New mystery project

I started a new toy over the weekend. It's a pattern that has you make the various bits and bobs first, and then attach them as you make the main body:



No, it's NOT a pony. It's not either of the things I talked about making last week....I found the pattern going through some stuff in my guest room and decided to start it.

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Bad allergies this morning; my eyes itch and one of them is a little hived up. I'm guessing it's tree pollen, though I suppose it could be molds.

I wish there were some kind of way of rebooting one's immune system (like you can try rebooting a computer when it's become unstable) because I am beyond done with random hives and sneezing and worrying about "if I eat this new thing might this be the thing that sends me into a giant allergy spiral?"

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I commented on Twitter that if Aurora (they make the best ones) or some other company decided to make a stuffed Sunburst (the "new" male unicorn - though I guess there was an earlier-gen Sunburst?), I would save up my pennies and buy it. (I doubt they will, though; I bet he's a largely one-off character). Well, last night I was looking at the big Dr. Whooves I made off a pattern I bought, and thought, "If I really wanted to I could probably mod this pattern for a Sunburst." Not sure that I WOULD but I see how it could be done (would really only require a recolor and the addition of a horn and a beard...)

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I guess I've finally more or less adapted to it being daylight saving time. I still do not love getting up at 4:30 to work out when it still feels like the middle of the night, and I do not love driving to work at 7 am when it's still dark out.

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They posted our "pay advice" (this is like an online version of a pay stub; we all get stuff direct deposited) for March. I admit I was "stalking" this because I wanted to see how big the cut was (and, in my bleaker moods: "Are we even going to be able to MAKE payroll for March?").

It's.....not nearly as bad as I feared. I had calculated a 10% cut off my base pay and subtracted that from my take-home pay as a worst-case scenario (I knew my withholding would adjust but I had no real good way to know how much). It also looks like the cut is just under 9% rather than 10.

Still, it's not a happy thing.

I mean, I don't regret so much now spending $50 on a birthday gift for my brother, and I will be able to pay the large-ish ER copay (from my panicked January visit; the bill finally came, and yes, I am kicking myself for not going to the urgent care place instead, but at the time I genuinely thought I was going to be admitted for surgery) without dipping into savings.

I will need to continue to be careful and limit my "discretionary" spending but I don't have to be QUITE as strict as the "spend no more than $50 a week on food, including food-from-out" limit I had set for myself.

But yeah. The bad budget times have really worn on me. It does feel sometimes like everything is broken. (Being "between pastors" - assuming we ever get another one - at church only adds to this). I need to try to break myself out of that feeling but sometimes it's hard.

Oddly, they don't show a reduction in "hours worked" for the month and it was my understanding that was how the furlough days were going to work. So I don't know. Maybe I grade on my future furlough days if it means I'm less stressed otherwise. But this is really hard to negotiate and deal with.

(I expect when our fall contracts come out this pay cut will be "baked into" them - we will make 9% or whatever it is less, but with no more time off. People can then decide, I guess, if they continue on or leave. Given how hard TT jobs in academia are to get these days, I bet most people shrug and rebudget.)

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And I am adding one of life's imponderables:

Why does Garfield hate Mondays? He's a cat. Cats don't have jobs. For him, every day is like every other day. So why does he hate Mondays? It's not like he loves Jon so much that it makes him sad to see Jon go off to work (does he even? Or does Jon work from home?)

This is something that's bothered me since I was a young teen and Garfield was first popular.