Love/Hate/Overworked/Look what I got!

There are days when I am absolutely, madly in love with Korea.  Days when it can do no wrong.  The weather is perfect, my kids are happy, my co-workers make me laugh.

There are days when I am not so in love.  Days when I would give anything to be able to walk into a store and buy come frosting in a can.  Or maybe some vanilla extract.  Or some black beans.  Or green beans.  Good beer.  Pork chops.  Or being able to find nice specialty shops, like {nice} yarn shops.  OH THE YARN SHOPS.

This week I have been overloaded with work from a special project I have volunteered to help out with.  I didn't realize that it would be this much work when I signed up.  I have been feeling slightly under valued while being horribly overworked.  I'm pretty sure that I have already worked over 40 hours this week - normal working hours plus all the extra time I'm putting into this other project - and it's only Wednesday.

I asked the other people who are involved to help me out - that I am on the verge of being burnt out.  I'm sure they will come through.  They are good people.  This is a good project.  I'm jazzed to be a part of it; I'm just hating the amount of work that I have had to do in one week. 

The work has made me horribly cranky.  I have no patience for some people ... some students too.  I feel angry and sad and tired and empty all at the same time.  But I know that this week will never repeat itself (I am going to make damn sure of that).  This is a one time push and then it's easy street for the rest of the project.

I will show you what I've been working on, I promise.  I am too impressed with myself to not show you.  But that is a post for another day because I'm still not done working on it.

On a happier note, I got a fish!  She is a betta.  Her name is Star Shine.  She lives in a big jar.  She likes to stare at me when I eat breakfast.  Long story short: she totally rocks.

The Return of Zombie Caroline

After 3 weeks of vacation and 3 days of being back at work (which means staying up because you can't sleep and getting up at 6:30 - gag - to go deal with kids who don't really understand what you're saying and don't care because they are only in school for two weeks before we have another 2 1/2 week break) I can honestly tell you that I am tired.

So tired that I don't really remember the walk from the bus stop to my apartment. I do remember that I wrote about 6 different blog posts in my head about my vacation and how wonderful it was and my birthday and also about how I have a list of things I have to do tonight and about the kind of blogs that I love to read because they make me laugh ... and now I don't remember what this post was supposed to be about.

The long and short of it is that I am (dead) tired (heh) and that I have many wonderful things to tell you about my vacation and about how I did not have a breakdown on the morning of my birthday even though I am now the oldest I have ever been.

... I just re-read that sentence. I am now going to bed. Here are some pictures of said (much missed) vacay in hopes that they will lure you to come back when I have have recovered enough to write a post with fewer (possibly none but I'm not promising anything) parentheses and run-on sentences.

Entrance to the Bantu Caves, Malaysia


Boys in skirts.

Monkey friends!

P.S. - I realized as I was putting captions for these pictures that they sum up my vacation quite nicely: we saw some temple-y type places, there were boys in skirts and lots of monkeys. Awesome.

Thoughts on a Thrusday

This is my actual journal entry from yesterday:

December 9, 2010

I hate this day.

- Caroline

Pretty much sums it up.

Take your Mom to Work Day

Today I took my mom with me to work. Yes, you read that right.

It worked out because I nanny and my mom has this thing about snuggling little babies and I really like to sit and let her do all the work hang out with my mom and little babies at the same time. The schedule for the day looked something like this:

• Snuggle time.
• Sitting and rocking on the porch swing.
• Make the baby smile, practice our coo-ing and giggling.
• Snuggle time.
• Watch Jurassic Park and snuggle.
• Nap for 45 minutes.
• Snuggle time.
• SuperCareo knitting time/SuperMama uses some mom-type magic to make the screaming baby fall back asleep.
• Shopping time (even though Mom didn't get me anything ... what a rip-off).

All in all, a good day indeed. I particularly liked the part when the screaming baby was being dealt with my someone other than myself. Plus I got some knitting done on my sweater which only has the one sleeve left until I seam it all together and then knit the collar.

Yes, I knit. I'll own it. Even if Hilda insists that I also need to acquire 20 cats and grow some gray hairs to go with it. Knitting isn't lame people. Just go click that link and then tell me that I'm knitting things that you would hide in your closet. I AM NOT A GRANDMA.

