Month: January 2019

Work Stuff

Pick Your Battles

Karen

I work with a lot of alpha females. In fact, other than our doctors/PA’s, we have ONE guy that works in our whole clinic.

The females that I work with are smart, fierce and work hard to get the job done and to do it to the best of their ability. We have to all have strong personalities in order to handle our very strong, very smart neurosurgeons. (Who have NO patience for stupidity, to be honest). I don’t mind it, in fact, I sort of enjoy it.

However …

Since we all have very strong personalities, we also have to learn to accommodate and adjust to those personalities.

I have definitely chilled out over the years. I wish I was this “calm” and “zen” when the boys were little – I put impossible expectations on them for which I regret today.

But I have a ways to go. My mantra for this new year, “PICK MY BATTLES.”

I have a tendency to be high strung anyway, especially when I’m at work. I want everything to go smoothly so I’m both nowhere and everywhere at once. I’m hyper-aware of my surroundings and who is where at all times. this helps me to plan the clinic day, keep the flow going, and it works, but it’s also exhausting.

By the end of the day, all of my mental energy has been sapped and I just want to sit, absorb the quiet, not talk and stare at the wall.

I go into zombie mode.

And that works for me.

However …

There is drama at work. How can there NOT be when we have so many women with strong personalities. There are days that we don’t get along, or we perceive a slight when in fact, it’s really not that big of a deal. People snap and are snarky and bitch and moan about situations that in the big scheme of things, are simply not that big of a deal.

At least, in retrospect.

This is apparent whenever we are all in “bitch” mode, blowing off steam and our male doctor simply shrugs and puts things into perspective. Suddenly, is it REALLY that big of a deal?

A little testosterone goes a long way.

I have to work hard to shove my ego into the corner at times. Do I get worked up along with everyone else? Of course, but I also try and look at all sides because it’s not all about me. Is it easy? Oh hell no.

It’s not about being the loudest, but the smartest when it comes to conflict.

If I’m going to get involved in a problem, I want to make sure I’m heard and taken seriously.

I can take this stance because I’m older. The majority of people I work are much younger so I feel like I have an advantage from that standpoint. Sometimes I’m the voice of reason, sometimes I’m the irrational one I need someone to bring me back to earth.

I could care less what someone says about me or if they like me. I truly don’t care. Take it or leave it. Sure, it’s more fun to have fun but ultimately, we’re there to do a job, do it and we’ll get along just fine.

But I do get worked up over injustices. People taking advantage of others. People making excuses for piss-poor work performances because they’re too lazy to learn and do it right. People being holed away from the watchful eyes of management to spend their time on their phones the entire day and making their team partner do all the work.

I’m a hot head and I tend to mouth off when I’m really annoyed or worked up. But I’m going to work on doing a better of job curbing that response and looking at all sides of the issue before flying off the handle.

  1. It’s a more mature approach
  2. My blood pressure will thank me

So. My 2019 mantra?

PICK. MY. BATTLES.

 

 

Daily Prompts

My Life: Day Four

Karen

I’m attempting to force myself to write in my blog every day. I’ve gotten SO BAD at keeping up these past several years and someday I’ll be dead and then what?

I’ll be gone but hopefully not forgotten. (Feel free to use these prompts for your own writing).

Today’s prompt(s):

Sleep: What things help you sleep at night? Or, are you a night owl? Do you get enough sleep or wish you could sleep more?

Out of curiosity, I searched “sleep” on YouTube and to my surprise, there were three different “live” videos playing relaxing music and videos of peaceful, beautiful landscapes to help you relax enough to fall asleep, I guess.

Random to tell you that, but interesting – a lot of people have trouble with sleep.

I wonder why, truly. Is it because people’s stress levels are too high? Unresolved life issues? Health problems? Busy brains that can’t shut off? All of the above?

I love to sleep and getting to sleep is not my problem, staying asleep is.

I’m a fish when I sleep. I flop around and change positions multiple times every night. It’s so disruptive, in fact, that Kevin and I don’t sleep together. We can’t. We just don’t sleep that well together. I flop around and snore, he sleeps with a Cpap (a sleep apnea machine because he actually stops breathing at times and the machine kicks in and makes him breathe again) and he sounds like Darth Vader.

Sexy.

But it works for us. We actually sleep. And Kevin, who has never been a good sleeper, is finally able to sleep.

The thing that helps me sleep at night – mindless activities. Whether that’s watching YouTube videos (though it’s not recommended that you stare at electronics before sleep), playing the Sims, (because I LOVE me some Sims), or reading, it works. I still my mind and my body follows shortly thereafter. I fall asleep fast, but since I’m so restless and have to get up and pee three times a night, I’m up, a lot. But again, I can fall back to sleep rather quickly, so that helps.

