While the Husband’s Away, the Wife Will Play

I know I just made the title very exciting, but the reality really is not as fun as the headline implies.  My husband is away for the week on a business trip.  This is the second one in a month, and it seems likely he will be going on another next month.  He does not actually travel that much for work, but I usually get three or four weeks a year to myself.  So what does a wife do when she is all on her own?  No, I am not having wild parties and passionate affairs, but I do the things that I cannot enjoy (at least not as much) when he is around.

First, I love having more time to myself in the mornings and evenings.  Although I love my husband, he seems to eat up large chunks of my time.  Some of this is used just being with him, often doing things I would not do on my own.  I watch TV shows that I would not normally watch, I talk about politics way more than I want, I let him lecture me on scientific theories I do not understand, I go to shows that do not interest me, and I visit with friends, some of whom I do not like that much, just so he will be happy.  I am not complaining about these things really, because I love him and I want to make him happy.  But without him here, I do not have to put any time into them at all and this frees up hours of evening space.  The other chunk of time comes from not having to do the little things that pop up because of him.  I only have to make one lunch in the morning instead of two.  I can get up a little later because I do not have to maneuver my bathroom time around his morning routine.  I can microwave a dinner without feeling as if I am cheating him out of a full meal.  I create half the dishes, so I do not have to do them as often.  I am free to fill my time with things that make me happy, like reading quietly for hours or watching Law & Order marathons.

Second, I am enjoying blissful quiet.  My husband has ADHD and seems to crave chaos all around him all the time.  I, on the other hand, enjoy moments of quiet solitude without the need for all that noise.  In fact, I often feel overstimulated and overwhelmed by the volume he creates in our house.  I do not like to have music playing all the time.  I do not need to have video games emitting explosions and fighting noises to feel entertained.  I never turn on the TV the moment I walk through the door just to have it playing in the background.  In fact it has only been on for 45 minutes while I watched one Law & Order episode since he has been gone.  Right now, I am sitting in the kitchen listening to the white noise of the air conditioner and the song of the night playing outside my window.  I can think better, can be more creative, and can produce more work when I am not fighting with a dozen things competing for my attention.

Third, I am enjoying a change in diet.  I almost always change my diet when he goes away, but I do not always change it in the same way.  Sometimes, I feel the pleasure of just stocking up on microwavable things that do not require any effort.  Those kind of simple meals are perfectly acceptable to me, but are not big enough to satisfy him.  He is a meat and potatoes type of person, while I am happy as a chicken patty person.  Sometimes, I eat things that he does not like.  I can order pizza with tons of veggies and no meat if I want it.  I can eat mac & cheese and tuna out of a can without any comments about the smell.  I can make beef stroganoff which he told me to never make him, practically on our first date.  Sometimes I pig out in an epic manor.  I eat things that are very unhealthy and in much bigger quantities than I really should.  However, no one is here to see me do it and so I do not have to feel ashamed about the gluttony.  Plus, I do not have to share which makes it all the more tempting.  I hate it when I bring home a delicious something only to feel like I did not get my fill because he has eaten it all before I could.  This time has been mostly of third variety.  I have had almost all take out and in way larger quantities than I normally allow myself to indulge (that bathroom scale is not my friend this week).

Finally, I love having the bed all to myself at night.  It usually takes me a day or so to adjust to him not being in the house.  Although I have experience being on my own, I am so used to him being here that I am not really adapted to the noises of the house settling around us and the neighbors on either side.  So I get a little jumpy by the unfamiliar bumps and creaks, especially at night when I am just drifting off to sleep.  Once I get used to it though, I love having the room all to myself.  I can sprawl out on the bed in any fashion I want without bumping into him.  I can have as many or as few blankets on the bed as I want.  I can open the window to let in the cool night air.  No one tries to hug me or hold on to me while I am sleeping.  No one wakes me up in the middle of the night by making trips to the bathroom.  No one plays Youtube videos all night because they need noise to sleep.  No one snores!  I sleep much better when he is not here (after the first night or two anyway).  So much so, that I often think about having separate bedrooms on a permanent basis, but so far I have not been brave enough to make the request.

