— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
I had so many things to do "first thing" or definitely "this morning" as part of this being my last day before the longest vacation I have ever taken: starting with re-entering my PTO in the staff calendar for Eric and/or Gabby to approve. I had to wait to do that until today so that, with the accrued PTO as of today's paycheck, the approved PTO would not exceed the maximum deficit of 40 hours. My projected PTO balance right now is roughly -38 hours. (This is all because no one bothered to tell us last year that we would not accrue PTO on cashed out hours, which I had figured into my budgeting calculations. Thanks a lot, PCC!)
I had to run an override so a broker could submit a late March promotion, which I need to be able to take care of today. I had to run a certain report early, that communicates late-breaking cost adjustment changes for March. I had to re-send an updated email to Amy, Cathryn, Amanda, Eric and Gabby (fuck! I should have added Steven) regarding all the tasks that need coverage in my absence and who owns which task. I emailed POS at all stores to give a heads up that I will be out for the next two and a half weeks, and who to contact in my absence. I needed to change the vendor on five items so that it would batch that change to stores on Monday, which because of weird limitations of our system meant I had to key the changes today.
All of that isn't even to mention the half-hour meeting I had with Amy and Eric over Teams to show them how to do one last task someone else needed to learn how to do. That had been scheduled for an hour but we only took half an hour; Amy smartly records these Teams meetings when I show her how to do things. That left me a half-hour break before just one more half-hour Teams meeting I had at 11:00. And with that, the
ninth and final meeting I had this week was done. No more fucking meetings! I hope, anyway. Please, God.
All of the above shit was in addition to plenty of other stuff that came up in the meantime or in between.
Side note: this being "the longest vacation I have ever taken" is really . . . just barely. The last time we went to Australia, I took 12 days of PTO. This year, it will be 13. So it still breaks the record! As for actual travel time, that is also slightly longer this time: including travel start to finish, the 2020 trip spanned 15 days; this year will span 17. Just as I did last time, I'm taking an extra PTO at the end of it to re-adjust to the time change, thus making this vacation two and a half weeks long.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
There are no social plans between now and our departure—no moviegoing plans either; my last movie was on Wednesday. I walked all the way home yesterday (11,302 steps!), which included meeting Shobhit at Diesel for a cocktail before getting all the way home. This added to the 1.5 parathas with eggplant squash Shobhit made for dinner would certainly be why my weight was up slightly this morning, back to 159.6 lbs. Still below 160 though so I'm calling that a win!
I almost always have higher weight the next day after drinking alcohol though. Shobhit observed that ages ago and it tends to hold true. I was going to wait to drink until our flight from LAX to Brisbane, but damn, after how stressful work was yesterday, I needed a fucking drink.
Isn't that just how it goes? This week I already had plenty extra to take care of just to get everyone prepared for my absence and coverage needs. But at least three different people also picked this week to bring time-consuming issues with varying levels of urgency to my attention. One of them was a vendor that got me on the phone after 4 p.m. on Tuesday and by the end of that conversation I wanted to throttle her. And now we've got this FDA compliance issue with noting allergen ingredients on our Bulk bins and again with the urgency: can I find people who can assist with this while I'm out? I'm already dumping way too much on way too many people, for fuck's sake. And now I have to spend time figuring
this out. I am so ready to get the fuck out of here.
I almost never feel that way about this job. But as I told Gabby over email this morning, right now I feel like I need a vacation from this week alone. I need a vacation just from fucking preparing for vacation!
Anyway, Shobhit and I walked home from Diesel, and went down to the storage unit to get our second suitcase we'll be packing, bringing it upstairs on the elevator. I helped him make the delicious dinner he prepared. We watched episodes of
Poker Face (not my favorite episode) and
Abbott Elementary (that show is like visual comfort food).
And then? The cherry on the cake for my fucking day yesterday: Shanti, my cat, somehow managed to do something completely unprecedented . . . in the litter box. Or should I say,
from the litter box. She did this while I was doing my exercises so I didn't see it; I only walked up to discover the aftermath: it was like she detonated a shit bomb. Literally. I'm not kidding.
It was as though she pointed her ass out of the litter box and sprayed the carpet and walls like a firehose. Okay, not quite at that intensity, but close enough: there were bits of shit in several spots on the carpet,
and on the hallway wall opposite the litter box. How the fuck did she manage that?
After I spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning all of this up, I'm pretty sure I figured out what happened. I don't think she actually aimed her ass out and let a giant kitty-shart. It was clear she had a rather mushy bowel movement—making cleanup more of a challenge—but my guess is that she shit in the litter box, and probably inadvertently kicked litter out of the box in the process of supposedly "burying" it. Our cats have long been idiots on this front, not always actually burying their shit, and instead just scratching the sides of the box, and often the wall next to it, instead. But they do some digging in the litter itself too, sometimes kicking litter out of the box in the process. You know how a cat might accidentally dip their paw in, say, water, and then shake the water off that paw? Shanti may have, like, stepped in this gooey shit and then did that with it. Which would splatter it all over the fucking place.
In any case that was what I had to deal with right before bed. I sprayed Resolve in too many places to count, scrubbed the carpet and parts of the wall, and even got a wet wipe and wiped down Shanti's butt fur, which itself was slightly caked with brown streaks.
The shit
really stank. Just to give you a vivid picture of this experience. Air freshener got sprayed all around the litter boxes—
after I scooped them out—no fewer than three times. Still, that stank hung in the air for probably an hour. Shanti herself continued to stink for a short while. Holy shit the whole mess was disgusting.
But having pets is a true joy, you should definitely get one!
— पांच हजार तीन सौ उनहत्तर —
[posted 12:30 pm]
