Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Bursting with ideas




In the past, couldn't understand how manic depressives enjoyed their condition, because back before I was medicated, I lived much more in the lows than the highs. Now that I've been properly medicated, and am currently living on about a third of my normal meds, I see the allure. The highs are nice; I feel happy and strong, and my brain turns on big-time.
Examples:

  • Instead of cluttering the apartment with both of the garage cabinets I have my eye on, if just the bottom one is in good shape, bringing that to the apartment as a pantry, and placing the chopping block on top, will free up counter space in kitchen proper...


  • If we can't afford to move in or out of town come baby-time, maybe moving to a new apartment within our current complex...

Man, these mood swings are a blast (she said sarcastically)...the politics of a flawed work system just made me look bad on the job and I'm livid, so I'll end this before I start ranting. Snuck both those pictures from other blogs for their calming influences...the pantry is from Two Frog Home, the green beans from Tiny Farm Blog. I aspire to both illustrations.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

New week

The debris has been cleared, and the retention ponds have been raised to their erosion lines...nice! Hard to think about the tropics as going through a drought, but we're in one half the time, so we're always grateful for the rains, even if they knock the crap out of us. Man, though, it's nice to see sun again!

Saturday was a wash, Sunday was half spent at Mom's...we're getting closer to garage sale time, so we invited Tom (Dad's LilBro) and Denyse up to go through the garage...which resulted in me bringing home some more clutter ::sigh:: so I played hookey on Monday and reorganized some of it. The dining area's still a disaster, but the bedroom's quite liveable...I stole SouleMama's idea of using vintage suitcases for storage, and reorganized my fabric stash, Craft garb, and some yarn into Mom's old suitcases. The result is easier access to key stuff, and a neat look to the bedroom. In the coming weeks, I'll be unpacking boxes with CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes and reorganizing them shelf-style, switching out end tables, and weaning myself back off the worktable in the dining area, as I'm hoping to switch it with an old typewriter table that's buried in Mom's garage, for use as a sewing machine table. Trying to embrace the less-is-more concept, but after 10 years of collecting, it's slow going...

And we just ain't discussing the Buy Nothing Challenge yet, cuz I SUCK at it...

Basil's about the only herb that's rallying out front, and the tomatoes are still poking along...I put 2 little stakes in the tomatoes, but they still ain't flowering so I'm going to have to revisit the idea of putting them out back part of the day...

Friday, August 22, 2008

August showers

Yeah, more like August deluge. August monsoon. Ever see The Perfect Storm? How 'bout Castaway, when the plane crashed? Yeah, try driving in it...

I'm so pissed to be at work today, this post will probably be one big vent. I drove through debris, flooding, dead traffic lights...it's not safe to be on the roads today. It's really got me thinking about this company I've given almost 9 years to...

We've postponed our weekend work at the house, and I'm glad, as I'll spend tomorrow assessing my career and replanting my aloes, which are drowning as we speak out on the porch. I woke up around 1 a.m. feeling some serious guilt about not moving those, as the winds and rain lashed against the apartment and my windows rattled. I took the herbs down from the ledge out front to be safe, and they're under enough cover where they haven't moved, but the aloe's taking a serious pummeling.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some hardcore sulking to catch up on...Happy friggin' Friday.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

I work for a very fancy meat market

BAH! My tight-assed company finally came to the conclusion that they needed to shut down operations this afternoon...

BUT...

They hate shutting down so much, they're a) making us use our own PTO if we do go home, and b) blackmailing people with time-and-a-half to stay on the phones...

Since a huge chunk of the phone folks are having to go home due to bridges closing, kids, etc., they're looking for folks who don't normally work the phones to do phone work too...

I haven't worked phones in 4 years. We can always use the money, but do I need 4 hours of solid stress to get it?

So now I feel like I'm not a team player because I'm electing to stay at work doing MY JOB!! 8½ years working for this sweatshop and I feel like my loyalty quotient just cut in half. Great.

Dumb-assed tropical storm.

Ahh...ok...vent over, moving on...

Ah, Florida...

Land of scattered hairstyles and fashion-unconscious footwear...

Thank goodness I got my hair trimmed up last week, cuz with these winds I'd be going out of my friggin' mind this week. It's nice having the wind blow your hair six ways to Sunday and know that it's probably falling back in place in a non-ugly fashion...

