Scatterbrain

I'm wrapping up work before my vacation, and my mind is all over the place. It seems to have started this past weekend when I called my father this past Sunday and wished him a happy Father's Day. Then, two days ago, got into an argument with a friend about Father's Day being this past Sunday. The thing about this incident is that A. why did my crazy, old father thank me instead of telling me it wasn't Father's Day, and B. why did I make A.P. call his dad? Then, when A.P.'s father told him it wasn't Father's Day, why did A.P. not tell me???

Then, yesterday, I was unloading some gardening supplies from my car at work, and some of my team members were helping me. It was just about to rain, and I didn't want any of us to get wet, so I was rushing. I left the car idling while we unloaded the gardening supplies. Here's the thing, our car does not have automatic locks, so I am very, very much in the habit of locking the doors before I close them. So, I locked all the doors without thinking, and slammed them all shut...with my keys inside and the car running. And then it started to rain. Oy!

At first, I figured I could ask a coworker to quickly run me over to my apartment, which is like 10 minutes from work. I could grab the spare key, and the problem would be solved. Ummm, yeah...the keys to the apartment were locked in the car, too. I couldn't even call AAA because my phone and my AAA card were in my purse, locked in a filing cabinet, the key to which was also locked in the car. Double oy! Luckily, I work in a building with engineers, who I know and am friends with! So, I called them and asked them to please help unlock my car. They came with the kit, and then it started to pour. They worked and worked in the rain for 45 minutes, and soon after I'd called A.P., gotten our AAA membership number, called AAA and arranged for them to come unlock the car, the engineers got it unlocked! So I called AAA back and cancelled. Meanwhile, I was wet, and stressed.

Anyway, it seems that I am in desperate need of this vacation (which isn't even a real vacation since I still have to go in a few times for the garden/greenhouse). I'm so over doing work, and have gotten increasingly lazy. Plus, the closer I get to next week (I'm off starting Wednesday), the crazier I get about my bedtime. I've been staying up until really late and then getting up early. Plus, since I'm doing so much gardening this week while I wrap up my final grant report, I am dressing like such a bum. I'm a hot mess in other words. I look tired and I'm wearing sweatshirts and jeans. And since I've made myself ugly from the stress and exhaustion and now have dark circles under my eyes, it looks really bad when I don't wear makeup and follow my friend's advice, carefully concealing my under eye circles. I can only imagine what my coworkers think of me.

Part of why I don't go to sleep is another reason I'm losing my mind. I'm obsessed with Wedding Dash 4 Ever! I am not a gamer, but every once in a while, I'll get obsessed with a video game. I will devote all of my attention to it and play it nonstop much to the dismay of A.P. A couple of months ago, it was this game Chocolatier, where you make/sell different kinds of chocolates. Now, it's Wedding Dash, which is not the same as Chocolatier AT ALL. Chocolatier was really easy, and just required attention to detail. I was able to beat it within a week. Wedding Dash is easy, but stressful as hell! The guests are nuts and get really angry when you don't deal with them right away. Then, if you lose the level, the couple says rude shit like, "We should have just eloped. What a disappointment!" WTF? I bust my ass, get 300 points away winning, and it was a disappointment? Screw you, fake video game characters!

I bought the game from the App Store this past weekend, and now I've almost beat it. That means I've been playing whenever I can. It's obscene. I even started taking my personal laptop to work so I can play during lunch! I'm stuck on level 5. It's a bitch of a level, and it's taking me way longer to beat. It's driving me mad!

I've been thinking about all that I have to accomplish during this vacation and it's overwhelming. Many of the list for 2011 things need to be accomplished during this brief pause from work. It's stressing me out and really, all I want to do is lay around, watch TV/movies, and surf the internet. Still, less than one week from now, I will be doing a whole lotta nothing, and even if in between that whole lotta nothing, I have to do a little something, I'll just have to learn to get over it.

Marty J and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I feel terrible for not blogging on Friday. It's been bothering me all weekend, but really, this is the first opportunity I've had to post, and sadly I didn't have a Friday dance post saved for last week. To quote the famous children's book, Friday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Last week and this coming week have been/will be very stressful for me with work. I have a major project due next Friday, and I'm going out of town Tuesday/Wednesday for work. Plus I have all these smaller projects and meetings wedged in between. I'm STRESSED. Every day is filled with a bunch of crap I have to do, and my desire to do it all is, well, nil.

The point is that Thursday night, I stayed up until 1:30am completing some work, and so when I woke up on Friday, the only thought I had was, "I just want to call into work." But I didn't! I was a trooper! I got dressed and ready for the below zero weather (I wish I was kidding), and headed out to the car. (Yes, a car. We bought a car. You are reading a post by the owner of a brand new, beautiful 1995 Toyota Corolla! We got a really good deal, and bought it from someone we know and trust.)

When I got out to the car, it started. I opened the trunk to dump all my stuff in there, and there was all this ice in the trunk. I couldn't figure it out. Then I remembered. I left a can of diet coke back there, and the damn thing had exploded EVERYWHERE. Okay, annoying, yes, but not terrible. It was frozen, and easy to clean. There wasn't anything else back there really, so I just started scooping out Diet Coke ice chunks with my gloved hand. When I got that mostly cleaned up, I decided to put my stuff in the back seat instead. I opened the back door up, and put my bags back there. When I went to go close the back door, it wouldn't shut. The lock was frozen, and wouldn't catch. Funzies! Finally, I got the door shut by thwacking it with my hip.

I climbed into the car, and pulled away. I noticed the car was dragging a little, but I figured that was from the extreme cold. I also noticed it was making a lot of noise, but couldn't decipher if it was the extreme number of potholes I was driving over or the actual car. Finally, about two blocks away, I pulled over, and got out. I had a flat tire...and I had driven on it. I called up A.P. and explained the situation. He told me to drive the car back, park it, and we would deal with it after work. In the mean time, I had to take the bus to work. I was already running late. Miserable start to the day. It's kind of like how much could go wrong in less than an hour? Apparently, a lot.

I spent my lunch and whatever free time I had at work figuring out our different options for fixing the tire. I also realized that my Uggs, that I love and wear almost daily had a little hole in them. HEARTBREAKING!! Finally I called my brother. He agreed to pick me up from work and help me out. So we got back to the house, and in 7 degree weather, my poor brother tried three times to jack the car up and get the flat off, and the spare on. Three times, the jack gave out when we were trying to whack the tire off the axle. Lame, lame, lame. We spent forty minutes messing around with this tire, only to put the lug nuts back on, park the damn thing again, and call it a day.

Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, we called a guy who came out, and changed the tire. Then we had to go get a new tire. What a mess. It took almost two whole days to get that one thing done. After we finished that mess, we sealed all the windows in an attempt to perhaps make our apartment a bit warmer and took down all the Christmas stuff. Then we went to to Fogo de Chao to celebrate A.P.'s birthday, which is on Monday. Today I'm working all day. So needless to say, there just wasn't time for blogging. Life sucks sometimes. And I'm slowly learning that when one bad thing happens, it means five other lousy things will follow. Ugh...I can't wait for this week to be OVER.