Corner of Bourbon & Division

I'm still exhausted. Today was the last day of working with the professional organizer. It went well and I have no regrets, but I still have a lot of work left to do to clear out and give away some of what we decluttered. The kitchen is in much better shape than before: I moved a shelving unit into the small space that serves as KK's office and leads into the living room and replaced it with a smaller shelving unit that was already in the kitchen and a small cart on wheels, so now the kitchen feels far more open, and there is in fact a bit more room to work with. The living room does look as though seven or eight tornadoes have gone through it, however, as it's full of all of the piles for donation and discarding. Oops. Oh well. Omelet, eggs, etc.

My mortgage financing is conditionally approved, although I have to jump through fourteen thousand flaming hoops to prove that the money I have in my bank account is actually mine, and there has to be a "desktop appraisal" of the property in case the amount I offered for it is higher than what the mortgage lender thinks it's worth. Uuuugh, why are finances so complicated and stressful?

I have scheduled a house inspection on Sunday morning with an inspector I haven't worked with before. My usual guy, Mike Courtemanche, was unavailable to work with me because this is the busiest time of year. The new guy comes recommended by my real estate agent as well, so I'm sure he'll be good too. 

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Alfred bird auction (although I won't get getting quail now that there's a strong possibility I'll be moving in just two months), where I shall hang out with my newish friend Val (we've been friends for about five years now) and later I shall head further out in order to spend some time with Dylan and Sarah on their farm. I have some plans to bring disinfectable footwear with me so that I don't accidentally track bird flu onto their farm just in case any of the auction birds have it, or some other horrible avian disease that will affect their poultry.

I have fallen asleep three times at my keyboard trying to finish this, so it's time to call it a night. I have to leave around 6:30 to get to the auction on time, so a full night of sleep is definitely in order.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

So because the last two night shifts are 12-hour weekend shifts, the halfway mark of my week of night shifts is actually on Friday. Exactly 32 hours of work left before I'm off for two weeks, since I traded my weekend day shifts with a coworker.

I am excited to get through my night shifts and into next week, even though I'm going to be super tired. Between the night shifts and the terrible quality of sleep I've been getting, I'm going to be a bit of a basket case during the week. However, I am excited to have the professional organizer over to help me get the kitchen whipped into shape. I have some ideas about how to move some things around to make things more effective, and I'm hoping she will be able to help me streamline the rest of it to be as functional as possible. I would really like to bring my herb garden into the kitchen, too, although I don't know if that will even be possible. I guess we'll find out.

The international news is currently awash with headlines about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar. I just saw that the United States Geological Service's (USGS) predictive modelling estimated the death toll could exceed 10,000 people, and that losses could be greater than the value of the country's gross domestic product, which is WILD. How does a country recover from that kind of disaster? I'm actually surprised the USGS is still functional enough to provide services internationally. I assume that Doge will be decimating them shortly. *sigh*

I am struggling a little to find good news in the world these days. Right now everything feels like it's on fire all around me. So even though my own life is going comparatively well, I am struggling with survivor's guilt about that. I'm also worried that the fact that my life isn't going nearly as well as I think it is, and that it could all fall apart at any time. Apart from the fact that I have exactly one year and two days left in my work contract, which means I could very well be unemployed right after that, there's a non-zero chance that my contract could be ended early if the Conservatives get into power and decide to force more cuts in the government. Hell, the Liberals could do the same as well. It's also increasingly likely that we're going to face some sort of violence from the USA, ranging simply from economic violence all the way up to and including invasion/annexation.

It actually reminds me of a post I saw earlier today, by someone named nitewriter:

So, yeah, it all feels sort of like that. I actually tried bullet journaling a while back, and it didn't work as well as I wanted it to, which is kind of weird because the person who invented bullet journaling did it in order to manage his ADHD. I'm actually curious to see if any of the ADHD management techniques that have failed for me over the past few years might not work better after I get a CPAP, supposing the CPAP actually makes a difference in my energy levels and ability to focus and retain information.

