“When sunny gets blue”… and sunny… and blue… and sunny….

I have two blog posts that are sitting in my queue waiting to be finished.  However, I can’t seem to get in a right frame of mind to finish them because my mood’s been all over the place.   This presents a challenge considering when I write, it’s to express how I’m feeling about my experiences on this journey of self awareness, self realization, joblessness, un-underemployment, whatever you want to call it.  I begin to write, stop due to minor interruptions like life’s responsibilities, then try to pick up again only to find the inspiration lost.  Hence, reflections of Monday, January 30th on Monday, February 6th (with a stuffed nose)…

I didn’t sleep well on Sunday night on top of already not feeling great (stomach issues.)  I tossed and turned til 2:45AM and was up four hours later to help my family off to school and work.  So 6:45AM rolls around and I’m awakened by the soothing sounds of the HTC Android phone alarm… and the smell of feces.  (No, it wasn’t me.  My issues weren’t that bad.)  Turns out my cat dropped a deuce on my pillow.  She’s totally pardoned as these are her final days (that’ll be a whole other post) but as you would imagine, it wasn’t the way I wanted to start my week.  I then proceed into the living room, aka my daughter’s sleeping area (“Living just enough, just enough for the city”), and she welcomes me with this doozy, “I don’t love you Daddy, I want Mommy.”  I knew she didn’t mean it but that was the first time she said it and it wasn’t really what I needed to hear.  I proceeded to the kitchen to prepare some breakfast and fix my ladies’ lunches and was greeted by a monster roach. “And good morning to you, monsieur roach.”  SPLAT.  Fast forward an hour.  Enter:  the cable guy.  (Talk about an efficient company – my upstairs neighbor had an appointment with Time Warner to fix his cable box on Sunday.  I called a couple of days after he made his appointment, with his confirmation number, to have them come ONE FLOOR DOWN to JUST SWITCH OUT MY CABLE BOX.  Do I even need to finish this one?  They couldn’t fit me and my 2 1/2 minutes worth of work in and I had to schedule them for Monday – two trips to my building for 2 1/2 minutes worth of work.  And we wonder why Time Warner is so outrageously expensive.)  So, the cable guy is over to “install” the latest cable box for me.  For those of you who don’t know anything, and I mean anything, about cable boxes, this is literally taking one box out and replacing the same wires in the same location on the new box.

According to monsieur cable guy, this new box and my television (a flat screen, LCD, Samsung) don’t work well together and can’t speak to one another through high definition (or HDMI) cables.   My thought bubbles were going off left and right – “dude, please, that’s impossible.  I know my TV’s 2 years old but it’s still pretty much state of the art… it can’t be.”  So he leaves my apartment having set me up with regular wires and leaving my screen pixelated (seeing lines (or dots.))  I didn’t mind,  I just wanted him to leave so I could install the box because I knew I could do a better job.

Why have I told you about my Monday morning?  I get that everyone has their own mishigas but this was a great lesson re-learned for me.   I was able to add a little sugar and water and make some lemonade out of this day.  The cable guy left and I instantly got busy.  I attacked a task that had been on our To do list for ages.  Every time our list was re-written, the task reared its ugly head.  Sometimes at the top, sometimes popping up in the middle and sometimes bringing up the rear.  And I dreaded having to do it.  Re-wiring the television, cable box and receiver is such a time consuming, tedious task.  So I looked at the cable guy’s ineptitude, took the opportunity and spent the next 2 – 3 hours cleaning up our entertainment center.  Mission accomplished.  You see, this time out of work will not be spent just “looking for work.”  I can’t tell you how many times people have suggested I enjoy myself because before long I’ll be back at work. I won’t go so far as to say I enjoyed cleaning up our entertainment center, but it had to get done for us to continue moving forward.  And I did it.  Check mark in the win category for Monday, January 30th.  And a step in the right direction for me.  World… it’s on!