This Week

Arthas says "this full-time Mommy-sitting
stuff is a lot of work! I need a nap.

In lieu of the ranting and blathering I am tempted to do, I'm going to keep today's check-in short and to-the-point.

The Good: 

•  Lots of progress made! 
• Plenty of stuff cleaned out and sold, which is reducing the stress (a little) and making it easier to grapple with what remains.
• My Prince made great strides on the bathroom (a separate post to come!).
• Nature has finally figured out it's supposed to be Spring, so everything is green and blossoming, which will be excellent visually when we post/show the house.
• We met with a Realtor who was super nice, very competent and extremely encouraging. 

The Annoying:

• Bureaucracy. (I'm on my 3rd try to renew/upgrade my license, which expires on my birthday, which is not quite far enough far enough away to prevent me from having to get another one before we go.) 
• People who do not/cannot read. (Can I tell you how many replies I've had to my craigslist ads where people paid zero attention to where we are, even though I explicitly stated it? Then they're all astonished and horrified at how far out we are from where they are... like, if you live in Albany, why are you even looking at Oneonta ads if you don't want to drive that far?!)

The Random:

• There were three bears at the hedgerow last night and turkeys in the yard this morning. I was definitely struck by the fact that that has become normal... and will cease to be very soon! 
• It is my informed opinion that all lipsticks and lip crayons should come with built-in sealer... because I found the best lip color ever, but I keep leaving burgundy smudges on two furry border collie noses and they are Not Amused. 

Nightwish

In the middle of March, we discovered that (due to a change of plans) one of our favorite bands was coming to Albany! Nightwish is a symphonic metal band from Finland and I'd always pretty much figured we'd have to go at least as far as the Ocean (there's a 20,000 Tons of Metal cruise!) to catch them. So when My Prince found out they were going to be playing locally, he snagged us some tickets. (Am I spoiled, or what?)

Neither of us had ever been to The Egg, as the performance venue in Albany is called, but it was interesting. (Lots of scantily clad little kids running around for a dance competition on the lower floor... seriously, children, it was March! You need more clothes! I don't care what you're dancing too!) Everyone was joking in line about how none of us knew there were any other European metal fans in the Capital Region, which was amusing. Then we got inside...

Our tickets were front row.  Just off center. It was phenominal. Best. Concert. Ever.The energy levels were so high you couldn't help but get up and dance. (I may or may not have been drooling over the lead singer's leggings, too. So cool.) It was a pretty small theater, relatively speaking and the band was extremely interactive with the crowd. At the end of the concert, Troy (the piper) gave Eric a fist bump!! I won't go on as I won't manage to do it justice, but it was a fantastic experience and all the better for being unexpected.

Fedora!

My Prince has long had his eye on a proper fedora. He even knew where he wanted it to come from - The Custom Hatter, who does everything by hand on antique forms using vintage tools to create one-of-a-kind masterpieces fitted to the owner's head. But he didn't want to buy one for himself, because it seemed indulgent. So, for his birthday last year, I got him one. (Sort of. He had to do some of the ordering part himself because of sizing and preferences and such, but you get the idea.)

We had hoped it would arrive before his trip this past winter, but no such luck. The Hatter had a huge long list of orders and it wasn't done until January! That said, it finally arrived and it was worth every penny and every minute of waiting. It's modeled on the one Indiana Jones wore in Raiders of the Lost Arc. (Fun fact - Harrison Ford wore a different fedora in every Indy movie and they were all slightly different!)

Not only does my Prince look good in it, but Arthas rocks it pretty well, too.  : )

March (So Far) in Pictures

Syruping - Bad photo, I know. Also, we've doubled this set up, running two burners... except that after our first week of flow it hard froze and there has been endless snow. So all our buckets, pots, burners and other infrastructure remain on hold, waiting for above freezing temperatures to return and allow us to finish out this year's syruping season. 

