Pickles & Dimes

This time of year always puts me in a weird place mentally (not that I’m not usually in a weird place mentally, but anyway). The snow has been plentiful, to be sure (We’re already on Minnesota’s Top 10 Snowiest Winters Ever List, FTW!) and the 13-inch snowfall after a week of melting temperatures was a frostbitten slap to the face, so I’ve decided that I’m done with winter. I’m no longer surviving it, but instead, simply no longer acknowledging its seemingly friendly-white-drifts-hiding-malacious-black-ice existence. More snow’s on the way? Fine. Whatever. I have a husband who gets home before I do and feels compelled to shovel. The temperature’s only going to be 28 degrees? Screw you, I’m wearing short sleeves anyway and I have a space heater at my desk. I feel like winter is purposely trying to get a rise out of me, so the best way to deal with it is to just ignore it until it gets bored and goes away. If that fails, I plan on jumping off of our deck railing onto the 6-foot-tall snow pile in our backyward because that also seems like a good way to tell winter to go screw itself.

Monday was the day of our giant snowfall, and after Jason & I got up at 4:15 a.m. to shovel our driveway (LET ME REPEAT: 4:15 a.m.! You should know, the Wanting to Barf Level was very high) we decided that since our street hadn’t been plowed but the side streets had, my car would never make it over the resulting Plow Wall at the end of the street. So I called in and worked from home. And it was glorious. After answering a bunch of emails at 6:30 a.m., I finally called a halt to the nonsense and took a shower, ate a nice, leisurely breakfast, and forced myself to wait until 8:00 a.m. to start working again. (Whenever I do work from home, I overcompensate by working longer/harder because I feel everyone thinks I’m slacking off. I am not.) The whole day was nirvana: no commute, no streaming line of procrastinating project managers, no endless supply of questions fired at me by people in my vicinity. Just a sleeping puppy in his bed near the desk, an electric blanket/purring lap kitty combo to combat the basement’s chill, and a crazy amount of productivity. I totally need to figure out a way to work from home (at least once in awhile). Plus, it totally fed into my introverted, no-need-to-talk-to-people-unless-absolutely-necessary philosophy.

This is probably why I had such an immediate and visceral reaction when one of my coworkers sent me a link to a marketing event that’s the business equivalent of speed dating. (Seriously, the whole evening consists of sitting at a table with 5-6 strangers and having 5 minutes to describe your business before being herded to another table of strangers to repeat the process. For three hours.) To tell you the truth, I would rather quit my job than do this. And it’s not because I’m afraid of speaking to strangers (I’m not), and it’s not that I’m anti-social (I am, but not really). It’s just that these types of events are filled with smarmy, teeth-itchingly-annoying cheeseballs that back you into the proverbial corner all night promising you all kinds of business advice (for free!). And then, once the evening ends and you’ve stupidly given them your work number or your email just to ensure your escape, they keep calling you. And calling you. Forever. And if you’re a nice person like me, you passive-aggressively give them subtle hints like ignoring their LinkedIn requests while simultaneously yearning to punch them in the face. And yet they keep calling.

Would you ever go to a work event like that? In case it’s not clear, I would not. Ever. At all. Ever.

Pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training yesterday. To say Jason and I are excited about this (and the slowly-but-surely-upcoming Opening Day) is a gigantic understatement. In case I haven’t mentioned it a thousand times before, we’re kind of devoted to watching baseball:

We’re not as lucky as other fans across the country because in the winter, with no interest in the Wild, the Vikings finding new and clever ways to disappoint and/or embarrass us, and the Timberwolves “highlights” consisting of games where they lose by 30 points, we don’t have much to look forward to besides seeing how awful the weather is going to be:

Ed. note: We really do have a meteorologist in the Twin Cities named Sven. He is approximately four feet tall.

Other fans across the United States have more pleasant things to occupy their minds during the months of November-February. For example, the entire state of Wisconsin:

Tampa, Florida:

Phoenix, Arizona:

And Boston, Massachusetts:

So, yeah. Baseball – finally. Now we have a little more color and excitement in our lives:

Well, we are back from our mini vacation to a casino in Wisconsin, the nearest place we can legally play roulette, and my strategy of staring intently at the roulette wheel and randomly picking numbers did not quite pan out, can you believe that? I lost all of my money (generously donated by our spare change jar) but played for nearly 2 1/2 hours, so that’s OK. Jason fared a little better by hitting four numbers in a row, feuling my rags-to-riches fantasies into high gear for a brief moment or two, but then settled into a routine of Losing to the Man and coming home with enough money to buy us a nice dinner. We had ample time to play cribbage (shhh…I am actually winning so far in this year’s tournament), play endless games of Angry Birds on our new phones, and enjoy the bizarre fact that on a Saturday night, while everyone else is losing their shirt across the street at the casino, the hotel pool and hot tub are completely empty.

