Cody’s blog

I’ve been thinking about quitting my job lately. It’s not that I don’t like the work—although it’s been getting less and less fun since we’re so short-handed, and now we’re not even allowed to use Extra Help to fill all the hours we should have people there—it’s that I have so much stuff to do at home, and work is taking up too much of my time.

I started my job as something to do to get me out of the house when I was so depressed after my cancer treatments, and it really helped at the time. Then, I barely had the energy to crawl out of bed in the morning, so things like large plumbing projects and home improvements were not going to get done anyway. Now, I’ve got my running and my Buddhist practice and all the yard work and house work and clean-up and fix-it projects I want to do, and I actually have energy to do them—but barely any time.

Money is a bit of a problem—that extra $500 a month from the library really comes in handy—but I could work out ways to handle it. Right now, I’m hesitating because I don’t want to leave the library any more short-handed than we already are. We finally have a list to hire a new OST from, but then our other OST is retiring in January so we’re back to square one. It’ll probably take the county another six months before they let us replace her. And one of the other DAs mentioned to me that she’ll probably quit in November. I’d like to wait until we’re fully staffed before quitting, but that could be a long time from now. I guess I’ll just have to see what happens, whether my frustration with work hits a boiling point before the staffing problems are solved.

I would like to stay on as Extra Help. I still like working at the library, and would be happy to work a day or two a week, or a few weeks every now and then. In fact, if I could even just drop one of my half-days, I’d like my schedule a lot better. We’ll see.

Saturday is my long run day. I’m finding that it’s not easy to do a long run in the morning and work in the afternoon—even though I have time, it’s very tiring, especially if I get up early to be able to finish the run by 11 am, and I generally find myself just wanting to take a nap when I finish my run, not get ready and go to work.

But there really isn’t any better day to do my long runs. I like having Friday and Monday for projects and chores, and Sunday is temple day (if I have energy to go) and lying around doing nothing day. So I carry on. One more reason I’m starting to feel like quitting my job. I like the work, I just have too many other things I want to be doing.

Anyway, I’m worn out this week from the latest unforeseen project—my generator quit running on me Monday night when I went to pump water, so I had to wrangle it out of the shed and haul it into Bakersfield Tuesday morning to Pacific Power. It took much longer than I thought it would, mostly due to discovering that I had the wrong size trailer hitch ball. The original one I’d bought was the right size ball, but the shank was too short, and I couldn’t fit the nut and the washer on it, so I screwed on the nut without the washer. I knew that was a bad idea! Eventually, it fell off (luckily not while I was hauling something). The second ball I bought was bigger, and the shank was long enough but the ball was too big! So I had to drive into town and buy a new trailer hitch, then drive back and switch balls, before I could hitch up the generator trailer and get going. I was an hour late getting to work, so I ended up working an extra half-hour Tuesday and Wednesday to make up for it.

I was worried I’d run out of water before the generator was fixed, and have no way to pump more, but that all worked out—the generator was fixed yesterday, so Mom and I drove to Bakersfield and had lunch at Black Angus before picking up the generator, then we came home and wrangled it back into the shed.

Getting it back in was tiring and stressful. I have a ramp I built to the shed entrance out of planks and 4x4s, but it’s narrow and I’m really bad at backing up with the trailer, so there was much pushing the generator around to get it into position, and jiggling the truck around to get it lined up right, and bleah. I need to 1) build a better, wider ramp to the shed, probably out of concrete, and 2) learn to back up with the trailer hitched.

But anyway. It was done, the generator is back and working beautifully, and it didn’t even cost much—the guys are hoping they can get the labor paid on the warranty and only charged me for parts. So maybe now I can relax for a week or so without some urgent repair or rodent infestation or something to wear me down?

Speaking of which, I caught the little squirrel or chipmunk or whatever he was on Wednesday, finally, so that problem is taken care of. And I cleaned the bedroom on Friday, so the entire house has been cleaned!

And Jewel Quest III is out, so I have a new game to play! All is well, for the moment. But I really need some resting and recharging time.

Yesterday was a bit disjointed, but I got some things done. I cleaned the back room, which included cleaning out the piles of stuff in the inbox tray and the stackable open-front baskets I had in here. I wanted to use the baskets under the sink in the bathroom, since there’s no longer a shelf in there. They fit really well, which is good, because now I don’t have to go out and try to find something else to use in there. I also went through all the stuff I’d pulled out from under the bathroom and kitchen sinks, threw away what I didn’t want and put the rest back under the sinks.

I’d thought about doing a major vacuuming–sweeping–scrubbing floors of the entire house, but decided against it, because I’ve still got a squirrel in here, leaving its little leavings all over the place. I borrowed a live trap from a woman at work and set it up yesterday afternoon, with peanut butter for bait, and am hoping to catch it soon. But I figured I might as well wait until after the squirrel’s out of here before cleaning the floors. I did vacuum in the back room, which sorely needed it. Ahh! It’s nice to have a clean, mostly neat room to hang out in. I get tired of stepping over stacks of books and newspapers. Every time I clean, I vow not to let things pile up so much, and every time, well, they go ahead and do. But I’ll try again.

I ended up with a full garbage can full of junk to throw away. And stacks of cardboard to recycle. And I still feel as though I’ve barely made a dent. Oh well, if I can really keep on working on projects and housework at least one day a week, I’ll eventually get the clutter under control. My problem usually is that after maybe six weeks at most, I run out of steam and stop doing the work and the clutter takes over again. I’ve been doing pretty well lately, though. I’ve kept up my energy for quite a while this go-round. Let’s see, I think it’s been… five weeks? now. And I’m still going strong. So maybe I’ve finally broken through the barrier. I have been feeling more energetic lately. My half-marathon training is going well, and my speed has increased. I must be doing something right!

The other thing that got accomplished yesterday was that I did the service on my generator. I hadn’t planned to do it yesterday, but it’s been running rough lately, and yesterday it was very rough and hard to start, and since I’d gone down early, around 4 pm, to start the pump, I decided to go ahead and change the oil, and replace the air filter and the spark plugs. I would have replaced the oil filter, too, but I didn’t have one on hand. I should get one and do that, too. I also forgot to clean the spark arrestor, but I’ll try to remember to do that sometime this weekend as well. It didn’t take too long, but it would have gone even faster if I’d been able to 1) find the bag with the spare air filter and spark plugs in it sooner, and 2) figure out where the freaking spark plugs were! Sheesh. After I finished, though, it started up with a zoom! and ran really well, so it was long past due for servicing.

After I finished the generator, I went online and found another maintenance kit (includes air filter, two spark plugs with wrench, oil filter, and a few other things I don’t need, like a fuel filter, but it’s still easier and probably cheaper buying the kit than all the bits separately) on eBay for $23.95. Cheapest non-eBay one was closer to $50. So I bought one on eBay, of course! Will be good to have one on hand for the next time.

Now I need to do all the same stuff for Mom’s generator. I’ve changed the oil a couple of times, but haven’t done a full service since I moved it up to her place.

I got an email from Curtis yesterday saying they were still figuring out how to automate my generator, but they would schedule someone to come and finish the work asap. That’s good news. I will be so glad to finally have that done.