The Power Went Out

I was eventually going to either write a pretty long blog post about ... something or do my EWR, which I haven't done in months.  But then, a bit past 1, the damn power went out.  Tried to sleep, couldn't, then finally got my headlamp in order to read this surprisingly fun magazine of ... well, I don't know what you call it, but the editor-in-chief wrote every single article touting something around the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota, and he did so with a lot of style and even sarcasm.  I probably will keep it.

Finished that at 3.  Tried to sleep again and couldn't.  Finally, at a bit past 4, I heard the beep from our alarm.  I put in a ticket to the local utility saying the power was out, and it said it'll be up by 6:30.  Welp, even though we had no electricity for a little more than three hours and so I missed listening to the kickoff Game of the Women's World Cup (because my modem and thus Internet were out), they are 2 1/2 hours ahead of schedule.  And now I can blog something small, like this.  And now, hopefully, I can finally go to bed.

Yep, My Boss Is Calling Me Out

Yep, what I wrote at the end of this blog post that I was afraid was going to happen did happen at work yesterday/Tuesday.  I got an e-mail from my boss pointing out -- well, maybe more like calling me out -- over working too much overtime.  He said that for some reason, I have been incapable of getting out of The Fourth Department within eight hours while the other two people who work there do.  He is asking me to see how I pace myself, but otherwise I'm not sure what concrete steps he wants to take regarding this.

I will not lie; I feel kind of attacked here.  Like I said before, I am working my ass off back there.  Sure, I sit back a bit and sip my coffee, but I have to, otherwise I'll have a damn heart attack trying to keep up with everything.  I am trying to balance doing the work fast with doing the work right.  And while there are a lot of problems that crop up out of nowhere and throw me for a loop (and, it needs to be said, eat up my time), I think I do my job pretty well.  But that means I stay until the work is done, and usually, there is too much work for me to do within eight hours.  But the work gets done.  That's my job, right?  I'm not sure if my boss, through this e-mail, sees it that way.  And so now I feel defensive about it.

I respect the hell out of the two people who also do that position.  But I find it extremely hard to believe that given the workload they surely face like I do, they get through everything that needs to be done within eight hours.  If the metrics say otherwise, well ... (shrug)

The other main way I feel defensive about this is that I don't know what else to do.  I am not going to cut corners in this position just so I don't do overtime.  But I think my boss thinks I'm just half-assing it back there when the reality is anything but.  I have to work at breakneck speed to get everything done before I have to walk out the door.  Now, as I said, everything is less stressful than when I started out back there because, for the most part, I know what I need to do now.  It's just that, on most days, there is a lot to do.  If he is telling me to push that work till the next day so I leave when I'm supposed to, fine, but that leaves more work for me the next day, and that, quite frankly, is stupid.  But I cannot and will not work any faster than I am doing now because I am busting my ass already.

I wonder if he expects me to reply to his message.  I am guessing that would be the elephant in the room if I don't.  But I think I know better than to lash out and say he's wrong about everything.  Then again, I don't think a milquetoast response represents how I really feel.  So I don't know right now what to reveal and what to conceal.

The only saving grace in this situation, as very unfortunate as it is, is that I might be the only person in the intermediate future who can do this job.  One of the two other people who can work in The Fourth Department is my supervisor, and like I said before, she has to do other things in other places because she's a supervisor.  The only other person who can do this job is not at work for the foreseeable future.  Maybe my boss, who I know is getting pressure over this from his bosses over my overtime -- he said so in the e-mail -- is dreading the probability that I am going to have to be in The Fourth Department for the time being and is seeing the dollar signs he might believe is showing up on my eyeballs like the tumblers on a slot machine.  I will do what I can.  But I already am giving him, and the company, everything I humanly can back there.  I am kind of scared that he's concluded that that's not enough.

I Sleep Different When My Parents Are Home Because ...

Since my folks have come home, when I come home from work (and granted, that's about, oh, three times during the workweek because work keeps me so late I just stay out to eat twice a week), after I eat I immediately retreat into my bedroom and, after scrolling on my cell to decompress, I fall asleep.  Once in a while it's about half an hour.  But usually it's 90 minutes, and sometimes two hours.