There they are, my reasons for loving his business trips.  I do miss him being here, and I do not want him to go away permanently.  I will be ready for him to return at the end of this week.  For now though, I will enjoy my week off from married life.  While my husband is out, I do indeed play.  It might not be as exciting as what some other women might do with their freedom, but I enjoy every minute of it.

See you next week!

Ugh! Self-Evaluations

I just reached my sixth anniversary with the company that currently employs me.  Every year on my anniversary, I get a Happy Anniversary card from the human resources department and a review from my boss.  The review process starts with a self-evaluation form that I must complete, but which I absolutely hate doing.  The rest of the review does not really bother me much.  I can handle reading the critique my boss completes, and I really do not mind sitting through the meeting where we go over it all.  I am good at my job, my boss really likes me, and communication is fairly open between us.  Therefore, I am rarely surprised by anything that comes up in the review process in terms of my current performance.  The self-evaluation portion of the review though fills me with anxiety.   It involves three simple sections to fill out, but they still fill me with dread every year.

The first section is a straight-forward list of my tasks and responsibilities.  I have my job description and a department task list that I can use to help me complete this section.  Plus, I am familiar with what I do on a day to day basis at work.  So this section is usually not that bad.  This year it caused me more stress than normal, because this is the first time I have done an evaluation since being promoted to the accounting supervisor position almost a year ago.  The past four years have mostly been a copy and paste process from the prior year with maybe a few updates to reflect changes in responsibility around the department.  This year, I have a few tasks that I am still doing from my old job because they have not been transitioned yet, but the rest is all new.  I do know which journal entries and reconciliations I am reviewing on a regular basis, so that was easy enough.  However, I was a little stressed out about what management responsibilities I should be including in this section.  I really do not feel like I do a good job at the supervision portion of the position, and I am a little lost sometimes on the boundaries between my responsibilities and my boss’ responsibilities.  I am worried that I either missed something big that they think I should be doing or that I came across as too arrogant about what my role actually entails.

The second section is my list of significant accomplishments for the year.  This is my least favorite section to fill out.  No matter what I put in here, it always seems sparse.  I go to work every day and I do my job to the best of my ability, which I think is a pretty good accomplishment.  However, I do not really work on big projects or unusual assignments.  I am an accountant.  We have a list of routine tasks that we do each month and each quarter, and it does not really change much.  I have been relying on my MBA program to provide some bulk to this section for the last two years.  This year I had the promotion from last fall to include.  Most years, I feel like I include a couple random trainings I took during the year and a couple new reconciliations I learned how to do.  The list always seems so pathetic once I have completed it.  I worry they are going to be disappointed when they see how little I have accomplished during the year.

The final section is a list of goals, broken out into short-term and long-term.  Most of the time, I feel like this section is practically fiction.  I have an idea of the career path they expect from me within the company, and so I cater my goals to make it look like I am on that path.  I also include vague goals like “continue to strengthen my accounting knowledge and leadership skills to grow professionally in the future”.  This year was actually better than most on the short-term section because I do have some ideas about how to improve some of the department tasks that my staff completes and some things I should learn in order to take on some responsibilities that my boss currently does while I am learning my new role.  The long-term section was still vague and somewhat fictional though.  I kept the generic “continue to strengthen my accounting knowledge and leadership skills to grow professionally in the future” items that have been on there for six years.  I also added some that make it look like I intend to get my CPA (Certified Public Accountant) license and continue on a management path.  Truthfully, I do not want to move up in management at my current company because none of my bosses have jobs that seem like they are worth the stress that come with them.  I also am not sure that I want the type of job where I really need a CPA license.  I feel like I cannot say this though, because the department has expectations of what its supervisors and managers will do.  Plus, I do not want the lectures about wasting my potential and sabotaging my career if I do not get my license or continue on the management path.

Right or wrong, good or bad, I filled out the sections and sent it to my boss yesterday.  Now I have to wait for her to do her section, and then for it to go through the channels of review (at least two more levels of management and human resources have to sign off on it).  Eventually, I will have a meeting with her to go over it all.  I guess we will see if what I wrote is in line with what they expect from me.

