Vacation… down time… time when you don’t HAVE to jump every time someone thinks about suggesting you should jump. It is necessary. When you get to the point where you wake up and cry in the shower over absolutely nothing because you are so stressed… it is necessary…
This week, because the next several… dozen… are going to be packed back to back to back because the amount of work grows exponentially and the head count grows by… two… maybe… PSYCHE… or maybe not… … … this week it was necessary. And I took it because I knew it was getting to be to the point where it was necessary… I took off… and worked over a third of my ‘off’ time.
Here it is, Saturday of my week off and I’m realizing that I’ve gotten EXACTLY nothing of what I planned on getting accomplished actually accomplished. I have not made jelly. I have not canned up the pulled pork (that I’m doing today). I actually took two “day trips” but only one of those counted because after working four hours on Saturday, I took one of them on Sunday and Sunday is TECHNICALLY a weekend anyway. And at the end of my week not quite exactly OFF off but at least I could work in shorts and a t-shirt so I guess that is something… I’m exhausted still. I’m still getting up in the morning and dreading tying the anchor to my butt and dragging it with me every single solitary place I go. And to top it off, I got up this morning only to find several emails that prove that just doing MY job isn’t sufficient, I need to be the mom to everyone and make sure that even if I do my job they do their jobs and the they that is down stream gets the message and… and… and…
And sometimes it totally sucks being the responsible one. Sometimes it would just be nice to be able to be the one that just says… you know what… I’m on vacation… find someone else to handle the crap. But I go to the stock room and get the coffee, and I answer my phone, and I do the needful because the needful needs doing.
And I’m really really tired this morning.
I’m sitting here looking at the birds in the feeder (I think I’m going to get an out front bird feeder today with the bonus dollars that I got from buying so much at the garden shop in April) and sipping coffee and wondering where my time off went.
In my head I know that I should be taking actual down time. In my head (and fingers… and wrists… aaaaannnndddd this morning my knee) I know I need to stop pushing for just a little while and relax and let it go (let it go… let it go… I don’t care what they are going to say… the cold never bothered me anyway). I can’t keep this up… and I’m just really really tired this morning. But I already said that…
I’m SO much looking forward to next weekend’s half marathon in Presque Isle (and maybe actually going to see what the park is like at Waldamere). I’m not entirely sure how well I will do, but I’m going to give it my absolute all (and it will be several days out from my infusion on Wednesday… so… I should be fit as a fiddle… and I’m taking my standard pre-race 2.2.2.1.1.1 prednisone taper, just in case, starting on about Thursday).
I shouldn’t vent. I know I shouldn’t vent… I try so hard not to vent… but… there are days when the giant rabid groundhogs in my brain are sitting there, in the middle of the road, taking up space and being so randomly unsettling that the words need to be spilled… I need to have the bullet (and this is my bullet) like the one from Charlie Hamilton’s rifle to help me spill the words/blood to the pavement page so the rabies are harming nothing and no-one.
I guess that one needs some explanation… When I was in high school, one morning there was a ground hog sitting in the middle of the road… sitting… dead center… all fat and stupid. He stared up at the sky with a weird look on his face. Cars passed… they slowed to an almost stop (it WAS Kelly road and it’s not like there is a huge volume of traffic in either direction) and drove into the ditch or into our drive way so they didn’t hit him. He never moved. He stared at the sky. He sometimes shifted his gaze just a little… looking at the garden… looking at the mailbox… but his butt stayed planted in the middle of the road. I had to run to Charlie Hamilton’s house (through the field because he was probably rabid and no one wanted him to bite me) to get him to come look and bring his gun to put the poor creature out of his misery. Charlie came and put a bullet in his head and drug him off on a big old coal shovel to burn him so nothing would dig him up and get rabies from eating the remains…
Sometimes it feels like that inside my head… like the regular traffic of thoughts and stuff have to drive way out around the big giant ground hog sitting in the middle of the road only there isn’t always a driveway or a safe little ditch to drive the thoughts through.
Anyway… with that lovely thought and my mental ground hog quietly bleeding all over the tar and chipped road… I’m off to the garden shop. I have 57 dollars just begging to be spent on something frivolous!
Love and Light
April
7/9/16
A Figment Of Fitness 