Tag Archives: reminder

Jagged edges…

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Well, the initial shock has mostly worn off and the enormity of how big a change a missing 17 pounds can be has begun setting in. 

I’ve moved on from one yawning pit of generalized loss to noticing the small changes – like closing my bedroom door all the way instead of using the contraption that keeps it propped open enough for a slightly chunky cat to enter and exit at will through the night. Remembering not to set out fresh breakfast and dinner or clean out the litter box has also presented a challenge.

The house is still strewn, of course, with toys, climbing towers, scratching posts, and all manner of other items now sitting idle. I haven’t had the heart to do anything at all with those. Since Maggie’s crate is still fully assembled in the laundry room, I don’t imagine clearing out any of this will be something I get after any time soon. File that under “too hard / do not want.”

Maybe the more challenging idea to get my head wrapped around is that Hershel was the living link back to Maggie and Winston – the youngster of the house while they grew into old age. Just by being, he connected me back to long ago days with my first pack when we were all so much younger.

Intellectually, I know each tomorrow will look just a bit better than the preceding day. Time will round over the jagged edges. Just now, though, those edges remain awfully raw… and if I’m honest, I’m in no way prepared for them to be smoothed. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Forty minutes. I overslept by 40 minutes. I know that doesn’t sound like much – and it isn’t in this work from home environment where I regularly climb out of bed two hours before I need to sign on for the day. It is, however, just enough time shaved off the morning to make me feel like I’m running behind for the rest of the day. So, sure, I’m marginally more rested but carrying around loads of extra angst while spending the day trying to shave minutes and seconds off everything and get back to baseline so I don’t feel like I’ve squandered the day when it comes time to lay my head down again.

2. Reminders. I have an appointment with my doctor on Friday. I know I have this appointment because when I made it, I tapped it into my calendar and set a reminder. To the best of my knowledge, even in the time before electronic, handheld calendars when everything was written on paper, I never missed or even found myself late for an appointment with my doctor. I’d even be comfortable extending that to pretty much any appointment I’ve ever made as a grown adult. If I tell you I’m going to be there, I’ll be there. On the rare occasion where it hasn’t been possible to keep an appointment, I’ve cancelled as soon as I knew there was an unavoidable conflict. My doctor’s office, however, seems to think I’m the most ragingly incompetent adult who has every shuffled through life. So far in the last seven days I’ve received three text messages and an email imploring me to remember that I have this appointment. I’m trying to remember that this is probably just a reflection of the general public being barely able to dress and feed themselves without assistance. Honestly, I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about the situation.

3. The Gas Rebate Act of 2022. Proposed before the U.S. House of Representatives is the Gas Rebate Act of 2022. As proposed, it would send $100 to every American (plus an additional $100 per dependent) each month that the price of gasoline exceeds $4.00 a gallon. Maybe I truly am just one of the olds now, but I distinctly remember a time in America where we expected to need to pay our own way in life. That seems to have gone out of fashion with the bailout of homeowners who over-mortgaged themselves in the early 2000s and has only accelerated in the Plague Era when rent and mortgage payments could be suspended completely while Uncle sent out round after round of cash money “just because.” I increasingly feel like a real sucker – over here paying my own bills and seeing the obscene amount of money being taxed away every year so I can pay for other people’s goddamned gasoline too. 

What I learned this week…

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I’m sure I learned something new this week. Meandering through seven whole days without picking up one remotely interesting tidbit feels like it should be hard. Actually it feels like it should be impossible if you have any kind of inquisitive mind. To be fair, I’m sure I did actually learn more than one new thing as I was pouring through the latest hundred-odd pages of Pax Britannica. Those new things, though, aren’t really the kind of nuggets you bring to your blog on Friday night. Well, I sure some people do, but that’s not how we do things here.

The fact is, I’ve scoured my memory for the better part of the last hour hoping to tease out one little factoid that I could turn into a paragraph. I’ve been soundly defeated in that effort. My post-work Friday afternoon brain dump seems to have eradicated more than the stuff time stamped during business hours.

There’s also the very real possibility that I’ve completely overestimated my ability to remember random minutia. I try to make note of the interesting stuff, but even that system seems to have failed me this week… and maybe that’s this week’s lesson. It turns out I really can’t rely on my internal memory to keep track of jack shit anymore and need to make a conscious effort to be a better note maker.

Yeah, I guess that’s what I learned this week. It’s lame and I’ll probably have forgotten it by this time tomorrow, but there it is.

Like a (acting) boss…

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From time to time it’s good to be reminded about what you’re priorities in life are. Today’s reminder was about the complete and total lack of interest that I have in ever being a supervisor Lumburgagain. It’s not that today as chaotic or even busy, it’s more that I just don’t like having the “what if” factor hanging over my head. My historic experience with being “management” has been that 90% of the day is sitting around waiting for things to happen and/or wondering what happened and the other 10% actively trying to unscrew that which has been screwed up – generally to little or no effect.

Some people want to do it. Some of them even have a natural skill for it… and while I might have the skill, I most decidedly lack the interest. Watching the clock, hoping that nothing important explodes before the final whistle of the day blows is no way to spend your life. As for me, I’m perfectly happy heading to the house and not having to give a damn if the phone rings or not. I’m abundantly happy that my 8 hours in the hot seat is mission accomplished. Hopefully it’ll be a good long time before I get another “opportunity to excel.”