January Blues...

I am ready for this week to be over. I feel as though I’ve been under my "Pootle” cloud since Monday. I don’t know if it’s the time of year or just one of those times in life where everything just seems blah but that seems to be what’s going on.

Work is going fairly well, at least. I like my job because it’s different every day. It’s actually different every hour. Gone are the days when I feel like I’m so bored, I’m going to climb over the walls of my cubicle, wave my arms in the air and tear off running down the hallways screaming “ARRRRG”

For one thing, I don’t have a cubicle. I have an office. All of my very own. Until today, it even had artwork. It was an enormous, framed, slightly tacky poster of Las Vegas. Today, I removed the artwork. I’ve disliked it since I started and the account manager next to me who is a young guy who’s never been to Vegas but wants to go asked if he could have it. Naturally, I told him yes. Now I have a bare spot on my wall but I quite like it. It’s crying out for something interesting. I’m not sure what that is but I think I’ll find it in time. I’m eying the large framed poster of London we got from HQ that’s supposed to inspire us to do our job well enough to have earned enough ‘points’ to go by August. I’m not sure where that poster is going but I have a nice empty spot on my wall where it would fit…

I digress. I like having an office. I like having the variety in my day. I don’t necessarily like that my boss hired a ‘temp’ recruiter to help me and my fellow full-time recruiter out and she’s competing with us more than she’s helping us but that’s up to my boss. We originally thought she was going to help us find resumes for open positions but it seems she’s started recruiting on her own. I suppose that’s fine. I just wish she wouldn’t use my Monster.com account and call people for my open jobs before I get there. I’m trying to rise above but I know that my fellow recruiter is also getting a little frustrated by her. We’ll see what happens there, I suppose.

However, I like virtually everything else about my new office. I like my coworkers. I like that I can leave if I need to as long as I tell someone. I like that I have sick time and vacation time. I really like that my boss doesn’t care if we go on Facebook during the day as long as we’re doing our job. At my old job, they blocked Facebook except for lunch time. This was a bit of a nuisance for the staff who were expected to maintain the company’s Facebook page during their workday. It meant…they couldn’t. It was a bit daft when you think about it. Besides, what companies don’t realize is that the majority of people have Smartphones and if they have a Facebook account, they have it on their smart phone which means you can block it all you want on the PC but it won’t stop employees from accessing it, commenting and posting regular status updates throughout the day.

So, I think I’ve established that my job isn’t the reason I’m under my 'Pootle' cloud. I don’t even lie in bed with the puppies thinking of ways to avoid going to work. This is actually a strange feeling. I spent almost two years feeling that way with my old job so to get up each morning, detangling myself from puppy bodies and paws, turning on Fox 19 Stormtracker Weather and following the rest of my morning routine doesn’t feel at all like a prison sentence. It’s quite nice.

I think it’s just a state of mind. As I said in my ‘chubby day’ blog yesterday, I’ve been feeling unhappy with myself and my clothes. I’m wondering if it’s because winter clothes feel so lumpy. So many of my big, warm sweaters make me feel blobby, I’m wondering if I need to replace them. Some of them need it. I have a fondness for chenille but I’ve discovered that no matter how careful you are when you wash chenille, inevitably, it wears away and you’re left with bare spots on the garment.

But what to wear when it’s below freezing outside and your office isn’t the warmest either? It’s an interesting dilemma. Any suggestions on that?

I’m hoping that this weekend, if I take some ‘me time’ and just enjoy myself, I’ll lift myself out of the doldrums and feel better about everything. I’m feeling the need for something ‘new’ in my life. I don’t know if that’s a new novel or a new boyfriend or simply a new friend. I think I just need to shake the January blues. Even though February is a little too ‘pink’ in my mind, it’s short and sweet and doesn’t come on the heels of a major anticlimax as the holidays end and the world is grey and cold. I like the world when it snows but lately, we’ve just had the remnants of the last snowstorm sticking around and making everything look messy. I’d rather have a nice fresh covering. I even wore my snowflake pendant today. (Please don’t kill me, mum!). I’m hoping it’s good luck charm will bring on the snow this weekend. Then I can have a lovely self-enforced snow day. That sounds like a treat.

