09.27.06
Email etiquette a pass tense …..
I’m sitting, waiting. Two nights ago I emailed a group of people, a group of core deciders in a youth function we ran together last year. I emailed about a pressing topic that needed to be addressed immediately, if not sooner. Here I sit, still waiting for a single reply.
Has email etiquette gone by the wayside? The phone is bad enough, we’ve had quite a few people ignore our calls, people who were supposed to be friendly to us. But email is so horribly convenient a means of getting a message across that there really is no reason for such a delay in a response when one was specifically asked for. Is it that people are so busy they haven’t checked their email or is it because we get so bombarded with scum/spam email (such as the crap spam I even get on this blog!) that we fail to see the more important emails along side.
I opened my yahoo email account to find one email message and fifty-one messages marked as spam. Do you think I filtered through each of those fifty-one messages to see if one was a legitimate letter? No, I didn’t. But, on the other hand, people who have that email address are in the address book that will not filter into the junk mail folder.
So, what’s the beef with my ‘friends’? See below about my own crappiness with friendships, it may provide my own answer.
09.25.06
Dear God I’m almost there
It’s been like pulling teeth but I have 1100 words on paper for my first essay in this course. I’ve often spoken aloud that I’m not sure I like my program, but after spending around $10,000 on school, it’s not a viable option to switch now.
It’s actually my school’s fault that I’m not as keen on my schooling as I used to be. Yes, it’s their fault. I go to ~a certain university~, it’s main forté is distance learning, meaning working your ass off to teach yourself to gain a degree. I’m half done, I only have 15 courses to go, and am seriously loving working from home. I couldn’t imagine going to a bricks and mortar school now. I can write this fricken essay in my skivvies if I really wanted to (and have 
). It has spoiled me.
Here’s the problem. . . how does a Human Resources manager/person/recruiter get a job as an online manager? It makes sense IMHO for a technical recruiter to get a job virtually, as technical (meaning computer geeks 
) company employees hired are often virtual employees. I can’t see how it’s going to be feasable though 
. Anyone know of a company hiring an HR person to telecommute?
An insomniac’s refuge
I’ve been having quite a bit of this lately. Insomnia is gripping my mind and disallowing me to venture into the world of sleep . It’s like an entity of its own, like a small child unwilling to be forgotten or left behind or unnoticed, yet it is an angry child. Insomniacs will agree with me when I say I do sleep, but not normally. Not every insomniac lies awake night after night with no sleep whatsoever. An insomniac’s nightmare can start from the moment the supper dishes are cleaned up and she realizes that the exhaustion she feels is from the go-go-go of her life that prevents her from sleeping as normal people do and only too soon it will be another night where she crawls into bed exhausted only to arise again within an hour wide awake as if the bags were supposed to be permanently fused to the bottom half of her eyelids. It could begin the moment he steps in the door after work and feels the weight of the day press further down on his shoulders, all the while knowing it will not be relieved with a good night’s sleep. It may even start at midnight after a blissful hour of deep sleep brutally disturbed as the lion rears its head yet again.
I wish I were normal; go to bed at 10 o’clock pm, fall asleep at 10:12pm, wake up at 2 am to stagger to the pot to pee, fall back asleep at 2:07 am and sleep until 6:30 am.
My nightly awakenings are not awakenings at all, but ‘never-sleepenings’, until the early morning. I count myself very lucky if the clock above the bed reads 12 am when I crawl into it. Then, it’s still a fight to shut my brain off enough to sleep. Two hours later, my mind has woken me, no, startled me, shaken me awake with another shocking dream and it can take another hour for me to be asleep again. This can happen up to four times per night, and often the fourth time is when I’ll just get out of bed because I’m not sleeping anyway.
My husband will often complain, as a spouse is surely welcome to do, how tired he is as he didn’t sleep well. Meanwhile, I had walked in and out of the room 3 times that night to see if my body will give-in to its sleepiness, only to find him breathing heavily, or dreaming. How I wish my sleeplessness was a mild mannered child, as if it didn’t give witness to its tantrums night after night.
The good news about my ailment is that it is often temporary. I thank God that I do get the opportunity to rest my weary head and it does shut down and it does sleep well. I know it does as I’ve done it before many times. The insomnia always comes back like a bad hemorrhoid, but the relief I feel when it’s gone…..I wish it were gone today.
09.22.06
I don’t wanna mom!
