Office Time Wasted?

I've spent so much time at work not actually working it's ridiculous! It's been like this for the last two weeks. I can't even calculate how many hours on the clock I've 'wasted' because it's literally been the majority of the day, every day, for almost two whole weeks!!
At first I thought it was because my boss has been out of town the whole time so the days just seem less demanding. Admittedly, I've been late to the office more often than usual during this time because, well, the boss is out of town. For some (obvious) reason that fact makes getting out of bed on time just a little bit harder. My lunches and breaks seem to run a smidge longer than they should, too. So I thought, OK, I'm making the most of the situation is all. There's no one looking over my shoulder, I'm still getting all my work done, nothing wrong with having a relaxing week while the boss is having a holiday. But then I would stroll back from lunch all set to start being productive after a not-very-on-the-ball morning and... nothing. There would be nothing to do! It's just been the slowest couple of weeks ever. Out of the entire summer, this must be the most popular fortnight for vacations. Everyone's gone so there's no work coming in. That's my theory, anyway.

I have spent an incredible amount of time lollygagging, browsing the internets, checking out Facebook happenings, keeping up with the World Cup, jotting down notes & brainstorming projects I want to complete at home, writing a story I've been working on, reading various blogs, sending emails, catching up on celebrity gossip, looking at photos, playing with my ipod... you name it!

I have also spent several hours arguing with myself about whether or not I should go ahead and use some vacation time to get the heck out of this pit of boredom! Because really I'm not wasting office time so much as I am wasting MY time. I've got nothing important to do. I'm getting headaches staring at this monitor and racking my brain to figure out how to get those last two hours to crawl by just a little bit faster. It's summer! There are so many other things I could be doing right now: spending time with my son & husband, swimming, going to the park, jogging, writing, drawing, working on the house, summer cleaning, gardening, anything but sitting in front a computer in a gray cubicle!! Ugh. But then I talk myself out of leaving because, you know, you can't waste that vacation time. 'You'll want to go on a trip, you'll want to do something really good with it,' I tell myself. I'm not really 'wasting' my time because I'm earning money and earning paid time off. I should be happy about not having to work so hard to earn those things. I should enjoy wasting work time right now so I can use the PTO time for something spectacular later. But...

We're not actually taking a vacation this year. Next year we have plans to go to Europe so we're sort of saving money and time off to use for next year's big trip. It's a staycation kind of year anyway. Should I nickel and dime my time off by cutting out early on a few slow afternoons to go take care of some summer-y business, or save it all up for several days of camping or something? Which one would be more satisfying? Which one would make me feel like it really is summer and not just one long, continuous, exceptionally hot and humid work year? Weeks like these make me think maybe I should just be a stay at home mom, even though I'd probably have to be on welfare to do that. Of course, I was bored staying at home all the time, too, and I'm pretty fond of my paycheck. It's the eternal question: Should I stay or should I go?

Maybe I'll just take a long break and get a snack while I mull it over.

Guacamole Break

A quick post to jot down a really good guacamole recipe that I stumbled into last night. Very tasty! It's not your usual guac:

Chop up 1 Avocado
Dice a big Slice of Red Onion
Dice 1 small Clove of Garlic
Chop up maybe 1 TBSP of Cilantro

Mash all of that together with about 1/4 Cup of Pineapple Juice

Add some Salt and a pinch of Cumin & Cayenne

Enjoy with some fried corn tortillas or chips or pita chips. Good, good stuff!

No Sh*t, Please!

As I've been spending some time pondering ways to bring more focus, clarity, and balance to my life I started reading a few books on the subject. I just finished reading Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner. It's a good book. I like his take on things, and the way he describes things. He's a funny guy, and I like funny. Especially when the funny's aimed at a subject like religion, which is usually taken so seriously. Your own personal religious beliefs might be very serious and important to you internally as an individual and they probably should be. But when groups of people get together the seriousness of religion should be left out of the picture. Serious religious thinking just isn't a group activity and trying to make it one only causes problems! But I digress...

My point was that Buddhism (and Brad Warner) emphasizes questioning things. It reminds you to question authority, question yourself, question everything. That's one of the things I've always liked about it. And meditation. I like that too. So somewhere in meditating over all this talk of questioning things and pondering the focus of my existence I hit on a little nugget of truth about myself. Here it is in a nutshell: I don't want to take a lot of shit.