I really liked the concept of bullet journals, and I got very excited when I saw all the pretty ways in which people on the internet were customizing theirs, but I got bogged down in perfectionism and preparing my pages in advance started taking up so much time that I would put it off until I was "too far behind" the arbitrary deadlines I'd set for myself. That's mostly because even when I picked the easiest pretty layouts I could find, my artistic grasp exceeded my reach. I am really, really shit at visual arts, and so even very basic stuff takes me forever to accomplish. So if I do decide to go back to a bullet journal (or BuJo, as the kids were calling it a few years ago) I will likely avoid trying to make it look aesthetic and stick to just plain writing. Anyway, I don't plan on trying yet another journaling method at least until I've had my very own functional CPAP for a few months.

I probably shouldn't hang so many hopes on the CPAP. If I turn out to be among those for whom it's not effective, the disappointment will be excruciating. I'm just excited at the prospect of no longer constantly feeling like absolute garbage. I have no idea for how long I've had sleep apnea, but I've felt like the aforementioned garbage for years now, although it got noticeably worse at the beginning of the pandemic, so five years at least now. I assumed at first that the brain fog was just due to aging and ADHD combined, and then it kept getting worse. At multiple times I thought maybe I'd had an asymptomatic case of Covid (in spite of the fact that I mask everywhere in public) which had resulted in long Covid that had fried my brain. Of course, there's no way to test that theory as far as I know. I've been vaccinated multiple times, so the antibodies will already be present in my system. Right now the sleep apnea seems to be the more likely culprit.

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I cannot promise that the whingeing about being tired will end anytime soon.

I am counting the days until my sleep study (three more sleeps!), but of course even then I won't get answers right away. I'm still happy it's happening, and I'm planning to ask how quickly they typically have the results of a sleep study in the hopes that it's a relatively quick process. I have been told that even if it turns out I do need a CPAP machine, I get a "loaner" machine for a month so they can figure out all the correct settings and whatnot (don't ask me for specifics, I don't fully understand it yet), and then the loaner machine gets taken away and I have to wait an unspecified number of months before I get a permanent machine of my very own, all of which sounds sucky. I would just like to get a machine and be on my way, thank you, but alas, that's not the world we live in. On the other hand, I am really hopeful that this will be the determining factor in why I'm so goddamned tired all the time. It would be ideal if I could get the Mystery Tired sorted out before the summer so that I can really take advantage of the nice weather and not drag my sorry ass around like a partially deflated balloon.

In the interim, my brain keeps writing cheques that my body can't cash. There are so many things I want to do, but have no energy to even get started on, not to mention no brainpower or willpower either. If I were to write a list of all the things I want to do and learn, people would probably laugh at me, but I do honestly kind of want to be a Jack of All Trades with a lot of practical skills, like sewing and crocheting and making soap and woodworking and stuff. I should probably make a complete list of all those things and maybe break them down into categories by how feasible they are from a realistic standpoint. It would be an interesting exercise, for sure.

I got in touch with the person I've been jokingly referring to as my worm dealer. The red wrigglers I got from her a few weeks ago are doing well, so I decided to get them some friends in the hopes that they will all reproduce a little faster and produce more castings. I was a little worried at first because I kept finding worms climbing the sides of my bin, but a bit of research revealed that it's normal for just a couple of worms to do that in search of condensation. There was quite a lot of condensation in the bin at the time, and when I got the humidity a bit more balanced they stopped doing it. Apparently you only need to worry if either all of your worms are trying to escape, or if they're all huddled together in one spot, since that means the conditions are poor, but so far that doesn't appear to be the case. The worms have been happily worming, and I've given them more than enough food to keep them happy for now. That being said, I am still happy with my decision to get them some worm friends to speed things up a bit.

I'm meant to go pick up my new worm friends on Friday, and since I also have doctor's appointment that day, that will significantly cut into my time. My original plan was to get my seeds started, and I am still going to give it the old college try, with some spillover into Saturday if needs be. I am a little annoyed about the doctor's visit, because it takes me nearly an hour to drive there and then an hour to drive back, and my appointment is for literally fifteen minutes, and I doubt I will spend more than five minutes in there because I'm only going in order to request blood work for my A1C at the request of the bariatric clinic. This could easily be a phone call or an online appointment, but noooo, I have to waste nearly three hours of my time (travel time, wait time, appointment time, and the time it takes me to deal with all my winter gear) for it. Blargh.

