A Better Week

The Week

Monday was a very productive day at work. I was able to hand some things off to our new team member. I've been covering multiple roles for awhile now and burn out was looming menacingly. The day may have been extra productive because I forgot my phone at home by the door...

Sometimes I don't know how I blogged at all during this heavy period at work. But it was often the only writing I could manage. I think it helped to get me through it. Curling did as well though I didn't have a lot of social energy during it. Not that I'm a social butterfly anyway. My Enneagram type is 4w5, The Bohemian. I went to events all that time though I wasn't at my best and often just drank through it. Not a healthy way to navigate my social anxiety, for sure.

My performance review happened on Tuesday and that went very well. I dropped by Sephora finally to get some better quality makeup in the right colour for my face. Apparently, it's half a shade, so I'm almost a vampire. The woman who helped me find my colour told me I have lovely skin. Was that a sales ploy? Regardless, I felt good about it.

I kept hitting snooze on Wednesday. I guess I needed more sleep because of the burn out. In the evening, I went to a queer ladies game night and had a decent time despite still not knowing anyone all that well in the queer community. I often wish I was a bit more outgoing and able to easily open up around new people or be the fun person I can be when I'm comfortable around someone. It takes me a while to get there and for people to really see me. I won at Santorini. I rarely win games.

Thursday and Friday flew by. I didn't get as much as I wanted to done before vacation, but part of that was the system crashing. The rest was needing a break from everything. I'm really looking forward to having one job to focus on. 

In the evening, I tried out my new little apartment-sized laundry unit out. It takes a bit of work to fill and empty, but it is cleaning my clothing well, I can do it as needed, and I'm in control of what goes into the machine. No more will I be finding poop in a machine. Some people are truly disgusting.

I've since propped it up on yoga blocks for better drainage and some soundproofing, but here is a picture of the little machine. It has a spin dryer that dries to damp, then I just hang up the load. Each load is about half what I used to get through in the machines downstairs, so I'm saving about $2.50 per load. I'm also saving about 30 minutes per load.

On Saturday, I didn't feel well enough mentally, emotionally, or physically to make it to kung fu and I feel bad about it, but I really needed to stay home and practice self-care. I was sore for several days after Class 2 and I don't think that is normal. Like, more than the usual two days after. I'm not sure what to do about it, because I'm enjoying the art and the teacher. Maybe I'll just need to take a class off here and there until I'm further along in the art?

I did a lot of things I love that I hadn't been doing in recent months. I worked on my laundry, watched Les Misérables for the first time, followed by Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. I liked Les Mis, but also found it wholely depressing. There are a number of essays positing that the French Revolution was successful and others who say it wasn't. I suppose any effort like that will achieve some of its goals and not all of them though. It helped change society in a meaningful way even if it wasn't exactly what they were targetting. So many died for that to happen. In the musical, it paints a picture of nothing changing and that is what I didn't like about it. As to the other two films, I enjoyed them, though I could have done without the puke scenes. I loved how there were dramatic moments that flowed into comedic ones. Dramedies are a favourite genre for me.

While watching those, I worked on my fairy silouhette cross-stitch. I've stopped following their instructions of working in specific squares in favour of my old method of doing all one colour. It's hard enough to work with black thread on navy blue Aida that I don't need to increase the complexity with extra counting. I wish I had kept the cute puppy cross-stitch I did many years ago. 

It now has a line of black going to the rightmost edge. I figure I will work darkest to lightest. The black visibily sticks out and will provide a good foundation for the rest of the piece that I hope to hang up someday. I'm happy to have gotten back to it. I wanted to sooner, but felt too overwhelmed to figure out how to start it again. I even thought about starting it completely over, but didn't want to lose what I already did. Plus, I worried there might not be enough extra thread for that.

I also watched quite a bit of Carolina vs Florida. I've been hoping for Carolina to win, but they haven't been playing well. In Game 1 of this series, I saw them falling down quite often and wondered if they had new skates. They were on their home ice, so I doubt it was the surface they were skating on.

Sunday was a mixed bag between more laundry catch up, movies, cross-stitch, and the hockey game. I had hoped that Dallas would win that one. It was also Dino Sunday, so I watched Abominable with my Dinosaur club friends. It was a sweet story.

Current Read

I'm thoroughly enjoying Helen of Troy by Margaret George. I'm 8% into it. It will likely take the whole summer to read and that is an absolutely lovely way to spend some of my downtime.

Current Watch

Happily, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has returned, so I have something fun to watch again. If you haven't seen it, it's loosely based on the history of early female comics. Sometimes they have musical episodes. It's witty and fun. The only thing is that I've already caught up and am awaiting the next episode.

So I started watching Dead Ringers. It's Cronenberg, so that is an extreme vibe shift. I feel like this one is both amazing and frightening. I actually haven't seen a lot of Cronenberg. I feel like a fraud as a horror fan. Should I though? One thing I've learned listening to podcasts like Zombie Grrlz is that there is a lot of horror out there and I watch pretty much all the genres except westerns. OK, I'm picky on Rom-Coms to a degree, but part of that is how many are heterosexual or pretty much the same formulaic thing of two people meeting, one hurting the other, the hurt one starting to move on with someone else, then the one that hurts them realized they were a dumbass and so they profess their love at an airport or altar. They're a totally unhealthy depiction of relationships and often aren't even funny. Some are good though.