Tag: anxiety

Uncategorised

Promo Sunday

Autumn wanted to go to a fundraiser pancake breakfast at Stoby’s today, but since I was the only one willing to take her, she decided she’d rather stay home. Summer ended up having a relatively full day planned, so I went home and spent the rest of the day feeling like I was just kind of waiting for something that would never happen.

I’ve been trying not to get too stressed out about my suspension, but it’s unnerving not knowing how the school board will feel. It’s easy to swing my feelings in both directions. On one hand, they’ll want to show solidarity with the superintendent they just hired for the next three years. On the other hand, I feel like I have a pretty reasonable case. Unfortunately I’m not sure how much reason will actually play into what happens, but all I can do is plead my case.

Summer asked me to stop by for dishwasher detergent on the way back, so that got me out of the house and on a bit of a quest. I had a birthday cinnamon roll from McDonald’s in the morning, so I decided to go to Wendy’s for a $1 Dave’s Single for a late lunch. Then I went to Walmart and scoped out some heavy duty rakes before grabbing detergent. On the way back across the store I ran into Sharon and shared my woes with her. She was feeling pretty frustrated by the state of the union as well. Then I grabbed my rake and headed out of the store. My last stop was Freddy’s for a free birthday dessert, but due to some stupid system glitch, I ended up having to use points instead of my free reward. That cost me about six bucks worth of rewards.

I finally made it up to Summer’s, and Autumn had mowed, and Summer had cleaned up inside the house. They had a couple candles going that made me feel a bit nauseous, so I put them out and just tried to stay quiet and calm. Eaddie ended up wanting some help with some homework that she was really just feeling too lazy to figure out herself. She eventually woke herself up enough to complete it though. She came out later playing Autumn’s clarinet, which I dabbled on for a bit as well. Then everyone was off to bed.

Except Eaddie, who came out for a 10 o’clock dinner.

Uncategorised

Apply Yourself

I dropped the girls off at school again this morning, and then went straight home to work in the yard again. I was by myself this time, which was fine. It was a little cooler, since I started earlier in the morning. Unfortunately I still had trouble getting a good fire going, but I burned up a bunch more leaves and trampled some of the crispier plant stalks that were left standing. I may be able to mow some of it down tomorrow.

Once the fires burned out, I came inside to take a shower. Then I went by Taco John’s and took a late lunch to Summer at the wash. Autumn had been texting us both to try and come up with an alternative to getting back into a car with me, but when the time came, she got over it. I dropped her off at the wash, and then went to Walgreens to drop off the floormats that I needed to return.

Eaddie had a band buddies meet after school, so she got a ride there and then to Dairy Queen, where the FBLA kids were hosting a fund raiser. Desha spotted me, and then Dustin came around and got to hear my exciting story. Otherwise, the Diary Queen experience was pretty awful. The poor teen that was running the place was stressing over a downed computer system. Then the food was all cold and overcooked.

When we finally finished there, I went home to swap cars. Mom and Dad popped in for a moment since they were next door, but then I headed up to Summer’s for the evening. I finished filling out an application for what would essentially be my dad’s old job. Brody texted to basically tell me he was keeping a seat warm for me at Clarksville. If I have to go through the pains of learning a new job, I at least want a raise out of it.

I probably don’t have 43 more years in me though.

Uncategorised

Fn Keys

I tried to sleep in a bit this morning, but I still couldn’t. I got around to making a burrito for breakfast, and then woke Eaddie up to watch Breaking Bad. She eventually got hungry, so I made her a ham, egg, and cheese bagel. Autumn had an away basketball game, but I couldn’t drop her off until the afternoon.

After I finally got Autumn to the high school, I went home to clean up before taking my keys back to Thomas. Tammy met he at the door with a big hug, and then I sat at her desk super awkwardly while Thomas watched me remove the keys from my KeySmart holder. I took the opportunity that this was a really shitty 40th birthday prank, and then went on my way as he walked me right out the door again. It seemed I wasn’t welcome even to visit.

I saw Zach and Greg pulling back in as I left, but decided not to turn around to chat. I went on to visit with Dad and give him the news. We talked for a while, and then Ben called and we talked on the phone for nearly an hour. It seems I have options, but I just need to make a decision.

Eaddie wanted to make shrimp Alfredo, so I met Summer at Walmart for some groceries. I tracked down Amanda while we were there, but she wasn’t able to chat. Then on the way out we ran into Lenetta and one of her kids, who apparently knew Summer. It was fun to realize those connections for a moment, but frustrating to share my termination after she remembered my last one from Asurion.

