September 16, 2022
In August, I took a new position within my company, at a different branch. It is an opportunity to learn a completely new department, and that experience will be great for when it’s time to move up into a more administrative role. It’s also an opportunity to get away from a couple of very bad people and situations. It’s just the new chapter that I needed – professionally and personally. While I do miss several old coworkers, the new start has been a lifesaver. Days are brighter. The lingering sense of doom and pointlessness is considerably thinner.?
I have an obscene amount of paid time-off piling up at work, so every month I take a long weekend at the least. Today is part of that monthly vacation! It’s going to be a “Me Day”; the hubs will be at work, and I’ll be left to my own devices. I love being around friends, as I was all day yesterday, for Day 1 of my long weekend, but sometimes I need a recharge, and my ambivert self needs the quiet for a little while. I don’t know if this will lead to an interesting journal entry, but today is the day to write one, so here it is!?
12:30a – After dozing off an hour earlier, I wake up to my husband coming to bed. I pop up awake, thinking I am smelling the cat having peed in the room. But he says it’s just the cat box in the next room. I am kind of known as having a keen sense of smell – He offers to go scoop it, because he knows I’ll never get to sleep if something like that is bugging me at night. He’s so nice. The last thing I remember is him laying in bed again, and I see “12:47am” on his phone.?
7a – I wake up feeling pretty rested. Hubs is half awake, and asked me if yesterday (day 1 of my long weekend) was good. I said yes, I enjoyed it. It was some unexpected social time with friends – he invited a good friend to come to our place to do her laundry, saving her about $40 in laundromat quarters. He then settled in to get another hour or so of sleep before he has to get ready for work. (His alarm usually goes off at 9.) I lay there long enough to wake up more.?
7:45a – I get up, swing through the bathroom, come out to the kitchen, start coffee, and notice out the back patio that the bird feeders are empty. I go to the pantry but we are out of birdseed. So I put that and cat food on the little whiteboard for the next grocery order. While the coffee is going, I start this audiobook I am trying to get through. It is a super cheesy hicksploitation slasher thing. It has about 4 hours left, so maybe I can knock it out today. I hate DNFing any book, no matter if it’s bad. This one isn’t bad, just, very specific, and I’m not really in the mood for that kind of insistently-specific right now. So I play it while feeding the cats, making coffee, and writing this entry. Coffee now poured, I open the back patio door, go over to the comfy chair in the living room, and read. Just me, the 2 cats, the birds, and the cars traveling down this road running along the back of our complex, just on the other side of the strip of woods out my back door. I stay like that until…
8:50a -? I noticed the cat box smell again and realized Hubs must have just dumped it in the kitchen trash can last night. So I stop, take the trash out, wash my hands, refill my coffee, and resume my book.?
9:05a – I get a text from the bedroom. Hubs is “sleeping an extra hour”, and asking me to close everything up and turn on the A/C. It’s not that warm, but I do it anyway. Maybe I’ll open things up again after he takes off. This book is insipid.?
9:25a – I’m sick of this book for now. 2h 49m left of it; I’ll get back to it later. Now I move on to planning a little bit for the new Dungeons and Dragons game that I am going to start DMing here in the next week. I’m finishing my names list for NPCs.?
10:30a – I hear hubs in the shower. He’ll be on his way soon. I hope he has a good day at work; his new position is contingent on his ability to generate revenue, so while he enjoys the work, there is a constant stress to do well, or risk losing the job. I think I am getting a bit restless, so after he leaves, I will get ready myself, and head out to do something nice for him as a surprise. There are several wall prints that need framing in here, so I will go to Michael’s or somewhere and get a couple of them done.?
