Quo Vado?

I'm three hours or one task away from the end of a full work day. Today, complete with a local site visit caps off a week of overly intense engineering and long bouts of quiet. As I sit in my darkened office, I can't help but wonder just how other people work these weeks all of the time. I'm beat. I certainly don't want to tackle that last task. I even managed to oversleep ninety minutes this morning. I'd turned off the alarm and gone back to bed - just for a minute. Some how I found that perfect morning sleep position. With my head pointed toward the window and my arms tucked underneath my stomach, I floated calmly for much, much longer than a minute. Luckily, Bossman's in Nashville today and my morning site visit guy flexed some time for me.

I have a couple of small goals for the weekend.

1. Do my laundry - from basket to hanger.
2. Clean the bathroom
3. Put everything back into it's place

I was fifteen and a half when I learned how to drive. I wasn't a great driver when I began (hitting parked vans anyone?); but, the one thing I had down better than anything was the steps for turning off the car. Pull the parking break, place the car in park and turn off the ignition. Those three steps soon became second nature, in part because the driveway sat on one of the dozen hills in northern Indiana and failure to follow these simple steps could lead to rolling down the driveway and crashing into the fire hydrant. The routine only changed once. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college I wrecked the blue Toyota (the first accident caused by violating the no-left turns across multiple lanes of traffic rule) and had to learn how to drive a stick. Park became second gear and the automatic nature of the process continued. Today, I forgot to 'park' My Poor Car twice. She rolled six to ten inches before I realized my error. Am I loosing an old habit? If I am, why does it have to be a useful one?

... and I'm not OK with that.

For the last several weeks, I've been making an attempt to live outside of the fantasy world of romantic fiction and television. Taking a step outside of the insular life I built around myself long ago, I ventured into the 'real' world.

I want the isolation back.

At least when I ignored the world I wasn't lying to anyone. When I ignored the world, I didn't encourage others to think things were possible that weren't. As I hid out in this cave, I hurt people by not sharing my witty repartee with them, or by not giving them my two cent opinion, or as PHSv2.0puts it just prevent them from the possible joy of knowing me.

My behavior over the last couple of weeks has been duplicitous, lying, misleading and manipulative. I don't like it. I don't like me. I feel more self-loathsome than I ever did as a cave-woman. There's way too much drama out here. I create way too much of it. I cannot be an adult and stand-up for what I know is right. I cannot be truthful in the face of possibly hurting someone. It feels like the only place I'm honest anymore is in my writing, and that's too ugly to print.

The cave's calling me.
Yet, part of me never wants to go back.

Dear Bossman,
I'm sorry the CAD guy you have working for you is so bloody worthless; but, stop steeling The Kid. I have work for him to do. I have work that needs to get done if I'm going to meet those deadlines of mine that you're so worried about. You keep pushing me and taking away the one resource I need to get my work done. Stay the flip out of my office. Stop bugging my guy. Learn how to read the code. Understand the difference between 2001 and 2004. In other words GO THE FLIP AWAY.
Sincerly,
Your Exhausted Structural Engineer

I took a day trip to Dallas yesterday. Both of my flights left and arrived on time, so the actual travel part of the trip wasn't as bad as usual. Today, however, I feel like I've been run over by a train and my eyes don't want to stay open. My brain hurts alot, and sleep sounds like a disturbingly good thing. I think I'm going to go home on time/a little early today because I feel like such crap. Luckily for me,

I don't k now what I was going to say.

Probably something about the joys of having eight hours of OT already and the promise of working at least one day this weekend. I have to keep reminding myself how much faster OT pushes away stupid debt than staying at home does.

And that's all I have to say on that matter. In other bits of randomness:

• Regularly wearing tall heels would make life much easier when I dress up.
• There's a hole in MPC's driver site floor mat where my heels have been riding for five years and 78,216+ miles.
• I wore a skirt Saturday night that really didn't go with the top. The colors work; but the shirt and the bottom both have too much 'flowing' fabric. There is such a thing as too many ruffles.
• I'm thirty-two years old and I haven't learned how to use utensils yet.
• I'm not the least bit athletic; yet, I find myself struck by the need to correct people's form. From the cross body arm swinging runner to the improperly located butt placement for a stretching waiter, I want to holler out my car window at them.

I some how during the last great room rearrangement managed to loose an important piece of financial information. I methodically moved through 'the boxes' today looking for that one piece of information. I haven't found it yet. What I found instead may be worth more in the long run.

I save cards. If you give me a card, even in thanks, there's a fairly good chance I'll keep it - even if for a little while. Today, I pulled down a box who's contents I'd forgotten. Loaded down with four years of high school yearbook, the real prize were the graduation cards I found inside. The most heart warming of these fourteen year old cards came from the rising sophomores.

