Welcome to March.
Monday, March 1:
Working from home, day 209.
I am not in a good place right now, mentally. I am so angry and tired all the time. The end of this month will mark one full year of working from home for me, as I believe it was something like March 29 last year when I began logging in remotely for work every night instead of being in the office (I'll check that later in the month when we get closer to it). Within a week or three after that, most others on my team had followed in my footsteps as the company made a grand push to get people offsite and working remotely as quickly as possible when the pandemic began to ramp up.
Now, almost a year later, not a whole lot is different -- not in the grand scheme of things regarding my daily life/work life, anyway. Yeah, cases are going down and we have not one or two, but three vaccines now in the United States (Pfizer, Moderna, and the new Johnson & Johnson one that's apparently only 66% effective). Even after most of the populace gets vaccinated I don't foresee a return to any sort of office work environment anytime soon, if ever -- our teams are now supposed to be permanently work-from-home, I guess. We don't have a building to go back to for the something like 200-plus agents and staff in our program alone, not to mention the other programs that went work-from-home at the same time. The lease expired on that building last June, so while it is still there, it's no longer our company's building to use. They even took the big company lettering off the top of it, which I had to laugh at.
I have a shorter work week than usual; I took Thursday off (using my "floating holiday" so I can conserve actual PTO) as Daisy's dad's birthday is on Friday and we plan to spend the day with him. Had I not taken Thursday, I would sleep all day Friday and the day would be lost. This way I can actually be conscious and can have an extra night off work. Daisy's parents have both had the vaccine -- Dad got his second dose today and Mama gets her second dose later this week/early next week, I can't remember. They'll be protected, though we'll still wear masks and the like.
Tuesday, March 2:
Working from home, day 210.
After the simply brutal cold of about two weeks ago, the high temperature today (and really, every day for the currently foreseeable future) is in the 60s. It's an amazing change that's wreaking havoc on my allergies -- I've had a headache since this morning that will not go away -- but I'm not complaining about the warmth in the least. This is, of course, a week after I purchased two new pairs of gloves off Amazon in order to be able to brave the cold when shoveling snow. It feels like such a foreign concept now.
I'm not holding my breath; we almost always get one last big snowstorm sometime in March. If we don't, tornado season starts early. This is Nebraska for you. I'm coming up on seven years of living in Nebraska now -- the longest I've ever lived in one state since I moved out of my parents' house in 2006 -- so I'm used to the weather here by now.
Daisy is back in the office this week, which makes the house seem empty and lonely. The house is also a wreck; many rooms and living spaces need a good deep cleaning, spring cleaning of sorts. I wish I had the time and energy to do it. It's almost like a chore gathering the energy to write here sometimes, let alone do much else in what little downtime I get.
The night at work is hectic, again, and I don't know if I'll ever come across a night again that's not. [EDIT: I will] I am stuck working at least half an hour late, which has now become par for the course most nights. On the plus side, though, I field far fewer questions from the people in my own leadership that I report up to, as they know I am constantly on the ball with everything. It's been months since I got an off-hours call from my executive director for something that was off my radar, because now almost nothing is off my radar.
Wednesday, March 3:
Working from home, day 211.
Today is my youngest (living) sister's birthday; she turns 28. I'm not in contact with her and haven't spoken to her in many years, not since she was just a kid. The last time I saw her in person she was 6 months old and she peed on me, so there's that. Of my actual related-by-blood sisters, two are still alive. They are both happily married, and the younger one (mentioned above) has a son who's a toddler, roughly. My older sister -- who turns 30 in three days, actually -- is pregnant now with her first child. I'm in contact with her on a pretty frequent basis via social media, but my younger sister I'm not.
People have always asked me if it bothers me that I'm not really close with that side of the family (my father's side of the family) and truthfully, it really doesn't. My father remarried in 1989 -- I was there, I was in the wedding -- and had three daughters with his new wife between 1991 and 1998. The youngest of those three was killed in a car accident in 2013, and I never met her or had any contact with her. Aside from my oldest sister, I am in contact with a few aunts and uncles, and several cousins, from that side of my family -- all of whom love me and miss me. Most of the family, however, are not actively social with me and I don't try to keep up with them; never have, really. It's a time and energy thing more than anything else.
The temperature hit 65 today, and with it my allergies skyrocketed as well. You can very easily tell that spring is coming in Nebraska, and that was never made more clear to me than when, at 11am, I was jolted out of a dead sleep by every tornado siren in the state doing its first test of the year. JFC, I thought the Purge was (finally) happening.
The night at work is long and hectic again, as has become the usual. I am able to get off relatively on time, at which point I put up my OOO messages on my phone and email and disappear.
Thursday, March 4:
Day off, PTO.
I sleep most of the day, am awake for but a few short hours in the afternoon and evening, and then again sleep most of the night. I don't write here. I don't even remember much of Thursday at all, actually -- that's how tired I was and how much I slept. The one thing I do remember is that in the evening, once Daisy got home from work, we went to Home Goods (all masked up of course) and purchased a pretty planter vase for Dad for his birthday the next day.
Friday, March 5:
Day off.
Dad's birthday.
Daisy and I both took off time for today; I took yesterday (so I could be awake today) and she took today. We'd asked her father what he wanted to do for his 73rd birthday some time in advance, so we could plan for it. His response was that he wanted us to come over to the house early in the day, he wanted to just relax and sit around and drink wine and then grill burgers and the like on the deck, and just be present with us and have a nice dinner. There were just a few problems to that plan:
1) I can no longer drink alcohol (my meds won't allow it; it could kill me, etc etc)
2) He wanted us to be there at 10am
3) To have a cookout means that Daisy and I needed to procure some food that, y'know, vegetarians and vegans could eat when cooked outside on a grill -- meaning we needed vegan burgers and stuff like that
4) And we needed to have a present ready for Dad.
The last one was fairly easy; we'd gotten the planter vase for Dad last night at Home Goods, and Daisy had ordered a large nylon wall tapestry for him as well off Amazon a good week or so prior. We still needed to get the other things, though -- so in the morning (well, probably around noonish) we ventured to Trader Joe's (again with the masks) to pick up a bottle of port wine for him -- his favorite -- and some other foods for the cookout. Turns out we already had the vegan burgers; it is rare that we don't have vegan burgers in the house. We made it over to the parents' house by around 1 or so.
I will pause here and note that Dad has had both doses of the vaccine and is fully protected. Mama has had one and is scheduled to get her second dose within the next few days at most (I believe it's supposed to happen over the weekend at some point, per her schedule, but I don't know for sure). I almost never leave the house so my own exposure chances for Covid are almost completely nonexistent, and Daisy masks up anywhere and everywhere and carries hand sanitizer with her at all times, which she uses almost obsessively. While she did work in the office this week her own Covid exposure chances are very greatly minimized in everything she does, and as I've lived with the woman for seven years and am in close (sometimes, ahem, very close) contact with her every day and haven't gotten sick, suffice it to say that there's a slim-to-none chance that either of us are carriers of the virus and are, for lack of a better term, safe enough.
At the house I wore my mask for awhile, but did just take it off after a bit. Daisy did the same as well, though she wore hers far more and far longer than I wore mine. When the parents are 75% vaccinated and it's clear that neither of us are carriers, it's kind of pointless to try to breathe through masks for hours on end, feeling and sounding like Darth Vader. I would still go outside to vape, because I didn't want to put more particulates into the air in the house, but honestly, it was a very relaxed family environment -- finally, something like the old days again.
