Weekend: Full of Happy

• Every other 6- to 10-year-old girl in this town might have gotten to hear T. Swift live and in-person Saturday night, but MY kids got to play Go Fish, Crazy 8s, Slap-Jack (Whisper-Jack, Yak-Jack), and even Gin Rummy with me on Sunday night at our kitchen table. I love playing [non-stressful] card games.
• It's surprising how delicious the pizza at Mellow Mushroom is. I was thinking about it again this morning, after going there Friday night. (Friday night pizza! What is better than that? NOT MUCH. I'm in love with Friday Night Pizza. Can we please do it every weekend?)
• Kate was totally giggly most of the day yesterday because of the word, "Tummy." We don't know why.
• Alex has begun using the word "Derp" in all the right ways, and it, too, made us laugh over and over again.
• A fuzzy diary and a metal Naruto headband (? I don't know either) are little things you can get at the mall, that make 2 kids pretty happy. 
• Wal-Mart might have lowered my grocery spend for the month of October (we haven't done the final tally), but I have declared that experiment over now. I really hate buying groceries at Wal-Mart, and decided my happiness is more important. Do what makes you happy! Don't do what doesn't. 
• During our backyard game of Frisbee yesterday, we broke the RECORD of 16 catches without dropping it! We made it all the way to TWENTY-ONE! It was momentous. 
• Shawn is the one who sorts, starts, switches, and folds most of our laundry on Sundays. (And he's cute, too!)
• We made Jerk sauce for our hamburgers last night, because we both like to eat everything spicy. YUM.
• The glass of Riesling I sipped while reading The Shell Seekers on my Kindle (64% through it) for 30 minutes last night made that half-hour truly lovely. Loving the book!
• I went to bed at 10:30, and slept all the way through.

Wish

Hope. The Holy Spirit. And a reason to Smile at the office. These are 3 things I prayed for this morning. These are what I think I need to get through a workday. My office is so amazingly bizarre/horrible. I have never been in a place that has SO much politics, drama, and is so incapable of getting a wholly successful team on-board. Is it because our hiring managers are no good? I think that has been part of it. We've had people in the HR office who have little understanding, in my opinion, of what it means to be an HR manager, and their bosses, the VPs of hiring, are European, and maybe don't catch all the nuance in their American interviewees' personalities. So they hire these people who never turn out to be what the position needs, and then they have to dramatically let them go and people whisper and worry, and get shuffled around to cover, and and and. It's a theory. (Also: there's one manager in particular who is actually good at what she does, but has power-trippy tendencies and also causes a large majority of the daily chaos, because she can never enjoy status quo. This person is head of my team, incidentally.) Anyway, we are once again in a state of flux/drama with middle management and leadership, and yet EVERYTHING STILL HAS TO GET DONE, so I have one million "hot" tasks and I'm once again (still) so over it.

Holy Spirit, be here. Hope, come in. Smiles.... just, please let us smile. I'm yoga-breathing today.

I'm ready to find something else -- to flee, to run away! -- but I am also having a hard time being enthused about anything jobs I've seen, particularly in my field. I'll keep looking. How I would love to have a remote (work from home), flexible full-time job writing for a cool, successful company (because benefits). Putting that wish out into the universe, maybe, will mean something. Hear me, Universe? Help a girl out.

Follow-Up: Summer Goals

We didn't accomplish all of my summer goals. However, we did accomplish a few of them, so I thought I should update my life-log, for future reference. [Related: I just had to Google "blog etymology" because I forgot where the "b" came from. !!?! (web. web-log)]

1. Finish the Easter puzzle. .... nope. In fact, I finally put it back into its box on Saturday morning. Gave up. Not going to happen in this stage of our lives. I will save it for my first week of retirement, someday, and work on it while eating Raisin Bran for lunch.

2. Bike riding. Another nope. Too hot. Too tired.

3. Reading! YES! DID IT! Both kids read 4 chapter books. Maybe more. Kate, who prefers being read to, even finished several of hers without me. I'm unsure now if Grandmommy read them to her while she was in Florida, but even if.... this was a big success. I gave them the gift-card prizes, too. (See? Just because we don't have leisure-time for the public library summer reading program, doesn't mean we don't have a reading program!) Am very proud of us.

4. Swimming! Kate! YES, by the hair on her chinny-chin-chin, she figured it out by September. GO GIRLY! Like a fish.

5. [Screentime Limits] I don't even know. This issue is going to continue to crop up again and again, I think. Right now, we're in school again, so it's different from summertime, but obviously still requires limits of some kind. We discovered we're right AT our monthly usage limit on our internet usage overall, so we're monitoring that... and both kids have "favorite" YouTube channels, users who publish new videos either every day or every week ("Munching Orange" is Alex's current favorite gamer to watch, and Kate likes a makeup artist named "Promise Phan" as well as "MattyB," a kid musician/rapper who's hilarious/nauseating.) Plus, Kate is lobbying for her own tablet -- she wants it right away but I'm trying to stall her until Christmas -- so then we'll have to figure out more rules. It's a moving target. Last night, we declared no devices during the weeknights without asking parental permission. Time will also be limited if they ask. We'll see if they can survive. (Does TV count? I don't know. Yes, I think it should, but no, not really, since they can access the TV more easily and I can't "put it away.")

Breaks

I feel compelled to tell someone that I'm enjoying an afternoon of working at home today. I was sure my manager wasn't going to approve it, but lo and behold, she proved me wrong, so here I am. Both kids are watching their shows with headphones on, for a little while until I make them go do something constructive, and I'm sitting here feeling content and grateful, with my pumpkin spice candle burning -- and oh, yeah, actually getting some work done, too. Mildly important.

It's interesting that part of why I'm feeling good is because I was entrusted with two fairly important projects at work. And they're getting done. This morning I was kicking ass and taking names on those two projects! Helping the president of the company, thank you very much. And also because yesterday, I did the annual helping-with-inventory at our warehouse. I dread that day every year, but while I'm there, I usually enjoy it. It's a distraction; the workday goes much faster when you only have 3 scheduled breaks to look forward to. You know you must work until 10:30, then take 15 minutes, then work until 12:30, and after lunch again at 3:30, you get a 15 minute break.

I'm considering setting up my regular days the same way. Isn't that silly? On my own schedule, I will dork around 'til the cows come home, taking the 5-minute break here to check Facebook, there to read a blog post, everywhere 5 minutes. (Sometimes 10; I do enjoy my 10-minute walking break that I try to do every day, especially now that the weather's cooled down.) Yesterday I was reminded that the longer breaks are a lot more satisfying. Hmmm. Something to think about.

Anyway, the day away from my desk and the gift of a work from home Friday afternoon have improved my week SIGNIFICANTLY.

Also: I am no-more bound to the no-good manager -- my time as "E-business and PR Coordinator" is officially over, and I am on the Global Marketing team, hooray hooray! I'm hopeful this will improve things in a long-term way. Goodbye, Store Locator spreadsheets! Goodbye, "Help Desk" duties! Goodbye, requests from random salespeople to help their customers download photos, or manage their own Facebook pages! I will SO not miss you.

Amen and amen!