Running...

Some days it feels like I'm running in circles, or stuck on a hamster wheel.

Put in 18 hours of overtime last week trying to catch up and stay ahead of what's going on at work. Had 10 hours on the weekend, plus Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. I've got to put in some time today as well. Do it at home where I've got only a cat or two to distract me, not more than a few idiots running around.

Yes, the money is nice. I got both my quarterly bonus and 10 hours OT on the paycheck Thursday. My check was almost double what it normally is. Means I can catch up on a few bills, pay things ahead. I'll be able to pay the mortgage out of next week's check and still have money left over. Sweet.

As for the four footed distractions... AB has finally warmed up to me. He's been funny this week, in that he's been doing laps around the living room. He'll start out in his usual corner, peek his head out around the couch and look at me. Then he'll quickly slink across the living room to behind the love seat, walk behind my recliner, then try to get by the recliner on the way back to his corner. I started putting my hand down on the side of the recliner so he could smell me and get a bit of a pet on the way by.

This morning he decided to come out from under the end table next to my recliner. With a little encouragement he hopped up on my lap and let me pet him for a half hour. Then he whined about the litter box, so I got up and cleaned that out.

He's been purring and talking up a storm ever since. Loud freakin' purr, too.

Tabby, on the other hand, is still in hiding. I couldn't find her earlier in the week, looked in every known hidey hole. Finally looked way in the back of my closet and found her there. I scared her out yesterday and caught her. She didn't fight back. She was panicked, so I just held and soothed her as best I could, then let her go.

Now that AB is OK with me, I'm hoping he'll talk to Tabby and let her know I'm OK, too.

The martial arts/self defense class is going OK. Sifu gave us an idea yesterday about how to practice elbow and other strikes. He suggested tying a whiffle ball to a string and hang it in a doorway. Then you can adjust the height of the whiffle ball to give you a different place to strike at. He also noted that some boxers have used the technique to improve their dodging skills. Start the whiffle ball moving, then shadow box and move as the whiffle ball comes back at you.

Had a rather sad moment during the class as well. Sifu asked us to move to the mirror to understand how one of the elbow strikes works. Watching myself in the mirror doing the strike was humbling. I had the strike down, but looking at just how big my body really is hurt.
Body perception is WAY off. What size I see myself as and what I saw in the mirror were two very different things. Yes, it's a goad to get me to really push myself during my workouts. I don't want to be this body any longer. It took me time to get here, it will take me time to get to 175.

My chats with my martial arts co-worker continue. The chats have been insightful enough that with some of my well gotten gains I've purchased a LiveScribe pen. It can record conversations or meetings as you take notes. That will be handy for classes I take. It also means that I can unobtrusively record my conversations with him so I can collect the knowledge he's imparting on me.

I asked him if he and his dad were thinking about writing an e-book to put on their website. It's something he wants to do, just hasn't made it a priority yet. I also asked if they had ever taught any self-defense classes, and they have. It's been a while - the early 1990's - since they did one, and they need to update their stats, etc. I may suggest he bring it up to the Wellness Center about teaching the class at work.

No matter where he teaches it, I'll be there. I'll also drag my nieces with as well. Wouldn't hurt them to learn how to defend themselves.

So, time get get moving. I need to upgrade the OS on my Mac so I can use the LiveScribe. I need to do all the usual Sunday stuff like washing clothes and dishes and making lunch and supper for the week. And once I get things rolling, perhaps record a deep trance identification script as well.

New kids

The new kids are doing OK, far as I can tell. Most of the time I find them camped out under/behind the end table I have in my prosperity corner.

AB's been funny today. He'll sneak behind the couch, slink by my recliner, then walk over by the door and peek at me as I've been washing dishes and making yogurt. He'll sit there and watch me do my thing. The moment I move out of the kitchen he's gone.

When I was having my lunch of baked chicken and grapefruit, he was sniffing around my chair. I slowly put my hand down where he could smell the chicken. Sniffed my fingers, did a bit of a head butt against my hand. When I went to pet him, poof, gone again.