I wear a Garmin, which keeps track of my sleep patterns, (whether it’s accurate or not is still debatable) and if I can get four hours of deep sleep, it’s a good night for me. I think my record of deep sleep was six hours and that was largely because I took a Benedryl before bed.

I used to be a night owl, but now I guess you would call me a reluctant early bird. I trained myself to get up early shortly after marrying Kevin, who gets up at the ass crack of dawn every morning (though he’s not as bad as he used to be). Then we had children, so I had to get up with them. And now I’m up with the roosters every morning to get ready for work so I’m lucky if I stay up past 9:00 PM most nights.

I don’t necessarily wish I got MORE sleep, I just wish I got BETTER sleep. More deep sleep. I’m a very light sleeper so anything and everything wakes me up. I sleep with a fan on every night, even in the dead of winter, just for the consistent noise. Because anything other than absolute quiet will wake me up.

It’s so annoying.

I’m annoying.

Book Corner

Book Review: Phantom Evil by Heather Graham

Karen

A secret government unit, a group of renegade paranormal investigators… and a murder no one else can crack.

Though haunted by the recent deaths of two teammates, Jackson Crow knows that the living commit the most heinous crimes.

A police officer utilizing her paranormal intuition, Angela Hawkins already has her hands full of mystery and bloodshed.

But one assignment calls to them too strongly to resist. In a historic mansion in New Orleans’s French Quarter, a senator’s wife falls to her death. Most think she jumped; some say she was pushed. And yet others believe she was beckoned by the ghostly spirits inhabiting the house — once the site of a serial killer’s grisly work.

In this seemingly unsolvable case, only one thing is certain: whether supernatural or all too human, crimes of passion will cast Jackson and Angela into danger of losing their lives… and their immortal souls.

 

 

So, I finished this book at about 11:30 last night. (Hence the reason I was a zombie at work today), so that should tell you something. I was interested enough to continue reading well past the time I knew I should be reading.

I haven’t read anything from Ms. Graham, though I’ve seen her name everywhere and have been meaning to. So when I saw her name on Kindle Unlimited, I thought “why not?”

I’m not typically into “horror” books or like any stories dealing with the supernatural – it just spooks me. Not the content itself but because I believe in demon spirits and the possibility of these spirits manifesting  and making its presence known in my life.

No thank you.

But my curiosity got the better of me and I read it.

The writing itself is not bad. It flowed easily and I wasn’t jerked out of the story by awkward phrasing or stilted conversation on the characters’ part. Though I was personally not bothered by the sheer number of “main characters,” the author did a good job keeping them straight, I can see that being confusing for a lot of readers.

There are a lot of characters and there is a lot going on at a given time.

But again, Ms. Graham does a good job keeping Jackson in our sights and the character himself divvies out responsibilities/tasks to the characters so the reader knows who is doing what, where.

The book opens with the prologue, which in essence, is the crime. The rest of the book works on solving “who dun it.”

A group of misfit characters are assigned to the job by one FBI agent who appears at the beginning of the book but then just becomes a character in the background. All of these characters who form the team have some “special” talent. Though it’s not entirely clear yet who can do what, Ms. Graham does a good job of giving us hints so we have a general idea of what roles these characters play in this task force.

The crime itself is … interesting. It’s an interesting premise, I will give her that. And the way the characters go about investigating is organized and makes sense.

However, the premise behind the story, of ghosts that can be seen, and sometimes even physically felt, just felt contrived to me.

Again, I tend to roll my eyes at paranormal stories. On one hand, they are creepy as shit, and on the other hand, they are almost ridiculous, which I would think would be a writer’s challenge for this type of genre, the sheer challenge of “selling” this premise to the reader without making it look over-the-top or just plain silly.

Most of the characters in the group can see dead people.

It’s hard to write that sentence without smirking. I feel like there was an idea for this story and then the author just decided to throw in some supernatural element to make it more interesting. It was definitely more interesting but for me, it just didn’t work.

Not to mention, Jackson and his love interest, Angela. The amount of time that these two started a physical relationship really turned me off. They knew each for what, TWO DAYS before it started getting steamy. And the fact that the rest of the team, again, all strangers and all just meeting, were perfectly fine with it did not appeal to me.

String me along!

I think, for me, if Ms. Graham is going to make this team a series, and it looks like she does, then let’s slow things down a bit. Let’s see the relationship grow, let’s see the characters tease each other and get to know each other before doing the nasty.

That completely turned me off.

In addition, the brainwashing church cult aspect of this story stuck out like a sore thumb, too.

I felt like the author took some story ideas, threw them against the wall and kept the ones that stuck. It felt hodge-podged and disjointed. Not to mention the “bad guy’s” reason for bringing the team in in the first place was sort of a weird, thin reason, in my opinion.