It was not lost on us that the last time we had an actual sit down dinner with the parents, and spent more time with them than an hour or so that was extremely socially distanced, was last year on Dad's birthday -- a full year has passed. All I've wanted for the past year is to sit down on a weekly basis with the parents like we used to, every Saturday night, and have dinner/decompress from the week.
After the time spent with the parents, as I'd been awake since the very early morning hours, we came home where I very exhaustedly came upstairs and collapsed into my chair...and slept a good chunk of the night. When I awoke, it was close to 4am and Daisy was (remarkably) still awake, finishing her binge of the newest season of Good Girls on Netflix.
Saturday, March 6.
Day off. Sort of.
Today is my oldest sister's (by blood) 30th birthday. She is something like 16-18 weeks pregnant with her first child and recently got married -- I mentioned in one of these posts a while back that I can't remember if I was invited to the wedding or not. I really don't remember, but I think I was. I very vaguely remember sending back the RSVP envelope but for all I know, it could've been a fever dream or something. My sister does have my address; we send Christmas cards to each other and the like.
Earlier in the week, I had been roped into doing a "change bridge" for company operations on Saturday night, primarily because nobody else is in on Saturday nights in Omaha that's management. As I am the operations manager for all of 3rd shift in Omaha, regardless of whether it's a night I'm supposed to work or not (Saturday nights, as you know, I do not work), the responsibility still falls mostly on my shoulders to make sure it's covered.
What is a "change bridge," you may ask? It's a massive company-wide bridge call done in the middle of the night by IT Operations when they make a server/firewall/routing change that has the possibility of bringing down one or more active systems for agents on shift. Representatives -- usually leadership, like myself -- from each and every site that could be affected by the change all login to a Teams meeting, dial into the bridge, and then wait for roll call. When they call your name, you acknowledge and state "all green" if all the systems that should be up for your site are indeed currently up for your site. Then, they start the actual systems change, complete it, and tell everyone to reboot and log back into all systems -- and after a 15-minute allotment period to do that, they begin the roll call again to see if all systems are still functioning as expected ("all green") after the change has been made. If so, your work is done, you can drop the call, leave the meeting, and go about your day. If the change has borked your systems, you have to tell them and then stay on the line while they either troubleshoot or (in most cases, as your site is not usually the only one borked) rollback the change and then start the roll-call process again once it has been reversed.
I've been on both bridge scenarios before. Most of the time these bridges, from start to finish, last maybe an hour or two at most, because the changes are successful and don't affect the Omaha site. I used to hate doing it back in the day, but now that I work from home, I really don't mind it anywhere near as much as I used to.
Anyway, because there wasn't anyone else who was openly volunteering and because I want my team and my leadership to know I'm reliable and dependable, I volunteered for it. This time around, the bridge was scheduled for Saturday night from 11pm to 5am (all changes are scheduled for a six-hour change window, though they almost never take that long). I logged in around 10:40pm to find that they were already halfway through the first roll call (wtf, bridge people). I got my spot, all was fine, and I waited for the tester/change operative to join. And waited. And waited some more.
As mentioned, these bridges are company-wide, and are international. Our main IT support staff is in the Philippines, and has been for years -- they're the ones making the changes. But these changes are wide and far-reaching. And this bridge had -- I'm not kidding -- 336 people on it.
One of the IT teams' folks came on the line around midnight -- an hour after the change was supposed to have started, and said "the tester will be joining us shortly, please stand by."
Within about 60 seconds, somebody on this 336-person-call started playing Ben E. King's "Stand By Me."
Loudly.
Daisy had gone upstairs to prepare for bed at this point, but was still awake. I called upstairs to her to ask if she could hear this, but she could not.
Nobody knew who was playing the music. I sent a message on the side to my agent in El Paso, who was monitoring the bridge from his site, and told him I could get behind this music.
After the song finished, this same agent -- the only other person on the call reporting to me, out of 336 people -- said to all the others on the call "that was great, can someone play 'My Girl' too? Y'all taking requests?"
I was mortified, but within 30 seconds, The Temptations' "My Girl" was playing.
This was followed by "Build Me Up, Buttercup" and the Bee Gees' "Night Fever." Then Billy Joel. Then "Hocus Pocus" by Focus.
That last one you should definitely check out if you've never heard of it.
All the while I'm sitting there, in the middle of the night on a Saturday, with 335 other people from all around the world, listening to the all-request power hour. The chat has lit up with requests for more songs. There's a guy who's actively talking on the line in a radio-DJ-esque voice. This has quickly become one of the most surreal phone calls I've ever been on for work reasons.
Eventually, the testing team stops the chatter and the music, and starts the change. By this point, it's well after 1am, I'm tired as my sleep schedule has been fucked this week/weekend, and I am very grateful when they say it's been completed and to reboot for the final check-in. I reboot, log back in to everything, and experience no issues. When the roll-call comes around again, I'm "all green," as is my agent in El Paso. We're both told we can drop the bridge, and I do not hesitate in doing so. By the time I can get the computer shut down and go back upstairs, it's well after 2.
The rest of my night was spent decompressing, trying to play a game for a bit (and half-falling asleep while doing so) before shortly after 4, I forced myself to get up and go into the bedroom to sleep with the wife instead of in the chair. It was dark, I was exhausted and unshowered, and my cat came to sleep with us.
Sunday, March 7:
Working from home, day 212.
I wake up around 10am with a vision.
I go downstairs, where I boil a pound of fettucine, then steam a bag of "California blend" vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli), then cook a bag of Quorn meatless pieces (which is, essentially, cubed fake chicken). I dump a jar of Trader Joe's alfredo sauce on it and bam, ten-minute (fake) chicken fettucine alfredo with vegetables for a good Sunday brunch, with a shit ton left over since Daisy won't eat it because it's not vegan -- the alfredo as well as the Quorn pieces are simply vegetarian, as they both have milk and eggs. I don't care about milk and eggs in my food, because I'm not vegan.
I've been on a pasta kick lately; I'm not sure why. It's cheap, it's fun to experiment with, and there are myriad ways I can make it good and filling without needing to break the bank on cooking a meal. And it doesn't take three hours to cook. The downside is carby-carb-carbs, which make me fatter and exceedingly tired as well. I'm not a fan of most of the non-wheat-based pastas either, like chickpea pasta or corn noodles or whatever else is in the offshoot "gluten free" pastas (the exception to this is rice noodles, or bean threads or something of that ilk) because it's just not the same.
The temperature hit nearly 70 in Omaha today, and is supposed to brush with 80 twice this coming week. In the afternoon hours, Daisy went to Lowe's to get some supplies for around the house, including some bee traps for the backyard and some planting stuff to get her garden restarted here in a few weeks once it's continually warm enough to do so -- meaning, when there's no chance that the Nebraska weather will get a wild hair up its ass and drop temperatures down way below freezing again, or give us another snowstorm. I've been mostly lethargic all day, so I did not go with her.
The night at work is incredibly quiet, far more so than almost any night since the holidays. I'm able to get a lot of background work done, including payroll, for the week.
