A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #121 buttercream covered in chocolate frosting
Don’t trip!
It’s Friday and I’m procrastinating.
Originally, we were to leave today to head to my brother’s place before heading back to KY but the GP I saw earlier this week about my mouth wanted to see me next week, so we postponed our leave date by a week.
I took today off since we were going to be traveling and kept it as a day off to get errands done. By 11 a.m. I had dropped the dog off at the groomers, went to UPS, Starbucks, and Target, grabbed dog from groomers, got gas, and then came home.
The procrastination is I must go to the laundromat today and I don’t want to, but I must.
I’ve started a list of things we need to do before we leave next week and as the day has gone on, the list has gotten longer. A lot of it is things we normally do every year but as always, there is more shit to add. One chore is removed since our landscapers are going to come and blow leaves off the driveway before winter.
The weather earlier this week was wind-a-geddon where sustained gusts of 58 mph (nearly 100 kph) for nearly three days. We lost power on Wednesday for about 10 hours and that was fun! Not only was it cold, rainy, and windy but we had no power. Our phones are hot spots, but the tower was overloaded so it was worse than the dial-up days from yore. I tried to “watch” a football match via Twitter and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I just read the rest of the day instead. (Everton lost to Newcastle 0-1. This has not been a good week for my teams!)
We went to dinner about 5 p.m. to beat the rush in case others felt the same at a place outside of the no power zone. After dinner we got gas and drove around the peninsula to power our phones. I was a tad scared with the winds and the rain as some of the road was right up against the bay but I was ever so glad to see power in our sub when we pulled in.
My boss approached me last week about taking an approach to work from home. I’ve been in the office less than a ½ dozen times since March of 2020. I keep skirting around the requirements from HR and I hoped to keep skirting but looks like the jig is up. My boss doesn’t care if we work from home, but HR has a bee in their bonnet that unless you are already in the books as WFH, you need to be in the office at least twice a week. Fuck that shit, there is no point to being in the office.
My boss’ path is to see if I qualify under the ADA requirements to get accommodation. I’m bipolar which falls under the ADA so I’m using that and my ADHD as the reasons why I need to work from home. My boss is going to bat for me on this and will go to bat for me if I can’t get the ADA accommodation and see if I can WFH another way. She was a bit upset that the only reason why we’re staying in Louisville is for my job. J has been able to WFH for nearly two decades, my in-laws, whom we came down for in the first, we barely see. I have no friends here and trust me, I’ve tried. My socialization is with long term friends across the interwebs (daily texts, social media, video dates). (My on-off again work wife wants to start hanging out when I get back to Louisville but I’m not putting stock in it. We tried to hang out a few years back but she flaked.)
Work in the office is stressful and I’m not a fan of most of my immediate team. Lots of noise, I get over stimulated which means I get out of sorts, I can’t focus, and my coping mechanisms is based on working in a quiet space which I have at home where I can function just fine on my own. It’s also stupid, and my boss agrees, on our team having to be in the office. We’re not customer facing, and all our meetings are on Webex. My boss was telling me how the other day one of her reports came into her office for a meeting and they still had to use Webex since viewing each other’s screens were difficult due to the layout of the office.
The new normal is working from home, I just wished more companies saw that. (I also tried to spin that I was saving the company money by not taking up resources that could be saved. There was a slight chuckle to that.)
It is now Saturday.
I’m afraid to walk.
Considering what happened, I don’t think anyone would blame me but fact remains, I must walk for life before I can run for life and being scared isn’t going to do it for me.
I keep seeing it over and over in my brain of falling and breaking something or glass going into my eyes. How did I escape this with the last fall? How am I not more wounded? (Though I’m sure an argument could be made that a total of 10 stitches in my face and mouth would be wounding enough.)
Yesterday, I walked from the laundromat to the grocery store as I was thirsty. It was maybe a block, probably less. The ground was pavement with swirls of leaves. I watched my feet, one foot in front of the other, as I stepped over fallen branches and dips in the pavement. I relaxed when I got inside the store but on my return trip, I watched my feet with occasionally bringing my head up to gauge traffic and my direction.
I was scared I was going to trip and fall and do something worse.
I’ve walked a million times in 50 years and having one major fall out of hundreds of thousand walks will not statistically mean I am going to have the same kind of fall if I do trip.
But yet. But still.
This is all so funny considering in the beginning of 2023, I’m going to start training for 5Ks.
My therapist and I had a conversation yesterday about my fear of falling and they said I should sit with the thought and consider self-compassion. I am okay. I will be fine. I can do this.
That shit is hard as fuck. But apparently to my therapist, I’ve become more open to the idea of being kind to myself.
Right now it’s hard to be kind to myself when I am badly need of a cut, shape, and color. Vanity, vanity.
This week was so-so about my sports ball teams:
Forest tied with Brighton Nil – Nil
Leafs lost to Coyotes 2 – 4
Everton lost to Newcastle 0 – 1
Forest beat Liverpool 1 – 0
Leafs beat the Stars 3 – 2
Everton beat Crystal Palace 3 – 0
Forest is 19th in the fixture, Everton is 11th. Leafs are currently 6th in the Atlantic Division out of eight.
Leafs play the Jets tonight at 19:00. Everton next plays Fulham on the 29th and Forest goes against Arsenal on the 30th.
One thing I did discover is that if the EPL game is not on Peacock, it’s on USA networks. I’ll never be out of watching my teams again. Plus with ESPN+, I can watch all the Leafs’ games.
Things I Recently Wrote
If you read #97.5, you’ll recall I’ve ditched the We’ll Read Anything Once (Twice If We Like it) book review blog for a newsletter of the same name.
What I’m Reading
FINISH A FUCKING BOOK LISA BEFORE STARTING A NEW ONE.
Glenarvon Byron’s ex-lover was so distraught about their breakup; she wrote a roman à clef about their relationship
Shades of Milk and Honey (Glamourist Histories #1) If Jane Austen wrote fantasy
Crime and Poetry (A Magical Bookshop Mystery #1) Cozy mystery with bookshop as the background
Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14 / Witches #4) The elves are back and this time they don’t want just your teeth
Pride and Prejudice Read this a zillion times but doing a read-a-long for Austen Mondays
The Christmas Cupid Can Zoey match six couples before Christmas Eve?
Listening in the Dark Anthology of women writers on the power of intuition
The Seventh Sinner (Jaqueline Kirby #1) Errant librarian solves a mystery in Rome
Hotel du Lac The book that won Anita Brookner the Booker prize. It asks the question, “What is love?”
The Pursuit of Love (Radlett and Montdore #1) Satirizes British aristocracy in the 1920s and 1930s
Want to see what I’m reading or watching? Check out my list for 2022!
Wonderful Thing
Have I exhausted your ears yet about the wonder of Bumpy Cake?
A devil’s food chocolate cake with “bumps” of buttercream covered in chocolate frosting.
A definitive Michigan dessert (I’ve yet to find anyone whose seen this outside of the Michigan unless it was a Michigan chain (ala Meijer) that sells Michigan based products) that is reputedly concocted by Sanders Candy decades ago. I don’t remember how I was introduced to it but it’s been a staple in our diet for years. Once, we got so desperate for it, I ordered directly from Sanders to ship to KY. Worth every shipping dollar.
Also worth every calorie.
lisa x