You Learn Something New Every Day...

A short list of things you can't do when you have labyrinthitis:

Drive

Cook

Work on a computer for more than ~5 minutes without the world tilting wildly

Sleep normally (yay meds!)

Walk in a straight line

Enjoy a glass of wine on your anniversary

Labyrinthitis, for those not in the know like me until today, is an inner ear infection which doesn't have to be accompanied by pain, fever, congestion or any other typical "itis" symptom. You can go to bed feeling totally fine and then have vivid dreams of wildly spinning only to wake up and the spinning won't stop. Labyrinthitis can just show up one day as a whomping case of vertigo that lasts for as long as it wants. So far for me, 7 days and working on the 8th. 

An even shorter list of what cures it:

Maaaaaaybe antibiotics if it's a bacterial infection but if it's viral, nope. In my case, it doesn't seem to bacterial. 

Time

Rest

An even shorter list of what might help:

Anti-vertigo meds. So far, they haven't helped me but hey, they could!

Decongestant (hence the reason my sleep is so terrible)

My five minutes of productivity are now over... Back to waiting for this to pass. But hey... I'm catching up on a lot of crappy television as I hold down the couch!

Travel. Work. Work travel. Home!

I have lived out of a suitcase for the past six months. I enjoy the trips I take but it takes a toll on me. Just when I get in the groove of eating well, exercising, sleeping well, working "normal" hours etc, I hit the road again and despite my best intentions and my second best efforts, inevitably I have to start pretty much from scratch when I get home. 

When I travel for work, there are always lunches that are ordered in (I try to choose the salad but often there is none left by the time my team gets to the buffet) and dinners out. There are early meetings which means standing in front of the hotel fridge drinking a protein shake hoping it will hold me over rather than swinging through Dunkin Donuts etc on the way to the office. There are late meetings which means sneaking out at some point to grab a handful of almonds or a protein bar so I can focus before we head out to a late dinner. Dinners sometimes last until 9 or 10pm because I actually enjoy my co-workers and after we are done with work talk, we visit for a while as a means of winding down. This means my window of opportunity for exercise is slim. Really slim. 

As I write this, I'm on night two of a four night stretch away from home (unless I can keep my Thursday meetings from going too late and then I can go home a night early!) and I'm looking down the double barrel of a suuuuper long day Wednesday - starts with an early meeting, meetings allllllll day with one tiny 30 minute break and then meetings up until the Open House which is followed by a late business dinner. Thursday is an alllllll day planning retreat for the leadership team which will be great but busy followed by a meeting with my boss. Whew! I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

The irony is that my boss handed me an article today called "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" and talked about how we need to get back to a place of doing what we love and putting to bed the growing pains that are causing all of this extra work. I like it. In theory. I hope u get there. Soon. 

I do love what I was hired to do but with our catapulting growth, I have been sucked into the world of process and troubleshooting and problem solving and reaction. I was hired to develop and manage leaders and I can't wait until I can focus there again. 

And now, to bed before midnight. Hopefully my brain cooperates and shits out the lights soon. Maybe I'll get up early and walk to work. It's only about two miles. And this time I won't do it in heels. :-) I don't even pack them after the last incident that left me unable to put on shoes after a co-worker convinced me the meeting was "just down the block" but it was 2.4 miles away. :-)

Hotel joys of the night: Small dog barking in a nearby room. Man outside my window beeping car horn and yelling "José José! Let's go! JOSÉ! LET'S GO!"

(Apparently José is in a room and his ride is ready for him...) Air temperature of the room volleying between arctic and tropical. Smell of tonight's dinner wafting in from the bathroom trash. Yay! 

Did I mention that I miss being at home? I also miss being able to show up to a meeting wearing pajama pants because nobody can see them in my video chat. :-)

Oh. I have a blog.

Life has gotten SO busy that I haven't even had time to write. 

Since last entry:

Promotion at work - I'm now the "Manager of Team Development". Big title. Lots of responsibility. Great challenges. Love my job. 

Two week trip to Alaska with A and his parents. Flight seeing around Mt McKinley was amazing. Spectacular weather and views everywhere. Stayed on the Kilcher Homestead (watch the show Alaska the Last Frontier to know what that means). Whitewater rafting in Class 5 river. More talk of Alaska being on our list for a retirement stay. I love it there!!!!!!

Camping with friends. Visits to TN, ME, NH... And more? 

Busy. So busy!

Will try to remember to write more...

Heaven is in the Florida Keys...

We've had quite a winter this year! When I left home, we still had well over a foot of snow in most of our yard and about three feet of snow bank still out by the end of our driveway. 

I'm hot now. The windows are open. The slider is open. The ceiling fan is on. I'm sweating. It was 89* today and it's probably 80* now. But I'm not complaining!

This is the view from the balcony in my bedroom. I'm spoiled. 

I'm on Sugarloaf Key with my sister and brother in-law and my other sister arriving tomorrow. I wish A was here but he didn't have much vacation time left and... he quite dislikes the heat. But I miss him and wish he was here. 

Today we poked around Key West, had a wonderful Cuban lunch, toured the USS Ingham, cruised past the southernmost point in the continental US, and spent a few hours reading on the deck. Not a bad day!

My only complaint is that with travel, heat and eating out, I feel like a stuffed sausage in terms of swelling. I'm planning to get out early tomorrow to get in a walk to try to keep things moving but until then, I'm putting these sausage fingers to bed!

Organization nerd...

I didn't take pictures because it was abominable before we started and because we were exhausted and freezing cold by the time we were done. But believe me, it's a MASSIVE improvement!

When we moved into our house, we brought soooooo muuuuuuuch stuuuuuff! It was overwhelming as we had three households plus bins and bins and bins of things that had traveled to many of our temporary homes and they seemed to multiply. When living in transit, if you can't put your hands on something and you need it, you acquire another...

So, upon arriving in this house, we divided the basement into three sections of bins. One was for things we use often or regularly like our camping gear, Christmas decor, sports equipment etc. (We don't have a garage so it all heads down the stairs...) One was for things that needed to be sorted and most likely sold, donated or given away. And one was for long term storage - things we don't want to part with but don't need access to very often. 

Despite a major purge a few years ago, the bins have continued to multiply and random junk has found its way into the nooks and crannies. 

After getting water in the basement last week from the melting snow (yay for walking downstairs to put in laundry in socks and simultaneously hearing and feeling the telltale sploosh of water in the area rug in front of the washer. UGH!) we decided it was time to get the bins in the long term storage area stored appropriately. It only took us seven years!

A quick(ish) trip to Home Depot brought home $200 worth of lumber to get the job done. We spent the rest of the day moving bins, building custom shelves, and freezing our tails off! With the temperature at 30* outside, it didn't feel much warmer downstairs at ~45*. I had to stuff insulation and sweep cobwebs to keep moving and stay warm between surges of action!

I'm so thrilled to have a handy husband but even happier that he knows that I can help. I'm quite handy with the chop saw and the screw gun and I'm no slouch hauling lumber. In short, we make a great team!

We had planned to weed through several of the long term bins but we ran out of time. But we now have such a wonderful, spacious, easy to access shelving system that we were able to temporarily sort them by those we need to go through and those we know we want to keep as is. Another rainy day will give us the chance to finish that job!

And now that we've got the design worked out, we plan to build another custom system for the items we use regularly. 

Ideally, at the end of this process, the third "need to sort" pile will be history and free up a whole section of the basement. And... give us access to the troublesome window that we are pretty sure is the culprit for the occasional water issue.