The Secret to Faffing in These Foolish Things

Ugh. So lazy today. I woke around 8am and did not get out of bed until after 10am. This is not normal for me, and I don’t want to get in a groove like this, but sometimes it’s just so decadent to sleep in.

I took Martini on a slow walk around the park and back into the pathway by the nearby college. Every time I do that particular walk (which is nearly daily), I always look around and remind myself how lucky and happy I am that I live in this neighborhood. I still love the Treehouse so very much, and even though it’s the most expensive place I’ve ever lived, it’s honestly worth it.

I can’t believe we are heading right into Fall already. Where did that summer go? I guess I faffed all the way through it, even though it didn’t really seem like it. And then it did.

I mean, where did this YEAR go? September is half over! Next month I will turn FIFTY-FUCKING-FIVE! What on earth?? Never forget, however, that aging is a gift and every single day that I wake up is honestly a miracle. I’m always happy when I wake up. Always.

I had a kind of a pseudo-eventful-ish week last week and stirred up some interest from a couple of companies by Thursday - including one call-back interview for which I’ll have a video interview with the hiring manager on Monday. I’ll not go into detail, but it’s a decent opportunity (if it didn’t involve relocation I’d be asking for all the big vibes. Alas…)

So yesterday was Friday and I decided to take it fairly easy and did a slow-ish walk to the grocery store to pick up fixins for a giant kale, quinoa, orange salad (so yum) and then run a couple of errands and then out to yet another meetup group, this time at a fun, dog-friendly outdoor spot that I love.

Now. This is the same meetup group where I met those awesome women, but this time there were only three of us, and one of them (the HOST) turned out to be kind of a creeper. I didn’t realize this at the beginning, and I was so happy to be out and about on a lovely Friday early evening happy hour-type situation that I just didn’t even notice the semi-creepiness of this guy until after he offered to buy me a drink and I responded positively.

It was really nice of him to offer to buy me a drink, but then I realized I was kind of stuck with him because the other meetup person joining us was late.

And he was weird and asked me tons and tons of questions and looked at me all creepishly. I can’t really explain it, but I was happy when the other woman showed up and took some of his attention away.

But then I was sort of trying to get away from that woman too because she kept coughing and coughing. And even though it was an outside event, I was trying to move further and further away from the both of them and hoping that they wouldn’t notice.

By that point, I’d already kind of made friends with some other people via Martini (who always steals all of the attention anyway).

It’s funny. Since I barely drink anymore, one glass of wine does me in completely. It’s not like I get drunk, but I am D-O-N-E after one glass of wine, so I made a break for it after the wine and some shrimp tacos (which were also delicious, btw).

And that was my BIG Friday night.

Like I said, earlier in the week was nothing wildly crazy to write home about except for a couple of silly things like going to a career fair that was a HUGE waste of time. Long story, but I’d seen that one of my target companies was going to be at this career fair and I thought it might be worth it to get ready and personally make the hike (40-minute drive) over to where I could talk to the people in person. Once I got there and did this long-ass check in, I finally got to the booth where the company was, and the two HR people were like, “Oh, we are HR for the distribution center, not corporate!” And I was like, whelp, okay and turned tail and got the eff out of that place.

But I think that just physically getting ready and polishing myself up for potential was a good enough sign for the universe to give something back to me because I started hearing little things back from a couple of the companies I’ve been reaching out to and applying with.

Regardless of all of that, I am still feeling confident-ish and still making things happen even if it feels like I’m faffing most days.

I know that I’m going to look back on these days with a little bit of longing (though also with relief that I made it through these days).

Anyway, over the last couple of days I have found the most gigantic source of faff material EVER. In addition to spending obscene amounts of time scrolling TikTok, I have discovered that the people of Pinterest have created a new app called Shuffles by Pinterest (link is an article about the app) which is all about creating collages from either images found on Pinterest or mixing them with your own images and text.

Well.

I am HOOKED.

And the thing is, I found out about it and then I found out that it’s by invitation ONLY. You have to have a code to log into the app and start creating. And that makes it all the more exciting because I had to search and search in order to get a code and once I was IN (I got in today), I’ve found it to be the biggest time suck EVER!

So that’s how I will be spending the rest of my weekend - faffing via Shuffles.

[Pssssstttt. Super Secret Note: If you’re REALLY interested in this kind of thing and want to collage along with me, try this code: BC1JJPPJ - but once the code is used up, the app will give you a message telling you that the code has reached its maximum, so don’t ask me for another one because it took me forever to find my own! I’m giving it out here simply because I’m faffing through this entry and don’t want to have to back-and-forth over messages, ha!]

Enjoy my friends!
GS

Last updated September 17, 2022