionally gets these feelings of dread too. It's the kind of dread that makes me feel like I'm going to wake up to really bad news. I hope that's not the case.
Sunday, August 16:
Working from home, day 86.
New, further-updated list:
1. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
2. Refill prescriptions
3. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
4. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
5. Figure out phone upgrade plans
6. Mow grass
7. Assess comic renewals
8. Clean/reorganize kitchen
9. Clean/reorganize dining room
10. Drop off glass at recycling place
Aside from making this list in the early morning hours before bed, I don't touch my computer.
Monday, August 17:
Working from home, day 87.
1. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
2. Refill prescriptions
3. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
4. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
5. Figure out phone upgrade plans
6. Mow grass
7. Assess comic renewals
8. Clean/reorganize kitchen
9. Clean/reorganize dining room
10. Drop off glass at recycling place
I am exhausted. I don't know why. I slept over eight hours. I got up, I took a shower, and my body still feels like it is weak and, well, asleep. This does not bode well for Monday night, which is one of my hardest nights of the week. I need a break, I need a vacation. Labor Day is still three full weeks away.
Upon checking my PTO last night, I have now crossed the 50-hour threshold; it took forever, but I got there. I haven't taken a full night of PTO since...I think the wife's birthday, so it's been a few months. On average -- a rough average at that -- I earn a little more than 10 hours a month (it's probably 11-something really, I've never really cared enough to check). I had around 30 at that time. Now I have 52, with two of those hours already used for the Sunday night leading into Labor Day. If I had been able to actually take a vacation this year, or plan anything to take time off for, I wouldn't have any of that time -- so it is what it is. I'll use it around the holidays, I suppose.
Since I didn't touch my computer yesterday and I didn't get on it this morning before bed, I want to tell you the story of one of the most bizarre things that's ever happened to me in this house, and it happened last night in the middle of my shift.
At 2:33 AM (I know because I noted it) I heard, very clearly and very close, five gunshots. Because of the way the house is built and how sound carries around it and within our neighborhood, I could not say from where -- could've been next door, could've been a block away. I noted the time because I wanted to be able to check the scanner later and see what was going on.
Less than 2-3 minutes later, I heard yelling out in the street, which is not commonplace for going on three in the morning, and I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I did hear "you'd better get the fuck out of here" as in someone was chasing someone else off. In fact, I know that some chasing was indeed happening because I heard pounding feet on pavement very close, like right outside my house on the sidewalk, or perhaps someone running between the houses to try to cut through yards to escape (I have a sidewalk that goes between our house and the neighbor's house, and it is legit four feet behind the wall that my work computer desk is against, if that). That path leads nowhere, by the way; it stops at my neighbor's back gate as well as my own.
The running goes away, as in, I can hear them running away and fading off into the distance, and I immediately unsheathe my "home defense knife" and peer out the side windows into the darkness. I see nothing. I then go upstairs and quietly wake the wife and tell her there's something going on, to get fully awake but to be quiet, because there's shooting and people being chased, as I see two Omaha police cruisers pull down my street, from opposite directions. The first pulls up very slowly, and sits at the end of my driveway, blocking it off, before pulling up further and then blocking off my neighbor's driveway. The second pulls up and sits between my neighbor's house and the next house down. No lights, no sirens, of course (it is, after all, three in the morning) and the cops get out and go up to the house literally across the street from me. The wife and I watch them with great curiosity. I watch them shine their flashlights into the cars parked along the street in front of the houses -- they are very clearly looking for something or someone. The cops themselves spend some time talking to the people across the street at that house, and I see them walk back and forth, see the people there moving around, etc.
Everything quiets down and the wife goes back to bed, and since the cops are across the street and whatever situation is going on appears to be under control, I go back to my desk and continue to work. Several minutes later, I legit hear my back gate open -- the gate that leads into our backyard where our porch and garden is. It is an unmistakable sound and it is about eight feet from where I'm sitting at my work computer in the living room.
"THERE IS SOMEONE IN OUR YARD," I text the wife, who is once more asleep by this time.