Last/Monday night, however, was a bear.  I conked off at around 6 and woke up a bit past 10, just in time to catch the weather report.  I was making up for my lack of sleep that morning.  I may have slept for 90 minutes overnight, but honestly, I don't know if I really fell asleep at all.  (Thank Buddha I fell asleep for lunch.  It was so deep that when my cellphone alarm rang, my whole body jerked up in attention.)  What probably ruined my sleep rhythm was the fact I took a nap between 10:10 and 11 at night.  And that was possibly affected by me not having a nap in the afternoon, which I usually can do during the weekend.  And that, in turn, was affected by me staying up till 5:30 in the morning and sleeping till 11 a.m. -- and that was both on Sunday and Saturday afternoon.  Those four-hour evening naps, by the way, isn't a one-off thing.  I have not done it many times, but I have done it several.

It's ironic, I think, that I am now willy-nilly conking off whenever I want with my parents back living here.  I love sleep.  It could be a hobby for me, no cap.  However, when they're not here, and it's just me in this great, big house, I can't think of too many times where I get a good and proper night's sleep, and I'm sure I don't pull off this biphasic sleep pattern where I pass out in the evening, wake up, then pass out for several hours again before I wake up for work.

Why is that?  Well, if there are no parental units who expect me home, I have a tendency to do what I want ... and that, if I'm being honest with myself, isn't necessarily sleep.  It's going out, it's having drinks at a secret bar, it's eating at fast food places, it's having my dick wanked at a house party, stuff like that.  Moreover, whenever I do make it a night in, I have things I need to do as the sole caretaker of the house -- water the plants, check the mail, call them if any of the mail is important, prepare food, mow the lawn, plow the driveway, etc.  I am on my own when they're not here, so I have to be "on," and that doesn't allow me to relax.

So yeah, hearing my parents yap at each other gets to be too much.  But when they're here, they take care of the house, the meal preparation, the bill paying, the tending to the yards, all of it.  And that means I can relax, and sleep whenever I want for as long as I want.  I am ... safe here with my parents home.  And so I am, well, grateful they make me feel safe.  Please don't tell them I think that, however.

But Is It A Break, Really?

While my schedule for the past, oh, year-plus has been regular (in the sense that I am in The Fourth Department the first half of the week and I am somewhere else the back half ... and come to think of it, I don't remember the last time I worked in My Main Department, but whatever), I have been told that my job requires me to be shifted from one position to another on short notice.  That has been needed lately because of emergencies that have befallen two of my co-workers.

What's going to happen today/Monday is different.  On Saturday, my boss texted me that I won't be working The Fourth Department.  Instead, I'll be in, uh, what I will refer to as The Third Department in the morning and then Filing in the afternoon.  My supervisor is going to fill in for me in The Fourth Department even though she doesn't work Mondays.  Here's the thing: He's not moving me because of any family emergency.  He says I could "use a break."

I need to get the more important issue out of the way here before I write about what I wanted to write about for this blog post.  I guess I could use a break, even though I am almost certain I will be back there at some point, probably this week, maybe as soon as tomorrow/Tuesday.  However, I think this move has something to do with an e-mail from him last week asking why I stayed late in The Fourth Department for one day last week (and by the way, I was in The Fourth Department all of last week because of a my colleague's family emergency).  My boss still is getting pressure for his higher-ups to control costs, and one area of scrutiny is overtime.  Now, I have detailed in several blog posts over the past couple years about how there's just too much damn work for me to get out of there within eight hours.  And I not dragging my ass back there, hell no.  I'm working my ass off, and I can prove that, and I can defend needing to work there until the work gets done because otherwise, the work will get pushed back to the next day, and since there usually is a similar amount of work that next day, that work gets pushed off to the following day, and so on.  Yes, it gets to be stressful.  But now that I know how to do most of the work, I have made my peace with the fact that most days, I'm staying there past eight hours.  I don't mind it.  But I will work late to get the work done -- and I will get paid for it.

So I suspect that instead of being given a break, my boss has told my supervisor to come in and work because then, I work only eight hours.  I cannot and will not believe she gets all the work done in eight hours, especially on a Monday, when the person working that job has to deal with all the work that accumulated over the weekend.  I simply won't believe it.  But she leaves when she's "supposed to."  And I now have to wonder, in the back of my mind, if there is an idea of moving me off The Fourth Department, even though the only other people who could work that job are my supervisor, who has other things she needs to do, and my co-worker, who, frankly, may not be back at work this week.

---

Man, that's a blog post all to itself.  Anyway, I wanted to write about my boss giving me a break.  I don't think it's much of a break.  While I don't mind getting away from The Fourth Department from time to time (and I have talked about this before here on Wailing And Failing), I work best when I know the details of every outstanding form and the information I need to get.  Jumping back in and picking up another person's work always feels like jumping into a car going 100 mph because I need to know what that other person did and as quickly as possible because the new stuff is coming throughout the day.  I may be hyperbolic, but it's how I feel.  And assuming I'm back in The Fourth Department some time this week, I get that feeling back this week.

