Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Good question, considering I've had the last several days off! It feels weird having this many off in a row, but I've been keeping busy-ish. I've gotten a lot of house cleaning done! I still have a few things to do here and there, but the laundry is finished, dusting and swiffering have been done, groceries have been purchased, the garden has been watered, and the cats have been given more than enough attention throughout the day. I've also gotten a significant amount of revision done for this go-round for Theadia, which includes making much more detailed notes in the few "write this later" chapters I need to insert!

Mind you, I have most of next week off as well (this time on purpose, we're taking a few personal days off), so it feels kind of weird to not be at work so much. I'm pretty sure I'll be exhausted again once I'm back to full time hours again.

Okay, maybe not fitter, but no longer feeling brought down by allergies, so yay me! And more productive, which is a surprise given that I did a TON of personal stuff on my two days off this week. On Monday I did the much-needed laundry which I hadn't had time for last week, but I also finally got rid of two very big boxes. One had contained A's new treadmill and the other our new mini-freezer (more on that in a moment), which were taking up a lot of room. And while I was at it, yesterday I finally took care of that long-delayed trip to Goodwill to get rid of several boxes of books as well as my old printer (they do e-recycling if they can't fix it) and I once again have a floor in Spare Oom! There's only one box left to get rid of -- the one the new printer came in -- but I'm holding onto it for just a tiny bit longer until I know for sure it's working fine.

But that's not all! I'm writing daily entries for 750Words again! Right now I'm kind of taking the easy way out by writing -- again -- about music, going through my digital library and revisiting much of the music I listened to while writing the Bridgetown Trilogy. I'm doing this on purpose to help me focus on the remaster of A Division of Souls, and it's definitely working. I've been trying to restart using that site and been having a tough time getting started in the first place, so this was a perfect kick in the butt that I needed. I'm hoping this will also get me restarted on a few other things I've been meaning to restart as well, like the journaling and other creative outlets.

Oh, and I've installed the Squaredle app on my phone, so that should work as a way to distract me from the internets during my work breaks, heh.

Here's to hoping it works!

I've got on-call jury duty this coming week so I may or may not need to go in, and won't know each day until the night before. Now, I'm hoping that it won't be like last time in which I'm called in on the very last day as that was a pain in the ass on several levels. This also means I'm suddenly free on my schedule...so that means I really should use that time wisely and get a lot of writing work done. I'll admit I was super lazy on my birthday (and felt ever so slightly guilty about it) by doing almost nothing except futzing around on the computer.

So yeah, my plan is to focus on Theadia and also get started on the Anniversary Remaster of A Division of Souls. I really need to get started on the second one considering I've given myself a hard deadline for it! [Why September 3rd? Because that's the date of the first scene. Heh.] I don't believe I need to to a huge amount of work on it, but there are passages I think could use some light dusting and straightening out.

Today we covered two hours service time at the community garden (the agreement is that we work at least twelve) and spent it doing some major and much needed weeding. We're both exhausted and achy now, but it was definitely worth it. I also met one of our other lot neighbors for the first time so that was neat as well! We still plan on redoing our lot and putting in new gopher wire, and I'm both looking forward to and dreading that. Dreading as it entails a crapton of digging of the current soil, tearing out the old chicken wire that shouldn't have been there in the first place, and then putting all that crapton of soil back, with a fresh layer of compost as well. It'll be worth it once it's done, but I'm pretty sure my back and knees are going to scream in agony the entire time. Ah well...!





Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

It's...Thursday? Yes, it's Thursday. Had to work on Sunday so my internal clock is once again all wonky. Another day off so I'm using it to catch up and relax a bit. I had a busy day yesterday at the Day Job which entailed cleaning up, sorting and rearranging the dairy walk-in cooler, and while I didn't get nearly as many steps as I usually do when I'm on the floor, I did get a lot of heavy lifting. Those crates of milk are heavy!!

But yeah, that cooler looks a LOT better now, especially since the store is doing an inventory this week. That was one of my reasons for doing the clean-up -- I'd originally planned to put stuff out on the floor and do some pre-inventory inventory, but quickly found the numbers were ALL out of whack, primarily due to certain products being put away in multiple places and without rhyme or reason, and thus miscounted. [We also have holiday stuff in there that hasn't gone out yet that needed to be gathered into one single place.] At the end of my shift I let a few of the others who go in there know how I set it up and to PLEASE keep it somewhat orderly, so hopefully it'll remain that way!

So...what else am I going to do today? Good question. I don't have much planned other than catching up on writing and maybe stopping at the garden to water what few plants we have left! [Not to fear, just that most of the plants we have there have finished for the season so we're just letting the rest sit there for a bit until we redo the gopher wire, resoil the plot and and put in some winter grass to feed said soil a bit.]

Today's the midweek day off for me so I'm doing the usual of catching up on errands (laundry, playing with the cats) and writing stuff (daily words, working on Theadia). I'm also finally ripping some of the dvds that we took from the library, including the somewhat ridiculous show The Tudors. (Totally something A would watch, not really my bag.)