We drove Jason’s new vehicle to Wisconsin, a 2008 Ford Escape. It’s quite nice, and we got a great deal on it, thanks to buying from Jason’s hometown Ford dealer, who has sold Jason’s family approximately a million vehicles. From the time he had his accident to the time we got everything squared away with Liberty Mutual, it was only two weeks. We couldn’t have been happier with them. From taking the initial claim, to following up when they said they would, to the more-than-expected-reimbursement to replace the totaled truck, it was practically a pleasure to deal with them. Kudos, Liberty Mutual.

Before we left on our trip, I got a massage on Thursday. Of course, because Mapquest sucks, it put me about a mile from my desired destination, with my only available route being a one-way parkway that I wished to travel in the opposite direction. Because I still had plenty of time to get to my appointment, my panic level remained at Stage 1 until I twice followed that damn parkway only to find the houses skipped hundreds of numbers. Remembering the last time I was denied a massage, I engaged in some self-pitying pouting, even raising a fist and shouting to myself in the car: “This is not happening AGAIN!” and finally called the massage therapist to get directions. Only later did it occur to me that my new phone was equipped with a Garmin. Doh. Suffice it to say, when I finally arrived in the nick of time, the massage therapist had plenty of knots to work with and must’ve felt sorry for me, because he went 15 minutes longer than my scheduled hour. It was awesome. I felt completely relaxed for the entire day, and when I dreamily told Jason I wanted to get a massage more often, he enthusiastically asked, “Oh, like twice a year?” and I said, “Um, I was thinking of getting another one next month for my birthday.” I mean, the feeling of awesomeness was incredible, and since work is being shitastic to me to the point that when I got my blood pressure taken at my doctor’s appointment last week – an hour after leaving work – it was so high the nurse was alarmed and insisted on redoing the test three times before she was convinced I wasn’t going to die of a heart attack right there. And that was last week’s Work, not this week’s, which has already received two angry X’s marked on the calendar to designate those days I wanted to quit. So yeah, if a massage helps get me past that cuddly murderous stage, I’m all for it.

I’m also for this week we’re enjoying of above-average temperatures. People are driving with their windows down, I saw a woman wearing shorts (and she wasn’t jogging), and it’s only a matter of time before the first convertible-with-its-top-down or motorcycle spotting. Every day when I get home it’s like greeting new friends: Well, hello there, garage rooftop! Hi, teeny patch of grass! Thanks, garage door, for opening without manual assistance! The only thing I forget about is that the water puddles refreeze overnight, so every morning it’s: Holy crap, driveway!

Oh well. If I fall, then I can just get another massage, right?

We are still waiting for the check from our insurance company, but we’re purchasing a vehicle tomorrow, and while we know the approximate amount we should be receiving, it’s still a little nerve-wracking to say, “Oh, we’ll just transfter that money from savings and reimburse it once we get the check from insurance,” because of course my mind immediately veers into WE WILL NEVER GET REIMBURSED territory. Please don’t let us down, Liberty Mutual. It will be so nice for Jason to have a vehicle again, because the rental Hyundai Accent does not count as a vehicle if the driver’s seat is reclined so far back it feels like you’re lying in bed.

I was supposed to get my stitches out on Monday, but the doctor’s office called to cancel because the doctor had a death in the family. That was OK, but the nurse had some Major Attitude and when I attempted to reschedule for that same day with a different doctor, she snottily informed me that she had a LOT of patients to reschedule so that wasn’t possible, but I could go to Urgent Care if I wanted them out so badly. Obviously, I wasn’t about to pay someone at Urgent Care to pick up a pair of scissors, so I asked about waiting until Thursday to do it since I have the day off. Nurse With Attitude then upped her huffitude and informed me I’d already had the stitches for 10 days and they didn’t want them in for much longer. Her tone implied that the skin was growing around the stitches and absorbing them back into my body and that I would probably be dead soon from a massive infection. So after some barely contained cattiness on both our parts, we agreed on an appointment for this afternoon. Which is apparently so much better than tomorrow morning. If I didn’t need to see my lab results, I’d just have Jason do it.

I have tomorrow and Friday off, and boy howdy, do my coworkers seem to know it. The requests I am getting are pointing toward the “practical joke” variety, because come on, I know you know how to make an org chart, dammit! For just this reason, I don’t usually advertise to my coworkers when I’m going to be gone because I like to imagine the feeling of horror they get when they come to my desk and see me gone, or email me and receive my Out of Office message. That’s what procrastination brings, jerks!

I have one last meeting today before I leave, and sometimes when I’m sitting in a boring, means-absolutely-nothing-to-me meeting in which I say three words (and that’s just to say something for the fun of it), I have a deep urge to make chicken noises. Like, if someone was right in the middle of droning on and on about “business development” and “strategic initiatives,” I could just belt out a loud “BA-GOKKKK!” and see what happens.

I bet it would be pretty awesome.