Monday, September 28, 2015

Monday, Monday

Monday always seems determined to shock my system.

The alarm goes off in the morning and I’m all like, Nooooooo, how did THAT get turned back on? It’s only SUNDAY!!…oh…wait…

Every other morning of the week, I spend the first 30-60 minutes on sifting through overnight emails, reviewing job dashboards and running diagnostic queries to make sure all is groovy with our applications, and researching anything weird that pops up from All That.

Mondays, though…geez. Sometimes it’s almost 10:00 (<= 4 to 4-1/2 hours after I’ve logged in) before I finally put All That to bed and get back to my current work tasks.

There’s always a Certain Pile of emails from people who insist on working over the weekend (95% of these will be “weird things” they saw because they were “validating” something while its process was still running, of course it looked “weird,” it was only half-baked when you were lookin’ at it) (but, you can never assume that, because there’s that other 5% of the time when it was actually something going horribly awry on us…ugh…!).

Plus, the applications had two whole days without my hairy eyeball resting sternly upon them, sooooo, they do have a tendency to get up to all kinds of mischief while I wasn’t looking.

And then, there’s the early release thing for the Denizens. Every Monday. Almost two hours earlier than every other day.

For me, it translates to a half-hour earlier log-out time from work…but somehow, it always feels like it is, like, four hours earlier. It always arrives the same way the morning alarm does, setting off a loud wail of, “Whaaaaaaat? But, it’s way too earllllllyyyyyyyy…!

Ironically, my coworkers do not share this sensation. There are about four of them who will faithfully ping me every Monday at 4:32 p.m. team-time to say, “Oy. aren’t you supposed to be picking somebody up at school right about now?”…usually quickly following up with “…like maybe your son?”

Smart alecks, the lot of them.

But then, they also got the picture I sent them once of Captain Adventure giving me an incredibly disgusted look as he climbed into the van because I was late, mom, LATE.

But even weirder is the way that somehow, bedtime also always seems to arrive well before I’m, you know, ready on Mondays. I still have things I meant to do. Posts to read. Things to order or research. And I always think it’s only, you know, maybe 8:00-ish, but actually, it’s 10:30 and I really need to be off to bed.

And then my phone goes off, shrilly informing me that it is time to wrap it up, woman, you don’t want to end up a zombie AGAIN tomorrow, right?

Whaaaaaaaat? no, it’s too early, it’s only…oh…crap, is that really the time…?!

Mondays, man.

They’re brutal.

Monday, September 14, 2015

The illusion of control

So I was looking at what to make for dinner (I’m thinking a honey-mustard-l’il-hint-of-curry chicken with garlic-roasted cauliflower at this point) (although I have to admit that the ‘cauliflower rice’ thing is really intriguing me) and was having a terrible time with it because omg EVERYTHING looks AWESOME! and then I realized I hadn’t really eaten much today and was arguably too hungry to be trying to pick a recipe because I was so distracted by the thought of, you know, food in general, and THEN I thought to myself, waitasecond – there’s still PIE in the fridge!

If there had been water under my sneakers, I would have been walking on it, I moved so fast. Pie-pie-pie-pie-mwahahaha, pi…you are @^*&@ing KIDDING me…

I mean, really now. Who does this? Who DOES this? That’s like drinking all the but last half tablespoon of soda and putting the 2-liter bottle back in the fridge. Or using all but about eight of the bow-tie pastas but putting the open bag back in the cupboard, loosely rolled up so that it looks like there is at least one more full serving available in it. Only even more evil, because, this is PIE we’re talking about here.

Right up there with putting a carton of ice cream that has, like, two scant teaspooons of frozen confection left in it. <= should come with a minimum eight year sentence somewhere very, very cold. And also ice-cream-less.

…grumble-grumble-grumble…

(Darn tootin’ I ate it. It was my civic duty at that point, and I am nothing if not keenly aware of my civic duties.)

(Danger Mouse made this one, and it was good. The future of pie is successfully being passed on to future generations, you’re welcome, y’all.)

Meanwhile in other news, not long ago Fleur Fatale decided that the place to be throughout the day was on a folded towel on my desk, immediately to the left of my keyboard. Curled up nice and snug in a little ball, sleeping away…occasionally rousing just enough to yawn, stretch, and nudge at me for exactly five pets.