What about you?  Do you have to do self-evaluations?  Do you like them?  Do you see them as open communication tools to further your careers?  Or do you feel the same pressure I do to fill them out according to the company’s plan and not your own plan for the future?

See you next week!

TV Binging

In general, I try not to watch a lot of TV.  I just do not have the time in my schedule to watch for hours, especially if I want to get a full night’s sleep.  Plus, it is too easy to get hooked on shows that are stupid and not worth the time being used.  I do not watch regularly programmed TV anymore, because I cannot keep to a specific schedule with the unpredictability of my work and family life.  And I made myself stop watching the vast majority of TV shows available on Netflix streaming because it was too easy to be sucked into a vortex of endless watching with the automatic play feature.  So this leaves me with getting past seasons of TV shows on DVD which means I am always behind the rest of the planet but happily only watching in short spurts every week or so.

Occasionally though, I make an exception to the no streaming rule.  For instance, when I am stuck home sick or I am completely brain-fried from work, I sometimes just want to do nothing.  Then, I find myself pulling up TV shows on Netflix and watching for hours.  This has been one of those weeks.  The chaos of work and home life has been marginally better, and that is why I have the time needed to write this week's blog, but it has been hard to motivate myself to do much else.  I am still tired and rather cranky from dealing with everything.  So for the past week, I have come home, turned on the TV, pulled up Netflix, and binge-watched my favorite shows.

My favorite types of show to watch when I am in a cranky mood are procedure crime dramas.  Of course, my selection is limited to what is currently available on streaming, but here are some of the ones I like the most.

-  Criminal Minds – I am fascinated by the psychology behind why bad guys do the things they do.  Of course, some of them are simply evil, but I am more interested in the ones that have a sympathetic background.  While I cannot imagine committing these horrible crimes, when I see stories where I can understand how they got to the killing point, it makes me wonder what, if anything, could drive me there too.  Plus I love the characters on this show, and how personal they have gotten with them over the years without making it seem too hard to keep up with everything.  My favorite character is Dr. Spender Reid because I love his awkwardness and nerdiness.

-  NCIS – This used to be my favorite show, but it has fallen to second place.  Again I am drawn to the full-bodied characters and great interaction between them as much as the smoothness of the show itself.  I am a big fan of both Timothy McGee and Abby Sciuto.  I like him because of the nerdy cuteness (yes there is a pattern), and her because I admire her and wish I was more like her.  I also am a fan of them together and am disappointed that the show does not play with that storyline more.  The reason this one has fallen from the top spot is because it has turned too far into the anti-terrorism storylines.  I want my procedural dramas to be contained in one episode and not require me to put a lot of work into keeping track of threads.  I do not mind a two-parter or a story that builds over a few episodes occasionally, but NCIS has gotten to the point where I am constantly referring back to old episodes to figure out what is going on in the current one.

-  Law and Order – I know this one is no longer on TV, but I am still watching old episodes on Netflix whenever they are available.  I like the fact that these are self-contained, mostly straight-forward murder cases.  I also find it a hoot to watch the older episodes and see how much the show changed and yet still stayed the same over the twenty years it was on TV.

-  Law and Order: SVU – I know most people think this is better than the original, and sometimes I agree with that.  However, most of the time I find the other one easier to watch and that is why I often prefer it.  One reason I find it less entertaining is the painful character arcs.  There was a stretch of time where watching Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler get more and more out of control was ruining the enjoyment of the show for me.  I am happy to say that the cast change-up starting in season 13 has breathed new life into this show and I am enjoying it much more that I was.  The other reason this one is less enjoyable is because some of the episodes are too likely to happen to someone like me.  If there are too many in close sequence where I can identify with the victim, then I get freaked out.

-  Psych – This one is a comedy rather than a drama, and so sometimes it is not a good fit for my mood.  Also, this is one of the shows I watch with my husband so I cannot pick it if he is not going to watch with me.  This show is great for silly entertainment.  It still has a crime to solve, but nothing is done to regulation or expectation.  Shawn and Gus get into trouble as often as they help out.  I am almost guaranteed to be laughing out loud whenever I watch it.  My favorite scene of all time is the Blueberry Speedbump scene (go check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7i0A5xCl0U).

