Happy All the Time

Good news. I have happy things to report.

The first was the full moon in the morning sky. It was huge and bright and absolutely beautiful. Incredible the things that God makes for us.

The second was the headline in the Detroit Free Press - Wild Pigs Menacing Farmers and Joggers across Michigan. While it's bad that feral pigs are ruining crops across the state, destroying natural habitats and all the rest, isn't the visual of pigs chasing down joggers brilliant? I imagine a northern Michigan Running of the Hogs. Pamplona has nothing on us.

The third thing is that I realized that I haven't had sugar cravings for days. My boss brought in chocolate chip cookies to share. I didn't want one. I don't know what's up with that but it's actually pretty cool.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to C who sent me an email with brilliant "stress in the workplace" video clips. My favorite? The guy with printer issues who finally gave up and dragged his monitor to the copy machine so he could get a hard copy of his document.

So there you go. Happy stuff.

By the way, I learned two new things today - how to search Flickr and how to import images into my blog. And I got to play around with Html code too. Life doesn't get any better.

Lightening Up

The blog's been a bit of a downer lately. It's probably more accurate to say that I've been a bit of a downer lately. Maybe it's because of the rain - there's been lots. Maybe it's because T got injured - always worrying. Maybe it's because I'm not feeling well. Whatever. To counteract the gloom, I'm going to find one thing a day to write about that makes me happy. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep it going but it'll make a change.

I'm happy about a blog I found - www.thatreadingwritingthing.blogspot.com. It's written by a British writer who has excellent taste in books (excellent because she likes a lot of the same books that I do). What totally sold me on the blog was a political commentary where she made a brilliant comparison between Sarah Palin and Basil Fawlty. Brilliant because 1) the show Fawlty Towers and John Cleese's portrayal of Basil Fawlty are classic so any reference is welcome and 2) Sarah comes up short in the comparison.

Gosh. I feel a little happier already.

The Real Me, At Least Partially

I changed my profile name. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable blogging and thought that I might as well use my real first name. So, ta da. I figure that when I get over the whole bitterness and sarcasm thing, I'll be ready to use my last name too. That might take a while.

I spent a lot of time last week listening to an on-line conference for National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week. I came across the conference by chance and listened to the first session because the timing worked with my schedule. It got me hooked because it's not often that there's a conference that's actually easy for someone like me. Having archived sessions made it possible to listen for a while, pause, move around for a while, listen some more, and so on. I didn't listen to everything because some sessions didn't apply but most of the speakers I heard were interesting and helpful. The sessions are archived at www.invisibleillnessconference.com.

After thinking about what I heard at the conference, I realized that I don't often admit to myself that I have a chronic illness. Which is strange considering I spend so much time, effort, energy and money dealing with my fibromyalgia. What's even stranger is that I've spent the last ten or so years dealing with the frustration of trying live like I used to before I got sick and then being resentful because I can't. I'm trying to figure out what denial is getting me and why I'm afraid of going to a place of acceptance. Sigh.

I don't think that my current treatment plan is part of the denial. I think that staying up too late some nights and drinking too much coffee some days and eating too much sugar at times and not doing yoga ever are part of the denial. There's a whiny four-year-old in me screaming "it's not fair". That's denial.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this new insight. Not dealing with it sounds really good while working through the issue sounds far too much like healthy work, acceptance, a sort of yoga for the mind. Now that it's in the open, it'll come up again. The good news is that the conference gave me some new tools to deal with it.

Dread

Dread is a good word. When I say it, I can feel heart, soul, energy, and yes, lifeblood being drained away.

Dread.

When I say I dread work this week, I am not kidding about the draining thing. Here's why in a word. Meetings. Oh, not the kind of meetings needed to follow up on projects or assign new projects or, potentially, rarely, get things done. No. I'm talking about the other kind of meetings.

The Monday morning staff meeting is being moved up an hour. Painful enough because staff meetings are a huge waste of time. But there's more. I will spend the rest of the morning with all of the people in the department in a locked room being forced to preview the company's new on-boarding web site. (OK, the room won't really be locked. It'll just feel that way. There's no escape. Guards will block the doors. OK, slight exaggeration again with the guards. It'll be guard dogs. With guns. And shoot to kill orders.)

On-boarding is hip-company speak for getting prospective and new employees to fill out forms and then give the new hires an orientation to the company. I admit the on-line capability will be great for our company - over 50% of our employees work remotely. However. I'm a compensation analyst. I don't recruit or give orientations. In fact, my job requires very little day-to-day employee contact (a happy situation that has extended my HR career for nearly 15 years). I won't be using the program or helping others use the program. Still I will be forced to spend four hours looking at the program. Ouch.

Wednesday is an all day workshop on HR legal issues. I hear the first topic of the morning will be Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and leaves of absence. 'Nuf said.

I am very, very grateful for my schedule which will allow me to spend Tuesday and Thursday in mental recovery mode. Which, I guess, makes me grateful for my fibromyalgia. Hmmm.

I need to find a new career.

What is up with that?!

So, today I was at Barnes & Noble browsing magazines when I heard a male voice say "they always want to have children and I don't".

Because I'm nosy I looked around to see the guy who was talking. It wasn't some young guy. No. The man had to be at least 60 and not a "Paul Newman when he was 60" either. I'm talking scrawny with weather beaten face, scraggly white beard and stringy white hair dressed in a faded blue work shirt.

I wanted to walk over to the table where he and his friend were sitting and say "how about dating someone your own age? Women past menopause normally don't want children. Think about it."

For Pete's sake, how can someone who looks like that find young women to date? I may never know. He left before I could check to see if he was driving a Bentley.