User talk:TheEileen/Feb 2011
February 2011
22 Feb 2011
Updated list and wiki. Other than the updates, no movements. One project posted, but there is a glitch at PG because the PPer has confirmed that the link takes you to a PG page with the wrong name of author and book, but the actual link takes you to the right project. I'm waiting to update the wiki until I do not have to explain that. Grin.
Having possible pre-flu symptoms but I hope it not that really. As below, I was hanging around sick people and the germs! The germs! Grin. I did get my hair cut but nothing else. I forgot my cards to get my discounts and birthday stuff, so I'll go another day. I did, over the course of the weekend get several things crossed off my to-do list without further stressing myself, so I'm happy on that count.
Weather COLD and snow flurries. Listened to an interesting program on the local radio here about a study just published in the Northwest of the US about we have had about a 100 years of unusually wet weather when looked at a time-frame of thousands and tens of thousands of years. But naturally, for USians it is "always rainy and wet" here. Only it isn't and so now with the last 8 years of rainfall being "below average" (when factored over urban history of about 75 years) and all our water usage and laws working best with more rainfall ... The announcer didn't make the conclusion but I jumped there that we are going to have to start reconsidering those things and reconsidering what is "normal" for here. As it is snowy and rainy and hailing a little. But just a little!
It was so bright even at 6pm (I took a nap from 3:30 to 5:30 after the dentist today because I was so tired and hoping to stave off possible flu) and gorgeous sunsets and sunrises around here right now. That part I want to appreciate and enjoy every day. Even when I'm whiny, I'm trying to "stop and smell the roses" and appreciate what is good in my life.
19 Feb 2011
Updated list on Tuesday the 15th but no time for wiki. Tried to update the wiki some on Thursday the 17th but my computer which has been given me grief continued to do so. That is, it will go along nicely for a while and then the moment I'm like "I have 10 minutes for this thing and it usually goes fast so I'll do it", the computer or the internet decide to slow to a crawl, not boot up, not switch programs, etc. etc. I do swear I'm either more patient the other times when I'm not in a time crunch OR it really does seem to go into molasses-mode the very instant I need to go fast for some reason.
So, if I do things on the computer at all these last few weeks, it has been things I could start and then walk away from OR, like Ibsen Vol II, things that don't require the internet to be available. Annoying. And because I'm annoyed, I end up not doing fiddly things (like Am Miss or Spalding's TEI) since I need patience for that.
Having recently realized that a lot of my impatience and annoyance with the world is directly related to having to share an office these last five months now, I think this is another area (light bulb) that is being affected also. I honestly do not know if I'd be this stressed if the person I shared with wasn't so annoying to me or not. If I had a quiet person who didn't feel the need to share every stray thought that crossed her mind, I might not feel so drained of energy at the end of day. But then again maybe not.
This one, she once stated that she is a "burbler - I just go on and on and most people do not pay attention to me". My brain is wired to always ALWAYS focus on the human noise and pay close attention so as to know where danger comes from (long story, just believe me on this) and since she rarely shuts up these last few weeks, I spend the days in a constant state of stress and distraction. I want to come home and a) not interact with people at all, even by internet and b) de-tox out the stress. Usually by playing mindless games. I read about a study done recently that showed that most people are more distracted by listening to half a conversation than if they are next to both of the people speaking, hearing both sides. Our brains are wired to engage to figure out what is the other half of the conversation, if we can't hear it. This co-worker will try to talk to me for the first hour of the day about allllll the amazing things that happened to her the previous evening (and please imagine my major sarcasm for this because we are talking about what her drive home was like, what she ate for dinner, what she watched on tv, what she talked to her mom about on the phone, when she went to bed, how her sleep pattern was, and the always running commentary in FAR TOO MUCH DETAIL of her health with particular emphasis on her digestive track and bowel movement and I am not freaking kidding). I have told her repeatedly that I do not want to hear that (politely and not so politely), and I'm very uncommunicative, so after a while, she winds down. And then calls her friend "Mary" and tells it all to her for 45 minutes. Then calls her friend "John" and tell it all to him for 45 minutes. Then she needs a break. She has lunch. Then she calls her friend "Joan" and repeats it all. Then she calls her friend "Steve" and repeats it all. Takes her afternoon break. Then the last hour of every day, she calls her mother and/or her sister and HAS THE SAME CONVERSATION AGAIN. Honestly, I usually have to hear the same thing at least three times a day. This is the same one that sleeps during her work day in the office. What work does she do? As far as I can tell, she answers 3-5 e-mails out of the 100s we get, processes 1 or 2 work requests, maybe does 15 minutes of audit work and that's it. The rest of the time, she just wastes time.