Within 15-20 seconds I hear it close again and latch. I look out the front window. Cops are still there. I surmise that they're now checking yards and around houses looking for someone. Nobody knocks on my door, nobody disturbs the house. I still don't know what the fuck is going on. I go back upstairs and look out the spare room window (to be inconspicuous), and watch them, with their flashlights, get back into their cruisers. The rest of the night is quiet.
When it's light in the morning, I open up all the curtains and the like as I normally do, and I see nothing amiss. I walk outside onto the back deck and see nothing amiss either; gate is latched and closed, nobody around, cops are gone, and the house across the street looks and seems normal. Omaha Scanner says nothing about the incident, which is really odd seeing as they always make posts about gunfire or attempted robberies or domestic disturbances or what-have-you.
So yeah, I have no idea what was going on. I couldn't even tell you if the gunshots were related to everything else (I mean, this is Omaha, after all). So, it is what it is. But I'm glad I keep the "home defense knife" on my desk with me at all times.
After work I go to bed as I normally do and don't think much else of it. Compared to that, the rest of the night was a breeze.
Tuesday, August 18:
Working from home, day 88.
Six year anniversary at this job.
I am a mixed bag on how I feel about being at this job for six years today. Part of me wants others to be proud of me (for various reasons, not all of them good ones). Part of me is also extremely depressed that six years later, I'm still there. My role there has changed over the years of course, and I've had like three different promotions (two of which were little more than "lateral moves" but still), and I've been on the leadership team for almost four years now, which is nice...but yeah, I didn't think this is what I would be doing with my life. I wanted to be teaching, I wanted to be writing, I wanted to get the fuck out of the midwest once I was married and...yeah, I'm still basically exactly where I was six years ago when I started in this job. I own a house now, and my salary is a few thousand dollars a year higher than it was when I started, but otherwise...yep, right where I was then.
Tonight the wife and I sign the final paperwork (in person, a dude physically came to the house) for the refinance of the house. With it, we save about $200 a month on mortgage payments and dropped our interest rate by a full percentage point -- or more, I can't remember, that's Daisy's department and I'm just along for the ride. While we're partners on almost everything else, there is a very large division of labor when it comes to banking/house/financing stuff, because she knows far more about all of that than I do. The most financial experience I have is balancing our checkbook and making sure our bills are paid on time and accurately.
Tomorrow is recycling day. I will also say that it marks the day that I've finally completely disposed of all of the leftover CDs from the archiving project. Most were recycled; some were simply trashed because of the way the recycling schedule in Omaha works now (once every two weeks -- waaaaay not enough).
I'm not going to post the to-do list stuff here every day anymore as it's a waste of text; most of the things on it do not change from a day-to-day perspective, they only get done when I can actually have the time to take care of them. I barely even have the time to take care of myself anymore, let alone accomplish a set list of tasks. It's a miracle if I even have the time and patience to take care of doing the laundry or running/unloading/reloading the dishwasher. I'll post the to-do list on days where I actually do something to change what's on it.
There's been no update on the car repairs; I asked Daisy about that last night. Estimated date to repair is still the 25th (a week from today), and we still have the Mini Cooper in the interim. Daisy said she didn't need daily updates from the shop on it, and just asked them to tell her if it was ready earlier or if it would need a few more days, etc.
Wednesday, August 19:
Working from home, day 89.
In the overnight hours, because I had to log in over two hours early to help out on some administrative duties and am taking a longer lunch hour than usual, I take another lunch-shower. I'm tired, and the wife is working from home today (she has an "e-conference" she's attending), so taking a shower on lunch will let me sleep later in the evening as I won't have to worry about her being out and about (that is, actually, a thing I do). My allergies are hitting full-force, and while I'm not completely miserable, I am indeed uncomfortable a good chunk of the time because of it. It's fine, it is what it is, and it's not something I can reasonably control.