There's one other thing, however, and I just realized this as I am looking at the clock on my laptop.  If I am not working in The Fourth Department, chances are my shift starts an hour earlier.  And I have realized that waking up at 7 is a hell of a lot better for me than waking up at 6.  It's just an hour, and yet getting to sleep in for an "extra" hour is a psychological boost that may be worth all the crap I have to deal with working The Fourth Department.

Now consider what I am doing now: Staying up and blogging.  I need to get to work an hour earlier than I usually do on a Monday, therefore by staying up right now I am losing an hour of sleep.  And as much as, say, four hours of sleep is still punishing to my body, trust me, getting only three hours of sleep makes me feel even more miserable.  I have gotten used to going into work at 8, and therefore I really, really don't like getting to work at 7.

Which means I should end this blog post, eat the rest of this cake Mother made for the family, pop a Lactase, drink the rest of this milk, and try to fall asleep for 3 1/2 hours before going to work at a position that might change because I'm costing the company too much money.  Awesome!

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2).  I can't think of a better way to start the second half of a season in which you're scuffling and trying to put away inferior competition in order to sew up a playoff spot than The Oakland Athletics, who, as it was announced about a month ago, will (in all likelihood, because this is not 100% set in stone) be taken from the good people of Oakland and be placed in the furnace known as Las Vegas, which, according to Father, reached 117 yesterday/Saturday.  They have a lease to play in their Coliseum through next year, which they probably will invoke (which means, by the way, I should cancel the flight reservation I made to go there in September and use it instead on a different Southwest trip).  But the new stadium won't be built until, I think, 2027.

Anyway, all this negativity that has surrounded this organization for years reached a head with this move in the middle of this season, and that should be pointed out as the main reason the A's are an MLB-worst 25-69, and why they lost the first two Games of the series with Minnesota in Oaktown.  Granted, they were nail-biters: The Twins were down by a Run until Joey Gallo blasted a two-Run Home Run in the top of the Ninth Inning in Friday's Game, and in last/Saturday night's crazy contest they were tied at seven until Minnesota plated a Run in each of the final three Innings.  But they're still awful.

(Aside: I'm about to say something controversial [that's interesting]: While it isn't fair for the good people of Oakland to lose the Athletics after a half-century, and it is, ultimately this relocation is different from other such relocations such as the Dodgers being taken from Brooklyn or my North Stars being stolen away from Dallas.  The one very important fact: Oakland, respectfully, stole the Athletics from Kansas City.  In fact, the "Athletics" have been moved twice already: They were born The Philadelphia Athletics in 1901, ripped from Philly after the '54 season, and stayed in K. C. from 1955 to 1967, at which point they were snatched from the good people of Kansas City and put in Oakland.  I am afraid to point out that Las Vegas [at least the government is; word has it that no Las Vegan cares about baseball] is doing to Oakland what Oakland did to Kansas City what K. C. did to Philadelphia.  Once a franchise is stolen from the city in which it was born, it might as well be a vagabond outfit.  Sorry, but while I am angered by this move, that anger is measured in comparison to other relocations.

My outrage is partly fueled by the fact that with this move, Oakland will now have no major-league teams to call its own, at least technically.  The Raiders were stolen away to Las Vegas, and the Warriors moved to San Francisco, so one can at least say that organization [which, ironically, was also born and thus really belong to Philadelphia] remains in the Bay Area.  But Oakland will probably cease to be a major-league city.  The psychic damage that will be done will be immense and, I think, far-reaching.)

But this is The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey.  The Twins, who started off Friday a 1/2-Game behind Cleveland, are now 1 1/2-Games ahead of the Guardians because they have lost the first two tilts of their series vs. The Bastard Washington Senators (v.2.0).  A better measurement of how good the Twins really are should come from last Sunday's 15-2 battering at the hands of The Bastard St. Louis Browns, which completed a three-Game sweep at Target Field.  Thank God, once again, that this is flyover country and not the coasts, where franchises actually care about baseball and actively put money into their teams.

Once they finish up this/Sunday afternoon, they'll head to Seattle for three starting tomorrow/Monday, then come home for a trio with the White Sox starting on Friday.  This is a chance for the Twins to, possibly, pad their lead in the Division.