The footwear crack is cuz I'm wearing sneaks twice in a row this week to work, and while they may not go great or be my first choice with my slacks, they're comfy and handle the weather better than anything else in my closet right now. My company dress code is relaxed business casual, so I'm not breaking any rules, but being older and larger than a lot of the crowd here, I usually try to maintain some semblance of work fashion (I've mentioned before how I save my jeans for Fridays). Plus I tried wearing an old pair of shoes on Tuesday, and now I'm a poster child for blisters :(

This storm really pussed out on us here in Jacksonville..it could still turn, but I'm not worried personally, though I'm pretty sure I'm drowning my porch aloes, never got around to moving them...they haven't even closed the bridges, and the gusts only have to get up around 40 mph for that to happen. That basically shuts down the city, since the St. Johns River splits Jacksonville in half. Lucky me, my 10-minute commute goes nowhere near the river. Most folks who are ducking out on work have kids who are out of school...a good reminder to me of challenges to come (hopefully). We're trying again this month, and this time I'm armed with a triple-hormone regimen - so prayers to Husby if the mood swings kick in :)

Stay dry, y'all!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Soggy Wednesday

My reverse seasonal affective disorder kicks in with this weather...storms are exciting, so long as they behave themselves. And can you imagine being a kid in the Duval county school system, starting back to school on Monday only to have Wednesday and Thursday off for the storms...I mean, I enjoyed school for the most part, but I sure loved me a good snow day. I wish it were different for my nephew's sake though, as his autism means he desperately needs the structure of school back in his life, especially after moving to a new house this summer.

Got to see him this past weekend, growing like a weed (my gosh, is he! only going-on 8 and practically up to my shoulders!), and behavior wasn't bad at all considering he's on next to nothing medicinally right now...just gets wound up occasionally and needs the words of a family member he knows to respect. He wouldn't listen to me if I tried to direct him, but once his dad stepped in, he was good. Pretty much as it should be with any kid...

Got some nice inspiration from SouleMama today...it was a good reminder of how you have to set your mind to a task and just tuck away at it. I've been letting myself get overwhelmed by the apartment lately, and then nothing gets done in the evenings...I watch TV, knit, goof off, when I could be unpacking a box and going through it. One box at a time...and she just reminded me of some things, like the use of old suitcases for packing fabric or whatever (when we just came across some oldies in Mom's attic), and how the sewing machine doesn't have to have a huge area when the dining room table can double as a crafting space...

Now if this tropical storm would just increase to hurricane status so I could go home and get started....ah well, guess that's not enough of a reason to possibly endanger lives with nature....but getting started tonight is definitely in the cards :)

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Yup, there's a new badge on the blog...

Buy Nothing Challenge - August 2008

Very neat idea, and one I HAVE to embrace. I just spent the last week, stocking up on junk food we don't need, and trying to talk myself in and out of a new purse. We're barely making ends meet, and I'm thinking a new purse is in order. So today I'm catching up on One Green Generation and am inspired by her thoughts on redefining normal. And then I wander over to Crunchy Chicken (while checking out the APLS blog carnival posts) and find her Buy Nothing Challenge. Ah, another greenie epiphany at the ole lighthouse...my purse yearnings slide quickly into the "NO" column, and I'm into my bag stash for something that'll placate my itchiness for consumption.

Sure, it's easy to cheat or slip on any challenge, but if you don't have a plan at all, it's that much easier to spend willy-nilly. Having the procreation of small people become possibly real this month really shifted my thinking; I look at our apartment, our lives with new eyes.

Fairly straightforward goals (from Crunchy Chicken):
  • No new clothes
  • No new gadgets
  • No new furniture or housewares
  • No salon services (except haircuts) - heh, that's a cheat, just got mine cleaned up last week.
  • No new makeup
  • No new tools (also a cheat - any tools I need I'll be acquiring in the coming weeks from Mom's garage)
  • No whatever the hell else people buy (gee, like purses?)
  • No eating out

I've talked about that last one before, and nothing's changed since the last time I mentioned how badly we need to stop pissing away money on easy meals. So I'm looking forward to being hard on myself and Husby on this one. Wish us luck!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Midweek upswing

A short blurb about manic depression, and then we'll get to the update...

Chris Burke, that dear guy from the TV show "Life Goes On" said in an interview way back when, that he had Down's Syndrome, but just a mild case of it. That's how I treat my manic depression. It's tempered with age and medication, and I can deal with my mood swings now, for the most part, without spending us into bankruptcy or fantasizing about running cut glass on my skin.

