previously recorded from Kellys couch

This weekends thoughts go to my journal for the women's retreat

sup full moon 🌕

transcend the mundane

* brought to you by costar app

Mundane existence. That is the existential dread rearing its head. I am not supposed to be an accountant. It's just a means to an end, right? But it's more exhausting than that and its a trap. The deeper I get, it becomes more performative. Do I want to strive to get ahead? Take development courses? They want a bachelor's degree before you can become a manager. I don't want to do any of this. I just want to make enough money to live and not be emotionally exhausted by 4pm. I want my coworker to retire instead of moving the goal posts. She is an emotional vampire, everyone knows it. And nobody calls her on it though today I told her not to roll her eyes at me. Sometimes I hope something happens to force her into retirement. Maybe a small stroke. I don't know if I can handle her until 2025. 

The kicker: she likes me. This is her being nice to me. So I pretend to be her friend because that's what you do at work. I don't really like her at all. I feel sorry for her.

The resources: money. The things I have been buying compulsively are pretty things or broken things or dusty things. Projects. I see things and I want to make other pretty things and then either sell them or honestly, have other people look at the things and say "oh skindee, you are so good at making things pretty, you are so talented, you are an artist, here is a million dollars so you can open your own store with your own vibes" and people will flock or not and I can just hang out and chill and make art all day or go treasure hunting at thrift shops for inventory. 

These stores exist and are owned by stay at home moms as tax shelters. What I actually need is a booth or a shelf at a collective or an etsy. 

I was looking into Debtors Anonymous so I did some binge shopping tonight. Kinda like the day before a diet. Must stockpile.

Love my house. I have crafted (almost) every room into an homage of my shifting moods. Each room has its own vibe. The dining room is black and white, red accents, witchy goth meets The China Garden (the old school chinese restaurant down by the dam in my hometown). The living room is rich jewel tones, gold, dark brown furniture, and vintage cat figurines keep watch from the crown molding around the door frames. The parlor/office was first so its the most Chip & Joanna, soft blues and grays, white furniture. Elegant. The kichen is a sunny teal and more vintage finds. My bedroom is everything purple and feminine and the walls are crammed with art by women and my crystal. The spare room is claiming its identity as The Rainbow Room as it becomes my art room and I strung christmas lights to offset the weird angles and north window. Unicorn art and all the weird things, stickers, magazine photos, cool cards ... the collage wall I never had in college. Its the art room and I embrace my inner child. She decorates tbnis one.

I still hate my neighborhood. It is also a trap.

I have an escape plan. Or at least I'm inspired to create one.

a lack of appreciation & a practical matter

Have you ever had your debit card decline at The Dollar Tree? Man, what the fuck is even my life?

Everyone is pushing me to my limit.  What is a nervous breakdown if not being pushed into snapping by everyone wanting something from you, expecting things from you, and there not being enough hours in a day that I can not do everything I am expected to do AND do what I want to do?  I feel like I am saying the same thing every day.  This is my end of day rumination.  This is the beginning of my new plan to sit down at 9pm every night, blog or journal it out so I am not up until midnight or one o'clock scrolling and ruminating in my head and then having weird vivid dreams in which I am some kind of sociopath that is really only reflective of the shit I've been watching (right? ..... right? ...?)

I have yet to actually do it at 9pm but it's only day 2.  I started at 10pm then just took a 30 minute sidebar to look for stickers to send to my aunt in her birthday card that will likely be late.  One of the things I was going to purchase at the dollar tree was a card for her (among others) then I looked in my drawer of other cards and there was a birthday aunt card I had already signed and forgot to mail to a different aunt and luckily I didn't write on the envelope so thank you kismit I guess?

KISMIT is only a word when capitalized I guess. Thanks, blogger.

Today's creepy horoscope keeps bringing up relationships.  I am trying not to think about relationships.  I haven't been to therapy in a month but go next week.

