Whine and (Nickel and) Dime

lack of motivation is a real bitch

Soooooo… much like my on-and-off again attempts to learn the Ukrainian language, I’m suffering through the same fits and starts with running.

Consistency is not my thing apparently.

I decided to register for Wine and Dine because I want to redeem myself and not end the half marathon in tears, wondering when I’ll get swept. That’s totally public enemy number one, that Disney half marathon.

I have a whopping 107 miles under my belt this year. That is not the training of a serious runner…

I can barely consider myself a walker at this point.

Right now, I’m dealing with the aftershocks of a decision I made last weekend. I’m waffling between pride and stupidity.

I signed up for a half marathon that went three loops through a park. In a “safe” park. In a “safe” town.

I managed two loops because during the first two, my bad touch spidey senses were tingling. There were parts where I was the only person on the course for as far as I could see. There were random guys scattered through the park alone and in groups. There were a few in a playground area that were definitely giving off some bad energy, and I’m not normally given to paranoia, but it is what it is. I got to the split for the finish line and walked off the course, bib in hand. I wasn’t going to cross the finish line… I didn’t want the participant medal. I didn’t want anything but to go home.

I’m on the phone with the husband telling him what a miserable time I had when this dude approaches me. Big guy. He will not leave me alone. Asking me if I want a medal or headphones (what?! Seriously! Do you want some candy, little girl? / Why don’t you get in the back of my van. I’ll drive you to your car. / Hello, Lester the Child Molester). I ended up elbowing him in the gut and running the rest of the way to my car. It was a shame I turned my Garmin off - that was probably a five minute mile.

So. Yeah. Happy I didn’t tempt fate, but upset that I didn’t. Damned if I did, damned because I didn’t.

I’ve decided to rerun all my medals again - surprise! But, I’m doing it a little differently. I’m still tracking the original rerun because I want to earn them all, but I decided to also track my medals earned by distance run. Right now, I have an excel spreadsheet that I’m filling in based on mileage alone. In order. So if I run a 5K, I fill in the very first 5K on the medal list. Regardless of which RTI club it is. On the ‘real’ tracker, I’m trying to run races in a way that allows me to finish challenge medals and then fill in the rest of the blanks. Out of the 107 I have on the year, I’ve only run 74 RTI miles. Technically, that’s about 2 miles a day from here to the end of the year.

But anyhoo, I digress.

Marathon Weekend’s registration opens on April 22nd. I priced out the costs of doing the Wine and Dine races separately (5K, 10K, and Half) and comparing it to what I actually spent for the 5K and the Two Course Challenge. Of course, the Challenge costs more, but it’s minimal. You’re basically paying for the cheap race shirt at that point. Pointless math, except…

I’m not sure if I want to run Marathon Weekend if I’m not attempting the Dopey. It’s a lot of money… and I could technically do a half marathon anywhere, except that park. I was thinking about signing up for the three races and avoiding the marathon completely - or signing up for the Dopey if it’s cheaper and selling my medal on eBay, if I accept it at all this time.

I told myself that if I can run consistently through April 1 - 21, I will register for the Dopey again. If I can’t, I may do the three races… or at very least, the fucking half marathon.

I will beat the balloon ladies even if it kills me.

Steady repetition is a compulsion mutually reenforced

I’ll take a bag of rice, please.

OH. MY. GOD. WHY. IS. THIS. SO. HARD.

Draft four has been an amazing, almost religious experience… if you choose to worship at the altar of pain, tears, hair pulling, and very, very creative swearing.

That fucker needs some holy water AND a blow torch.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

So. Yesterday.

I turned 47 and my husband came home from the hospital.

Yeah, read that again.

Friday, he went to the ER. He stayed in the hospital until late Sunday afternoon.

Nothing serious. The symptoms he was experiencing were due to a bulging disk and not a stroke or diabetes or whatever Doctor Google terrified him with. He needs to stretch, relax, and do yoga. The husband doing yoga is a visual that I will treasure until the day I die…

But.

He gave my mother a run for her money when it came to the absolute worst birthday weekend ever. They might actually be tied for first right now.

Happy fucking birthday, Wendell.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

My godfather’s daughter and I are friends on Facebook. We haven’t spoken for… oh, let’s say thirty years, until recently.

Her grandmother was the Colonel. The Keeper of the Culture.

The baddest ass motherfucker on that part of the family tree.

That woman used to scare the everloving fuck out of me as a kid.

Anyhoo…

When all that shit with Russia happened, someone asked L on FB if she had any family over in Ukraine.

She replied that she did, but she wasn’t close to them.

I couldn’t help myself and messaged her, asking for details. The Colonel used to stay in contact with them, but nobody else had.

After a long back-and-forth, we compared family trees. The one she did when she was like 10 years old and the one I paid a professional for.

They were identical. (And, you have no idea how happy that made both of us!)

She had some information that I didn’t have and vice versa.

But, yeah. The women I found in Ukraine were definitely family. 100%.

She totally made a completely shitty weekend worth it.

I needed that sense of family so badly this weekend and I got that and more.

I. Am. An. Idiot.

omg

Remember when I said that I didn’t think 2022 was going to be full of, um, triggering activities?

Well.

Surprise!

I’m a fucking idiot.