1130a-3p – Hubs leaves out right at 11, and by 11:30 I am showered, dressed, and out the door. While driving, my Spotify is on a “Sunday morning” playlist. It’s stuff that’s all calm, pleasant. Nico, for example. “Chocolate Jesus”. “Jubilee Street”. I head down McGalliard to Michael’s. There, I find 5 frames for a pretty reasonable price, and pack them up in the trunk. I then head to Target, to grab some cat food, and a couple other household things. During the drive, Hubs messages me, seeing if I’d be interested in Lunch. I say yes! So, at about 12:30, after Target, I get in line for some drive-thru fish and root beer. While waiting there, I get a message from an ex-co-worker in my old branch. She let me know that she found in the break room cabinet a cute coffee mug she gave me as a gift. I was mortified! I didn’t pack it and take it with me when I changed positions! I tell her “I’m right across the street, I’ll be there in 5 minutes!” So I ducked in to my old job. People there seem good, and I notice a profound lack of gloom that I usually had when working in that building – now that I have zero work responsibilities to the person in charge there. Being able to breathe in there was nice! I grab the neglected mug, and bid everyone a good day. By then it was 1, and I had to deliver lunch downtown to Hub’s job, and eat my own before a 2pm meeting in the Village. We are very good friends with his employers – a small indie business. I have a great little 45 minutes or so with them, catching up, while enjoying lunch with Hubs. You could tell he was glad to see me. They are getting ready for their booth they will have at this weekend’s Washington Street Festival. So at 1:45, I leave them to it, and head to the Village. Parking was a little tough, and I parked a block or so away, but it was a nice bright day, and with me needing the Vitamin D, I walked to the Cup, got a drink, and took a seat outside. The meeting went well – the project the 2 of us contribute to is going well, and we exchange some ideas for its future. By 2:45, I am back in the car, and headed home.?
3:20p – I typed on this for 20 minutes at 3 o’clock, and from 3:20 to 4:45p, I hung 7 bits of wall art. I look forward to Hubs being delightfully-surprised that I did that today. The bathroom looks way better now with everything put back, and updated. I finally hung this 1 piece that I got for Christmas in 2020. He has been waiting for me to put this stuff up for quite some time. Sure, he could very well have done it, but I am going to use this as a chance to show him I am still here, plugged into our life here. I guess it has taken me this long to get out of a years-long funk, and I am choosing to use this last hour as the manifestation of me coming around. The “Astral Weeks” album plays on the TV’s Spotify app. Part of my 2020s low was being shown crystal clear of how terrible so many people are around me throughout the COVID thing. But we cannot let others’ terribleness ruin our life. After the pictures were up, I took the chance to tidy up for tonight’s D&D game. People will be arriving at about 6. Sweeping, mopping, Clorox wipes, new cat litter, dishes, trash, a new scented candle. I turned the lights on. 2 blue jays bicker out the back window.?
4:45p – Tonight is our regular D&D game, and shortly before 5, one of the players arrives. There was no real talk earlier in our group chat about when the game would start tonight, other than me saying I’d be home after 3:30. It was just her and I for about an hour, so we had a nice time there, and worked on some things for the game. She works in my former branch, and when I worked there, we would talk a lot about our game and nerd stuff in general, and she is probably what I miss most in having taken this new job. She is having some water/plumbing issues at her house, and it sounds like a headache. I hope that gets cleared up for her soon. Other players trickle in, and by 6:30, we are ready to go. This is right when Hubs gets home. He does not play in this game, and he spends the evening in the spare room on his headphones with his online video game people. I order some Doordash, and get settled in. One of our other players at the table gifts everyone else with sets of very nice new dice for the upcoming new story we will be doing. It was too much really; he is a gentleman. We ended a bit early, around 10:30, because a couple of us have early mornings tomorrow. The night was silly, relaxing, and cozy. It was a wonderful ending to a productive yet restful, solitary but social, peaceful yet active day off.?
11:30p – We have to be awake at 7am; Hubs and I helping his boss (our friend, one of the D&D players) set up at the Washington Street thing this weekend. He liked all the new things on the wall, and we talked about that, and his hopes for the Washington Street thing being a success for their booth. It was cool enough to open the windows with no A/C, and I passed out listening to the breeze.