I'm the chair of a 10-person work group that meets once a quarter. The meeting lasts about three hours. I'm responsible for running these meetings and creating the agenda. And I don't just mean that I whip out a handy Word template and fill in the agenda items, I mean that I literally decide how we're going to fill those three hours, then spend at least 100 hours over the course of three months gathering the information for the agenda items. It's a lotta lotta work. It's about a third of what I do for my job.
This work group met on Tuesday (1/15). So if you've talked to me any time in the last couple of weeks and I've been distracted or weird or maybe even rude... I am very, very sorry! I get pretty focused on this meeting, and pretty busy getting things together, and a little bit stressed out about it. It can make me a flimsy nutcase.
As if that wasn't enough for my brain, I'm also helping out with a special project for the next couple of months at work, and it has a very dramatic ebb-and-flow to the work. This last week happened to be a big kickoff week for the project; I missed one of the team meetings and only had time for about 10% of the work I was assigned. (No really, the project leader had to re-assign 90% of my work because I didn't have time, not this week.)
Thankfully the new project is going to be very calm for a couple of weeks, and the next quarterly meeting isn't until April. So my brain can quietly grow back into one whole unit, and my sanity levels can decrease to normal. Yay.
Turning now to house projects, I totally deserve a pat on the back: I finished wiring the lights in the utility room!!!
I know it doesn't look like much. Electrical work always seems and sounds so easy. What you don't know is that I had to drill a hole through every. single. one. of those ceiling joists so that I could run the wire from switch to light to light to light to switch. It was something like ten holes. That's 10 holes, each circle an inch in diameter, cut through a two-inch beam of old, hardened wood. I can only do a couple at a time before my arm and/or shoulder is tired from holding the drill and boring through the wood.
Then I had to run the wires and cut them to size; that's pretty easy. I had to figure out how to hang the lights; these ones are made to attach to the drywall in the ceiling. (Someday the ceiling will be finished with drywall, but not for awhile yet.) So I had to rig up a temporary frame for each light. Again, not hard, but takes some time. The real mental challenge of this project was figuring out how to run the wires. I can follow a wiring diagram, if it's available. It's not hard to connect this black wire to that red wire, bundle all of the white wires together, etc. Just follow the picture and all will be fine. Problem is, I couldn't find any lighting diagrams that showed three lights and two switches. Eventually I just took one of the two-light-and-two-switch diagrams, studied it for a good 30 minutes, and then drew my own diagram for my 3-2 combo.
I really don't have a clue how it all works or what it's doing down there, but all of the lights work, the switches work, and nothing pops or cracks or sizzles or sparks. I know I used the right type of wiring. So even though I can't explain the how of it all, I'm going to count this as a win.
After that, I decided to give myself the week off. It was Monday night and I didn't want to do any more electrical work for the rest of the week. I told myself I could spend some doing a craft project, maybe even some of the sewing projects that have piled up. Or I could just relax and watch some movies, go to bed early. Bake a cake. Whatever I wanted, you know? That was my brilliant plan. Here's how my week actually went:
The next night, Tuesday night (note that this is the day I had my big quarterly meeting), I spent an hour cleaning up the utility room (put the tools away; threw away all the wood chips, wiring scraps, old bits of electrical whatnot; and swept thoroughly), then I spent a half hour staring at the two Burleys in the garage, trying to make a decision. (I still haven't made a decision.) I went to bed at my usual time, exhausted.
Wednesday night, I put away groceries from Costco then wrote a letter to my daughter for her 19-month birthday. She was having a hard time getting to sleep, so I went in and rocked her for awhile.
Thursday night the fun continued! I pulled all of the carpet and padding out my craft room; Nate followed after and took out the staples. I planned the dinner menu for the week ahead and made a grocery list.
Friday was a day off for me. My daughter was so excited to spend the day with me that she woke up at 3am and stayed up until she got to cuddle in mom and dad's bed. She got up for the day at 5:30am. Lucky me, I needed to mix a large batch of bread dough. Then we went grocery shopping; I was so tired and absent-minded that I left two of my reusable grocery bags at the checkout line and forgot my receipt. We got home with just enough time to put away the cold groceries, then it was back in the car and to the doctor's office for Darling Girl's belated 18-month checkup. She got three shots; I got a stack of paperwork from the pediatrician. When naptime came, I went down too. Slept for about two hours; toddler stayed down for three. Meanwhile Nate came home and left again, off to an overnight snow campout for the scouts. After bedtime, I cleaned the office, balanced the checkbook, and made a checklist for Saturday.
Gee, how could there be more to do? My daughter made sure I was up at 5:30 this morning (as if waking up every two hours last night, certain that someone had come to kill me in my sleep, wasn't enough). We mopped the kitchen floor and ran through four loads of laundry before heading out to visit Nana and Poppi. They have a new puppy, Hazel. Darling and the puppy were just starting to hit it off when it was time to go home (we had errands to run and I was starving). I wanted to run to the hardware store but Toddler declared that it wasn't going to happen. Home we went, lunch we ate, a nap she took. I put away those four loads of laundry then tried to get some sleep, too. Nate appeared right at the end of naptime and off we finally went to the hardware store. (Guess what I got? More supplies to continue the electrical work in the basement!)
Just now, I finished eating a pair of cookies, re-balancing the checkbook, downloading the week's pictures from my camera, and writing this blog post.
Whew.
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