Category: September 2017

Our well-trained Kai sits at attention when he wants something. Now what could he be doing sitting there, nowhere near his food bowl?

Yep, there’s something on the counter he wants.

John brought me a little stuffed toy, “Sandy the Lab” from our Sandia labs credit union. (Har-har, punny! Get it? Sandia lab.) He gave it to me for my office. (So I can always remember Sandia?) I didn’t even realize the dogs noticed the exchange. But Kai knows it’s up there. And he thinks it must be for him!

Kira’s oblivious, she’s like, “Oh! We’re sitting for pictures? OK!”

Remember when I posted recently an article about what it’s like to inadvertently kill someone?

Well, this very sad thing just happened about a mile from our house. We are a small, rural, tight-knit community, so this is going to affect everyone.

http://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/women-killed-when-sheriffs-deputy-backed-into-her-was-helping-to-investigate-burglary-neighbors-say/4619466/

On nextdoor.com there is a “blame the victim vs blame the deputy” debate among our neighbors. Why do we always have to blame someone?

Now it is time to post about my new job!

The best thing so far about my new job is all the great people! Also it’s good to just be back into it. Even though this particular job is new, so much about the office environment is familiar, and I definitely have been missing it. I feel like I’m part of a team again.

MONDAY:

The first day was somewhat stressful because I had to meet everyone, and I promptly forgot all their names. Not only did I forget all the names, I couldn’t even remember who I had met and who I hadn’t met. “Did I meet you already? No? Ok. Hi, I’m Kristina.”

Monday evening I had two clients scheduled, but one requested a reschedule, so I had just one client. A good thing, because it had been a long day!

TUESDAY

Woke up with a mild migraine, took my meds right away and was fine the rest of the day. Whew!

Second day was lots of HR stuff – signing millions of documents. I got my badge – but they put the wrong name on it! I had to go back and get another badge 🙂 There’s a separate card to unlock the building, but mine doesn’t work.

Oh, and they gave me a hat. And a t-shirt! Here I am in my new hat. Now I’m official LOL!

One great thing about working for the state is I can take pictures of things for this blog (you can’t take photos at Sandia).

Two clients on Tuesday night. A busy day!

WEDNESDAY:

For the rest of the week my whole department has training. The training is being held at a different location than our office – about a mile away. It’s a very fancy building. Wouldn’t it be nice to work here everyday?

There are balconies off the second story with tables. If I worked here, I would be working on the balcony!

At the training I met a ton more people. Everyone keeps asking me where I’m from. I don’t know what to say to that. Where am I from? Placitas? Sandia? California? Albuquerque?

They also want to know where I’m living (or how long is my commute). Equally confusing. Placitas? My friend’s casita? Buying a townhome? “So your husband’s going to commute?” Uh…no…I needed to have rehearsed simplistic answers ahead of time, because I am confusing everyone and totally failing the “Who are you?” quiz. But there just aren’t simplistic answers. A lot of people commute all the way from Albuquerque, which is even further than Placitas. So I think it seems odd to them that I’m moving here without John. I’m not mentioning my reasons…clients and migraines. In an ideal world, those things wouldn’t reflect badly on me. But in the real world, some people (like my previous boss at Sandia!), imagined I was less of an employee because of these things.

I’ve also discovered I have a certain amount of reluctance to say much about my kids (sorry guys!). It’s not that I’m not proud of my kids! But most people in my new office are a lot younger than me (unlike Sandia, where they’re all old, LOL). Anyway, when I start talking about my kids, pretty soon it’s obvious from the context that my kids are all grown up. And then my coworker’s eyes get big and they look at me like, “OMG you’re OLD!” Of course they don’t actually say that, but that’s what their faces say, and then I really do feel old. I think my boss is my daughter’s age. Not exaggerating. But she is very sweet 🙂

I’m sure I’ll relax after I get to know people. But I was not treated well at Sandia in California, so…once bit, twice shy, I guess. Now that I’m being treated with respect, I’m almost angry about how badly I was treated at Sandia. The difference is stark. It’s like I’m only fully realizing it now because it was subtle (but pervasive). When I first started that job I was very unhappy and I didn’t understand why. Four years later, when I quit that job, I still didn’t fully understand why I was quitting. But now I can’t believe I put up with it for as long as I did.

