So, I played my aggravation well - I did not volunteer for the onerous task my boss delayed asking for, and the person who is rude had to agree to do it, including moving her appointments around. HA.
And then, my boss ordered us all to work in the office. Not all the time, but she set a date, which she's never done before. The truth is that she's never done it because she doesn't want to have to be in the office, but people love having a hybrid schedule. and then she couched it as a helpful thing for us all to be there, but bitch - that ship sailed YEARS ago. I'll go, and I'll sit in my office with the door closed, and I'll leave for lunch. No, I won't be brown bagging in the conference room with you, or eating the bagels you promise as though that will bring us in happy. Bagels fuck with my blood sugar, no thank you. Massive carb load.
Whatever. Her punishment bothers me less than others.
And, I was late to work today because I decided to do some garden chores. I was only 1/2 hour late which is not that big of a deal, but I ripped out the tomatoes because the weather is now cool and they're all splitting because of rain and the plants are a literal pain for me and they were in the way. And I harvested all my carrots, some of which look actually very nice but it took them waaaay longer to grow than it shoudl have, and most didn't grow much at all. The turnips didn't actually produce at all. That bed was a real bummer; hopefully it was just the lack of sunlight. But that bed is now cleared so I can empty the soil elsewhere in the garden and hopefully plant the garlic this weekend. And harvest dry beans. I just froze all the green beans I harvested yesterday because I just wasn't feeling it, to cook and eat them soon. What I really want is cabbage and potatoes, so I'll probably get some this weekend. I'm craving a potato salad I had in Russia, with pickles - I'll use fermented pickles.
I lived in Russia for about six months in about 1992, and it was very hard. Not a pleasant experience. There are of course wonderful Russians, but many of the people i met were duplicitous at best, and the organization I was there with fell apart when the organizers embezzled all the money and left the country in the middle of the night, and somehow the situation became my problem to manage - paying teachers and host families, threatening the English contact person to bring me a backpack of cash to do all that, going down dark alleys for sketchy contacts - it was just all so weird. The family I lived with was weird - the mother an alcoholic with no boundaries, and they'd just disappear with me and the chldren left alone with no food - and getting food was difficult; I had to jump in any food line I found, always ready, and the systems were hard (going from counter to cashier back to counter, and such food shortages). We'd go to the dacha to the father's mother and she had survived the siege of Leningrad and was very hardened by it - she'd tell me tales as I helped with house and garden tasks - and she was racist and antisemitic and that came out in unpleasant ways, and it was just one of the most difficult situations I've ever been in, and I finally escaped on a train in the middle of the night and I was so sick and only brought a big bag of gooseberries to eat, and I landed in Germany and called my ex-boyfriend's family and they connected me with him and he nursed me back to health and
ANYWAY.
I miss a salad I ate in Russia not infrequently. And I"ll make that.
Russia was one of the least pleasant places I've been, but there are so many other wonderful memories of other places. I was remembering last night about the time that my driver/lover was teaching me to drive in West Africa, and we went out to some interesting spots, and then I was driving and ended up down a road that led to a Bangladeshi peacekeeping force, and there was no way to turn around, so I just kept going, and after some tense moments, they invited us in and then their top brass came to see what was going on and they fed us and enjoyed our company as they were kept really isolated from the people of the country, and it turned into a really wonderful day all around, one of the best days I've ever had. I am not the most hospitable person, but I really appreciate when I experience it.
ANYWAY, while being late to work I also pulled the cucumber plant I don't like because they're bitter. I'd kept them around because Dear Friend likes bitter cucumbers, but now she's gone. But hopefully I find some more cucumbers and can make a big batch of dill relish tomorrow to can, to stock up. I stuffed that green waste bin FULL. I just read I could also substitute zucchini for cucumbers so I may do that to get to my cucumber allotment. Or I may pick up a cucumber or two at the store when I pick up potatoes to make the potato salad I cannot stop thinking about. Or maybe I'll go to the farmers market instead of the store - I have a hard time keeping to budget at the market because there's so much good stuff. Who can resist beets and chard? Not I.
**
Another attitude adjustment, and this one is huge, is that maybe it's not the end of the world to stay in this town. The benefits are starting to shine more - the lack of real traffic problems, the access to fresh food. I still don't have enough friends, but I think there are enough activities to facilitate me meeting friends once I'm no longer consumed by work. Hopefully. I do like my elderly neighbor, for example, even though I may have alienated her and her friends by an interaction on the bike path this week (about the pending group home in our neighborhood - someone absolutely doesn't like conflict and I find it necessary when the organization isn't giving any information, to continue to push and question).
And there are of course benefits of my house - the garage is a big one, the gardens. I interact with people who think that garages are a massive waste of space and priority, but I love my garage. Sure, for parking my car in to keep in good condition and ease of unloading in the rain and not having to scrape windows in winter, but also for projects is a big one and for storing things - things like my bicycle which I use all the time, canning jars and supplies, garden produce that is curing, garden supplies, tools. I use all these things, they improve my life, and without a garage it would be a challenge.