No, that’s not what my dd’s have said to me when I ask them to do something, that’s me, telling myself that I don’t wanna do my essay. I’m such a procrastinator when it comes to essays. And, I have 3 to do for one course……yay me.
I do find essays to be very hard, mainly because I HATE the format that must be used. By ‘must’ I mean I get docked major marks if it’s not a certain way. My mind doesn’t wrap around information in a neat and tidy manor so it’s a huge undertaking for me to get things written out and sorted into a logical order. And planning doesn’t work for me, it just doesn’t.
Shit, better get to it.
09.20.06
Ah, the almighty list ……
I’m a list girl, there is no doubt. I don’t leave my house without one, period. I often see a guy (sorry to generalize, but this is what I see) roaming around the grocery store, with that deer-in-the-headlights look wondering what else he’s supposed to get. I’m not assuming he’s going home to anyone to feed, but I am assuming that his bill will be more than mine due to my incessant need to have a list and stick to it.
My dh learned the trick of the list through trial and error. He was a SAHD for a year and had to do all the grocery shopping. His first trip was a disaster for our pocket book and a delight to the store owner’s. He learned quickly that the list can mean the difference between meeting and breaking budget.
Now, we’re back to me being a SAHM and I list everything like crazy. But now that I’m a student as well, trying to do full-time studies, I find myself wanting to make lists for the other family members within this house that don’t do chores. Yes, I’m the nagging housewife that’s sick of feeling like the maid. I had a friend post today about feeling the same thing and a light bulb went off when a fellow friend suggested lists to curb the male spouse from sitting on his patootie whilst his wife does all the work.
Now my dh is far from that, he does do some things, but I have yet to see him, in this house of 3 years, clean a bathroom, or stop and put a load of laundry in instead of walking over the pile in front of the closet. Yeah, I get the fact that he works all day, of course I just sit around eating bon-bons, so why can’t I do it all? I don’t wanna, I’m not his mommy, nor am I from the generation that has to feel like they should do it all.
Me thinks it’s time to make another list.
09.17.06
Gardening is for the birds
I have spent almost my entire summer camping, and my garden shows it. I did not once weed it, water it, nor hoe it, and the dang thing still grew! I have potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, onions, and peas in it, and the beans have never been picked, so they’re gone now (meaning they’re so woody that even a beaver couldn’t chew through them). Dh takes care of the potatoes (since I don’t eat them much I don’t plant them, those are his babies) and I ‘take care’ of the rest (and I use that term loosely). So now, I have to clean it out as almost all of the plants are still good (durn tubers live through anything!). I’m procrastinating ….
09.05.06
Kananaskis at its best
We had the most wonderful weekend and I’m absolutely exhausted from it. We backpacked into “The Forks”, a total of 7 km in, and stayed 2 nights in the most pristine area I’ve ever seen. I’ve been camping all my life, never have I come to a campground so kept (the only word I could think of). I found 1 piece of garbage the entire time and it was a fluke to find it! Usually we clean up a site before we get settled but it was stunning. Picture this; three enormous mountains converge, as do 2 creeks, at a very treed area. Picnic tables, marked sites and a central fire pit count as serious perks as further up the road fires are not allowed. This is a conserved area, meaning, no logging roads/trucks to barge through, no noisy ATVs, just nature with a lot of laughs.
Our first night was great as the campsite was full of people who really wanted to be there and for the beauty of it, not for partying. So everyone was exhausted from a hike from somewhere and were eager to share, talk, and laugh around a warm fire. We met quite a few people, and we thoroughly enjoyed their company.
The second day we hiked further into the Southern valley to “Three Isle Lake”, which is 4 km in with quite an elevation hike toward the end (250 ft head-wall). The lake itself was seriously interesting. A book we read called it blah, but it was beautiful! We stayed there to lunch it and take in the view, whilst keeping our food from an adorable Pica running around.
Hiking back down 4 km was good, and the evening ended up quiet as most of the company we met had already packed up and left. All in all the entire experience was mind-blowing. I even want to consider selling my trailer to tent it full-time!
The next morning’s 7 km hike back to the car was much more difficult than the uphill trek in as we were all tired from the prior 2 days of hiking. Total hiking distance of 22 km in 3 days is hard on me, and my 5 & 7 y/o dd’s hardly feel a thing!
Today was spent figuring out what hikes to do next …….