Monday, March 8: Working from home, day 213
Tuesday, March 9: Working from home, day 214
Wednesday, March 10: Working from home, day 215
Thursday, March 11: Working from home, day 216
As I mentioned previously, Daisy is working from home this week. She expects this to continue, in weekly cycles, for pretty much the foreseeable future. I, on the other hand, am expecting her to be told sometime within the next month or so that she'll be back in the office permanently.
President Biden (goddamn, do I love saying that) announced tonight that not only are our other stimulus checks coming, but vaccines will be made available to all adults, nationwide, by May 1st. While this is the best news I've heard all week, I suspect that it'll be a little harder to put into action than most people suspect. Finally, though, we have a sort of "time window" for it. Daisy and I are on a list for vaccines in Iowa, where we can possibly go get them earlier than that -- Iowa doesn't have as strict a rule mandate for who can get them and when compared to Nebraska's frankly Orwellian age-based only rules, and Iowa doesn't have anything against out-of-state folks from getting them.
My week has been busy, punctuated by very little sleep. While the weather has been gorgeous, I barely get to see it because of my night-shift schedule. When I have slept, it's been pretty light and not exactly restful sleep, and I've found myself -- almost every night this week, when I've been able to take a lunch hour -- setting my alarm to take a one-hour nap on the couch. Daisy, on the other hand, has been working busily around the house and outdoors this week in her downtime, making plans for the garden and cleaning up the back yard, and getting rid of the big pile of firewood we had back there which was, quite literally, just sitting there for years and slowly rotting.
I have been so tired and full of a general unwellness, or malaise, whatever you want to call it. It permeates everything I am, everything I do. I have almost no energy, or desire, to do anything at all. Most of the time I sit in my chair playing a game on my phone, or sit here at the desk playing a game here on my PC, just trying to feel something akin to motivation. I can't. My diet has been poor, I never want to leave the house (even for things that used to bring me joy) and I feel like I'm moving about as much as a bump on a log. Every day at work bleeds into the next like some sort of nightmare from which there is no escape, and my weekends are blink-and-you'll-miss-them affairs, punctuated by, occasionally, maybe an extra few hours of sleep here and there if and when I can force my body to accept them.
Friday, March 12: Day off. Payday for me.
Saturday, March 13: Day off.
$550 in bills paid later and I feel no better or worse.
Some friends have already seen the new stimulus money pending in their bank accounts, 24-48 hours after the bill was signed by President Biden. It's not pending for us yet -- I've been obsessively checking our bank account about three times a day.
There are apparently rumors brewing at work about a return to the office eventually for everyone. I 100% do not want this and if it looks to be a certainty, I will do everything within my power to make sure I have a new work from home job before it happens. I absolutely refuse to work in an office environment again in that place, for that company, with those people. If we're forced to go back, it will finally give me the motivation I need to move on from that job after almost seven years there. Plus side is that I know I'm not the only one who feels this way; several others at my level as well as at the agent level have adamantly refused to continue working for this company if they try to move us all back to an office -- I say an office because both of our former offices were lost when the leases on them expired -- I have no idea where they'd put us. Truthfully, it would be cost-prohibitive to find another workspace for 200+ of us, so maybe it really is just a rumor. But, if it's not, it'll be something I'm prepared for. Nobody in their right mind should want or choose to work in an office setting when the entire job can be easily done from home, especially now that all of us have our computers at home. I can't fathom why they (meaning the company) would want to go back to it.
That's also part of why I'm hoping the $15 minimum wage gets pushed through soon. If they have to start paying everyone a minimum of $15 an hour, my company will absolutely not have enough funds to also provide a new building for all of us (most of my agents don't make $15 an hour now, though it's close for some of them) and it will be incentive for the company to stop hiring idiots off the street who can barely fog a mirror, let alone understand and perform the job well -- idiots that we spend time and money training up only to fire when they realize that the job is very different than they were told it would be, and actually requires timeliness and multitasking and critical thinking.
I would also assume that my own salary would eventually get a bump up as well, perhaps to something more of a liveable wage or something that actually helps to reflect my knowledge base, skill set, and longevity/tenure in my position. I've had exactly two very small raises (aside from being promoted) in the almost seven years I've been there. With a $15/hr minimum wage, without a salary bump of my own, I'd be making only a couple grand more than the base pay for the lowest level employees -- it wouldn't be worth it for all the extra I do. When you are a team manager with two advanced degrees and have over five years of tenure in the position (almost seven in the overall job) as well as 20 people reporting to you -- and you could quit your job, go across the street to the local Dairy Queen, and do far less work with far less responsibility for almost the same amount of money, you'll finally start seeing people get paid what they're worth.
I told Daisy last night that to manage a team of 20 people and to be the only full operations manager on shift, on my schedule, for an entire block of time -- not to mention be a salaried, 24/7 employee expected to be able to jump in and work on any downtime on any day off at a moment's notice -- any respectable company would easily be paying me twice what I'm getting paid where I am now. That's not a joke; a lot of other companies actually do pay double the salary for what I do. Good luck getting hired by them, though. Believe me, I've tried.
Sunday, March 14: Working from home, day 217.
Monday, March 15: Working from home, day 218.
Daylight savings time, which went into effect Saturday night (but obviously wasn't noticeable to me until yesterday) has affected me in a big way. Generally, it doesn't. I lose an hour of weekend, etc, it's whatever -- no noticeable changes for me. But for some reason this year, it's like every little thing is just another punch to the solar plexus when I'm already down.
I am so sad. I don't know why, but I am morose. It's become difficult for me to process things, to feel human and to feel like anything I do means anything. I feel like anything and everything that is going wrong -- whether at work or at home -- is being made my fault or my responsibility, or if it can't be directly blamed on me I'm somehow made into the scapegoat for it. This is, I've read, a symptom of being under a large amount of stress, as well as having anxiety issues.
My anxiety has exploded over the past 2-3 years. I never had any sort of real anxiety before. I mean, when I lived alone many years ago, before I was married, there was some, but it was very underlying and it was easy to avoid situations in which it would be experienced, most of the time. The past several years have been horrible when it comes to anxiety-causing situations, though, and now there's so much of it I can no longer avoid, and my reactions to those situations are far, far worse than I've ever dealt with before. It's hard for me to be inside automobiles now as a passenger, because I don't trust that anyone else on the road actually knows what they're doing and/or gives a shit about their own well-being or the safety of others.
This isn't a problem when I'm driving, by the way, because I'm at least in some control of the situation.
I think that's a big part of it, actually. So little of my life am I actually in control of. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to create and control my own worlds. I wanted to get paid handsomely for this. Instead...
It's all just so, so depressing.
Last night at work was deathly quiet. Once the wife went to bed, I turned on my podcasts and they didn't get turned off until after she was already awake this morning. I appreciate a quiet night at work once in a while but even then everything that goes wrong seems to be my fault. I'm beginning to think that all I want do do with my life is be given peace and be left alone and get paid for it.
Daisy is back in the office this week, which leaves the house quiet and empty in the daytime hours. I had real trouble sleeping today, and went back and forth between the bed and my chair at least twice, because no matter what position I slept in I experienced a lot of back pain, to the point where I couldn't just sit/lay there and rest anymore. I finally got motivated enough (by pain) to get up and do some grocery shopping online, but felt disgusted with myself enough to where I couldn't submit either order for the stuff I wanted simply because I "want" it, despite the fact that we have the money to get it and we'll be getting the stimulus money soon. This tells me that there is so little I want or truly care about anymore, that I know the pleasure brought to me by getting new foods and household supplies is fleeting and unfulfilling. Nothing fills the hole inside me.
