Бо я тащусь від тебе давно

What? You asked.

The year my mother died, I was taking a drama class. I was friends with all the theatre geeks and I liked the drama club teacher, so why the fuck not?

(Long time readers will recognise the fuck it factor at work…)

The homework assignment was to describe an emotional day you had - the day you got your driver’s license, for example. You know. Emotional shit.

My essay might have started by grabbing you by the short hairs and didn’t let go for two pages.

On Wednesday, March 18th, I walked into the condo to see my father crying at the kitchen table.

My father never cries.

When he finally looked at me, I knew.

“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” I asked.

“Ding dong,” he answered.

Have I said how absolutely fucking thrilled I am to be cleaning out 40+ years of memories I’d rather forget? (STILL!)

Do you know, I couldn’t remember what grade I got? I couldn’t just flip to the end and look. No! That would have been the sensible thing to do. The easy thing.

When the fuck have I ever done the easy thing?

I read the entire fucking thing. Cried through all of it. Wondered how it would end.

(Spoiler alert: it ends with my mother six feet under.)

And the grade? As if there were any doubt: A+  The relationship between mother and child can be difficult and you captured that.

Can. Be. Difficult.

Oh, Doc L., you have no idea.

BBQ sauce on my titties would have been a much better story.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

I ran last night.

Willingly got on the treadmill with my puffer in hand.

2 miles - intervals for all of it: 30 seconds (13mm) / 2 minutes (20mm).

Not speedy. Not balloon lady safe.

I did two beginner iFit workouts because I wanted to zone out and let the treadmill tell me what to do.

(The girl who drives a stick and refuses to use cruise control because she drives the car put the treadmill in charge. Yeah.)

I didn’t enjoy it.

But, I didn’t hate it, either.

I have a Turkey Trot coming up on the 24th. In fucking Miami.

I wasn’t really looking forward to the race, but… I’ve always done well at 10Ks. Especially there.

It’s not enough to salvage my Dopey training, but it’s a start.

My new shoes and socks don’t cause blisters, so maybe I can get father in the marathon than mile four.

I have no idea and I don’t really care.

I’ll do what I can and then I’m hanging up the sneakers.

I no make words go good. English hard.

I’m running out of icons and pretty colours on my little sidebar.

I’ve decided to scrap the third draft and start over again…

Welcome to draft 4, which is already filled with random notes like this one.

TBH, I don’t know which one of us was completely shitty when that was written, but my money’s on me. Beka seems like he’d be straight-edge. (When he’s not statutory raping a fucking 15 year old, that is. KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS, BEKA.)

Yeah.

So much shit on my mind and instead, I’m tearing apart a story that I’ve already written three drafts of to play with new point of views and - hopefully - get them to keep it in their pants. I DO NOT WRITE KIDDY PORN, GODDAMNIT.

At this rate, I’m going to have to age them up… and I hate that. I like AUs, but that’s totally not the story I wanted to tell.

Yearning. Slow burn. A love story spread over three years.

That’s the story I want to tell.

And the one I am completely incapable of telling.

Oh well. The 4th time’s the charm, right?

 

- - - - - - - - - -

I’m trying to keep myself distracted.

The pending war in Ukraine. The new job. Life in general.

I’m a big ball of stress right now.

So, of course, the Sims released a new game pack today.

By all accounts, it is buggy as fuck, even despite being held back by a week. (And wasn’t that a week - the short version is, EA self-censored and refused to release the game in Russia. All hell broke loose. EA backed off and held the release a week to ensure that the game would launch globally at the same time. A whole lot of stupidity ensued.)

Still bought it. Haven’t even bothered playing yet.

I probably won’t get a chance until the weekend.

Maybe EA will patch it by then. (Or not. We still have bugs in the game that are several years old and well known by everybody. Like, there’s no way the SimGurus don’t know about them. Why they aren’t being fixed is anyone’s guess at this point.)

Also not helping is the fact that the 2023 NHL All Star game is being held in my backyard. At that place. That I used to work at. Before I got fired for being bipolar.

I’m torn between wanting to go and staying home. I don’t know which option is healthier.

I’m just glad that life is starting to become closer to normal again… I have a half marathon towards the end of March and I just signed up to run a 5K in early March. I have a Boombox concert to go to, and I might head to Universal on my birthday to see Gavin DeGraw.

Who the fuck knows.

All I know is that I’m stressed to the gills….

I need a nap, a cookie, and a hug.

Every mile is magic

I love this so much

I need to vent about this…

My old AR person, at the other company, kept 6 spreadsheets that all had the same information. AND NONE OF IT MATCHED. She had collection notes spread across them and none of them were the same. If you opened spreadsheet A, it had a note that on [date] she talked to the insured and they said blah, blah, blah. If you opened spreadsheet B, it had a note that on [same date] she called and the number was disconnected. The amounts she was trying to collect on were different. The adjuster’s name, phone number. email were all different. Her replacement and I didn’t know which one was right, so we nuked it all and started from scratch.

That was such a miserable experience.

At the new job (a printing company), the woman I’m replacing is just as bad. I plan on consolidating a few of her spreadsheets because I just can’t deal with it.