Next week I promise to be less ‘grey’ and more upbeat. Thanks, as always for reading!

Happy Friday!

Pre-Trip Bad Moods....

It's the day before I go on vacation for four days. I think I'm supposed to be happy and excited but at the moment, I'm actually feel rather crotchety and irritable. I know I timed this trip badly; at the moment, all I want to do is just go home, put my feet up for a bit and then putter around the house for a few days. I know I'll have a good time when I get to Comic-Con in San Diego but at the moment, I'm too tired to actually think about going.

Today is one of those mornings in which I feel like I got out of the wrong side of bed: I'm having a bad hair day, I feel like I look awful, traffic was terrible this morning and my coworker and fellow Comic-Con attendee has stood me up in the office. We were both supposed to get here early so we could leave early and yet...I'm here and she's not. Which now means, chances are, rather than leave early, I'll have to work late until she's ready to leave. These are all small things but if you combine them with a rather tired Monkeypants and...I think that means I might be a little scary.

I'll try not to socially interact until I'm feeling mellow. It's probably better that way. The timing of my bad mood couldn't be much worse: I know that.

Now my coworker is here and...sadly, she's also in a bad mood. We're both suffering from pre-travel stress: Me, because I'm in a bad mood, her- because she's afraid her credit card has been cancelled and it happens to be the card under which our hotel room is reserved.

Strangely, this has put me in a better mood. I probably should be worried about the credit card but...I'm not. That has a logical conclusion and solution...it will just take a little time. My bad mood is irrational and silly.

I have no reason to be in a bad mood, honestly. In the grand scheme of things, life is going well. I am a rather lucky Monkeypants in that respect.

I find bad moods fascinating. Most often, there is a logical cause for them but on other days, days like today for me, they just hit you with no real reason. It's like you wake up and even though the sun is shining, you still feel like there's a big old raincloud floating right above your head, just like the Flump named Perkin did. Everything just feels like it's not quite right, hence the bad hair day. I tried to make a cup of tea and then realized I'd already put the rubbish out and there was nowhere to put the teabag without starting a new bin which was not something I wanted to do when I was going to be gone for almost a week. I went to make toast and realized that it had popped up and become cold while I was worrying about the teabag. My ponytail holder isn't tight enough and no matter how many times I redid it, my ponytail looked stupid. Behind all these tiny little things is the bigger worry that I've forgotten something very important that I'm going to need for my trip.

Then, I drove into the office and got stuck behind the world's slowest driver. He was one of those people who constantly rides the brake so it actually looks like he's blinking his lights at you from behind, it occurs so frequently. I always try to keep a cars-length between me and the driver in front of my but it's hard to keep consistent when Mr. Brakey is tapping out morse code on his brake pedal. When he finally turned off, I got behind Mr. Inconsistant. This is the type of driver who is going 70 mph one minute and then slows to about 45 mph the next. Fast and slow, fast and slow...in a way it's worse than Mr. Brakey.

I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not been in my grouchy mood. However, the smallest little things tend to bother me on days like this.

As I got to the office, I noticed there were some of the Facilities crew outside, cutting down a tree right outside the office windows. On a normal day, I'd probably be quite excited that there are lumberjacks outside...lumberjacking. Which, actually, now I type it, is actually a rather hilarious word. Go on, say it again...LUM-BER-Jack. I think it's the lumber part that's funny. What is a lumber, anyway? LUM....BERR.

Um...I digress. I have a thing about words. I've mentioned that before. I find words delicious and I love to say some of them out loud. LUMBERJACK!

Ok, I feel even better now. I think I'll just shout out "lumberjack" if I'm feeling crabby. Of course, that's if anyone can hear me over the sound of a chipper-shredder outside the window. Which, of course, leads me to think about the movie "Fargo" and the creative use of a chipper shredder there. Which is strangely interesting...