Two clients Wednesday night. This week is flying by!

THURSDAY:

Woke up with a bit worse of a migraine than Tuesday. So I got up soon as I woke up and started my migraine prevention routine. (This amount of migraine days is typical, BTW, and not due to the new job. Commonly 2-4 days a week, but usually under control and able to continue with my day.)

The casita I’m renting is only 5 minutes from where the training is being held, so I was also able to go home at lunchtime to do more migraine prevention. My new townhome will be about twice as far, but still only 10 minutes; still possible to go home for lunch if needed.

Here’s the other, more fun, advantage of being close enough to go home for lunch. Mmmmmm.

Only one client on Thursday night. She’s a new client, and it was her very first session. Initial sessions can be more of a challenge, but it seemed to go very well. And I kept the migraine under control all day, yay!

FRIDAY:

I just realized that I had failed to collect payment from a recent client prior to our session. I always require payment ahead of time, and I had in my mind that she had paid – but she hadn’t. This session was just a one-time session (sometimes people do just want one consultation). I can bill her retroactively, of course, but it’s highly unlikely she’ll pay now. Plus the session itself was difficult – upsetting for me. Sometimes people – and their lives – are not easy for me to deal with. Ugh, well, I just need to shake that off. Meanwhile I’m looking forward to continuing with my new client from Thursday night. She’s now scheduled regularly for Mondays and I know I will enjoy working with her.

Currently most of my clients are in their twenties, and trying to get their careers going (with their parents paying for the coaching). It’s a hard time of life. But my clients who are a decade or two older and in the midst of everything – children, career setbacks, deteriorating relationships – it seems like that’s even harder.

Particularly the relationship struggles – it’s the same stuff over and over. In our society we do not seem to know – or at least don’t widely teach – how to communicate in a relationship.  There’s some basics that would make such a big difference if people were simply taught. It would have saved me a lot of grief in my own life if I known more, sooner, about communication.

On Friday night I drove back to Placitas. The evening light through the clouds was amazing and it was very beautiful. But I passed the remnants of two recent car wrecks as I drove home. I feel so bad for everyone who has to make that commute twice each day. And I only have to do it twice a week.

After I got home last night, John and I went on a short walk to see the rest of the sunset. The sky was doing crazy, strange things as usual. New Mexico definitely has the best sunsets of anywhere I’ve ever lived.

Here’s a few pictures from Globalquerque, which is an annual world music festival held in Albuquerque. John and I go every year. Even when we were in California, we would fly back for it.

There are 3 stages, two outdoors and one inside a big theater hall.

Here are African singers & drummers. In this shot, the percussionists have abandoned their “real” drums and are just using pieces of wood on wooden stools. It worked well!

These next guys are singers & dancers from Tbilisi, Georgia (the country).

The festival is for 2 evenings and we always see lots of great music that we would never otherwise hear. And I always buy at least one CD, and if you’re lucky you can get them signed there.

Laura, can you remind me what this is? I found it in the refrigerator.

It has tape around the lid, which suggests it was moved here from California last year (and obviously not used since).

Back in the day, “Cost Plus World Market” was called “Cost Plus” rather than “World Market” and was a cost-effective place to get interesting imports from around the world. Now it’s just an overpriced place to buy the new “mid-century” decor, which is currently popular with the urban younger generations. To my generation, it just looks like Grandma’s old stuff. No, actually, by the time I was 7 years old, my grandparents had already gotten this stuff out of their houses.

For example, I can imagine that if I’d never seen anything like this couch before, I’d really like it. It has good clean lines, and a warm color. But no, this is the furniture that was in the Goodwill stores when I was a kid. It’s not even the furniture that I grew up with. It was the dated furniture that was already beat up, smelly and unwanted, and given away for free.

