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It really does feel like my days just zoom by, and I have nothing to show for them except working and sleeping. I haven't even been cooking much during the past couple of weeks because of my evening and night shifts. Yes, I ran a metric fuckton of errands last week, and to a lesser extent this week, and somehow I still feel like I accomplished nothing.
It's possible I'm being too hard on myself, but other people are out there doing the same job as me but also raising children and running Girl Guide groups and playing sports in the evenings and going on dates and tripes with their spouses. Several of the younger women here play hockey or socker or whatever else, and a couple of days ago they were talking about a game they played that started at 10pm. Just, no. If I'm not working a shift, at 10pm I am asleep. I don't leave the house after 7pm most of the time, let alone go play a freaking sport at 10pm. *shakes head incredulously* Now, to be fair, these young women are literally half my age--not a one of them is a day over 25, and maybe at their age I had a bit more get-up-and-go than I do now, but my get-up-and-go got-up-and-went a long time ago. I am tired just thinking about this, quite frankly.
Since KK was working from home today, I left my bedroom door open a little in case Octavia (my youngest kitty, who will be turning eleven this May *sob*) wanted to come have a cuddle. She doesn't get much unadulterated cuddle time anymore, because the dogs' crates are in my bedroom, and I have to keep the door closed for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that KK's dog Rika likes to come in my room and poop under my bed. The second reason is that if my dogs spot any cats coming into the room, they scream the place down, and no one gets any sleep. So the poor cats are exiled unless I'm working night shifts and KK is working from home and can keep the dogs downstairs. Normally either Juno or Octavia will come keep me company, but today there was no sign of Juno, and Octavia decided to come into my room and stand by the door and scream at me instead of cuddling. It was actually quite funny, but also I was a little sad because I would have loved some uninterrupted cuddle time with her. Ah, cats. What can you do?
Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of Ministry & Counsel, and we are discussing the State of Society Report. Our clerk sent us a draft that they had put together, and at the risk of sounding extremely mean, it was both incredibly lackluster and somehow also managed to make me rage at the same time. The latter was because the clerk wrote "the threat of Covid 19 has waned," and NO, I CANNOT STRESS HOW MUCH IT HAS NOT WANED. Fuck everything. This is a person whom I know is Covid-cautious, does not attend Meeting in person, is careful about masking, etc. WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THAT? I feel like I'm being gaslit. Anyway, I sent back much politer comments to that effect, and hopefully we will be able to get that sentence either stricken or altered, because JFC I will not stand for Covid minimizing in my community. I will NOT.
*breathes deeply*
ANYWAY. The rest of the report felt super flat, as if the clerk couldn't muster any enthusiasm for any of it. They wrote a better report last year, so I know it's not just their writing style, or whatever. I don't know if they are struggling or maybe a little depressed or what, but it felt like kind of a depressing read. I'm hoping that if we all provide some extra input tomorrow we'll be able to make it a little nicer. One of the members has yet again accidentally double-booked herself tomorrow, and I am trying to scrape some compassion from the bottom of the empty barrel of my soul. She has ADHD as well, and I get it--the struggle is real. But I for the most part (with one single exception) have managed to be present and on time for every meeting, and she is routinely late or doesn't show up at all, and she's usually late because she's decided to do something right before the meeting (like go to a busy restaurant with her husband), or lost track of the time, or didn't realize she'd booked a conflicting appointment. And another member keeps vanishing on extended trips with his wife or cancelling because he doesn't plan his freelance work gigs properly. Like, folks, COME ON. I am the youngest in our committee by about fifteen years and I am the only one with a full-time job that requires my presence in an office, and yet I manage to put things in my calendar and be on time. I'm not the clerk, so it's not my job to herd the cats, but it's incredibly frustrating to constantly have people missing the one hour a month we all committed to.
/end rant
I am apparently in a MOOD today. :P Sorry for the slight bummer of a post. I will end on a good note, and say that I renewed my community garden plot today, and received the good news that I am being moved away from Mosquitoville and to a better, more accessible plot! I am no longer relegated to the back corner where there was no sun and ALLLLLL the mosquitoes and the ground was full of roots. This is good news on so many fronts, I can't even begin to tell you. Trying to garden in that back plot felt like a punishment. Hopefully this year I won't have to have as many fights with my plot in order to get anything to grow in it. I will need to transplant all the perennials I put in my plot last year, but that's not that big of a deal, I don't think. I may ask for some friends to help me with that, particularly transplanting the asparagus that I carefully planted last year, so that I don't have to do it all on my own and risk damaging the plants.