This is turning into a rather strange blog. I apologize. I'm going to a comic-book convention so I suppose being strange is probably actually...quite normal.

Which leads me to tell you that I probably won't be able to blog until next week. Captain Monkeypants is going on vacation. My apologies but I will return with stories from my trip. In the meantime, I'd like to thank you all for reading, for putting up with my strangeness and enduring my bad mood. I am feeling far better than when I started this blog. Yet, just in case my bad mood threatens to return....

LUMBERJACK!

Happy Wednesday....

Monday Morning Blues...

What is it about Monday mornings that make it so hard to get going? For example, today it's a grey and snow-dusted Monday, the temperature gauge read 17 degrees and the minute I uncurled myself from my warm and comfortable down comforter, I realized that I'd like nothing more than to get back into my bed.

It never matters how much sleep I get the night before. I could go to bed at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night and wake up at 6:45 a.m. and still not feel like I had enough sleep. Any other night, I'd be fine but Sundays lead to Mondays and that makes them different.

Now it's a Monday morning and I have a strange feeling of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach. I remember having those when I was in school and I had a large test the next day or I'd had a fight with a friend and was nervous to face them in school or, the very worst, a bully had targeted me and wouldn't stop calling me names. As far as the bullies went, that old theory of "they'll leave you alone if you stand up to them," is crap. I tried that. They'd just get meaner. No, the best strategy was to not acknowledge them, to laugh at them and look slightly down your nose at them as they mocked you. They got tired of that quickly and moved on to another vulnerable target. These bullies were rarely violent but they used words to hurt instead, somehow finding the most fragile area of your self-esteem and then attacking. No matter how much you tried to laugh it off and ignore it, the words still did their job, making you doubt, second guess yourself and secretly accept that they were true.

I'm older now and the bullies are much easier to handle. They're usually at work in the form of a coworker or boss who try to use you to get ahead. My strategy with those is to let them; chances are they'll end up shooting themselves in the foot eventually.

On the plus side, we're supposed to have a major snowstorm tonight. If I were going to be a Pootle, I'd worry about the bad roads, of my family having to drive in it. I refuse to be a Pootle though and thus, I'm going to allow myself to get excited about it. We're supposed to get up to 6 inches. I can't wait to see the cascading flakes fall from the clouds and cover the world.

I can feel my mother cringing and curling herself into a ball as she reads this. As I've mentioned, she hates snow. I tried to get her to tell me why and all she says is that "it's cold." I don't get it. Then again, she thinks I'm mental because I love it. I think she should go out and build a snowman and take time to appreciate the uniqueness of a world that's covered with freshly fallen snow. The world is so much more silent like that. Sounds are muffled by the ground covering and the echo of life is much more apparent.

Yet I'm going to choose to be happy about the snow. I was going to write a miserable little blog about how cruddy I feel because I got rejected again, I was going to talk about loss and grief because I lost a friend a year ago.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to enable Monday to throw its shadow of simply being over me. Instead, I'm going to wait for the promised snow. I shall enjoy the fact that "24" is on tonight and though poor Jack Bauer's already had six really bad days, he's having another one and I can't help but watch.

So just because it's Monday and I'd much rather be in bed reading, I'm not going to think on that. I'm going to remind myself that I just had two days off already and they were good. I'm going to remind myself that there's another weekend in less than five days.

Now, if only that would work.

Happy Monday.

In which I pick up a Stray...

There are some days that seem like they were made for not getting up. Today is one of them. The temperature is warmer today; it's supposed to reach almost 50 degrees. For Ohio in December, that's rare. It's also welcome because it means the ice will melt, the ground will clear, renewed and ready for the next snowfall. Today, however, it's raining. It's the gloomy kind of rain that is set in for the day. The sky is a charcoal gry, the clouds angry and heavy, the drops falling sporadically but heavily and the ground is soaking wet.