What about you?  Do you binge watch TV when in a foul mood?  What shows are your favorites to gravitate toward when you just need a few hours of mindless entertainment?

Well, I am off to watch some Law and Order:  SVU.  I mean go to bed (watch SVU).  See you next week!

Not a Real Blog – That’s Life

Although my goal is to write a blog a week, sometimes things just will not work out.  That’s life.  The past three weeks have been very rough.  It is quarter close at work, and a rocky one due to changes in the department.  My father-in-law’s illness has continued to take a toll on my family at home.  The past two weeks, I have managed to eke out a few hours to write the blog.  This week though, it just is not going to happen.  I have run out of the time and the brain power needed to put together my thoughts on any topic.  These few sentences of explanation will have to suffice.  I have high hopes that next week will be better workwise, and that should mean we are back on schedule for a blog next Wednesday.

See you next week!

Feeling Helpless – Loved Ones Dealing with Sick Relatives

I feel so helpless when people I care about are dealing with painful situations and I can do nothing to help them through it.  It has been a rough week.  I have had two loved ones dealing with relatives in the hospital.

My father-in-law has been in the hospital for over a week.  His heart was failing and not pumping the way it should, which caused fluid to back up into his lungs, which caused him trouble breathing, which caused an oxygen shortage to his brain, which caused a very sick and confused person.  They got the fluid drained out of his lungs and installed an implantable cardioverter defibrillator.  He was released but ended up in the emergency room not even two days later.  Now he has blood clots in his legs and his lungs.  They performed surgery to clear those out.  He will be there for another week and possibly longer.  Prognosis is not great.  My father-in-law has not taken care of himself over the years, and his body is not strong enough to fight effectively.  The doctor has supposedly said (all third hand information through my husband) that if my father-in-law quits every vice and follows every instruction to the letter, he is still probably only looking at a couple of years.  It is more likely that he will throw those instructions out the window as soon as he is strong enough to do it though, so we are looking at an unpredictable route of complications that will likely end in death sooner rather than later.

My husband is not handling this whole situation well at all.  He does not have a good relationship with his family.  The strongest tie is to his father, with a neutral stance on his sister and a volatile bond with his mother and brother.  So now, he is sad that his father is dying.  He is angry that his father has done so much to destroy himself.  He is even angrier at his mother and brother who are completely dependent on his father, and in his view have caused his father more work than necessary to support them.  He is afraid of what is going to happen to them when/if his father dies, and he feels guilty that he does not want to help them in that situation.  My husband deals with this by alternating between bottling emotions up inside to pretend that nothing is bothering him and lashing out in yelling, crying fits about how awful and unfair everything is.  I feel completely helpless to help him out with any of it.  All his emotions are reasonable.  I do not have a much of a relationship with his family, but a big part of that is because they are so completely dysfunctional.  It is unhealthy to be around them and their drama.  Now he is forced to deal with it in an unpleasant way and with very little predictability about what will happen next.  He will not talk to me at all half the time and he scares me with crazy raving the other half.  I also have no practical advice.  There is no way to make his father behave.  We are probably going to have a weird and difficult time figuring out how to deal with his mother and brother when his father dies, regardless of whether it is tomorrow or five years from now.

On top of that situation, one of my best friends’ mother has also had a recent hospital stay.  I have gotten very few details from her though, so I do not at this moment what the status is.  A week ago her mother was in the hospital for a few days with severe anemia.  They gave her more blood and started her on iron supplements.  However, they could not figure out what went wrong to cause her blood count to drop so low in the first place.  The last I heard was that she was being released to go home.  I have reached out to my friend a few times to get an update since then, but she has not replied.  She could just be really busy, but I worry that there have been additional problems with her mother.  I live several hours away, and I feel completely unable to offer her any kind of help.  Given the situation with my husband’s family, I cannot go up there to check on her, visit her mother (who is a wonderful woman who always treated me like part of the family), or offer any kind of assistance to her.  Plus, there is always the possibility that I am overreacting and everything is fine with her mother recovering nicely at home.