I had one class period to fill, when I set my schedule the previous year and on a whim I added the freshman drama course. I was the only senior in that class. I remember walking into that class many times after an hour of calculus and an hour of physics wondering why I was taking freshman drama. It didn't take long until the five young women sitting around me made themselves part of my pack - or me a part of theirs is probably more specific. They joined the Speech Team with other friends of theirs and soon, I was watching over them like a mother tiger. They cheered me, challenged me and allowed me to help them. I had the best time that year with these fourteen year olds who didn't want me to be anything but me - silly and mother henish all in the same person.

As I read through their cards this afternoon, I could only pull images of memories, not actual memories. I still fund myself filled with that warm acceptance they always offered as their words reminded me that not only do I have something to offer; but, going on is always possible.

I have tears in my eyes remembering their kindness and realizing just how much I'd cheated myself and the world by locking down everything but my business side as far as possible.

It's been an interesting week work wise, even if I haven't once felt like being here. My task for the weekend is to get caught up on all of my site visit reports, so that they can go out Monday and I can just print Bossman a list of things I have to get done.

I discovered several things I didn't really want to know this week. Neither Bossman nor Grumpy check all of the required elements of shop drawings. It's more useful to get the Russian Tea Room to work on them. At least the Russian Tea Room occasionally brings reasonable questions. They at least check the truss deflections. Better than that the micro-management now comes with another whole set of lists. Like I need more paperwork and lists to fill out.

My brain's been pretty scattered lately. Add to that the addition of some private writing that I'm doing, and it's been hard to find things to say here. I had a whole post of stuff to write earlier today; but, I have since forgotten it as I bounced from task to task around here. One of these days, maybe I'll grow up.

Yep, I got that perplexed shake of the head from PHSv2.0 tonight. He sees my room as an island I've created to protect myself from being a larger part int he big bad world. He's not entirely wrong. I do hide out here so I don't have to deal with people. What I'm resisting right now is that I have to take responsibility for voluntarily seeking out new people. Which I completely agree with. What I struggle with is the way my brain completes the sentence, "so they can hurt you whether they mean to or not." What kind of warped person am I that sees the whole world as mean? Or thinks everyone's going to hurt me? Or even thinks that it's about me at all? Do I not have faith in the human condition? Is my heart really that jaded? Oh, man. I think I need more sleep.

Oh, my, that was a first for me. I had two, possibly three minor meltdowns over the holiday weekend. I'm getting used to the whole reality that humans have feelings and I'm supposed to be a human so the weekend for me was rough. I even managed to leave evidence of the first meltdown below. I'm not going to remove it because hopefully one day it will be something to actually laugh at. If nothing else, it will remind me of a weekend that really represents one of those turning points people talk about all the time.

I managed to talk myself through two feeling stupid for putting myself out there ledges (see below) while taking two more steps to being a part of the world. I've felt like a zombie for so long - as if I was along on some carnival ride. A seriously warped one that allowed me to steer myself right into my worst nightmare.

PHSv1.0 and I kept having the conversation about how illogical my behavior was and how I could either make a change or keep doing what I'm doing for the rest of my life. I kept going back, so I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing.

PHSv2.0 have only met together three times and I'm already stepping out of my comfort zone. Sometimes too far to really be safe (see the two feeling stupid ledges) but have made some great strides. Even better I've had several hard conversations with people. One of them involved telling Alm I wouldn't be going back to church with her any time soon and the likely hood that I was making preparations for doing some obvious sinning. Another one involved actually telling someone - we'll call him DBlue - about why I was freaking out during the actual freak out. DBlue is actually stationed overseas right now, so I typed rather than said aloud, but that right there is a great victory.

In thinking about what's different now, I realized that PHSv2.0 never made the conversation about reaching out into the world about absolutes. It was about fighting the good fight, getting knocked down and trying again. In PHSv1.0s framing of the issue, he didn't leave room for screwing up. And I, knowing what a serious screw up I am, couldn't even bring myself to try.

It's amazing what a little POV will do for a girl. Heck, I'm even getting ok with applying that term to myself. The world might just be ending. If so, I'd best head off to bed.

"To be mature means to face, and not evade, every fresh crisis that comes." - Fritz Kunkel

"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." - Jacques Deval

I did something pretty brilliantly stupid today. And I'm going to pay for it for a while. I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Seriously. Man, one day I'm going to get it through my thick skull not to be so bloody stupid as to put myself in a position to feel like a fat miserable cow if things don't go well. Damn.