Vacation Day!

Son #3 has a dental appointment shortly after noon, so I'm taking this opportunity to use one of my 13 vacation days left before June 1st. (I'm saving the rest for when my soldier is home on mid-tour leave in May.) It's windy out there, but warmer (about 53 degrees F, moving up to 64 in the afternoon), with a chance for thunderstorms and tornadoes tonight! In case I haven't mentioned it, I embrace bad weather, but only if it's warm.

I'm biorhythmically moving into one of my introspective periods, which means fewer posts and comments. At least I understand my own patterns and can predict them, even if I haven't yet managed to figure out prevention. I may be on to something, though: a co-worker invited me yesterday to walk the six flights of stairs that flank the interior of the hangar and lead to a catwalk at the ceiling. If I lead up to doing this every day, five days a week, I'll be well on my way to restructuring my bird legs, having thighs and calves, and maybe preventing a fluctuation in mood. And if I end up looking like the lower half of Beyonce, who am I to complain?

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how painful self-restraint is for me. And not just self-restraint, but being forced by other people or by circumstances to refrain from doing something - especially spending money. It's bad enough that I live with a tightwad at home, but now I'm faced with a tightwad employer. Since I started my current job, I've been in charge of ordering office supplies for my department. Because of the current economy, the only thing I can order is paper, and even that has to go through the approval of four managers. This means no Post-It notes! No pens! No multi-colored miniature legal notepads! Do you know how much that hurts me? It's a good thing I have my purple, refillable Dr. Grip gel pen, with the dozen-or-so black ink refills I ordered a while back just in case. I may have stumbled upon an entrepeneurial opportunity, though. While I still have staples, I'm going to take discarded printer paper, cut it into quarters, and staple it (blank side up) into small note pads and sell them to my co-workers.
(Note: While I understand that if you "take care of the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves," it seems a bit laughable when you consider that the top five executives of my company are pulling in a total of 44 million dollars. I say slice from the top of the cake first. I'll bet the top of the cake has Post-It notes!)

So that's it. I'm spoiled rotten, and never would have survived The Great Depression. Especially since Post-It Notes weren't invented yet.