 

Freaking snow!! We have had three nor'easters in just over as many weeks, and there's another on the books for next week. The snow just keeps coming and piling up and it's beyond ridiculous already. Frisbee is lost and gone until probably July at this rate, buried under all the mess somewhere. I'm officially tired of plowing/shoveling more than once per day and still having it look like I never did anything. Eternally grateful that my husband bought us both take-no-prisoners snow tires!!

While I've been pouring every ounce of energy I've got (after dealing with snow) into mastering my writing job and keeping up with the workload, my Prince has been cranking out absolutely amazing projects! Within days of getting home in January he was grinding away at the basement insulation project. I was (and remain) flabbergasted at how fast he got studs up, insulation and sheeting in, drywall installed, mudding done, and then the whole wall (the entire length of the house!) primed and painted. The photo above is the primed version. Because I'm in a hurry and not interested in scrouging up a photo of the finished product, imagine it a bright, spotless white! It makes the entire space look huge and gorgeous. I'm glad one of us is getting things done these days!!

Writing Job Update

I have officially been doing my new writing job for just over a month now, and it's finally starting to come under control. (For blogging purposes, I've created the tag "WFHW" to stand for Work From Home Writing and to use when referencing this job in the future.)

The first couple weeks were really rough. The style of writing is extremely different than what I did when grant writing, and I honestly didn't find the on-boarding materials I was given all that helpful. They were professionally done, but obviously by people who didn't realize just how much information they had in their heads that they were taking for granted that wouldn't be obvious to other people who were trained/experienced in different standard practices. As such, in addition to needing to work out a new schedule to balance both my jobs and everything else that has to get done as just part of daily life, I also found myself redoing pieces I'd written when they sent them back with new information about formatting or other requirements. (Which was crazy annoying, given that I really wanted to do things well and efficiently, and would have the first time around if I'd had all the info I needed! I may or may not have spit out half my lexicon of sci-fi swear words in consistent torrents for a couple weeks straight.) As a result, it took me three weeks to get to the point where everything was both done and done right by the deadline provided. (Just a little bit of stress, there....)

I have finally (*fingers crossed*) reached the point where I'm hitting my stride. I'm down to four days a week at my other job (off on Mondays), which gives me enough time to get all of my writing done and sleep more than three hours a night, which is amazing. (And healthy.) I've made checklists for myself that incorporate all the initial instructions and additional feedback I've gotten, which is going a vastly long way toward making sure everything is right the first time, now. I've also dialed in my back-of-house systems in terms of tracking where I am on assignments during the week, keeping my digital files organized, and logging my work turned in for accounting purposes. Now that I'm not eternally frustrated with my writing supervisor for sending things back to me to be redone over things I never had reason to know were outside their specs, I find him a pleasant human being and am happy to see his emails in my inbox. It's a little discouraging to have to dump so much of my monthly writing paychecks in a "taxes" account (because we're going to get raked over the coals again next year, too), but all things considered I'm delighted and relieved to be where I am on this front right now.

I love putting fewer miles on my truck every week. I love being home with my babies (and sometimes My Prince) one extra day a week. I love the peace of mind that comes with knowing I'm no longer losing my writing credentials by not using them. I love the relief of knowing that I can afford to take days off later in the year to travel because I'll still have enough income, and the confidence that if opportunities knock it won't be my job situation keeping us from jumping on them.

Serendipitously, I received a fantastic standing desk as part one of the review programs I participate in, so I've got my own little writing command-and-control center happening where everything is organized. As a bonus, it's near a window, so I get sunlight (when there's any to be had, of course) and when it's nice out I'll get fresh air! My Prince has been amazing - adaptive, supportive, and forgiving when the learning curve ate me alive and I wasn't much company. There are still details to be worked through and I'm sure more bumps in the road as seasons change and other aspects of our schedules with them, but for now I'm pleased to report that I've found a good place with the WFHW and the whole thing is finally doing really good things for my mental, emotional and physical health!

Welcome to the Family!

We have a new furry niece! Her name is Cassie Lu and she's approximately three years old. (It's always a bit of a guess with rescues.) She is, I'm told, tiny, adorable and shy.

Our babies sent her a squishy ball in welcome and can't wait to meet her!