So.

I turn 47 this year. If you want to work in specifics, I will now be two years older than my mother was when she died. (She died in March, but her birthday is (was?) in May.) It’s pretty hard to wrap my head around that. Like seriously. How the fuck did I outlive my mother? I certainly don’t take care of myself, other than pretending to be a runner and pumping my body full of all kinds of (prescription) chemicals.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic… she died in 1992. The calendar is telling me we survived 2020 and 2021 and are now in 2022. You probably don’t need to be an accountant to do that math in your head…

She has been dead for thirty fucking years. THIRTY.  (And yet, she continues to live in my head rent free.)

Moving on.

While we’re talking about easy math, how about 2022 less 2001?

Yup. Dad’s been dead for 21 years this April.

Holy Jesus motherfuck.

I am not ready for these milestones.

And I thought that being married for twenty years this August was going to rock my world.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

Recently, my six year old MacBook shit the bed. The power button broke into little bitty pieces and the fan ran all the time. It would overheat. It would freeze up. It was getting pretty nerve wracking. I was never sure which laptop was going to boot up.

I ended up getting a new one for Christmas.

While moving all the software and crap was easy, hooking up all my peripherals was a bitch and a half.

I love Macs, but they are, hands down, the worst fucking piece of equipment to upgrade.

I have a Logitech wireless keyboard that I am so in love with it would be illegal. But, it’s got a USB/Bluetooth dongle thingy.

I have a great black and white laser printer, but it’s USB only.

I have a super nice HP colour laser printer that works sporadically over Wi-Fi, so that is normally connected via USB.

I have an old LaCie drive that holds all my music and photos. It’s Thunderbolt 2.

I have two HDMI monitors. One that actually connects over HDMI and one that used a Thunderbolt 2 / HDMI dongle.

The new Mac has Thunderbolt 3 ports and does not have a single USB port. (Well, technically, I guess it does, but it’s USB-C and everything is USB A? B? 2.0? 3.0? I don’t know. The “normal” USB.)

I spent a lot of time researching my options because upgrading everything to work with the new Thunderbolt 3 bullshit wasn’t going to happen.

I bought a really expensive dock. I bought HDMI to DisplayPort cords because the highly recommended dock didn’t have HDMI ports. I dropped over $250 on what could essentially be called band-aids.

Only to get it all hooked up to find out that NOTHING worked.

No monitors. No keyboard. No LaCie drive. Absolutely fucking nothing worked.

Because I’m not a total idiot, I always spend the extravagant amount for AppleCare. (I’ve really only needed it twice and both times it was a lifesaver. As my father used to say, you buy insurance hoping you never need it, but you’ll be glad you did when the world falls apart around you.)

The poor tech dude who took my call… They’re not supposed to recommend things that aren’t Apple branded or aren’t affiliated with Apple in one way or another, but I finally got him to give me a brand name.

$65 out of pocket for a dock and a little stupid USB dongle for the keyboard.

Fuck me.

Should have just called Apple before I even bought the damn computer.

(Also, I just realised that I got my first Apple Macintosh desktop computer in 1992. Right after my mother died… so I’m also celebrating thirty years of my love/hate relationship with Apple products.)

I’m fucking old.

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.

Alphabet Soup

the boxes (and bags) OF DOOM

I don’t know what started it, but there has been a trend among my friends to post articles about ADHD.

I’ve already been diagnosed with a few things, with bipolar being the #1 diagnosis - from several doctors, and even a few therapists - so bipolar is the benchmark.

Anyhoo… one of the things I’ve seen several times is the tendency to put clutter in boxes so that it doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately, but it’s removed from sight. And, oh, holy fuck, does that make so much sense. I’ve had clutter boxes my entire life. Once I found out I was bipolar, I decided that this was a symptom of it. I clean during manic phases and I box during depressed ones. What happens when I’m forever depressed? MORE BOXES!

So, yeah. In the spirit of full disclosure, this is about two or three years worth of clutter boxes (and several bags). We painted my office last year and I’m just now finally working my way through the Boxes of Doom!.

Why the Boxes of Doom!, you ask? Because, half the fucking time, they’re filled with memory landmines.

You know, those things you randomly stumble across that rip open wounds that had been slow to heal in the first place? Yeah. Those.

I’ve gone through three boxes this morning and I have cried during every one. My offer letter from the Cats was in one box, photos of my parents and I at Disney World in another… just weird shit that I am not equipped to deal with right now.

And, can we talk about that photo with my parents? The photo is of myself and my parents in front of the castle and we are wearing matching Mickey Mouse shirts. OH. MY. GOD. We were that family back in 1980. We were wearing MATCHING SHIRTS. (I’m pretty sure it was my idea, too.) I make fun of those families now… and I am obviously the one that started the trend. Fuck. Me.

I still have boxes and boxes of clutter - and memory landmines - to get through, but I’m pretty sure this is what the articles are talking about.

I feel both seen and attacked, and I don’t like either.

(I suppose the joke’s on my most recent former employer… I had two clutter boxes at the office and a clutter folder on my desktop and a clutter folder in my inbox. In my defence, those things did not appear until Ida decided to visit Louisiana this year and I was overloaded with minutiae. Oh well. I hope they have fun with that.)