[Heidi]

I didn’t make it to the gym, and I still haven’t done the dishes, but I made a payment on a credit card.

If I’m going to be this wiped out from work, the least I can do is get out of debt.

 

Also, in the stillness this evening, it became clear that the path of wisdom is to take only one class this term, no matter how interesting or important the other class is. Let us learn from the mistake I made this time last year in not dropping the TikTok class.

[Heidi]

Yesterday I woke up just in time to go to work, and then during my morning break I got to talk with Jane. These conversations are great, and they really help me feel centered and connected more than I had expected they would. I am glad I have them. 

 

Yesterday was long at work, and today will be as well. 

I took advantage of a break to pop some ground beef in the slow cooker with Worcestershire sauce and beef broth. I set it on high and a few hours later it was perfect. I warmed up some of the quinoa and had a lovely bowl of it. I don’t know exactly how much weight is lost during the cooking process, but I ended up eating half of the beef in one sitting, and I’m not the least bit sorry.

 

I did a quick inventory of the freezer, and I will be out of salmon in the next fortnight or so, and I have a lot of chicken that I’ve passed up in the past few months. So I’m working on a new recipe for the chicken, hoping that I can find something savory enough that I am actually inclined to eat it. Right now I’m thinking of combining vinegar and soy sauce (with onion and garlic of course) into a pre-cook marinade that becomes the cooking/steaming sauce as well. Stay tuned.

 

I was wiped out at the end of the work day, and slowly made my way around the apartment, neatening up and doing dishes and the like. 

I was too brain-dead to watch television, so I didn’t.

 

There’s this odd thing that has been happening for a week or more now: I get ready for bed, lie down, get drowsy and then suddenly have to get up and go to the bathroom. Then I’m up, and it takes another hour or so to settle. This happens on repeat until the very early morning, and i am getting only a few hours of sleep before rolling awake just in time to log in for work. I think I’m going to have to go to the gym in the evenings or something to help solidify the “going to sleep for real now” thing.

 

I’m sure the uncertainties with work and with my daughter are as significant a factor as anything else, so I’m definitely thinking that some sauna and post-sauna meditation might be just the key for breaking this unwanted habit, especially since it’s affecting my sleep pattern enough that it is effectively eclipsing my morning gym time. We’ll see how this goes.

 

This morning the weather is weird and my head is weird and work feel ridiculous. 

The contentious coworker is making things difficult again, but this time for people other than me. I don’t see how this is a good approach, but I certainly wasn’t consulted.

 

I am meeting with my new advisor over lunch, and I’m looking forward to it very much.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Given your proclivity for soup, your inclination for using the slow cooker, and your predilection for eating veggies, why not chicken vegetable soup? 

[Heidi]

9 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Given your proclivity for soup, your inclination for using the slow cooker, and your predilection for eating veggies, why not chicken vegetable soup? 

This is a good suggestion, but in the main i find that i 1. Cannot make a small batch of soup that is actually yummy when it involves a meat and 2. Can’t seem to muster the motivation to eat leftover soup.

 

It’s after nine, and I’m only just starting to wind down from the day’s activities.

The meeting with Neal, my advisor, went long— 2 hours instead of the 45 minutes i had initially planned on—and then work was A Whole Thing until 5:30. I logged out and got a fresh notebook (I filed the last two pages while talking with Neal) and made some notes about the conversation while I still knew what my shorthand meant. That led me down the path to opening a document and making some structural notes, which turned into a draft for the proposal. It’s no where near complete, but it’s in enough of a solid state that I need feedback to make sure I’m on the right track for the deliverables.

 

Also, I went out to see if one of the books I’d like to use in my research is available on kindle — it is, for $150. What the heck? Obviously, i did not buy it.

I still need to sign up for next week’s morning calls with Jane, and then I think I’m too tired even to watch anything. I cannot take any more data in; I’ve hit saturation point.

 

May you have peace this day, friends.