(They also expressed their approval that Uncle Chris is now properly supervised again... humans without furry supervison are dangerous, you know!)

Don't Be Busy

I was on Pinterest the other day, just swinging through to pick up a link I'd saved there, when this graphic/phrase caught my eye and lodged a little in my brain. I wanted to share it here because it struck me as a personal challenge. (And maybe you'll know someone else who needs to be challenged like this?)

I am absolutely certain there's going to be a LOT going on this year. (I've got the calendar and bullet journal lists to prove it!) But I want to stop answering "good, but busy!" every time someone asks me how I've been, or starting emails by apologizing for taking so long to reply because things have been so busy. Days can be full and deadlines can be tight, and it's okay to be focused on being productive - because there is so much I want and need to do.

But 'busy' is as much an emotion as an adjective - it speaks of haste and preoccupation and sometimes, unfortunately, doing things for the sake of doing them or simply by default. That's not what I want for my 2018. We've put a lot of work into paring down our stuff - this year I want to pare down the intangibles. The bad habits, the inefficiencies, the unfounded assumptions, the hold-overs from previous stages of life that aren't serving me any more. I want to pay attention to what I'm doing and to make better choices - even if its hard, or if it takes a bunch of tries to figure out what those better choices look like.

'Busy' won't get me there.

So if you hear me saying I'm busy this year, will you call me on it? Thanks!

Celebrate With Me?

It's not a secret that our long term goal is to leave New York State. (Isn't everyone's, honestly?) Nor have we been anything less than bubbly about our Errant Venturing.

One of the first things that always, always comes to mind when we talk about long term plans and opportunities is how not portable my job is. Although I can usually get days off without too much trouble, I don't have sick time, vacation time, or anything else - all days off are unpaid. Moreover, while I could technically put in for a transfer to a different cafe when we're someday ready to move, there is no guarantee wherever we go next will even have one, let alone have a good one that needs someone in the hours I'd be available to work.

I have plenty of credentials and experience to do other - far more flexible and portable - things. But, as I've been increasingly aware the last few months, the longer I go without some kind of current employent in those fields, the less up-to-date and reliable my skills look to potential employers. To make matters worse, about 95% of what I did in the grant writing field was proprietary, which means I barely have any work that I'm allowed to show potential employers to prove what I can do! 

Anyway, to make a long story short, I set myself up with a two-pronged plan to correct that situation - the sooner the better. (More on the first prong in another post to come soon!) To make good on the second part of the plan, I've been doing the stressful and unpleasant work of job hunting for a while now, trying to find a (very) part-time, fully remote/telecommute writing-related position I can do (in addition to my full-time job) between now and when we eventually leave NY to serve as a bridge between where I am and wherever we go/whatever we do next.

AND I FINALLY GOT HIRED!

Only time will tell if it works out or if I end up going back to the drawing board but, for the moment, I am enormously relieved. It feels SO good to know that I'm not just wishing and dreaming but actually doing something to set us up for success in the areas and plans we hold near to our hearts.

Biting the Bullet

Terrible picture of actually very nice
every day boots.

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of shopping. I am particularly not fond of shopping for clothing or shoes. (Seriously, do you have any idea how many positively hideous pairs of shoes there are in the world?! And somehow you have to scroll through all of them to find the one or two simple, attractive things that you want. Every. Time. Ugh.)

Most of time, I get off easy. Not only is my closet well stocked enough that I rarely need to shop for anything, but My Prince is much more patient about these things and very gracious about helping me search if I need to purchase something. Recently, though, I found myself in the unwelcome position of needing to buy shoes. Not just one pair, but two. It was my own fault - I'd been putting it off and putting it off, and finally reached the point where my black heels were too shot to keep wearing and cold weather was solidly here, meaning I could no longer avoid getting a new pair of every day boots.

(For the record, I tried a couple times in the last couple years to buy a decent pair of boots, but with no success.)