Daisy tries to help. She does all she can. She does far more than anyone probably should. I told her a few weeks ago that this may be my midlife crisis; I don't even know anymore. Daisy, as well as some of my friends, tell me that therapy and medication may be something worth looking into, and I tell them the same thing I've always said -- it's not inside my mind and body, it's a "shit needs to be better in the world and for me" thing.
Except for the anxiety, that one is indeed something that could probably be treated by therapy and medication. My problem with that is that medication and therapy for my anxiety doesn't solve the problems, it just makes them not affect me. The problems will, after all, still exist. I don't want my thoughts and feelings to be muzzled by meds.
In some interesting news, there are tornadoes today bearing down on the exact location(s) in Missouri that I lived in when I moved out here 15 years ago -- where my ex's family still lives, to the best of my knowledge. It's mid-March and there are tornadoes in Missouri, which isn't incredibly surprising overall because of the time of the year, but it's surreal to me that it's warm enough town there to get tornadoes when it's barely forty degrees in Omaha and I'm having trouble staying warm. We've had a cold, nasty, windy rain here since Friday night that is still lingering in the form of cold drizzle...and nothing else.
It's been several years since we had a really active tornado season in and around the Omaha area. 2013, when I graduated from grad school, and 2014, right around and shortly after Daisy and I got married, were both pretty active. 2016 we had a tornado about three-ish miles from work, where we were all forced to go downstairs into the tornado shelter area (read: the break room) in our old building. All other years since we've had some pretty nasty/severe storms from time to time -- including the one that took out our failing retaining wall in 2019 -- but only one or two small, isolated tornado outbreaks in a 200-mile-ish radius per year.
I guess I shouldn't say anything. In 1975 a tornado literally ripped right up my street and destroyed this house. It was rebuilt the next year (and has been in its present state since, with some modifications here and there of course). It could happen again; mother nature sucks sometimes.
Okay, a lot of the time.
Tuesday, March 16:
Working from home, day 219.
Tuesdays have become, more often than not, business days. They are the one day of the week where my job is basically to get as much accomplished as I can before Daisy gets home from work (or just gets off of work, if she's working from home that week). Tuesday night is garbage night, and it usually falls on one of my "shower as soon as you get up" days, so I also have the extra energy and alertness derived from that shower. So far, in the past 2.5 hours, I have:
1. checked for the stimulus in our bank account (it's not there yet)
2. taken a shower and performed all related hygiene tasks
3. fed the cats and made sure they had new treats and fresh water
4. lit two sticks of incense to refresh the downstairs of the house
5. taken both the trash and recycling to the curb
6. retrieved the mail, sorted it
7. washed a load of my laundry
8. dried a load of the wife's laundry and moved it to the bed for her to put away
9. dried my own laundry
10. ordered a new pair of glasses that was on sale on Zenni, the first time I've done so in a year
11. begun the caffeination ritual with a Mountain Dew (zero sugar, of course)
12. pared down my list and made an Amazon order for household essentials
13. begun the hydration ritual as I've been feeling dehydrated over the past few days
14. reminded the wife to pick up my meds from the pharmacy tonight, as I only have one pill left
15. checked the specials on Papa John's website and asked if she wanted pizza for dinner (she does not)
16. refilled and charged up my primary vape device
17. checked and cleared out all of my email inboxes, including the work inbox
18. checked in with my friend April as to where she and her husband will be moving to soon
19. and, finally, started this post.
This is a far cry from most of my other non-Tuesday routines, which generally consist of:
1. wake up and hate the fact that I'm awake
2. hate myself and what my life has become for 3-4 hours (general bare minimum)
3. maybe eat something
4. dick around on the internet or on my phone
5. maybe watch something on TV, with or without the wife
6. consume a large amount of caffeine and go to work.
On Sunday night, our porch light burnt out. We've lived in the house for almost three years now, but the porch light had never died in all that time. Last night, Daisy stopped at Lowe's on her lunch hour and got us a new bulb that's a dusk light bulb -- it turns itself on and off based on ambient light, so we don't have to mess with it or worry about it. It was $14, and is supposed to last something like 13 years. She told me that and I was like a'ight, I'm not mad at that.
This is all well and good, but our porch light is encased inside one of those glass-sided enclosures that's sealed at the top and bottom; I'm sure you've seen them:
This is not our exact fixture, but it's close.
Let me tell you, if you have a porch light fixture like that and you have never opened it or have no idea how to get it open, good goddamn luck to you. FUCK light fixtures like this. Daisy spent close to two hours trying to get it unscrewed and opened to replace the light bulb, and eventually had to use our power drill to drill through the fucking screw and metal to get it popped off and removed. She was able to replace the bulb and get it put back together with a similar-sized screw, but for fuck's sake.
I actually slept decently well today for once -- I think part of that was because I was in bed by 8:30 this morning and my little old lady cat with me from the get-go. It's also been gray and dark and dreary for the past few days, so that helps out a lot as well. We've entered the Omaha rainy season, as is typical for the spring months, and most days here throughout March and a good chunk of April tend to be gray and rainy overall -- punctuated by gradual warming and the occasional tornado (as mentioned yesterday).
Wednesday, March 17:
Working from home, day 220.
St. Patrick's Day.
Growing up, I was always led to believe that I was very Irish on my father's side of the family, and overwhelmingly English on my mother's. I was particularly proud of my Irish heritage, for some reason -- perhaps it's that my hair lightens and reddens in the summers (my body hair, however, has always had a deep reddish hue that's visible in bright light/sunlight) or maybe it's because I thought that embracing that heritage made me feel like part of a larger community.
When I had my first AncestryDNA test done, my results seemed to confirm my original suspicions -- mostly English/Welsh with a strong showing of Scotch-Irish in there too. However, a few months back, those test results were updated and refined again, and I learned something perhaps more interesting about myself:
I still have Irish blood, yes -- it's #3 on the list...but #2 is a big surprise.
Norway? Norway? Who the hell in my family is from Norway?
I asked my mother this, and asked if she knew if we had any Norse heritage down the line, an offshoot fully Norwegian relative somewhere I'd never heard of, etc. She did not know.
I asked my cousin on my father's side if she knew anything about any Norse heritage running through our bloodline, but the closest she had was some people on my paternal grandmother's side of the family with Dutch backgrounds -- nothing Norway.
So, apparently, I have a mystery Norse progenitor out there. I'd like to think it's Thor, God of Thunder.
Thursday, March 18: Working from home, day 221.
Friday, March 19: Day off.
I neglected to mention in yesterday's post that we do now have our stimulus money in our bank account. We do not yet know what we're going to do with it, if anything major. As I've mentioned here before, any time we come into money, we almost always have a major expense the fates throw our way out of the blue. I am hoping that's not the case this time around, but I'm also not holding my breath. I've told Daisy I want to keep the money in the account (instead of moving it to savings) at least for several days, until we can get groceries and get some bills paid as necessary here and there -- as much for peace of mind as it is for a bit of breathing space to be able to, y'know, take care of something when (not if, but when) something happens.
