Oh, hi!

Oh my god. It has been 12 days since my last post.

TWELVE! I have become one of those awful bloggers whose page you refresh and refresh and refresh until your key seizes up and you delete the whole thing from your RSS feed in disgust.

Forgive me, dear readers. It's going to be a long month. Oh, shit. Month is basically over. It's going to be a long...quarter?

I was going to blog yesterday, but then I got stuck in holiday traffic south of Olympia. This was particularly irritating because THERE IS NOT ONE GODDAMN THING SOUTH OF OLYMPIA. There is an asinine billboard run by a right-wing conservative. There is a perfect example of why people with money should not be allowed to spend it without some form of oversight. There is a small town whose location I can identify only because it is directly south of the two smashed-to-bits freight truck cabs that have been perched atop a 20' pole for as long as I can remember. I think it is an advertisement for a junkyard. Or maybe a memorial to drivers who went insane after navigating this long, unforgivably boring stretch of highway week after week. Last night, I could not reflect upon the meaning of the trucks, because I was sharing the car with a cat who does not understand congestion. He'd behaved very well until traffic slowed -- probably because I sprayed Feliway in his carrier until he hallucinated -- but we were doomed as soon as the tail lights lit up.

Want to know what cats think of highway backups and air pollution? It goes like this:

"Meow. Meow. MEOW. MEOOOW. Meow. Meow. MEOW. MEOOOW."

A little tip? Do not attempt to soothe a road raging cat. It may clamp down on your finger and continue its monologue thusly: "Mrmph...mprhwo...ooooow."

After four hours, I wondered whether I should pull over and find somewhere to stay for the night. You see, my cat also has a few gastrointestinal delicacies, fancy talk for: he's prone to farting whenever he's excited. Or pissed, apparently. Just as I reached the point where I was willing to stay in a room next to a giant Veggie Tales outlet (you so wish I was kidding right now -- welcome to the parts of Washington State we don't talk about in polite company), traffic cleared. And then I drove like the proverbial bat from hell except I can see so I didn't have to use the sonar which was good because I think bats would have trouble navigating at 80 mph+.

Did I mention this week is the week from hell? No? Well, it is. So this semicoherent post may be all you get from me until Saturday, because in between now and then I must:

1. Work until 10 p.m. tomorrow, because nothing says, "I'm a short-timer!" like a 14-hour day
2. Take the cat to the vet to have a lump examined Wednesday. This involves putting him in the carrier, which he didn't used to mind until we started going on 3 hour excursions. On Sunday, he almost took down a lampshade in his attempt to escape the plastic jaws of doom, and that was when I had someone else to help me. This should be fun.
3. Work a full day Thursday, go to physical therapy (oh, crap, you don't know about that yet) and then drive to Seattle because
4. I have an interview at 9:30 Friday morning (and I have lovely pre-interview questions I have to think about and write beforehand because, you know, you really need to go through the wringer for a 15-hour per week job) and then
5. I have to drive back to Portland by 1:00 to finish my workday. Because they hate me.
6. Did I mention I need to pack all weekend?
7. And CB comes into SeaTac on Monday? Which involves (yes) another drive to Seattle (nonononono).

It is now past my bedtime and I am going to take a bath because, damnit, at this point sleep deprivation might be a good thing.

Bound to make you crazy if you let it

Man, I just have a knack for positioning myself in...interesting...jobs. Current job (aka "Paying My Dues") goes something like this:

8:30 Get to work after terrifying drive through Portland traffic. Contemplate biking, then think about the 17 near-misses one has had since 8:15. Decide to continue driving and to increase auto insurance.
8:45 Check email. Feel frightened by size of inbox.
8:47 Email interrupted by request from co-worker for some aspect of the project you've never heard of until now.
8:51 Continue reading email until other entry-level person comes in, since she's the only one who can tell you what the heck the first person meant.
9:01 Rapidly assemble packet of materials for an afternoon outreach presentation that no one remembered to tell you about until now.
9:17 Rapidly dissemble packet after being told this one wouldn't look quite like the others.
9:24 Rapidly hurl packet through vacuum-sealed office windows after finding out about yet another change.
9:32 Hold head in hands.
10:14 Chase all three levels of people needed to approve changing "freeway" to "highway" in a document which approximately four people will read.
10:51 Discover you are scheduled to work every weekend from July 21 to September 4. Give up on finishing novel until sometime in the spring of 2011. Also give up cooking, long workouts, and personal hygiene.
11:05 Realize you never followed up on that first co-worker's request. She has now had to do it herself. And she hates you.

It's actually not that bad -- although my schedule is about that crazy, the fantastic, supportive coworkers help quite a bit. Nevertheless, it is definitely making me think that a career in government/private industry is not what I want to pursue. For months, I've had the idea of returning to school to become a librarian, and now I'm leaning even more in that direction for a multitude of personal and professional reasons. Still, I don't want to give up on environmental policy just yet, even if what I'm doing isn't as related as I'd hoped. Fortunately, until CB returns, I'm here doing this. So, by my estimation, I have at least 7.21 minutes to contemplate my life's work between now and when he graduates next winter. That should be plenty.