#-2: United FC (Last Week: -3).  Wednesday, while I was concentrating on watching the USMNT struggle and ultimately fall to Panama, of all countries, in the Semifinals of the Gold Cup, the Black Hart was also playing the Loons' Match in Houston.  I picked the wrong Game to watch; MNUFC avenged their Open Cup battering a couple months ago by crushing the Dynamo, 3-0.  (Aside: I thought that the Americans were going to cruise into the final, but Mexico would struggle in the other Semi later in the night against Jamaica.  I was completely wrong, as the Mexicans thrashed the Jamaicans, 3-0.)  

That gave me some hope that opting back in to watching the Match versus LAFC (instead of going to the Nickel Creek concert; here's all the internal drama over that), a club that, despite being in second place and winning at St. Louis mid-Week, was desperately out-of-form as of late.  No dice; the Match ended 1-all.  United FC, once again, had their chances, courtesy of Emanuel Reynoso, to score, especially to start the Game, but they couldn't finish.  Laugh-See, then, capitalized in the 21st Minute, as a moonshot connected with Carlos Vela, who outmuscled and outhustled Michael Boxall for the ball, then swerved around an oncoming Dayne St. Clair to score into the open net.  Three Minutes later, however, a weirdly intricate series of passes in the box, the last of which was a Kervin Arriaga lifter, ended up with Reynoso side-kicking a low shot past the Goalkeeper to tie it up.  And that was that.

Teemu Pukki, the squad's brand-new signing (and latest Striker), actually scored against the Dynamo, but he seemed largely ineffective last/Saturday night.  I saw around Allianz Field a couple people wearing paper birthday hats; as the Pukki signing was streamed, someone (maybe the team's PR department) said the announcement was a "Pukki Party," and so people are wearing hats as a cheeky sign they're supporting the new guy.  I hope it works out, but if last night was any indication, I fear that, once again, the rube hype over another new finisher will vastly outstrip the reality of scoring Goals.

While they didn't technically lose this screening Week, they blew a chance to get back into a postseason birth by not winning.  They sit tenth in the West, albeit a Point behind the Dynamo for the final playoff slot.  And the reason why the Loons sit behind the Twins in this Week's WMNSS is because they will stay sitting in tenth and out of a postseason spot for a month as MLS stops league play to concentrate on the brand-spanking new Leagues Cup, a competition between Major League Soccer ballclubs and squads of Liga MX.  They will play Puebla and Chicago, both at home, next Week.  You know, I haven't thought of whether I should track the XI for the WMNSS or not. ...

#-3: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  Congratulations to Napheesa Collier for dropping 20 and helping Team Breanna Stewart defeat Team A'ja Wilson in last/Saturday night's All-Star Game in Las Vegas.  Now, back to reality: The Jynx came into the All-Star break on the receiving end of a pair of vicious skull-fuckings -- by 24 to The Bastard Utah Starzzz last Sunday and by a franchise-worst 40 to The Bastard Detroit Shock Wednesday.  Both ass-kickings, by the way, were at home.  And that loss to Dallas was the annual day camp Game.  Young girls were watching their heroines getting their brains beaten in.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT LASTING DAMAGE YOU'VE DONE TO THOSE PRECIOUS KIDS BY LOSING SO BADLY?!?!?!

This past Week proved so starkly how Minnesota just ain't gonna win the WNBA Championship this Year.  And yet there are so many teams tanking resetting for bountiful draft next Year (Seattle, Phoenix, probably Chicago, maybe Los Angeles, and by the by, Indiana is The Worst Team In The League, but I think they're trying to win) that the club is going to make the playoffs because they're not bad enough not to.  For example, this screening Week, while busy, starts off with a Game in Atlanta on Tuesday and a home showdown with the Sparks on Thursday.  Those are both winnable.  Saturday they host Las Vegas again.  That one is not winnable.

#-Infinity: Whitecaps (Re-Entry!).  I neglected to write about this story when news of it broke out, out of nowhere, last month.  The Premier Hockey Federation was bought by the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association with the help of longtime front office executive Stan Kasten and fucking tennis godhead Billie Jean King.  The PHF, apparently, is dead.  And the last moment of its existence apparently will be the Whitecaps giving up the Isobel Cup-losing Goal three Minutes into 3-on-3 Sudden Death Overtime (wondered how the OT lasted that long).