My mood and general demeanor over the last few days has been better. It's not the money -- I noticed it picking up a bit somewhat this week, before the money even hit. I'm still tired and fatigued all the time, and I've still been having a decent amount of trouble sleeping -- either I can't sleep at all or I sleep far too long or at inopportune times (like hours I should be spending with Daisy), and still inside me I have a deep anger/discontentment that I cannot shake, and underneath that is a deep, roaring sadness I can't really define other than "I'm just so sad to the point that it hurts" ...but overall my baseline is pretty good.
I'm not being facetious there, or making any sort of joke. If you ever want to know what it feels like to be inside my head, that's a pretty good approximation of it. I keep meaning to post my psychoanalysis of myself here, based on all of the tests I took and descriptors of various mental illnesses -- it has been finished for months, yet every time I look through it and re-read my answers, I end up re-editing them because what I thought the last time or how I thought I actually was isn't accurate now, etc.
Also, how much of myself do I really want to share with the world? Isn't this blog, with these different series of posts, enough of a mental health tracker as it is? I'm not sure I want the whole world to know my innermost tendencies because I am very aware that I'd be judged by them. Several things on the list(s) would absolutely make people point at me and go "yep, that man is actually crazy; it's not an act and he's not kidding, he is actually certifiably insane based on this one answer alone."
And I don't want that. I don't want to justify myself as a person or have to defend myself anymore.
Saturday, March 20: Day off.
Sunday, March 21: Working from home, day 222.
Because we now have our stimulus money, and because we need groceries, I got up early Saturday morning and refined my delivery order from Walmart. I spent an hour adding things to it and changing it around, with the help of Daisy, to get what we needed in the cart and ready to go. Because it was a Saturday and because I didn't want to wait two days for a delivery slot to open up, I selected the express, "get it within two hours" option for an extra $10 in delivery charges -- because fuck it, if I can get it in two hours instead of two days, I don't care about a $10 extra fee. I'm already tipping the driver $20 anyway (yeah, Walmart is one of those companies that's an option for).
I submitted the order and got three emails about it in those two hours:
1. Your order has been submitted, here's the time window in which it should arrive
2. One of your items is out of stock, sorry (it was my provolone cheese)
3. Your order is now out for delivery, it should arrive in the next 18 minutes, here's your driver's name
--all pretty standard stuff. I like that some of these companies are very communicative about where they are and what they're doing.
And then the order doesn't arrive on time. Okay, I thought, it's Saturday, it's gorgeous outside, traffic probably sucks and the people doing the delivery orders are probably busy.
Then I get the fourth email:
Canceled?
The fuck do you mean canceled? Thirty minutes ago you sent me an email that said it was out for delivery and gave me the driver's name and his ETA.
I was livid. I was angrier than I've been in a long time, because none of this made any sense whatsoever. Dude was supposed to already be on the road bringing it to me -- like, it was done, according to their last email, it had left the store.
"Maybe the delivery guy didn't show up for his shift or something," Daisy mused.
"...so instead of giving it to the next guy up for deliveries and emailing or calling me to say there would be a slight delay and asking if that was okay, they auto-canceled the order and -- I guarantee you -- unbagged and returned every single thing I purchased right back to the shelves? That's fucking stupid."
I was so angry I couldn't breathe.
A $180 grocery order just canceled and wiped clean, an order that I had been prepping for a week and had spent over an hour with Daisy trying to get finalized before hitting the order button just gone. Walmart doesn't have a "save for later" button like Amazon does -- you can't just go back in and redo it (well, you can -- see the email above -- but it carbon-copies what was on the original order and you have to make all your quantities and select all the options again).
I did not reorder it. I was so angry and tired that I took a four hour nap. During that time, Daisy made an order herself from Whole Foods and had it delivered. She wanted to make sure we had everything on hand needed for the vegan chicken noodle soup I'd requested she make for dinner.
Look, y'all -- my wife is amazing. The fact that she puts up with me is amazing enough, but when I tell her a story of how chicken noodle soup is something I miss greatly from my living-alone meat-eating days all those years ago, and how it pains me she'll never be able to eat my own homemade special recipe version of it, because
1. it's not vegan, obviously,
2. I don't eat the meats anymore myself,
3. even if I could make it with vegan chicken, I cannot find vegan egg noodles in a store or online to save my life, and
4. I used chicken stock or chicken bouillon for the broth--
...she does ten minutes of research, says we have the ingredients for a really good vegan one in the house already, and then takes the time to make it while I'm sleeping.
The soup was marvelous, all. In the top three soups my wife has ever made, and she makes a lot of soup.
There's enough of it for a good hearty lunch/dinner left and believe me, I will be eating every last bit of it.
Today also marks another grim milestone: it is the last time I'll ever make a vape order for juice or supplies ever again, as the cutoff for that -- federally -- is Thursday night at midnight. It got pushed back by a month, but March 25 is the hard cutoff date now.
I spent $103.60 on juice from the company I get it from -- the last time I'll ever be able to do it -- and $55.20 on coils from another site (the only one I could find that had them in stock for a reasonable amount) for the two tanks I use on a daily basis. And that's it, I'm done, it's all over now. Once that stuff is gone, I'm done. The coils will last longer than the juice will. With what I have in the house already and the new order coming, I give a rough estimate that I'll be completely out of every last drop of juice I have by the end of summer, possibly before. The coils will get me through what I've got and then everything that's left -- batteries, spare supplies, devices and cases, and tanks -- will be boxed up and put into storage or sold outright to anyone who wants it.
It is with a bit of irony that I celebrate five full years of being a nonsmoker next month, because while I no longer smoke, I still inhale the vape every day. It's far less detrimental to my health, yes, and overall far less expensive and with much less nicotine, but when I run out of everything it's going to be difficult for me. Not as difficult as it was to quit smoking, but difficult.
However, it is a step towards wellness. I'd like to eventually live an addiction-free, vice-free existence, with everything I put into my body being clean and from the earth. Fuel, not drug, or what have you. Meat was the first step, followed by most sugars. Quitting smoking was next. Vaping is now. The next big step, of course, would be to work on getting off caffeine -- and I really have no idea whatsoever how I'll be able to do that while still working overnights and barely sleeping.
Some of you (read: my wife especially) would probably make the logical leap that going completely vegan would be the next expected step -- and while I may eventually do that, I really don't see that happening for another 10-20 years, if ever. While I do love vegan foods, and vegan versions of the foods I eat every day that are facsimiles of non-vegan things (read: vegan mayo, vegan sliced cheese, vegan lunch meats and jerkys) -- until I can get a vegan cheese that is the same price as and tastes exactly the same as a non-vegan one, or vegan Cheetos and vegan cottage cheese and vegan string cheese...I am just not there yet. Dairy -- as well as food containing eggs, even though I'm not a fan of eggs on their own -- these are big things for me that vegan food companies just can't completely synthesize good enough yet, nor can they get them to a price point that's comparable if they can and be able to fool me at the same time. Until those things all happen, I just...I can't get there all the way. I can do it mostly, but I can't do it all the way.
