clicking

 I'm sometimes astounded at how good at my job I am, especially as it felt so overwhelming even into summer of last year.  There are still so many new aspects that I have to encounter, including some really big difficult things, but the things I've done a couple of times now I do really well.  And maybe that's why they seem so hard at first, because I really want to master them and not half-ass them.  

Our brains really change as we age.  When I was young, I could very quickly assess anything new - even if completely foreign - and do pretty well.  Now, if there's something completely new, my brain is trying to attach a scaffolding to something similar.  I've made some missteps from that, but now that I'm building scaffolding for THIS, it's so much easier to plug and extrapolate.  It's kind of fascinating how our brains age like that. 

I'm also really good at things that go unnoticed by others, but that make my job so much easier.  The getting ahead of things, the ability to see into the future and slightly adjust course to make it so much smoother instead of waiting for a clusterfuck to descend.  I can handle clusterfucks, and I will always be That Person who jumps into the middle of a melee to break it up, but I like it so much better if I can avoid it.  I don't like to spin my wheels; I like traction and forward motion.  

It's starting to become apparent that I'm good.  I think that people wrote me off - I'm old and fat and readily admit my mistakes and what I don't know, and I had zero mentorship or support to help and so I was floundering to figure things out.  Now people are recognizing that they underestimate me at their own peril.  But either way, I just do things my way, and I do them well, and I FINALLY have a team that is on board with that. I feel like powerhouse days are ahead, getting into a comfortable groove.  

OH, I have to shower and go show up to work.  And honestly, showing up is 80% of what I have to do.  

hobbies

 I was a voracious reader since a very young age, jumping eagerly into almost anything.  I noticed a change after too many years of graduate school, and I purged my library 15 years ago and haven't looked back.  I still ship a few boxes of books when I move, but nothing like the multiple crates of books I shipped abroad on a short-term contract.  Or that time I lived in Russia and bought and shipped So. Many. Books home. 

I don't know really what caused the change.  It does sort of track with technology and screen time and streaming video, but also with my brain aging and processing differently, and also with too much grad school and moving across the world too many times.  So I dunno.  And no, I do not like audio books, and I really do not like e-readers.  What I do like is the power to stop a book that I don't want to read.  When younger, I always read everything all the way through, and when I stopped doing that it was freedom.  

When I lost power last week, I crawled in bed with a book that I had from the library that I'd seen on NPR, about Arab communities, mostly Lebanese, in Dearborn, Michigan. It was engaging short stories.  And then in my local buy nothing group a person offered Lessons in Chemistry which I picked up Friday afternoon and then promptly devoured in 28 hours and passed along to the next person.

Did I just luck out with two good books back to back?  Or is this tide turning?  I would like to read more, and I"m on my library's waitlist for the latest Barbara Kingsolver book.  Balancing it with also watching some TV would be good - I feel like I watch so much TV, and that nothing is interesting to me anymore. 

I definitely don't want to buy books though.  Sorry, independent booksellers and authors.  Those days are gone. 

The truth is that I require sit-down activities.  I recently read an article about post-exertion malaise found in people with long COVID, and it explains so much of my symptoms since getting chikungunya years ago.  How many doctors did I tell, "This is not normal how I feel after exertion, it totally wipes me out and sometimes for days"?  NOne of them understood.  Friend has definitely noticed and remarked at how different I am from years back.  I have to take breaks, pace myself, and know my limits or I make myself really sick.  I watched all of the TV show Leverage and REdemption, and that's about seven seasons, while renovating my kitchen.  Work a while and then sit down to recover.  That's my survival cycle.

And so when I have huge truckloads of mulch on my front lawn, there's only so much that I can do.  It seems never ending because I can only put in so much time before I have to stop.  The rainy weather and soggy ground doesn't help, and working long hours and and early sunset it also unhelpful.  So I hve to really think about what can I do for myself and what can I not, or what is too much to do alone and enjoy quality of life.  LIke, I really want to get bark down in my backyard to limit mud, which will make me and my dog so much happier.  But first I need to spread these leaves, and I have a big fucking yard.  So do I spend money to have somebody distribute them for me, so I can move more quickly to a not-muddy dog paw life?  

I'm focusing back into frugality, obsessed with paying off my house and saving for retirement.  Yesterday I had AAA come to check my battery and alternator, as my truck's battery was dead.  Just the battery, and a new one would be like $190.  I had checked with Costco and could get one there for $80 less, so I declined theirs and spent the hour or two going out to Costco and schlepping the battery and installing it myself, and I'll need to go back out to return the old one.  That's a lot of time that I could be doing something else, but eighty bucks is eighty bucks.  And I'm canceling my AAA, as I'd only gotten it for the cross-country roadtrip in my very old truck.

