A Week in the Life: August 8, 2021

This week started out annoying and kind of didn’t let up. The job search marches on, my will to leave strengthened by my boss telling me this week that she doesn’t really understand what I do but she thinks I am “underutilized.” She also asked me why I don’t want to be a proposal manager (for those who don’t know, I’m an editor), which, as Kirk put it, is like asking an accountant why they don’t want to be a marine biologist. I told her I felt disrespected by her from the start with her saying that anyone can edit and no one on our team should be a specialist. She said “I’m sorry if you were offended.” Neat. Get me out of here.

I started vision therapy this week, which is good overall, but also kind of annoying since I’m trying to train my eyes to do things they do not want to do. It’s tiring. There is a lot of work around peripheral vision and developing awareness of what the eyes are doing, what hurts, etc. I had to do tasks like cover one eye (I was provided with an eye patch lol), look in a mirror, and turn my head until I can just barely see my uncovered eye. This is surprisingly uncomfortable. I’m also supposed to repeat the activities at home and take notes, which is good because that is how I’m going to improve my eyes but it is uncomfortable and tiring to do. Only 31 weeks to go.

Consuming

Here are some things I’ve recently read, watched, or bought.

Books and Other Words

I have, once again, read no books. My goal to read 100 books this year is slipping away but it’s okay because time is imaginary and numbers are arbitrary.

Meanwhile, on the internet I’ve been keeping up on the discourse around working remotely:

• Companies want remote workers in all states but 1 via The Atlantic. Colorado passed a law that companies have to list the salary range on job postings, which is awesome. However, this makes it a lot harder for companies to take advantage of people. Some job postings now exclude Colorado residents from applying so that they don’t have to make salary expectations public. This is obnoxious for a lot of reasons, but it’s surprising that no one is worried about how big of a waste of everyone’s time it is. I’ve gone through many interviews only to discover that the pay range is way too low for me at the end. We could have skipped all this garbage instead, but corporations don’t want to play nice.
• Why managers fear a remote-work future via The Atlantic. From the article: “Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.”
• Why weight loss goals for a wedding/office/beach body never work via Vice. It’s annoying but not surprising that people are worried about their “office bod” with the threat of having to work in an office again.

Rampant Consumerism

I spent over $4,000 on vision therapy (that’s for the full series, not just this week. Don’t panic), and I never want to spend money again.

Making Things and Doing stuff

There are some things I’ve made and stuff I’ve done.

Knitting and Crafts

I’m excited to announce that I’ve finished a knitting project! I’ve been working on the Angostura sweater vest for a while now and I’m glad to be done. It’s, of course, too hot to wear it right now but I’m prepared to look good in the future. I learned two new techniques for this: a three-needle bind off (to create the shoulder seam between connecting the front and back) and mattress stitch, which is definitely an act of witchcraft because you can hardly tell there’s a seam once it’s done. I knitted this with about 8.5 skeins of Juniper Moon Farms Fourteen in goldspire.

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Moving It

My ballet class, I think I mentioned previously, has been getting more intense but I’m enjoying it. My teacher is starting to point out things where I should be pushing myself more (she said she knew I was capable of holding my passe higher, for example). I am really excited that we started learning grand allegro (aka big ol’ leaps). I rarely get very excited about anything so this was a lot of fun for me. In class yesterday, my teacher said I was bringing the right level of energy, something I’ve probably never been told before so that felt great.

My dance studio announced that they are adding a tap class for adults and I thought that sounded fun so I signed up. If you had told me a few years ago that I’d be taking three dance classes a week (jazz is my other class), I definitely would have been confused, but I’m having fun now. The tap class is the same night that I had outdoor roller derby practice the last month. My initial thought was, that sounds fun but I have derby. Then I realized that dance class sounds a lot better to me than roller derby right now, so I am taking a hiatus from roller derby. I’ve gone skating a few times in the last couple months and wasn’t really feeling it. I’ve decided to stick with what feels good for now, but it was a hard decision because roller derby really feels like a community and I am afraid of losing that. As much as I’m enjoying dance class, it’s not a community like derby is.

Kitchen Witchery

I tried a few new recipes this week. First, I wanted to use a bunch of corn so I made this corn and bacon fettuccini, which was tasty because it’s a bunch of creamy pasta. Can’t go wrong. Similarly, in an effort to use some zucchini, I made these zucchini brownies. Because of the moisture in the zucchini, I thought it was more cake-like than brownie-like, but it doesn’t really matter because they were good and chocolatey and they are gone now. On Friday, I got the cookbook Snacking Cakes from the library and immediately made the sesame cake with a tahini glaze. I already like this cookbook because, for each recipe, it lists a few variations. This makes it easy to use what you have on hand and keep things exciting. The cake was really good and I’m already plotting to try my next recipe.

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Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Fritz is having a good week because we finally decided to let him roam the house all night. We had been keeping him in a bedroom (well appointed with toys, food, and everything he needs) at night to give Huey a break and because he can’t be trusted not to pee in weird places. However, we realized he is generally peeing in inappropriate spots when we won’t let him go somewhere. So we were like, fuck it, and let him run free. It went surprisingly well. He has peed on the floor next to the litter box a few times but otherwise he has behaved well. He is a super cuddler and is spending most of the night with me in bed, which I obviously love. We have an appointment this week with a cat behavioral specialist to help us train him to pee where he’s supposed to, so hopefully that helps.

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