I see my boyfriend for about ... a day and a half on weekends.  Usually late Friday nights when he is done with work, and he goes home Sunday morning to afternoon, usually earlier now because football.  And when he is here I think, this isn't so bad.  We enjoy each other's company for the most part I think.  I sometimes get annoyed with him.  He is a bit of a child.  I don't know that I have ever referred to him as a man.  He is a boy.  A big ol' baby boy but he buys me things and pays for my meals and I dumped him because of the drinking and when he cried and cried and I agreed to give him another chance he did stop drinking, at least around me.  I did not institute a weed rule though so sometimes he might overdo it on the Delta 8 or real thc if he hasn't gobbled or vaped everything up from the last time we ran to Illinois.  Then he's kind of an idiot baby boy.  So I take a 10 mg gummy and get lost in an adult coloring book.   

My problem is that during the week, when he is gone, I think about how and when I might be able to get out of this.  And then I feel guilty.  It's all the same old codependent shit.  I can't handle his reaction to being broken up with.  Even if I make it about me, he makes it about him.  I feel fucking trapped.  I feel like I want to be alone, all the time.  Maybe that is depression or anxiety.  I think that if/when I were single I would not try to date.  And I don't think I've ever dated without trying, without being on the apps or going to bars and shoving my tits in someone's face.  I walk around with resting bitch face, fucking talking to myself these days, having conversations in my head while making the external facial expressions like a fucking crazy person -- dudes are not coming up to me in stores.  The only store I go into is The Dollar Tree because they don't have curbside pickup.

Wait, the interloper next door tries to talk to me.  Fucking Randy.  He has ex-con written all over his face.  Not literally but it's the way he says "knowma sayn?" I think he goes and sits on the deck smoking cigarettes waiting for me to get home at 4:45.  Usually I try to avoid eye contact.  Sometimes he leans on the railing and stares at my house.  I can already tell he is going to be back for the winter, probably packing the fucking snow down again in my driveway.  Maybe I'll kill him before he kills me.

Seriously my cat is at the top of the stairs  yelling at me to come to bed.

Anyways the point was that I don't know if I really want to be alone or if it is fear or depression or anxiety.  I don't know if the lack of passion in my relationship is menopause or just reality.  I think almost everyone settles.  Romance is a myth.  We're friends.  We're companions.  I don't want to live with him.  I certainly can go a day without talking to him.  I'm 44.  I've been waiting for lightning to strike in many ways and I think it's time to grow up and realize that it's climate change baby and we're in a fucking drought.

Getting bleak maybe.  Almost 11pm.  Can I be asleep by midnight?  Can I keep the phone at least across the aisle from my bed so I don't buy shit in my sleep?  I have plans. I don't have any execution.

I need an executioner.  

;)

a human party bus

Its always right.

I'm not eating or smoking or drinking really. So I'm buying things, mostly online and in bed.

I have been noticing seashells more often. I did a puddle this morning and my toes were wet all day. 

one of my recent Temu binges included a sticker that says everything is temporary.

I have been having weird disassociative feelings, dizziness, spacieness accompanied with swirling epiphanies that I can't even capture or articulate fully. They are half baked. Maybe its a brain tumor. Or a midlife crisis. Perhaps a spiritual awakening. New meds. Crippling anxiety.

I wish for many things. I wish for discipline. I wish my boyfriend would leave me. I wish a fairy would clean my house.  I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish for a hundred thousand dollars.

A mysterious and pungent odor

 So here's a funny thing, internet, if you are still listening.

I go and login for my 2023 post of the year and see my republished version of a rant about being overwhelmed from way back in oh 2008 I reckon, about 15 years ago.  I think I was trying to copy the post with comments to a word doc, archiving the old records and shit.

I feel exactly the same way today as I did that day.  What a fucking hoot.  Some things really never change.  I suppose the difference is that now that I am older and now that my ADHD is diagnosed I know that I easily get overwhelmed when I am overstimulated or say yes to too much  and am bogged down with obligations and while I want to freak out and yell at everybody to fucking leave me alone, I know that I really just need to step away and try to corral my ducks and draw some boundaries.