I could get a roommate for more $$ to paying off house, but I really like living alone. REALLY like it.  So I will find other ways for earning and saving money.  I spent a TON of money on this house with all the things that needed to be done for basic quality of life (like air conditioning, which required modernizing electricity, those kinds of things), and I sprung for some of the nicer features (I'm obsessed with my induction range and Bosch dishwasher), but now it's time to focus back on being the frugal person I know I can be.  It could make a significant difference in when I can retire, or at least to go to part-time or a different job that isn't so demanding and stressful.  

And one more things on my mind; I cannot seem to eliminate the mice in my house and it's driving me nuts.  I have like ten traps out with enticing bait (peanut butter, cheese, dog kibble); I have all food inaccessible and I put the dog food away.  Yet if I sit real still in my living room mid-day, a mouse shows up.  It's really aggravating.  I'd love to not have to hire an exterminator but I'm baffled.  I am going to pay someone to come and check my chimney and insert for safety (I could use it if I lose power again) and there likely needs to be a chimney cap to keep mice out.  I also think they come through the kitchen door that doesn't close right anymore, and I have a new door coming that will solve that problem hopefully.  But I do not want mice in my house.  

OK, off to walk the dog, which is why I got the battery in my truck taken care of so quickly.  All about the hound.  And then hopefully more work on the kitchen and moving refrigerator in there.  That would be amazing.  I really need to finish this renovation. 

pain perdu

 After my last post, I lost power for some extended blocks (five hours and then 20 hours), and it was cold and miserable.  I thought I had a camp stove for coffee but I found that I do not, and that will get remedied soon.  I could not work for a couple of days, but we were mostly all in the same situation.  On the long day, a woman a few blocks away offered to let people come by to cook and charge, so I cautiously (ice was still thick) walked over there and spent much of the day there with coffee and food and electricity and warmth.  It was very helpful to my frame of mind, which was stuck on reliving the pandemic and post-hurricane trauma.  

And now the ice has melted away and we are back to live, back to reality.  I'm starting to move past the survival mode back to thriving mode, able to get some things done both for work and life.  Friend will come over today after work and we hope to finish a last section of kitchen basics including a last cabinet and then moving my refrigerator into the kitchen out of the living room which will be so very nice.  I really need to get out and move mulch but I'm distracted in my kitchen and using up things to share. LIke, when my friend was in town last month and we went to a really nice bakery, she bought so much including a loaf of challah that we didn't even touch.  When she left it, I stuck it in the fridge, and now it's becoming pain perdu.  I'm working my way through my garage food storage and made a large beet-potato salad that I'm sharing with the nearby little free refrigerator, as well as other things I have in my fridge and freezer that I don't really want.  I want to figure out a way to use up these frozen snow peas from Friend's garden with pasta to eat and share; maybe with pesto?  Or parmesan and olive oil?  Something will come to me, and I'll bundle it up into reused food containers and put it in the LFR and it'll be gone lickety-split.  I plan to start moving my canned food back into my kitchen out of the mudroom where I stashed everything during reno, and that will motivate me as well.  Somewhere in there is some applesauce I made from windfall apples, and that can become a nice cake to share with a dusting of powdered sugar.  

I am so loving having a kitchen again, and I continue to be delighted with the ease with which I can share food now.  

On one of the cold housebound days, I looked through the seed catalog and plotted my bounty.  I have some ideas about how to set up my garden that I'm not sure will work well but hopefully it will and I can grow heaps of food.  This will let me eat healthy and cheap while sharing with others.  We took great advantage of Friend's garden space last year and I pushed her to really eat better (she had chard for the first time and grew to really like it, and we were swimming in carrots, and so many other things), and my yard will potentially provide even more.  My friend from up north has started bringing me cases of canning jars, as she inherited a lot and I'd left many behind with her as well and she's just not planning on doing a ton of canning anymore.  I have plenty of storage so told her to bring whatever she wants, and she's enjoying clearing out the space in her laundry room.  

But before I can get to the planting stage, I need to move those ten yards of leaves that are left, and then I need to figure out how to get about 25 yards of wood chips and spread them around as well.  It's quite a lot of big project on top of other big projects.  But once these big projects are done, the maintenance of them is much much easier and I can manage fine.  I think I might even spend quite a lot of money to have the wood chips brought here and spread for me, instead of me trying to find daylight hours without pouring rain.  My godsons up north want to come and help me (chores are our love language) but getting our schedules to work has been a challenge especially with this very inclement weather.  

Speaking of chores, the sun has now risen and the coffee is drunk, and it's forecast to start raining heavily soon so I should get rolling. 

cozy

 Like much of the country, we are in an inclement weather situation.  Today was Day 2 of DO NOT LEAVE YOU HOUSE IF YOU ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE TO, which is an instruction fine by me.  The real problem for me is that the yards are also slippery like a skating rink so I don't even go outside.  I tried to take out the compost and between the bin being completely frozen shut with a very thick ice layer and the slip sliding, I just abandoned the container and have started another.  We are supposed to get another onslaught of precipitation so probably another two days of this, though I'll be back at work remotely soon.  

