heart stress in 2015

6:31pm

I’m never going to catch up on all the things I want to say. Have I mentioned that before? I feel like I probably say that a lot. heh.

So much has happened and yet I’m having a hard time coming up with stuff to say.

Oh! Reason # 74 I love my Mom. She just walked over to my bedroom door and reached out her hand. At first I told her that “it wasn’t me” and that “I didn’t do it.” Then I asked if it was candy as I leaned over to grab what was in her hand [my room’s dark except the laptop light facing me, so it’s not like I’m blind. ha] and I feel something round and soft and ding I realize it’s a can of beer in my favorite coozy. =D Better than candy!!

She’s seriously the best! Because it’s not like I’m always the greatest daughter. I have a short fuse these days, I snap, and I curse too much. But she doesn’t hold that against me. She’s spoiling me for the future though. How am I ever going to want to leave this?! ;)

Actually, in a funny coincidence, I’ve been finding the shape of a heart in random things a lot lately. She’s found a couple too. Just where ever. Like in a rubber band on the table, or a cable on the floor, or my frosted flakes the other morning! And she had a slight moment of panic where she goes, “Noooooo, she’s going to leave me and get married.” haha. Despite her constant bother about getting me to go out and trying to hook me up with every single guy she meets; she doesn’t want me to go. Which I obviously already know.

As much as I want to get out of here some days, I’m not sure I could imagine being anywhere else.

Well, I’m trying to catch up on entries today since I’ve been so busy lately. To the point of not even getting on the computer at night. I have pages upon pages of reading to catch up on but this month just seems so hectic.

It’s stressing me out actually. I cannot remember, before this last week, the last time that I laid in bed staring at the dark and contemplated the millions of things that need to be done. I learned not to do that a long time ago, but it suddenly crept up on me and I felt overwhelmed.

Mostly over it though. I mean, I’m still feeling bouts of stress, but I’m trying to cope. It’s just that we start our season right after New Year’s and this time of year always has so much stuff going on on its own without adding stuff at work.

We have been doing little upgrades to the office over the last couple of years so that we don’t end up having to do it all at once next year when the deadline comes around. So we ended up needing to order carpet and furniture this year. But there were so many issues. [Not even including the fact that we’re huge procrastinators!] We were going to give in and have some guy install our carpet but he was super flaky and unreliable so we ended up doing it ourselves. There aren’t many other options in a small town like this.

The carpet arrived Monday, I think, and then we worked that day and Tuesday. By Wednesday we’d closed the office and started tearing up the old carpet. It took us all day to tear it out and move furniture back and forth. Some of those pieces are very heavy!

Then we spent the next four days, up until about 2pm on Sunday, laying carpet, moving furniture, and cleaning. The good thing about doing it ourselves is that it gets done exactly the way we want it. Like the last people left all kinds of garbage underneath the old one and we cleaned everything before the new stuff went in. Also we got to do it at our pace, saved the ridiculous price he quoted us, and it worked out ok.

Obviously, by “we” I mean that Mom did all the tile laying. Unfortunately [and it kills me at every thought] I cannot get down on my knees to do anything. I can’t even squat down close to the ground so it’s really hard for me to get anything done that low. But I ran supplies back and forth, and I did a lot of running to the house for stuff. I also did a lot of the lighter furniture moving and setup.

Plus on Thursday I got stuck having to troubleshoot and repair our internet connection. It was working fine the day before but we got in and it was dead. At first I thought we knocked something over but after a ton of messing around with it, nothing worked. I gave in and called AT&T [who’s currently hassling me, by the way, by calling me multiple times in a row even after I hang up - and calling our house (different guy I assume) like five times a day from different numbers. It’s insane! But that’s a rant for another day]

The guy on the phone was nice and tried to be helpful but there wasn’t much he could do over the phone. They tested the lines and said it wasn’t getting a good signal or whatever bs they tell you and set me up with an appointment for like 10 minutes later, which was nice. We had a funny moment where I pronounced a name in Spanish and he said it sounded really nice and tried to repeat it. Only he obviously didn’t know Spanish because he super struggled to get it out, half-way made it, and then laughed at himself for screwing it up. hah. I tried to be nice and not laugh too noticeably. :) Best person I’ve probably talked to at that company. I always wish you could get people’s direct lines at call centers!