This situation is strange, and the tributaries that flow into its apparent denouement are strange, too.  The PHF (born as the National Women's Hockey League in 2015) soldiered on as The Little League That Could, going from four to five to six to seven teams over the Years.  The 'Caps, born as an independent showcase team, joined in 2018 and won the Isobel Cup in its first season.  But the really good players, the ones you see play in the Olympics, never played in the NWHL/PHF.  I don't really know why, although they unionized as the PWHPA in 2019 and the league is non-union.  The PWHPA teamed up with Kasten, King and that chairman last Year in an effort to form its own league separate from the PHF.  And whenever I heard the players under the PWHPA talk about playing pro hockey full-time, it always seemed as though they were invoking the National Hockey League as a partner, even though the NHL never seemed to reciprocate or even acknowledge that relationship.  It sounded desperate, if not thirsty, for The Best Players In Women's Hockey to try and attract the attention of the male-dominated NHL.  It appeared as if they could have provided an example of independence and female empowerment by just winning a spot in the PHF and showing everybody how fucking good they were.

Little did I, nor a lot of people working in the PHF, know that behind the scenes earlier this Year, the stakeholders of the PHF were willing to sell themselves to the PWHPA and its backstoppers.  The General Manager of the Whitecaps re-signed one of its players, Rookie Forward Natalie Snodgrass, to a two-Year deal Tuesday, June 27.  News of the deal hit two days later.  And under terms of the deal, everybody's contract was immediately voided.  Everyone who worked at the PHF were all out of a job that day -- players and front office people too, including Chi-Yin Tse, 'Caps GM.  The whoring by the league, the suddenness of the news and the out-of-nowhere aspect of the news reminds me of the PGA-LIV merger in golf ... well, except that I don't think the PWHPA et al. ever murdered and dismembered a journalist they didn't like.

So instead of forming its own league (the members of the PWHPA divvied up into four teams that weren't city-based and played over two weekends in Canada in October and November of last Year), the PWHPA instead bought a league it considered itself superior to, then hollowed out all of the people who worked for it so it could move into its host body.  I find all of this shady, if not despicable, and if women's hockey had more of a national following, I think more people would regard this move with a lot more contempt, too.  They may have had non-union issues with the PHF, and thought that this ruthless move ensured they themselves won't lose their jobs like they did when the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) went belly-up in 2019.  But they essentially fired a bunch of players with this shock merger.  The money people has set up a pool that will dole out severance (as determined by the money people, probably) to all contracted players and even more money for anyone who tries out for the league and fails to get a spot.  If you live in America and are smart, you know not to trust the word of people who have the money.  Not to mention it ain't right to just fire people outright.  I wonder if this "deal" has a Non-Disclosure Agreement attached to it.  If so, there has to be one contracted PHF player willing to break it.  I mean, the money you would be given isn't worth signing the NDA, is it?

Beyond that, I cannot help but see this as bullying.  And I find it depressingly ironic that people I would look to as fighting the good fight have instead went over to the dark side because they can take what they want through power, money, talent and fame.  One of these superior players, Canadian Sarah Nurse, herself was out of a job upon the death of the CWHL.  "We're not celebrating dissolving a league," Nurse is quoted as saying in this Associated Press article.  And yet she, through her union, has dissolved the league.  "Our hearts definitely go out to (the PHF's) players and staff because we know what it's like to have a league fold and get that phone call," Nurse also said.  Really?  Because she was able to take one of their roster spots without needing to earn it on the ice.  And I'm guessing she didn't pick up a phone to spread the news, either.

If I were a PHF'er and saw that quote from Nurse, I would vow to injure her if we ever were playing in the same hockey Game, new league or beer league.  I don't believe she fucking believes her bullshit, and I don't think she cares that she doesn't believe it.  I don't think any of the players in the NWHPA give a shit about any player losing her job in the league.  Look past all of the performative well wishes, their "Chin up, you'll find a job in hockey" bromides; understand that it is shameful to destabilize people's livelihoods in order to guarantee stability in a league that you decided to acquire.  Nurse and them, for all of the wondrous talent they'll now feel free to showcase in their host body, are nothing more than victims turned perpetrators.

(Shame, by the way, has to be flung at Billie Jean King, too.  This trailblazer for women in sport has also okayed women losing their places in sport.  I thought her support for Virginia Slims cigarettes as she helped start a women's tennis association in the seventies was understandable, but I now pair that with this disgusting merger as a disturbing pattern of someone who sees in the taking of dreams of the people she helped allow to dream the full realization of women's liberation.  I shake my head.)

So, what of the Whitecaps?  According to that same article I linked to in the previous paragraph, there will be only six teams when the new league (I'm guessing it'll be called the WNHL -- the Women's National Hockey League ... yoo-hoo, sailor!) starts, presumably next season.  The Twin Cities apparently ain't one of them.  So the Minnesota Whitecaps, a team founded by two hockey dads that sustained itself by essentially being barnstormers, make a deal to home itself in a league, only to be reduced to an asset that will be buried under piles of Intellectual Property papers for the next half-decade as this new league starts up out east.  A dream turned into a line item, hrmph.

