Whew!

It's weird to get an email from your Mom asking "what happened to your blog?" All of a sudden you wonder.....hmmmmmm...."what DID happen to my blog." So, I wandered over to where my blog was supposed to be and lo and behold.....an empty spot. Uh-oh. Is this what happens when you don't blog for, oh, I don't know, a year? I couldn't believe that this was really the case.

I went about my day and really didn't think a lot about it. Once I thought that it was sort of a relief because I now had an excuse for not blogging. Then I felt a little bad because I thought maybe I would want to blog again some day.

When I sat down at the computer a little while ago, I started messing around and began to wonder what would happen if I went to Blogger and tried to log in. I actually have two blogs there (there is one supersecret blog for work only but that hasn't been written on in probably 2 years.) Then it hit me.....Blogger is a Google thing and I've had trouble with my Gmail. Last weekend something got into my Gmail address book and sent emails to everyone in my address book asking if they would like to purchase some drugs. (If you got one, I'm sorry.) Well, I didn't think about it until earlier today when my Google Talk account was shut down. It took me a while to get that back and I started to put two and two together. Google shut down my account for suspicious activity. So, when I signed in, both blogs are alive and well. All is well with the world (I think.)

Whew! I would hate to not have this blog as a fall back to Facebook, Twitter and whatever else there is that I need to keep up with.

(Not so) Young and Restless

Restless....ants in my pants. That describes my mood today. My question is why? I feel this way every once in a while and I always just muddle my way through. Well, I need to look at this some more. Why do I just wake up feeling restless and bored.

My thoughts:

1. While I say I am fine being by myself, and most of the time I am, there are times when I don't want to be by myself.
2. I haven't been able to knit for the past two weeks and it really did fill up a lot of my time. It also was the way I relaxed and focused. I know that if I want to get back to knitting, I can't just break the rules, knit and re-injure my arm.
3. I am frustrated with my arm situation. Yesterday morning I got up and felt great. No pain, no numbness and it had been that way for a few days. I had a chiropractic treatment and as of last night, I was back in pain and was having numbness & tingling.
4. So, while those are all the situational things, what are the other things that are going on? I'm pretty sure some of what I'm feeling is overwhelmed. I need to do some reorganizing and purging in my room and I really don't want to. I know I need to get rid of a lot of stuff. That is a little anxiety producing.
5. I'm a bit concerned about this big project at work and I want to just "get it fixed" but I need to go through the process of working within the system.

Okay, that's enough.

Tightest Arm Award? Letting Go.

All these years of defying the ergonomics lady, not using a keyboard tray, refusing to sit with my feet on the ground, knitting and crocheting have finally taken it's toll. I guess sleeping on my side hasn't helped either. I have given up and made a visit to the chiropractor to see if she can rid me of the numbness, tingling and pain I have in my right arm and shoulder. She told me I definitely had the tightest arm she had felt. (I sort of wanted to be proud of that but then realized it hurt too much.) Anyway, I sense some changes in the computer set up at work coming and I'm not happy about that BUT it's better than the pain, numbness and tingling that's been going on around here for a few days.

Last week I finished the Summer Scabbard, blocked it and brought it in to it's intended recipient. She had been trying it on throughout the knitting process to make sure it was fitting well (it's knit from the top down.) When she put it on after blocking, it was huge! I say huge because it was so very different from the way it had fit during knitting. Rather than being a relatively close fitting sweater, it turned into a drapey one. I was horrified. Yikes, what had happened. I went back and read the pattern...it said block it. I had used the yarn recommended (silk)...I had blocked silk before, what happened? I tried to figure out if I could "fix" it and she graciously let me. Luckily I sat and stared at the sweater, pondered it's existence and state of being and decided that I really didn't need to mess it up even more. My friend likes it the way it is. She likes that it will be very cool to wear out on a date. She's thrilled that I made it for her because no one has ever done that before. There you go....Lesson Learned.

Monday, Monday.....

As the song goes..."so good to me" but for me it was sort of bleh. I just couldn't get my head in the game today. I started the morning being late to two different meetings and then could just not get started. True to form though, about 1/2 hour before I left, I started to get into the swing of things. I wonder why this happens sometimes.

I recently read about a technique to keep you focused and productive in just 23 minutes of the day. You start out by spending 5 minutes in the morning thinking about and writing down the priorities for the day. Then hourly you do a process check to see how you are doing. You are supposed to set an alarm to remind you to check in. Then at the end of the day, you spend 5 minutes reviewing what you were able to accomplish during the day. I have been doing that for the last few days (including today) and most days I've been able to complete most of the things that are a priority. I just had a hard time creating my priority list for today.

As I was writing this it hit me that this might be a side effect of the 4-day work week. By the time I get back to work on Monday morning, I have lost the momentum that I had going the previous week. I think I will try writing down the priorities for the following week before I leave on Thursday evenings. I'll let you know how this works out for me.

Sugar Coma

Just had a small hot fudge sundae from Scrumpdilicious Dairy Queen. I am now un a sugar coma and am unable to put two coherent thoughts together. When will I learn?

I Detest Days Like Today

Today was one of those days when I had back to back to back meetings starting at 9:30 thru to 5 PM. (There was a 1/2 hr break in there somewhere.) It's not that I detest the meetings per se because I really do enjoy hearing others ideas and coming up with new thoughts of my own, getting the work done, etc. What I really don't like very much is that by the time the 3rd or 4th meeting rolls around, my ability to really focus and concentrate is very low. You know how Outlook or in our case Lotus Notes (yes, really) just looks for free time to schedule meetings and people just keep filling up the empty space? I think that after two or three meetings are scheduled in one day, a warning should pop telling the scheduler that "the mental capacity for Mary Pat has been reached. If you request her presence at this meeting, please know that her brain activity, ability to concentrate and contributions may be limited."

I've Been Thinkin'

I know that I've been sort of putting myself out there with this blog lately. I mean, what the heck, it's my blog...it's not like there's 100 people reading this. So, why couldn't I just write this stuff in a journal (other than the numbness I would get in my right hand from carpal tunnel)? I could even just type this into a Word document ....why isn't it the same?

I think it's about not hiding. All this "suff" can go on in my head and just go on and on and on and on. If I put it out there and I know that it's really out there, I just can't hide from it and I have to work through it. Sometimes if feels like it's a bit self-indulgent and it is. (I was almost going to put a BUT in there.) At the same time (sort of a BUT) by just moving forward and not giving into the "I'm not good enough, it's stupid" stuff is part of the exercise for me.

So, thank you for letting me just put it out there for as long as it lasts.

What the Heck?

Usually Molly gives her mom (Karen) a thorough bath every morning. I guess when Karen's gone, she'll resort to giving Misty a bath.

Note the shock on Misty's face. What the heck?