Finally, last month, I bit the bullet and just carved out time (and patience) to go through the whole online shopping process. Not surprisingly, both pairs of shoes ultimately had to be exchanged for a different size (why are these things so inconsistent?!). Even on sale, the boots were a lot more than I'd have liked to spend. That said, there's huge relief in finally having the ordeal done with and knowing that I won't have to do it again any time soon! 

New all purpose black heels. Super comfy!

100 Days of Productivity

I recently ran across a challenge online called "100 Days of Productivity".

The original idea is pretty simple and geared toward Instagram/Tumblr in that you do something (anything) productive every day, and post a picture representative of it online. Obviously, my personality type is too geared toward productivity in general for that to be anything new or helpful for me as is. Moreover, I not a fan of taking/posting photos, so that whole tracking process would derail me completely.

But as we near the end of the year, I can't help but be attracted to the potential of a slightly modified version. There's a lot to like about the idea of starting something in the next couple weeks that rolls over into the new year - it feels like a headstart on a New Years resolution, with the added awesomeness that it's only for a set period of time instead of the whole year. By the time you hit March, for example, you could be celebrating already having banged out something great and feel like you'd set a positive tone for the year. It also feels like it might provide some welcome focus through the usual mess of the holidays and the generally cold, dreary weeks that follow when everything slows down and drags. 

The question, then, becomes what target to set or what subject to pick to specifically work on. I want it to be different from what I'm already doing (like reading a chapter of something a day) and separate from long-term health habits I'm trying to establish (working out, drinking enough water). And, of course, if it's going to be worth doing and set next year up well, it needs to be a goal that matters.

I've been picking at a couple ideas, and I think I've almost got it narrowed down, but I'd be curious to hear what everyone else thinks. If you were going to do 100 Days of (Focused) Productivity, what would you choose? Anyone want to do it as a shared challenge with me?

It's Good Not To Be A Manager

Yesterday at work, there were two different repair guys in: one was working on the rethermalizer (essentially a giant box of hot water that we use to heat bags of soup) and the other was working on the walk-in freezer. The entire freezer/cooler area smelled like burning metal, which wasn't encouraging, but was apparently the least of our worries.

The guy working on the rethermalizer shut the whole thing down, informed my General Manager that the plug and outlet it was connected to were charred, and he really had no idea how we hadn't burned the entire cafe to the ground yet. Yikes!

So the GM goes to grab our back-up portable unit from storage. While he's gone, the cafe gets a call that someone was drilling just down the street and hit a gas line... which they thought was connected to our (giant) rack oven. So the manager on duty had to run out and tell the day bakers to shut the ovens off until further notice - because we're only a bakery cafe and don't need those or anything.

All I could think as I headed out to my truck (finally) was that it was a really, really good day not to be a manager. The manager who counted my drawer ended up working 13 hours yesterday... and I went home on time, and left all the drama behind. I don't miss being in her shoes at all.

Tomorrow we have piles of regional corporate company. My GM dared me to throw a brioche roll at the District Manager's head. It's an unreasonably tempting offer, but I think I'll probably be good. (Probably.)

Hope everyone else is having a less dramatic week than where I work!

Special Features

It turns out my truck has special features I didn't know about! I knew it was all kinds of equipped, of course, but I completely missed the fact that it has dedicated Puppacinno servers!

I've read that if you go to Starbucks and ask for a 'Puppacinno' they'll give you a small cup of whipped cream. We're not Starbucks people, but needed some terrible coffee while on the road and that was what there was, so we stopped. Eric actually had the presence of mind to remember to ask and the server did, in fact, offer up a cup of whipped cream.

Nenya turned her nose up at it ("that's not gravy!!"), but Arthas happily helped himself. Which is when I realized that there are actually cup holders in the back of the center console of my truck, perfectly positioned for happy border collies to nom on cups of whipped cream from the back seat.

The picture doesn't do the adorableness of the moment justice, but I thought I'd share anyway. Hope your week is off to a good start! 

