Hazy Glare and a Bit of a Broken Heart in Everyday Ramblings

You can see the haze and the glare here in the oh so smoky air. I took this yesterday morning. It is a tiny bit clearer this morning.

A few weeks ago when I was walking early in the day to the grocery via the big wooded hill behind me a couple of deer came out on the road and seemed confused. I fretted about their wellbeing and those of the drivers who zip around those curves. Wednesday morning I saw two similar deer outside my kitchen window, which means they had crossed the big busy street.

I have never seen deer down here before.
They were clearly looking for water.

Yesterday from a bus window on my way back to the grocery I saw a dead deer by the side of the road. It broke my heart.

Drought sucks rocks. Climate change sucks rocks. I was listening to someone talk yesterday about the herders in Somalia and how their animals are dying right under their watchful eyes. How difficult that must be! Here as I turn on my taps I have the luxury to have a broken heart about the intersection between the wild and the settled.

But for those of you who have deer eating your gardens I understand the frustration.

I saw my regular doctor yesterday. It is from her office waiting area that I took the above picture. We switched around my whole allergy treatment protocol. That will take a little getting used to but at least I can manage them somewhat instead of just accepting the itchy, swollen, runny nose continuum of it all.

She did tell me that they now know how to identify exercise related hypertension (My blood pressure was below the new norms and healthy yesterday) but they, umm, don’t know what it means. They think perhaps it is a marker for the possible onset of heart disease later. She says they might ask for a CT scan of my heart. I didn’t even know they did that.

I see the cardiologist on Monday. She put me on the baby aspirin a day and wants me to consider a low dose of a BP medicine that won’t affect my heart rate. I’ll talk to the cardiologist about that.

Mrs. Sherlock told me based on my results that my rhythms were probably off but she said it is not that. It is more about a slight stiffening of the arteries. Oh joy, isn’t aging fun?

Learn by doing.

Saint Joe and I had a 2 and ½ hour meeting with Mr. Multiple Screens on Wednesday talking about initiatives, workflow, processes and eek, my retirement. It turns out that he had already talked to Saint Joe about plans they have to nurture him in his career and provide a path for advancement.

And that path leads straight through my job.

I adore Saint Joe and am unbelievably grateful for his work ethic, reliability, and ease of getting along with. Him getting hired was the best thing that happened to me in this job.

No one else has worked with him though and he has very specific aptitudes and skill sets and one that he does not possess is an inclination for critical or global thinking that I employ all the time. He gets anxious and likes things to be routine, and is not comfortable out in left field exploring what is possible or likely can be created.

In the course of the discussion the idea of me taking a package if offered or going part time came up. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for me going part time with my role clearly defined. They figure, because I am older and have a costlier benefit package if they can get me out the door (at least part time) they can bring in another full time junior person to do a big chunk of what he is doing now.

Wow. There is a whole lot to think about packed in there.

I am kind of shaken up inside and hoping arbitrary decisions aren’t made (any more than they already have been) before I am ready.

As an aside I am smarting a bit from the fact that I have gotten no support, none, nada, zilch from management for the last 9 of the 11 years I have had this job other than the fact that I was completely left on my own to flail away and figure stuff out.

I am happy for Saint Joe but this is implicit sexual discrimination in action.

I will give Mr. Multiple Screens credit; he was completely baffled why I didn’t get any support for my game-changing project that I shepherded through about four years ago. He thinks it is marvelous. And as they build on it as I phase out I am certain any credit that accrues will not, umm, be focused my way.

Once I am out of there I won’t care. That day could not come soon enough. At least that is how I feel right now.

Last updated August 17, 2018