When we got home, Eaddie resisted coming out to help, but eventually made minimal effort while I made dinner. I enjoy cooking, but not knowing the recipe by heart and having to scroll up and down between different sections of the site to find volumes and steps was incredibly frustrating. I only loosely followed the recipe anyway, and added mushrooms and broccoli to the mix. It turned out really good, though the garlic bread got burned while I tried to defrost it. I was just doing too much at once, and Eaddie was too busy on her phone.

After dinner, Eaddie and I watched a few more episodes of Breaking Bad until I had to pick up Autumn. I brought her home, and then it was pretty quick to bed since Eaddie had her National History Day project the next day.

I couldn’t even get halfway through the book before they started asking for money.

Uncategorised

Shitty Universe

I only slept from about three in the morning until about seven, because Autumn was talking loudly to Summer right outside the bedroom door. I felt incapable of sleeping by the time everyone left for school and work, so I got up and eventually made myself a burrito. I looked for some jobs and chatted with several people. Travis was the only person from work to text me, since we didn’t have each others’ phone numbers already, and it was really nice to hear from him.

I would have liked to be more productive, but I just felt sleepy and groggy all day long. I was definitely too hazy to do anything too cognitive, and my emotions cycled through confidence, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, and doubt. As the clock ticked on, I finally made it home to shower before having to get the girls from school.

It seemed clear outside, so I took the car for a wash before going to pick up Eaddie at hour-early dismissal. She responded that she had stuff to do for robotics while Autumn was at basketball practice. That nearly messed up Summer’s plan to start teacher conferences as soon as the doors opened.

I ended up getting Summer from Superfast, and then coming right back to the high school to try for conferences. As we pulled through the parking lot, I saw Travis and Sarah walking into the building, so I circled the lot and we happened to see Eaddie. I wasn’t in the mood to fight the stars and their twisted plot, so we took Eaddie to a friend’s house to work on their National History Day project. Then we went to Staples to get her a flip chart before going back to the high school to get Autumn from basketball.

We went back to get Eaddie and took the girls home, and then went to Las Palmas for dinner before going to conferences much later than we originally planned. Those went well, and I shared my news with lots of old coworkers, to a surprising variety of responses. The kids are lined up, but I’ve got more work to do tomorrow. I took Summer back to the Murano at Superfast, went home to trade vehicles myself, and then made it up to their house for the night. I thought I’d crash earlier than I did, but at that point I wouldn’t turn my nose up at going to sleep “on time.”

Collect the facts.

Uncategorised

“Pack Your Things” in Nature

I really didn’t expect today to play out the way that it did.

I made it to work a little early this morning, expecting rain, and then not expecting rain. I started to go to the high school to work with Jacob, but stayed at the shop to do those same tickets since it’d be easier there anyway, and Jacob didn’t really need me to hold his hand.

Diane at Crawford messaged me with badge printer trouble again, so I ran across town to take care of that. I was there just long enough for the storm to roll in, but that wasn’t all. Judy emailed Jeff and me that she needed to have a disciplinary meeting with me at 4:30. Everyone knows it’s no good to have a disciplinary meeting after hours. I knew they were terminating me right away.

I got back to the shop and told Zach, and then Tammy, and then Ryan. I felt like they were all as stunned as me, and we all kept going back and forth on whether it really was a termination or a writeup. It just didn’t make sense, but I could play it out either way in my head. I’ve heard of more and more distrust lately, and frankly I think it bit me.

I asked Zach to be my witness, and then asked Greg and Justin since they were there as well. For a moment I thought I’d actually have a group to support me.

Nobody else was around, so Zach and I went to Arby’s for a nauseating lunch, only on account of my anxiety. I was glad I ate though, because not eating would have made the long night even worse. We made it back to the shop, and I tried to be useful until quitting time. Gary and Thomas had been at training all day, but came back in the afternoon.

When it came time for me to walk across the street, I went to say some goodbyes, and Thomas hugged me and said he didn’t know what they were going to do. I figure that was an untruth at best, because I’m pretty sure he’s the only one that raised the flag at Central Office in the first place.