I came here to brain dump everything that is overwhelming me/pissing me off.

I've just now decided that I've also come here to brain storm solutions, in no particular order.

• This fucking kid riding her bike down the street in front of my house ringing her bell as she's trying to thirst trap the other toddler across the street.  My nice quiet street has become full of screaming children as all the old folks have slowly died/moved away.
• Keep telling myself they are renters, they are renters, they are renters and hope they move away sooner rather than later.
• Shut the windows.
• I could also yell at her like the mean old lady that I have become.
• My wegovy coach who sent me links to videos every week and nagged me to login to the portal every couple of days to set my SMART and reward has dumped me.  Because I ghosted her.  And now I feel bad because she doesn't like me.
• I hate SMART goals and this coaching program did not work for me.  I only signed up for it because I had hoped for a WW like forum with recipes and group interactions.  Mostly it is basic ass articles that anyone on a diet could have written.
• It's okay. I wanted a way out.  And now I have one less AI robot nagging me.
• I keep forgetting to take the Wegovy ... I'm already late this week.
• I just did it.  This needs to be the thing that I can do right now.  If I can't do everything they tell me to do, at least do the injection because it's the part that actually works.
•  My co-worker is on vacation this week and I have taken it upon myself to prove that I can do the work of two people without being a whiny bitch like she will be when I'm on vacation.
• It is easier to get work done when she is not there constantly trying to talk to me or interrupt me.
• My boss has noticed and commented on how hard I am working so point proved, no need to kill myself working 12 hours a day.
• I am fucking tired.
• Chill out tonight.  No working from home tonight, tomorrow I can kick ass.
• Had signed up for a new local poetry group/open mic tonight but just canceled.  Last time I went I gained some fans but I just don't have the wherewithal tonight.
• Hey how about I put the phone down instead of doomscrolling from 10pm til midnight and go the fuck to sleep?
• The biggest problem weighing on me at this exact moment is my broke-ness.  Ever since I bought my used car and let the payment creep up beyond what I had said I was comfortable with ($300 turned to $400 turned to $450 and ended up $457 a month) I have been robbing Peter to pay Paul (more like robbing myself to pay myself).  I have a disconnect notice from the electric company.  It won't be disconnected but come on man, I'm almost 44 years old and this is still happening?
• Canceled Amazon Prime, one of my favorite places to buy things on my phone while in bed.  Heck, I just uninstalled the app from my phone.  Double heck, I just went and removed all stored card numbers from my online wallet.  Take that, impulse spending.
• Canceled my YNAB (you need a budget) subscription which sounds counter intuitive but they had upped that shit to $100 a year and I wasn't really budgeting, just using it as an overpriced check register app.  Just switched to Quicken for $35.  
• Did not take money out of my 401k, but did request a loan.  I would like to get a bonafide consolidation loan but my credit score is atrocious at the moment. I will use the loan money to bring down balances and catch up on the dire needs and hope to see my score go up enough that I can get approved.
• Going to need to get an actual budget set but still working on importing all my accounts and sorting out the nuts and bolts.  Needs to happen soon because I have been procrastinating on this.  Head in the sand sort of shit.
• Also, I have not been just willy nilly blowing money on silly stuff (just nilly), the problem is also that I have no emergency savings so when I owed taxes to both the feds and state, I had a car repair that wasn't even fully repaired, and I had to call in an exterminator to rid my house of a yellow jacket infestation, that also meant turning more to the credit cards.
• I have been saying that I am going to have a rummage sale for three years now, maybe four, ever since I moved and I declared that it will be the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.  A friend is coming to help me work it but that now leaves me with 2 weekends to finish cleaning the garage, purging my house and getting ready to get set up and it is a time crunch.
• I asked my therapist if I could push it off but the week after would not work and even if it did I would end up spending my vacation prepping and who wants to do that?  And then it's fall and who has rummage sales in the fall? This one might even be too late in the season as it is.
• The problem is that everyone wants to hang out with me on the weekends.  Boyfriend, friends I haven't seen in ages. It's nice to catch up but also it's really the only time I have the bandwith to do these projects.  Boyfriend says he will help but I am all codependent and stuff still so I can tell he doesn't want to or he's in the way so I say I will work on it Sunday but I don't because by then I'm super worn out so I told him not to come over this weekend until Saturday evening.  I need time and space and everyone outta my way.
• The boyfriend situation argh.  I don't even have the bandwidth to go there and I also have guilt about procrastinating working on all of my codependent literature.  I said I was going to read Codependent No More and do all the writing prompts by the end of summer.
• I have failed at Self-Care Summer.  Or have I?
• Does self-care work like that?
• I went thirty days no contact with him which were nice and quiet and productive.  I took him back because he promised to quit drinking but it's slowly creeping back and boundaries and guilt and obligation and yes, do not have the bandwidth. 
• At heart, I am an introvert and I have not been filling my cup.  I need quiet time, sleep.  I have off next Monday to spend time with my mom and then the week of labor day.  