I've also told Daisy that when we go back home to visit my family again, my self-imposed dietary restrictions will be going out the window only for the duration of that trip. Yes, I will be eating White Castle on the drive when we pass one, and I will be getting pepperoni rolls and a few of the giant pepperoni pizzas from the best pizza place in the state of West Virginia, and if my mother wants to cook for me, she is going to be able to do so without restrictions.
"You're going to make yourself so sick doing that," Daisy told me.
Yeah, well, we'll see.
Monday, March 22:
Working from home, day 223.
Payday for the wife.
I do not know where March has gone. But, it's spring now, officially and on the calendar, and to make sure all of us in Nebraska know it, it began raining last night and we're expected to get 2-3 inches of rain, in a near-constant fashion, through Wednesday-ish.
Daisy is working from home this week; this is good as one of her coworkers in the office was indeed just diagnosed as Covid-positive. I'm not exactly concerned; we'll have our vaccines soon enough and Daisy's parents are now fully-vaccinated. My own parents let me know that they've now gotten their first doses of the vaccine as well (they got the Pfizer one) and asked if we'd gotten ours yet.
"No," I replied. "But we're on two different registration lists to actually get them, and we're waiting because Nebraska is stupid."
That really sums up a lot of my feelings on the state, honestly. Like, there are wonderful people here, and Omaha is a thriving, beautiful city with almost anything I could want in it (except a Tim Hortons or a White Castle), but the state's leadership is Republican, backwards, and mentally-challenged on almost anything it can possibly take a stance on. It's like living in fucking Kansas all over again.
Case in point: our governor issued a press conference and made a statement to declare this past Saturday a "Meat on the Menu Day" simply because, well, he doesn't like vegetarians and vegans and their "agendas" since Nebraska is a major beef-producing state.
....look, I don't like the "radical vegan agenda" either, and I'm a vegetarian married to a vegan -- I have a lot of problems with people who use dietary choices to push agendas (it's the same problems I have with religion) and I've openly told Daisy before that her favorite magazine, VegNews, which we subscribed to for several years running absolutely has a radical vegan agenda (that agenda is "go out and convert people") instead of welcoming people with open arms who are researching, transitioning, or are vegan-curious (yes, I am aware of the comparisons here) and she has agreed with me on that statement...but the governor? Taking valuable time he should be governing to basically shame anyone who doesn't eat meat? That pisses me off.
This is also the same governor who said a few weeks ago that legalizing marijuana would kill babies and children. And people voted for this guy. We've got roughly a year and a half before we can vote him out of office.
Tuesday, March 23: Working from home, day 224
Wednesday, March 24: Working from home, day 225
Thursday, March 25: Working from home, day 226
I would like to note that yesterday, March 24, is the one year anniversary of when my team slowly began migrating to work from home. I was one of the first, and others slowly followed. By about a month or so later all of us were remoting in. By the summer, all of us had brought our computers home and had become fully work-from-home employees.
Now, a year later, not much has changed. In the past year of isolation, I've probably gained fifteen pounds, have not gotten a haircut, have shaved (maybe) four times, but I have never been happier that I don't have to go to the office every day.
But, of course, it's not like everything is all good. This series of posts should make that evident. Working from home has created numerous other issues and problems, not all of which are easily remedied. I think I've covered most of those pretty well here over the course of the past year. However, I remain
This week has been fairly brutal, too. Last night at work left me frazzled and unable to focus. I think fraying at the edges would be a good description. The work week is rough on me and just makes me upset and feeling unwell. There's only so much I can do to counteract this. I used to love Thursdays -- they were my fun day of the week and let me coast into the weekend, back when we had the staffing we needed and the workload was much less than it is now. Now they make me miserable and just...angry? I guess?
My hair is now long enough to where I could tie it back, if I wanted to, with hair ties and gel. I don't want to. It's the longest I've had my hair in several years, and I really can't wait to get it cut this coming spring or early summer.
Friday, March 26:
Day off.
Payday for me.
I awakened in the evening hours (yes, I slept into the evening for the first time in a very long time, sleeping until after Daisy had gotten off work, even) to find a text from Daisy that we had appointments to get the vaccine -- in Iowa, on Tuesday afternoon, a 90 minute drive away.
Sigh. While I'm grateful to be able to get the vaccine, that's three hours on the road (round trip) and a night I'd absolutely have to take off work due to the travel time, lack of sleep involved, and possible vaccine side-effects. I told her it was fine, though not ideal for obvious reasons.
Daisy is on a much bigger push to get vaccinated as soon as possible than I am. While yes, I'd get the vaccine tomorrow if I were allowed to do so (stand by on that, all), as you know, I never leave the house unless I have to, I don't interact face to face with people other than, well, Daisy herself more than say...once a month, and with how fast Biden is rolling everything out, I am okay with waiting a few more weeks or a month or so to get it. It's not like half of the Republicans in this country are going to get it anyway, so how much is it really going to help society in the long run?
Daisy, also realizing the problems that three hours on the road in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon would pose, looked for alternative options. An hour later, she came into my room to tell me that she'd secured another appointment for us -- tomorrow morning, 11am, about 40 minutes away at a Hy-Vee grocery store pharmacy in Iowa, and wanted to know if I'd rather switch to that.
"Hell yes," I said. "Do it."
So she did, and tomorrow morning we will be jumping in the car and driving to a little town in Iowa, to a Hy-Vee grocery store (for those of you back east or outside of the midwest, Hy-Vee is basically the midwest version of Giant Eagle), to get our first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine -- yes, they told us which one we're getting. We'll be making the drive again three weeks from tomorrow to get the second dose as well. Yes, they already preset that second appointment for us. Iowa apparently actually has its shit together when it comes to giving vaccines -- as opposed to Nebraska, which totally doesn't.
So, I guess this means that for me and Daisy personally, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and life will slowly begin returning to normal. Or normal-ish, anyway, at least in the realm of social interaction and y'know, leaving the house to do things.
Daisy's parents, who have now both been fully vaccinated and are now past their two-week period it takes to build up the vaccine's full efficacy in the immune system, will eventually be going to Colorado for a few days to visit Daisy's sister's family -- who they haven't seen in over a year since the pandemic started. Aside from us, and that's only on an occasional basis, Daisy's parents haven't seen anyone other than the people at their doctors' offices and the occasional grocery store checkout person since this pandemic started, and both of them are aging rapidly.
In other news, over the past few nights this week we have now finished both Star Trek: Voyager as well as (finally) The West Wing. Both shows have left us drained emotionally and made us both cry multiple times over their final few episodes. Neither of us had watched through either series in their entirety before. Yes, even me, a man with a Starfleet tattoo on his arm, had never watched through Voyager.
I few nights ago, in response to not being able to get my Walmart order (making me so angry I was shaking) I did a delivery order from our local Kroger affiliate that was close to $200 and got us about 90% of the groceries we'd need for the next few weeks. There's still some stuff I couldn't get -- like string cheese and a few other small items -- but for the most part, I was able to obtain what I needed easily. We should be set for most foods for a while now.
Saturday, March 27:
Day off.
Vaccine day one.
Well, here we are -- our first vaccine day.
Yesterday, I got paid, and last week we filed our taxes. Adding to that was Daisy's pay from earlier this week and (most of) our stimulus check, and we suddenly found that we had a fuckton of money in our bank account. While our tax refunds hadn't been deposited yet, we did get the state refund back this morning (federal will likely drop in another week or two).