But also other things with this house that I put in like the induction stove, the heat pump heat and AC.
And so it is really too much house for me, I don't need the 1260 sq ft or whatever I have of living area, but it's got its advantages, and I'm not 100% certain that I want to be unhoused and flitting from friend to friend. Though that has its advantages as well, especially the quality time with people who matter to me. And I do still think that an intentional community is the way to go for me, I just have to find where I want to be, and I don't want to settle for something less than what is something I can commit to - that will take time and effort to find and I'm not so sure I want to give up home base.
this pushes me back to wanting to hold my nose and just bear through another 2.25 years - hopefully enough to pay off the house and have enough to retire. There are so many things that I dislike about my job, and some things that I can mitigate - like by all the planning in advance of big projects and not procrastinating, it reduces the stress considerably; this is hard for my support staff to understand and I have to keep pushing them to follow the timelines that I set. But those timelines frankly save my life - the stress that piles on me without it is completely intolerable. I communicate A LOT and it avoids problems I see crop up with colleagues. I front-load the work and set clear footings, and so far that has worked for me to avoid some of the really big issues that colleagues have been dealing with that frankly I don't have the mental or physical stamina to handle. I live in constant fear that one of those things will still happen to me - and maybe they have, but my strong skills with breaking big problems into small pieces and handling them one by one has worked to avoid the worst of it. I will never have some of the skills of some of my colleagues, but I have other skills to manage this incredibly difficult job. And pushing back on the volunteering to take on other work - I'm sticking with that even though it's hard for me. I'll continue to follow all rules and administrative requirements, but I'm becoming that pesky old guy in the office close to retirement who will balk at anything more than the minimum. That is how I can hopefully survive. I'm 60% of the way to my goal. More than half. I deserve a solid retirement savings and mean girls and other people's procrastination shouldn't push me out.
This job market is weird and I have less faith than I've had at any time before that I'd be able to easily get a job. Once before it was this bad, when I finished grad school in like 2009, and it did take me WAY too long to find a job - it was almost a year to get a job, and it paid like 1/3 of what I was making before, and it was really hard to find acceptable housing with that very low pay. Yes, I have more experience now, but I'm also older and crotchetier, so age discrimination works against me. And now I have to think ahead - if I live into my 80s, do I want to have to worry about how Ill pay for my life? No, I don't. Present me may need to suffer for future me.
Anyway.
Weather says it's 43 degrees out and it's overcast, but it looks dry-ish. Yes, soil is harder to move when wet, which it is now as we've had rain, but I still want to get this done and get the garlic planted! Top priority.
The repairs to my front porch are underway and it looks great. The brickwork had been coming off, the mortar breaking down, so they've remortared and are sealing it. Now I'll be inspired to change out the front storm door which is broken. Friend installed a new one that she's really liked and it's not too expensive so maybe that will be sooner than later. It would be nice to have one that I can close and lock (the current one doesn't close), and then I could potentially use it for ventilation with its window (the windows on the east side of my living room don't open), or for when people knock on my door. It is always going to be a challenge to not overspend on home updates - I'd love a new driveway, new siding, new patio - I could spend so much money. But I need to make do with what is good enough when possible, and consider cost-benefit ratio. $400 on a storm door that makes my house front look nicer and allows ventilation is maybe worth the cost; $770 on repairs to my porch that would have had to be done when I sold the house because loose bricks are a trip hazard - totally worth it.
I'm a bit excited about change of season. Not really excited, but open to it. it's perfect now with cool weather and enough rain that I don't have to water the garden. Once I get the new garden beds set up, and put in a bunch more native plants after my landscape architect gives me advice and makes a wholesale order for me, outside work should be slowing down and once it turns very soggy outside I can turn to inside projects, such as finishing more quilts and perfecting a whole wheat pita recipe for me since Trader joe's is no longer delivering the goods on that (their new ones are gross and have 2 g added sugar each - and I have a firm no added sugar before lunch rule, plus that's 20% of my daily allocation on most days, so ... no). I can focus on maybe hiking when the weather doesn't suck, volunteering, reading, more cooking. Learn to prune my own trees, even though I do very much like my tree pruner and I want to hear about his trip to Japan.
I am also realizing that my house gets dirty really quickly. I can scrub the outside siding but it just is dirty again a few weeks later. NOt as dirty, but not clean. Why kill myself to scrub it down? Though I do want to try again to get the windows clean.
**
Garlic is planted, yay! Beds formed with soil, fertilized, planted, watered, lightly mulched, covered with fencing to hopefully keep critters (dog) out. I still need to process the rest for storage. Unfortunately some seems damaged - rotten, mildewed. Not sure why. Maybe it stayed in the ground too long before harvest.
NOw I need to shower, head to market. The spend some time in the kitchen - start dill relish, start whole wheat pitas, make salads (cabbage-garbanzo salad, Russian potato salad), can beans. Then clean house. Read, process dried beans if they dry out.
This is what a good day looks like to me.
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