This is enough dumping.  I'm tired and hungry and my cat smells like a farm, or maybe this town does.  I am miles away from any farm fields though, so who knows where that shit smell is coming from.

Olivia, right now, annoyed that I said she smells like a barn.

keep this feeling in a plastic jar (original post 4/7/2008)

I spend all weekend calming myself down and telling myself its just a job and it doesn't matter and I shouldn't get so worked up over it blah blah blah but apparently I must for some reason care about my job because within twenty minutes of walking in the door the rage returns. And it is ruining my bloggy flow. Once in awhile I have a witty thought about something to blog about it and forget to write it down, but the majority of my time is spent in the midst of work rage or suppressing work rage. If by some chance I would happen to blog from work the post would look something like this:

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING CUNTS LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING LAZY ASSES STUPID FUCKING JOB FUCKING STAB BITCHES IN THE EYE FUCK FUCK MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN COFFEE FUCK FUCK FUCKING HANG MYSELF FROM THE RAFTERS ABOVE MY CUBICLE FUCK FUCK FUCK HELLO MAY I HELP YOU?

It applies to both jobs. And then I come home and have a glass of wine or beer and either sit on the couch and sigh or sit at the computer and sigh while clicking refresh a hundred times on my myspace homepage or facebook.

I won't really elaborate because nobody really wants to hear about people's jobs that they don't really know anything about, it's about accounting and gl accounts and boss's sisters and meh, suffice it to say the devil doesn't really wear prada but a lot of eddie bauer.

I am taking a four day weekend, friday through monday, hoping to regain a little bit of sanity and reel in my Tourette's (the self-editing mechanism that filters what I'm thinking before it comes out of my mouth seems to be on the fritz lately). I plan on drinking a lot of coffee (or mimosa's I haven't decided yet--maybe both), doing some serious spring cleaning, putting together a proper computer desk, and just.... not working. I need a break, even though I have been busting my ass for the last week to have things caught up enough that I am not too behind next Tuesday so maybe it negates itself.

The point here is that since I promised myself only quality posts, no blogging just for the sake of blogging, is that I hope to either clear my head enough this weekend, or at least drink my problems away enough in order to continue to bring you juicy updates about my own personal LOL Cats, my druggie neighbors and oh yeah, those silly arrogant people who have penises who like to refer to themselves as what, oh yeah, that's right, men. Boys, whatever, pffffffft.

The Goal for January is Survival

It is 5am on a Wednesday as I sit down to blog.  I've been up since probably 3:45, peeing, tossing, turning while trying to listen to the soothing meditations to get me back to sleep but I just laid there feeling like I was starving and sweating into my Cuddle Duds sheets despite it being -13 Fahrenheit just on the other side of the my window.

I'm not doing well, haven't been for weeks.  It seems like everyone is in the January doldrums so I smile meekly and try to downplay it as that but I think I may be having an anxiety episode for a few weeks now.  