The Communication Skills They Didn't Teach Me in College

So, I was a business major and, as part of the curriculum, we learned all kinds of models for communication. Some, obviously, were better than others.  Recently, I ran across a new model I haven't seen before that I really liked. I haven't really tested it with other people yet, but I'm finding it a fantastic structure for sorting things out for yourself or to pair with Brene Browns SFD method.

It's the Whole Message approach, for lack of a better term, and it involves breaking down what you are trying to communicate into four parts:

(1) Facts
(2) Thoughts
(3) Emotions/Feelings
(4) Needs 

Using this framework to imagine what I'd say to someone about some situations that have happened recently has been really eye-opening. It significantly changes how I'd word things. It also provides an unexpected feeling of calm, I think because there's tremendous power in separating hard fact from how we feel about that fact. Because someone can attack 'feelings' all day long - automatically inciting defensiveness and the slippery slope that conversation usually slides down once you're there. 

It's a lot harder to argue with a fact. And once the fact is established, there's a lot less ground for someone to stand on to try to assail you from.

There's also enormous peace to be had in figuring out what you need before you have a conversation. Even if that 'need' is just "I need you to understand that this behavior is outside my boundaries" or "I need you to be aware that, because of above fact, I no longer trust what you say to me." Even if the other person doesn't like it or isn't interested in acknowledging/cooperating/changing, it's powerful to know you did everything you could, expressed things clearly and calmly, and can move on from there however you need to without guilt.

Now if only they'd taught me this in business school a decade and a half ago!!

Sunk Cost

Have you ever had one of those weeks (months? years?) where the same idea or theme just keeps popping up? Different places, different ways, but defintitely recurring?

For months now, maybe even the whole of this year thus far, I've been seeing the Sunk Cost Fallacy come up over and over - in passing conversation, in choices friends and family have been grappling with... just kind of all over.

If you're not familiar with the term, a "sunk cost" is any investment - time, money, energy, emotional involvement - "that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered". [src] The year you invested in a work project that just got canceled. The weekends you dedicated to remodeling your house. The friendship you worked so hard to cultivate that's spiraling into bad territory.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy (SCF) - and related Escalation of Commitment Bias - occurs when people make decisions about their future based on "cumulative prior investment" rather than on the evidence, numbers, or other information they have about the realistic costs and benefits of a choice moving forward.

Two really simple examples from my professional life are the FDA/USDA's unwavering hardline position on promoting patently unhealthy diets and the US Department of Education's continued funding of a myriad of programs that we know don't work. In both cases, decades of research prove beyond doubt that what is being championed has not - and will not - serve the public good. But enough high-ranking people have so heavily invested their careers, reputations, and trillions of dollars of tax payer money into those faulty programs that the agencies continue to toe the line rather than acknowledge the good intentions, the new information, and the losses in between the way they'd need to to move on constructively. 

It's not always pride that prompts people to act from this bias; sometimes it's an aversion to/feeling of shame about waste. (I paid for these tickets, it'd be wasteful not to attend the event even though I really don't want to.) Sometimes its a fear of grappling with the grief, shame, or self-doubt that would accompany letting go. (If I let this go, it means owning up to having made a really bad call. How will I trust/respect myself after that?) Sometimes its just about not feeling up to taking the risk of trying something new. ("The devil you know is better than the devil you don't," or "just thinking about trying to figure out what I'd do instead if I gave this up is exhausting!")

And sometimes it's all just freaking complicated because this is life and sometimes it just is.

There isn't really a point this post, except to share my observations of a pattern I've been seeing more and more of lately, and to wonder (semi) publically if anyone is seeing the same patterns or aware of this trend. Is this a thing where you are right now? In your life, or the lives of people in your circle? Are you noticing other trends, instead? I'd love to hear about it, either way!

August: Five Random Things

I'm having a little bit of a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it's officially September already. (But the twenty-degree temperature drop and the distinctly 'crisp' air on my way out to work in the mornings is bringing it into perspective pretty quickly!) As I looked forward to what's coming up in this new month, I also did a quick glimpse back at August and thought I'd share a couple random interesting things from the month around here.