[Heidi]

Today is a day and I'm doing it.

 

I slept on schedule-ish, which means that I got more than 4 hours before logging in, and there was very little stabby-cotton head stuff as I woke up. This is good.

I cut up the chicken while the morning kettle boiled, and put it (the chicken, not the kettle) in the crock pot with some broth and set it on high. It ended up making a very nice and tender batch of cubed chicken that i added to some quinoa warmed up with a bit of the broth. This is all wonderful, and I'm glad I added more broth than is strictly needed; I'll use it in the coming days when steaming and microwaving. Many thanks to @Tanktimus the Encourager for reminding me abotu how amazing soup is and giving me the inspiration to make JustChicken soup in the crockpot.

 

Everything at work today feels as though I'm in a hole. There's been almost no communication yet, and the one thing that came across my desk to test was buggy, so it got sent back. The fun part is no one knew what environment it had been merged to, so I ended up asking the dev to sit with me as I tested it in all the environments, including on his local machine -- different bugs in each place, but no place without bugs, so it became pretty straightforward to say "there are bugs" and send it back to development.

 

I'm tired.

I'm pretty sure I'm too tired to read, even though there are a half-dozen books that are calling to me for the dissertation. Top of the list is Development as Freedom by Sen. 

I am slow, like back in October when I felt like a mountain or an Ent.

Probably very little will get done today beyond logging out.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Glad I could help with the culinary front.

I hope you get plenty of rest.

[Sovalis]

I hope you get some restoration, Heidi. 

[Heidi]

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Glad I could help with the culinary front.

I hope you get plenty of rest.

Thank you. Friends make everything better, especially food.

 

12 hours ago, Sovalis said:

I hope you get some restoration, Heidi. 

I did get restored.  thank you.

 

I logged out and was wiped out, and basically just knocked around looking at cabins online and played with graph paper ideas for the better part of the evening. Then I read the news for a bit and was nearly myself again, and I decided to open up the research proposal that I had written back in April. How can that seem like a million years ago? Anyway, it was better than I had thought, and I ended up tweaking this and that, making a change here and then there while I waited for the House of Representatives to reconvene for yet another attempt to elect a speaker of the House. By the time the voting started, I had found my stride, and started writing for real. It was nice; I feel like I lost sight of everything scholarly inside me last spring, and I hadn’t expected to find it again. In ways, I had nearly forgotten what it felt like. Epiphany, indeed. I worked on it until I was happy with what I had, and I’ll send the final document to my advisor tomorrow afternoon. I’m very glad I have nothing scheduled this weekend. 

 

I am content.

[Heidi]

Despite not getting to sleep until after 3, it is turning into a Very Good Day™

I woke up when the phone rang and talked with my friend for nearly 30 minutes—usually we only have tie to talk for 15 minutes, tops, and lately it was more like a minute or two, and we missed some days. This happens at the holidays, but we both feel the lack.

 

After the call I read and wrote some more, and I’m feeling very centered about where this project is going. 

Around 1, I noticed I was getting grumpy, so I put on my leggings and gym shirt and went to the gym where I walked half a mile and then did a long-ish session in the steam room and sauna. I was pretty wiped out, as you might imagine, as I got dressed, but on the walk back home I started to feel like a real person again, and this is nice.

 

On the way into the sauna I weighed myself.  When inflammation hits, it is pretty evident in the puffiness all over, and there’s a water weight (i call it cortisol weight) that goes with it. 135 was a good weight for my frame, and the overall feeling better benefits were when I weighed 125 (back in May 2016, before The Troubles started).  I weighed 146 this afternoon (down from 150 in November-December) and this is good, this is the right direction. More importantly, I can feel the cortisol/stress/inflammation leaving my system. 

 

I heated up a cup of the quinoa and a some leftover ground beef and ate it while I made a few more notes to the annotated bibliography section that I’m putting together. I was still pretty hungry when it was gone, so I seeded half a pomegranate into a bowl, added some blueberries, ginger, and granola, covered it with yogurt and it’s just amazing. 

