Ethan’s Journey

 Paul and I worked on getting things in order for adding utilities to the building. Paul plans to trench and lay the electrical cable with some help. Ethan plans to help with placing wire inside the conduit and putting it in the trench.  I did a presentation today for some vet tech students. There was an issue with my notes getting erased when a coworker re-branded the presentation. I just flew by the seat of my pants for an hour. I am feeling exhausted. Maybe it is a byproduct of donating blood? Maybe my brain hurts from thinking all week. Off to bed to recharge my batteries.

 This morning’s coffee reading material…..Zombie Ant Fungus. There is a type of ant (Camponotini tribe) that can get infected with this fungus. Once the ant is infected, it leaves the tribe, family and friends goes down to the floor of the rain forest where it is ideal for fungus to grow. It bites the underside of a leaf and then dies from the fungal infection. It can take 4-10 days for death to occur. What? Their brains are hijacked! The fungus then starts growing out of the ants HEAD and releases spores to infect more ants. The cool thing is that it can hijack other fungus’s so that these ant tribes aren’t wiped out completely. That’s wild! Science is cool! The funniest part is that Monday night I had a dream that I attended a live demonstration of how ants help the eco system. I was so enthralled with how strong they are and how they eliminate dead things from the environment. Now this pops up. I think I am being hijacked by ants. Time to get a tin foil hat. I am sure that will ...

 The frustration level for work is at threat level midnight! (That’s a lot!) My heart was feeling a little sad because I like helping people. I don’t feel fulfilled right now at my job because of the software limitations. I constantly feel like I am letting someone down for reasons beyond my control. I got mad this morning at this situation. I was mad at feeling like my hands were tied and I wasn’t able to help which I normally get joy from. Anyone who knows me knows that anger is not a good look for me. I decided to kick my anger in the crotch! I don’t like it! So I decided to do something that helps society. I made an appointment to donate blood. I will NOT be controlled by anger and frustration from a job. I don’t have room for that in my life! Ha! Take that anger!!!! I donated and I felt joy. Today is Jiminy’s 4 th birthday! Four years ago this world became a better place simply by him being born. He is so perfect and loved. 🥰 He brings joy to all that meet him.  We had o...

 I have a tittynope of patience left for this Monday! More glitches with the work software. Today’s glitches involved  creating offer letters, seeing candidate that applied and anything else directly related to my job. I have submitted an IOU to the swear jar. I may need to take out a loan to covers today’s fines. Ha! I put in a solid 12 hours. My brain hurts. I am mentally exhausted. Who knew thinking could be so tiring? I tried to come up with some good bright sides from today. I thought about it longer than I should have. This is what I came up with: it is almost time for bed. It is still a bright side, so I am going to count it. Let’s be honest, I made the rules for this exercise, today is not the day I am going to be a stickler with my own exercise. Paul also had an equally frustrating, very Mondayish Monday. Neither one of us have anything good to say. We were each other’s venting buddy by text and with 5 phone calls.  Typically our correspondence during the day is ...

 A friend sent me a new term to use. I am going to try and use it at Thanksgiving dinner. “Oh look, there is only a tittynope of turkey left.” How fun!  When I got to Walmart on a weekend, the plonkers in the aisles leave with a tittynope of patience. Words are fun. Especially when your maturity level has not reached adulthood yet.  I enjoy learning new words. Yup…..that is something a nerd would say. Guilty! I didn’t open my laptop today. I know I will not love that decision tomorrow. But I needed a break. I start interviews at 7 am tomorrow. I was mentally dull today. I didn’t do a whole lot of thinking. I recharged.  Jiminy went on a field trip with Avery and Kendall for dinner. They stopped by and grabbed Jiminy and Jim got to meet some of Kendall’s family. I am sure Jiminy loved the snuggles and warm laps. Jiminy started his own Instagram page today. He is pretty technologically savvy! If you want to see cute Jiminy pics, he is at Jiminy the Chihuahua.

I woke up with a tension headache. I have had this headache for about a week. It is annoying but this morning it was making me a little nauseous. I was up around 5:30 and the house was quiet. Everyone was sleeping except for me. I sat in the dark with my eyes closed sipping some ginger water and feeling sorry for myself. Then I got mad. I was mad at my work situation. I do enjoy my job, however the stupid new system was a mess and I needed to do manual audits on 84 jobs. Each job audit takes about 5-10 minutes to make sure all the information is correct. I just need time set aside when I am not bombarded with questions from people within the organization. I decided this weekend I am going to put a dent in it. This will help the lingering stress of it just dangling over me and transforming into a tight band around my skull. Not really the way I want to spend a weekend, but I am sick of this damn headache! Almost as soon as I made the decision, my headache started to subside. Stress is a...

 One of Ethan’s favorite nurses arrived today with her daughter to explore SUNY Brockport tomorrow.  Avery and Kendall stopped by and we went out to dinner all 7 of us. We tried a new restaurant. It was kind of noisy (says the introvert) and they didn’t have a drink menu. Their solution was to have me go look at the drinks at the bar to see what I could order. Not a great first impression.  The food was good, the company was good. The staff was nice and did a decent job taking care of our needs. Avery and Kendall are always fun to be around. I enjoy their perspective. They were sharing their experience with SUNY Brockport. They gave a fairly accurate account of demographics, culture and accounts of people within different curriculums and how they typically behave. Ethan showed his nurse his projects in the garage he has been working on. He chatted for a while in the garage with them. She put a lot of work into this kid to get him to the point where he could start doing th...