Random Things, Part II

So, my mood has shifted from depressed to a glimmer of hope to HOT DAMN! in the space of a few days:

The American Rescue Plan has been signed, and help is going to start rolling out immediately. Direct deposits of stimulus payments are already hitting bank accounts.

Vaccinations are running way ahead of schedule. I’m eligible to sign up next week. I’ll try for a few days to get one nearby, then I’ll take my daughter’s advice and sign up for the drive through at the convention center. It’s a pain in the ass to get there, but I have a personal goal of getting the first shot in the next two weeks.

In the past week I’ve been contacted by three recruiters about job opportunities – none of them were suitable for me, but it’s just the idea that things are moving again that gives me hope. It also gives me great motivation to fit into my work clothes again.

I have now been working from home for a year, and the few times I ventured out for something work related it was into the field, where I was wearing hardhat/vest/boots/jeans/safety glasses, no makeup or jewelry, and let’s not even talk about my sweaty hardhat hair. I am NOT office ready. If my dream employer came out of nowhere to offer me a six figure job if I could show up for an interview in 48 hours, I would collapse in a puddle of despair.

If I get a call about a job worth pursuing, I would need a new, work-appropriate interview outfit for a Woman of a Certain Age. I have no idea what that looks like, because did I mention I have lived in jeans and have a hardhat and steel toed boots and a fluorescent vest in my car? And I gained 10 COVID pounds this year? Yeah, this is dire.

I need to learn what women my age wear in a professional environment in this climate these days. I need to lose the COVID 10 and 5 or so more. The return to Daylight Saving Time will make that easier: I MUST WALK DAILY. IT IS NOT OPTIONAL. It’s sad how I lost my motivation for daily walking when Disney had to refund my money on two runDisney events in a row last year. I’m holding out hope that this year we may be able to do the Wine and Dine in the fall, but in the meantime, my ass needs to fit my summer clothes.

I’m knitting again, sleeping better, and genuinely feel like a corner has been turned. Not that everything is awesome instantly, but damn, we are, at last, heading in the right direction, with a real President. (I’ll spare you my rant about Republicans, because, yeah, fuck them.) We have a real President, a new and awesome Attorney General, and he’s already been briefed on the Capitol Insurrection.

I finished my very basic TV watching shawl, (meaning I can knit something like this while watching TV, not that it’s to be worn while watching TV) and it definitely needs blocking. I rarely make things that need blocking, so tomorrow morning I’ll improvise: beach towels on my bed, pat it into place, pin with whatever I can find, and shut the door so the cat doesn’t destroy it while my back is turned.

Gidget’s groomer took a break for a month. She’s fabulous and her clients were glad to wait for her. I’ve joked for years that she had a license to print money with her teeny-tiny shop in the back of a veterinary clinic. I call it the grooming speakeasy, if you don’t know who she is and aren’t given directions, you’d never know it was there. Every time I dropped Gidget she had at least 10-15 dogs on deck for the day, at say, $50/head minimum, big dogs and fancy hairstyles cost more. But she was working her ASS off, barely took any time off, and I guess push came to shove and she just took a break. She’s back, thank God, I didn’t want to have to try to introduce my small neurotic dog to a stranger.

Gidget will see her next Wednesday, and may I say, not a moment too soon.

Tiny Blonde Ewok.

Sophie is not doing so hot. She’s stopped responding to the steroids and antibiotic, the pressure hose diarrhea is back. She’s got me up at 5 two days in a row, desperate to get outside. She has periods of acting happy and like her former self, but it’s fewer and farther between. I am not sure how long this decline will go on, or if a change of meds will help her rally again. I can say I’m very grateful for that $1400 stimulus money. I’ve spent more than that on her in the last year. I feel guilty for thinking of the money, but yeah, I have to think of the money, as well as her quality of life. I thought we’d found a combination of meds that was working, and then it stopped working.

Delaney is dancing at a competition in Tampa this weekend. They actually had a decent livestream, and I was able to watch her solo today while working. She did great, and did her first aerial in a performance. (An aerial is one of those hands free forward flip leaps, a no-hands leaping cartwheel that terrifies her chickenshit grandmother.) She “got her aerial” in rehearsals months ago, but it’s one thing to do it in the security of the studio and another to do it on a strange stage in a strange city, under the bright performance lights. I needn’t have fretted.

She nailed her performance, as usual. She got a great score but was disappointed that she didn’t place. The competition, especially from her own teammates’ solos, was fierce. Their team really is a powerhouse, and though her grandmother loves her fiercely, I don’t think she was robbed. She was great, two of her teammates were better. That’s just how it goes when you’re dancing at this level; these kids are really something. They’ll dance their group dances tomorrow afternoon.

She’ll need to make a decision at the end of this season if she wants to go on dancing at this level, or shift her focus to swimming. She’d also like to learn piano. Grandma is biased. I don’t see much long-term value to this sort of dance, it’s fun and great exercise and she’s learned a lot of discipline, but it also costs a lot in time and money and isn’t going to help pay for college. Competitive swimming, OTOH….