Haven't seen much of Tabby girl. I'm presuming she's under my bed, though I haven't look there today. She still spooks really easy. She's the one that will take the longest to warm up.

It's like they've gone back to being wild. They've had so little human contact that they are afraid to let someone in again. That's what Jodi picked up Wednesday night.

I can sympathize, I know all too well about letting people in again. In some ways the three of us are much alike - can we learn to trust and let others in and still be safe? It may be aloof of me, but I'll let them come to me when they are ready.

Can I do that in my own life? Do I reach out or sit back? Do I trust and hope I'm treated with respect and gentleness? Or do I expect the worst, which is what I've gotten in the past?

Yeah, the cats and I are in much the same pickle.
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Been a busy weekend. Work is piling up to the point I don't have a choice but to put in overtime. Acrobat was added to my plate on top of already having a full workload. The things I need to get done for Project and Visio have to wait until I get done with the Acrobat stuff.

I'll be taking over more of the Acrobat stuff come Tuesday. My boss met with with the VP of risk management about Acrobat and how poorly its been handled. Acrobat will be taken away from the person who has been handling it on Monday. Tuesday we need to come up with a new communications plan, communicate to all the people I've previously worked with and do this the right way.

The person and his boss who flubbed it up will be unhappy about it. The boss FUBAR'd the Vista rollout, so I'm not surprised this went belly up.

So, yeah, I'll take the overtime. Ten hours last week, I've already put in 7 so far between yesterday and today, and I know it will be long hours this week. How long will I have to keep this up? Not sure. Depends on how swamped I get, how far behind I am.
At the moment I should be working, however I keep getting kicked off the VPN. I'll give it another 10-15 minutes and try it again. Too much to do to be goofing off.

The money can go towards a trip to Boston with my oldest niece. Thankfully AB and Tabby aren't on a schedule like Shadow was, so I don't have to worry about being home at a specific time to feed them.
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Self defense class is going well. Got the instructor to myself again yesterday. I really need to work on my footwork and coordinating my hands with my hip rotations.

Got to talking with one of the guys at work that I know is into martial arts. I was about ready to pound the joker mentioned above, so I went to talk with this guy. Since he teaches tae kwon do, he knows his self defense. I was telling him about my class, had him look up the website. He likes how Sifu is teaching, and I may even be able to talk him into coming in for a class sometime. (Just listening to those two talk theory would be an education in and of itself. Watching them spar - that I would want to videotape so I could go back pick up what happened.)

He really encouraged me to ask questions. He's thinking that by asking questions, I show I'm interested. Being at every class on time, etc, shows Sifu I'm serious, so I'll start getting the little extra pointers. That I can do. I'll also pick his brain every chance I get.

Then it occurred to me - I'm a certified therapeutic coach, why not do a deep trance identification on both Sifu and my co-worker. Pull in the years of skills they have, the muscle memory, the theory and practice. Pull those into my being, then integrate them so I can make use of what they know and do.

One more thing to add to the to do list.

When one door closes...

Another one opens.

In this case, as the door closed on Shadow's life, I was able to open a door for two more that most likely been euthanized at the Humane Society.

Meet Tabby, 14, on the left, and AB, 15, on the right.

And yes, there is more than a passing resemblance between AB and Shadow. AB is a lithe little boy, more refined than Shad.

Someone here on LJ saw what their mom had posted on Freecycle and posted it in the Twin Cities group. I saw it Friday night and offered. Got the email address, emailed mom, told her I could take both of them. The above photo is from her.

Went down after my martial arts class Saturday afternoon to pick them up. They had AB already crated, Tabby was hiding and didn't want to come out. So I brought AB home Saturday and told mom we could meet up on Sunday to get Tabby home. She came home Sunday night.

Right now both are very skittish. AB at least will come out, slink by me to use the litter box or get something to eat. Tabby will do neither while I'm awake or here. They are content to hide under and behind an end table at the end of the couch. I figure they will come out when they need attention. Otherwise, nary a squeak out of either of them.

