Hrrmph

.
I'm going to try very hard to stay awake long enough to write this entry. I know if I were to go to bed now, at 7:50, I'd wake up at 3:00 and not be able to get back to sleep. While I'd enjoy doing a lot of Pine Tree Designs work before going to work, it would make for way too long of a day tomorrow.

I'm so tired because I'm exhausted by stress. It started Tuesday. We had an ESOP meeting in our Buffalo office that I was very much looking forward to attending. A road trip! Visit friends in the Buffalo office! What a treat. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy serving on this committee of 9 representatives. I love sitting in a room with these other committed, passionate people who want to make our company better - financially and culturally. I always say I get to use a different part of my brain during these meetings and it feels good. This was to be our first meeting in our Buffalo office; we've always met in our Rochester office.

I rarely talk about my workplace in detail in this blog and I'm not about to start now. Let me just say the meeting was disastrous. We all left feeling so disheartened and exhausted and disillusioned.

The good news is the ride there (an hour each way) with 3 co-workers was the best part of the trip. We stopped at Bob Evans in Batavia for breakfast on the way there. We sort of thought we'd be taken out to lunch after the meeting but we weren't so we stopped at Papa Jack's in Victor, an ice cream stand, on the way back to our office. Ha! We showed them! Papa Jack's doesn't make their own ice cream or anything but they serve Perry's, so naturally I had Death by Chocolate. It both made me feel better and got me all jacked up on sugar and caffeine. As if I wasn't already jacked up enough by the meeting.

I went to bed at 8:45 last night, so spent was I. This morning I woke up with a crushing headache that went from my neck to my eyes. Steve and I have started walking Reggi every morning before work recently. We were only a few paces into our walk when I told Steve I needed a hug. We hugged and I felt that familiar lump in my throat, the kind you get before a good cry. But I didn't even tear up - and I felt the stress literally melt away, like a plug was pulled or something. I'd love to see what stress looks like in the human body, like with some heat seeking goggles or something. The dumb thing is I really didn't think the headache was stress-related - I thought maybe I slept funny or something. Big fat duh.

Boy, am I looking forward to my massage after work on Friday.

Today, besides the headache, I woke up depressed and lethargic. That got a little better as the work day went on. There is so much damn work to be done that today was one of those unfortunate days where I felt stumped as to where to start first. So stressed I couldn't prioritize, I guess. That's not good. As I've said before, it's not just me, all employees are feeling this. The company is having a great year financially and this is how that goes. Hopefully we'll be successful enough again that we can hire help but not yet. It's one of those good problems to have - but feels sucky day to day sometimes.

I wouldn't even mind it so much if I could leave the stress at work. But I really hate it when it spills over into my home time. It drains my energy and squashes my creativity - that really pisses me off! I'm having a relaxed evening though - Simon and Steve are both working so I had a nice dinner alone while watching a new show I've found on DIY, Uncommon Threads. I watched an episode about needlepoint and an episode about quilting tonight. That was nice.

Afterwards I watered the deck plants, then sat outside and read the paper. It's been lovely lately, in the 70s so it's nice to spend time outdoors again. Verona (in her cat carrier case) and Reggi sat outside with me.

Reggi became a bit lame on our walk this morning - she was walking so slowly, I called it our stroll. Simon told me she seemed worse during the day so I made an appointment to take her to the vet tomorrow afternoon. Poor thing. Something is going on with one of her back legs, sometimes she won't put weight on it at all, other times she hobbles. Mom and Dad stopped over this past Saturday and she was skittering around the driveway like a little puppy, she was so happy to see them. Steve and I think maybe she twisted it or something jumping out of the car this morning to go for our walk because she seemed fine before that.

Anyway, I'm beat. Off to bed to read. I made it to 8:30 - woohoo! (Have fun proofing this one, Mom, I'm too tired to think.)

Sorry for all the whining. Sometimes that's just the way it is. By the way, we passed our Connecticut sales tax audit today with flying colors. He just found one customer we should have charged sales tax that we didn't. No big whoop. He was nice, personable, friendly. The process was painless, a piece of cake. The New York State audit in September will be much more intense and much longer than 2 days, but then it will be done. It's like I tell Simon about certain things - it's a finite thing that will end sometime.

Goodnight.

.