No more, no less.

And pets, dammit, not tickles or skritches or thumps. Firm pets. But not too firm. What constitutes ‘too firm’ is subject to the discretion of the cat and may change from day to day / hour to hour, but usually means nice smooth, consistent strokes from whichever part of the cat is being thrust insistently under the human’s hand to the shoulder while looking directly at the cat and cooing appreciatively at her. No multitasking. No hindquarters. No belly. No legs.

Adhere to these rules, or I bite the crap out of you, human. Your overlord has spoken. See that you obey.

Also, let’s be clear: The towel must be on the left side, conveniently close to the keyboard but not too close because humans type too loud.

Not on the white craft table behind the human, which is too far away to allow for being a nuisance at will. And also not on the right side of the keyboard, because, reasons. CAT reasons, you’re not intelligent enough to understand, so let’s keep it simple. The. LEFT. Side.

Also, not a pillow, or a blanket, or any other form of cushion: A folded towel. Preferably a lighter colored one. Folded such that there are at least four layers, but no more than six. It should be just wide enough to accommodate a curled-up Fleur, but not wide enough to accommodate that tubby-arsed sister of hers, may she dwell forever in darkness and also some OTHER room because GAH, is she ever ANNOYING.

For example, this is mostly acceptable. (Note the empty phone case, conveniently located in case the urge to knock something off the table should strike. Good human slave. Gold star.) (Note also that you’d better not have a phone in there, because eventually, yeah, that thing is goin’ to the FLOOR, yo.)

(I am pushing my luck here: I’ve secretly got one edge of the towel tucked under a heavy book on the little ‘micro shelf’ you can’t see immediately under this part of the desk, so that it doesn’t slide wildly around when she first jumps up onto it. It is very undignified when one’s towel dumps one unceremoniously onto the floor whilst one is attempting to leap from a surface that is arguably just a wee bit too far away to make the bound gracefully, but when one refuses to accept a nice cat bed with a skid-resistant coating on its bottom, one may find that this happens from time to time.)

REMEMBER: Four to six layers of towel between Her Regal Self and the desk.

Any less and she will parade back and forth in front of the monitors knocking every loose thing she can lay a paw on off the desk until order is restored. “Fluff my towel, Minion! snap-snap!

Any more and she will paw and fluff at the towel until it commits suicide by throwing itself off the desk. “Too thick, Minion! Make with the happy, chop-chop!

On a related note, the little stick-on cable / pen holders* I applied to the top of my desk need to go. Not only do they prevent my pen from flying off the desk when she swipes at it irritably, but they themselves likewise do not budge when nudged.

Profoundly annoying, that.

Had to be hissed at last night, when the human slave inexplicably removed the towel for something called ‘washing.’ For, like, three whole hours. No towel. Three hours.

Tsk!

YA KNOW…sometimes, I suffer from the delusion that, you know, I am the mistress of this household. Hahahahahahaha, I know, right?!

Next I’m going to think I can pick out my own clothes in the morning, or take a shower when I want instead of having to wedge it in between Denizen demands, or…you know, never mind.

We all know how that is going to end…

(*They’re like this thingee. I’ve got one on each of the monitor stands, and one right next to my keyboard, where I am always setting the pen I’m using after scribbling a chicken-scratch onto my notepad. And then it promptly goes rolling under my keyboard, or off to one side or the other, and then when I try to grab it again I’m all where did it go?! Only, NOT. ANYMORE.

I love these stupid things. It was super easy for me to get into the habit of sliding it into that slot instead of just dropping it onto the desk, and after the first few times it loosened up to where it isn’t an effort to get it into these anymore. Small enough not to be annoying, straight-up impossible for the cats to knock over / bunt around, also work a treat for getting all those dangly-cords up so that I can’t get them wrapped around my feet and then spike my speakers or phone or whatever-all-else was attached to said cable to the floor when I get up…it’s like the ‘win’ never stops!

Except that I do suspect I’m going to end up having to replace the adhesive backing on the one I’m using for the pen all the time. Have a feeling I’m eventually going to jam my pen into it too hard one time too many and it’ll peel itself offa there. Because I am horribly forgetful about Such Things and will insist on jabbing it into place instead of gently placing it.

But I digress.)