Busy Thursday

It's always rain or drought. It's been so calm and peaceful and under control the past month, then, just like that, things are getting crazy busy again.

Fired off an official fax to GoDaddy about my site, which I fully expect to be restored to me since they ILLEGALLY sold it to someone else (no, it was not up for renewal).

Finished one project at work yesterday, and had twice as much more work dumped on me every day this week.

Start physical therapy next week for my shoulder; my PA said it would probably hurt as much or more than the original pain. Gee, I can't wait.

In less than a month I'll be at Vermont College of Fine Arts for their post-graduate week-long residency. Of course, I've barely gotten my poems in on time to be included in the workshop books -- four new ones (bad) and two old ones (not bad) -- and am in no way ready to go anywhere. It's been 18 years and I don't know if I can still write good poetry. I used to be very, very good but quit for several reasons. JBH, my mentor here, was thrilled when I called him about going back to Vermont, so I'm holding on to his good energies.

I'm flying, which I dread because of the way airlines treat passengers. Plus I'm determined to fit 7 days' worth of clothes and sundries into two small carry-ons. All I need are tee-shirts and shorts and underwear.

Today is the Staff Senate, and all the newbie senators will be attending -- all innocent and full of faith and good will. Just wait till reality sinks in.

Summer chorus rehearsals will begin this coming Monday for the women who tape the practice CDs and "spot," i.e., be sure the tapers are singing the right notes. I agreed to learn how to be a spotter, so Monday night is shot.

Tomorrow is T's birthday, so R and I are taking her out to nice lunch.

O gave me another "difficult" piano piece to learn. Sigh . . . I don't have enough fingers to play all those notes! She says I'm doing very well, but it doesn't sound that way to me.

And at 5 o'clock today, Sugar is due at the vet's for her blood draw. Her weight is up to 115, whereas it's normally 108 or thereabouts. The vet said she's probably getting to lay an egg, but that was last week and there have been no eggs. That means either that Sugar is gaining weight and I'll have to put her on a diet, or something horrible I don't even want to think about. We'll see today.

All the birds got some Harrison's birdie bread last night and I ate some Haagen-Das, so a good time was had by all.

Piano Woman

Tonight is my weekly piano lesson. My teacher is a young woman from Russia who has X-number of degrees in musicology and is also the pianist for the women's chorus I'm in. When she fusses at me her accent is so thick I usually can't tell what she's saying. But she's a good teacher and good person and a great musician and I think she's great.

She won't be pleased tonight. She gave me three pieces to do, one of which is "difficult" at my level, and I haven't been able to do it. The notes are all weird -- like playing middle C with the left hand instead of the right. But she'll explain it and I'll learn it and it might even make sense.

Or not.

I got my committee assignment today for the upcoming Staff Senate: Staff Issues, which is a bummer since most of the people on that committee and the chair don't believe there are any staff issues.

Monday, Monday

I took off Thursday so naturally I had to pay for it today. I walk into my office and there are 9 pieces of work that had been faxed to me (four of which have already been taken care of and are duplicates but no one knows why they were resent to me, and three of them were filled with scrawls no one is able to decipher), a stack of mail, about 30 e-mails, and a subpoena for some documents.

Got the subpoena dealt with, then slogged through the rest of it. Then it was time for The Retreat.

I work for a hospital, shuffling papers for administration. I do not come within five miles of a patient and maybe talk to a physician once every other month or so. My office is three miles off-site. I deal in language; I do not comprehend data collection and core measures and quality indicators and percentages and so on that goes on in any medical organization. So naturally, The Retreat was all about quality indicators and core measures and how we're all a "team." There have been some reorganizations (surprise; they only reorganize once a year), so we got to see the new "organ" charts so we would know who is most important this week. My favorite part was one of the administrators saying how important it is to motivate and appreciate staff. Right.

Mr. Perky (not his real name, of course) was there. I call him Mr. Perky because he's always upbeat and happy and full of positive thinking. He's one of the lower level administrators and since he makes over $100,000 a year I guess he's got a right to be perky. I bet he feels appreciated and motivated.

They encouraged us to voice our concerns and ask questions, so several people mentioned that we need more staff and more cooperation from the clinical folks. Don't worry, said the administrators, we're going to take care of it. Interpretation: We will continue to need more staff and cooperation from the clinical folks (who also need more help).

The Retreat was supposed to be over at 5, but of course the administrators kept talking until 5:20, at which point I just got up and left with a couple of other folks. There was absolutely no reason for me to be there. None. But I can't say so lest people think I have a "bad" attitude. $100,000 a year would help my attitude a whole lot.

I had to stop at Wal-Mart where they didn't have the frame I was looking for, so I got dinner to go from Subway. My parrots like the bread and lettuce and cheese (in teeny tiny amounts) from Subway. It's Monday, which means House is on so all is not lost!

Hmmm . . . wonder what House would have done in today's retreat . . . .

Sunday Afternoon

I've had a wonderful anti-social day. I've spent it reading Carved in Stone and reading more medical blogs. I fiddled around with my blog, changing the colors and layout.

I had all the birds out at different times, then I gave them all dishes of water for baths. Charli and Sugar really got into theirs; the Bobbsey Twins just stood on the edge of the bowl and looked at the water.

The next door neighbor had a visitor who left their car running and their car radio blasting out that bass THUMP THUMP THUMP at 700 decibels. I finally had to go over there and ask them to turn the damn thing down. Who leaves their car running for over 30 minutes these days anyway?

While I was out I found an unlit firecracker in the front yard. Then I went around the house to be sure none of last night's fireworks hit my house.

I've been leaving the television off on weekends until about 9pm, and it's amazing how much more I get done and how much less frazzled I feel. I do keep the radio on at a low volume, tuned to NPR though.

Tomorrow at work we're having a "retreat," and I've been dreading it for a week. Three hours of "positive" talk and reminders to work harder and do more with less and how we're all great people -- never mind that they pay us the bare minimum. Just be positive about it, okay? grrrr

Big Scary Purple Vet Tape

Yesterday I bought some vet wrap to put on Sugar's sandy perch. She watched me remove the perch, wrap the tape all around the perch, then put the perch back. Would she go into her cage? No -- something scary in there! So I stroked the perch and talked to Sugar and petted the perch to show it wasn't going to eat me -- but she wasn't convinced. This morning I saw that she was walking under the perch and running around on the perch side of the cage, so I figured she wasn't too scared.

Around noon I had lunch with a friend, and when I got home there was Sugar, sitting on the purple vet-wrapped perch! Just as pretty as you please, preening her beautiful self.

So I went into the kitchen and made a big batch of Harrison's birdie bread, which my birds love more than Nutriberries, which I didn't think was possible.

It's so hot and humid today I don't think I'll go back out. I've been invited to a big cookout party in an adjoining town but I don't want to get caught in the rain, and the humidity and heat just make me miserable.

I bought the book Carved in Sand, so I think I'll stay home, curl up, and read that.

But the damn idiots with fireworks around here aren't going to let that happen. After hearing two blasts that shook my patio doors I called the police. Who showed up about an hour later. Very nice but the fireworks were over by then. No broken glass though, which is good.