Life and times of the Wicked Witch of the Cats
It’s been a weird several weeks and I’m feeling very ungrounded. Is that even a word? But it’s what I am.
First, the absolute sad news. Grandma made it through her neck surgery, and they moved her into a rehab center. But the doctors said she probably has 3-6 months left in her. We were feeling hopeful, because she tried to get out of bed a few days later. But we got the call yesterday morning, she has really bad shingles and some other infection. And they still haven’t removed her feeding tube, and it’s the only thing keeping her alive. And really, it’s time to let her go. She’s probably miserable, and she’s not going to get better. It’s heart wrenching, but I have reached to point of acceptance that it’s her time to go.
Mom has been trying to get me to talk about it. But I don’t want too. I’ve never been great at talking about emotional things, and I don’t know how much help it would be anyways. I’m very sad, but talking about it isn’t going to make it better, right? So while I quietly grieve, life moves along.
Work has been extra challenging lately. I went from not having a whole ton to do to being completely slammed. I’m starting to feel the stress of it. Last week I had my job, and was covering for another person. I was so busy with my job I didn’t have time to do everything and had to farm out some of the work to others in my group. I went into the office today to get a bit of work done and made the mistake of reading my email. They like the work I am doing to support the program, but they need even more charts and data, in a different format. And I know my manager will agree, so I need to figure out how I am going to do this with out manually counting a 1000 records each day.
It’s job security, but it’s a bit more then I can chew, especially knowing I will be spear heading a few other things that start, oh, this week. I’m going to stop sleeping, I can tell already. Didn’t sleep all night last night because I kept going over the work I needed to do today.
School is chugging along, but I have made two decisions. 1. I don’t like online classes, I prefer the classroom environment. And 2. I hate hate HATE semesters. I really like quarters. Good amount of time for my attention span. The classes aren’t to terrible, but it’s boring reading a lot of time, and for some reason, people think it’s acceptable to discuss their religious beliefs on the course discussion boards. When did that become ok? It’s a history course, not religion, and it’s a public school. God doesn’t belong there, save it for church.
On the positive note, I’ve been getting out and doing stuff. The zoo is really fun to volunteer at and the ocelot kittens are incredibly adorable. Go see them if you can! Friday night I went to a VIP Party at the Space Needle that was sponsored by REACH. REACH is for young Boeing and Microsoft professionals. It was a good time, and it’s amazing how much the Observation Deck has changed since the last time I was there. I met up with another Boeing person from the 787 and he is really nice. Next weekend I have tons planned too. I am going to a theater show at the Seattle Rep, then on a book tour (The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Awesome read, so read it). And then the day after that I am heading up to Redmond to play Scrabble.
I’m continuing to work with my personal trainer at the gym, and continuing with Pilates as well. On Thursday I start Tap Dance lessons, and I want to take some salsa/tango/some sort of dancing too. BCC offers some classes and I think I’ll sign up. I just hope that the ratio of girls to boys isn’t 5:1. Some reason, I always end up learning the guys’ part, and then I’ll never be able to actually do the dance with a fellow. A brave fellow, who isn’t afraid of me stepping on his toes.
To round out my scheduling I’m house sitting in March and flying to Utah for a cousins wedding. And house sitting for someone else in April.
So while I am doing fun things, it all feels so turbulent, and hectic. I feel totally ungrounded and uncertain about a lot of things. I’d really like to find a way to center myself, but it’s not something I excel at. I usually just try to distract myself, or ignore the problem until it’s no longer a problem. I’d do some meditating if I could sit still long enough.