Once the news becomes official, I'll write about them again.  But I don't mind starting the obituatry now: RIP, Minnesota Whitecaps.

Ick, Hangover

So yesterday/Friday the workload at work wasn't bad.  But my day was still bad because I spent the first 90 minutes trying to get into my computer.  Shouldn't have made updating my computer the last thing I did before I left Thursday afternoon.  And then I had re-training with my supervisor in the afternoon, and that was another 70 minutes that pushed back the work I normally would have done earlier.  The saving grace of the work was that many of the forms came from the same company.  That means that I could combing my requests for missing information into one e-mail, then scan all the forms for that company at once and send them all at once.  There were seven forms that happened to need to go to the same company.  In essence, that's not seven forms I had to deal with, but only one.

I would have been able to get out in about eight hours if I weren't locked out of my computer and if I didn't have re-training I had to do.  That wasn't enough to get bent out of shape, but my weird day didn't dissuade me from going to the secret bar I wanted to go to, and which I reached a bit before 6:30.  I was afraid that my run of good times was going to end because they inevitably do -- bartender having a bad day, being bothered by some drunk sitting next to me, etc.  And I will say that I didn't have a good sleep for lunch and, combined with getting about three hours of sleep overnight, I was pretty tuckered out.  I was kind of scared the two cocktails I planned on having would amplify my fatigue and get my in trouble on my drive home.

I was alright.  But once I got that second cocktail, which I asked the bartender to make based on what he wants to make, to go with some tasty Korean wings, I felt really good.  The music, which is always great, was spinning this person named Rahill, whose latest album, released in May, is very impressive.  And while I am glad I got there when it wasn't busy, it quickly got packed starting in the 7 o'clock hour, and seeing this good place full of people really puts me in a good mood.  Once again, it was a great night there.

And I got home just fine.  Actually stopped by Sebastian Joe's one the way because I was still on one and getting a regular sundae during the Golden Hour but when the sky was hazy with Canadian wildfire smoke seemed like the right thing to do.  Got home, made sure I pulled my daily Day 7/400% free spin on Zynga Poker, then went to sleep at a bit past 9.

And I woke up at around a quarter to 1, and I had this pounding headache.  I am not unfamiliar with a pounding headache after going to these bars, or even after making one cocktail for myself at home.  I enjoyed my time out, and I would do it again, but this ... well, let's just call it a hangover because it was, this occurrence that always happens is, well, getting kind of old.

Hell At Work And Then ... Not

As bad as The Fourth Department is, I didn't think it would be this bad this week: I pretty much worked my full, self-imposed maximum of ten hours Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  There was a lot of work.  But notably on Tuesday and especially on Wednesday, there was a lot of extracurricular BS that didn't get tied up by the end of the day.  It was, "Hey, can you call these guys and check on a test?" or, "I don't think this form should go to us, sorry!"

That meant that Wednesday and yesterday/Thursday morning, my day immediately started -- and, frankly, immediately went off the rails -- by catching up on the loose ends from the day before.  I have gotten into a routine (that might not be the right word) whereby all of the crush of work I know I have waiting for me at the start of the day I will at least "touch" before I go to lunch.  For that reason -- and also because I want to delay my morning break until after Stephanie Miller, and also I because I am tuckered out in the middle of the afternoon and not the start -- I don't do lunch until six hours after I get into work.  I think a lot of people will see that and say I'm insane.  My supervisor has warned me that my boss will get antsy if he sees me taking lunch that far into my day/that close from the end of my day.  I just don't feel as though I could drop what I'm doing exactly four hours into my shift.  There is a ton of crap I don't get around to until I'm well deep into the day.  Hell, I was catching up on so much old stuff on Tuesday that I didn't get around to doing the new stuff until after I got back from lunch!

It has been a ridiculous week.  If I were still relatively green in this position, I would be freaking out and getting very, very upset with my supervisor, my boss, my company, and especially myself for putting myself through this absurd meatgrinder.  But now I've been at this for a while and some of the work I know how to deal with (but definitely not all; the curveballs I've faced are completely new and foreign to me, and so I have relied on my supervisor to do them, quite frankly), I'm non-plussed.  I'm working late at The Fourth Department, well, forever, or at least until they decide another person will be assigned to do some of the work every day.