And I mean that in every possible way. I don't want to take a lot of unnecessary attitude from anyone, I don't want a lot of drama in my life, I don't want to put up with a lot of dogma, I don't want to be really competitive, I don't want people cramping my style or telling me what to do, and I don't want to take in a lot of shit, either. I don't want to take a bunch of drugs or be wasted all the time, I don't want to eat nasty food or breathe nasty carcinogens.

So. Now that I've got the "don'ts" covered, what about he "do's", right? What do I want? Could it be the exact opposite of what I don't want? Let's see...

That would mean that I... Do want to, um, give a little bit of good stuff? Uh, I want to give off a good vibe or attitude, I want to limit the drama and bring in more calm & peace (I had to use a thesaurus for that one), I want to allow for the existence of a certain amount of ambiguity and uncertainty (that was even trickier than 'drama'), I want to not worry about being or having the 'best', I want to be free to express myself and to be around people who inspire me. I also want to prepare and share and eat good foods & drinks, and be in healthy natural environments that aren't toxic to me.

Yeah. I do want all those things. And I do think that if I had more of those in my every day life I would feel better, and yes, even be more balanced, focused and clear-headed. Well, I will just have to work on that.

Office Time Wasted: Only about an hour, I think. But it's not really relevant, is it? The object of the game is balance so, if the job's getting done, what difference does it make how much time I actually spend on it? Wait, does that sentence even make sense?? It might be time for a tea break.

Listening To: Rancid's '...And Out Come the Wolves'

Focus

I'm not very good at focusing. I don't think I ever have been. Actually, I guess if I'm really honest with myself, when I'm working on something specific I can focus on that one thing just fine. I'm really good at that, as a matter of fact. For a little while. The problem is that my focus doesn't seem to encompass the bigger picture so I jump from project to project, job to job, friend to friend, place to place, etc. working on each one with intense attention for about 5 minutes before I move on to the next one. I'm always looking for the next new thing to learn about & discover & puzzle over.

The result is that my life seems to be an accumulation of short-lived flights of fancy with no real direction or aim to guide me. That was alright for awhile. And it's been fun. But I'm realizing as time passes that I'm not able to accomplish anything really big or important this way. I can't get really good at anything, or turn out any really great piece of work, or create any really strong bonds with anyone, or even develop a strong sense of personal integrity if I'm always just buzzing all over the place. I have so many hobbies and interests, but if I'm actually going to perfect any one of them or be successful at any particular thing, I need to choose what I want to focus on and really work on it.

Here are the things I've narrowed it down to right now: Writing, Drawing, Crafting things, or focusing on School/Career goals (since I'm about to start taking grad school classes in the Fall). These are the things that I mostly find myself spending time on and thinking about. I'd like to be able to decide what really feeds my soul and start putting more routine, regular energy into that rather than letting it happen in fits & starts the way I usually do things. The goal is to create a more steady stream of satisfaction and an accumulation of completed works to help me identify what's really important to me and what I'm really good at.

My plan is to spend at least 15 minutes a day on at least one of the above-mentioned categories. I'll keep at them. I'll find out which thing gives me the most satisfaction, and which thing better remain in the margins. I also plan to use the old standby's: Yoga and Meditation to help guide this little endeavor. Balance, baby! No more flitting about uselessly. I want to move with a purpose and create something wonderful along the way. If I have no identified goal for my life I find myself trying on all these different hats and just spinning my wheels, feeling all wobbly and out of balance. But how do I expect to achieve balance in my life if I don't even know what the focus of my life is? It's a 'which came first? The chicken or the egg' kind of question. This is what I'll be exploring for the next couple of weeks, at least.

Books to Accompany This Post: Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner, The Artist in The Office by Summer Pierre
Office Time Wasted: Not much. It's been a busy week! I've been forced to do this on my own time.

Molasses Dust in the Air

So far, it has been one of those terrible, zombie-state kind of weeks where I have so many things to do at home, so busy at work, but sooooo tired. It's been really gray, and cloudy, and humid outside, and I think there's some kind of lethargy-inducing mold spore floating around in the air. It's poisoning us. I'm not the only one who has it- friends at work are complaining of the same thing. I'm hoping when it finally passes it will be followed by a light & happy, energy-inducing wind. Here's to hoping!
In the meantime I'm just slogging through, one foot in front of the other, and probably not going to make it to the gym any time soon. Even though maybe that's exactly what I need- a good workout. Hmmm, something to think about while I struggle through the day.