I received three more Marvel books in the mail yesterday, again out of sequence (but slowly catching up, I guess). Still no more DC books in a week or so. However, DC did issue this statement on their subscription website:
At this time we have been noticing an increase in delivery times as a result of the pandemic. We are currently extending the claims windows once again to allow time for the issues to reach you. During the pandemic some issues may arrive sooner than others and other issues may take longer to arrive, and we have noticed issues may ship out of order. If you receive an issue out of order be sure to check the release date on your account, and allow the following time periods for all issues to reach you: For domestic claims please allow up to 8 weeks for the books to reach you from the release date. For international claims please allow up to 12 weeks for the issues to reach you from the release date. All customers will have an additional 2 weeks after the provided dates to file any claims for the missed issues. We have found many issues will arrive before these provided dates, however due to the increase in delays from the postal service we must provide these extended times. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. Many thanks for your understanding and patience to the newly provided times as we are working to ensure all orders are fulfilled!
Well alrighty then, I suppose.
I check the release dates and see that I'm...mostly caught up on DC stuff, actually -- only four or five issues of different books have not yet arrived. This is much better than the 15+ I was expecting. Marvel put up a very similar (but not the same) message on their subscription site as well.
The night at work is mostly normal, I guess, for a Wednesday. I've been working late every single night this week for one reason or another, since something always tends to pop up right as I'm trying to leave for the morning. Tuesday morning it was almost 8. Wednesday morning it was 7:30ish. I feel the need to prove my worth more and more as everyone else in that place seems fairly "checked out" a good chunk of the time, and I want to be the one people point to and say "See Brandon? Brandon still actually gives a shit about this job and the quality of work his team produces." One of my Director colleagues on dayshift once more told me how much he appreciates me and my team, but me especially since I do everything I can to help out and make sure stuff is resolved. A little gratitude, even if it's from the same person I've been praised by multiple times before, goes a long way when it comes to morale. I so rarely get any gratitude at all from anyone else on overnights, not even my own leadership staff.
Thursday, August 20:
Working from home, day 90.
1. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife)
2.
3. Charge, boot up, and update Chromebook
4. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
5. Figure out phone upgrade plans
6. Mow grass
7.
8. Clean/reorganize kitchen
9. Clean/reorganize dining room
10. Drop off glass at recycling place
I call my parents this morning, as it is their birthday (yes, they share a birthday) and I find out that my sister is already under the knife in the hospital; she is having a second valve replacement done on her heart. Previously, she had a pig valve installed -- I say installed because, well, how else would you put it? Today she's getting another one installed as a replacement. Well, for obvious reasons, my parents aren't in the best of moods due to the stress of that happening today, so my call with them is a pretty muted affair. My mother says she'll text me with updates when she has them. I tell her to open their birthday gifts I sent them, which arrived a few days ago.
When I get up in the afternoon -- earlier than normal, I might add, before 3 -- I have no updates from my parents, so I don't know if that's good news or bad news. I later hear from my mother that yes, she survived surgery and is back in her room -- with a chest tube and pain, but alive and recovering. I also receive an update from my wife that the Mini Cooper has been returned, as we got our car back today. She says it's shiny and looks new, which I confirm myself once she gets it home. So, until someone else rams into our car like an idiot, it looks like we can close the rental car chapter of our lives and return to normal.
Because I'm up early, I take a shower and feed the cats, get the mail (one new DC book, two new Marvel books), and immediately throw the bedsheets/blankets/mattress cover into the wash as I don't know when else I'd get the chance to do it over the coming days. I also take my pill as I was so tired this morning, I just came upstairs and went to bed without taking it -- a failure on my part, to be sure.
When Daisy gets home, we work in the garden for a bit, and I begin slowly developing a headache.
Tomorrow is my grandmother's birthday. It means little now, since she's been dead for going on three years, but she would have been 93. The woman lived through the great depression, was a teenager during World War II, My grandmother helped raise me, as you know if you've been reading this blog for a while or paying attention over the past few months. Her death in early 2018 affected me in a number of profound ways that aren't always apparent -- the least of which being she was one of my last tethers to West Virginia, my home state. I don't have many friends left there, and most family still there I haven't associated with in any real capacity for years. My parents are only there when they have to be, as they spend the rest of their time in their beach house. My grandmother was my cornerstone of connection to my home state. When she died, so did a lot of my desire to ever return. I mean, I still want to go back, every once in a while, to see what's changed, to see who's there and where, and to experience some of the things I can only experience back home (as in, some of the foods, the scenery, the mountain air, etc), but a big chunk of what I loved about West Virginia died with my grandmother, as she was one of the main reasons I visited home on multiple occasions. She finally got to meet Daisy on our last visit (two years after we'd been married, I might add), which was very important to me.