When I say a fuckton of money I mean enough to buy a decent used car made in the last decade if we so chose. It is really unusual for us to have much more in our bank account than we need to pay bills, the mortgage, and get groceries with.
Alas, this wasn't to last long. I made a massive Amazon order this morning (almost $300, but stuff I've been putting off buying for the better part of a year for some of it). The wife paid some bills and the mortgage, because that's still a thing, and moved about half of what we had left to savings. I'm going to do my best to convince her that we don't need to move the federal return to savings when it finally drops, because I actually like having some breathing space in the bank account in the event that I, say, want to order a bunch of pizzas or an unexpected bill/expense pops up that needs to be taken care of.
So, this morning, we drove across the border into Iowa to get our first vaccine. Let's recap the experience.
The little town where we had our vaccine appointment was about 30 miles away. 30 miles is nothing out here in the midwest once you get outside the cities; it's a delightful country drive. We got to the little town and began looking for the Hy-Vee store in which we were supposed to get the vaccine.
"In 400 feet, you are approaching your destination on the right," Daisy's GPS gleefully chirped at us. Except there was nothing there. Iowa is fairly flat, and we did not see a Hy-Vee store anywhere around us anywhere, and we could see most of the town.
Daisy recalculated the route and apparently we'd passed it.
"Bullshit," I said, "there's no goddamn Hy-Vee here."
No, there wasn't. But there was a very tiny, nondescript brick building that was a Hy-Vee Pharmacy.
You've gotta be goddamn kidding me, right?
Okay, whatever, it's fine. We went inside to find maybe five people total inside the building, which was maybe the size of the lower level of our house, possibly smaller. We let the pharmacy staff know we were there, and after a maybe three-minute wait, we were both called on and taken beyond a curtain to get the shot.
Our pharmacy tech was very sweet and kind, maybe late 20s/early 30s, and apparently she and I have the same birthday (I didn't ask the year). She asked which one of us wanted to go first. Daisy volunteered because she wanted me to photo-document the occasion -- getting the vaccine was and is very emotional for her. From her Facebook post about it:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is my wife.
I did take pictures, which she used to accompany that post. For Daisy's privacy I won't post those pictures here.
I asked if the pharmacy tech minded being in the shot, because if she didn't I would make sure to take it from angles where she wouldn't be identifiable (I am always very respectful and understand that some people never want their pictures to be taken). She laughed at this and told us to make her famous on the internet. Then she put a special little membrane disc over Daisy's arm, and jammed a what looked like a 1.5-inch needle deep into it. I focused on Daisy's face when I took the photos, not the metal being rammed into her arm. It took maybe five seconds, and then she was all done.
My turn:
Sorry for how fat I look in this photo, but I am what I am. If you zoom in close in that photo, you can see the length of the needle itself.
We had to stick around for about 15 minutes to make sure we weren't going to have any allergic reactions to the vaccine or anything like that, but once that time was up, we were allowed to go. Here's what our experiences getting the vaccine was like:
1. For one, it's not like a flu shot, which (when I get it at least) I barely feel. No, this one you definitely feel going in, it is a deep sting. Not like super painful, but oh yeah, you feel it. Less than the pain of a tattoo, but not by a lot. Keep in mind that I also didn't think my tattoo hurt that much.
2. Within about five or so minutes, you will feel it moving through your bloodstream. Daisy and I both felt it radiating down our arms first, but I actually felt it enter my bloodstream and circulatory system through the heart and lungs shortly thereafter. I had a brief (like, less than 15 seconds) feeling of lightheadedness as well when this happened, but it quickly passed and I began to feel normal again.
3. The discs they inject you through are to seal the vaccination site because apparently you bleed when this goes in you. I bled a decent amount (1-3 big drops) out my vaccine hole, which (because it's an air-free environment under that little disc) didn't flow or dry up until I took the disc off hours later. I don't think I've ever bled more than a pinprick at the site of any other vaccination I've ever had. Daisy bled too.
4. For some people -- Daisy amongst them -- there will come a wave of dizziness and fatigue, and/or heavy nausea, that will strike about half an hour after the vaccine. I didn't get this. Daisy did. She said it hit her on the drive home.
5. Finally, about 12-15 hours later, my arm is now sore down into the muscle where they gave me the shot. This is typical for pretty much any vaccine for me, but the Covid-19 vaccine seems like less of an ache than say, my flu shot or tetanus booster gave me. So that's interesting, at least.
So far, neither of us have had any actual adverse reactions. I've been told it's the second dose that knocks you on your ass anyway and makes you dead to the world for about 24 hours. Our second doses are scheduled for April 17. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. Probably to be administered by the same lady, even. I will be taking the day after my second dose off work as a precautionary measure -- I don't care how I feel, I could use another Sunday off anyway.
Also of note -- I found out this afternoon (well after we'd already gotten our first doses and after our second appointment had been set up) that I guess by the end of next week, Nebraska is finally following in the footsteps of many other states and will be lifting all vaccine restrictions -- anyone age 16 and older can get them anytime at any place carrying/administering them.
We came home and I got something to eat while Daisy baked a dessert for the parents. Once that was done, we took it over to them and spent some time with them into the mid-afternoon hours, stopped at an actual Hy-Vee to pick up a few things on the way home, and then came home and I passed out for my Saturday nap.
I don't know if I've talked about the Saturday nap here before, but now is as good a time as any. As my sleep schedule is fucked on my days off, I generally sleep all day or most of the day on Friday, get up and spend the evening with Daisy and eat dinner, and then at some point I pass out again either in my chair or if I decide to sleep a bit with Daisy. This means I always wake up on Saturday mornings between 4am and 8am or so, and my sleep schedule is more fucked than it was previously. To solve this and right it again for the coming week of work, I almost always take a nap on Saturday afternoon/evening for a few hours, which resets everything and allows me to stay up for most, if not all, of Saturday night and sleep throughout the day on Sunday, thus righting my schedule to work overnights for the week. It's a complex and thoroughly asinine system, but it works.
I got up and (per my request) the wife had made me another huge pot of her vegan chicken noodle soup, which was just as good this time around as it was last week. She doesn't like the soup much herself, but she knows I love it so she is happy to make it for me. I made the joke that she'll probably like it more by this time next weekend when she's making a third pot of it for me. She didn't find this as amusing as I hoped she would.
Sunday, March 28:
Working from home, day 227.
Day one after the vaccine and I still feel fine. Arm is still sore, but eh. I haven't had any adverse reactions that I've noticed. My friend Jane told us that if we have fatigue and/or any weird aches and pains, that ibuprofen and lots of water apparently helps. I tend to drink a lot of liquid anyway to keep my gout in check, and the wife always has a giant glass/mug of water within arm's reach, so I think we're good there.
President Biden has updated his goal of 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days to 200 million vaccines in his first 100 days, and I think that's not only admirable but very, very possible. By the end of April, most anyone over 16 who wants the vaccine should be able to get it or should already be vaccinated, and if that's the case I expect infection numbers to plummet to the floor. When that happens, as you know, life will return to normal almost immediately.
But is that a good thing?
