Thank You, Shit Heads!

Week Four.  Jesus.  Seriously?  Four weeks?  A frigging month of this?  A month of doing nothing but work and sleep.  And the work I’m doing?  Ultimately putting a lot of people out of jobs.  Not cool.  Feels horrible in so many ways.

Today?  Done. Oh, the strike is still going on and there’s still MOUNTAINS of work to do.  But I was just reminded (thanks Universe) that no one cares as much about me or my health and wellbeing as I do.  THANK YOU!  Thank you jerkface company that just jacked me out of 12 hours of earned overtime.  THANK YOU, because I am done with this BS. 

This weekend I Was Sick.  Every bone in my body was aching, I slept for HOURS every day and then for at least 12 hours every night.  I kept looking in the mirror and seeing myself descending into somewhere I do not want to be and not knowing how to stop it.  Gratefully, today I got screwed………and now my eyes are Wide Open.  It’s not to my benefit to work 11 hours a day and then fire up the laptop and work from home and then spend every hour of the weekend tied to a company phone that never stops ringing.  Not to my benefit at all, actually to my complete detriment!

I don’t mind that they stole 12 hours of time back.  It reminded me that the only thing to my benefit is my 7.5 hour day that earns my paycheque….and the rest of my life.  The things that are important to me.  Being well rested, being properly nourished, being active, being nice, being hydrated, feeling good, looking good.

Sure….it’s only been a month….three weeks of strike and a week before that of prep……but it’s beat the shit out of me and today I call Uncle.  I realized that I’m not where I want to be in life right now in a few aspects…….there are only one or two that I can do anything about and if I don’t put some action into them then they continue to go in a direction that doesn’t work for me.

Tonight I’m going to take my dog into the trails for a 3.5km walk-jog (probably more walk than jog given how long it’s been) while Ray takes my car and fills it up with fuel.  Tomorrow I’m getting up and going to the gym for an hour.  Warm up, goblet squats, assisted pull-ups, lat pulls, abs.  Good God I’ve missed the sounds of that!  

I’m mentally exhausted, physically out of shape and emotionally drained.  Only shoving myself through this temporary obstacle course gets me to the other side though so I have some “sucking it up” to do and some “push harder” to do.  Good thing I’ve been on that road before and and know that it brings good things!  I’ve let this huge obstacle carry too much weight in my life and I’m resizing it effective immediately.

Thank you, work shit head, for revoking 12 hours of my life.  I hereby revoke my life from you!

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Strike, Day Three

Here we are, on Day Three of the Strike….and one day before the company goes forward with the Lockout.  Obviosuly, as I’m sure you can guess, things are awesome!  Haha.

I’ve been up at 4am every morning and on the road at 4:45 to get to the “undisclosed shuttle location” to be picked up and dropped at my desk to begin work at 5:40am.  It’s frigging rough and I hate it.

Yesterday I was supposed to work until 5pm (an 11.5 hour day) and I was completely resigned to it.  Then?  At 2:30?  There was an area wide power outage.  No power?  No workie!  I hopped the shuttle, got to my bike and rode myself the hell home.  We packed up a little picnic of ribs and greek salad from the night before, gathered the dog and ourselves into the car and went on a mid-week date.  First stop was a favourite coffee shop where we sat at lovely tables on a little breezy plaza and drank iced coffee (and tea) while chatting and people watching.  Next stop was a park that we’ve ridden our bikes past many times but never stopped in.

We took a 1km uphill hike to a beautiful water fall and then walked back and had our picnic.  Last stop was a shared sundae (shared between the two of us and the dog) and then home and into bed. 

It was refreshing and good for the soul.  The gorgeous bushes and great bush smell and the water fall and the air and sun and sand (at the river’s edge) was amazing and just what we needed!

Today is a new day and it’ll be a busy one.  Ray will go and pick up his daughter’s puppy this afternoon though and bring him back to play with Grace so there’ll be some fun and puppy antics when I get home!

Couple videos from yesterday for you and a picture of the water fall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A43CPwrLIq0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LE6jS_iQC8

Stress Response

Do you know what your stress response is?  I’m talking about your Huge Events stress response.  Or your Lots Of Big Events All At Once stress response.