Just after new years my boyfriend disappeared for a few days.  It feels like years ago, honestly, but at the time I was so mad at him for ghosting me, then relieved that I didn't have to break up with him, maybe he was just waiting until after the holidays, then depressed that I would be alone, then happy, then I worried he was dead and who was going to tell me if he died, so I was googling his obituary and then considering adding his mother on facebook when he finally sent me a cryptic text message with a photo from the emergency room.  No explanation of why he was there, and I assumed he had finally given himself alcohol poisoning (he kept throwing up on New Years eve and the next morning).  Not exactly -- he had given himself hypocalcemia, too much calcium in your blood which comes from either a tumor on some sort of lymph node or potentially from taking too many Tums and this kid eats Tums like they are candy because he always has heartburn, I suspect, from the drinking.  I thought maybe he would learn his lesson and he stayed home the next weekend to rest, but mostly he was grounded because when he was in the hospital his mom found his stash of empty vodka bottles in his bedroom.  He is back to drinking on the weekends and honestly I know I need to end it or at least try some ultimatum manipulation, but I can't go through a break up and be alone right now, especially since he is my only physical human contact.  I keep trying to downplay our relationship to casual so it doesn't matter as much.  It's his problem, and it's not like we're not getting married.  

I haven't been smoking, which is good, except that it also means I have not been taking breaks from work or going outside.  My lungs feel better but I also feel like I'm losing my mind.  If it wasn't so fucking cold,  I think I would let myself do it.  I had a couple of the boyfriend's smokes this weekend and ahhhhh.  

I had my adhd follow up and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me did not prescribe me any medication, she just reiterated what her notes said.  She kind of explained which tests I did "good" on and which ones I did bad on.  Apparently I have good verbal skills and comprehension, I'm just a slow processer, like my Dell computer here.  I called the local behavioral health branch however, and the adhd specialty therapists are not taking new clients, other therapists are booking new clients in July, and the earliest I could get in to see a nurse about meds is April 19th.  What if I was/am having an actual mental health crisis?  Do I need I have an actual mental break and end up in the ER?  I am afraid to bring up depression and anxiety because sometimes that is all they hear and they get hung up on treating that.  

So here's the thing.  I am on no meds right now, which was going fine until now.  I had backed off my prozac in anticipation of the diagnosis and wanting to start fresh.  I think I still have some and I think I might self medicate.  Like... now.  I cannot raw dog  these emotions through the rest of the winter.

Friday night I was in Target when I had what I usually would refer to as a low blood sugar episode -- I get woozy, sweaty, feel like I'm going to pass out, get a little panicy.  My instinct is usually "I need to eat" and I buy some little debbies and mow down on them in the parking lot.  It seems to happen a lot when I am in grocery stores.  So this happened, I did the routine and I have not been feeling right since it happened.  This is also why I stopped taking metformin - it was happening a lot - and even though they told me that metformin does not lower your blood sugar, I think taking diabetes medication when you're not diabetic must do something to lower your blood sugar.  It's an off-label use to treat PCOS but I'm not actually trying to get pregnant so I think it's silly to take it.  I gained weight when I was off, but also was working from home.  My new nurse/doctor tested my A1C and it was not even in the prediabetic range, but she wanted me to try going back on it at a lower dose.

Here's the thing, I don't really know if it's low blood sugar.  And being fat, I really need to come with evidence of what is happening, which  means documenting, which being adhd I am not good at, which is not an excuse because I have always been terrible at tracking things just now I know why.  

I could just be having panic attacks?

Because I still don't feel right.  I still feel woozy and starving all the time.  I just ate a double serving of oatmeal and am still hungry. 

I have to go out into the cold today so I am going to buy a glucose monitor and a pregnancy test because that has been running looping around the back of my brain too.  I had my period, but it was weird and early and light but long but I might be beginning the long march to menopause, who knows.  Let's just rule it out.

