Tanks Given Halloween Costumes
Highlights: Lauren and Jen decorated for Halloween. Simple but effective, and when I move the orange lights out, it'll be fun. Halloween back at Panorama feels completely surreal. I'm not sure how I feel about it or anything of late. I'm struggling with many overwhelming feelings and emotions and am on edge. Between the drama Sun and today about Linda's tax debts (short story - managed and manageable but initially quite a different story), Tommy's focus-du-jour being selling his car (again) and buying something else (again), the pressures of work demands feeling unobtainable and unrealistic, and my sense of being trapped in a rescuer/provider role weighs on me. This isn't the life I want to live for another 20 years, and I feel the need to find a place to retreat. This all boils down to resurrecting habits, which have proven sporadic. As I've mentioned before, it's been hard to revive my routine since moving, but I'm down for continuing to try starting tomorrow with meditation and focused practices. As for the rest of the past two days, we had a pleasant dinner and evening visiting the Marioni's and their kids with Tommy along. Lauren made it to school fine and interviewed at In n Out today for a possible job there! That will be awesome if it works out. I was heads down with work tasks most of Sunday, and all the work I did regarding "named ranges" blew up in my face on the first import of new data that wasn't aligned. Vlookups are required, so I reverted and salvaged the data validation checks. Onward. I'll rewrite it more when I can. I'm a bit irked at work and some references to needing to ensure reports are more reliable when they've been evolving and are damned solid at this point. It's offensive, but I'm doing all I can to not take it as such, it's just insulting that somebody feels like they need to get into the weeds, but at the same time, I'm happy to give them the keys and let them figure it out. See… I'm irked. What else? Oh, Lucky ripped into the coffee Sunday while we were gone but didn't eat it, just opened it. Maybe it smelled better than it tasted. The damned dog is annoying as fuck, but he's doing better with daily walks, and I put him outside yesterday, and I think he's starting to get some concept of cause/effect and consequences. Identical to Tommy, who I had to get belligerent with today about the school, visibility to grades, and all that combined with funding and providing a home for him. It was tense, and I had little patience with it, but Jen told me to take a moment and not do anything, and to my surprise, Tommy came around and complied. It felt like a step in the right direction. The other approach was a cliff, so that was not the option I hoped for. I didn't sleep last night as my head raced around all this stuff with Tommy and Linda's taxes and job… it contributes to my struggles. It's a vicious cycle. I'm going to get some 'wind-down time before bed with meditation podcasts or other calming steps vs. just being in deep thought and stimuli then thinking I can turn it off.