Almost there

My goodness Mr. Lina and I have been working our asses off.

Tomorrow the photographer is coming to take pictures of our house which (if all goes as planned) will be listed for sale on Tuesday, Sept 2nd.  We've moved:

• two book shelves
• one wardrobe
• one expidit desk (the kind that attaches to the shelves)
• a crapton of boxes
• $11 worth of empty beer/liquor bottles
• multiple bags of garbage (which is challenging with a 2 bag limit)
• multiple boxes/bags of recycling (which is fortunately not limited)
• multiple bags of clothing and stuff to Goodwill

What furniture has been left has largely been moved around to make the house look bigger.  

It works, it does look bigger.  More like the mansion I thought I was moving into compared to our 1 bedroom apartment.  It's not quite done and I'm rather sure the agent and photographer are going to do more moving of stuff, but I am pleased with what we've done.  I really hope that after all this effort the house sells fairly quickly.  

I have been thinking at times about pitching things as a skill set.  One I sadly lack.  I'm still probably packing stuff that I should be pitching, but I'd like to think that at least I'm feeling more positive about it.  I think less and pitch faster and honestly feel better.  The overwhelmed feeling is gone because I can see what's already been done.  That's something for me to remember.

Possibly related to that is that I am still a bit forgetful but not teary and I've managed to keep my purse and phone with me all this week.  Shiny gold star.

I also had a conversation with my manager about my career and what my work arrangement will be like when we move further from the office.  Our house will now be a full 100 km from my employer and while my current client is closer, 78 km isn't exactly close.  As I have pointed out to my newest team mate, being an "on site" analyst means you actually go to the client office.  That means less flexibility for working from home.  And I'm bored.  I am dragging my feet on a lot of projects and I think it's because I'm just not interested in doing the same thing over and over.  So we're going to change that.  Not today, this is a domino that will impact others, but it's also good for my manager as he can offload more responsibilities on me.  Win-win.  I felt a bit scared asking for what I want, I've just bobbed along with my career so far, but it felt pretty good.  

Okay, time to get going on that last bit of decluttering.  Time to be sure every flat surface is empty... 

The Parking Lot

The other day I was meeting with someone at work and she talked about "The Parking Lot".  She was giving advice to my new coworker that he didn't need to know everything right off the bat.  It was always okay to say "I don't know, let's put that in The Parking Lot and I'll find out for you".  It's good advice, he's not going to catch up to my 7 years of doing this in 3 weeks.

For me, this blog has become a parking lot.  Sometimes when I'm at work, ideas swirl around and they need to go somewhere so I can focus.  A quick post here serves that purpose (and lets me delay doing work I'm not all that interested in).  It's not so much , but it does become a storage place for ideas I need to set aside.

I haven't been posting much lately for a few reasons.

• I'm mentoring "the new guy".  Either I'm looking at his screen or he's looking at mine.
• That takes up a lot of time and I still have my own work to do, no time to procrastinate.
• I'm interested in what I'm doing at work again so my attention span is better. 
• I don't have negative thought swirling around that need temporary storage.
• I spend all day in front of a computer, so when I'm home, I don't spend much time online.  If I don't find time to post at work, I'm not likely to post at home.
• I don't have a lot to think about, I'm at an action stage more than a thinking stage.

This weekend was great.  We are getting the basement and hallways/stairs to the second floor painted on Wed/Thurs which means we have to declutter to let the painters get at the walls.  The basement is where we hang out, it's full of media and stuff.  We filled 14 52L totes with books, DVD's and CDs and 5 paper boxes of books.  And that's still not everything.  What can I say?  Mr. Lina likes his movies and we support a lot of musicians by purchasing CDs.

In May we (that's the royal we, meaning mostly Mr. Lina) sanded the deck and stained it, the focus being on the horizontal boards of the deck so we could set out our new patio furniture.  Sunday we finally had the weather and time to finish the railings.  We weren't sanding those down, just painting over them.  It was hot and sweaty work but it looks nice now that it is done.  Another box ticked off on the to-do list.

Mr. Lina started a batch of beer with a friend on Monday (a stat holiday in Ontario).  They are splitting the batch of a Belgian Tripel they are trying to clone (smile, nod, no it doesn't mean much to me either but if you want to know more, check this out).  So I had to clean the kitchen so they could make a mess of it with the beer making (which they did generally clean up).

And I sewed.  Yes indeed, I've made another Sorbetto.  This is now the 4th time I've made this pattern but I need that kind of low thinking/pre-traced sewing to get me back into the swing of things and this does fill a wardrobe gap.  There was still some thinking involved since the first two don't really fit well at the bust (not sure if they ever did or if it's a change in bras), even after #3 it still needed some tweaking.  I asked Mr. Lina to take pictures of me on Friday when I wore #3 to work, but it didn't quite happen.  #4 needs to be hemmed and we'll see how #3 did in the wash last night.  It's 100% cotton and came out wrinkly (as expected from cotton), hopefully it did all of it's shrinking in the pre-wash.