Oarlock update: it didn't work. My plan was a bust. No success at all with the solo rowing. I think I'm just going to have to give up on that idea because if I don't I'll probably end up just putting a lot of time and money into it and, in the end, it still won't look or act the way I really want it to. I'm just going to have to get a battery for the trolling motor, use the motor to get around, and use the oars occasionally, canoe-style, when I just don't need to go very far. We would probably never make it to the little island on the power of oars alone, anyway. My little boat is not made for speed, that's for sure! It's heavy, and clunky, and really, really slooooww. Like this week.

(That turtle up there had been hit by the molasses too. He didn't move at all, kept his foot sticking out like that, for at least the 5 minutes that I was standing there!)

Good slow activity of the week: Hand-hemming pants while sitting on the couch watching How To Marry A Milliionaire.
Office Time Wasted: Well, none of it's been wasted on purpose this week, but who knows how much the molasses dust has taken.

Communication

The other night I watched 'He's Just Not That Into You' with my husband. I'm a sucker for most romantic comedies, even if they're not very good. This one wasn't bad. I'd watch it again. I even got a little teary eyed during the part where Ben Affleck shows up and does the dishes, etc. for Jennifer Aniston when her dad's sick. When it was over, my husband declared it "a terrible movie" and launched into a complaint about the fact that Ben Affleck exists. I said the movie was alright. It was entertaining even though some of it was ridiculous, the main girl's insane, and the other one's having some sort of nervous breakdown. And, although I'm not a fan of Mr. Affleck myself, I really liked his character in that movie. He's honest and sincere, and he did exactly the right thing -the single most helpful thing he could do, actually- when his girlfriend was upset and needed him. It was so sweet and thoughtful, I said. My husband just scoffed!

But the next day a strange thing happened. He called me at work and left a message (!) saying "I went to the store and I got soy sauce and Pull Ups. I repeat, I got soy sauce and Pull Ups. That's all." That by itself is pretty big news because just that morning I had mentioned in passing that I had made a recipe for dinner the night before but it hadn't come out right because I realized half way into it that I was out of soy sauce. It's important to note that, since we work different hours and my husband is, um, way too hungry when he gets home to deal with complicated reheating procedures (not lazy, hungry), he doesn't eat what I eat. When I cook it's for me & the kiddo, not for the Mr. So him buying soy sauce for my dinner was awfully nice. Buying soy sauce AND Pull Ups without even being asked to was over the top! Plus he left a message, which he never does.

And it doesn't end there. When I got home after work the stove top was cleaned, the dishes done, and 2 loads of laundry done, too! They weren't folded and one load hadn't made it out of the dryer, but still. He had even done a separate load of whites! I don't ever even do that, not just whites. And to top it all off I later noticed that the window in the bathroom was open so I stepped up onto the edge of the bathtub to close it and I smelled bleach. He had cleaned the tub! With bleach! Amazing.

All this from the same guy who, a few weeks earlier, had laughed at me when I said, "Before you leave for work could you make the beds and clean up the house?"
"Clean up the whole house," he chuckled, shaking his head. Then, seeing the look on my face, he added, "I guess you don't understand how hilarious that is."
"But I'm serious," I said, really seriously. "I clean up the whole house every day. Why shouldn't you do it sometimes?" He just looked exasperated.

I should mention that my husband and I have been having some serious communication problems lately. We have not been meshing well at all for the past several months. He has gotten way too comfortable with leaving all the house & family & responsibility stuff to me so that he can go out and have fun, and I have gotten way too comfortable with blowing him off and doing everything myself because I just don't want to deal with the argument or make the effort to include him in something when I know he'll just drag his feet and I'll feel like I'm raising 2 kids instead of 1. It has taken me awhile to realize that this is why I sometimes find myself feeling mildly disgusted at the sight of him. He's a grown man, right? Why is he acting like a little boy? We needed to talk, obviously, to work it out. So, I keep trying to talk about it and he keeps trying to avoid talking about it by suggesting things for us to do instead.

