Drunken Owls and Other Delights

WHEW. I may have only worked four days this past week (and regular eight hour shifts at that), but by Saturday it felt like I'd been there for twice that. The day before Thanksgiving is always an insanely busy day for grocery stores, and this was no different -- in fact, I saw our numbers and we made over TWICE our usual sales, and I think it's also a new record for us. On Wednesday I worked noon to 8.30pm, which is pretty much peak sales time anyway, but it was constant with no let-up until that last hour. Just one customer after another after another after another, and most of them were spending upwards of $150 - $200 for big holiday spreads.

Suffice it to say, after I clocked out and got home, I climbed right into bed and fell asleep probably an hour later. That day was exhausting.

The remaining three days weren't nearly as chaotic, but they did have their moments. I spent a frazzled last hour of yesterday's shift trying to juggle multiple orders and finishing up the bookkeeping and only made it under the wire with the help of a coworker and manager jumping in to help. Still, I'm glad it's the weekend and I can sleep in!

I'm back down to only three working days this coming week, but I've decided I'm going to use that to my advantage instead of asking for more hours. A took the week off, so we both decided we're going to use our mutual days off to enjoy ourselves with little day trips around town. 


Of course, tomorrow is the first of December, which means it's time for my usual Year End Mixtape and Contemplation Blog Posts. We'll see where this takes me!

I've said this in the past, but one of the biggest things I'd noticed when we moved out here to California is how blessed bright it can get on a sunny day! I know it's partly because we're closer to the equator (sort of) but we're also on the coast so there's less particulate in the air (far less than woodsy/pollen-y New England, at any rate). We were walking around the botanical garden and the Inner Sunset earlier and I couldn't help but squint and shade my eyes half the time. Lovely day, however! We got a few miles' worth of walking in, and now we're lazing around the house with the windows open. And yes, I will say one more time that I am extremely happy that we now live in a place with better windows where we can pop them open without a) one of them popping out or sliding askew, or b) one of the cats escaping through it.

Sunday is of course chore day, so the laundry is going, I've paid off a few bills, and taken out the trash. Oh, and I've also bought tickets to The Nutcracker at SF Ballet, which we've been going to nearly every single year since we've moved here! I of course still need to get my daily words done, so I'll do that a little bit later.

Meanwhile, my work schedule this coming week is kind of weird in that I once again don't have that many hours, and what hours I do have are all on the back end of the week, so I have the next several days off. WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF, I TELL YOU. Well, one is to maybe get myself to a dentist as one of my fillings fell out (boo!) and I'm probably far past due for a cleaning. I could go to the one I used to go to, but I've chosen a closer office this time, and one that I think might assist in some of my other dental work I've been putting off for far too long. [Not to worry, I won't go into details. But I do have a health-based account that was set up with my Former Day Job that I've barely touched, so perhaps I can use some of it to soften the financial blow. We shall see.]

Anyhoo! Not going to stress too much these next few days and instead try to get some major writing work done!


Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

See, now this was the week where I actually planned to take multiple days off so A and I could frolic and relax for a few days before Q4 nonsense kicks in. [Read: we weren't planning on going on any vacation trips this year, so instead we take various days off throughout the year like this. One, the current political nonsense going on, and two, cats.] We do have a few destinations in mind, including an olive farm up in Petaluma and some shopping down the peninsula. Other than that, I had very little on the docket other than sleeping in a bit later than usual and enjoying the company of Juli and Cali! :)

Speaking of days off, I'm still getting used to not having to worry about wondering if I'll be working on Sundays or not, and not knowing until the last minute. It's a weight off my mind, and there's a much better chance of us deciding to visit a neighborhood we haven't visited in ages, or heading up to A's parents' house, or just a fun day trip somewhere. I don't feel the least bit guilty about having won that particular battle at work, though it is wild that I'm having to adjust my head around it still.