However, if all goes well I should still have a fair bit of time in the afternoon. The plan is to pick up the worms on my way to the doctor's appointment, then head directly home after that, which will get me home by about 1pm. If I play my cards right and don't let inertia get the better of me (the trick is to not sit down, ever, because then I immediately realize how tired I am and don't want to get up again), then I can have a quick lunch and immediately head to the basement to get my seeds started. I do still have to set up all my grow lights, but I'm cautiously optimistic that that won't take more than an hour or so, which leaves me with several hours to plant some seeds before I have to start making dinner. 

I've kind of been slacking in the meal planning department, too. I had gotten into the habit of planning dinner the week before, and that really came in handy for cutting down on grocery spending and more importantly saving me time and stress about trying to figure out what the fuck's for dinner every single night. I've also been meaning to create a full inventory of what's in all the various freezers, too. I have a decent idea, but there are things that I keep forgetting about that I really need to get around to cooking, especially stuff that's in the largest chest freezer in the garage. I have to dig out the sheets with QR code stickers that I got a while back with a view to making an attempt at getting more organized. That never materialized mostly because I keep running out of energy to do anything besides barely exist. 

Okay. I have one hour left before my workday is over and things are picking up. See you on the flip side, friends!

One thing you don't grasp as a child is that becoming an adult essentially means giving up a huge chunk of your free time. Until I moved out on my own, I essentially had two adults who did a lot of stuff for me without my really noticing. Don't get me wrong, I was expected to help around the house and contribute to the overall functioning of our household, but that's very much not the same as having to do it all myself on top of holding down a full-time job.

This is my roundabout way of complaining that basically every single day next week is taken up by commitments, even though I have the whole week "off" work. I am deeply annoyed by the fact that I won't have any downtime at all until I have to go back to work the following Monday. It's very rude, is what it is, and honestly I am tired just thinking about it.

The good news is that, much to my surprise, KK agreed to move her in-office shift from Monday to Tuesday, so tomorrow I shall zip to Montreal with the Hubris Shawl and a couple of other things I got for my mother, specifically some new KN95 masks for her to try out and a pulse oximeter. I have been worried for quite some time that my mother will resist seeking medical attention when she needs it because she tends to dismiss any symptoms as minor or unimportant, and I'm hoping having an objective measure will help her make that determination. The one I got has good reviews and wasn't super expensive, and I can show her at what number she should definitely seek medical care. Her compromised lung function already puts her at considerable risk, so also knowing when *not* to go to the hospital is also a useful skill to acquire.

The plan is to leave around 8am, which will put me in Montreal by about 11am, especially given the current meteorological conditions, and then leave maybe around 7pm to avoid rush hour traffic and the aforementioned meteorological conditions, which are pretty terrible right now. It didn't snow much overnight, much to my relief, but it has been snowing steadily all day while I've been at the office, so I fully expect the roads to be an absolute nightmare for the next couple of days until the city can get them cleared properly. Driving in was pretty gnarly despite the relative paucity of snow, because the ploughs weren't out yet. Logistically it makes sense. The plough drivers will likely be doing 16 hour stints and desperately need sleep, so it makes more sense to send them out once a lot more snow has fallen so as to maximize the effect of the ploughing, rather than having them scrape two centimeters at a time off the roads and then have to go off shift just as the storm hits its peak. 

Speaking of ploughs, I'm not at all convinced my property management folks will have gotten around to my driveway by the time I get home tonight, so I am bracing for having to pull out my shovel and clear myself a space in there. My immediate neighbours, who share the driveway with me, drove away on Thursday and I haven't seen their car nor any sign it has come back to the driveway since that day. I'm not sure if they just decided to park it elsewhere until the snow was completely removed, or if they just went on a little trip together that happened to coincide with the winter storm.