Justin beat me to the office, and we went in to find Judy. She was running all around, and was acting lighthearted enough that I sort of got my hopes up. Jeff was just solemn-faced the entire time though, and we sat down at the table in his office. Judy said not to read too much into the timing of the meeting, which prompted me to ask if they weren’t terminating me. She replied that she didn’t say that either, and I felt yo-yoed around. In the end, she presented me with a page that accused me of purposefully hitting an employee with my vehicle on school property.

I kept it together and took my licks. I think she was trying to help me at least a little bit. We left and I spoke with Justin for just a moment before going back to the shop where Thomas and Gary were talking. I was pretty sure Thomas was shocked to see me badge back in, but I don’t know who else would have disabled it. He offered condolences and help, but I figured it was too late for that. Both Judy and Thomas said it was fine for me to have badge access all night to clean out my office, which seemed very out of the norm. Very little of the afternoon made any sense at all.

I went home and talked to Ben while I waited for Summer to get the kids home. She beat me to Gardner, so I ran back across town and we got to work cleaning out my office. Then Brody called me and we talked while loading the car. It was big stuff first, and we made two trips back to the house. Kevin called me to get the scoop as well, but didn’t have a whole lot to add that I hadn’t already heard. After we unloaded the second time, we went to Chick-fil-A for some dinner. Then I let Summer take the Montego home while I went back for one final load of little stuff that had to be boxed up. I was out until well after midnight, but I got it done.

Once I had my nightly routine finished, I headed up to Summer’s to crash for a few hours until it was time to take the kids to school in the morning.

Seriously, could you have whipped that pen out any faster?

Uncategorised

And How’s Your Day

I woke up in the middle of the night with a pretty bad anxiety attack, and it had me feeling a bit off for most of the day. I made it to work pretty early, and didn’t really have a good starting point. I started to leave for Crawford when Gary asked me to stick around to go over some Google and Active Directory sync changes with the engineering team. It kept feeling like we were overcomplicating it, but Ryan is just extremely structured and methodical about how he does things.

When we finished, I continued to Crawford until lunch time. The guys had left the shop while I was on the way back, so I just met them at Slim Chickens. I really liked their new hot honey sauce. The afternoon was pretty quiet after that. I went to Central Office to set up a webcam and headphones, and then stopped by Transportation on the way back. Kayla got on a rant that ended up consuming the remainder of my day.

I stopped by Superfast to check on Summer, and then went home to change before picking up some Taco John’s and heading up to her house for the evening. Eaddie had played hooky to catch up on homework, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense since she was only behind because she had missed two days for all-state last week.

The three of us ate dinner in a mixture of tacos and burritos, and then Autumn came out of her room long enough to make a bowl of ramen that ended up being too hot for her to eat, so she gave it to Eaddie. Then I crunched some numbers and planned some account changes for our phone plans until I was off to bed.

Plug it in, plug it in.

Uncategorised

Too Stressed Three Me

I went to bed really early, but it was still a really rough night of tossing and turning. I went in to the office and mostly stayed quiet in my room, trying to solve the puzzles they pay me to solve. Tammy sent me to the main office to set up a scanner, and I happened to catch up to Gary on the walk over. He lent a hand, and then chatted with me about the witch hunt on the way back to the shop.

Zach had been out of the office most of the morning, but came back for lunch. He, Gary, and I went to Foodies, which was tasty but extremely slow to present our meals. Zach had never been, so it was a nice change to try something different.

In the afternoon, I finally got around to talking to Thomas about what happened on Monday, and he seemed upset that I didn’t specifically incriminate myself in writing. I just explained to him that I didn’t see any other way out of it, and that this kind of documentation is never going to be used to benefit me. I sent the email, and then worked out the day as productively as I could.

After work, I stopped for a cold and windy car wash before going by Superfast to visit Summer. Then I stopped by her wash to vacuum out my car. I thought I’d go by my parents’ house, but never made it. Instead, I backed up some videos from Sentry Mode on my car and tried to relax at home.

Summer had a meeting at the ATCC that ran a bit late, but I met her up at her house when she finished. We ate some leftovers, and then I had already taken care of most of my nightly tasks, so it was easy to get to bed.

If you’re going to believe every off-the-cuff remark I make, your mother’s got some explaining to do.

Uncategorised

Third Missed

We had a fairly brief meeting this morning, and then I was assigned the junior high for the day. Gary and I ended up chatting in the shop for a while though, and then I did a bunch of tickets from my office until lunch time. I didn’t really plan to be in there for that long, but the time just flew by.