Remember? Yes, we remember.

And look, remember the metal strips around the bottom of the table legs? What was that for? Like, in case your dog was still in puppy-chewing stage?

But I’m still partial to the store. And I was wasting time on their website recently when I spotted a great chair. It’s simple, with beautiful lines. It’s a great chair.

And it costs $299, plus tax, plus $70 in shipping (only available online). $400?!?! Who would spend that much on a chair? A single chair?? That’s just stupid.

I do want a chair, and a variety of other things, for my new townhouse. So I went to a consignment shop in Albuquerque (any locals reading this, it’s on Candelaria a block east of the freeway).

Consignment shops are great! I’m all for buying used because reusing items is the most efficient form of recycling. Also you can get all kinds of unique and different stuff, for less than the cost of new. And it’s better stuff than at the goodwill type stores, because the stuff is nice enough that the sellers think they can get some money for it. Goodwill only has things people are willing to give away for free. Also at consignment shops you can find things made by local woodworkers and other artisans.

Heres my $25 chair. I know it’s not for everyone, but I think it’s wonderful. And it fits me so well! Most chairs leave a huge, uncomfortable gap between my back and the back of the chair. But this chair fits great. I’m going to use it as my desk chair because right now I’m just using a dining room table chair and a pillow. My back with thank me.

You can’t see very well in this picture, but there are adorable little old-fashioned coaster wheels on the front legs. It’s just cute. And it will match my new townhome. I have a vision for the decor – a little funky and eccentric, but clean and simple, not cluttered, with a few strong colors. It’ll be great!

I’ll bet you never had this phone conversation with your spouse.

(Ring, ring)

John: Hello?

Me: Hon, can you come out here and get the mouse off my windshield? I don’t want to drive into the garage with it up there.

John: Where are you?

Me: In the driveway. I don’t want to pull into the garage because there’s a mouse on my windshield and I don’t want it in the garage. Can you get it off my windshield please?

John: What? A mouse?

Me: Yes, definitely a mouse, long tail, I must have picked it up when I stopped at the other house to get the UPS package. Can you come out here?

John: Your windshield?

Me: Yes, it’s been running around on my wipers for 3 blocks now. I don’t want to drive it into the garage, can you just deal with it please?

John: On the inside or the outside?

Me: On the outside, thankfully, but I still nearly ran off the road, it keeps running back and forth. Can you just come out here?

John: Is it still there? Did you get a picture?

Me: I don’t know, it might have jumped off just now, but I don’t want it in the garage, and NO I DIDN’T GET A PICTURE, IT’S DARK AND I WAS TRYING TO DRIVE.

(Then, 8:00 the next morning. It’s a lazy Saturday morning.)

Me: I’m getting up to get my coffee.

John: ok

(one minute later)

Me: Hon, there’s a lizard in the dining room.

John: What?

Me: A lizard in the dining room. Can you get it, please?

John: A lizard?

Me: Yes. Lizard. In the dining room. And it’s all photographed and ready to go. Don’t let the dogs eat it.

After meeting at the cafe John was following me home, about 1 minute behind me because he stopped at the other house to check for UPS packages. He arrived to find the garage door hanging open and me wandering around in the dark near the driveway waving my iphone light ineffectively where my headlights had been, saying, “Kitty, kitty? Kitty, kitty, kitty?” He asked, “What are you doing?”

I said, “I just saw the biggest black cat I’ve ever seen, sitting on a rock out there. And I know it wasn’t a dog. It had cat’s eyes and it just sat there like a cat. But it was huge.” So we made a joke about panthers. And later he said, “You probably saw a small bear.” And I’m like, no way. I’d mistake a bear for a cat on a rock?

But we do have a lot of bear, of all sizes, and today on Nextdoor.com, someone posted about there being a bear around last night. That might have been a little bit more of a kitty than I was prepared for.

PS. Laura – great phrase card – mistaking a bear for a cat on a rock!