In the meantime, I have reached out to a local professional organizer. I am 100% fed up with the state of the house, and I can't do it on my own. KK is not going to be of any help for a variety of reasons, so I'm hoping the lady I emailed with today will not be faint of heart and will help me manage within the parameters of the current state of the house. I'm willing to purge more of my stuff to make room, but KK is not going to want to part with any of hers, so I have to figure out storage solutions for all of that in a way that will allow me to keep functioning

My main hope is to start with the garage and turn that into a more functional storage space than it currently is, then turn my attention to the main floor and the basement. I am reasonably confident I can tackle my bedroom on my own, but if that turns out to also require a helping hand, I can always avail myself of the services again. Of course, we might not start with the garage simply because it's been so damned cold lately, and my garage is unheated, so that might have to wait for more clement weather. I'd much rather do the garage first so that it can serve as a staging/storage area, but needs must, I guess. We could always start in the basement or the kitchen. The kitchen is the most in need of some kind of organizing, but we have «l'embarras du choix» as they say. 

I'm just over halfway through my last weekend shift at work. Another five hours and I can GTFO. Pray for good road conditions, friends!

My body is still mad at me. I have given it some painkillers by way of apology, and we shall see if it forgives me tomorrow.

I got up early again and did some cleaning before the remaining organiser arrived. I cleared out the clutter in the front entrance and hallway, and mopped the floors, and mopped the floor in one of the upstairs bathrooms as well. I also moved all the furniture in my bedroom around in what I hope will prove to be a better/more efficient configuration going forward. Time will tell. For now it feels a bit weird and disorienting to have my bed at a 90 degree angle from its usual orientation, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I also vacuumed all the accessible carpeting, 

Today felt less productive than yesterday, but that's only because the pace was a lot less frenetic and was focused more on organising and putting things together rather than the massive amounts of decluttering that got done yesterday. In reality, today was also super productive. Only one of the organisers came back, but as it turned out that was a good thing, because two of them would have been serious overkill.

We got the guest room 95% cleared out (soon to be KK's room). All that's left in there right now is a folding table, and the box with the papers I need to shred and my shredder. We then moved the furniture and computer peripherals out of what is now the Cat Room (I had already moved the computer itself earlier this morning), and went through the last of the books. In total I think I got rid of about 35% of my books, and I now have enough shelf space to accommodate my entire library, which is awesome. The organiser also helped me rejuvenate my filing system, and I put away the handful of papers I actually kept after yesterday's blitz. There was still an hour left "on the clock" by the time we were done, and so on the spur of the moment we decided to tackle the front closet. I had been sort of avoiding it because it seemed like a huge job, but it was way less terrible than I had assumed: we finished in under 40 minutes and it looks fantastic.

The cats are extremely mad at me, needless to say. I changed things and moved things around without their permission. Everything is terrible, and I am a monster.

I still have a lot of work to do, but the progress is undeniable, and I am feeling very accomplished. Next on the list is actually putting all my books in order, and putting the final touches on my new "home office" set-up. Once I have cleared the garage of all the recycling and garbage bags I generated this week, I will focus on clearing out the garage. Ideally I'd like to clear out 60% of it, possibly up to 75% if I can manage it. I won't be able to clear anything until after this Tuesday, though, and even then I will still have a ton of paper recycling to put to the curb the Tuesday after. So I'm looking at about 10 days before I can really get in there, and if I'm realistic about it, it will be more like two weeks because that feels like a weekend project than an "after work" project. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on reorganising the kitchen. I have already done a small bit of de-cluttering in there, and I want to keep going with that until I have it looking and working the way I want.

What I will have to do in the next week or so is acquire storage solutions in the form of shelves and possibly some bins. I resisted the urge to splurge on organisation porn until such time as I had de-cluttered, because it would have been a waste of money. You can't organise clutter, after all. Now that said clutter is coming under control, though, it's time to put together a system that will work for me. I will update as events warrant, as I haven't completely decided on what I want that system to look like yet.

I'm kind of amused that I'm tackling this massive de-clutter in 2021, a full year after everyone else on the planet did it because they were locked down during a pandemic. I'm not sure what sort of contrarian that makes me, but I am enjoying the dramatic irony. Phnee resists de-cluttering while all the cool kids are doing it, but promptly gets to work as soon as people aren't talking about it anymore.