I took Zach and Gary to Taco John’s, and we all ordered something other than our usual tacos since it wasn’t Taco Tuesday. The parking lot appeared to be really full, but there weren’t that many people there. I guess it was just a lot of staff.

As soon as we got back to the office, I headed to the junior high and was surprised to find Kyle pulling in just ahead of me. I ended up walking him through the whole building to show him where everything was, and then we went back to his new office for a bit. Wight came with some new copiers, so we had to walk back up to the gym to set theirs up with PaperCut, which went fairly smoothly. Then we chatted for a while until quitting time. His view of the new work hierarchy seemed to mirror what I’ve been feeling for a little while, which was a bit of a disappointment.

I headed back to my office to finish up some paperwork, and then went home for the day. Eaddie ended up going to the movies with some friends, so I waited around until she was ready for me to get her. We came back to my house just briefly, and I checked that the Montego’s tire still had air pressure. Then we headed up to their house for the evening.

Autumn had a basketball game, so she came home a little bit later. I helped Eaddie find the name of a song for which she only had a small portion of the sheet music, and then we watched a couple episodes of Breaking Bad until bedtime.

Could it be better?

Uncategorised

Dig In

It was eerie pulling in to a mostly empty parking lot today, but as I was confirming what I already knew, Gary pulled in right beside me and we walked in together. Someone beat us into the office, but the lights were on while some of the inside doors were still closed and locked, which was weird. We sort of met in the shop for a minute to see if there were any projects, but then I was left to myself for most of the day.

I got into a support chat with Adobe for a couple hours because none of us were able to approve a student’s request for software. It’s worked in the past, but support insists that we shouldn’t be able to approve the requests due to our licensing type.

That got us right to lunch, and a big group of us went to Taco John’s where I had a really light lunch. Then I spent some time getting our agenda sent out for our meeting in the morning. At one point, Gary had me run some stuff to Greg and Josh at the high school, but they didn’t need my help beyond that.

I ended the day at Dwight to check on a laptop that they suspected may have received some liquid damage. Many pipes had burst in the freezing weather over the break, and many rooms and buildings were flooded and ruined. Eaddie needed me to pick her up from her flute lesson after work, so I just waited for her in the driveway.

On the way home, we stopped by Summer’s parents’ house to check on the charging battery. Connecting the terminal immediately started the alarm system, so I disconnected it again after a quick honk. I hooked up my smart charger to finish it off, and we continued to my house so I could change.

When we got to Summer’s, I picked at some leftovers, and then Eaddie and I finished the first season of The Umbrella Academy. The visual effects were kind of goofy all season long, but I chalked it up to the art style. In a word, I found the whole season to be predictable.

Target Acquired

Uncategorised

Storm’s a Brewin’

It was set to storm in the afternoon, but I thought I’d have time to get over to Summer’s parents’ house to test their old car battery after an overnight charge. I had a bit of a slow start and ended up bathing before I left her house, and shortly after I got home, the deluge started. I ended up working on getting Eaddie’s new phone set up instead.

Mom and Dad came by Bác Vân’s and wanted to see my refrigerator, so while they were still next door, I took my Google WiFi bridge over to test out whether it would help her signal for her iPad. Mom was there trying to teach her how to do things on the iPad, but I knew how frustrated she would get trying to do too much at once. I ended up having to shoo them along to look at my refrigerator so I could meet Summer at Walmart.

Summer closed the carwash early due to the storms, so we went to Walmart for salad stuff for dinner. We ran into Ryan there, and got to hear about their fourth kid on the way. Then we made our way home for the evening. I still had to port Eaddie’s number to a new Google Fi account, so Nick called me out of frustration with AT&T and had me hold on the line with him. It took a total of two transfers over several minutes, but we finally got it done. Autumn had brought Adam over, but they hid out in her room while we ate.

When Autumn finally took Adam back to the pet store, Eaddie and I started watching The Umbrella Academy. We both felt like there were several inconsistencies and plot holes, but enjoyed the show in spite of them. I found it to be relatively predictable, but entertaining. Elliot Page is teetering on the edge of Uncanny Valley, which is odd considering an android mother and a talking monkey are supporting characters.

We wrapped it up early since it’s back to work for me tomorrow. The kids will be back in school the day after that. I failed to actually apply for any new jobs, so the anxiety I’ve felt all day may not serve me well tomorrow. Time will tell.

Dick Tater Ship