As you may know, I didn't get to go to my grandmother's funeral. She died on a Saturday night in the middle of a particularly harsh midwest winter, and I did not have the ability, money, or time off to just up and go to West Virginia on a whim. She had given me permission long beforehand not to attend, because she knew the end was coming and she did not want me to stress about it or waste the money when there was nothing I could do. It was far more important for her to see me and Daisy while she was still alive the last time I visited home, so that's what we did. I knew when I left the nursing home it would be the last time I saw her alive, and that haunts me, somewhat, to this day -- but I'm sure feelings along those lines haunt a lot of people.
The night at work is steady, hectic off and on, and semi-frustrating in a lot of arenas. But, I survive it.
Friday, August 21:
Day off. Payday for the wife.
I tell the wife that in the evening, when she returns home, I want to go to Asian Market so that I can get some different types of ramen noodles -- meaning, dried, uncooked, unflavored noodles that I can boil up and make my own broth for. She agrees, and we do so. Upon returning home, she showers and pays the bills she has due. I watch most of Dune on HBO -- a film I haven't seen in many years -- and I make some of the ramen as my dinner. When she comes downstairs, we watch an episode and a half of Rust Valley Restorers on Netflix before she's too tired to watch any more, and she goes to bed. I stay up for another hour or two afterwards, listening to Joe Rogan on my mp3 player, before falling asleep in my chair for several hours.
Saturday, August 22:
Day off.
My sister is recovering from her second heart valve replacement, and has been doing well enough to post on Facebook about it, so I can only assume that's a good sign. I've been trying to avoid a lot of the social media when possible; doing so helps out with my depression. Once I'm up and about, I wait for the wife to awaken and run a "clean washer" cycle on the washing machine, as it's about time I did so, to help kill the time, before I run a load of her laundry as well.
Our only plans for the day are to go to Trader Joe's -- something we can do pretty much anytime -- and to clean out the closet upstairs and reorganize it. It's going to be nearly 100 degrees every day for the foreseeable future, so I can tell you that anything involving the outdoors and a lot of physical movement is going to be out of the question for me, pretty much, until that heat breaks and we can get some real, actual rain and cooler temperatures. Two weeks ago, it felt like fall -- highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s and 60s -- not anymore. Welcome to Nebraska, folks.
My parents relay to me that they appreciated their birthday presents -- and (rather depressingly) told me that they're the only presents they were going to get. I guess that happens once you get older, once all the kids grow up and the rest of your family dies off or you no longer associate yourselves with them. It's not a thought I enjoy. Daisy told me last week that she thinks about death every day, has since she was a little kid, and is terrified of her own parents' aging and eventuality.
"You don't think about death?" she asked me.
Well, I mean, not others' deaths, is what I wanted to reply.
In actuality I don't really think about it a lot. What's the point? Everything dies. People die, animals die, things die -- refrigerators, stoves, cars, etc. Why obsess about it? It happens, it gets taken care of, and the living move on.
"I'm here for a good time, not a long time," I replied.
Stress, depression, and anxiety has made me curt and short recently, and has made my temper flare up at times where it shouldn't be flaring up. I have been trying, to the best of my abilities, to recognize when this is happening and to actively work on it. This is sometimes far more difficult than one would think. Despite this I have been actively engaged in trying to do anything I can to help Daisy, and have actively been trying to be a kinder, gentler husband, to show her attention when she needs it, to cuddle her when she asks, to be there for her when she needs me. She comes first, which I need to remember as my own health and well-being should always be secondary to hers -- she keeps this household running, keeps me mostly sane, and does everything she can to give us all the stability in the world we can have. I sometimes lose sight of that.
Sunday, August 23:
Working from home, day 91.
Aside from a quick check of my email I don't touch my computer and don't write here.
Monday, August 24:
Working from home, day 92.
1. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife) in progress
2.
3.
4. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
5. Figure out phone upgrade plans
6. Mow grass
7.
8. Clean/reorganize kitchen
9. Clean/reorganize dining room
10. Drop off glass at recycling place
11. Figure out car alarm stuff
12. Do/put away laundry
The wife's car alarm keeps going off randomly. It generally only happens in the parking lot at her job or in the parking lot at the store when we're out and about, and has never happened at home with the car in the driveway or garage. We don't know why. There's probably a bad fuse or the sensor in the hood is screwy after the car repairs. I...don't know how to fix this. I offered the suggestion of taking it back to the shop and having them unhook the damn alarm, with the reasoning of "the car's 11 years old; we have full coverage, if someone wants to steal it, fuck it" but that didn't go over that well. She was originally going to take it back to the shop tomorrow for diagnostics, but that could cost us a few hundred dollars if it's normal wear-and-tear stuff. I'm not incredibly opposed to that if they fix the problem, but it's just one more thing we'd be forced to spend money on. The situation is frustrating, to say the least.
Last night at work was mostly quiet. I was able to get a lot of administrative stuff done and I take great pride in being able to say that -- I shine when it comes to the stuff I'm actually supposed to do for my job. It's all the other bullshit that I'm forced to take care of that gets in the way of me doing that. I still worked half an hour late this morning attempting to get most things in a good place for the morning crew. I'm beginning to resent that a little more each time I have to do it, as it's becoming more and more frequent these days now that we're completely work from home.
My first issue of Poets & Writers came in the mail today. I have no idea when I'll have the time to read it. I subscribed to it via Amazon several months ago, because it was $5 and actually pertains to what I'd like to do with my life. I also got the vape juice order I put in on Saturday night. A 36-hour turnaround is remarkable on that.
Everything else remains status quo. I dread the night of work ahead of me, as there are hurricanes afoot (Marco and Laura) ready to hit the gulf coast, and when that happens my team gets slammed. I also do not have escalation support tonight outside of my one Team Lead on shift, who gets bombarded with the same issues everyone else does (though at a lower number). I had to make a schedule change for Labor Day coverage, which was thankfully agreed upon by my volunteers. We should still have good coverage regardless, which will be nice for once on a holiday -- not that I'll see it, as I took the much-deserved and much-needed day/night beforehand off. Believe me, I cannot wait to get that little bit of extra downtime.
Also of note: I had a dream while sleeping today about purchasing two guns -- one was very specifically a bolt-action .22 rifle, in camo print (I don't know why I'd choose that one, but meh); the second was a pump action shotgun of some sort. I don't even know why I was getting them, but I remember a sense of dread in the dream as if I'd need them for something coming -- the apocalypse, a zombie uprising, etc. Something of that nature.
I'm sure this doesn't mean anything psychologically, right?
Tuesday, August 25:
Working from home, day 93.
Fuck August, man. I hate this month.
I wake up to an email from one of my colleagues on dayshift assigning an issue directly to me, seven hours before I get into the office. Like, hell naw. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but hell naw, there are multiple managers at my level in the office between now and then who could either get it resolved or close to resolution before I even arrive on shift.
Part of it, I think, is that I have a reputation (among some or even most of my colleagues on dayshift) of someone who gets shit done, and I've been told this on more than one occasion by said colleagues. I do like that, of course; my entire goal in that job from a leadership perspective is to be the shining example everyone points to as the one person doing the job right. The result of that end goal is to be viewed as one of the most dependable, reliable, and well-liked employees we have, so that when the contract does eventually end, because it will, that I'm at the top or near the top of the list for a promotion or lateral transfer to another department if I don't have anything else already lined up.
At roughly 6:20 PM, me and my team leads receive a text from our director in El Paso saying that there's a massive outage and that we were authorized to have our folks clock in early to help out if they wanted to. Two of my most reliable folks immediately jumped into the fray and three more said they were on their way as well. Between this and Hurricane Laura in the gulf, bearing down on our more southern states, this does not give me high hopes for a good Tuesday night at work. Once I log on, my fears are realized, and for the following eight hours I work what could conceivably be described as the worst night I've had at that job in probably six months. Remarkably, I am able to take almost an entire lunch hour and I do leave (relatively) on time in the morning -- maybe 10-15 minutes late at most, which generally I'm fine with.