This is a question I've been asking myself frequently over the course of this past year. Do we really just want a return to the status quo in most circumstances, or so we want to move onward and upward? Like, I don't personally know what the overall endgame is for most of society. I don't necessarily want to find a new job right now, but if my job tells me we're all moving back to an office setting at some point, you bet your ass I will be leaving that job before I have to set foot in an office for them again. I told the wife I'll go work at the gas station across the street before I work in an office again for this company. It's one thing to be constantly "surrounded" by people in a virtual setting; it's quite another to be forced into close quarters with them in person, and instead of receiving instant messages of questions on issues/tickets, having them come to you one by one and forcing you to deal with them face to face. Nah fam, not a fan of that. Wasn't a fan of that before we left the office setting when I had half the number of people on my team, and am definitely not a fan of it now that I have double that many.
But as for the rest of society? Yeah, I want movie theaters, bars, restaurants, and stores to open to full capacity again. I want to be able to go on vacation. But I also want our country, and the world, to learn something from this experience, because we don't seem to learn much from history or past mistakes anymore. Aside from the obvious -- that working from home is far easier and more efficient for a lot of people/jobs, and ordering groceries online to be delivered is pretty great and should become the norm rather than the exception...I'd also like the country to become...ehhhh...less self-centered? I'd like us to be able to prepare for this sort of thing to happen again and have contingencies in place for it, because -- believe me, it will happen again.
The night at work is relatively quiet, and I use this quiet to complete a boatload of yearly compliance training that has now come due again; I encouraged my agents to do the same in their own downtime. The quiet is remarkable because it is a full moon, which usually dictates that my team gets assfucked by crazy/stupid issues all night long. My executive director gave me a task to take care of almost as soon as I got in, and I fulfilled said task on schedule and then got the fuck outta there when my work was completed.
Monday, March 29:
Working from home, day 228.
It is 77 degrees and very windy in Omaha today, and the first thing I did when I got up this afternoon was open up the windows, turn on the ceiling fans, and put new lavender oil in the diffuser in the kitchen. The wife is working in the office this week, so it's just me and the cats in the house today. And even though I got up early (before 3pm, in fact) I have...energy. Now, part of that is probably because I made an iced coffee and chugged 2/3 of it, and made an energy drink with my Sodastream that I have now chugged 3/4 of as well, but a lot of it is the weather and warmth. It invigorates me. The cold, the winter, snow and ice all sap my energy and will to live (part of why I desperately want to move to a southern, coastal climate), but the spring always makes me perk up, makes me feel better.
I spend the afternoon hours taking care of various things around the house, such as unboxing one of my two Amazon deliveries of the day (the second isn't here yet), doing a load of my laundry, chatting with my boss (he's not just my boss, but a friend as well) for a while as he's already at work for the day, and for the first time in a long time, actually enjoying life. I feel accomplished and mostly happy at the moment, and as these feelings don't come around very often, I'm riding the wave as long as I can -- especially as the night at work may suck (I am expected to be down at least 2-3 people, maybe more, on the overnight shift tonight).
Last night I put in PTO for the day after my second vaccine, as many have said that second dose knocked them on their ass for 24 hours or so after getting it. I'm not taking any chances and 100% want an extra Sunday night off. Even if I don't get sick from it, it will be a celebratory weekend anyhow because, hey, fully vaccinated. An extra Sunday night off also gives me something to look forward to, big time.
Daisy and I will have to discuss vacation plans soon. I think discussing them now is a little premature, and I told her so this weekend (in the car on the drive home from getting our first vaccines, actually). As you may recall, we missed out on a trip to WV last fall because of Covid, and we didn't get to go anywhere/do anything for my birthday, Christmas, our anniversary, or her birthday -- all days where we generally make some sort of celebratory plans. This year, Daisy and I celebrate seven years of being married and our anniversary falls on Memorial Day, so we already have the day off. She's taken a few days off around her birthday a month later, too. I'm not sure we should make any travel plans for anything until we can see what the country is going to look like closer to those points. I'm not going to put a $200 hotel stay somewhere on my credit card only to have to cancel it later, if you get what I'm saying, and I don't want to make grandiose plans to visit home to see family and friends only to have to cancel it later because not enough people got vaccinated and we've become a germ farm of a country again.
Again, I believe that (even though it'll never happen) we should absolutely make vaccinations mandatory.
The overnight at work is, frankly, a fucking nightmare. Monday nights generally suck anyway, but I either made or took probably thirty phone calls, filled out two very lengthy reports, took care of the shared mailbox and assignment duties for probably half the night, sent somewhere in the realm of 40-50 emails, and got a multi-day executive-vice-president issue resolved, making both my executive director as well as myself both look like goddamn heroes. As I told a few coworkers last night, my mission during the overnight hours was to impress the fuck out of the big boss -- and apparently I succeeded in that mission, as I got a thanks and a well done from him when the hero-making issue was resolved (a "thanks" or "well done" in itself is a rarity from him; getting both is almost unheard of). I even worked half an hour late to help said executive director get some traction on another issue that's completely outside our program just out of the goodness of my heart, and slipped out the back door quickly afterwards.
Tuesday, March 30: Working from home, day 229.
Wednesday, March 31: Working from home, day 230.
As you know, Tuesday is generally my "hustle" day, where I get a ton of stuff accomplished in the afternoon hours upon waking up, before the wife gets home. Today that did not happen. I fell asleep in my chair this morning shortly after the wife left for work, had a bad dream (I can't remember what) and woke up around 10, moved to the bedroom where I slept until 3...and it was very hard to wake up and force myself to get out of bed and get to the shower to get my day rolling.
I did shower, though. I also fed the cats, took the trash and recycling out to the curb, made a big cup of coffee (it's still sitting downstairs untouched, but the point is that I made it), opened up the house again to let some air flow through, got the mail, brought in the Amazon delivery (laundry detergent pods), took care of all of my work email, reached out to check in with one of my employees who's experiencing a family emergency, took allergy pills, and finally refined and placed a Walmart order for delivery on Thursday night. I say Thursday night because I wasn't about to pay the extra money to have it delivered in two hours only to have the order get canceled out again if they were buttholes about it. I can wait two days for the groceries within it, it's fine.
I keep forgetting that this is Easter week. Like, it doesn't affect me because I'm an atheist and couldn't give less of a shit about it, but it probably means that this weekend at work is going to be dead quiet, especially Sunday night. Easter is not one of the holidays our company gives off work because it's a Sunday, and because the vast majority of our company's employees are Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm workers -- so anyone outside that box pretty much gets the shaft on anything and everything. It used to bother me that we didn't get Easter off, but at this point I'm so jaded and bitter at our parent company that eh, it's not worth devoting burning calories to it. I'm so burnt out that hoping stuff will be somewhat quieter than usual is all I can really hope for.
Both Tuesday and Wednesday nights were nightmares at work; I have not had a single lunch hour this week, with the exception of about 30 minutes on Sunday night/early Monday morning that was interrupted rudely by my agents needing help on multiple issues, repeatedly. I'm incredibly burnt out, but am suffering from a "I need to do everything" complex to show/prove my worth in that place -- especially when so many others seem to be completely checked-out or otherwise seem to exude in multiple ways they they don't give a shit about the work. The better I look, the worse they look in comparison and the more likely I am to actually get some sort of gratitude, raises based on performance review (if that ever happens again) and promotion/permanent retention possibilities. While I don't want to work in my current job forever, I desperately need it right now.
And so ends the month of March. It was a weird one.
On to April....