 I finally have a Sunday off after multiple weeks of working through the weekend! Yay! I was looking forward to spending a bit of time with A walking through the park, getting some coffee at one of our favorite places, then heading over to the farmer's market. Sure, doing a bit of shopping for fruit might be uneventful, but it's always fun to head to the top of Clement Street and work through the stalls, check out all the tasty foods and try out the free samples. Plus, whenever we do go, we always stop for brunch somewhere. Today was at Cafe Bunn Mi for, yes, banh mi's. In this case, crispy duck! So filling that our plans for dinner are now essentially salad, bread and cheese!

I've been talking with my boss about marking me as permanently unavailable on Sundays recently. Right now they've got me listed as available on opens and midshifts and they manually try to avoid putting me on Sundays, but that isn't always the case. I wanted to clear it with the head bookkeeper as when I do work on Sundays, it's most often because he's taking the day off as well. (His schedule is Sunday to Thursday, and I do the bookkeeping on Fridays and Saturdays.) He's fine with it, so at this point it's a matter of getting a third-string person that we can trust and not have to worry about, just for those occasional days where we need someone else to fill in. He's brought up a few names, so we'll see how that pans out.

Point being, I'd really like to make it permanent that I have Sundays free so A and I can plan to do things without having to wait for me to see the schedule on that Friday morning before the weekend. I've been there since 2022 and even the boss says I've more than earned it. Also, this might also mean that my second day off will most likely be midweek, and I certainly enjoy breaking up the work week like that. It gives me a break so I'm not exhausted by week's end!

So of course I can't let a day off go by without Doing Stuff That Needs Doing. Because I don't know how to slack off without feeling guilty about it, heh.

More pictures have been hung on the wall, and several have been put aside for storage as we're thinking of updating our art prints. We of course buy most of them from our local museums or ones we've visited in the last couple of years, and the old ones have started suffering from sun fade. A is currently looking at multiple museums' online shops, and we're also awaiting the re-opening of Ukiyo-e Heroes' website -- they do a lot of giclee prints of anime and sf/f characters in a feudal Japan style, and we already own a handful of them already. We'll be putting more pictures up tomorrow!

Also done today: two of three things I've been meaning to get rid of have now been gotten rid of! Thanks to FB Marketplace our moving boxes have been picked up by a few local Millennials that will be moving soon, and our old Dyson stick vacuum (which is around seventeen years old at this point, and it was a refurb when we got it) was also taken. Someone is picking up our old floor lamp tomorrow. This means we once again have more room in the garage, and the pile of Things to Donate is once again shrinking. I'll need to find the time to drop the four or five boxes going to Goodwill. I'd do it tomorrow but there's no rush.

Tomorrow is my second day off in a row (yay!) and A is doing a half-day, so after she signs off we'll be doing some grocery shopping, but that's about it!

Well, at least I did get to be lazy and lie in bed until 7am!

A couple of weeks ago I'd decided I needed a three-day weekend as desperately needed the break. As mentioned before, I'd been feeling overworked but was also fighting back a cold and/or a sore throat, not to mention said cold constantly waking me up in the middle of the night. I put in the request and the weekend is FINALLY here!

This is something else I really appreciate about my current employer, by the way. At the bank I would have had to call in sick/play hooky, or if I put in the request I'd have had to jump through a few hoops with management. Sure, I have a few coworkers who gleefully exploit this so they can slack off, but for the most part the teams make do and power through the best they can. And besides, they're trying to make budget right now and I basically told them that they can give my hours to anyone who wants them instead of paying me for that extra day off. [And that's also a plus for me in that I end up not using my floaters, paid vacation or other days so I can use them later on!]

So what do we have planned? Well, not much at all, really. A few local errands, that's about it. The weather's supposed to be crappy the next few days anyway so holing up to watch movies, listen to podcasts and work on writing is just fine by me.

I've been looking forward to this break for a month or so now. For the last couple of years with the two weeks I get for vacation, I've been using one full week for an actual vacation and the second split up into various days off as needed. (And aside from the couple of days off I took in January, I haven't touched the other week yet, so I'll need to find time for those days before the holiday season kicks in!)

Anyhoo, This morning I did the one thing I'd planned on doing today: sleeping in. I haven't done that in a while (I get up at 6am on days I'm working but not opening so I can still use the morning hours for writing and whatnot), so it felt so good to allow myself to be that lazy and get up at 8:45!! The cats usually get annoyed and prod us awake and demand breakfast at 7 but they'll grudgingly wait if we're sleeping in.