I am finally sleepy again.  It was probably the coffee.  Coffee can soothe the ADHD mind because our brains work the opposite.  That explains how I never had a problem drinking truck stop coffee late at night then going to bed.

My wake up alarm just went off.  I have an appointment this morning and need to drive to Milwaukee.  I just want to call in sick and go back to sleep for a few hours but adulthood is calling.

I might dump more anxiety later.  Mostly, I just feel like I am dying.  And when I don't feel like I am dying, I feel like I am trapped.  Sometimes it's both.  Now I feel queasy again.  Time to shower and dig out the Prozac!

2021 wasn't real

2021 in review: work from home, work from home, vaccine, a few awkward dates/sexual encounters.  But I have a new alcoholic boyfriend now. It's been 4 months and we haven't said "I love you" yet but I kinda think we are each using each other for companionship and sometimes sex. He's not over his divorce and I'm not over my bullshit so we'll see where it goes. Likely nowhere, until I become the first 42 year old to accidentally get knocked up.

We went back to the office part time in the summer. Also, my new job had summer hours which I did not like. I was just tired all the time. My coworker is very annoying in person. Only 2 years until she retires (fingers crossed). I had covid in early November, mostly just malaise and body aches. 

I also was officially unofficially diagnosed with inattentive adhd in December. Or maybe unofficially officially? I have not had the follow up to my diagnostic/testing yet but was able to read it in the psychiatrist's notes in which she says it.  I am supposed to find a therapist who specializes in adhd coaching. Also, a prescriber because drugs is the reason for this rabbit hole. I need to plant the magic beans and all my dreams will come true!

I think my resolutions for next year are the same as this year and every other year that I fail them. This week I'm not smoking so I am going easy on myself. Work is going back to 100% remote for January, probably to stave off the inevitable covid wave. I'll clean, I'll get the Christmas decorations taken down, I'll try to avoid leaving the house. I'll curl up with my electric blanket, because January is rough enough the way it is.

this is a bad idea. let's do it anyway.

Oh, hello August and your intense desire to make me question my existence. I get solemn and even my annoying coworker asks me what is wrong. I'm just trying to tune her out.

Hot Girl Summer had been going quite well. Has been. Is been. *(I am on my phone so the cadence and lengthiness will be different and typos will be rampant.)*

A month ago I sat around the fire with a couple of girlfriends and talked about everything under the sun while drinking everything under the sun while sitting under the moon. It might have been enough for July, to have that comraderie, community, confessional time. It made me look forward to when their husbands are dead and we can live together or side by side as golden girls.

I tried to capture the expansiveness of that soul filling night in a poem but it failed. I was even so present that I didn't know where my phone was and did not take a single photo. The whole fact and feeling of it lives solely in me. And hopefully my gal pals. 

A couple of weeks later I went to the small hippie wedding of a poetry friend where I didn't know any guests when I arrived but made mingling friends with two Pauls and a Jane. One Paul was very cute but very short and asked me to dance for a slow song and everyone was like aww thats so cool you guys danced. We also fast danced together, ate together, spotify dj'd together, chit chatted and and then he left me with just a hug in front of everyone. Was I supposed to chase him down and force my number on him?  Or was it just the two buck chuck fueling the wistful romantic clichés of a wedding? The bride and groom were together because she took the initiative to stalk him down after their initial meeting. 

I had Paul's last name (Jane was a good wing woman) so I stalked him on facebook to verify what I had heard. 33, a former touring punk band member, came home to start over as an IT student. Also apparently fairly Christian.  I probably used the lords name in vain as I am wont to do .

I held off on reaching out because that night ended with me phone chatting with my latest okcupid match Andrew for almost three hours and we had a date set for the next weekend and I wanted to avoid a love triangle. I also wanted to give a few days to see if Paul asked about *me.* 

Andrew is cute, days away from turning 37, also lives with his parents and tries to pull the "care taking" card even though they are always yelling at him in the background.  He's divorced but has a good job history and the only legal hiccups were around the divorce. He doesn't drink and drive so instead of him coming to my town for our date, I went to him.