But then the dumb tech guy came out about 20 minutes later, looked like he had no idea what he was doing, went to his car and brought a replacement modem and then started to switch it out. He seemed to be confused by the setup we have going on. He spent about 10 minutes in there and then asked me about a static IP and told me it might not work until we got our tech guy out. He was going on and on about things to tell our “tech guy” and stuff for our “tech guy” to do and I finally just go, “Yeah. That’s me.” And then he stopped talking about it.

You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I didn’t have a smart phone available though! Totally priceless! He was speechless. Like he couldn’t even contemplate the idea. Poor thing.
But I mean, even if I did, why the hell would I let you use my phone?! Bring your own damn equipment!

Then he said he was going to use his, but never did. Left shortly after that. I noticed he’d left his little binder looking thing [where I’m guessing he had his ipad and was too dumb to remember] and I chased him across the parking lot to give it back. He said he would have noticed like four hours later. Yeah, I can tell you’re not very good at your job dude!
Later I kinda wished I’d kept it though. Just to see how long it really would have taken him to notice. Not that I would have looked through it, although I would have been pretty damn curious, but I could have played it off that we didn’t notice because we were busy with the carpet. Damn. That was a fail on my part!

Oh, and I had to spend the next few hours doing my own tech troubleshooting to get the stupid thing to work. First I had to figure out our router, which I thought was the whole problem [our company requires their own and it took me a bit to find my old notes b/c I had trouble when I first set it up and the office was a mess]. But then I was able to get that up and it still wouldn’t work. No internet. So I plugged, and unplugged, and replugged in different configurations and well, it turns out that that idiot failed to mention that I would no long need to use their big dumb router that they forced me to connect in the first place!! UGH! Argh! Every curse word came out of my mouth. Because he’d done just fine at pointing out that we could throw away the old modem but didn’t mention anything about the router which he’d very clearly seen because he had to plug the modem into it!

Idiot.

My point after that long story is that I wasted most of that first day of carpet work on fixing the stupid thing when I really shouldn’t have been.

But it turned out ok. We took the last two days off and went into work today to finish putting furniture back in its place. Had a couple of squabbles over doing things right, but oh well. It’s mostly back together. We need to finish one corner of carpet, a couple spots of vinyl base, and finish one work desk. Other than that the office is fully operational. =)

We’ll work again tomorrow. I’ll try to finish my Christmas lights on Friday, which I barely started to put up like yesterday after we finished a lunch with our friends and there was still a tiny bit of day light. These lights are also on my stress list because I love this time of year and we go all out but I just haven’t had time this year. The carpet really came at the wrong time of year. It’ll be a miracle if I get them done this weekend and then have like two weeks to enjoy them. =( And of course this is the one year that all our neighbors are actually getting into it [they usually have like one string and we have 20] so we look like the Grinch house. Which is ruining my reputation. ha.

We got together Monday for a lunch/blessing thing at a friends house about an hour away. Same house as Thanksgiving. And we ate and drank. Then got together again yesterday because someone forgot the Secret Santa names at home, which was supposed to be the other reason we got together the first time. But it was ok. They’re being fun these days. We’ll get back with them on Sunday for a church / lunch thing at a mission.
[Yes, I realize a lot of these things revolve around religious moments, but hey look what time of the year it is!]

I still have to do my Christmas shopping. I actually have good ideas this year!! But I applied for a new credit card, got approved immediately, and now have to wait for it in the mail. I make about 98% of my purchases on credit anyway, so I wanted to have a card that gave me cash back. I mean, it just makes sense to get something in return. So now I’m waiting for it in order to make all my Christmas purchases, which I would have gotten anyway but like the idea of making money off of. I’m cheap like that. =)

This is a huge update, I know, and there’s still so much to say. Like I need to tell you about how Thanksgiving went! And other stuff at work, and all that. But I need to go. Too much already. My typing fingers are hurting.
Oh, and my beer’s empty =P

rose.
8:01pm

Last updated January 13, 2016