If I have time tonight I will pull out my seed list (although it's missing a couple of things that I need to add from my seed box) and start planning what I want to put in my garden this year.
It's possible I'm being too hard on myself, but other people are out there doing the same job as me but also raising children and running Girl Guide groups and playing sports in the evenings and going on dates and tripes with their spouses. Several of the younger women here play hockey or socker or whatever else, and a couple of days ago they were talking about a game they played that started at 10pm. Just, no. If I'm not working a shift, at 10pm I am asleep. I don't leave the house after 7pm most of the time, let alone go play a freaking sport at 10pm. *shakes head incredulously* Now, to be fair, these young women are literally half my age--not a one of them is a day over 25, and maybe at their age I had a bit more get-up-and-go than I do now, but my get-up-and-go got-up-and-went a long time ago. I am tired just thinking about this, quite frankly.
Since KK was working from home today, I left my bedroom door open a little in case Octavia (my youngest kitty, who will be turning eleven this May *sob*) wanted to come have a cuddle. She doesn't get much unadulterated cuddle time anymore, because the dogs' crates are in my bedroom, and I have to keep the door closed for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that KK's dog Rika likes to come in my room and poop under my bed. The second reason is that if my dogs spot any cats coming into the room, they scream the place down, and no one gets any sleep. So the poor cats are exiled unless I'm working night shifts and KK is working from home and can keep the dogs downstairs. Normally either Juno or Octavia will come keep me company, but today there was no sign of Juno, and Octavia decided to come into my room and stand by the door and scream at me instead of cuddling. It was actually quite funny, but also I was a little sad because I would have loved some uninterrupted cuddle time with her. Ah, cats. What can you do?
Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of Ministry & Counsel, and we are discussing the State of Society Report. Our clerk sent us a draft that they had put together, and at the risk of sounding extremely mean, it was both incredibly lackluster and somehow also managed to make me rage at the same time. The latter was because the clerk wrote "the threat of Covid 19 has waned," and NO, I CANNOT STRESS HOW MUCH IT HAS NOT WANED. Fuck everything. This is a person whom I know is Covid-cautious, does not attend Meeting in person, is careful about masking, etc. WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THAT? I feel like I'm being gaslit. Anyway, I sent back much politer comments to that effect, and hopefully we will be able to get that sentence either stricken or altered, because JFC I will not stand for Covid minimizing in my community. I will NOT.
*breathes deeply*
ANYWAY. The rest of the report felt super flat, as if the clerk couldn't muster any enthusiasm for any of it. They wrote a better report last year, so I know it's not just their writing style, or whatever. I don't know if they are struggling or maybe a little depressed or what, but it felt like kind of a depressing read. I'm hoping that if we all provide some extra input tomorrow we'll be able to make it a little nicer. One of the members has yet again accidentally double-booked herself tomorrow, and I am trying to scrape some compassion from the bottom of the empty barrel of my soul. She has ADHD as well, and I get it--the struggle is real. But I for the most part (with one single exception) have managed to be present and on time for every meeting, and she is routinely late or doesn't show up at all, and she's usually late because she's decided to do something right before the meeting (like go to a busy restaurant with her husband), or lost track of the time, or didn't realize she'd booked a conflicting appointment. And another member keeps vanishing on extended trips with his wife or cancelling because he doesn't plan his freelance work gigs properly. Like, folks, COME ON. I am the youngest in our committee by about fifteen years and I am the only one with a full-time job that requires my presence in an office, and yet I manage to put things in my calendar and be on time. I'm not the clerk, so it's not my job to herd the cats, but it's incredibly frustrating to constantly have people missing the one hour a month we all committed to.
/end rant
I am apparently in a MOOD today. :P Sorry for the slight bummer of a post. I will end on a good note, and say that I renewed my community garden plot today, and received the good news that I am being moved away from Mosquitoville and to a better, more accessible plot! I am no longer relegated to the back corner where there was no sun and ALLLLLL the mosquitoes and the ground was full of roots. This is good news on so many fronts, I can't even begin to tell you. Trying to garden in that back plot felt like a punishment. Hopefully this year I won't have to have as many fights with my plot in order to get anything to grow in it. I will need to transplant all the perennials I put in my plot last year, but that's not that big of a deal, I don't think. I may ask for some friends to help me with that, particularly transplanting the asparagus that I carefully planted last year, so that I don't have to do it all on my own and risk damaging the plants.
If I have time tonight I will pull out my seed list (although it's missing a couple of things that I need to add from my seed box) and start planning what I want to put in my garden this year.