The movie was one of the things he suggested. I had sort of reluctantly agreed to sit down and watch it with him instead of downloading the pictures from our West Texas trip, or reading my new book, or drawing, which all sounded like more fun than watching a movie after a day of staring at the computer screen at work. But I don't want to be disgusted by the man I'm married to so I joined him on the couch. The movie was fun. We laughed, we complained about the irritating insane girl, he drooled over Scarlett Johannson, and I admired Ben Affleck's sensitive man-ness. If we had watched this a couple of months ago I probably wouldn't have bothered to argue if the movie or any of its actors had a right to exist. I hadn't hit on the idea of trying to fix the problem yet (I was too busy ignoring it) so I probably would have just rolled my eyes and gone to bed with a big, irritated sigh wondering why my husband has to makes jokes about everything. And then in the morning I would tell him to clean the house and he'd roll his eyes and wonder why I'm so demanding. Later, I'd come home and the house would be a disaster but the lawn would be mowed, and I would get good and pissed off because why the hell can't we just communicate?! Didn't I ask him to clean up the house? Who had said anything about the lawn?? Something's always getting lost in translation.

But romantic comedies...that's a language everyone understands, apparently. All those times I had told him I needed help around the house had gotten me bupkus! I just came off as demanding without being able to explain why what I was asking for was important. Men are visual creatures, they say. Although I didn't (and still don't, really) know how to communicate what it is that our relationship needs, it seems that something about seeing the idea in action and then talking about it helps. Suddenly it means something when there's a visual aid. Weird. But useful. I'll have to try that one again sometime. I guess Ben Affleck's existence is not a complete waste after all.

Office Time Wasted: about an hour and a half of typing time.

Yesterday's Disasters

'Disaster' is a relative term. Compared to a lot of really disastrous disasters, yesterdays events don't even count, actually. They were just things that didn't go right. This post should really be called Yesterday's Things That Didn't Go As Planned. But that's too long. I'd better stop mulling over the post's title though, and just get on with it.
Here's what didn't go as planned:
We went up to west Texas for the weekend to see family for a nephew's Law School graduation (some pictures from the trip are included). We had planned to get back home on Monday and just keep our son out of school for the day. I was going to spend Monday afternoon getting him all signed up for summer camp (which I can't believe I haven't done yet!), meeting an old friend for lunch, and then cleaning out the fish tank. Instead we got back on Sunday so the boy went to school, and I forgot all about both summer camp sign-up and the lunch meeting! I'll have to do the summer camp today (hopefully they'll still let him in) and rescheduled the lunch for sometime later this week (which means it's probably not going to happen at all). And I just plain didn't get around to cleaning out the fish tank. Those sad, oxygen starved fish are short about 4 inches of water so I really need to do that tonight. Come on motivator!
Since I was home from work on a scheduled day off with nothing really important to do (and had decided to blow off the fish) I went out and got the oar locks for my rowboat, and some hardware for mounting them. I got the holes drilled in the boat and put the locks on and was all set to be enormously happy with myself and my productivity... but then I tested the oars in the new locks and realized that they're set too low for the oars to clear the sides of the boat! So disappointing.
The problem is that the edges of the boat are curved outward and the whole thing's made of fiberglass. I can't mount anything directly on the curve because it's not strong enough to support the weight, so I mounted the oarlocks just beneath the curve. I thought the lock itself would sit up high enough in the little holster to allow the oars to work, but no such luck. I don't want to add anything to the boat that sticks up over the sides because I need smooth sides in order to push the thing onto the top of my car without lifting. And I really don't want to put any more holes in the poor little guy. So many obstacles!
It took me a really long time to come up with a plan to make the damn things work in exactly the place that they are, but I think I finally figured it out. I will write a separate post about that once I get it sorted out, so there's something to look forward to.



I did manage to accomplish a couple of things though. I washed the dog, cleaned the house, unpacked all the trip stuff, went to the grocery store, and finally mopped the floors with this great homemade Peppermint Floor Wash that's supposed to help keep bugs away. I'm not sure about the bugs yet, but it worked pretty well on the wood floor, it smells good, and it's dirt cheap so I like it already.
Office Time Wasted: Only the hour or so that it took to write this today.