July 6, 2010: Stress

I got up early this morning.  After the holiday yesterday I knew that there was going to be extra work to be done this morning and that things were going to be really hopping at the office so I made sure to be up and signed in and working extra early so that I could stay on top of things.  I also knew that my boss was out today so I needed to be around to cover for him.

I worked very hard all morning.  Definitely a busy morning as I had predicted.  I waited until a quarter till one local time, which I always try to do when going to lunch here because it seems to be the perfect balance for work to be optimally lunch-ish both for the people that we support and for our own office.  Working in central time and supporting eastern time causes all kinds of problems that someone somewhere never thinks that you should be at lunch at that particular moment.

Of course, no matter how much planning I do to not take lunch at the wrong time, I get a call from my boss while still on my way to lunch: “Where are you?  I guess you are out of office today?”  What do you mean I must be out of office?  I’ve been working for five hours already.  Do I not get any lunch?  I’ve only been away from my desk for minutes and I am available still by email and phone while I am away.  That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.  Not only am I working but he was supposed to be taking a holiday today.

Then he tells me that I was supposed to be in the office today even though we had discussed more than once that I would not be coming back until sometime next week.  And it just gets worse from there.  Well now I’m just having a crappy day.  I do not handle this type of stress well especially when I am not in a position to deal with it right away.  I hate problems that linger and the last thing that I want is to have major problems at work and have it be an entire week before I am in the office to find out what is going on.  And as the new practice seems to be to tell me major bad news only after it is too late I live in a constant state of waiting to find out what has already happened of which I have not been informed.

So now I’m just going to be stressed for a week.  The biggest piece of news for the day is that we are no longer able to move to Austin.  Originally we were going to go straight to Austin but then had offered to go to Dallas for six months to help out.  That would have meant that we would have been heading to Austin right about now.  But as the house in Peekskill didn’t sell or lease we were really trapped and we needed to renew our lease in Dallas until we were able to get out from under the house.  But now everything has changed and we are staying in Dallas now.

It’s not that Dallas is the worst option but we have had our hearts set on Austin for a year and until today we thought that we were moving there as soon as we were done with our lease.  Now that we pretty much have renters going into our house we were very excited that Austin was finally going to happen.  We are extremely fortunate that we found out today that we cannot go there since we might have sent the moving truck there this weekend!  Talk about cutting it close.

At this point I’m a little sick from the stress and worry.  Dominica is very upset that we will no longer be living close to family like we had intended all along.  So instead of being three hours from the Grices we are going to remain five hours away making our weekend travel pretty awful for the indefinite future.  Just when we finally had a long term plan after so many years of moving around.

I’m assuming, but won’t know for a while, that this also means that our plans of spending our summers up north is no longer an option.  That was a really critical piece of being in Texas.  Our lives are in total upheaval now. It’s not entirely unlike I lost my job or got relocated again today.  Effectively we did get relocated and we are starting our planning all over again.

I’m stressed enough that I have a stomach ache.  Dominica is pretty upset as well.  The worst bit is not really having all of the details for a while.  We can make Dallas work.  We will get over that.  That’s just surprising.  It is extra crappy as Andy and Miranda will be in Round Rock soon and would have been just up the street from us.  Now they too will be hours away.

We are assuming now that we need to rent indefinitely.  Dominica was right that we are just too volatile to buy a house.  Even when we try to have a long term, safe house buying plan we get burned.  Our previous house buying we knew was somewhat short lived. Not as short as it ended up, months rather than years, but it was never supposed to be our “home” location like Austin was.

So we cut lunch short so that I could come home and deal with this as much as was feasible this afternoon.  I shouldn’t even try to have lunch; it just seems like a bad idea.

When we arrived back at the house from “lunch” the new Kodak 1080p video camera had arrived.  Unfortunately it needs a very large SD card to be of any use and there is no spare one at the house.  Dominica is tasked with finding one tomorrow morning when she goes shopping at Walmart for doggy cooking supplies.

Back to work all afternoon.  After work was over we went down to the Richardsons’ for take away Chinese.  I was pretty distracted and not very sociable.  I hate that work does this – leaves bad things hanging so that it is impossible to leave work behind.  Liesl had a great time though.  She played in the yard and went all over exploring.  She got Aunt Sharon to walk her down to the garden and pick strawberries which she ate right there.

Liesl had a great time going over to the lawnmower shed and just standing on the slope and then running down.  She was quite the card and everyone found her to be really entertaining.  She knows how to work the crowd, that is for sure.

We did not stay too late.  Dominica is still feeling pretty sick and obviously I don’t feel too hot today.  So we were home at a reasonable time.

The DVD archiving project is going gangbusters.  With three laptops running all day long as fast as they can there is just tons and tons of stuff being archived.  At this rate I am hopeful that we will hit four terabytes of data before I have to head off to Texas.

We were supposed to have the paperwork finalized for the rental of the house in Peekskill today but we did not receive it.  We are told that everything is still going alright and that we just need to hang tight.  It was a bad day, though, and it makes it that much easier to think the worst.  We don’t really have any cause for alarm or concern yet.  It would be very nice to know the official status of the lease sooner than later, however, as we need to be able to schedule movers, get some plumbing fixed, figure out when I am going to go down there, etc.  There is so much to do to get the house ready and not knowing for sure if we can move out of it or not yet is making things that much more difficult.

Dominica and I did go down to the barn today to figure out if we really care about the stuff that is down there.  Tons and tons of the stuff that remains is either going to get tossed or donated.  Sorting through it and making sure that we find the sentimental stuff is our big task.  We want to get as much of that done now as possible as we no longer know when we will be returning to New York and what is there might remain there for a very long time without us having any opportunity to sort through it.

Again tonight, when we went to go to bed, Liesl wanted to go out to the tent to sleep rather than going to bed in the basement.  She really loves camping, apparently.  We were surprised that it occurred to her that we might go out to the tent again after we had only done it for those two nights.