I know that many people feel helpless when the people they care about are experiencing pain.  There are often situations where there just is not much anyone can do to ease the burden.  I know that my husband and my friend both know that I am here to listen and lend support to the best of my ability.  I just cannot help but feel that I should be doing more for both of them.

What about you?  Do any of you have any sage advice on how to get through these situations and how to help my loved ones out?

See you next week!

Addiction to Beauty Bloggers

I have a confession to make.  I have recently become addicted to beauty bloggers on Youtube.  Youtube is actually a fairly new phenomenon to me.  Although I was aware that it has existed for quite a while, I did not have an account and I really did not watch much of it.  Mostly, I watched videos that my friends sent to me sporadically.  Occasionally, I would look up a music video on it.  Last year, I had to use the site to post a video presentation for one of my classes (360 degree performance appraisals, exciting!).  Thus, I had to create an account and actually work with the site a bit.  From there, it moved into more frequent video watching.  My first subscription was Jenna Marbles because that was the site my best friend sent to me most often.  Since then, I have added three more comedy sites (IISuperwomanII, Pittsburgh Dad, and Jeanne Robertson) and two yoga sites (Yoga TX and PsycheTruth).

Then, I discovered the Beauty Bloggers.  Originally, I was just trying to figure out how to use some of the products I received in my ipsy bag.  I have spent most of my life being the Plain Jane.  Now in my 30s, I am tired of everyone looking better than I do.  So I decided to start wearing a little bit of makeup and trying to take more care with my appearance.  I got the subscription to ipsy because it seemed like a fun way to test out some new products and find things that worked for me.  I was never very good at makeup though and am seriously out of practice from little attempt to wear any in the past few years.  Even though I received the new products, I failed at wearing most of them.  So I turned to Youtube for some guidance on what the products were, whether they were any good, and how to put them on my face.  I was quite surprised to find out that ipsy subscription “unboxings” were actually a big thing on the site.

A few ipsy bag videos turned into subscriptions to several channels and hours of watching young girls unboxing samples, showing off hauls, reviewing products, giving tutorials, and talking about their lives.  It is ridiculous for me to spend so much time watching these videos, especially since a lot of it is garbage.   However, I do still genuinely need some guidance on which products to use and how to apply makeup.  I deleted several of my subscriptions and made some rules for watching the remaining ones.  I only watch girls who have similar styles and complexions to myself, because they are going to be the most likely to point me to products that will work for me.  I only watch videos that are reviews or tutorials which give me the information I actually need.  If a Youtuber starts to become too repetitive or annoying, then I delete the channel from my subscriptions.  I try not to subscribe to any new channels.  I find myself backsliding occasionally though, subscribing to that new Youtuber I could not resist when another made the recommendation, watching a haul video that only serves to make me jealous that I do not have all that stuff too, or falling prey to a drama-filled headline that has nothing to do with beauty tips at all.  Overall though, my addiction has become much more manageable and my viewing time is less than an hour a day most days (unless my motivation levels are way down…see previous blog).

Currently, I find myself focusing on three Youtubers.  My favorite is Emily Noel, who actually has two channels, Beauty Broadcast Express and EmilyNoel83.  She is one of the best at presentation due to a TV journalism background that gave her experience with conducting herself on camera.  The Beauty Broadcast Express is entirely short product reviews, which a) give me good insight into some products I would be interested in trying and b) are easy little videos to fit in when I only have 5-10 minutes free to spend on Youtube.  The EmilyNoel83 channel has a mix of reviews and tutorials that I find easy to follow.  My second favorite is Kathleen Lights.  She does a lot of tutorial videos with different eye looks that I find helpful in learning what colors to use and pair together.  She also has extremely dry sensitive skin, same as I do, and can provide some tips in the skincare realm.  The third is RachhLoves who does reviews and tutorials but also some fitness, nutrition, and organization tips that I find interesting as well.  She has a refreshingly silly style that makes her very relatable.

