Negative Nellies

Man oh man.

I'm starting to feel sorry for anyone and everyone who is exposed to my social media feeds. People have been emailing me being like, "gee, seems like you're having a rough couple of months!" and every time I see a post title (see my last one about funks) I feel a twinge of surprise. Much the same as I did when I got those emails.

See, the thing is...I'm an ungrateful bitch.

The Schatz's Mum has carpal-tunnel in one arm/hand and just broke her other upper arm. My dear boss is in the hospital after having lymph tissue removed, waiting for her biopsy results. Her sister died young of cancer.

And all I can seem to do is bitch about an overabundance of opportunity in my life.

"Ooh, will I get into the law program I want? Will it allow me to keep all my good paying private teaching gigs, or will I have to cut back? Will I get permanent residency in the country of my choosing?" LORDAMERCY.

It's luxury complaining is what it is. Damn it, there are people in Japan who lost everything, people die in bombings every day or die fighting for basic political freedoms (Syria, Egypt, etc.) and all I can do is piss and moan about not having *enough* extras in my life.

Sure, I'm sad that a good friend is doing a 2/3 move to some crappy city over an hour away and won't have as much time for me in the future. Yeah, I'm kinda sorta stressed about defending my early childhood ed thesis on Thursday but not enough to actually really DO something about it and gee, I'd love not to have to worry about how I'm going to finance my rockstar lifestyle while in law school. But really? Really? I'm fine. I'm better than fine--things are fcking fantastic! My life is great, not average and certainly not fcked.

I'm obviously lacking perspective. I need to be shipped back to the homestead posthaste for a good, swift kick in the butt from my yankee Mother who would knock some gratitude back into my self-absorbed skull. Or I need to go spend a few weeks meditating with Deepak Chopra, getting in touch with myself and the universe.

I follow Yoko Ono on twitter (seemed like a good idea when I reactivated my account a few years ago) and she drops these trippy pearls of wisdom on humanity. You know, things like "Write a list of everything you're afraid of. Burn it. Pour sweet-smelling oil on the ashes". Which I usually take with a grain of pink himalayan salt or completely ignore. However, she recently tweeted something along the lines of "Try not to say anything negative for 3 days. Then a week. Then a month. See how you feel." She kind of got me thinking, Yoko did. Or her ghost twitterers. Whoever. I think when I get lowdown and mean, I keep my self down. I bitch about my coworkers, my future mother-in-law, my too-many-chances and everything the Schatz does or does not do. I wallow. Seriously. And I've been doing it more on than off for MONTHS now. This aggression will not stand, man (to quote someone with a far healther lease on life than mine at the moment). So it's time. I'm going to follow Yoko's and my sainted Nana's example and try to quit talking smack. Slowly of course...gradually. Because I come from good solid smacktalkin' folk. Apart from my great-grandma, that is. But I think it's got to help. And two out of the next three days are weekend anyway, so that should be easy. I think.

...maybe I should start with three hours.

Wish me luck.

What A Difference 3 Days Make...

I know it's not Christmas yet. 

I'm not entirely sure whether or not I've got the Christmas Feeling yet.

It is December 23rd, though. I've been on vacation officially since Monday and it's been fantastic. I was getting burnt out as hell and just generally quite sick and tired of all the horseshit flying all over the place at work. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I've got a lot of different things on my plate at the moment, job-wise. My life does not unfortunately consist solely of throwing lovely dinner parties. On occasion, I really wish it did. Between work at the KiTa and school, I get my 40 hours/week. Add the various team meetings, planning sessions or parents meetings and we get another extra ten hours/month, give or take. I teach one adult ed class/week (2 1/2 hrs), have the banker once a week (1 1/2 hrs) and the psychiatric practice every other week(ca 2 hrs). The aforementioned gigs require quite a bit of prep work, which of course happens on weekends and after hours. 

Someone else can do the math, but suffice it to say, I've been busy. Which makes me appreciate two weeks where I've been able to clear my schedule completely of the aforementioned committments all the more. Even the weekends take on a different character. Sunday wasn't the first day of my work week this week. Normally I build a fort out of various books, magazines other printed resources and le laptop and plan all my lessons for the week. Vacation is great. 

Thus far, I've had the time to meet up with several of the Lovely Ladies who I've not had time to see for the last few months/weeks respectively. I showed our new french/british intern around my charming hipster neighborhood and entertained at least 3 times for dinner. And once for breakfast. I also drafted a behavioral analysis and organized and wrapped the rest of the christmas presents. And I've slept in. 

On the docket for today is a bath for the madame, a shopping list for the christmas eve viva italia dinner and perhaps my second behavioral analysis. There's a planning session set for 2pm for our trip to the Karkonosze Mountains on the Czech/German/Polish border. We're going with two other couples, which has not served to make the planning any easier. I'm a lone wolf when it comes to travelling. I do not like making compromises. When I'm someplace I've worked hard to be able to visit or perhaps have always dreamt of visiting, I want to do what I want to do and my companions can take it or leave it. This isn't really one of those instances--I have not always dreamt of visiting the Karkonosze but I do have a pretty clear idea of how my side of this vacation is going to go down. I will make minimal compromises, but god help the asshat that wakes me because breakfast is ready. I.WON'T.CARE. I'm paying money to squirrel myself away in a little snowy house in the mountains to relax, do a bit of skiing, appreciate real winter and snow, but mostly to relax. I do not anticipate further trips of this nature. Although Stephan and I are pretty equally strong-willed in most other things, when it comes to travel, he usually lets me run the show...I think because even he has to realize that I've got a damn sight more experience than he does. 

Anyway, enough ranting. I know it sounds ridiculously egoistic. And kind of negative. But I do think/hope it's going to wind up being a good time, as long as they don't get too german (read: retentive) about cashmoney, food, etc. I mean...we're friends in real life. We should be able to manage a week's vacation. I'll keep y'all posted, but it's bathtime on the farm. If I don't get a chance, I wish you all wonderful holdiays and safe travels with people you love.

Be safe and know that I'm thinking of you!