Wednesday, August 26:
Working from home, day 94.
1. Go through closet for donation clothes (joint project with the wife) in progress
2.
3.
4. Reach out to some friends and family to see if they need anything I can provide
5. Figure out phone upgrade plans
6.
7.
8. Clean/reorganize kitchen
9. Clean/reorganize dining room
10. Drop off glass at recycling place
11. Figure out car alarm stuff
12.
After last night at work, even before I log in tonight, I am seriously considering just burning a little PTO and taking tomorrow (Thursday) off. I can justify it by saying, simply, that I'm burnt out and need a break, and after last night's outage debacle the last thing I want to do is spend the next two nights dealing with Hurricane Laura issues, because believe me, they're coming. Normally I'd take a Sunday off and extend my weekend, but Sundays are now the days where I get the most administrative stuff accomplished at work, and when it's not 100% completely batshit crazy for the overnight shift (most of the time); I desperately need Sunday's time in order to be able to do that admin stuff now. I don't know. I'll decide depending on how the night goes.
It is nearly 100 degrees outside, again. The wife immediately goes outside to mow the grass as soon as she gets home, even though I tell her not to because it's too hot; my plan was to mow it next week, when the temperatures are expected to be highs in the 70s-80s again. After all, it's not like we've gotten almost any rain at all this month. 100-degree days and no rain reminds me of the several summers I spent in Kansas all those years ago now.
Daisy texted me this afternoon and requested I give her a massage this evening before work. I responded that I'd be happy to do so, and once she got home and showered, after mowing, I delivered what I would describe as a world-class massage before I started my shift.
Thursday, August 27:
Working from home, day 95.
Again, and let's say it loud enough so those in the cheap seats can hear, fuck August.
Last night at work was another legitimate nightmare. If something could have broken, it broke. If something could have gone wrong, it went wrong. I did not get a lunch hour, for the first time since I brought my desktop computer home back in June. June! I did not get up from my chair more than twice (and only then, to pee) in close to seven hours straight. Idiocy was rampant, we were being attacked on all sides by stupidity, and there was no point where I wasn't legitimately working on at least three or four things all at the same time -- sometimes via phone, sometimes via email, sometimes both at the same time. Spreadsheets, instant messages, issue breakdowns and follow-ups, putting out what fires I could pretty much anywhere I could in between all of those things. It was a draining, soul-crushing night. At the end of it I told my escalation manager colleague that I really, really hoped tonight would be better when we got back into the office, and he agreed.
One bright note, however, was that my most useless employee quit last night -- via text, at that. Here's how it went, roughly:
ME: Hey, are you planning to work tonight?
HER: No, I quit, I forgot to tell you. I'm moving out of state.
ME: ...effective immediately?
HER: Yes.
ME: Well okay then! I wish you the best, good luck!
HER: TY
I made sure my Team Lead was on that text message trail as well just so he could see that exchange go back and forth. He was as stunned as I was.
"Well, there's one problem solved," my director told me.
"How do I go about terming her out in the systems? Do I just do it through Oracle or is there some secondary process you need me to follow? I know it's different for you folks down there."
For the employees at our sister site in El Paso, onboarding/offboarding processes are skewed a bit -- almost like they're in a parallel dimension (similar to how I describe visiting Canada). There are a few different hoops leadership has to jump through to sever an employee's connection with the company; up here it involves filling out a spreadsheet and sending two different emails to two different distros, along with the corresponding actions in Oracle. Down there it's a similar process, but I don't have access to their site-specific distros, nor do I have access to their spreadsheet. I let the director down there know this, and he solves the issue for me by telling me to just move her under him and he'll take care of it. So, that's what I do, and let him do his thing.
The overall night at work is rough, but not brain-fryingly rough. 2nd shift got pounded with most of it. By the time it moves over to 3rd, a good chunk of it we are able to manage reasonably well, but I'm still pretty swamped for a good chunk of the night, and mark down my second night in a row that I do not get a lunch hour (just too much to do). I put in the PTO for next Thursday, since I didn't get to do it tonight, and immediately declare to the collected team that I won't be in that night.