We were expecting to finish up more kitchen projects that take two people, but it's not safe to drive here and so we don't.  It's a nice break for Friend and me, honestly.  I have started some of the deep cleaning so I've not been entirely couchbound.  

I think that most people are sticking close to home, though I'm perplexed at the folks that need to buy food.  Like, how are you not prepared for a few days?  

I have enough food to go for weeks, really.  I have so much fruit frozen and canned, and quite a lot of vegetables, too.  I have heaps of potatoes and beets in the garage in storage, and apples and carrots in the fridge.  Lots of nuts in the fridge.  The freezer is overfull with food, including quite a bit of salmon.  I have enough flour to bake probably about 30 loaves of bread (a neighbor gave me 10# of rye flour and there was a good sale on whole wheat so I stocked up).  I have cans of tuna and quite a lot of pasta.  I made a big pot of borscht today.  Oh, and I have three pounds of cheese because there was a good sale, four pints of yogurt I just made, and an extra container each of half and half and sour cream.  Oh, and two and a half dozen eggs.  And numerous other things. 

So, not only do I not need to venture out to the supermarket today, but I probably don't need to for weeks.  I should eat down my freezer to prepare for the deluge of produce that will start in a few months.  Though, I should also buy another freezer.  

I don't know why I'm inventorying my food storage here, I guess I'm just feeling really fortunate.  Thankfully I still have power, which not everyone does.  I do have a camp stove I could use if in a pinch, and there is a patio to use, but there's an ice slick between there and my back door and I didn't get salt in time.  I also don't have Yak Trax anymore, so I ordered some of those for next time. 

avoid the lifestyle creep

 I don't want to curse myself, but it appears that things may have taken a turn.

I got a raise at work and they hired someone to take some of my burden away and I just got reassigned a new team that is actually excellent.  I stood up to a bully and she actually was nice to me today, and others are showing me more respect for what I do.  I do things differently, more collaboratively, but they are realizing that doesn't mean weaker.  Maybe.  Tomorrow could be a different day where everything sucks, but today was good. 

And I have to be really careful about lifestyle creep, now that I'm making more money than ever before.  Just because I can afford to buy things doesn't mean I should.  I need to be socking away all the money I can to pay off my mortgage really early - something that needs to happen before I can retire.  

Kitchen renovation are kind of stalled.  I'm able to use it now - sink and range are in - which slowed momentum, and a grieving friend was here this weekend which had the dog up all night keeping me awake, which made me too tired to figure out complicated finish carpentry.  It's fine.  This is a much easier project than my houses in New Orleans, which were much bigger jobs.  All other houses I've lived in haven't required me to put this effort in. I'm hoping I'll get more done on this long weekend, like the refrigerator in the kitchen.  I wanted to really focus on mulching too (I've still got like 12 cu yds of leaves to move around, as it's very slow going for me), but it's supposed to be really cold which meals the big wet leaf pile will be frozen and very difficult to deal with.  It's ok, I'll get it done one way or another.  My friend said she'll be back in the next few weeks for her adult sons to help us finish the project - they are so sweet, as chores are our love language.  But that depends on their schedules and such.  I want the leaves done so I can then put a layer of woodchips down to fully block the grass to smother it but also to reduce all the mud in my backyard that gets on my dog's feet.  The sooner the better for that, but it's all a process. 

still remodeling the kitchen

 Nearing an end, but not the end.

I'm hanging doors, leveling them, and then the handles will go in.  I take my time with the finish work because it shows so much and I have to live with this.

I hit a breaking point with the backsplash; every one of Friend's tools chipped the fuck out of it, making it unusable.  And I didn't really want to use it, TBH.  So I started calling around for someone to do a backsplash, but then I realized I need the counters redone first.  I hadn't planned to do that for a couple of years but I may escalate the timeline.  The laminate countertops look good except for the cuts.  But I probably want to uplevel to a thin quartz, and then a tile backsplash, and THEN I can call it all good.  After the doors, I need to figure out the microwave install to vent outside, and then we drag in the range, and then I get a thingamabob that I have to try out to see if it works and then I'll build around it, and then I can move in my fridge.  That will really make it seem like I have a kitchen again, instead of in my living room.  Then we have to replace the door to the mudroom, and install baseboards.  I have toe kicks and fillers to do as well, and the last cover panels.  It really is nearing the end, especially since I gave up on the laminate backsplash and just caulked the fuck out of all my cabinet edges.  Friend was super impressed with the caulking job because I run a mean bead.  I'm also really fussy about giving it sufficient cure time before messing with it.  

A lot of waiting with this project, which is fine as long as it's just to percolate and not to have to actively think.  But I'll be really glad when it's done.  Maybe two more weekends.  

I went back to work today after like 10 days off and it was not terribly painful.  They are hiring another person for my department which makes all of our workloads lessen.  That and all the people coming back from maternity leave and a competent team could make my work life so much easier.  Today for the first time in a long time, I wasn't pressured by the weight of work.  Two people made decisions that took away a huge project for me and I'm very relieved.  Not killing myself for work is a good look.