Ahem. Sorry about that. I just needed to get that out there.

*twitch

Over the last two weeks, I have developed a twitch. Boyfriend likes to call it my "crazy eye". I would like to think that having a twitch doesn't necessarily mean that I'm crazy ... but the fact that my eye has been twitching for almost three weeks makes me wonder if he is right about the crazy thing after all.

Usually it goes crazy at work, but I don't feel like I'm under a tremendous amount of pressure. In fact, I like the amount of work I have to do at work. It means that I spend my whole day working (which makes me feel good and the managers happy) instead of looking around for new blogs to add to my Google reader (but if you know of a totally fabulous blog you should totally share it with me because I love adding blogs to my Google reader). So I'm not sure why I developed the damn thing in the first place.

However, I have noticed (yes - I have had the twitch so long that I have noticed when it gets worse) that it gets worse when people talk about the economy and all the super-depressing/totally-scary things that are going on in the world. Mom told me last night that I am no longer allowed to watch the news and/or read the newspaper in order to make said twitch go away. But when I'm at work and I get frustrated with something, like today when Photoshop would not do what I wanted it to, it goes NUTS. I mean ... come on!

How am I supposed to function in life if all I do is try to avoid the things that make my "crazy eye" go crazy? I just can't live that way! Unless that way of life involved a lot of vodka and sprites. Then I think I might be able to handle it. There you go - I'll just start bringing vodka to work in my water bottle instead of water (and if you found this blog and work with me: I am just kidding about that whole bringing alcohol to work thing. Seriously.)

You know what else I hate about this stupid twitch? When it starts going off in front of someone and I put my hand up to my eye to try and get it to stop and then I have to explain to them that I have a twitch. ARGH! And as a result, I can't stop talking about the damn twitch, which I'm sure makes it twitch even more.

And last night I got another twitch - in my butt. All day long ... eye twitch - butt twitch. I am going to go crazy if I can't find out how to make this stop short of checking myself into a 5-star resort/spa for a weekend. Or a week. Or maybe a month. Or maybe until the economy stops its downward spiral into a black abyss.

Ok - I'm done whining now. Thanks for listening blog - you are SUCH a good friend.

Home Sweet Home

Well, Boyfriend landed safe and sound. He was going through customs when I called him all those times ... he was too busy to answer. Or something. It really doesn't matter.

I took off of work yesterday to spend with him and it was wonderful. We just hung out and played all day. Bing and Lilly went into the vet to get their teeth cleaned and when they came home we all went for a big long walk thinking that it would wear them out. But really all it did was help to make them less groggy from the anesthesia and perked them up. Oh well, it was nice to get out of the house and move around. Although I hate to say that I was quite tired when we got back to the house.

Then last night I went to watch Boyfriend play ultimate Frisbee and his team won! Very exciting. And then we looked at pictures of his trip and called it a night. I didn't end up getting into bad last night until midnight. But I'm doing ok right now with the whole awake thing, which is surprising. I thought for sure that I would be dragging this morning. So far so good.

Also, my presentation is today after lunch. I'm nervous but for the most part I'm not all that worried. I will update on how it went later.

Work

Well, things have been picking up at work. I'm really starting to learn things that will help me later in life. Especially if I decide to go to another marketing firm and try to make a name for myself as an SEO ... which might happen.

Once I get a real handle on what I'm doing I think I might try to optimize my dad's website. He has expressed a lot of interest in working with Clickspeed to get his site to pop up whenever you type in "phase one" or other key terms that are used in the world of environmental geology.

The only thing that I'm not looking forward to is that Mike wants me to make a presentation to him and the other intern Rob, he would have to do it too, for a project that we're presently working on. I mean, come on, I JUST got done with coms 130 this last semester and I really don't want to have to give another speech ever again in my whole life. However, I know that's pretty unrealistic to expect and I'm sure that even in the hospital setting I hope to find myself in at some point I would have to give a few presentations.

I think that I might even need (or be really encouraged to) make a power point presentation. Bleh.