Not only was this week stressful because of the weird problems I faced, but also because there were some things I wanted to do in the evening, and the workload in fact jeopardized me doing those things.  On Tuesday I bought a ticket in advance to see Joy Ride (I like the representation, but it's too raunchy for me, sorry) at 8.  I thought that was going to give me enough time, but I worked right up to 6:30, and I promised my parents that I'd be home to eat a late dinner -- which, to be honest, was garbage because Mother made that Buddhist vegetable crap, a whole bowl of which I had to eat.  I needed to slather it in fish sauce to eat all that, and then I had to chew slowly because it was so distasteful.  Got to the movie just in time, thankfully.  And on Wednesday, I was too late to get to the Black Hart to catch the start of the Gold Cup Semifinal between the U. S. and Panama because I was too delayed at work.  If I had only been able to leave eight Minutes earlier. ...

At the beginning of the week I didn't plan on going to one of my favorite secret speakeasies at the end of the week.  I'm still going through money like nobody's business.  But after seeing the clock tick to 5:30 and seeing my co-worker, who gets in an hour after me, leave work before me once again, and feeling my heart pound because I want to watch the beginning of the soccer Match but can't ... well, I gave in and decided Wednesday that I would go to a speakeasy for the first time in months tonight/Friday night.  I deserve it after this week of hell.  And it'd be perfect if I went straight from work to there to grab a drink.  It'd be 7 o'clock -- great way to start my weekend and reward myself for reaching the finish line without worrying about a line of people to get in (at least I think).

But then the damnedest thing happened at work yesterday/Thursday: It was sane and reasonable.  I had work, but a manageable amount.  And most of the loose ends that were lying in wait for me in the morning were resolved throughout the day.  I stayed only an extra 20 minutes.  Now yesterday would have been the day to have planned something in the evening.

But with this psychological burden that lifted off my shoulders and flew far, far away yesterday -- well, the stress I felt I needed to relieve with a stiff drink is gone.  So I ask myself: Do I really need to go to this speakeasy?  Thursday wasn't bad, and although the other three days were terrible, I powered through.  I can't hit the bottle after every rough day, right?  So why not just chill at home?  Why can't that be my reward for reaching the week's finish line?

Nah!  I want to treat myself after Monday through Wednesday.  Plus, I haven't been to a speakeasy in a while, and I want to feel cool again.  Plus, who knows, Friday might be a steaming pile of crap like Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  So a drink for me!

My Psychiatrist Is ... Starting To Be Annoying

I haven't spoken to my therapist in quite a long while, at least a couple months.  I want to.  Really, I do.  But work has been a bear.  Whenever I work at a position other than The Main Department, I don't get out of work before a time where it seems reasonable to have a session with your psychologist, either in-person or (ever since the pandemic began) over the phone.  And I have not been in The Main Department much or at all in the past, oh, several months.  Co-worker absences also necessitate me working in general.  One of my co-workers had emergency surgery and literally is in traction for another month.  And I am in The Fourth Department all this week instead of just Monday and Tuesday because a co-worker has a family emergency spring up.

So I haven't had time to speak to him.  I guess it would be a little frustrating on his end that we do not have a set schedule.  And yet, it has been a little ... concerning to see him react by reaching out to me -- even when I have not scheduled a session with him.

I had a couple days off last week.  (These were planned in advance of my co-worker's surprise surgery, so even though they could have used the manpower, I decided to keep my staycation.)  That was the perfect time to speak with my shrink.  I set something up with his assistant.  We agreed upon a time: Last Thursday at 1.  So, after I ate al fresco at Centro and wound up at Glam Doll, I set up the shades in my car and waited for him to ring in.

And I waited.  And I waited.  I waited about an hour before I decided not to wait any longer.  It's not as if I had concrete plans, but as a general rule, I'm not going to wait for anyone for a long time if we had a set time we would meet.  Hey, I wanted to try Eat Street Crossing.  So I did.  And that's when my psychiatrist called.  Now, I could have just sat there and started talking to him.  I didn't have much to do.  But this is a therapy session, so I don't know if I want to blab my innermost secrets out on a patio, and besides, it gets noisy outdoors.  More than that, I thought I had given him enough time to call.  And I didn't feel obligated to delay any plans I conjured up in my head because he was late, however trivial those plans are.  So I told him I was busy and I'll speak to him later.

Later, turns out, was the next afternoon.  I really do want to talk with him, so I moved an optometrist appointment and exercise around to be at a park Friday at 3.  I think the woods are secluded enough to take in a therapy session over the phone.  But once again, he didn't call.  And as I think I have said from time to time here at WAF, lately he has been rather flighty with calling in at our supposedly-scheduled dates.  I don't understand what's going on.