Do I sound annoyed? HA. You can see why I am just completely useless when I get home. I have to concentrate SO HARD at work to tune her out and focus on what I'm doing. And of course, a major stressor is that I'm stuck with her and what do I do? What can I do? Well, I can constantly "tattle" on her to our boss who works in another state. But as you'll note by the use of the derogatory term, a) Americans are brought up not to "tattle" / "rat" out people, even the not good ones and b) usually the annoyance gets transferred from the bad worker to the one pointing it out. And with my boss that would be really true. Since he doesn't know what to do anyway and does not like to micro-manage (I have a whole soapbox about management in American now that I'll just avoid - but my boss is squarely in the norm in his management 'style') so I honestly cannot see him doing anything that would have a positive impact on my work situation and if he moves on any of the information, I'm stuck in the office with the person who would know there was only one place the information could come from. I do not know how to, in essence, confront her with the fact that I think she is a terrible worker who takes advantage of her situation and puts all the burden on me, in a way that again doesn't make the situation I'm in worse. But I know I do need to do something as I tend to do the more drastic thing of boiling boiling boiling and then finally just quitting my job to find another situation or sucking all the stress up.
I know I've said I was handling things well, and I realize now that in some respects that was most true when she was out sick nearly all the time. Now that she's back more and in her UP phase, I realize that a lot of that was based on her being not there or depressed so that she wasn't bothering me. And that I was using all these other ways to get the stress out. But I can see that I'm missing out on things I used to do a lot and liked a lot because they take energy I don't have after a day of dealing with her. I'm particularly bummed out this week due to being slightly sick, having a horrible earache which miraculously just disappeared but was very painful while there, and not being able to do what I really wanted on my birthday because I was being nice to my friends who wanted to do something that I should have been able to say "not what I want" a long time ago. Also, everyone was sick and insisted on going out anyway, which was just so much "fun". I tried, politely twice to reschedule or cancel and was over-ruled and let myself be, and I really wish I hadn't cuz guess who now has congestion and a cough. Thanks for the present, friends. And of course, the person I'm upset with is me for not being more "No, I love you but I'm not going out on my birthday with sick people". So, my own fault, which makes it worse. Damn, the headache has come back also. Okay, off to take pills.
Weather, cold but clear or cold but pouring rain. Today, beautifully sunny. I get my hair cut at 5pm, then buy my presents for myself (some product from Body Shop), then dinner for myself and then home to sleep or watch movies. Ciao.
04 Feb 2011
Updated list and wiki. One project posted and about five moved around. I am continuing to be fairly good with forums and DP-Feedback (when it happens). I tend not to log in and read my mail as consistently as I did before, so I miss the requests for formatting feedback sometimes. I have worked some more on Ibsen Vol II. I got into helping someone with tables and actually had to work so hard on that I got a little fed up and so haven't done very much foofing in the last few weeks.
Weather is cool and overcast with some rain. But no snow or ice storms. We are watching the rest of the country groan under massive storms but not us. Yet / So Far. I have much sympathy with them. And a LOT of sympathy with Australia right now. Wowser - massive rains and floods there. Health is fairly good although I seem to have pulled something in my lower right back about two weeks ago. My regular massage had to be canceled the week of the 1/17, and that was fine. Then the day I would normally have the massage, my back started really bothering me and hasn't stopped since. I need to do my stretches more regularly. I figured out today that I stretch as I should as long as it actively hurts. It starts to fade, I stop stretching, guess what? It starts to hurt more again. So, resolution to stretch about every hour no matter what. And it has been an hour, so hang on ... ow. stretchy. And then my right shoulder has *just* begun to get weird. I have no other word for it. I've not done anything even vaguely out of the norm, but when I do the stretch or bring my right arm/hand up to say my hair to push it out of the way, I get this odd pulling feeling right over the deltoids that is quite unpleasant. And last night, I almost burst out laughing because as I was plucking my eyebrows (grin), which involved mostly the same arm movement if slightly lower, I felt the same pull in a less intense way but also noticed this noise that I finally parsed out as a squeak. Really, it sounded exactly like say a drawer or cabinet door you try to open and the hinges are every so slightly rusty - so not a loud squeeeeeeal but a little "eck,eck" squeak. I do not expect human joints to sound like that. I would just rock my arm back and forth slightly to make it do it. Freaky-deaky.