All right. Tomorrow morning is another early day, as I want to take Peggy out for a frolic before Quaker Meeting, and after that I am heading over to KK's house to help her with more cleaning/de-cluttering as well. Therefore, it is time for bed.

 It's my mother's birthday today, so I suggested we do a virtual birthday party, and it was very nice indeed. My father ordered food from a local restaurant for them, and I made myself a simple but nice dinner of steak, baby potatoes, and asparagus.

In news that will surprise no one, I have found that I overall take better care of myself when I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I am better about brushing/flossing (oh, flossing, why must you be so boring?), can put out my clothes for the next day, and wind down nicely in a way that makes me feel ready for bed and not rushed or like I only have just enough time to pass out.

Tomorrow I'm going to work but I've "booked" the day to work on employee evaluations, so mostly it will just be me hiding in my office and not answering my phone and trying to ignore my email except at set intervals. I want to get them all done tomorrow so I don't have to worry about them later.

This weekend I'm going back to KK's house to continue helping her clear out stuff on Saturday, and then Sunday I will be doing the same except in my house. I should probably make a plan for what I'd like to accomplish, but I'm also really good at making plans that make me feel all optimistic (yay dopamine!) that I then don't follow up on, so... I don't know. I may try a different kind of plan, one which involves fewer lists and maybe resembles cognitive behavioural therapy homework a little more, by listing where I think I might encounter feelings of resistance and figuring out how to work through them.

We shall see. Stay tuned for more thrilling updates! ;)

I'm feeling a bit more energetic these days. ( Light and energy. )

( Gardening, fencing and asphalt. )

( Paperwork. Blech. And also the prospect of selling books. )

So that's about it for now. I have other thoughts about time and procrastination and time management, but they're all still pretty rough, and not ready to be written down.

I'm feeling pretty optimistic about summer. Maybe it's the extra sunlight, maybe not, but I'm not complaining. I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and to getting outside more.

Today was Power Point Day. Much like last week I ended up learning quite a lot. Oddly I learned less than I did last week, mostly because this week was truly a beginner-level PPT course and last week we covered more advanced topics in Word. That being said, I did learn what I was hoping to learn, namely how to make bullet points and other stuff in PPT do the fancy twirling/fading/sliding/flashing thing. I am now reasonably sure that I can pull off a decent, if somewhat basic, Power Point presentation if I have to.

I bought myself a new notebook today. The one I have carried around with me since 2008 is battered beyond recognition and is falling apart. So I have been transcribing the information in it that's still relevant, and leaving the rest behind. I'm a little sad at "losing" that stuff, which is weird since it's mostly phone numbers that are horribly out of date and grocery lists and to-do lists from years ago, but it feels like I'm tossing away part of my history. Of course that's not true, but I'm feeling a little twinge nonetheless. I'm also not transcribing some of the longer quotes I had in there before. For one thing, I haven't looked at them in a while, and for another, they are easily found elsewhere if I truly need to read/use them again.

The new notebook is also a little more compact, which means it fits better in my purse. So hooray for that!

I got some writing done, too, which was nice. I came home from my class, puttered for a while, did some cleaning/dishes, and then buckled down and wrote about 800 words of fan fiction. It's nice to be slowly getting back into the swing of writing, even if I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to it these days. I also finished writing the outline of the novel I'd like to complete this year, and either tonight or tomorrow I shall transcribe it into Scrivener to see if that helps me get a sense of how it's working out. I've never been much of an outliner, but I'm beginning more and more to see that outlining is beneficial for my stories, to prevent me from meandering off into why-is-section-even-here-it-should-be-purged-and-burned territory with my writing.

Speaking of devoting time to stuff, I remembered today to do a 5-minute mindfulness exercise. I have an app on my phone that has 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40 minute meditations, and right now they're a good way to keep my mind a little more focussed than my trying to do it all on my own. I'm starting with 5 minutes a day, and I'll see how it goes from there.

I have been remiss about answering everyone's comments in previous posts, but I want you to know I do read them all and appreciate every single one!