1. Rising Strong. In preparation for Brene Brown's new book coming out in a couple weeks, I reread/finished reading her last book, Rising Strong. It was one of those books that rewires your brain... literally and powerfully. It entirely changed my perspective on several on-going situations and I'm still processing it.


2. Bullet Journaling. I've seen bullet journaling all over the interwebs for a couple years now and never been inspired to try it. But this summer I found myself with a bunch of different systems I'd never quite been able to make work as well as I wanted them to and a frustrating list of things I wanted to prioritize but was abysmally inconsistant on. So I did some research (I'm an ISTJ, of course I did), selected a simple starter format that would cover just the stuff essential to me, picked up an inexpensive bullet journal, and gave it a whack. Results from my first month are good! My version won't ever be artsy or Pinterest-level-pretty, but it's working, and I'm happy. (And it's the reason I'm remembering to write this blog post tonight.)

3. Small Indulgences. It's a proven fact that small indulgences make a huge difference in quality of life and daily happiness. (There's actually a quote from I think the 1700s about people giving up all kinds of major things before they'll sacrifice their little happinesses, because those are what make the hard things bearable.) In August, we added two indulgences to the list. The vinyl decal shown at right, which graces the cabinet above the sink in the EV. (It's a Tolkein quote, if you're trying to remember where you know it from.) The second was a set of vanity plates for the truck, which say ERNTVNTR... yup, the truck and the EV are now both ridiculously coordinated, and it makes me stupidly happy!

4.  Vitamins. I minorly adjusted my vitamin regamin and almost immediately saw a big difference. Weird, but true. And I'm grateful because, honestly, when it comes to improving your quality of life, adding/subtracting a couple vitamins is one of the easiest changes to make!

5. Wizarding Weekend - this one is completely random and just for fun, but did you know there's a Wizarding Weekend in Ithaca in October? I didn't, until a bunch of my coworkers were talking about wanting to go recently. It restores my faith in humanity to see people drawn to things like Harry Potter, magic, fantasy, and all things geeky!
What did you learn/celebrate in August?

Mass Exodus

People in our lives have been talking about leaving New York for years now. As the state has gotten increasingly more liberal, more heavily taxed, more politically correct, and more obnoxious those plans have escalated in both seriousness and agressiveness of timeframe.

This year has marked a distinct tipping point. My sister picked up and moved to Florida in May. Eric's brother pulled up stakes this month and is on his way to South Carolina. Our neighbors (who have lived on this road for decades) are in the process of selling their house and eager to get back to the friends they've already made in New Mexico.

Other friends/family continue to plan their escape, caught where they are a few more years yet by other factors. We had someone come walk through our house, interested in buying it, at the start of the summer. That didn't end up going anywhere, but the larger trend has played a lot in our thoughts. It's interesting to ask oneself where you'd go if you just picked up and moved. What would you look for? What would you do (or hope/plan to do) differently?

Errant Venturing this summer has been really good for me/us on this front, as it brings up a lot of new ideas and questions and possibilities we just wouldn't have really had any reason to run into before. It's too early to know what the future holds and when (I've given up trying to anticipate much, given how the last year has gone), but we know we're not staying here long term and the writing on the wall has reached a new level of clarity, for sure.

I don't really have any conclusions or pearls of wisdom to offer or anything on this front, except that it's made two things really stand out for me.

First, it's totally okay to decide that something that worked for you before doesn't any more. Life changes, relationships and jobs and all of those things grow and transmute and if you find that a system or a habit or whatever no longer serves, trade it in for something else. No guilt necessary - be grateful for the season it was good and move on.

Second, nothing else I can do will match the impact of properly taking care of myself. Which always sounds selfish and weird when it's in writing, I think, but it's just true. Nothing's going to serve me better in the face of change and opportunity than having the physical, mental and emotional reserves and resources to meet the day head-on and make the most of it (even if that just looks like being able to enjoy little things like frisbee with the dogs or having the patience not to smack someone at work).

I have no idea if that matters to or helps anyone else right now, but it's been a big lesson in my life this summer, and I thought I'd throw it out there!