work

everything is burning

If you’ve ever been tasked with a whole bunch of responsibilities you’ve probably developed some kind of mechanism to determine what needs to be accomplished first.  I like to use the phrase, “What is the brightest burning fire?” I tackle those first.

Right at this moment it feels like everything in my life is burning.  And I can’t see a way to choose what to focus on.  I’m hoping by writing it out I’ll gain some perspective and find my path.

If you follow me on any social media at all then you know my cat George has been very ill for the last two weeks.  We’ve been in and out of the emergency vet, my vet, and he’s been hospitalized for days.  His bladder ruptured so he had to have emergency surgery.  I have him home now, but that is super challenging too with his treatment.  He’s taking 4 different medications that are all not at the same time.   He needs IV fluids under the skin everyday.  I’ve tried to do it myself the last two days and the attempts were very unsuccessful.  Today I managed to stab myself in the knuckle with his IV needle so now my knuckle is swollen and bruised.  His bladder and urethra are having spasms off and on due to all the trauma, so he leaks urine at times when he’s sleeping.  So I’ve got every piece of furniture covered in plastic and I’m washing blankets twice a day.  I’m not sleeping because I’m watching him.  I haven’t been able to exercise for the last week because I’m taking him back and forth from the emergency vet to the regular vet.

The big project at work that I’ve leading/managing has ran into one delay after another.  None of them have even been remotely my fault, but we are now WEEKS behind.  It was supposed to ready to go-live on Monday (7/2) and we literally just received word just yesterday that I can only now start testing it.  I’ll be lucky if we are ready to go by 8/1 at this point.  I chose the dates for my project with intentionality because other big things follow it.  I have other things in my normal day-to-day job that need to take precedence.  Now I need to do it all, together.  There will be many, many long days ahead with work.

Because I need one more big thing….I’m moving in 3 weeks.  Guess who hasn’t even started packing up her apartment due to all of the above?

George has cost me thousands of dollars I wasn’t expecting (or prepared) to spend.

And lastly, to top it all off, because I have had all this extreme stress and I’m not keeping my body “normal” my heart condition is flaring up.  So I’m dizzy and prone to passing out frequently.

So here is where I am.  How do I manage it all by myself? George comes first, obviously, but how do I keep up all the treatment and such that he needs AND maintain everything I need to do with my job?  I need to be the one doing my packing because I’m weeding things out as I go.  What is the answer?

I’m not writing this post for sympathy or pity.  I’m writing it for clarity.  I need to find a path.  I need to find a way to look at it that I don’t see everything burning.  So.  Without any doubt you can bet as I’m doing some work today that I’ll be doing my normal type-A self…trying to write a flowchart to make all this work.

TODAY I LOVE: Kacey Musgraves’ new album Golden Hour

all things may

We are almost halfway through this year.  I hate that my mom was right, that time really does go faster the older you get.  So yeah, May is over (one more day anyway.)  Let’s see how this month broke down for me:

HEALTH: I’m happy to report I was 100% on my macros everyday.  I was never over, although there were a few days that I was under.  I didn’t miss a single mandatory workout (lifting), and only missed one barre class from my bonus workouts.  Win! And it paid off: since the end of January I’m down 21 pounds and 23 inches.  I haven’t starved myself and I don’t workout hours and hours everyday.  The actual scale number is slowing down in it’s decreases, but I’m getting muscle and it looks so much better.  I’m happy with it.

For grins, I almost 100% cut out gluten during the month.  (I still maintained eating my Ezekiel bread every morning.  Not giving that up.)  Other than that, I was gluten free.  I really wanted to see if it made any difference in my belly bloat.  It taught me a couple of things. First, I really don’t eat that much gluten to begin with.  It wasn’t hard to not eat it.  Second, I had very thin crust pizza last night (yes, I considered May over for the most part starting yesterday), and it made my food belly (that I’ve affectionately named Ethel) go CRAZY.  Hello bloat city.  All that said, I think I’m going to try to maintain little gluten/wheat when I have other options available.   Because it did prove to me that it does make me puff up like a fish.

I did get the best compliment this morning.  Two girls who are not regulars at the gym came up to me as I was lifting.  They told me they hadn’t been in in a while and it’s been a bit since they’d seen me.  And they said I looked amazing!  Asked me how much I’d lost and said they could really tell I was working hard.  Anyway, it was so great to hear!  Onward to June.  🙂

RANDOM:  Let’s see…I got my hair done.  Only a trim off the ends, but went another step towards my blonde goal.  To all of you naysayers out there, it really is lighter!  I can prove it.  My hair is so dark it takes a long time to get to blonde.   As far as other beauty stuff, I’ve watched way too many makeup tutorials because now I keep wanting to dip my toe in these strange eye combinations.  Today I’m wearing navy and gold.  Yep.  It is disappointing to report that my eyebrows are still hopeless.  I’m not giving up.

IMG_2678

Ok, so my hair isn’t fixed in either photo (ignore that).  And also ignore the fact that in the second photo I’m getting ready for bed and have no make up and my glasses on.  Hey, real life folks.  You can’t ALWAYS be a beauty queen.  🙂 

I’m totally and completely obsessed with blackberries right now. The fruit, not the phone.  Cannot. Get. Enough.

I’ve read 3 books and am currently diving back into the Tudor dynasty as written by the awesome Philippa Gregory.  I think there are 8-9 books total.  It’s going to take me a while.

I finished season 3 of How to Get Away with Murder.  HOLY SMOKES.  That show is on fire.  I very rarely guess how it is going to end.

Work has been crazy nut-job busy.

I think that’s enough for now.  All in all, May wasn’t so bad on me.  I didn’t go crazy.  I didn’t blow up at anyone.  I think I maybe only cried 3 times or so.  That’s a win, folks.

How was your May?

TODAY I LOVE: the song “Every Monday” by Marvelous 3 (an oldie but goodie.  Takes me back to college.)