I have a call into my doctor because my sleep pattern went to hell in a handbasket these last two weeks (part of the reason for skipping one week of posting) and had combination temperature spikes up to 100 or 101 (F) for hours combined with rapid heartbeat (like double normal). Also freaky and I can't tell if menopause related or not (nothing on the web I could find).
Work is still annoying - office mate has continued on her overshare mode for the last two weeks. I alternate between ignoring her fairly well and wanting to scream at her. I've re-read several of these post and think I need to do that at work. It will help re-inforce my desire to just ignore her, let her not matter to me. I need to figure out the level of "politeness" I show that won't enable her to take advantage of me. Oh, funny to me, if not to her, she was telling me in tones of "isn't this horrible" how a friend of hers was complaining about his office-mate taking naps at his desk and how it was annoying because that put the burden of work on the friend and she was identifying with the friend. I pointed to her and said "pot meet kettle". She was taken aback and then I reminded her that she lays down for naps all the time and stops working. She tried to go to the "that's different, I need ..." and I cut her off and said, "I'm sure Fred feels the same way about why he takes naps - what makes it different from what you do?" and she couldn't answer. Although later that day, she told me "that wasn't nice saying that and I don't want to hear that again" which was an interesting phrasing, and my response was "I'm sure you don't". I have got myself down to just asking Frank, on our walks, for a check "okay, she did this ..." and so far he pretty much goes "God, that is insane/annoying/stupid" which gives me that validation, and I've been letting go better! Thinking on it, I'm not obsessing as much about her and her actions. Which is great.
At D&D this week, which had been creeping back a little in the "annoying" stage, one minor break-through. Our DM who is the person who snaps at people and was making me feel put upon, started snapping again. Now, context is that I had figured out that much of her snappiness had to do with her own internal demons. Honestly, this woman is doing an amazing job (if you know D&D and DMing) and I won't go into details, but she is juggling about twice as much as a normal person doing this job and she does it well. But she has this constant emotionally defensive response to nearly everything. Obviously like me, she was brought up with "nothing you do it good enough" but she hasn't gotten that out of her head, poor thing. But it means that nearly anything someone says to her, she can re-interpret through this filter and then spew out her anger at feeling inadequate, which especially if what you'd said was complimentary can make you annoyed. You are getting snapped at for complimenting her! So, we had been in a very jokey-teasy space in the game, and she said something that appeared to me to be in the same vein, and I responded, and she blew up. Very snappish at me, and I just saw red. Now normally, I have the internal voice of "don't be mean" (which means actually "never be negative" - very southern), and so the constant refrain from my therapist of "did you say that? no? why not? because it would be mean". This time I said what I felt which was that I was just joking, it was in the same vein as what everyone else was saying, and if I'm not allowed to speak, I will freaking shut up and not say one g******d word the rest of the f'ing game. In a very cold, angry voice. Which I honestly expected would put us in a fight (and part of why I'd been hesitant to let go of my control), only she actually backed down immediately and said in a very conciliatory and explanatory voice that she was overwhelmed and wasn't actually joking with what she said and explained why what I said had been a trigger for her. Whereupon I apologized for it triggering her but said kind of what I said above about knowing she's juggling a lot and that none of us are ever complaining about her, we think she does a fantastic job (which the other chimed in on sincerely because it is true). I've just come to another mini-epiphany as I type this up, she doesn't get quite as snappish with the other two (a little bit with the guy). I wonder if something about my tone, my voice, or my phrasing is particularly reminiscent of her mother or whomever put this "you aren't good enough" thing in her head? I find I want to smack John the most, and get the most upset with him, when he sounds and acts just like my mom. I cannot change that about myself, I'm not turning me inside out, she has to learn to deal, but it may shed more light on the subject.
My office mate pointed out how much I turn myself inside out to meet what my boss needs (managing up, so to speak) and I know I do it with some other people. I'm trying to STOP doing with others (the office mate for instance) and learn when I'm doing it because *I* do not need to be spending all this emotional energy on keeping other people's emotions on an even keel. That is exactly what I disliked about my relationship with my mother. I do not need it in my personal relationships and it is what keeps making me look at my D&D nights as a possible, I am not sure I want to do them any more. I can really, really enjoy the game and some of the interactions but others are just exhausting. Okay, off to do the laundry!
And now back to Eileen's Talk