I've got an appointment with my favorite animal communicator for tomorrow night. I want to let them know they are safe and loved here, and that they can ask Raini and Shad about how well I took care of them. I also want to check in on those two, especially Shadow, to see why she manifested cancer in her body when she didn't need to.

Other than that, I'm on week one of what I expect will be a journey towards me getting in and staying in shape. I'm aiming for 175 pounds, which may seem a bit high for a 5'6" woman. My lean muscle mass is already 140, so by adding 10-20 pounds of muscle, I can easily be at 175 with enough body fat to keep my cycle going.

The 175 goal is due to my platelet donations. I have to be at 175 or above to continue to donate triples every three weeks. Something about the amount of plasma they have to pull out. Add muscle, remove fat, I hit 175 and then I stay there.

My plan is to do body weight calisthenics Monday and Friday, PACE cardio on Tuesday and Thursday, kettlebells on Wednesday and martial arts on Saturday. Sunday's my day off. Should be enough variety that I don't get bored, cause I'm changing the exercises every 4 weeks for the calisthenics, cardio changes go from 4 to 6 to 8 weeks.

Well, kids, time to toddle off to bed. I have a presentation tomorrow where I go over in detail what I've been doing for the last year. Formatting bullet points in Word sucks. If I can get in early and get some peace and quiet I should be able to finish it up by 10.

RIP Shadow

The second worst day of my life is here. I had to euthanize Shadow this morning.


I noticed after I got back from New Year's that she smelled funny and was drooling. She wouldn't let me look in her mouth. Finally made time this morning to get to the vet. The vet opened her mouth and found that most of her lower jaw was consumed with cancer. I wasn't about to put her through more pain.

This is another one of those that I knew when I took her in this morning that I would not be bringing her home alive.

The house is going to be really quiet now. Well, except for the neighbor and his loud music. No more waking up at 3 am to her howling/toning, trying to get the energy to move for me. Or 5:30 am to get me to feed her.

Shad and I didn't always get along. She was a diva brat, right up there along with the worst of the human divas. She hissed and growled at everything she wasn't happy with. She growled at life in general right up to when the sedative finally kicked in.

As much as I hated her at times, I still loved her and will miss her.

Rest in peace, Shadow. Go play with Raini, Duke and Poochie at the Rainbow Bridge, and I will be there eventually.

I like Wednesdays

Quiet evenings, that's why.

Other than kettlebells kicking my butt and back. Hey, at least I'm continuing with it. Third set of 8 weeks.
I was also in the wellness center Monday night working on my footwork, did a bit of ladders with the kettlebells and stretched.

In my digging around the house I found some David Carradine videos I'd picked up in the early 90's. One is on kung fu, the other tai chi. The kung fu video has a great stretching routine that I need to get into the habit of doing. I know everything is tight - part of the reason why my back hurts during kettlebells. Get things loose and moving again and I'll be in better shape.

I finally figured out how to connect my VCR and DVD/HDD work together so I can move these videos to DVD. I moved the kung fu video on Sunday, I'll work on the tai chi this weekend.

I continue to have interesting conversations with my co-worker about his energy thievery. We got into it a bit yesterday and that conversation left me in limbo as to whether or not I can ever get through his thick skull. Today, different ball game. Talked to him for almost an hour this morning trying to figure out why Visio wasn't loading on someone's computer, then we got sidetracked on other work issues. Caught up with him around 3 and had another interesting conversation. That one was prompted because another female co-worker had talked to him about something where he came off as an arrogant son, as we were talking about her gifted child and her latent abilities she's afraid to use.

This one got a bit closer to where I wanted to head. I told him yet another person came to me about how I deal with him. He admitted it might take him a couple days to a couple weeks to get through his head what he's doing. I told him I'd nicknamed that part of him the Hulk because it's so much bigger than him, or him as a 7 foot, 400 pound linebacker. He liked that idea because he was a linebacker, center and nose tackle on his high school's football team. The conversation rapidly deteriorated from there, it feels like I'm making progress.

The conversation with the mother of the gifted child was interesting. We'd had a meeting about what I'm doing, talked about what I'm seeing with ITAM, etc. As we were coming back to our floor, I told her about my massage therapy and running and teaching energy work, and the questions just started coming.