I once believed that I was highly capable of dealing with stress, that I was good at compartmentalizing and doing what needed to be done, moving forward, keeping my head screwed on straight.  In fact, there was that one year where Ray was so injured he couldn’t walk, I had just been hospitalized and then diagnosed with a heart condition and I was moving into Ray’s house while Kyle was moving out.  I actually handled that one fairly well.  Went to work every day, came home, cooked, dog walked, gym’ed, took care of Ray while his injury and my illness went on for nearly a year.

Then last year I had the car accident that totaled my vehicle and injured me.  And?  I completely shut down.  While, yes, I was hurt, I was also so emotionally and mentally crushed that I couldn’t leave the house.  For two weeks.  And I stopped eating.  Me, the person who eats All The Time, just stopped.  It got to the point where Ray would have me text him a video of what I was having for lunch so that he could check up on me.  I ended up having to get sleeping pills and anxiety medication just to get through the day.  When it had all blown over, Ray told me that he was surprised that I handled it so poorly.  Honestly, my feelings were hurt because here I was, the person who takes care of absolutely everything, took a unintentioned hiatus from sanity/rationality/life for two weeks and he dissed me for it.    He was right though…………I handled it like crap.

In the time that has come after, I’ve worked on relaxing, deep breathing when upset, logical self chatter and better compartmentalizing.

Yesterday morning my boss told me she’s quitting, the company has walked away from bargaining/mediation with the union and are about to give 72 hours strike notice, the HR manager of the company told my boss too bad for me that I’m going to have to cross my husband’s picket line, I’ll have to “figure out how to deal with it”.  My grampa is ailing, we’re going to be completely broke, I still have a car accident to settle (which I cannot afford to pay for if it does not come out in my favour) and we’re looking at official work stoppage at the end of this week. 

Cue the shortness of breath, lack of appetite, consistent vomit-feeling, chest pressure and blank-brain.  I really need to pull my shit together; Ray and I are our own little island as far as this goes and I can’t be expecting him to take care of me because this time?  We’re up the same creek at the same time.  In order to “pull my shit together” I’m trying to immerse myself into my job to pass the time and distract myself…..however all the work that I’m up to my ears in is to ultimately make my hubby’s job (and that of the 80 other employees on strike) obsolete.  I’m feeling incredibly conflicted at the moment.  Nauseated, headache, emotional, stressed, angry, overwhelmed, annoyed.

Last night I was awake from 11pm until about 3:30pm dissecting things.  Things that are unknown or assumed or that I can’t do anything about.  Around 2am I decided that I wanted to go to the gym and I really should have, it would have been more productive than laying in bed stressing myself to vomit status.  The stupid thing is that I had so much anxiety over going outside in the dark, having to talk to the front-desk-gym-guy (who I actually do quite like), what would happen if Ray woke up in the night and I wasn’t there.  All of that was swirling around with everything else and I ended up just laying there for hours.

I realize that there’s probably no rhyme to this post and part of it probably sounds like whining/pissing & moaning….but it is what’s going on and that’s what my blog has always been about; balancing healthy with reality.  Well…reality has stormed the fort, big time right now………I’m just trying not to let go of the “healthy” part!

In For It

10 day strike notice was given at my company yesterday.  Husband and I work at the same place so we’re in a unique and highly stressful situation of limited/reduced finances, the high potential that the company will just close our plant permanently rather than deal with the strike and the political and relationship issue of me having to cross his picket line (I’m not in the union so I’ll still be working).

My Grampa has been in the hospital since last Wednesday with a wicked lung infection in his already deteriorated respiratory system.  He has COPD (emphysema) from decades of being a welder.  While they have mostly cleared the infection, he is now on full time oxygen and dealing with issues of acute aging.  He’s 82 and declared to me last night that he doesn’t feel like his life is worth living anymore. 

I am stressed to the max right now.  I don’t even know what to worry about at any given moment.  Last night I had a good hard cry………well……….I was going to.  I started to.  And then Grace came to the rescue while I was laying on the floor of the hallway sobbing and stood on my back and started licking my face like it was her job.  Ray says that she is a professional in the area of misdirection.  I say that God made tears salty so that your dog will lick them while you cry.  It’s strangely comforting.  I also drank some cheap wine and ate a couple chocolates.  That helps too.

I don’t know what next week will be like.  Hell, I don’t even know what tomorrow will be like.  I’m fully in one-day-at-a-time mode right now.  I have gym plans next week.  I think I need a hard sweat to help release some of the stress.  Whether I can actually get myself there or not……..can’t commit right now.