Winter Survival Tip #3

One of my best winter survival tricks for tundra living is quite simple: leave.  Get out.  Go somewhere, preferably warm and sunny, but at the very least somewhere else.  Winter is a great time for visits of obligation; it’s a better time for fun vacations, but sometimes a body needs to work within certain restrictions.  A required family trip to your mismatched Nader’s Raider aunt and “Romney is too liberal” bellowing uncle might not be the most pleasant experience, but if they live in Florida, it is a lot more pleasant if you can couple the visit to them with one to some sunshine and temperatures above freezing.  Ideally you can take a week or weekend for fun – cheer on your team at a spring training baseball game, watch the whales migrate in Cabo, surf in Hawaii – but sometimes it is necessary to be a bit practical.  Vitamin D is a practical need; if only I could get my insurance to let me apply airfare to my deductible.

Besides the benefit of a break from snow and ice, taking a break from the tundra also gives you something to look forward to…regardless of the weather here, I will not have to scrape ice off my car to go to work next Monday – I won’t be near my car and I’m not going to work!  Win.  It’s a mental, physical, and emotional break and it is necessary.

So!  Tundra.  You are on notice.  If you are not significantly warmer and sunnier, preferably with longer days, by Thursday  I AM LEAVING.  One of us has to make a change; I accept that it will likely be me.

 

Cold Weather Survival Tip: Thinking of Others

This post is inspired by 90% of status updates on facebook.  I share with you select wisdom of my mother:

1.) It is cold outside, you are correct.

2.) It is January and you live in the tundra.  What did you expect?

3.) Everyone else in the tundra is cold too.  These negative temperatures do not just affect you.

4.) Whining about the weather will neither make you any warmer nor endear you to others.  (I have been alerted that some folks feel solidarity with others and bond over the cold temps.  Fine, you might feel solidarity, but I bet you don’t feel warm.)

5.) Buck up.  Find something to do.

Five Weak Excuses For My Silence

So, um, I haven’t been posting much lately.  I’ve started a few posts, but haven’t gotten around to finishing them yet.  Here are five poor excuses for my silence, along with their debunktion.

1.) Oh, I am so busy!  I started a new job and it involves all sorts of new job-y stuff.  Yeah, a new part-time job.

2.) I am searching for other jobs AND studying to open educational opportunities. True, but I am doing those things when I’m not frittering my time away.

3.) Oh, but I am so tired!  So tired!  So tired!  LE TIRED.  Sounds like time to better strategize my coffee and soda opportunities.   While I am an eight hours per night person, there are sixteen other hours each day.   I work little more than sixteen hours per work.

4.) Nothing exciting is going on.  This is different from usual how?

5.) I’m hungry.  Great.  How many food-related posts have I started?

Advisory: ME

Oh.  Wow.

I’m taking a long weekend and the difficulty of getting out of the tundra once again astounds me.  While even-keeled and fact-based, I did have a mildly productive tantrum to my airline.  I’m pretty sure my expectations are reasonable, but the fact that I’m at (read: below) race weight, does call make that questionable.  Seriously though: Being delayed at an airport is bad enough.  It’s eight billion times worse when food and drink are off-limits as methods of procrastination.

In the Fight Against Mosquitoes…I Lose.

Mosquitoes are out of control in the tundra this year.  I am not a huge fan of bug spray, but am using it anyway.  (This is not an environmental stance; I really just abhor the smell…more than the average mosquito.)  Purchasing a “bug band” or other wearable bit is on my to-do list and I’ll report back on its effectiveness.  In addition to the standard mosquito “kisses” on my legs, arms, and feet; I’ve managed to get a huge one on my bum.  (Aside: HOW?!?!?) 

It gets “better” though…because I scratched it…with a jagged nail…and then it bled. 

I miss the frigid weather.

Dissatisfying Food

I have TEH RAGE right now, so decided to do some stress eating.  The following foods are not satisfying for rage-induced stress eating: bananas, yogurt, root beer floats, cheese curds, Wheat Thin crackers.

I need some beef jerky and one of those chocolate oranges that you “whack and unwrap” – GRRRRR!!!!

work day fail

It turns out I am also bad at working while sick.  I am not sure how to solve this conundrum (in which I suck at all of my options) but it’s been a rough week for my self-esteem.   For now, I am employing the coping mechanism of “avoidance via sleep.”  It pretty much involves a lot of napping (today’s total was four hours) and leaving work early. 

My survival plan for tomorrow involves convincing the kid that I don’t need to spend any portion of our day on: trampolines, bars, rings, or balance beams.  Yep, tomorrow is gymnastics at the place where I do not exceed the weight limit.  The back-up plan is make the weight limit by 10am.    In other news, I hope to convince him that we should spend a lot of our day on the couch.

sick day fail

Until today I thought it was my stellar work ethic that kept me from taking sick days, although my general decent health probably contributed too.  (This was the second sick day I’ve taken in over 2.5 years.)  Something I learned about myself today, during my many empty hours of self-reflection, is that I am BAD at sick days.  This is entirely different from being bad at being sick (although I’m miserable at that too) and being a troublesome patient (I prefer the term “involved” and I’m very upfront about it).  What I am talking about here is my deficiency at staying at home, in bed, recuperating.  I suck at it.  Suck.  At.  It.

I am pretty sick little monkey.  Part of me is considering staying home again tomorrow or at the very least working a short day, that is pretty low functioning.  (The family I work for is totally supportive of me adjusting “our” day when I need to: participating in naptime, the occasional a/v activity, no-cook lunches, etc.)  Unfortunately, while my physical health would probably (definitely) benefit from another day off, I’m not sure that my mental health can take it.

The one in which I whine

I am sick; I hate it.  Given that I work at The Germ Factory, it’s pretty inevitable that I will bring some “work” home with me on occasion…I just loathe those occasions. I am typing this from my bed, humidifier running, and juice AND water within reach – along with tissues and cough drops.  Today’s Advil intake probably reached double digits before the o’clock did and I’m unable to report how many I consumed as, well, I DON’T HAVE A CLUE.  When I started to hurt too much again and it seemed like it’d been “awhile enough,” I took more – usually to the tune of 600mg or 800mg.  I may or may not have exceeded the suggested maximum daily dosage today.  Fortunately, due to some recent lab work, I know my kidneys are top notch and able to handle it.  If I still feel crappy tomorrow, I am going to circumvent this irresponsibility on my part and count out a “maximum daily dosage” into a separate bottle and only pull from that.  Win.  I spent about six hours today dressed in real clothes to go to a beer tasting (I’m serious; I’d really been looking forward to it!) and dinner with some friends, where I ate Jewish Penicillin.  Given that I can see a synagogue from my front stoop, it isn’t hard to hook up with some good matzo ball soup.  My childhood of ham buns, Jell-O salads, and church lady hot dishes leads me to believe that if more people based their religious affiliation on the eats, there would be a lot more Jews.