Stick a fork in me…

…cause I am done.

With the backlog of bills, that is.

…that’s right, my life? Never ending rollercoaster of excitement, wooooooo!

I spent over nine hours today – nine! – catching up with the backlog of crap that required a signature, a read-and-understand, a bellowing up and down the stairs about planned course of action, scanning, filing, shredding or otherwise dealing with.

But on the bright side, it was a wretched day outside. Cold, rainy, windy, dark, blech.

Which made it easier to be cooped up inside doing the Dreaded Paperwork stuff, even though my garden is SO not ready for spring.

Except that I kept stopping to stare out the window in amazement as weather kept happening. I MEAN, REALLY…does it not know this is California? Aren’t we supposed to be, like, a sunny-blue-day vacation wish-you-were-here postcard all the time?!

…geez…

In unrelated news, I am so damned tired of Drama. Now with more Drama. PLUS, AS AN ADDED BONUS? Drama.

Seriously. Enough, now.

I think one of the not-exactly-downsides of being a person who ordinarily resists stress pretty well is, once it does get to me…man, I am not equipped to deal with it particularly well.

It got to me about two weeks ago. On Tuesday. When it was like, all the leaving that has been going on – coworkers to new jobs, or being laid off, our own Vanessa the Great finding another job, and why am I still here, again?!, combined with the “sudden” realization by Everybody that I was not going to be there that much longer OHMYGAH, if you ever had a question, about anything, be it how to do “that thing” in SQL, or how this application does that or that application does this, or how come this other thing isn’t blue while that other thing is orange…NOW IS THE TIME!

…I suddenly became verrrrrrrry popular, and a job that was already normally fairly go-go-go became GO-GO-GO…but now with more official meetings and less actually working.

Which, when combined with “my” developer leaving for another job and the subsequent need for me to train up a new developer…made for some interesting “time management” issues for me.

SPEAKING OF…ohmygah, you guys…get this. I got home Thursday night and started to basically go straight to bed. Which is kind of what I’ve been doing for the last Forever and a Half (hence the enormous pile of bills and other Official Things that I spent – I kid you not – nearly nine hours dealing with today, oy vey!), but then I said to myself, tiredly…

“Dude…you’d better at least open your email and clear out the server, before they lock you down.”

I try to keep up on my phone when I’m meeting myself coming and going. I try to deal with it while I’m loitering around on the train platforms, you know, at least delete out the spam and Extremely! Exciting! Offers! for 0.008% off if I buy between 10:00 and 10:08 a.m. on a Saturday and like that.

But I’d gotten way behind. WAY behind. And there was something wrong with my automatic sync that I hadn’t figured out, and, well, just, you know.

I needed to put in the massive effort to turn on the computer and open my email client.

PING! PING! PING! PING! HI! HI! HI! HI! REMINDER! REMINDER! HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? OVERDUE! PING! PING!

I had about eleventy mazillion reminders pop up for appointments on Friday, Saturday, [pause over Sunday], Monday AND Tuesday.

For a split second I was all, whaa? because for heaven’s sake, in what reality would I have put whackity-majillion appointments all packed together over three…

…days…

…aw, @^*&@...

YA KNOW how I was getting all sniffy about others not being particularly aware of how a calendar works? And was all like, shoulda been doing this six weeks ago, morons! and other haughty and superior sorts of stuff?

…ya know that old saying about how whenever you’re pointing a finger at somebody else, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself…?

Yeah. I sort of forgot I had planned time off Friday, Monday and Tuesday.

{head-desk}

When am I going to learn – the instant I start feeling superior about anything? Put a pillow under my arse, because I’m about to fall on it…geesh…

I was tired and irritable at that exact moment, so my first thought was, well…there you are then. It’s been on the team calendar for a Sunth of Mondays. It’s been called out in our weekly meetings, over and over again. Sure, yeah, I “always” send out a reminder email a week before, and then the day before, but you know – hey.

I’m sick of them, and they’re sick of me. And I’m tired. And not working tomorrow (read: talking to any of them, about anything)? Is sounding real good right about now…

But, after I’d gotten my 2.5 hours of actual sleep (and 1.5 hours of lying awake wishing I could get to sleep) (insomnia thanks to excessive brain activity that likes to respond to me trying to go to bed by going “whirrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRR!” instead of “zzzzzzzzz,” and yeah, it sucks) (stupid brain!) and was feeling a little less childish, I spent some time in the morning shuffling things around until I’d gotten anything that wouldn’t involve standing another human being up pushed off until early April.

So I’m taking partial time off. By which I mean, I’m working as usual, only with a few very long breaks midday so I can meet with people here and there for exciting things like spinal adjustments, crown installing (tooth not jeweled headwear, unfortunately) and to discuss their database needs.

And to have lunch with some friends. Which is a very important part of any given time not-exactly-off.

I only have two weeks left, and a lot to do…for people I’ve grown to care about rather a lot. I still feel as though I’m leaving a newborn on a bus depot bench and walking away, leaving this project as it currently stands…there’s just still so much that should get done, that probably won’t get done after I’ve gone.

There just isn’t anybody to do it…and it would take too long for anybody to train up into it.

…sigh…

Well…it’ll be OK, one way or another. The worst that can possibly happen still doesn’t result in any actual, physical death.

Or dismemberment.

So, onward. We’ll do the best we can with what time we have left, and after that, well…I’ll just have to trust that those I’m leaving behind can figure things out.

I’m pretty sure they can…and I won’t be, you know, moving…so the new developer can totally find me if he has any questions.

(Hi, honey. You will so owe me a whack of yard work if you take too much advantage of that.)

(Yet another fringe benefit of the two of us working together: Losing one of us doesn’t actually mean losing that one.)

(Heh. He’s so totally going to be driving me nuts with the ‘quick question’ thing for about two months after I’ve technically left, I can practically guarantee it…)

(OH, and? Vanessa the Great didn’t end up leaving us. Her new job fell through after a great many near-misses and miscommunications. Yay! Um, I mean, and I’m terribly sorry about that, dear me, tsk-tsk, simply dreadful, nobody regrets more than I do…)

(p.s. yay!)

(p.p.s. I am a bad, bad person…)