This also serves a dual purpose -- by taking Thursday next week off, I am out of office from 7am that morning until 10pm the following Tuesday -- because of the Labor Day holiday. For a total of ten hours of PTO submitted, with the help of a holiday thrown into the mix, I legit gave myself a four-day week for the first time since June, followed up by a five day weekend. And I'm not sure anyone but me realizes it yet. I 100% need the time off, and goddammit, I'm going to use it.
Friday, August 28:
Day off. Payday.
Most of the day is spent sleeping, because the previous week has exhausted me. What time that isn't I spend with the wife, cuddling with her in bed and then eating a noodle dish with her while watching trashy reality TV on Hulu, then we discuss astrology-related stuff until I'm so tired I feel sick. At that point I go upstairs and very quickly pass out in my chair and she goes to bed. I barely touch my computer and I do not write here.
Saturday, August 29:
Day off.
I awaken around 5am (because apparently that's now customary for me on Saturdays) full of energy. I take my pills, feed the cats, and balance the checkbook. I text the wife, who is asleep, and tell her how much I love her and miss her and wish she were awake and energetic at the same times I am, because I have fantasies about going on hikes and going to take care of all of the weekend stuff super-early and being back home by like 10am. Remarkably, half an hour later, she replies.
"You wanna walk?"
I have told her that when I have the energy and the weather is nice and not 100 degrees, I wanted us to walk on the hiking trails and get some exercise, enjoy each other's time and company, and generally just get some real time together that wasn't spent sleeping, in front of the TV, or doing things that we otherwise need to do that cuts into our time just existing together -- like shopping or running other numerous little errands. Well, the heat wave has broken now, it's 63 degrees outside with rain/storm chances this afternoon and evening (I guess, I saw something on one of the local news channels about it), and, well, today we can finally do that.
I go to the bedroom and tell her yes, I'd love to go for a walk, then do our grocery stuff and go get her a new pair of shoes (the ones she has now are falling apart, and she needs new ones) before coming back home, and we could be done for the day by the early afternoon hours at the latest. It excites me. I formulate a schedule for the day in my head, including coming home afterwards and napping together, spending the evening eating a good meal and watching a good movie, and still having energy to take care of everything I need to do in the overnight hours.
This is, roughly, what we end up doing. We leave the house to go on our walk by about 8:30, return home around 9:30, where we pick the second large cantaloupe in our garden and cut it up and eat it for breakfast. Then we head to the local Grease Monkey, and Daisy gets her oil changed. They tell her the problem with her car alarm going off at random intervals is more than likely a hood sensor out of whack, which is what I originally thought it was, and tell us to take it to an electrical place here in town to get 'em to check it out quickly and probably cheaply. We then venture to two different shoe stores -- one across town, where she finds the shoes she wants but needs them in half a size smaller, and then head to one in the outlet mall about 20 miles away, where Daisy is able to find said size and purchase the shoes. By this time, it's a little after noon. We return to Omaha, stop at the grocery store (the only place I really needed to go myself) and buy so much food and supplies for around the house that it legitimately takes two carts. We then returned home, put everything away, and were done for the night by around 3pm.
Daisy and I make poutine for "dinner" as we're both tired and hungry at this point, and then take a nap together from about 6 to 12. I get up and take care of a few overnight things, and at around 2, go back downstairs to make something else to eat and we watch more episodes of Married at First Sight on Hulu. Yes, it's trashy to an extent, but what a concept for a show. We come back upstairs, Daisy showers, and I pass out in my chair again sometime after 5-6am.
It was a perfect day.
Sunday, August 30:
Working from home, day 96.
Sometime around 11 I get up and go to sleep in the bed with Daisy. I don't get up again until she rouses herself around 2. I immediately strip the bed and begin washing the sheets and blankets, and shower and shave. I ask Daisy if she'd be so kind to make me more hummus and to cook up the vegan chicken mix I purchased about two weeks ago so that I could have something different to eat when I came downstairs, and she obliges this request.