That said, the downers still suck big time. I've mentioned I'm off my lithium and down to half my Paxil, because we're trying to have kids (and we're finally actually trying, so I'm being vigilant about keeping unnecessary meds out of my system...now if I could only do that with food too...). So when the downs take up residence, I'm a rather grumpy individual, not the funnest person to be around, and my time is spent accepting my misery and getting little accomplished, because the alternative, trying to fight it, really doesn't work and is self-defeating. Still, it's a frustrating cycle, because then you hit an upswing and think of all you'd like to have accomplished while you were being a whiny, self-absorbed mess (never mind that it's a medically justified whiny, self-absorbed mess), and then you scramble, trying to get things done before the next wave hits. Waa, waa, it ain't easy bein' me.

Anyhoo, that's where I've been...

About the cat, what an odd thing...Friday morning, this young male orange tabby shows up at our doorstep crying up a storm. Wants in so badly it's hard to get into the apartment at lunchtime. Still there in the evening, and cries all night. We gave him a food and water source, and he not only shut up, but disappeared, but I've been keeping the food plate filled at night, and it's licked clean the next morning. So we may have ourselves a cooperative outdoor cat, who was seriously dehydrated initially. I hope it's him eating the food, as I hate to think about the other critters that could be coming up our stairs, the not-so-friendly strays or worse, a nutria (we've got a bunch of those critters living with the ducks around our retention ponds - they look like beavers with possum tails). My herbs and tomatoes are still on the front landing, and they're no worse for the wear, but still...

So I'm feeling better and looking toward the weekend. Blogs are starting to talk about preparing for winter. Florida breeds laziness; we're lucky if we get weather cold enough to break out the wool, but there are so many other ways that we could be living simpler with just a little preparation. And autumn's my hands-down favorite season, so there's apple butter recipes to try, as well as more food storage ideas (freezing, canning, dehydrating), experimenting with squash and pumpkin recipes, and enjoying the break in the heat here, as Gaia gives us 2 days of rain. Enjoy the breeze!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Ornery n' out of sorts

I'll do a proper post in a day or two (maybe even with pictures and a neat story about the outdoor cat that's sort of adopted us...), but I gotta shake off these orneries first. TTYS!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Pensive Thursday

Seriously inside my own head today...check out SCMoving for the topics rolling around in there.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Wow...

Some things coming clear this week, quite a few things...one boss leaving, making it clearer the possibility that I could shift into a supervisory position here at work (in the months to come), either in Gretchen's current post or as QC team leader. I'm ambivalent, to be sure; I prefer the QC work to the prospect of supervising, and any pay increase would be a joke. But when push comes to shove, we're talking about job security with bennies, and when you're trying to start a family with a disabled husband, there's not much more you look for. Dreams shift, not to be forgotten, just set on a shelf. So I'm opening my mind to the possibility and looking for ways to improve my image with the higher-ups.

And we're finally trying for kids :) I don't think it took this month, but I'm going back on Clomid and Estradiol next month and we'll see. It's a true eye-opener, looking at life from the prospect of being someone's parent a mere 9 months later. We have an enormous amount of work to do. Like, understatement. This is where the "To Do" lists will take on new life...more later.

Check out "For Better or For Worse" today (August 6, 2008) - Excellent!! And I'd love to know how many US publications chose not to run that strip...

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Thoughtful Tuesday

Just wasn't in the mood to post Monday...

I'm in a weird place, not quite a rut, not quite up...

Nary a single "to-do" list was created this past weekend (naturally), but I did get little things accomplished, just enough where I wasn't beating myself up. Moved the aloe to the porch, still babying the herbs and tomatoes. Resigning myself to the tomatoes being a winter harvest. Made a carrot/banana bread on Sunday that was surprisingly tasty. Threw together a chicken dinner last night that was surprisingly untasty. Sigh. In another dry spell with the knitting too...

Just not much to post...doing a lot of thinking this week. We'll see how the week progresses...

Friday, August 01, 2008

Hope

In an attempt to interrupt my broken-record habit of making huge, grandiose plans of things to accomplish on the weekend, only to spend said weekend lamenting my inability to get those things done...I'm stepping back and trying a one-day-at-a-time approach (without the alcoholic cravings)...

To Do Tonight (Friday)
  • Relax
  • Think about the top you want to make, and give yourself a refresher course on sewing.
  • Start lists on several subjects
  • Steer clear of dining area
  • Don't clean anything (yet)

Mom's stepping back too...the weather's supposed to be rainy this weekend, so she didn't want to do any heavy-duty work on the garage yet, until she thinks about it a little more. That frees me up to tackle our apartment. Husby started a new med on Wednesday that has had rather nice results so far, so I may even get some work out of him too, as well as be able to talk with him about kids and future stuff.

3 hours to freedom! Happy Friday, y'all!