So are we doing anything? Yes! We're going to spend a few days up in Mendocino again, not doing much other than enjoying the sights, catching up on reading and taking pictures. I won't be writing but I'll most likely be taking my tablet to do a bit of 'reading so far' of Theadia or catching up on other writing projects. 

And speaking of which, I am still planning on 'getting back on the horse' with my daily whiteboard schedule as I often do at the start of every month, though this will obviously be a week late in starting, but I'm fine with that. I don't think I've been lazy about my writing as of late per se... more like I just haven't been taking it all that seriously. I'm coming to the conclusion that I probably do need to do that every now and again just to avoid burnout...but I don't need to do it this much. I can still balance the seriousness with the occasional days off, I just need to be more thoughtful and organized about it.

But yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to this week of relaxation and recharge. Stars knows I'll be super busy again in just a few months!

Bleh. I'm falling behind again on my writing. I admit some of it is because of my occasional weird work hours, but some of it has just been nothing but sheer laziness and screwing around with my music collection. Thing is, that's usually my default when I just want to take a brain day off or two. A fun and pointless distraction to wind myself down. But I've been doing it a bit too often again out of habit, so that needs changing. 

What's interesting is that I don't think it's a case of the Don't Wannas this time, but more like Don't Feel Like Its. The former is merely me falling prey to my procrastination, while the latter is me allowing myself some time off from the writing. And I'd rather have the latter than the former, because I very rarely take time off from creativity! I think I just want to spend a bit more time IRL -- and that includes away from social media -- and hanging with A or playing with the cats or having a bit more of a social life in and outside of the Day Job needs to happen.

That's not to say I feel like a wreck or a failure, far from it. I'm just someone who likes to reinvent themselves now and again.

When I saw how few hours I was getting this upcoming week, I had to double-check with my boss to make sure it wasn't just a screwup, because this past week had been chaotically cobbled together before Head Boss entered the picture to make things right again. [The original schedule last week had me closing one day -- which I NEVER do -- and doing really weird midday shifts.] But no, he said...this time Head Boss had okayed it, and that Upper Management was cutting hours for a few weeks in March. I'm ambivalent about it, partly because I know it's not permanent, and partly because it kind of gives me a reprieve of an extra day off for which I can relax, sleep in and do things without feeling rushed. 

So what will I do on those days off? Well, I'm kind of hoping that I can finally start on the Theadia rewrite! I've sort of been putting it off while I tidy up the dust and detritus from finishing off Queen Ophelia's War, though I've been sneaking in some crafty world building exercises and gathering what I have of the Theadiaverse into one handy reference file for future use. [This is what I did for the Bridgetown Trilogy, which saved my bacon more than a few times. Learning from past experience!] I've already started on the QOW reread, so all that needs doing is to just do the minor fixes I'll find during this sweep.

There is, of course, the time I can spend playing with the cats!

I have to say this was one of the most relaxing vacations I've had in a while, and I think it worked out well that we'd planned out a trip that wasn't completely filled with Must Do/See/Experience things. We did have things planned out for each day for the most part, but they were essentially 'go out to eat' or 'see this movie' or 'do some shopping' and that was pretty much it. (Not including a few minor errands like laundry and so on.)

It got me thinking about a few things, really. The first one is that come Monday I'll be returning back to the Day Job...and not dreading it. I'm still appreciating the fact that I work at a place where I'm not dreading dealing with an email inbox that's been through the wars. I stopped by the store today to get next week's schedule and while they say it's been a bit busy especially with a few call-outs, it hasn't exactly been terrible.

The second one is that I'm reminded of those school and college vacations of yore, where I'd look forward to Not Doing Anything to essentially get my head back in working order. I'm kind of glad that I'm not in that situation any longer, considering my head is in a MUCH better working order than those days of yore. It's not often that I come back from vacation feeling rested and looking forward to another cycle of work and socializing.

Anyhoo, I have two and a half more days of this vacation so I'm going to enjoy them while I can!