Maybe it’s my background in construction, or my interest in becoming a CMA, or just the way I’m wired, but work-in-progress schedules turn me on. Why do you need to keep a pending and a sales spreadsheet with you can combine both? I mean, once you have the billed amount on the spreadsheet, you can see if it’s pending or sold. Why not track the costs? There’s so much this simple schedule can do and so many ways you can tweak it… I mean, this is a portion of the final report I built. IT’S SO USEFUL!

 

(Yes, it’s blurry on purpose. Yes, those numbers aren’t real. I’m not THAT stupid.)

So… yeah. They don’t track their inventory. They don’t have any means to compare estimates to actuals except by looking at several different reports. They barely know if something’s been billed. (The Controller doesn’t sit in on the Production Meetings!?! She’s too busy - no doubt, because she’s managing a BILLION spreadsheets. Gah.)

OH! And I am SALTY about something that went down yesterday. I accidentally calculated the sales tax on a job that was tax-exempt. The spreadsheet was deleted and redone, without the tax calculation. Supposedly because I didn’t have the time to do needless work, habits be damned. THEN, I find out that I did need that sales tax number after all (to go on yet another spreadsheet). So I had to redo that. I TOUCHED THE SAME SPREADSHEET THREE TIMES TO GET ONE NUMBER.

How do I always find these places?

I don’t know… she’s retiring in March so I just have to hold on until then.

Gotta run. (HA!) I have a hot date with the treadmill. I’m getting a jump start on Dopey training because I refuse to let the dwarf beat me two years in a row. Now that I know exactly what to expect, I have a better idea of how I (personally) need to train. Most training plans are one size fits all, and well, I don’t fit that mold.

She’s Running the Distance

that is what a half marathon pr looks like

Let’s get the ugly bit out of the way: I did not complete the marathon and therefore, did not complete the Dopey Challenge.

Instead of coming home with six medals, I received four. The marathon’s medal was given to me after I got off the party bus, but I didn’t receive the Goofy or Dopey Challenge medals. I’m not nearly as upset as I could be about getting swept during the marathon. In all honesty, I made it farther than I thought I would.

But…

I PR’d the half marathon.

Shaved 13 minutes off my previous best race.

I got stronger as the race got longer, too. I walked most of the first half and then I started doing intervals -  run the chorus, walk the lyrics - when a good song came on.

The balloon ladies passed me, but I finished a whopping 30 seconds behind them this time.

I may have gotten pulled at mile 4 of the marathon, but at the end of the day, I completed a 5K, a 10K, and a half marathon.

Maybe I was crazy to attempt a Dopey without getting an IRL marathon under my belt first, but I don’t care.

I PR’D A HALF MARATHON.

Woo!!!!!!

I’m full of contradictions and hypocrisies

I may run at the speed of turtles swimming through peanut butter. But I run.

My Christmas present to myself was the top medal hanger… I haven’t done the #threewords in a long time, but I’ve been using Twelve’s words / the unofficial motto of the Whovian Running Club to guide me. Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind. Sadly, the only thing I’m good at is laughing hard.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas at all this year. Not one bit. No special dinner, no last minute “I feel like I need to buy you something”, not even a bone for the dog.

I don’t know. Neither one of us is feeling it this year. Which is fine.

Everything is fine.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When you’re young, you got time
When you’re old, you built a life
In between you’re just along for the ride
Nothing’s in a straight line, like the wrinkles on your eyes
Try to take it one candle at a time… - Pictures, Matt Nathanson

I’ve been on a steady pace of a new job just about every year and a half, two years for a long time. That’s when the honeymoon period is over, and the bipolar starts to affect things. Which, at this point, is probably a good sign to start seriously thinking about disability.

This job change completely blindsided me. I’d actually been doing well, and was mostly happy, but… there’d been some… hiccups. Definitely wasn’t expecting to be forced to choose between engaging in ethical behaviour and doing what was expected of me. I have a very odd moral code, but the things I believe in, I do not waiver on. One of those things is taxes. I am, apparently, on the side of the government because I believe they should be paid. The owner and I had several differences of opinions, but this last straw was the last straw. I’d already been looking for freelance gigs I could do on the side, and it was easy enough to find a real 9-5, so I’ll be back to normal after Dopey.

But anyhoo… it’s the reason I’m kind of stuck in my head.

We watched Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, as I’ve done every year since 1977, and it felt different this year.

I’ve been missing my father a lot lately. This year has been a bad one - I’m the same age my mother was when she died, and April 30th was the 20th anniversary of my father’s death - and I haven’t been able to get through it. Not that turning the calendar to a new month is going to make a huge difference in the facts of the matter, but there are no major milestones in 2022 that are triggering. Unless celebrating our 20th anniversary is a trigger… which it kind of is, but we will unpack that baggage in August.

I don’t know anymore. I know I blog a lot about being bipolar, but for every entry there’s a ton of things that I never say. I never really work through my shit here, in real time, and I probably won’t start any time soon. It’s easier to dissect it, in writing, well after the fact. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not tempted to do so.

So with that said… Christmas is hard. It is always hard. This year seems harder.

2022 is around the corner and I can’t be more thrilled for a fresh start.

In the meantime, I’m going to take it one candle at a time.