Thoughts running through my head this morning as I sit, pajama-robe-clad, drinking coffee, gearing up for a morning run despite a vicious head-cold.
No order.
1. Work. I return Thursday. The vacation/Christmas/New Years/Wedding/Honeymoon/Loose-end-tying-up has been amazing. And now it's time to get back to 'real life' ie, 'work life' and continue to maintain BALANCE and SANITY with a commute from hell (construction on Highway 7 between the 404 and Bayview is to continue to 2013......hello flex-time).
2. Flex-time. I really have 2 choices: One, to go in super early, avoid traffic, get out early, avoid traffic, get home in time to run in early evening. OR: Two (more realistic), go in later, get stuck in some traffic, come home later. Possibly run one morning a week until the clocks spring forward (when is that exactly?) and it's light out later. As much as I love option One, their is a flaw with it: I can NEVER leave at the time I should as I get caught by upper management at that time. So I end up working a 9 or 10 hour day. The other problem is most of my office likes the early-in-early-out:
a) Upper management doesn't (therefore giving them a couple of boss-free hours to do, well, not a hell of alot) and that they use their kids as pawns in this guise, the pick-up/drop-off dance that most working parents do.
b) I end up getting no work done in those two hours before 9:30 am because everyone is already there, asking crucial questions, interrupting me and generally making my life a misery.
Now that I'm married I plan to start dropping that "my husband needs the car, blah blah blah" and also I'm planning to have to pick up my niece and nephew at least a couple of times a week. So there!
This leaves me with option two, and really, there is no other option. I would say I'm grateful for my office allowing flex-time except I've now read, in every publication talking about the GTA workforce in the last two years, that there is no other option: our traffic issues are simply too serious.
3. Just finished a Globe&Mail article about 'designated days without meetings' (this has long been a personal policy of mine that I try to enforce: Monday and Friday are gear-up and wind- down and meetings have no place invading that. If only the rest of the world shared my theory on this). Also, when you HAVE to leave on time, you somehow get it done. Funny how that works. As I commented to my cousin I call most late-stayers "Face-Timers". Another friend of mine calls it 'Office Optics' a term I love because it so nails it: It's not the reality of your work. It's the perception. You're probably thinking "what a highly flawed system".
Guess what? You're right. It is. It sucks.
4. SOLD. As in my mother's house. As in 4 days on the market. As in now I have to find her an apartment in less than two months, and if you think that is not panic-inspiring, you need a stiff drink. Or seven.
5. I think a great percentage of the people I witnessed shopping at Costco yesterday were in-breds. That being said, I did pick up a gorgeous black cashmere sweater for $ 28 bucks. Who am I to judge?
6. Unless you are pushing a stroller, unable to walk in a straight line due to age or infirmity, or are legitimately challenged (ie in a wheelchair, have a walker, scooter, what have you) and are using a city side walk PASS OTHERS ON THE LEFT, and MAKE ROOM FOR THEM as they approach. It's only polite. Especially when that other person is running, and edging the icy sidewalk themselves.
Mike and I trade "running stories" when we finish our city runs. Since we don't run together very often we get double the 'fun' out of this. His story from Saturday was two couples marching along, oblivious to moving to one side even a millimetre, and then giving them the taste of what my friend N.'s husband (also a Virgo) calls "Mr. Shoulder" (I think of this EVERY time I pass someone and 'clumsily' knock them). We both agreed he should have clotheslined them, a term I also love, that Mike introduced me too. I laugh every time I hear it.
My story from yesterday's run involved going to Starbucks on Front St. at George after completing 10 km, flush with endorphins, which strangely, do not calm me, but seem to hype me up. I purchased a coffee for Mike and myself to bring home and as I was doctoring mine I heard what sounded like high-pitched barking. I thought, is there a dog in Starbucks? I glanced up, and there was a dog, tied up outside, patiently waiting for its coffee-loving owner. The barking I heard INSIDE the store was two eight-or nine-year-old girls, barking at the dog out the window, teasing it, and sounding quite realistic. Disgusting, I thought. They're old enough to know better. Then one of the girls decided to play by opening and closing the door, letting in a lovely arctic blast of air into the shop. I'd had it. The mother sat there, oblivious, idiotic.
On my way out with my coffees, I glared at all three of them, running sunglasses obscuring my eyes, and hissed, loud enough for them to hear: "Brats". The mother looked at me, startled that someone had noticed her lack of control over her kids, furious to be called out on it, but also: chagrined. Sorry lady. You suck.
I related this story to Mike, who loved it, and also to my friend T. who shares my "I hate the entire human race" city attitude and means it.
7. I'm sick. Again. This is my third kind-of-off-feeling-cold in as many months. I am back to epic sleeping (I did not sleep well in St. Maarten at all). When I ask my therapist about this, (and I do, endlessly) she simply replies that I am emotionally exhausted. I have to accept this as I don't really have any other explanation for it. I fall back on the Martha Beck article. Burn out. Enough said.
8. My ipod is boring me. I need some new music but I'm too old to relate to Katy Perry.
9. It's only January 16th and I am already in hate with winter. This morning, when I awoke at 7am, despite not having to since I'm still on vacation, it was pitch-black dark out. It's not the cold that gets me, ironically. It's the DARKNESS.
10. I'm really not bitter, just citi-fied. Sorry. (well, not really).
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