 

I’ve had two bottles of water so far and i’m halfway through a third.

 

Also, I tried to move the IKEA boxes and there is absolutely no way that I’m getting them upstairs on my own. They each weigh nearly as much as I do.

So. I will need to find some help.

But for now, and for today, there is peace and contentment.

I might watch television, might read, or might just take a nap.

Life is good.

[Heidi]

Shortly after I posted, I was got a notification that the gym was closing for the rest of the day due to a water break. I thought good thoughts about having already gone to the gym and drifted off to sleep in contentment.

 

Friends, that was a powerful nap. 

Beyond the time (two + hours), it really feels like I got restored. This is nice.

 

I woke up to many emails and updates about the water situation because apparently the pipe that shut down the gym is the water main that runs to my building. Not only do we not have water, but there is also water flooding into the basement where the storage is, so the likelihood is that the books in boxes on the floor of the small storage compartment are completely soaked. I’m not going down to look tonight, as there are dudes with construction equipment everywhere and my presence at this moment will not help or solve anything that can’t wait until tomorrow.

 

I am very glad I have my water system set up. I have about a gallon and a half on hand at the moment, which is enough to get me through tomorrow for tea and drinking water, but the whole hand washing, bathing, dishwashing routine is of course completely borked (that’ s the technical term, very specific). I’m hopeful that perhaps we will have a solution by morning, since it’s a city water main and not just a property owner moment. Or at least by tomorrow evening.

 

Every now and again the universe sends me reminders about why I like living in the middle of the city, and this is one of them. If I were in a less urban building, or out in the country, this would be up to me to fix, and have a much lower involvement for the water folks, who would happily shut the water off at the street and tell me to let them know when I’ve fixed everything and they’ll turn it back on. Despite having no water at the moment, i feel curiously supported. If it goes on for longer than a day, I’ll feel a bit more than merely inconvenienced, but still, this is a good message from the universe.

 

I considered watching a movie, but i don’t have anything on my watch list just now, and I’m feeling very centered. I might play with graph paper, and i might make a few more reading notes for the thesis (here’s the link in case you want to follow along). I’m hopeful that by the end of the challenge I’ll have the notes written from this particular book, which forms the framework for my investigation into What We Owe Students: An investigation on basic justice in US education. It took a bit of forever to figure out how exactly I was going to approach this topic, since it’s big and has a lot of moving parts, and it feels terribly important to me and that emotion can often eclipse the analysis for me. Now that I’ve taken a couple steps even further back, I see that what I’m analyzing is basic justice for students (or the abject lack thereof), and that means that I can turn to a very precise and particular analysis framework, and this makes me feel very centered.  It’s the difference between having a bunch of neighborhood level maps and a national one that shows the highways but not the side roads. I’m looking forward to the journey on this and hoping my committee likes it too.

 

Zero week was a bit of a mixed bag, with very few steps and not much gym time. I ate well enough, but barely enough, and my sleep was all over the map. Work was good (I kept my calm and my balance while the Contentious Coworker spewed her chaos), and my participation with my micro-community was good. There was no visit with my daughter this week, as scheduled, and the apartment didn’t get any better, but didn’t get much worse, either.  In a lot of ways, zero week feels like it was a full stop before slowly heading in the right direction. 

 

Here’s to a great Week one.

 

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I hope your books are OK. Glad you got a good nap.

10 hours ago, Heidi said:

Here’s to a great Week one.

 

We just finished week 1.

[Heidi]

2 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I hope your books are OK. Glad you got a good nap.

We just finished week 1.

Wait, wot?

 

 

Here’s to a great week 2!!

 

I got comments back from my new advisor, and wow the difference in tone and substance of the comments is dramatic. I am so very glad I switched!! Deciding on a topic is like planting a whole orchard so that you can describe the bite of a single apple from a particular tree.

