I Survived A Stressful Week Without Going Completely Insane

I am participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, which means one post every day for the month of May.

This last week has been fraught with stress. Along with almost everybody in my department, I spent the first half of the week waiting to hear whether I still had a job. I work for a large corporation, and they do these organizational shuffles from time to time, and invariably not everyone survives these. While we knew that this reorganization was underway, no-one was telling us anything. Throughout Monday and Tuesday, several familiar faces quietly disappeared. And those of us who remained were wondering who would be next.

On Wednesday, the new organizational charts were finally released. I had a brief moment of panic when I couldn’t immediately find my name, but located it under a new manager. I was not thrilled about that – I loved my previous manager – but at least I was there, doing more or less the same work I’ve been doing.

On the same day, I received notification that I had been accepted into the Professional Writers Association of Canada as an associate member. This was big news indeed: it gives me access to all kinds of tools and people that could help me in my quest to get a foothold in the freelance writing business.

While all of this has been going on, I have been trying to resolve some technical issues that have been preventing the upload of my new website. Last night I had to log onto a couple of sites, and click a couple of buttons that would finalize the transfer of my domain name to a new registrar.

My website broke.

I went into emergency fix mode, calling customer support lines and harassing my long-suffering website developer. I was able to put in place a band-aid fix, which will work just fine until my new website is uploaded after the weekend.

Then my email broke – the email that’s associated with the domain name.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what needed to be done. I had to kill off the email address in one place and recreate it in another. Which meant that I first had to sift through the emails in the old place to figure out which ones I wanted to keep. And we all know that nobody keeps their inboxes nice and tidy, right?

Sheesh.

I got the email address set up in one place, but now it would appear that I didn’t succeed in fully killing it off in the old place. So the Internet thinks the email address exists in two places. While I’m getting most mail in the new place and none at all in the old place, there is the odd message that simply doesn’t get delivered. Kind of like lost snail mail.

I am trying to muddle through and sort all of this out while coming down from a week of stress.

And deal with an autism meltdown that happened this morning when George couldn’t find his box of DVDs.

All of this is happening as I go a bit mental leading into the final week before my half-marathon.

At least everything that’s happening is, in some way, a step in the right direction. I still have a job. My writing career took a big leap. The infrastructure is in place for my new website, and I can always change my email address.

Even George’s meltdown was a positive thing, because he was able to communicate what the trigger was.

I am ready for a relaxing weekend, and I hope that anyone reading will relax right along with me.

Stopping To Smell The Roses

Look what I have...

For a number of reasons, I find my morning commute to be far more palatable than the afternoon commute. I rarely wait more than three minutes for a bus to the subway station. Because I board the subway at the end of the line, I always get a seat. The morning commute is faster and generally more pleasant – or at least, less unpleasant.

In the afternoon, I am tired and cranky, and my head is full of work-related stress. I am forced to squeeze myself onto an already jam-packed subway train, and when I emerge at my destination, I have to spend seventeen geological eras waiting for a bus home. Because my chances of getting a seat on either the subway or the bus are less than my chances of being ordained as the Pope, my afternoon commute involves me being on my feet for well over an hour.

By the time I got onto the bus yesterday, I was dying of thirst and my head was pounding. I stood there on the bus, one squashed sardine among many, feeling hot and grumpy. I never regard my commutes as fun, but yesterday, I was even more fed up than usual. I stared at the floor for the entire thirty minute bus ride just to avoid accidentally catching anyone’s eye. That’s how much of a mood I was in.

As the bus pulled up to my stop, I breathed a sigh of relief at having made it home while simultaneously lamenting the fact that my evenings are always filled with chores and running around after people.

Yes, I was feeling pathetic and sorry for myself. I admit it.

But then… something amazing happened.

As I stepped off the bus, I saw my husband and my younger son James sitting on the grass near the bus stop. Thinking I was seeing a mirage, I rubbed my eyes.

James jumped up and yelled, “Mommy!” The sun shone on his curly blond hair and illuminated his entire being. I swear, the kid looked like an angel – a glorious shining light that swept away every ounce of negativity in me. He ran towards me with his hands behind his back. The smile on his face as he reached me could have split his face in two as he pulled his hands from behind his back and thrust a bunch of red roses at me.

I spent a few minutes sitting there on the grass with my husband and my son, basking in the sense of love and belonging, and literally stopping to smell the roses.

I think I will regard my afternoon commutes with a lot less angst from now on. Because look at what I have waiting for me at the other end.

(Photo credit to the author.)

I Made It Down The Aisle!!!

Just married!

I tried, really I did.

I had the best of intentions to keep posting every day during the time leading up to my wedding. I thought it would be easy. Reposts. Pictures. A few sentences thrown together for the sake of getting something published.

Little did I know just what the final week of wedding planning would be like.

There was stress. There was much driving around getting things finalized. There were late nights spent at the computer finishing seating charts, printing place cards and drawing up itineraries as friends and family members helped wrap guest favours and keep me supplied with wine.

There was chaos, there were arguments, there were final negotiations with vendors.

What there wasn’t, was time. Not a scrap of it. Every second counted in that last week. The night before my wedding, I was still printing place cards at midnight.

So much for going for de-stressing runs.

So much for relaxing and going for a manicure on the final day.

Do you know what, though? On the day, everything came together perfectly. I had a beautiful, beautiful day. The flowers were lovely. The kids were absolute stars. I felt like a princess, sitting in the limo sipping champagne. The people surrounding me all day snapping pictures made me feel like I had my own paparazzi.

Even the weather cooperated. We got one perfect day of sunshine, that my Mom says was ordered by my Dad.

Best of all, most amazing of all, is that at the end of the day, I had the most amazing husband a girl could wish for. Every now and then, my heart flips as I look at my man and think, “I’m married to him!”

I feel like the princess who got her prince.