90 miles an hour with my hair on fire

At least that's what it feels like I am doing these days.

One of colleagues had a terminal illness in the family and was summoned to NY on Tues night. Unfortunately weather conditions delayed and routed him to Philly. By the time he landed at the airport in Long Island, this person had passed away. It's very sad to lose someone at all but someone who's 41 is very difficult.

I mention this because while all this was happening, and I was covering his workload, I also had a wake to attend for the daughter of a family friend. Also 41. She passed away due to a car accident. I didn't know the daughter to speak to as she was enough years older than me growing up. Her dad had passed away in December so this is a double whammy for the mother.

Now, I am the only member of my family who attended the wake. My step mom, who is closest to the mother, called her and they had some discussion about it. But Ellen knows that my step mom really avoids wakes at all cost since my dad died. I go, pay my respects to the family, but I do not approach the coffin for any reason. It is a rare day. I did for my grandmother but honestly, I didn't look at her.

When they opened the coffin for the private viewing for my dad, I was stunned to see how much healthier he looked in death. We buried him in his tails. I put his conductor's baton and pictures of his cats in with him. That bothered me, how well he looked. People shouldn't look better in death and I honestly lobbied for a closed casket. I just don't see the need to look at a person in that state. Not that they care. They no longer inhabit that body.

So, I don't do viewings. I do pay my respects and offer to cook meals etc for the family. The wake was the strangest I had ever been to. People were hysterical and throwing themselves on the coffin. I saw many of my dad's friends and collegues - some I hadn't seen since before he died - and so I as accepting my own condolences at someone else's wake. Weird. Even my neighbor, who went with me, agreed this was really odd.

As tragic as all this death was, I actually handled it so much better than I had this time last year. Those posts reflect how far down I went dealing with so much death. No clue why.

Through all of this I am working like a dog on both my work and my colleague's. I tend to put more effort into keeping my colleague's work from piling up than my own during that time. And with that in mind I spent my entire day correcting 4 international orders because the ruleset for that country changed since Monday ( this is a pet peeve of mine), then entering the last 6 orders for the same coutries under the new ruleset. The corrections took 2 hours and the new orders took a total of 30 minutes.... silly. I hate this system.

From there, I left to have my routine bloodwork done, visit my office briefly, teach 1 kid for an hour and another for 30 minutes.

The very first time I sat down to do anything remotely for me was 8PM. Now this may appear to be a complaint. It's not. To be home at 8 vs 10 is always a treat. I feel like I have gained time.

I am trying to slow my pace down. I'm not doing as well with it as I want. I have a tendancy to overbook in an attempt to make everyone happy. I'm a people pleaser and I always have been.

So in review of month 2 of the plan - I need to not be going 90 miles a hour with my hair on fire all the time. I am planning one activity and if another comes up, well, I'm sorry but I made the commitment to activity 1 first, can we reschedule for another time?

It's a piece of my personality that I don't want to get rid of ( it's very helpful in my professions), but I do need tame it. Manage it better.

So, yes this post is a little bit rambly - but I reserve the right to do that!