* I also need to clean house. I finally compromised with myself and said: "Okay. Do the dining room and the bathroom tonight. Then tomorrow, do the kitchen and the living room. Sunday tackle one of the bedrooms, and Monday do the other room-that-serves-as-a-bedroom." (The hall is "free space" because it's so small and really has nothing in it - all it requires is sweeping. The sewing room generally doesn't get cleaned though it needs it)
* Had a near asthma attack this morning (which is why I think cleaning should be on the docket). After working out and dressing, my chest got very tight and I had the characteristic feeling of a "band" of tightness all around (right about where the bottom band of my bra goes). I don't worry about it being heart because a doctor once looked me over for it and said, "It's asthma. If you start getting very short of breath, go to an urgent care place and they'll give you a nebulizer treatment." I don't have an inhaler (I actually rejected carrying one: I'd rather fight my way through the minor symptoms I have than deal with the shakes from albuterol. If I ever get bad enough to require a nebulizer I'll rethink that but right now I can manage with either heat or a hot caffeinated beverage). I stopped, and heated up a buckwheat bag, and plopped it on my chest, and that took care of it. I think in my case it tends more to manifest as the intercostal muscles tightening up than so much of a swelling/over production of mucus. (It may also be a wee tiny bit like a small slice of a panic attack, though I have nothing to be anxious about at the moment).
I do take a daily pill that's supposed to help with asthma (though I take it for hives)
* First AAUW meeting of the year last night. Mostly good except:
- the National is directing branches to STOP updating by-laws (we already got ours all updated) because now they want DIFFERENT updates, apparently. This is all about "protecting the brand" and it annoys me, frankly, because of the level of what they expect from us vs. the level of what they provide to us are two very different levels. Also, I'm just going to refuse to be on the next bylaws committee - it took way too long last time and I have other things I must attend to this fall.
- the National has started doing pins for "years of service." They do 10-year pins. Did they do that when I'd been in for 10 years? No, no they did not. Someone last night got a pin who was in ten years and then quit. (Someone else got a 40-year pin, which she well deserved). And I know, it's stupid and petty of me but YES, dangit, those little recognitions DO matter to me. I got annoyed when the Science Fair quit doing thank-you-for-10-times-n years of service the very year I hit ten years of service.
That said, if the branch hangs on for three more years and I'm still a member, I will get a 20 year pin. That is, if they're still doing them. (Watch them drop the concept next year).
(I have my fifteen years of service to the university pin somewhere. I can't wear it because it got broken before it was passed on to me. And it mattered less to me somehow because of that....I didn't go to the dinner where those things were handed out, it was at an inconvenient time, so it came through campus mail).
And yes, I get that the whole "pin and certificate" issue is just symptomatic of my stupid need for outside validation - I can't give myself a gold star for doing stuff well, see, because I don't trust my judgment, and anyway, wouldn't EVERYONE give themselves gold stars for stuff? Even if they do it crummily? So I need someone else to recognize that I've done something well (or at least stuck things out, which is what the pins really mean).
* So yeah. Tired and a little burned out. This was a long week and I still have Too Much Work this weekend.
I posted last night on Twitter that sometimes I wished I was an Alicorn Princess, so then I could go out into the realm of Equestria and, in my Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice, declare:
"YOUR PRINCESS REQUIRES HUGS!!!!"
Also the meme making the rounds this week - this coming from one of those execrable "PUA" sites (PUA = pick-up-artist, which means "a guy not actually looking for a relationship but seeking a bit of fun and maybe a good-looking woman to impress his friends with") about talking to women with headphones. And my slightly-sad response was that there have been plenty of times I wasn't wearing headphones and would actually have welcomed someone talking to me (well, maybe not a pick-up artist, but I'm not the type of woman they would be interested in anyway) and no one does.
(But of course, I am like a cat in this regard: there are also times when I just want to be LEFT THE HECK ALONE, like in the line at the grocery store where I'm trying to conceal my box of feminine-hygiene supplies from random eyes and of course someone decides I'm his new best friend. Though more often these days, as I'm a woman in her 40s, it's not a guy deciding I'm his new best friend, it's some woman without enough people to talk to on a daily basis who wants to tell me about her medical complaints....and I admit I wonder a little if in 20 years I will be that woman, who feels unheard so much and has sloughed off her filter, so she buttonholes other people in the grocery store to complain at. Well, that's partly why I have the blog, because your reading it is optional, but it's hard to ignore a loud person telling you about their gallbladder removal while you're juggling a carton of milk and that box of feminine-hygiene supplies and the spinach you know you really should be eating more of...)
though I would welcome someone with a genuine interest talking to me. All too often though it seems it's someone who either wants to talk AT me or who wants me to do something for them.
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