Went to bed with a headache, woke up with a headache, didn’t sleep well. The overcast and rain seem to fit my drained-feeling mood. I’ve been trying to rally but today’s tasks aren’t helping much.

Had to fill out school forms for the lad, they seem needlessly invasive to me but I guess in some kind of emergency his dad and I, who both work within 30 minutes of his school, might be unreachable. He starts next week and they just emailed me the summer reading list. I feel like maybe I should have gotten that a while ago. Actually, they sent a big email about how they are all about communication, effective communication, and keeping parents informed and there was a note about summer reading lists and school supply lists with a link to the website and instructions on where to find these lists and neither was there or anywhere I could find. I emailed the secretary asking where I should look and she emailed back 2 documents without so much as a single word like, “hello,” “oops!” or “Sorry, here you go!” Excellent communication. There are 2 books the kid is supposed to read by next week and he’s at work with his dad so I have no idea if this is something he’s already on top of or if I should be trying to scare up these books for him. So, I filled out forms and signed permissions etc. and found that one form has to go to the Dr.’s office. Oops, that one is on me, I didn’t check it thoroughly when I opened the packet.

I was also supposed to be making a monster book of monsters notebook to proof the process we’ll be using, that’s a great, fun task, but I can’t find all the materials I had to make it with… I’ve looked everywhere I can think of but all I found is the fake fur. So that’s on hold till I find everything. Or I skip it and take a chance on Friday that it will just work out ok. Not my preferred method but it might be the one I have to go with.

I got an email from my ex-boss last night asking me to work next Wednesday with my favorite coworker for the day, I said I’d see if I could and get back to her ASAP. This morning I get a follow up email saying how she’s supposed to be on vacation but had to work today due to lack of coverage, I think that’s a passive sort of jab because I quit. I gave notice on June 26th, my last day was July 10th, it is not my fault she didn’t hire anyone. The email also said she was then planning to be on vacation next week but now that’s collapsed and if I work next Wednesday I’d be working with her. I do not want to work with her, she likes to keep me “busy.” She’ll send me to weed out books that haven’t circulated in 6 years or more and when I lug them downstairs she then goes through them to decide book by book if she really wants to get rid of them, which I understand, BUT then I get to put the one’s she’s not ready to let go back upstairs, and come down and delete the others. Honestly, if she needs to weigh the worth of each book she could delete them herself and save time. I wouldn’t even mind just being the book sherpa who has to run up and down the stairs for her. It’s that she pretends I’m involved in the decision and then shatters that illusion. That’s her pattern and a main reason I was glad I don’t have to work there anymore.

Also, the last shift I worked was very, very awkward. Her friend came in as we were putting some materials together for the kids and pulled up a chair with us. I was practically sitting right between the two of them and my boss starts talking about her ex. She was talking about such wildly uncomfortable things… I just can’t. Not graphic, not like that, just… she’s pining over this guy who moved on years ago, is with someone else, has kids with the new person, I think they are married, and she’s just talking about all the possibilities or whatever and I almost cringed so hard I became a singularity. Her friend was clearly uncomfortable too and didn’t know what to say. I wanted to sink into the floor, run from the room, fly away. I was so happy when that shift ended, I haven’t been back there since. That would have been awkward no matter who it was but it was my BOSS. She also made assumptions about my schedule in the second email, saying if I left at 2:30 I could get my kid from school… he gets out at 1:30 and I would have to leave by 1:00 to get him. Something about that just bothers me.

On the plus side, I’ve spent the day at home so far, doing laundry, changing the sheets, thawing stuff for dinner, getting the forms out of the way, stitching a comforter back together that was starting to fall apart. I haven’t popped out to spend money or shopped online. It’s way to easy for me to spend money when my mood is tanking or I’m stressed. I’ve been trying to resist, and doing fairly well for some months now, but I slip a little now and then. I try to be really deliberate about what I buy, to plan ahead, to get excellent deals and spend as little as possible, every once in a while I suddenly find myself buying a bunch of yarn because it’s pretty, or picking up something else I don’t need, but I keep trying. I posted this morning on a sharing site about needing some stuff to fix up the shed. People just give away things they don’t need, I do it too, give stuff away there. There’s no cost to anything, no profit made, it’s all just to clear things out and get them to people who will actually use them, and keep things from ending up in a landfill. The phrase “There is no ‘away.” motivates me. When we decide something is useless, is trash, and some things actually are of course, but when we toss things “away” they don’t really go away. All that stuff, and it’s a MASSIVE amount of stuff, goes somewhere on this planet and begins to degrade, to pollute often, and there is so, so, much of it. It’s another great reason to avoid buying new things besides saving money.