 

Looks like I’ll be taking the sliver of “what does it mean to be a public school” and parsing it through the “charter schools — how public are they, really” framework. I dig this a lot. On a scale from one to Sheldon, how nerdly is it to be fired up about one’s dissertation?

 

A friend and I had brunch scheduled, but she has to deal with a family situation, so I’m knocking around wondering if I’m going out or (more likely) staying in and reading. The water is back on (thank you, water dudes!!), and it’s possible that all I’m interested in is a pot of tea and a book until the sauna opens at one.

 

 

[Heidi]

Without any context, I'm just going to drop:

My boss asked me to do something so upsetting and yet hilarious that my Fitbit registered 12 minutes of "aerobics."

 

In other news, I am very glad I went to the gym this morning.

[Jarric]

14 hours ago, Heidi said:

Without any context, I'm just going to drop:

My boss asked me to do something so upsetting and yet hilarious that my Fitbit registered 12 minutes of "aerobics."

 

In other news, I am very glad I went to the gym this morning.

 

That sounds awful, but also kind of hilarious that your Fitbit registered it. Hope it's not too bad.

[Sovalis]

Now I'm super curious. I hope it's nothing that compromises you! Especially if it gives ground to the Contentious Coworker! 

[Heidi]

8 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

That sounds awful, but also kind of hilarious that your Fitbit registered it. Hope it's not too bad.

It will all sort itself out becuase, as always, there is no fight and I have no enemies.

1 hour ago, Sovalis said:

Now I'm super curious. I hope it's nothing that compromises you! Especially if it gives ground to the Contentious Coworker! 

You knew exactly where this was going, and yes, it did bump into my integrity and wow, was that a moment or what?
I found my way through, as I so often do, by sitting, and listening with my heart open, and letting myself say no in as many ways as i needed to in order to see if there was a path revealed that was built from yes. all will be well.

 

In other news, there is more work-related goodness.

The team wanted to schedule some time to talk about setting up Jenkins.

They meant

I heard

 

and said

"At least I have chicken."

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

2 hours ago, Heidi said:

and said

"At least I have chicken."

I’m coming up with thirty-two point three three uh, repeating of course,

[Heidi]

1 hour ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I’m coming up with thirty-two point three three uh, repeating of course,

Thank you. Thank you very much. 

 

Today was one of those days where everything goes comically, subtly weird, but it started and ended great, so I’m going to call it a Very Good Day.

I went to the gym this morning and ended up walking with one of the old-timers — we did a mile before we knew it — and then went to the steam room and sauna and was in a great space when the day started. I talked with a friend about the WeirdAssignmentFromWork and we talked it through until I had a paragraph recommending the Contentious Coworker as an IT Rock Star that didn’t in any way compromise my soul or integrity and wasn’t mean-spirited compliments. 

 

Yes, friends, that was the assignment: write a couple paragraphs recommending her as an IT Rock Star.

SetPhasersOnStun.gif

What I did not say:

My first response, when I could find the air to breathe, was

“That hasn’t been the experience I’ve had with her, sir.”

It felt awkward, dangerous, possibly a trap.

I’m not surprised that it registered as an aerobic workout.

Completing the assignment with grace, dignity, and integrity was nothing short of a spiritual experience, and I mentioned that when I delivered. 

My boss was receptive to my commentary, and said “I think you’ve had more of a Mommy Dearest experience with her.” Friends, he didn’t know how close he was to the truth, and my reply was proof that he’s not the only one with phasers, here:
“Yeah, but who gave her all those hangers?”

 

It was a good conversation, in the end, and also he told me to stop “wasting my time” on one of her pet projects that is nothing but an artificial, deliberate construction for being mean. Happily, I said I would.

 

Other dumb-weird stuff was dumb-weird: just the small things that haunt those of us in the IT world when it’s as though you spelled your own name wrong or did your locker combination backwards, or did it the right way and then forgot to pull-to-open. The broad moments of the day were good.