Naturally, I love it. I love the sound of the beating rain against the window. I got to hear that last night. Despite my intentions to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep in hope of kicking this dark Pootle cloud that I've been under since Sunday, I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and tried to sleep but it wouldn't come. I hate nights like that. On nights like that, it's hard to clear your head whether it's a 'to-do' list, a writing idea, a bad experience you keep replaying over again or just a dejection at the way life is going. It's hard to sleep with that much on your mind.

When my alarm went off this morning, I was already awake. Though burrowing further under my covers would have been most appealing, I finally got up. I keep the heat low at night because I like the room to be cool while I'm cosy in bed. It was chilly though I knew it was warmer outside. I followed my normal routine but somehow managed to leave work a little earlier. The vague thought of Starbucks danced in my head but I wasn't that early. As I was going out to my car, I was stopped by a man I've seen around my building. He was stranded; he was a student at the university for which I work, his car died and his ride hadn't showed.

Though I don't actually work on campus, I drive right by. I felt sorry for him. I hate being stranded. So I gave him a ride. It turns out he recently moved from San Diego, California, had been in the Navy and now was a part-time student. He was friendly and he was nice. I dropped him off.

That was it, really but, in a way, it was much more than that. It was a break from my routine. It not only took me on a different route to work but it actually gave me a chance to interact with a human before I got to the office where, depending on how you see my coworkers, some of them never seem quite human anyway. Sometimes a little human interaction is all you need to give you a little boost. I love living alone but sometimes I get trapped inside my own head and those shadows of doubt that I blogged about last week seem a little deeper. Playing on Facebook doesn't always help, either. I have a lot of friends on Facebook, most of the time I love that. Yet every now and again, I'll receive a suggestion for a friend that takes me by surprise, it's a face I haven't thought about much in years. It's not always a face that comes with fond memories. Most of those faces are on photos that include children, wives and families. And every now and again, I see a former acquaintance and I can't help but think "HE/SHE has kids?" and then the inevitable "What's wrong with me?" starts.

So, I know, sometimes I need to get outside of my own head. But sometimes I have to go there, particularly when I'm writing. It helps to shut out the world and let my story/characters in. Lately, the writing isn't so easy. I can't get a grip on it. I can't settle down and let it flow. My character's voices aren't so clear as usual. That's a strange feeling for me.

I know that it's times like this that make the sunny days and snowfall seem that much brighter and uplifting. After all, you can't have the shadows without the sun which means eventually when the clouds part, the sun will shine brightly and the darkness will fade. Sometimes, all it takes is a good, fluffy, wet snowfall. Sometimes, for me, all it takes is a trip to the post office, a slice of toast and a mug of tea and a little change from routine.

I've already had my change from routine for the day. Tonight, I get to go to the post office. For most people that's not fun; for me, it always makes me feel like I've accomplished something. I love the order of the post office, the stamps, the flat-rate envelopes. Yes, I know I'm weird but we've established that. I'll save my full adoration for the post office for another blog. In the meantime, tonight I'll pick up my package, go home, make some toast, drink some tea and relax, hopefully to the sound of pelting rain against my patio doors. And, if not, it means the clouds are going away and tomorrow the sun might shine.

If that doesn't work, maybe I'll find another way to break the routine, to try something new, to climb out of my shadows on my own. Sometimes, all we can do is ignore the darkness and find our own light. I still have the glow of my two-hundred Christmas lights. I've added more since then. I figure if I keep adding them, maybe I'll drown out the darkness completely. Either way, I'll try to be cheerier in my blog tomorrow. Maybe I'll pick up another stray. I'll keep you posted on that.

Happy Tuesday.

