another long skip in entries, but i've noticed that september generally seems to be that way. not sure why, but september is the one month i pretty consistently post less entries. it's not school -- kids start in early august and i'm not subbing any more. and there's not much else going on, so i'm not quite sure what the deal is. it's very odd. i've not even been that busy for the editing thing. just weird.
the one person who is busy is saxy. the temp, "part time" driving job is giving him between 50 and 60 hours a week so far. on the one hand this is good stuff -- we need that money! on the other hand, it's 10-14 hour days, no regular schedule, and they keep pulling these last minute pick ups on him. he's needed days off to get things done, days where he needed to be done at a particular time or start at a particular time, and they just don't seem to honor the boundaries. they've even called him late in the evening on days off to go make one pick up that day. it's just nuts. i worry about him because he's working longer days than the legal 11 hours for driving in a 24 hour period. he's exhausted. and apparently they keep giving him a vehicle that needs repairs...on the BRAKES. wtf is that? exhaust your driver then give him a bad car?
i know they REALLY like him right now, but he's going to have to start insisting on some respect and some boundaries very soon because he now has a second job in the evenings that will be starting early next month. for this to work, the driving job HAS to work with him and let him go when he needs to go. but they've been really bad at that. today he needed to be off to take care of laundry and get groceries because there was almost no food in the house. he's finally on his way in to go get our car and come home...and they call him with another pick up. saxy knows he can't do this once the other job starts, so he knows he needs to start insisting on those boundaries being respected even if it means risking the job. we need the new job because it has real benefits while the driving job's idea of benefits is $100 towards a policy and pointing the employee to an insurance agent. i know my ex pays a hell of a lot more than that for his insurance, so these guys have to be nuts to think that's acceptable.
at any rate, new job is with target. he'll be working on the floor, his pay is something like $2.25 above minimum wage, and the hours are perfect (as long as driving job freaking cooperates). my one concern is that he'll be home very late and driving job will want him to do early pick ups on next to no sleep, so he's going to have to work on morning boundaries as well. anyway, orientation for the target job is over our birthdays, so he's not actually starting until the second week of october.
even if driving job cooperates with the scheduling issues (no early morning pick ups, no after 3 pm pick ups, and no weekends), saxy is preparing himself for long work days. mornings to 3 pm at driving job and nights from 5 pm to 11 at target, which means bedtime will be around midnight. the hope is that we'll be able to get on our feet or he'll be able to find a much more reasonable job before losing the driving job...or that the driving job will become a dispatch job which does have reasonable hours already built in. once we get caught up, plans include replacing the washer and dryer, new mattresses for us (i would so like to not be poked by springs any more), and a few other things that we just haven't been taken care of. before all that, of course, catching up on the bills (the one constant in my life: being behind on the bills and always trying to catch up...maybe we should get the washer and dryer first! lol).
as for me, i've hit a kind of lull. i suspect some of it is that borderline sad i've discussed before. i'm now pretty sure i have at least a mild form of the problem. for nearly 2 weeks we had gray skies. i was miserable -- nastiest headaches i've had in a long time and just tired all the time, no matter how much sleep i managed. towards the end of that 2 weeks, i was being hit with depression as well. then we had a sunny day and i was fine. still had the headache, just not as bad; and all the stresses present the previous 2 weeks were still present. i just felt...better.
the only problem? i'm having motivation trouble when it comes to my own work. there's been next to nothing to do for the small press. dii is running pretty smoothly and is relatively quiet. this should leave me pleeeeenty of time to work on my own stuff, but i just...don't. and i honestly can't tell you why. the whole gray skies thing didn't come back until today, and they aren't staying, so it's not the sad.
or maybe it is, and i just didn't know it until now? like i said earlier, september is a notoriously low posting month. it's also when the fall weather starts to hit. for georgia this is no real big deal since we've been in hurricane season since june or something, but there is a shift in weather in general in september.
at any rate, the one thing i have managed to get started on is some mild exercise. i'm taking it easy because it's been too long and i was in bed for a long time with my female problems. the biggest problem i'm having is being able to do anything standing up -- my back just gives me all kinds of pain. fortunately, my stretch dvd has a sitting down routine (it also has a floor routine, but at my size trying to wrap around your belly in any way, shape, or form is just impossible), and i've just recently picked up a sitting pilates dvd that says it's specifically for the elderly, the overweight, and those in rehab. i like the stretch thing, but a switch every now and then is a good thing. when my back gets stronger again, i have a couple of tai-chi dvds, and i'm hoping to pick up core rhythms and a couple of belly dancing dvds. love dancing and i figure one way to encourage exercise that you hate doing is to do things you love to do. we'll see though -- a lot of things have to fall in place before the tai-chi and dancing can happen.
i'm also managing to get the older whysper archives fixed. i just do a few pages at a time when the kids are getting ready for the school thing. it's slow, but i'm already past the halfway point for the year 2000. considering how long i've put this off, it's a good thing.
the kids are pretty much on normal schedules, so it's only his things and my things that have changed at all over the last week and a half. saxy's gotten busy, and i've...slowed down. but overall, everyone's things are looking better. let's just hope everything keeps on moving in the right direction.
~*~
word of the moment: virgate
having the form of a straight rod; wand-shaped; straight and slender; a yardland, or measure of land varying from fifteen to forty acres