 

After work I logged out and started driving to the school where Vivian would have her concert, and the jeep started overheating and then I remembered that I had meant to drop the jeep off yesterday at the mechanic’s, but had forgotten, and they were closed so it was too late to call, so I pulled into the lot, dropped the key in the drop spot, and I’ll call in the morning to let them know I  have been an airhead all week.

 

I got an Uber to the school and arrived in plenty of time, and started wandering around trying to find the auditorium. No one was around, except the swim meet kids, and I double checked the original email only to find that friends, i had not just uber’d to the wrong school, i had gone to the wrong side of town. I scheduled an Uber to the right school, got there a few minutes late, and then walked around the entire campus trying to get in. I probably got an extra mile in just trying to find any door that would open. Hilarious. By the time I found a gym parent who let me in, all I really wanted was a bathroom. As I was walking down the hall away from the gym, I ended up in a stream of band students, and Vivian was one of them. I followed along, since they were obviously coming out from her performance section of the evening, and she went to where her dad and stepmom were seated in the auditorium. Seating was packed. There wasn’t even a seat that they saved for Vivian, let alone any place for me. She talked with them and then needed to go get her saxophone, so I asked her if I could walk with her and talk a minute while she did that. I asked if her feelings would be hurt if I left since she had already played, and she said no that was fine. In the library, where the instruments were, we talked a bit more and it was nice, actually. I walked back with her until we met up with her dad and then said goodbye and went back outside, got an Uber again, with the same driver again, and we ended up talking about food the whole trip, especially lamb and baklava, and by the time I got into the apartment I was ravenous. (The extra 2,000 steps in the brisk air probably assisted the appetite, too). I ate and am overall feeling very happy. 

 

The tally for steps as of now is over 8100 for the day. I have eaten well and plentifully. There has been much water.

And, because the universe loves me and wants me to be happy, I found out that last week was not, in fact, the last episode of Leverage: Redemption and there’s a new episode that dropped this evening. As soon as I’m done with the dishes and in my nightgown, I’m hitting play and checking in on where the Little Red Food Truck goes next.

 

 

 

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Sorry about the comedy of errors with the concert, glad everything worked out ok.

Was the IT star thing some sort of bless those who curse you thing, a "corrective action" way to get you to appreciate someone you don't like, or something stupid that got handed down to your boss that rolled downhill to you?

[Sovalis]

14 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Sorry about the comedy of errors with the concert, glad everything worked out ok.

Was the IT star thing some sort of bless those who curse you thing, a "corrective action" way to get you to appreciate someone you don't like, or something stupid that got handed down to your boss that rolled downhill to you?

Yes to knowing all of this, please. 

 

What a day! I'm so proud of you for navigating it with grace and integrity and your fabulous sense of humour! I hope you are cozy and rest righteously tonight. 

[Scaly Freak]

44 minutes ago, Heidi said:

a paragraph recommending the Contentious Coworker as an IT Rock Star that didn’t in any way compromise my soul or integrity and wasn’t mean-spirited compliments

 

Well, technically, if you want to nitpick, this is very non-specific as to which rock star you are supposed to compare her to.... 

 

 

[Heidi]

19 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Sorry about the comedy of errors with the concert, glad everything worked out ok.

Was the IT star thing some sort of bless those who curse you thing, a "corrective action" way to get you to appreciate someone you don't like, or something stupid that got handed down to your boss that rolled downhill to you?

No, friend. It's that he truly does want to put her forward for the IT Rock Star award that the company has (for permanent employees). As part of the conversation, I said "I do understand that she's a rock star to you, sir." This was definitely an exercise of blessing those who vex you, but I think my boss revealed just how blind he is to the depth and danger of the vexation. I do not, in the main, get vexed in professional circumstances becuase, in the main, i simply do not care about non-work issues. So, if someone has my contempt, it's earned, and it's earned on professional grounds.