Brains and Rain

I think I feel like being lyrical today. Either that or the stark contrast of my very sort of left-brained job is leaving me empty of spontaneity and creativity. I was supposed to be born in March under a much more 'creative' sign but was born prematurely in January and fell under Capricorn instead. I think this might have made me a bit confused- I'm supposed to be very logical and organized but also love to write and make things up. I even took a quiz here for fun: http://similarminds.com/cgi-bin/brain.pl and discovered that I am 53% right brained and 47% left brained. So thus, I supposedly use both sides of my brain. I just think there might be a big gap in the middle and this is where all useful facts and figures go and are replaced, instead, by a horribly unuseful portion that retains pop culture facts that have little bearing on life whatsoever. Trust me...I can still name all the original members of Def Leppard but ask me who the governer of my new home state, Ohio, is, even though I read it on the State sign every time I leave the state to visit my family in Indiana, and I am completely lost.

Anyway...so, I started todays blog because I realized how much I miss rain. I've been living in So. Cal. for a little under eight years and it rarely rains there. It does rain sometimes, usually between January and April. Sometimes this rain is so heavy, the streets flood and the freeways become like skating rinks because the nine-months of oil and grime have built up and finally get the chance to rise to the surface of the road. Good news for the cleanliness of the asphalt but not so much for drivers. But it doesn't rain much there. And I have missed rain so much. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of sun too- I'm no vampire. But I love contrast- sometimes people just need rain. They don't even know it but they do. It's for those days in which you feel all messy inside and out, the days in which you spend twice as long in front of the mirror, everyone tells you that you look good and yet you feel like you're under a cloud. There's an episode of a rather silly, rather awesome episode of the Flumps, a British puppet show from my youth. In the episode, Perkin, the oldest son of the Flumps, feels all day that he's under a rain cloud and is in a foul mood. His little brother, Pootle, tries hard to make the cloud go away, chasing it, tricking it, etc. Yet nothing works until something makes Perkin laugh so hard that the cloud goes away. (side note, saying "Pootle" still makes me laugh like I'm five).

What I'm trying to say is that sometimes, even though it may seem bad, we all need those clouds. We need those clouds to rain because then it makes us appreciate the sun or, in Perkin's case, the chance to laugh. Granted, Perkin laughed at the fact that there was a turnip stuck in his Grandpa's Flumpophone (the Flump version of a French Horn/saxophone combo- I think it was a Flumpophone but it was something like that, anyway) but the thing is, he laughed. It's a simple thing but, because it chased the cloud away, it meant something. It meant something that Pootle wanted to help cheer up Perkin. It mean something that Perkin realized that sometimes, there are clouds that loom over us and seem like they're never going to go away but, when they do, he realized how nice it was for the sun to be shining and the cloud to be gone.

For me, rain is more of a cleansing thing. It washes away the dirt and grime and gives the world a chance to take a deep breath and escape indoors for a while. It gives me an excuse to curl up with a mug of tea and do a jigsaw, or write, or watch an endless marathon of bad t.v. or movies. It gives me a chance to not feel guilty that I can't enjoy the pretty day outside. It lets me recharge and renew something, no matter how small, inside me. I've always found that my writing is better when it rains, particularly when I'm writing a dark, sad or angry scene. Have you ever tried to kill a character you love when it's sunny and beautiful outside? Not easy. For me, it's not possible. It tends to rain when I kill characters. That'll be another blog, some other time. But regardless, if I love a character enough, I can't make the sun shine when he dies. It's not fair. I'm ok killing minor characters on a sunny day, of course but not the ones who are deep inside me, whose voice is really telling the story.

Since I've moved to Ohio, it's rained once. I've been here over three weeks. It wasn't even a good, heavy rain. It was a mist that lasted a couple of hours. It was enough then but now I'm missing it. And though people keep telling me to be careful what I wish for, that rain (and snow) will come soon enough, I can't wait. I can't wait to curl up and hear the rain and wind blow against my windows and doors, wrap myself up in my oversized-cardigan with my hands curled around a cup of steaming tea and know that when the rain is gone and the sun comes back, the edges of the world will look a little crisper and brighter, the air fresh and new again.

It's one of the many reasons I left the washed-out, cement ridden world of L.A. for the quiet peace of the Midwest. Bring on the rain, I say, bring it on!