Song: “Rockin’ The Joint” by Esquerita
Mood: 5.5
Nightmares: 0
Last night wasn’t great. Woke up quite a few times and it took a while to relax enough to get back to sleep. No nightmares so I can’t really complain, but I think I’m going to put my earbuds on my nightstand so if I’m awake I can follow along with the breathing exercises or listen to beach/thunderstorm sounds.
Unfortunately, the plan that I hatched yesterday to go for a walk before I did my exercises was foiled this morning by a light rain. I had some toast and jam for breakfast, and when I was done and the rain hadn’t stopped, I went downstairs to do my exercises. With the ear defenders on, they went pretty well again today, and when I was done them I felt considerably better than I did when I first got up.
When I was done my exercises, I headed back upstairs and looked out the window. The rain had stopped and the street was mostly dry. I changed, put on my hat and crocs (YEAAAHHH) and went out for my walk. It was already starting to warm up, but the air smelled pleasant. I wandered around the neighbouring streets again, and all in all I think I walked for close to half an hour. It was still unpleasant, but I did it, so that’s not too bad.
After I got home, I worked on my homework again. I’m finding that I’m spending a lot of time writing something and then immediately deleting it, so I’m not making as much progress as I’d like. DM sent me a text today with a good idea (thank you!) so I’m going to incorporate that, but as for writing stuff out and ranking various values… I’m still having some troubles. I’ll work on it some more tomorrow and get it done.
I took a break from my homework to send out my daily batch of texts. The break ended up taking longer than I’d hoped because I had to go back through most of my text history, which I found kind of frustrating. I don’t understand why I can’t be satisfied by only going back through yesterday’s texts. Or even the last week’s worth of texts. But no, I have to go back and look at every single one. There are a couple of people who I am able to avoid checking the history for now, but it still takes a while. I’ve thought of deleting the conversations so there’s nothing to go back and check, but there are texts in there that I’d really like to keep because they make me laugh or think or are special in some way.
My parents called this afternoon, and we had a good chat. Mom is doing well, she got some cucumbers out of the garden already and is in the process of making her first batch of pickles of the summer. It also sounds like my uncle (who was out visiting a little while ago) is going to take a trip to visit my other uncle (the one with the diabetes complications) and hang out with him for a while. Dad is also doing well, and is very interested in either J and me heading out to their place to have a BBQ or for he and Mom to come out here and have a BBQ. He’s also very keen about the two of us doing a road trip. We did one back in… holy crap, I think it was 2006. Twelve years ago. Good Lord. I think I need to put that on my list of recovery goals – Dad and me, hitting the highway, listening to crappy music, and having a good time. Now I’m a little sad…
Something is beeping. Not loud, not often, not regularly, and I can’t even tell if it’s coming from inside or outside the house. It’s got me grinding my teeth. I can’t for the life of me figure out where it’s coming from, and it doesn’t sound like any of the beeps that I’m familiar with (smoke detector, CO detector, door lock, security system, exercise bike, computers, phones, dishwasher, watch, bluetooth speaker receiver, etc). Plus, there’s no point getting up and trying to track it (although I do that anyway), because it beeps once and then is quiet for anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours. Frustrating, and it’s making me anxious. I’m missing something, I have no idea what it is, and I REALLY don’t like it. If you have any ideas as to what it could be, please drop me a comment or contact form.
Just to give you a hint of how much I hate the beeping, I locked the front door, put on my old crocs, a pair of gloves, and my big floppy hat, and went outside in the afternoon and weeded the garden. It’s not a big garden (a 4×8’ cedar box) but since I saw some stuff other than weeds growing a couple of days ago, I thought I’d try to give the plants a chance. Well, the good news is that I pulled a good number of the weeds, grass, and baby elm trees out of the garden. The bad news is, the stuff we planted that’s actually growing is tiny. Where people are already getting veggies out of their gardens, this stuff is just an inch or two high, and there’s not a lot of it. So, with some regret, I am declaring the garden a loss for this summer. Next year I will plant some stuff ahead of time (not tomatoes!) and get it into the garden on time.
I’ve been texting today with DA. He’s been pretty busy lately so we haven’t had a lot of time to chat, but we got to talking about work today. Back in the old days, he was my boss, and he was a pretty good one. He’s about ten years older than I am, and started working at the shop ten years before I started. For the last year or so before I left work, we had done up spreadsheets and figured out exactly when we could retire and how much our pensions would be. We’d get together during lunches and compare numbers and punch them into the online Pension and Retirement Calculator, and had everything figured out. Around this time, things were getting really rough at work, so looking at the numbers gave me a point to focus on, which was great. I thumbtacked a paper copy of the spreadsheet to the wall in the dining room so J and I could look at it whenever we wanted.
While DA’s job and pension are in really good shape (which is amazing because they almost eliminated his position just before Christmas), I realized this evening that my pension is now a shambles. I’ve lost almost two years of work, two years of pension, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be going back to my employer. There’s no way I can go back to my former position (it would kill me), and my employer really only has one function – Information Technology, so no matter what I did, it’s going to be pretty much the same thing I had to leave. So the pension that I spent 16 years working my ass off for is most likely going to end up being a tiny percentage of what I’d planned. I know nothing is 100% guaranteed, but I was counting on that money to be there in another 12-15 years. That’s really bothering me, too.
I started this post out with my mood listed as a 6. I’ve just bumped it down to 5.5, so I should probably try to not think about things that are weighing on me. I’ll stop writing here.
My main job tomorrow is to finish my homework, and if it’s calm out I’ll fly the quadcopter. Aside from that, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. We’ll see.
Stay safe.