word of the 2013 holiday season: tired

yep.  the word is 'tired'. 

just getting over a cold or bacterial infection of some sort and i'm still feeling utterly exhausted by everything.

also, i'm really insanely grumpy.  just a few days before xmas and i want to just... stab something.  paint the town black.

i'm tired of doing everything, of being in charge and i'm ready for some big changes in 2014.  i'll be 35.  fuck this shit.  

i'm going to get a handle on my health, whether that means joining a gym or doing yoga or pilates.  probably the latter. 

i'm going to spend more on me, like buying and owning more than 3 pair of shoes.  (wearing sandals in the winter?  over it.)  

i'm going to meet new people and venture outside my house.  i'm going to grow some plants and i won't kill them.  i'm going to hire someone to clean my house every once in a while.  i'm going to watch less television.  i'm going to stop reading so many blogs and pinning crap, and am going to actually DO things, and not curate things i WANT to do.  

i'm going to figure out a way to either enjoy my job, or get a new one.

more happiness and contentment.  less stress.

i hope you're ready, 2014.  because i'm tired of being tired and i'm totally fucking over it.

rest

after the insanity of the beginning of the year, the slow pace has been rather rejuvenating.  i've been puttering, cleaning, and purging.  still so much to do.  we moved into this house 3 (?) years ago and the bedroom?  still a boring and tedious affront to the eyes and senses.

i am hosting girlfriend sweatshop here in a few months - perhaps i can get together the motivation to put the house in order.  in a cozy fashion.  with paint and artwork and pillows.  and another kitten, natch.  kittens always round out a household.

we had gfss in gainesville this past weekend.  went tubing, sloshed in the mud, avoided drunken rednecks like champs.  also, as always, ate delicious food.  AND had a marathon drunken photo boudoir session that ended at 3 am.  pretty sure this is the only photo i can share.  the black and white effectively hides my bloodshot eyes.

*le sigh*

on monday, we had to let our little yam go. we knew it would be coming, and when she started to go downhill, it was really fast. and even with that knowledge, it was so very hard. 

this morning, we picked up her ashes, strangely, in a bag with tissue paper, almost like a gift.  i didn't realize they would be making a plaster cast of her paw prints.  we were doing really well, and as i was opening it, i thought it was just going to be an empty album.

SO. WRONG.  what a giant sucker punch to the gut and oh man we cried. 

so we treated ourselves to a long brunch.  and a cocktail for me, because i needed it.

these last few months have been filled with insanity.  car troubles, family health issues, death in our extended family, in friend's close families...    *sigh*

so here's to yam.  sweet little kitty with all the missing teeth and the penchant for swiss cheese.  and to a better end of the year.  because it can only go up.

I don't want to go to sleep, because tomorrow is going to suck. 

*big sigh*

?

t

hings i do not understand:  selling cold stone creamery ice cream in order to benefit a diabetes event.

perhaps they should also sell deep fried butter and other assorted deep fried candy bars.

uh oh.

i'm starting to dislike my job again.

my frustration and subsequent ennui seems to coincide exactly with the testing of our updates - a lot of it due to the fact that anytime there's an error, the testing team does no research on their own to fix it, even though they're the testers (who should understand what they're testing) and we're just the IT deployers.  i'm a systems analyst, not a claims pricing specialist, yet i am currently innundated with pricing issues on apr, apg, long term care and esrd claims.  *seppuku*  no  matter that the testing team consists of 5 people who split the different areas and we are 2.

giant ball of blarg.

... i mean, i like getting paid, and i like getting paid my particular salary, but it's probably not good to be so annoyed and mentally struggling for 8 hours a day.

yet again, i long to be an artisan worker in some way.  the problem, of course, is that i feel utterly unqualified in everything, even in my current job.  the feeling like i'm a fraud no matter what.  i have a lot of knowledge in a lot of things, but nothing that feels like deep knowledge of a skill.  a veritable jill of all trades, that's me.

catching up.

today is stressful for some reason. 

pretty sure i need to eat something substantial before i go batshit.

also pretty sure i need another vacation.

things on my mind:

• why did i agree to do this damn tampa zinefest?  FUCK.
• need to catch up on photography and finish
• and then take a hiatus
• yammie sadly has many more tumors growing, and the biggest one ulcerated the other week - basically there's nothing to be done, but take care of her and make sure her quality of life doesn't drop
• ulcerated means she's got this never-heal volcano of a wound on her belly - it's pretty awful
• and it'll eventually happen to her other tumors
• and if i take a vacation, who can we get to feed our two cats, who stupidly need to be fed different kinds of food? *headdesk*
• cannot wait to have a garage sale to get rid of all my crap, so tempted to take it all to the thrift store now
• trying to figure out if it's worth it to redo our kitchen, and if so, how much to do?
• basically - blerg and #firstworldproblems

ok.  do this now:

1) wash your face
2) brush your teeth again
3) make some food
4) get to work
5) make something with gin

Purging and cleaning.

it's thursday.

