the deep moans round with many voices

I took a sick day today because I woke up and just Could Not. Which was partly being absurdly tired for no particular reason, but also I think I hit a mental/emotional wall and needed to spend a day doing nothing to recharge a bit.

So I duly spent the day sleeping in and then doing nothing. Now I'm going to put my recycling and trash out for pickup and probably go to bed early because I would prefer not to burn more sick days than needed.

Things I apparently do while depressed and consequently low on impulse control:

1. Buy cross-stitch kits from Etsy

2. Buy baby clothes for my friend's kid

3. Buy tiny citrus trees

...

I mean, the last item isn't a surprise. My houseplant collection would not be nearly as large as it is if I didn't have a habit of buying greenery when I'm feeling hopeless, and I am determined to get fruit out of a tiny citrus tree eventually. (I have killed... uh... several. However, my second-to-last tree -- a clementine -- is still going strong after two years, and produced one whole flower last summer! Still no fruit, though, alas.)

The baby clothes make sense in context. (Did I mention that I visited Susan over the 4th of July long weekend while I was down in NJ helping my parents pack up their house? Probably not, given that I haven't been posting. Anyway, I visited Susan and her baby is the cutest baby in the world. He also looks a bit like a squashed frog, but you know, all babies look kind of like squashed frogs, so I don't think that can be held against him. *wry*)

And cross-stitch kits are the same kind of low-mental-effort creative projects as paint-by-number kits.

But still.

I would like some spoons back so I can funnel a few into renewing my self-control. *sigh*

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting in this journal since I started it. Where does the time go?

In summary, life has just kind of been A Lot lately -- no one thing in specific, but a lot of smaller things piling on top of each other, to wit:

1. My work schedule was disrupted for a week because Mom Boss and Aunt Boss were on vacation simultaneously and our most recent New Hire had quit (long story short, her computer skills were not up to snuff and she found the office too fast-paced, which, okay) so I had to lend Miss California a hand and let Mr. Geniality cover the leasing end of the downtown office on his own.

2. Church continues to be All The Things, All The Time, since we have parted ways with our interim minister (it was just not working out for reasons I cannot tell you because confidentiality is a thing) and now the Board is working overtime to figure out who should fill those areas of responsibility, and how to make everything work more or less smoothly. Also we have cautiously started to resume in-person Sunday services, which has been an interesting shake-down process.

3. I spent a couple days trying to sort out some car loan paperwork for my parents, since apparently Dad co-signing the loan with me means it has suddenly become relevant to their ability to finance a mortgage when they move to Minnesota next year. I dunno, banks are weird. Anyway, I was finally able to persuade the CFCU website to let me set up online access to my loan and one of the screenshots and pdfs I sent Dad seems to have satisfied his bank.

4. I think I may have had a mild blue funk, judging by the general fadeaway quality of my interaction with the world. Also my sleep schedule got completely borked, which I am only just now correcting.

...

I went to a lovely concert on Wednesday night, by NYS Baroque. It was Italian music from the late 14th and early 15th centuries: lute, viele, tenor, countertenor, and multi-instrumentalist (continental bagpipes, soprano and alto recorder, medieval harp (two rows of strings!), and shawm). It was originally scheduled for March 2020 but was cancelled due to Covid-19, so I was very pleased to learn all the musicians were able to make it happen after all. :)

On Thursday evening I intended to give blood, but when I arrived at the donation site they turned me away because apparently they'd had such a good turnout that they were out of blood bags and such. So I have rescheduled for Tuesday.

Before the Wednesday concert, I attended an online paid-training session for Not the IRS, because we are kicking into that part of the season. The other courses should mostly become available on November 29, but I think a few may be available now.

And that's about it.

It's weird to be focusing on photos and videos instead of the press of rentals -- I find myself more inclined to drift off into websurfing when I am not actively out staging and unstaging apartments or chivvying Mr. Geniality into coming along to shoot videos.

That is probably also at least somewhat a blue funk symptom, but it's hard to say where the boundary is.

Anyway, Mr. Geniality lost his voice late last week, so I've shot some videos entirely without him (which are, generally speaking, not great) and some with him walking behind me and narrating softly to give me a timing framework (my cinematography is much better on those). He's been to see a doctor and has some steroid medication now, so hopefully he'll be better by next week and we can do some audio-only voiceover tracks for our advertising/video guy to edit over the visuals.