This was a bad idea.

He really had no excuse for starting to drink Saturday afternoon. They hazily wound from his sister being in town, to us not having a firm enough plan, to being nervous about meeting me. While I was disappointed I didn't let him cancel and flipped it to me picking up what I thought was going to be a slightly buzzed man but turned out to be one HAMMERED motherfucker by the time I picked him up.

We attempted to go to Texas Roadhouse but they were out of rolls so I led him out of there before poor Joey could ever come back for our order. We went to the movies instead where I had to help him get his credit card in the slot and told him to "Stay" when I went to the bathroom. The teenagers working might have thought I was a good person for taking my handicapped brother out for the evening.

You'd think he would have been sober after a 2 hour movie and he was better but not 100%. He got a bit better after some George Webbs. 

He's incredulous that I'm still talking to him. I don't know, he's cute and humble, kinda funny. Says sorry all the time, so likely damaged.  I told him I'll give him another chance to show up here sober but if he's always sloppy,  I'll take the hint. 

And I added Paul on Facebook.  He messaged me "hey Cindy!" and I messaged back "hey Paul!" That was two days ago. Our connection might have just been under the influence of wine t. He's damaged in his own way: covid killed his dream and now he's living with his parents and starting over. 

IT'S LIKE I HAVE A TYPE. and my type is a version of myself. 

So all this and some other stuff is going on and its like all of a sudden I am thinking, *wait, have I been hot all along?* which is kind of fucking with me because I am also at my heaviest weight ever. I don't really think I'm hot but I'm starting to realize things such as I do not only exist through my perception.  

But on the flip side of things, I'm also feeling like shit. I have no lung capacity, I am out of shape and am embarrassingly out of breath when I walk up the stairs at work. I keep trying to convince myself to do the bare minimum. A walk around the block. Maybe even just to the corner and back. But its so hot. So humid. And I am one easily sweaty lady. I have been eating like a toddler. My desire to not do dishes has me hitting the drive thru or eating easy foods like grilled cheese and air fryer chicken nuggets on paper plates. Decent halfway healthy foods require planning and heat and dirtying all the dishes then leaving them sit until a work from home day. I am sick of summer hours. Spending three months going to work an hour early every day just so I can have off on Friday afternoons wherein I mostly nap out of exhaustion? Boo. 

A fall/winter boyfriend might do me some good. Get me out and moving around, a little sexercise, a reason to clean up, someone to cook for who might help me with dishes. Adderall might have the same effect if the end of October would ever frickin get here.

The gist is that I am uncomfortable but nothing new there.

Like the veggie burgers I left on the counter overnight, I wonder if this can truly go bad?

Now that the country is slowly returning to normal I am realizing what it is that I have been not missing.  I have not missed working in an office.  I have not missed all-day interruptions from and feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.  And whose idea was it to return to work in the summer, when I have to schlepp across the parking lot in 90 degree heat & humidity, to the back of the building, up the stairs, and to the back of the wing while wearing black dress pants and a polyester shirt so I am a nice sweaty ball of breathiness and fatness?  

Sometimes, if nobody is looking, I take the elevator.

We're not even there full time yet.  Two days a week.  One of those days my co-worker is also there next to me, narrating everything she does out loud so that I have to constantly pull my earbuds out and look at her to see if she's talking to me.  Sometimes she is.  Most of the time, she's not.  

I go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  She does Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  I was going to make Wednesdays my third day in July and she's going to make Thursdays hers, but that would mean working next to her three days in a row.

"I think I might make Fridays my third day," I told my boss.  I'm sure she knows but it's one of those things that I don't know if I'm allowed to voice.  My boss is five years from retirement, and the co-worker guesstimates she has about three years left.

By September we'll all be there five days a week, so I'm just delaying the inevitable.