So moving two 64L bins of fabric our of my sewing room seems to have had a positive impact - productivity.  Saturday I'll be joining the Toronto Meet Up (details here - and I have a choice of new shirts to wear!), which means shopping, the opposite of decluttering.  I might have to keep an eye out for some white fabric.  We're doing a team fun day of lawn bowling on Monday afternoon, wearing white is required.  I suspect my pale beige pencil skirt that probably doesn't fit me at my present weight is a good choice for lawn bowling.  A white A line skirt might be in order and I'm sure the only white in my stash is broadcloth.

Quick Post

I have thought of posting a couple of times and yet so little is happening, I don't have much to say.

We've switched my progesterone.  The endometrin and my skin were not getting a long.  Now I'm taking prometrium, 2 pills 3 times a day.  The down side is that I feel awful for about an hour in the morning.  It's like I get all the crappy parts of being drunk - dizzy, heavy limbs, uncoordinated, tired, etc etc.  The first time I wasn't quite sure I was going to make it to the couch upright.  After 3 days of this, I can feel it starting and lie down.  This is going to make driving to and from work rather challenging. 

Speaking of work, yet another coworker has quit.  So I'm back to having 2 clients and being at client offices 5 days a week at least until the end of July.  It has been made clear to the new client this is temporary, I'm not staying.  So, Thursday I start a new adventure of meeting yet another set of people.

Father's Day was a simple dinner.  Just my parents, my brother and us.  My mom had a wisdom tooth pulled and it hasn't healed well, she's still a little fuzzy on medications, we're a good pair.  Sadly dinner ended with my other brother phoning with bad news.  His wife's parents house caught on fire on Saturday night.  2:30 am, their dog woke them up as the flames from their neighbours spread to their house taking out the whole second story.  Everyone is fine, but the fire spread across 3 houses (the house that started the blaze was abandoned because of a fire 3 months ago, bit suspicious, no?).  Those of you in Toronto might have seen it on the news.  So, my thoughts are aimed at my brothers in laws.  Again, they are fine and have family to stay with, we can be thankful for the big things, but so many pictures, mementos and my SIL's wedding dress are gone.  Things like that you can't replace.

Ramble On

* Edited to add a picture of my poor toe.
I started a sewing post yesterday (yes, I have been productive in my vaguely "tidy" sewing room) but it is going to have to wait (it would be better with pictures anyhow).  My thoughts are rather jumbled so let's do a list, shall we?

• I hurt (broke/cracked/jammed?) my right middle toe last night.  We were taking out the garbage I was looking up at the house rather than where my feet were going and I stepped on the curb of the driveway at a bad angle.  This pulled my foot in one way and my crappy ballet flat in the other and pinched my toes.  I really can't explain how it happened, all I know is my shoe was not on my foot by the time I looked down and some not nice words were coming out of my mouth.
• On the plus side, I didn't hurt my ankle.
• You don't realize how important toes are until they hurt.

Poor toe.  It wasn't this bruised when I left for work.

• Weird things are going on with my hormones
• My breasts are sore.
• I think they are also getting bigger, looking at where the under wire lines are on my body at the end of the day, they aren't far enough back.
• I started crying on the drive home last night.
• I cried on my drive to work.
• Granted, both happened while I was listening to the news about the bombing in Boston so it's not without reason, but I'm not sure that's the only reason.
• I am not unhappy.
• But... what if this is where it starts?  I don't want to ignore signs like what feel like disproportionate tears.
• Remember how my manager quit?  I told my new manager about my fertility issues yesterday.
• Rather than replacing my former manager directly with someone senior, they are using that salary to hire two junior positions. It's a good call in my book, we need more people to do the work that is being sold.
• Someone else on our team quit, her last day is Tuesday.
• This requires shuffling people to meet her client facing responsibilities.  Her client days (and mine) are paid for by that client, we can't have a gap.
• I was offered being on site one day a week with a client as part of the shuffling.  I turned it down.
• It's probably the first time I've made a decision on what I (didn't) want to do at work.
• Why not?  We're hiring three new people in the next few months (I gather two are pretty much decided on) and they will need support.  If training others is what I enjoy doing, I'd rather have the time to do it. 
• Besides, I kind of admitted to myself (and my new manager), I'm a bit bored with my client facing role.  Two days a week is enough.
• In order to build up the skills of our two most junior on sites, they will now be sending their work through me before sending it to the client.  I like this, a chance to work with them to build their skill set and bring another perspective to a project. 
• Honestly, both of them come to me with questions anyhow, it's just being formalized that I'll see the finished work too.  They won't feel like they are pestering me and I will get recognition for helping them.  Win-win.

So lots of stuff going on right now.  Honest, sewing post is coming soon.  It involves draping purple broad cloth of all things.