So that is one of my guilty little secrets.  I often find myself watching these videos feeling silly that I pay this much attention to Youtubers, and feeling a bit guilty that I am not being more productive with my limited free time.  How about you?  What are your Youtube secrets?

See you next week!

Lack of Motivation

Do you ever have those days where you just cannot seem to accomplish anything on your To Do list?  I seem to have them frequently, especially on weekends.  I get up in the morning, sit down with my planner, decide what I want to accomplish for the day, and then….nothing or next to nothing.  Then, I go to bed at night, feeling very disappointed in myself for not accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish.

It is not that I am totally lazy and actually doing nothing throughout the day.  I usually keep up with the day-to-day chores like dishes and the routine weekly items like laundry.  However, I have several projects that I want to complete.  I have a house to clean and organize after moving into it more than a year ago.  My kitchen is only half organized, I have no furniture in the living room, and there are unpacked boxes everywhere.  I also have some home improvement projects on the list.  The deck needs treated, the front landscaping needs cleaned up (or actually I want to tear it out and redo it completely), and a new heating and air conditioning system needs to be researched and contracted with a professional.  I have work projects that I bring home with hopes of making progress on them since they never get done in the office, including creating training programs for my staff and updating written procedures that are years out of date.  Then, there are the fun projects that I am supposed to be working on, like knitting an afghan that I started about three years ago and building a model pirate ship with my husband.  There are many things that I would like to know how to do (speak Spanish, rock-climb, ice skate, decorate cakes, know more history, etc.) but I would need to study, practice, and probably get actual instruction from someone else to make any progress.  Finally, there is the writing that I am supposed to be incorporating into my schedule.  I have kept up with the weekly blog so far (go me!), but I have yet to start writing the fiction that I want to create.

For example, today (Sunday) I got up and made this task list:  1) Prepare something to take to the work potluck tomorrow, 2) Clean upstairs hall bathroom, 3) Do one of my pending clothing repairs, 4) Write blog for next Wednesday, and 5) Work on initial direct cost reconciliation procedure for work.  It is now around nine o’clock at night.  I have done laundry, read half of a chapter in my current book Overwhelmed, watched the movie The Money Pit, took a nap, played on Facebook, and watched many Youtube videos.  Right now I am working on the blog obviously, so that is at least something.  I also have sent my husband to the grocery store to get what I need to make my tortilla rollups for the potluck.  Sadly, this counts as a decently productive day for me.

So why is it so hard for me to accomplish my tasks?  The reasons vary from day to day of course, but they dwindle down to a few different themes.  The first reason has nothing to do with lack of motivation and just consists of other things that get in the way, like family events, tickets to shows, and husbands that want to explain String Theory to me.  The rest of the reasons all have an effect on my motivation levels.  Often, I am just plain tired.  I intend to do some work, but I end up taking a nap instead.  Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by all the things I want to accomplish, and either start/stop too many things to actually get through any one of them or cannot decide what to start so I give up without picking anything in the first place.  This is why I started using the planner and making To Do lists to try to prioritize projects and focus on small accomplishable pieces of them.  Other times, I get depressed by the amount of things that need to be done and the knowledge that there will just be more to do tomorrow.  It seems pointless to try to work on anything.  Finally, I get frustrated that I never seem to have relaxing time because of all the other things that need to be done.  I feel defiant and think I deserve to read for half the day or I should be allowed to watch a couple hours of TV.  All these factors combined make me look at my To Do list and say nope not right now.

I have days where I get a burst of motivation and I will accomplish many tasks that I want to do.  I also have days where I just pick out only things that NEED to get done or there will be undesirable consequences.  Then, I have days where I think I will just deal with the consequences and do not even do the things that really need to be done.  Lately, I just seem to be in a cycle of only doing what really needs to be done.  Then the knowledge that I am not accomplishing anything depresses me, which makes it harder to find the motivation to do something.  It is a cycle I find it very hard to break.

What about you?  Do you have these kinds of days?  Rarely, occasionally, or frequently?  What do you do to kick yourself out of the funk?

See you next week!