(no subject)

It's been a while, I know.

There are days when I feel like I've been thrown off my orbit.  The cumulative small things over time unbalance me, suddenly the world's not turning a full revolution every 24 hours, time passes me in a daze.  I knew it was bad last weekend when I realized that the dishes from ichicolco's b'day BBQ were still in the sink a week and a half later.  2:30 AM, and I'm filling the dishwasher, wondering how things keep slipping away from me.  And you don't want to know how I've been about bills and stuff. 

Grimmtooth wrote recently how his wife finally resigned from a job driving her crazy.  I think it's eventually coming to that for me, too.  I'm looking for a parachute.  How bad is it?  A co-worker on my project left suddenly, no notice, just came in and cleaned his desk over the weekend while no one was around, blew off 100 hours of vacation time, just to get the hell away from the place.  My other co-worker is looking to go back to a division with a known expiration date (BRAC'ed) just for a little sanity.  For 13 years at the educational institution, I was at work at 7:30 AM, 7:00 AM during the summer.  At the Evil Empire, I was at work between 7:30-8:00 AM.  Now, at this place, I struggle to get in by 10:00 AM, sometimes it's closer to 11 AM.  Oh, I'm up in plenty of time; I'm often up in time to get there before 9 AM...but bringing myself to go...I struggle.  My aforementioned co-worker, in one of the last conversations I had with him before he went poof, said he felt sick to his stomach coming to work each day.  He had developed stress-induced panic attacks and gained 45 pounds since starting the job -- he started two weeks before me. 

And yet they pay me well.  I should be grateful.

But it's death by a thousand paper cuts.  With daily dousings with lemon juice.  Constant minor irritations.  After over a year and a half of it...I'm worn down.  I'm tired.  I'm not happy; I'm not happy who I am as a consequence; it takes so much to leave it behind when I get home.  Sometimes I can't.  Sometimes I sit, tense and emotionally drained, for several hours until I'm able to unwind.  Then it's in the wee hours I finally feel like a shadow of myself again. 

Injury to insult:  I'm allergic to something in the ductwork at the office.  When the fan kicks in, I start sneezing uncontrollably.  I finally had a sneezing fit so long and so bad that I reinjured a disc in my back.  It wasn't obvious at first, the back wasn't what hurt directly--though later I discovered the tenderness and slight swelling--it was the pain down my leg...it was the pain down my entire left side, from my jaw to my ankle, with stops in my shoulder and wrist.  The cheap-*ss desk I have at work doesn't allow for arm support when I mouse, so unfortunately, I had a terrible flare-up of RSI/CTS in my right wrist, too.  I was in a world of hurt for over a week.  I was wearing braces on both wrists, a brace on the ankle (compression just helped it feel better), and I struggled to implement what my physical therapist had told me the first time I hurt my back:  keep your back straight for a week; no twisting, no slouching, force the disc back into place and allow the disc wall to heal, then slowly work on flexibility and strength.  The back is still tender, but the leg pain has receded, and I can get through the day without constantly popping Aleve.  The right wrist normally heals up after a day of rest, but it took several days this time, probably since I'm so run down.  At least I'm out of physical pain; I'm grateful for that.

Little Bunnies

...aren't so little any more.  Not full-grown, by no means, but not tiny little handfuls, either.

They are such strange little creatures.  It's only now, almost 4 months after I brought them home, that they are finally warming to us.  Bunnies are like that, however; trust is hard-won and slow to come.  Dusty actually seems to enjoy being petted; Scruffy is still highly suspicious and it's only after seeing Dusty get all the attention that Scruffy will finally come over and make himself available to be stroked. 

Scruffy likes to redecorate their area.  They have a cage which is always open and a fenced-in play area.  I put a folded towel on the top of their cage so that they can jump on top and lounge there--which they seem to enjoy.  Later, I added a sheepskin bed, which they seem to enjoy also, and I put another towel on top of it..

Every morning I come downstairs and something has changed.  Scruffy throws the bed and towels off the top of the cage; if I replace the bed and towels, they are happily back up there, laying on the bed.  Finally, the blue towel was exiled entirely.  Scruffy wouldn't allow it to remain on top of the cage, though he seems to enjoy pushing it around the play area.  Other times, I have come downstairs and just the bed has been thrown down.  One time I came downstairs and both the towel and the bed were on the floor; another time, the bed was on the floor and the towel had been pulled through a cardboard tube.  Today, somehow Scruffy managed to throw the towel down leaving only the bed on top of the cage.  Since the bed sits on top of the towel, I really would have loved to see how he accomplished this.

I had given them a rope ball with a treat inside.  One day, the ball was just...gone.  The treat was on the floor.  Many days later I found a great wad of chewed-up rope in their area--evidently they had pulled it into the igloo inside their cage, then rejected it.  I hadn't thrown it away yet, and when I did return to discard it, it was gone again--guess they are redecorating in there.  Peeking in their igloo, they have lined it with pieces of cardboard, bits of fur, hay, and the fibers of the rope.