Do any of you ever have those days where it's a massive effort just to move? Like sitting there takes all your energy, and moving your body feels like an insurmountable task? That's been today for me. I've been so, so tired. I slept a lot, I slept close to eight hours, but I legit feel like I've had any and all energy and motivation sucked out of me. Still, Daisy wants to go to Lowe's to get a planter and a new battery for her car's key fob, so we go do that. When there I grab a NOS energy drink out of the cooler, because I need something to keep me going. It's slightly disgusting but also grapefruity and intriguing. I probably wouldn't buy it again, but meh, it's fine. Anyway, she replaces the battery in her key fob and the alarm randomly goes off an hour later -- while the car is in the garage and off, for over an hour, with nothing around it -- so who knows.
It takes a lot to keep me going, especially when my weekends now are so brief. I read an article a few days ago about how now that we're in the ongoing pandemic and so many more hundreds of thousands of people are working at home, it's time to standardize the four-day work week for, well, pretty much everyone. I couldn't agree more. There are few jobs that could not be modified to a four-day work week with minimal effort. Especially salaried jobs. Just do it already, society.
I also read something about how Germany is going to try some sort of universal basic income (UBI) plan too; I also think that's something our own government should have been doing a long time ago.
At work, I take the time that generally slow Sundays provide me to take care of general maintenance and administrative work -- I've got a lot of it this week to take care of due to my upcoming time off. In the morning, one of our most vital employees gets locked out of her systems just as she's getting in and getting online, so it takes me, my executive director, and one of my employees an extra hour -- me working until almost 8 -- to take care of part of the morning workload until she can get back online and pull everything up. Normally this would make me mad as it's not particularly my job, but I am now of the mindset that everything I do that is above and beyond the call of duty makes me look really good and makes the people who don't do such things look really bad. With the end of our contract eventually on the horizon, who knows when (though I don't expect it'll be anytime soon with how they're literally opening up new hiring classes for September and October) I want to look like the MVP in our current staffing and impress as many people as possible.
Monday, August 31:
Working from home, day 97.
The wife takes her car back to the shop today, and they tell her (basically) that because the hood is slightly bent, the sensor is off whack -- the hood doesn't close as tightly as it should, and she can do one of two things: spend $100-150 to fix/replace it, or...unplug the sensor.
She does the latter, of course. For free. And we shouldn't have to deal with the random car alarm problem again.
She arrives home well before I wake up, and even once I do wake up, it takes me quite a while to awaken and get moving. It's the last day of the month, it's a shorter week for me leading into a holiday weekend, and to top it all off, there's a full moon on Wednesday -- my last night of the week. But, it's cooler outside, it rained hard for a while last night, and it'll probably rain/storm tonight per what the weather says.
My stomach has been bothering me the last few days, and I've had some gastrointestinal issues. I've been eating a lot of different foods, and have been focusing on trying to get more liquids and water into me because I need to do that to stave off the gout, but my body is a fickle thing and when I eat really differently it messes with me and/or I gain a lot of weight. I'm almost afraid to look at what the scale will say tomorrow morning when I weigh myself because of that.
Checking my email in the evening already shows me there are going to be a few headaches at work tonight, and I dread it. I have very little escalation support on Monday nights -- basically anything that goes wrong on a Monday night ends up being blamed on me because I didn't catch it, fix it, or take it upon myself to own and resolve, and I absolutely hate that toxic environment and those unrealistic expectations. I've had enough nights as of late where I didn't get a lunch hour or didn't get a full lunch hour because I've had to do other peoples' jobs for them, and I'm sick of it.
As we're at the end of another month I feel as if I should take stock of everything that's transpired before moving on. We got into a car accident, got the car fixed not once but twice, refinanced our house, Daisy's parents ran their cat through the washing machine, I fought off major depression the best I could, there was a shooting on my street, there were three hurricanes, only two of which that did a hell of a lot of damage to anything; not to be outdone, Iowa had a land hurricane, Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, riots surged for social and racial justice, schools re-started and with it came a spike in Covid-19 cases, Omaha issued a mask mandate, my comics subscriptions returned to (mostly) normal shipping schedules, and...I bought new bath towels.
Jesus, I can't imagine what September is going to hold.