Overall, I’m still on the fence if I want to read any more in this series. Granted, the paranormal story lines are not my thing but I don’t think I’m ready to completely write this series off yet. I downloaded books two and three from Kindle Unlimited – let’s see if I like them enough to continue reading the series.

 

Daily Prompts

My Life: Day Three

Karen

I’m attempting to force myself to write in my blog every day. I’ve gotten SO BAD at keeping up these past several years and someday I’ll be dead and then what?

I’ll be gone but hopefully not forgotten. (Feel free to use these prompts for your own writing).

Today’s prompt(s):

The Unrequited love poem: How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back?

I haven’t really been in very many relationships in my life. My first boyfriend just wasn’t that into me and it broke my heart. I gave him ALL of me and he discarded me like yesterday’s socks. To make matters worse, he started dating someone while he was still with me. I immediately broke up with him when I found out, which in hindsight, was what he wanted, I suppose. Then he wasn’t put in the awkward position of breaking it off with me.

Pussy.

But that experience taught me to harden my heart. It broke something in me. I remember holing myself off from civilization, for days, and analyzing every aspect of that relationship and coming to the conclusion, the only person I can ever truly count on, is me. I never again allowed anyone to get as close to me or to give myself as fully. It was just too painful. I’ve given all that I’m capable of giving to Kevin and no one else.

Ever.

I wish I could give more to Kevin, but there is a wall that no matter how hard I try to break down, remains to this day.

In some ways, I feel like that experience damaged me. It made me cold, uncaring in a lot of ways. I truly don’t care. I mean I care, but only to a point. It scares me sometimes how cold I can be.

But in other ways, I’m sort of glad it did happen. I don’t get that upset when someone pulls out of my life. I just shrug and  go on with my life. I’m not exactly proud of this trait, but it’s definitely protected me from getting hurt. And if people don’t want to make that much effort to be part of my life, I’m certainly not going to chase them down and MAKE them. Meh. Life goes on.

I had another “relationship” right before Kevin. I wouldn’t call him my boyfriend because I wasn’t naive enough to think it was going anywhere, he was separated from his wife. They were on the crux of getting divorced. He was someone I went to high school with and had a huge crush on, though he didn’t give me the time of day in high school because contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t part of the “cool” kids – I was one of those kids that was on the outskirts of many different groups of kids – I was friends with everyone and no one at the same time.

(Remember the cold heart trait?)

But it was an intense relationship. We had fun together. It was lighthearted and never serious. But I did like him. The night before his divorce was final, his wife called him and wanted to talk. He was torn. I didn’t want to let him go but I knew if he didn’t, he would always wonder “what if.” So, I encouraged him to go.

He never came back.

It was hard, and I cried for hours afterward. I remember my roommate stayed up with me and tried to console me. But that piece of walled heart? Protected me and though I was sad, I wasn’t devastated. It didn’t break me, I simply went on with life.

Six months later, I met Kevin.

But I was cautious. I tread very carefully because when I met Kevin, he was newly divorced (six months) and I didn’t want to become the “rebound girl.” (I feel like this blog post just took a turn into deep emotional territory, grab hold of something).

So, I kept him at arm’s distance, though we did move in together and lived together for two years until I thought, “Okay, I think it’s safe to say I’m more than a rebound girl” and pretty much forced him to propose because tick/tock! Life is too short for you to make up your mind, either we get married or we move on.

Yeah, I’m such a romantic.

And here we are, almost 29 years married.

But that’s my romantic story in a nutshell. Sure, there were other guys sprinkled throughout that history, but none lasted very long because I wasn’t interested in anything long term – we had fun, we moved on. So other than my first boyfriend, I’ve never felt love for someone that didn’t return it.

I don’t know if that is something to be proud or to feel sad about. I’ll let you decide.

 

At the Moment

Obsessed with These Daily Vlogs

Karen

I’ve mentioned the past that I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore. Nothing really interests me. Though I’m wondering if that changes once I get back on the treadmill and start watching shows to distract me from the fact THAT I’M DYING.

Still. I’ll make a vow right now – I will only watch TV on the treadmill.

There. Hold me accountable.

No. Instead of TV and reading, I’ve been OBSESSED with family vlogs. These two specifically:

And …

Ellie and Jared are the perfect parents. They are gentle, quiet, kind, patient and very loving to their boys. When I watched the Christmas Special, Part 2, I actually cried because the boys are just so sweet! I think it reminds me of when our boys were little and I MISS those days. I really do.

KKandBabyJ is a vlog I love because it’s a young, modern family that are simply DOING IT RIGHT. They are hip but they are clearly teaching their boys to be good  human beings. They have a great sense of humor and their boys are SO SWEET!! They are fun to watch and I pray if our boys ever get married, they live this kind of life.