Her oldest son is 7, and since he was little he's talked about the lights that have kept him up at night. He's not afraid of them, but he does get nightmares. He's also tapped in to past lives, where he was his mom's grandfather. Mom, of course, is a bit unsettled by it because she has latent talents that she's not acknowledging. For me, this stuff is completely normal, and I told her that I'd be more than willing to come out and talk with her son about it. Let him know it's OK, there are adults who have these gifts as well and use them. And maybe along the way mom will start owning her own talent and developing it.

Where to start?

Yes, we're almost 10 days into 2010 and I'm just now sitting down to post for the first time in almost three weeks. Been busy, what can I say?

Work continues. My contract has been extended out to the end of April and I suspect will be extended again after that. I'm no where near done with what needs to be done for Project and Visio, let alone having Acrobat and Visual Studio also added to the pile. I suspect my blogging time may get shorter as the prospect of overtime soon approaches. I'm almost at max capacity now with 40 hours, adding more to the pot means more hours. My boss is aware of it and may be able to leverage that into adding another person.

The holidays were ok. Got to spend Christmas day with Dominik clan, then went out to Jones clan for New Year's. I did take the second oldest niece's boyfriend out with me. Good boy, kept his mouth shut on the way out and back.

The weekend was a great reminder as to why I don't have kids. There were 7 of them between 7 and 17, and all of them had some type of drama going on.

Unwittingly, I got myself in the middle of one of them by bringing the boyfriend out. The oldest has a boyfriend out in Massachusetts, so her younger sister having her boyfriend in the house hurt, a lot. I sat down with her before I left to find out what's going on. Once I got her to open up, the dam burst and it all came out.

Looks like I'll be taking a trip to Boston and Cape Cod, either in April or June. I suspect it will now be June, since their school was closed both Thursday and Friday this week, so they will lose their Easter break days off. That's OK, it gives both of us more time to save the money for plane tickets, hotel and transportation.

That also meant sitting down with the parents to explain to them what I was hearing. The oldest doesn't feel like they are listening to her, cutting her off in the middle of a thought, she loses her train of thought, gets angry and stomps off. So Aunt Beth steps in, clears the air. Now we need to hammer out some rules about how this trip is going to come together.

I can sympathize with her. She can talk to, email and text her boyfriend. The one that I care about, I can't let him know I care. He's married, his daughter is pregnant and due in March, and he doesn't yet know I know. I walk on eggshells, trying to be helpful without giving away how I feel about him.

I may not have a choice about it. I had a couple of meetings with him that left me energetically drained dry, even though I was sending him as much energy as I could. I finally called him on it, asking what he knows about energy flows. Turns out his father teaches tae kwon do, hapkido, tai chi and Qigong, and he's a tae kwon do instructor himself.

The sticking issue is the energy flows he knows are all internal - he doesn't yet know how to tap into the Universal energy source. Instead, he becomes an energy vampire and tries to suck people dry. I've had a couple people come to me and ask how I deal with him because he intimidates people with his intensity. I told him that, and he's a bit baffled.

Now I need to teach him how to tap into that Universal energy source. In telling him the story of how I know what I know, he may figure it out. Then again, he may not.

Meanwhile, he's given me a key to helping me let go of the weight. After I learned about his martial arts training, something in me clicked. I was emailing back and forth with P Monday morning, and about the same time we came up with the same conclusion. My body will let go of the weight as I learn how to defend and protect myself. That means going back to the martial arts, specifically kung fu.

Why kung fu? It's what calls to me. Blame it in part to Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and my lusting after Chris Potter. I did learn a few things from the show, and it brought into my life some books and tapes that I'm now digging out because I need them.

I'm also signing up for classes. This place follows the old traditions of not having belts and degrees, much like the Shaolin temple does things. You progress at your own pace and get what you need. I went to class today and was the only one there, so I got Sifu Naylor all to myself. We worked on basic footwork, basic handwork, a bit of self defense. There are three others in the class, two of which will be out for the next month or so. Looks like I started at a good time.