 

exhaustion.

 

every night this week, i've gone to bed and proceeded to lie awake until past midnight.

 

WHAT. THE. HAIL.

as they say. 

 

last night, anthony and i were talking about prank jokes and he mentioned the saran-wrap-on-the-toilet prank, asking if i'd ever heard of it.  "if i'd heard of it" - pfft. 

my response, "yea, of course!  in.. college.. we...  time... one-time...  week...  pranks... *meaningless words jumbled together, stroke-like* *cry laughing*"

 

i do poorly when i'm tired.  it's translated into my physical movements this morning as i'm losing control of my fine motor skills.  my fingers fall heavily on the keyboard.  my arms move and fall with the weight of gravity, my hands - stiffly limp, not unlike rigor mortis.

 

and i am grouchy, oh MY, am i grouchy.

 

i'd been avoiding naps, in the hopes that exhaustion would overtake me, but no such luck.  today i will sleep whenever i damn well feel like it.  you hear that, self?  well, wait, not now.  when you get home.  yea.  home.  and stuff.

 

things. are. crazy.

i'm finally done with my last scheduled wedding.  it occurs to me that i cannot (CANNOT) handle 3 weddings in 2 months with a full time job. i'm utterly overwhelmed.  i'm excited that i have no other weddings scheduled, so i can edit photos with wild, wild abandon and when i'm done, i can actually do some things for myself, for once.

i'm amazed with how far i've come with photography; maybe i'll post some before and afters.  i love working with my brother, though i do wish he were a nikon shooter, instead of canon.  i'm always surprised at how fully and completely i'm exhausted the day after a wedding - my entire body is still sore and achey 2 days later.  name a muscle group and i'm sure i'm feeling pain.  even the muscles/tendons in my fingers hurt.  full body massage?  YES, PLS.

tonight: book club.  then i'll be staring at a computer screen for the next month non-stop.  *sigh*

when i feel like i don't want to do photography as a living, is it because i'm scared, or because i might be feeling depressed?

 

or because i legitimately just want to do this for fun?

 

excision

yams, by the way, came through her surgery with flying colors. she's far more her normal self, incredibly alert and chipper, than i would have imagined. it's like nothing even happened -- as though she got a little trendy shave and some body modification for kicks.


the mass is being sent to a lab to see if they can determine the extent of any spreading through her lymphatic system, but it was good that her radiology tests came through clear (though masses would need to be the size of a pea to show up).

god, man. pets. they're totally our furry children.

FIVE! K!

BOOM.
first 5k completed and under the belt; zoo zoom - held by, for, and through the lowry park zoo.
overall time, as captured by runkeeper, was 44:29. huzzah! ran 8:22 straight at the beginning, walked and ran, had lots of kids pass me by, and saw a florida panther, rhinos and roseate spoonbills. hills, by the way, are ROUGH. GOING.

i'm actually excited (and slightly apprehensive) about signing up for my next 5k - it seems like a good way to keep myself motivated to run and *gasp* maybe even get a little better.

towards the end, there's a bit of the race path on the road before the END in the zoo's parking lot - i mentally told myself i was going to run without stopping until the parking lot - RAWR! - and that walking afterwards was ok. but at the end, the last of the guides were shouting encouragements, and my friends were cheering me on at the parking lot, that i just couldn't let them down. adrenaline kept me running straight on towards the very end - towards a bottle of water and a slice of cheese pizza.

HEALTHY LIVING, FTW! heart and lungs +10 strength and endurance.

what what?

oh?  why hello there!

did i have a blog?  i'd almost forgotten.

i've been circling and circling the drain of life, non-stop as we all are.  the new year came and went and it's almost march.  almost march and a kitten to have a lump removed.  you know.  "kitten".  yam is maybe 11 or 12 years old.

did you know that having your female cat spayed within 6 months of birth reduces the probability of mammary cancer by 91%?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16095174


yea.  that.

sadly, yam was most likely spayed when she came to live at the st francis society when she was about 3.

so we got the diagnosis, an estimate, and spent a week giving her lots of love and wet food snacks, mulling things over.  we weren't going to go through w/ the lumpectomy, due to cost, but you know what?

screw. it.

we both just got raises, promotion increases, i just got an awesome bonus (what what?!) and march is a 3 paycheck month.

at this stage, it came down to money, which always sucks when it comes to your pets.  if she were more sickly, that'd be another issue.  and they'll be doing x-rays first, to determine the extent of any possible spreading to the lungs.  If it's already spread too far, then they'll stop at that point.

so she's going to hate us for a little bit.  thankfully, only 3 days of pain meds afterwards.