Crap that happens when you least expect it.

Right after I published my last post, I got a phone call. In fact, I got the call precisely as I clicked on "Sign Out". My friend, the pseudo-sister, was calling to tell me her father had just died.

He was relatively young, only 59, but he had a massive heart attack and died very quickly.

In between here and there, I've been staying overnight with her children as she and her husband left to help her mother get through the first night of widowhood, traveled 45 minutes away from my house to go to the viewing and the funeral and just plain, old listened. She's doing better now (today she was fully into the anger stage of her grieving -- a public service announcement, folks, you never know when you might have a massive heart attack, so make a list of your financial accounts, account log-ins and passwords, and leave it in an envelope in your desk. Your heirs will not curse you as loudly as she did her father today when she realized they don't know where he kept all his money.) I know she's got a long way to go to back to something akin to "alright", but at least she's on her way.

Plus the temp agency that I thought didn't want me on their roster has started calling me again. I guess they've got some temporary part time jobs they can't get the other job seekers to accept. It helps in this case that I'm not picky, I suppose. One of the ladies called me this morning while I was feeding an infant and I've called her back twice already. I know they're short handed today -- the secretary told me so -- so I figure now I'll give her space and time to call me. After all, I have no way of knowing when she's got a free moment, but she does. Patience. I will exert patience.

Sigh. I don't know. Sometimes it feels my life is spinning wildly out of control, and mostly I don't mind -- I am, after all, along for the ride -- but sometimes I'd like a little more space between the crazy, you know?

Oh, well. At least I have my KAL. I've been working on the second square for my blanket, and I don't know how I feel about the pattern. It's optional, but I've started it, and with all the cussing that's gone into the little bit I've done so far, I feel obliged to finish it if only so I haven't wasted all those obscenities. A damn is a terrible thing to waste.

Maybe that's what I'll do tonight, after I finish up reading the chapter in my latest self help book (The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is The Key To High Performance And Personal Renewal, it's fabulous and worth reading for everyone -- just sayin'). I'm actually enjoying this book, and for once it...well, what they say feels right and sensible and like something that will help me. As I'm the Burn Out Queen, I've been thinking a lot about my energy -- how I manage it, how I build it, where I spend it -- and this is the first book I've ever found that actually addresses that issue. After only reading the first half, I can say two things definitively: 1) I wish I'd participated in an organized sport as a child, and if I'm ever blessed with a surly knittling, they will play a sport, and be coached by a good coach. 2) This book has taught me more about why I've had so much trouble with the jobs I've held and why I have such an aversion to going back to work in the corporate environment. I'm not completely healed and ready for a 40 hour workweek in the service of The Man, but I think if I put the principles of this book into play, eventually the idea of taking a day job to support my writing won't chap quite so much as it now does.

GO READ THIS BOOK. NOW. NOWNOW.

Ahem. Anyway. Read first, knit later. I experimented with my media diet last week, and felt a bit more engaged in my life. So I think I'm going to continue the media diet, in an abridged format, this week. No internet beyond my email, this blog and Ravelry (because I need my peeps, yo) and one or two checks of Facebook, because I promised my niece I'd send her times for the movie we're going to see on Friday night. A little bit of tv at night -- if only because I do loves me some hot fiction -- but no more daytime tv. Daytime tv is just a massive energy suck. You don't realize how sedating it can be until you give it up.

But the neighborhood wise-kid had it right:

Seriously. It's helped me be more productive. And awake.

Whatever broodiness I was suffering is gone, long gone.

I started my job yesterday, although tomorrow is my official start date. The boys and their mom were all sick, so I went over to help her wrangle youngin's to the doctor and then get her a nap. I now have the near permanent smell of rancid baby formula in my clothes (granted, formula always smells four days old and slightly green so that's not all that difficult to achieve).

I love taking care of the boys, really I do, but whatever romance there ever was about motherhood and what it's like has vanished into hour-long temper tantrums, repeated viewings of Sesame Street's "Shapes" show and baby spit of the consistency of egg whites. Full time mothers should earn some sort of public service award, seriously. Or at least earn money. Them's some hard rows to hoe, people.

I think I'm going to try the media diet next week. A limited diet -- going cold turkey might cause the DTs, and people die of the DTs, you know -- , maybe cutting my watching time down to two hours per day. Sundays (since they don't count in Lent, I don't think they should count for a media diet) can be for viewing runs of tv series on DVD while knitting. My online hijinks are to be limited to blogging (three times weekly), email and Ravelry. I need my peeps during this difficult time, you know.

Wish me luck.

Now I have to get to bed. I've fallen, oh, so low -- I have a chronic cramp in my lower back, which cramps up my one glute (and this is why you should never rock climb without ropes, kiddos) so I took a heavy glug of wine to relax the muscle. But I didn't have any clean wine glasses, so I drank it out of my recycled glass Starbucks coffee mug (Made in Spain, according to the bottom of the cup) and I think I got a wee bit too much in the mug. Ooopsie.

Anyway, I'm going to take my sore butt up to bed. Hopefully, I'll be feeling much less sore tomorrow.