I also feel envy when I watch these videos. Not for the family dynamics, though I do wish I had Ellie’s patience when the kids were little, but what a GREAT video diary of their lives to look back on when they get older. I WISH I had done something like this, either video, or blog format, just to look back on and reflect and appreciate those times. I have pictures, which is better than nothing, but there are no stories to go with those pictures and as time goes by, I am forgetting the little things surrounding those snapshots and that makes me sad.

I like to watch clean, wholesome videos like this because it just sort of “cleanses” my whole day. It makes me happy and I walk away feeling hopeful about people in general.

 

Daily Prompts

My Life: Day Two

Karen

 

I’m attempting to force myself to write in my blog every day. I’ve gotten SO BAD at keeping up these past several years and someday I’ll be dead and then what?

I’ll be gone but hopefully not forgotten. (Feel free to use these prompts for your own writing).

Today’s prompt(s):

Beauty: How do you define beauty? What things are beautiful to you?

I define beauty as kindness, confidence, smooth edges and soft textures. Something aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Color or shadowy blacks and whites. Giving and being thoughtful. Dark hair and light eyes. A hard physique but a soft heart.

A landscape that takes my breath away.

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A solemn, silent moment to reflect.

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A dizzying array of colors, patterns and lights.

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Happy smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is beauty in nearly EVERYTHING. You just have to train yourself to recognize, and appreciate, it.

Daily Prompts

My Life: Day One

Karen

I’m attempting to force myself to write in my blog every day. I’ve gotten SO BAD at keeping up these past several years and someday I’ll be dead and then what?

I’ll be gone but hopefully not forgotten.

Today’s prompt(s):

Happiness: What makes you happy?

Also: New Year’s Goals – sorry, I’m going to be cliche for a moment.

What makes me happy … warm (not hot) sunny days. Sweet smell of flowers, or nice smells in general. Sharp, clean mountain air, cool ocean breezes gliding across my face. Funny people and entertaining stories. Being alone and immersing myself in an entertaining, imaginary world. Soft blankets and hot coffee. Challenging board games and comfortable clothes. Going on vacations with Kevin and coming home with really good pictures. Having adult conversations with our boys. Having a whole day in front of me with nothing to do and nowhere to be.

And here we are, friends, a brand new year. A clean slate. Out with the old, in with the new. Another year older.

Other than waking up each morning? I don’t really have goals. I guess my goals, overall, are to take a yearly vacation with Kevin, take more pictures and wrack up more memories. I would like to take a cruise with me and the boys one of these years but who knows when that will happen. Everyone has their own schedule now (though Blake is still working with Kevin, it’s hard for both of them to take off at the same time because that means there is no one to man the office) and we’re making the boys pay their own way (so they will appreciate the experience more) and that takes planning.

But it will happen at some point, I’m confident.

I’m really back into reading. I fell out of it for several years and I’ve missed it. I wrote about meeting my reading goal for 2018 and I’m looking forward to meeting my reading goal in 2019. I REALLY want to get back into writing, as well. My challenge is: since my day job sucks the life out of me and I’m so brain dead when I get home at night that all I want to do is veg out and do anything BUT think, I need to come up with a writing schedule that works for me, i.e. weekends/days off.

I’m trying to write these blog posts ahead giving myself  permission to post an occasional “bonus” post whenever something comes up or the inevitable rant because trust me when I say, I rant at times.

It makes me feel better. And it helps me put things into perspective.

Other than that? I don’t really have “goals” per se. This year it’s our turn to host Thanksgiving dinner, which means we will be doing stuff around the house in preparation. Stuff that we needed to do anyway and hosting a big dinner just motivates me to get it done. Side note: I’m working on making our Thanksgiving dinner into our Christmas party, too. I tentatively suggested this to Kevin’s mom and she wasn’t a fan, but I’m GOING to make it happen and I have several months to sell people on it. We’ll see if I’m successful.

I still plan on giving 150% at work, it’s just who I am. I can’t NOT give everything in me to do my very best. Especially when I respect my team so much. My goal has always been to be the best MA my doctor has EVER had.

I need to work on not being so stressed out. I think I’m better than I used to be, but I have a ways to go. I’m picking my battles, I have to, otherwise, I find myself getting worked up over trivial things or perceived injustices and honestly, in the grand scheme of things, did we die? (This is what we say at work when things get tense).

I’d like to build my relationship with my parents. I’ve not been a very good daughter – again – life happens. But they aren’t getting any younger and time goes by so damn fast. I’m not sure how that is going to happen yet, but I will work on making time for them.

Other than the, “I need to exercise and bring my BMI down” goal, I can’t really think of anything else. Overall, I have a pretty awesome life, notice I didn’t say perfect, but it’s comfortable and works me, I’m happy.

Isn’t that all anyone can ask for?