Isolation was good for me.  It was a break from societal expectations, of feeling self-conscious.  Now I am feeling submerged right back into the diet & wellness culture with the co-worker saying things like, "do you know how many calories are in those pop-tarts?" and feeling like anything I eat has to be healthy because everyone else is watching.  Are they?  Maybe.  If they are judging, it really only has to do with their own internal food issues and body shame.

I have definitely noticed I am more likely to snack in the office than I am when I am working at home.  I will chalk that up to ADHD.  One of the elements is needing constant stimulation/dopamine hits hence the easily distracted behaviors.  When I am at home and I feel the need to change things up, I go out for a cigarette or vacuum or tidy up the kitchen.  Because I don't really have friends at my new job yet (if I did, I might also be prone to interrupting them with idle chit chat to cure my boredom), I go in my designated snack drawer for pop tarts or granola bars.  

I mean, it's a cheese company for crying out loud.  A lot of my insecurities are self-perceived, I'm sure.  Maybe the first time people see me they might think "woah" and then they just get used to you.  I'm doing the same thing.

Here's a confession:  This draft has been sitting here for ten days and I don't know how I feel about it anymore.  

My job is fine.  It's a beautiful building filled with art and cheese and wellness culture and relaxation rooms and yoga classes will come back and I'll just get used to walking up stairs again by the end of the summer, maybe I'll go walk the walking path outside through the Sunflower Berm, monarch garden and Italian orchard.  I average one gift every time I go to the office.  There's a fucking 2pm Gelato break in the courtyard.  It's actually quite wonderful.  I am slowly starting to act like a human again.  I just don't want to weird people out.

I've been listening to the Breath book and getting my usual excitement at the prospect of a new lifestyle spurred by a single self-help book.  You're supposed to breathe slower.  Or faster.  Depends on what you're trying to do.  But empty your diaphragm.  Don't mouth breathe.  I downloaded a sleep tracking app and paid $20 for the year and it records when you snore in the night but there seems to be a two minute limit and maybe a ten times limit, but just listening to the horrible horrible noises I am making in my sleep are enough to confirm that I should not spend the night in any lover's beds.  Make a hasty exit lest he discovers that I sound like an elephant with a bird stuck in its trunk.  My "occasional" cigarette smoking has been creeping up so I haven't smoked since Sunday (a secret Father's day gift for my pops), bought mouth tape and I have been practicing my slow and empty breaths.

Speaking of father's day, my dad had a heart catherization scheduled for yesterday which turned out all fine, his existing stent was replaced and no new ones, but he was a little anxious on Sunday and I was being an accidental dick and decided that it would be a good time to talk about family history and how everybody died.  He said his mom died because she was too fat and had diabetes.  That's not really a cause of death.  He wanted to say something about my weight, he tried, but I have yelled at him before so I could see him trying to restrain himself.  I almost wish he had so I could point out, "but you aren't as fat as I am, and you have heart and cholesterol issues so maybe it's more hereditary bucko?"  He didn't say it in person but later texted me that he was sorry, and I said I was sorry back.  

I started a dad rant blog post a few weeks ago but didn't post it because I'm glad my dad is alive even if he pisses me off sometimes.  I think I have just come to realize that my dad is just a guy who probably doesn't know everything, he just acts like he does.  I had a thought the other day of, "what if my dad is NOT THE ONLY GOOD MECHANIC that exists in the world?"  I have been under the assumption that they all will screw you over.  I don't know.  My dad provides free labor and parts at cost and he asks what I'm going to do when he dies and I just shrug and say I guess I'll have to get a brand new car with a service package.

Maybe I'll just get a bike.  If I don't have to leave town to visit my friends or family I have no need for a car.  Everything is here.  Even delivery.  

I think I'm ready to switch into the next intuitive eating phase where I don't try to lose weight but I magically do because my brain is fixed and I eat like a bird.  

Well this was enough of a warm up.  I was gifted a mock-moleskine hardcover notebook from work that I have decided is going to be a book for making lists so I need to go start some lists and I bought a women's ADHD workbook because waiting until 2022 to get started seems foolish.  

It's like I have some hopefulness!