Alternately, I will just have to get better at doing my own narration-for-the-sake-of-timing and we'll have another batch of videos that need voiceover tracks. *hands*

We have one apartment currently staged, and I think I will take photos tomorrow if the weather isn't too dire -- it's supposed to be rain and thunderstorms all day and there's a flash flood watch over the whole region. I might try video as well, but we think the incoming tenant will not arrive until August so we should have some time to spare. Otherwise I have two key pick-up appointments and one building tour for a person who rented a room entirely via email and wants to get a look at the building now that they're briefly in Ithaca. That might wind up cancelled if the weather is too awful, in which case I will direct them toward our pre-recorded virtual tours on YouTube.

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In non-work news:

1. I have started reading Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace, and thus far I'm enjoying it a lot.

2. I did some review-checking and spreadsheet updates for Nick, because he likes to track the percentage of his ARC readers who leave reviews but doesn't want to risk trying to read the reviews himself for the sake of his mental health.

3. Garden report: I have picked and eaten a lot of raspberries and black raspberries. (Yum!) One of my bell peppers has not only bloomed but is setting fruit, and some others plus my jalapenos are preparing to flower. My squash and zucchini are blooming, though I think none have yet set fruit. My tomatoes are growing enthusiastically. And the bleepity-bleeping mulberry tree is FINALLY almost done dropping its infernal fruit on my back porch and seeding my container garden with a literal hundred thousand invasive sprouts.

4. I attended various church Board of Trustees meetings on Wednesday and Thursday evening.

5. Happy discovery: a local Indian takeout place in a food court on the Commons (they offer four entrees, basmati rice or naan, and vegetable samosas and pakoras) has reopened and I can once again buy lunch there. :)

6. Last night I woke up around 2:30am with an excruciatingly painful charley horse in my right calf. I got the muscle to unstick after about a minute, but it's been sore and achey all day and I am worried I may cramp up again tonight. Hopefully some stretches will help.

And I think that's about it for now.

Monday I was in Collegetown, and was surprisingly NOT overwhelmed by Tasks. So I got started on a downtown Task during my spare time: namely, creating a spreadsheet into which I can enter the key stamp numbers for all downtown apartment keys, so we have a clear record of which key belong to which lock.

This is not hugely important for finding keys since they're all pretty clearly labeled in the locked key cabinets, but it will be IMMENSELY useful once we start tracking key sign-outs and sign-ins in FileMaker, because we'll be able to stick a label on each key.

Electronic fob tracking is going to be a little more complicated, but we're working on that as well.

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Apparently my first attempt to upload my 2021 PTIN to the Not the IRS internal website didn't go through because you need one specific bit of corroborating documentary evidence (out of four potential options) and I provided all three EXCEPT the required document. *headdesk* So I redid that, and hopefully this time it worked.

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Yesterday I fried two strip steaks and had one for dinner. It was perfectly rare and absolutely delicious.

Tonight I ate the other. It was a bit less rare, on account of reheating in the microwave, but still delicious.

I have another pack of two steaks in the freezer. (They were on sale this weekend.) I think I'll cook them Thursday or Friday night.

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I got the church Board of Trustees agenda mailed out in good time, with all relevant supporting documents attached. Go me! \o/

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Sunday morning I had a Covid-19 test done out at the local mall. They said to allow 45 minutes, but the whole thing was over and done in under 10 minutes, from when I drove up to when I drove away. They said it might take 72 hours to get results, and they'll call me if I'm positive. I can also create an account with Caqyuga Medical to check results online and get details even if I test negative. I should probably get on that.

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I had no energy to deal with laundry on Sunday, but today I pulled up my big-girl pants and got everything washed and dried. I will leave the folding and putting away for another day.

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I have been so goddamn tired lately and I don't know why. It's extremely inconvenient.

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I need to send out holiday cards, blargh.

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I also need to coordinate with Nick and Dad about gifts for Mom, and poke Nick again about what he wants for Christmas. I should probably poke Cat and Susan too. I don't have the spoons for that, but transit time is a thing so I really do need to get started soon.

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Shit, what's the health insurance re-enrollment period this year???

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I've been falling into obsessive reading this past week, which actually, along with the inexplicable exhaustion, is a pretty good sign of a periodic depressive episode. (These are unrelated to my general low-level anhedonia and are basically my brain deciding to drop me down a well for 1-3 weeks at random intervals.) Hmm. Right. Okay, the treatment for that is mostly to maintain as close to a regimented sleep schedule as possible and make daily to-do lists, which I had stopped doing a couple months back.

Okay. Yes. And on that note, I think I should head off to bed.