19 hours ago, Sovalis said:

What a day! I'm so proud of you for navigating it with grace and integrity and your fabulous sense of humour! I hope you are cozy and rest righteously tonight. 

Thank you.  It really is all a comedy show, and I got over 8500 steps in the process -- what's not to love?

I slept very well indeed.

18 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Well, technically, if you want to nitpick, this is very non-specific as to which rock star you are supposed to compare her to.... 

 

 

You get me. My first candidate was John Simon Richie.

 

Today is a good day for me personally although there are other issues afoot that will be contentious for people not-me.

I went to the gym, walked with the same old-timer again, and we enjoyed it. They mile was over before I knew it. I like this.

After a trip through the steam room and sauna, I logged in and work was good -- the release is ready to ship tomorrow, and there was a meeting with new skills to learn and tools to play with, one of which I put to use before the end of the day.  Sadly, one of the team members I work with is having her last day, a casualty of the contentious coworker's contentiousness. The only surprising thing is that it took this long. Keep watching this space, as I suspect some more changes to be quietly coming in the next week or two.

 

There is a bruhaha brewing about visitation and the like. Not getting into details yet, but you know there will be some.

 

I have my first thing for classes due tonight -- two different one-pagers-- so i'm off to go write those and turn them in. FitBit says I have 4500 steps, and I think I cango out of my way and make sure it's 5000 by bedtime, no problem. Given the teeth-grinding bruhaha, I might hit the sauna before bed if I get the one-pagers submitted before 8.

 

May you have peace this day, friends.

[Heidi]

Well, friends, I made it through the critical reading and have five pages of notes from which to cull the papers for this evening. The class is on medical anthropology, and I’m pretty sure that my favorite reading note will not make it into either paper, but you never know:

Body-as-Machine and disease-as-combat rhetoric combine to depict  us as “fighting” disease [“kick cancer’s ass!”], complete with victory celebrations [“I beat Parkinson’s!”] and a sense that the patient ought not “surrender” to being ill. The opposite of aging is dying young, and I think I’d prefer to “surrender” to aging, thank you, despite the inevitable decrepitude that comes along with advanced old age. The image of a hale, hearty, beaming, 20 - 25 year old is not, in fact, the pinnacle of human existence. Doctors have become the Leonardo DiCaprios of well-being: trading out aging models for the latest young thing and claiming it’s somehow an upgrade.

 

The kerfuffle-cum-brouhaha is underway. I’m not sure what my next steps are, but I’m guessing it likely will not be of the shrinking-violet variety.

 

Because the universe loves me and wants me to be happy, the spiritual exercise of yesterday reminded me in no uncertain terms that there is no fight and I have no enemies. I’m interested to see how this current spate plays out. Just because I don’t have any enemies doesn’t mean I have any allies, either, and I am taking a very measured survey of the landscape at hand.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Just because you have no enemies doesn't mean no enemies have you. Good job not playing their game. 

[Heidi]

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Just because you have no enemies doesn't mean no enemies have you. Good job not playing their game. 

Thanks. The Way of the Spirit is not for the faint of heart.

I keep finding that the more that I engage at a spiritual level (from the contentious coworker to anything else), the more I'm given opportunities to deepen my spiritual engagement.

 

I heard back from the mechanic.

The jeep has a cracked head, which is just some cosmic irony. The Universe is making puns, now.

My mechanic no longer does these sorts of repairs, so I'm sitting with this,  unsure of how to navingate this new development.

No decision needs to be made right now, or even today. There is time to feel my way forward.

 

I've decided to scout around for a professional organizer to help with the apartment. 

It's not so much that I don't know what to do, it's that I do not have the physical or energy capacity to enact what will likely be a process of moving everything (yes, everything) out and bringing it back into the apartment in a more optimal way. 

I do not have to do everything myself.

Asking for help in difficult situations is success, not failure.

 

The Way will open.