What really scares and bugs me, however, is that, out of the blue, he called Tuesday afternoon.  I didn't pick up because I was at work.  But I think he knows that I have a daytime job.  I'm not completely convinced he confused Tuesday at 1 with last Thursday at 1.  He is getting up there in age, and I'm afraid I can't rule out cognitive issues.  And if he did know that we didn't schedule a time to talk Tuesday afternoon and just wanted to talk anyway, well, that's quite creepy.  I have spoken about his recent propensity to blur the boundary being doctor and patient.  Calling me up whenever to talk about whatever is a further trespass.  I don't know what to make of it, but I don't like it.

I am still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.  With no regular time to meet (and we haven't had one really since before the pandemic started), I am not in a position to pass judgement on when my psychotherapist should talk to me, and I don't think I can be too upset that he wants to talk to me when I say that I want to talk to him.  But at the same time, I don't think it's too much to ask to call when I, you know, schedule a call.

So how come he can't call when I want him to, and he does call when I don't want him to?  This has gotten really annoying, to the point where I don't really look forward to speaking with him, at least now.  I am scared that he no longer sees this relationship as a professional one that requires boundaries.  I confide in him, I have told him things I haven't told anybody else, but that doesn't mean I want to shoot the bull whenever I'm bored.  I'm starting to believe he thinks we can, and that I want to.  That's ... not the case.  And now I don't feel like talking to him, about that or, really, anything else, for that matter.

I might expound on this later, but right now I should go to bed because it sucks having only three hours a sleep in the part of the night where you're supposed to be sleeping for more.  My thoughts are so scrambled right now, I don't think I could blog post something that makes sense at all if I extended it beyond, well this. ...

This Is What Happens When I Eat By Myself

Work yesterday/Monday was a grind.  I feel as though I was in the wrong frame of mind going in to work after four days off.  The load of work was not an unprecedented amount, although it was as high as it has gotten.  I just felt as though it was a lot.  And I got out of there at ten hours not quite completing everything I want to do before I leave for the day.

Still, since my parents are home and they're willing to cook something for me, I went straight home for dinner.  What did I get?  Mashed potatoes and shrimp.  It was great.  Really, it was.  So great that I ate 20 shrimp -- and they weren't small.  They were plump.  And deep-fried.  Haven't had shrimp in a long time.  Haven't seen my parents break out a ketchup bottle for dinner in a long, long time.  But I sat at the dining room table, by myself, scrolling through my phone, gobbling up first the potatoes and then having a first serving (by which I mean I sprayed an amount of ketchup on my plate) of shrimp, and then deciding to have a second serving of shrimp.

Big mistake, that second serving; me eating my feelings quickly ended, and my bloated feeling of getting fat kind of rose up from my stomach and slapped in the head and screamed at me, "What the hell are you doing??!!  You're eating too much!!"  And I am, and even as I type this now -- after finishing up a bowl of melons Father cut for me for work after the shrimp, and then putting jelly into the peanut butter sandwich he made for me for work which I actually ate around midnight -- I certainly am feeling the aftereffects of my, uh, bingeing in my stomach.

I am quietly freaking out now because my health screening for my health insurance is coming up.  OK, it's in five weeks.  But I'm still freaking out about it.  They have increased the number of benchmarks you need to get the discount I have gotten on my insurance ever since I started working for my company.  Up to this year you had to just sign a statement saying you don't smoke and fall below a Body Mass Index threshold.  Now, there are three more markers -- one of them is high blood pressure and I don't remember the two others -- and you have to reach three of the five.  I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get the high blood pressure one, and I'm scared as hell that stuffing my face like this is going to cause me to overshoot the other two factors.  And I think it's best to start as soon as possible limiting how much I eat and what to eat, but dammit, I've got my parents at home and they're worried sick that I'm not eating, and I'm worried sick that if I don't eat at home I will displease them.  It would be me if they decide to leave the day after I do this panel.  One final week's worth of dinners at home, one final week of proving I am their son, and I am going to sacrifice potentially an extra $240 to do it.

(Well, there are diversionary options if I don't hit three of the five that still get me that insurance break.  You have to sign up through some fitness coach thing on the work health insurance, but I don't want to do that.  And to be honest, I could be stuffing my face if my parents weren't here, so there's that.)

But this is what happens (sometimes) when I eat by myself.  I can't eat just one shrimp.  I have to eat 20.  And I have to feel it for the next 24 hours ... or five weeks.