Tomorrow we're going out to dinner for our wedding anniversary! Like last year, we're heading down the street to Violet's for dinner and cocktails. Nothing too exciting, as neither of us are the kind of people who make a big thing out of anniversaries and things like that. And of course we both have to stop and do the math, but it's an easy year to remember because it's the same year we moved here! Heh. Nineteen years! Wooo!

As you may remember, doing a simple dinner is par for the course. After all, we'd gone straight to a local diner for brunch after visiting the JoP in Boonton town hall back in 2005, and spending the afternoon at a bookstore then watching a Fred Astaire musical. Very on brand for us. We don't have any other plans at all other than the usual weekend relaxation.

It seems that one of the other managers set up the schedule for this week as they assigned me a Sunday (I almost NEVER work Sundays, basically because it's the only day A and I have off together to do things) and they were unaware that Main Boss always marks me off as unavailable on that day. Main Boss is on vacation however. I'm not entirely happy that they've given me a variation of a midshift by pushing it an hour later (12:30-9) either. I'm thinking that I really should sit down with Main Boss and ask what the proper protocol is for me to permanently list myself as 'not available Sundays' and perhaps get out of midshifts altogether. I've told them before that I can do one or two if needed, but those are REALLY starting to drag me down. I'm also thinking I should request that I'm also interested in being assigned for day stock or help in other departments out on the floor as well, and I ask that mainly because otherwise I end up doing forty hours a week up at the front registers and after two years of register jockeying, I am EXHAUSTED. I need a change-up. I don't hate the job (far from it -- I really like it!), and I definitely don't want to give up the bookkeeping work, but after seeing so many of my coworkers leave the front end constantly, I get this feeling like I feel abandoned up there, yeah? Especially when I'm suddenly the ONLY one up there.

But that's another personal issue I'll go into at a later time. 

ANYWAY. I have today off and I would like to do almost nothing except catch up on writing, drink coffee, and play with the cats. I don't think that's too much to ask.

WHOOF. Those midshifts where I'm the delegated Front End Manager for the day are just...blerg. Sometimes they're fine, maybe a little boring, if the day is slow and there aren't all that many customers coming in. But last night was just EXHAUSTING. We were incredibly busy the entire time and I'm not entirely sure why, right up until I left at 8pm. Perhaps it was that the weather was lovely, or that people were coming in to avoid the inevitable Mother's Day rush coming this weekend, or whatever, I don't know.

Point being, I'm just very glad that I have today off and I refuse to get stressed out about anything at all. Do a few errands (drop stuff off at Goodwill and donate a few things to the local animal hospital, maybe do laundry later), do a bit of writing, and maybe watch the freshly minted new remaster of The Beatles movie Let It Be on Disney+. And that's about it.

One of the downsides to working the midshift on Wednesday is that I lose all track of time and forget to post here on the DW, and run out of time to write something for Walk in Silence. I don't feel guilty about missing a posting day now and again, but my brain sometimes does give me that wave of 'aaaah you skipped a day EVERYTHING IS RUINED' that I duly try to ignore. I mean, I'm using all that time to work on Theadia and maintaining a daily schedule on the 750Words site, which are currently just a bit more important to me at the moment.

Thankfully I have today off so I might just throw something together for Welcome to Bridgetown this afternoon. It's nice to have a day off midweek to get errands done and take my time doing what I want to do. I of course still wake up early out of habit, so that also gives me the morning to faff around a bit without any guilt! Heh.

It's Thursday and I have today off, so I'm not planning to do much other than laundry (almost done) and do some writing work (starting after lunch). I've had a super busy week so far and this relaxation time is definitely needed.

Speaking of the Day Job, we had a corporate visit/walkthrough yesterday so of course everyone was on edge. I've dealt with enough of that kind of thing at the Former Day Job so I don't get nervous at all. Besides, I was way too damn busy working solo up front on what ended up being a stupidly busy day. First of all, we were short-handed due to various reasons, but apparently it was up to me, on top of the stress of nonstop customer lines, to reach out and ask for help even though multiple coworkers who have the ability to work up front could and did walk by and not step in when I was clearly struggling. I don't always have the damn time to stop and ask, yeah?

But that's another gripe for another day. I had a talk with the managers about it at the end of my shift the other day and we came to a mutual agreement that I should be more proactive about reaching out for help and they should be more attentive when they're up at the front end. Fair deal, no one was angry and no one got written up, so I'm fine with that. Slightly annoyed, but I'll get over it.

ANYWAY. It's almost lunchtime and I am starving!

While I didn't get a chance to take my ten minute breaks outside the last couple of days, I'm not too worried about it. The plus side to having bookkeeping duties at the day job on the weekends is that it takes precedence over register duty unless we are super short-staffed. And the great thing is that's been somewhat rectified with three new hires this past week. I've met two of them and they're really nice and definitely people I don't have to babysit for hours on end. I can leave them alone up front while I do what needs doing in the cash office. 

All that to say that I've had a relatively calm couple of work days to the point where I didn't really need to head outside to detox! Heh. 

It's another wonky work week, this time due to the main bookkeeper taking his own days off, which is only fair, and it's not all that bad either. Only one midshift this time out! So today is my Sunday in which I get to do boring things like laundry and grocery shopping and catching up with blogs, heh.