Day 48 – work study yesterday; Crossfit; $

So, yesterday at work study, I did my usual (steam clean the yoga floor, do laundry, clean up after the piggies oh I mean yogis in the bathrooms, etc.) and then I had one BIG chore to do.

Gail had gotten what is likely a semi-annual delivery of “soap and stuff” from Seventh Generation – and my job was to put it away. Now, she said that I didn’t have to do all of it – but I made it a “TAR event” (yeah, I’m pathetic, I know) and also knew that she’d just be so glad it was done that if I could, I should.

There were 40+ boxes of product – from boxes of a dozen squirt-bottles, to boxes with two huge jugs of “wholesale” soap (as in, the stuff you would put “into” a bottle you already have). The boxes were of a size that (weights being manageable) I could stack two on top of one another, and they would fit just under my chin, with my arms fully extended. Since I’m over 6′ tall, those are fairly large boxes.

Now, granted, I couldn’t stack 2 on top of one another, for two reasons. One, some were too heavy for me to carry two at a time. Two – I had to carry them from a breezeway down a steep flight of stairs, duck under a support beam, into the cellar, then under a rat’s maze of pipes to the very back of the cellar, where the cleaning products go. (Things that are used up more quickly, like coconut water, Hint water and such, are stacked against a pillar by the door just inside the cellar, but the rest is way in the back.)

Both R and I were pretty impressed the pink-haired girl in TAR this season (the mean one) in that during the event where the teams had to carry 60 pound sacks of salt to a tub and pour them in, she was able to carry two at a time, versus all the other women who could just barely lift one. I admit I was thinking about this as I was lugging those boxes around!

I realized that bringing the boxes from the breezeway down the stairs one at a time, ducking under the beam, through the door, under the rat’s maze of pipes, then piling them up nicely where they belonged obviously would take way too much time. I personally couldn’t pile up 2 boxes (even of the lighter ones) and go down the stairs, because I couldn’t see the stairs if I did that. So what I did was to bring all the boxes to the top of the stairs, and then lift them down the stairs, going down 3-4 stairs at a time. So basically, making a little “wall” of boxes at the top of the stairs until they were all that bit closer, with me pulling them down from 3-4 stairs below. I could get 3 boxes across, 3 high – but any higher I wouldn’t be able to “lift over” the wall to get the next set – this being where R building from behind would have been a boon!

It was interesting doing it – also interesting figuring out the “Tetris puzzle” of how to get as many boxes as I could onto a stair (they were not exactly the same size, did I say that?). They all said “do not shake/this side up,” so by and large (meaning – “when I didn’t lose my grip on one and it tumbled sideways down a stair”), I paid attention to that.

I also was very VERY conscious of how I was moving my body. This weekend when we were moving those damned quartzite slabs around, H was constantly harping on me to watch my back. The good part of Crossfit is that it makes such a big deal of that, too.

Once I got the boxes all down to a couple stairs from the cellar door, I started transferring them into the cellar itself. I stacked them up on the coconut water boxes, etc. that were inside the door, so that I wouldn’t have to lift them off the ground. (Thank goodness the door didn’t have a spring! That would’ve been an extra level of madness…) After I got as many boxes as I could in, I carried those boxes back (under the pipes and ducts) and stacked them up. Then I would go back out to the stairs, transfer those boxes to on top of the coconut water boxes, then carry THEM back.

At one point, I wasn’t watching what I was doing (since most of the “dance” I was doing necessitated me to be moving backwards down the stairs), and I picked up a box and turned to take it into the cellar – then SMACKED into the support beam right in front of the cellar door. O-M-G. I actually saw stars – I thought that was just a joke from old Bugs Bunny cartoons!

Today I have Crossfit at 6:30pm with H – he can finally get off work to go. I just heard he will be down in San Jose for 2 days next week on work – they’re working him HARD. He wanted to get away for Thanksgiving, but I don’t think we can swing it. So he actually just told me he has booked us 3 days up at Squaw Creek in Tahoe – he found a Groupon, and so he did it. (Now, mind you, he doesn’t like that I do work/study on Mondays, and this will be a Friday-Monday thing. So I’m going to have to find someone to take my time without making a big deal of it.)

Ah, money. We did our taxes, and my income was pathetic last year and I mean pa-the-tic. I didn’t realize it was SO bad until I saw it in black and white. I’ve tried to do my best to do things (like work/study) so that stuff I want to do doesn’t come out of our budget. Since we were members at the JCC mainly because they had a wonderful pool for me to use, by getting H involved in Crossfit, I can transfer the JCC “budgeted amount” to Crossfit. (Not that we actually HAVE a budget mind you – H takes care of paying all the bills that aren’t directly “my bills.”) That means that we’ll have to suspend our membership to the JCC and its lovely salt-filtered-no-chlorine-pool, but I’m okay with that – if I want to swim, I can just bite the bullet and go swim in the Bay, or from the dock in Tiburon. Two people at Crossfit costs a bit more than the JCC did, but I know H really likes it more, and I also know he’s getting a much much better workout than he was getting just going to their fitness center and going through his “routine” two days a week while watching TV on the wall.

So how pathetic is my income? As in, I made a gross of around $20,000 last year.

Back when I was general counsel and my company was on rocky grounds – I actually wound up getting downsized – I had an interview at a company I really wanted to work for. I remember this very clearly. At the time, I “couldn’t figure out how I could possibly” drop my salary down to $110,000 from the $200,000 or so I made.

Pfffffft.

H doesn’t really complain that I don’t make that much, probably because he mainly pays all the bills, and they are the same bills that he had (by and large) when he was single. I still have my house, but I rent it out, and now (FINALLY) after re-financing, it’s cashflow neutral. (I was actually a little negative every month until earlier this year – but we also have a big line of credit on it that we’ve used to purchase more rental properties.) I do all the laundry, breakfasts, dinners, lunch when he goes in to the city, and such like that – but my gross of about $2,000 a month obviously shows why I do things like stage “clothing swaps” at my house instead of heading to Nordstrom’s. Not like I was ever a big shopper, mind you – but a lot of things that we used to do – go out to dinner, movies, etc. – have definitely fallen to the wayside.

More pathetic is the fact that a huge chunk of that pathetic income goes to malpractice insurance. I really should get my act back together and market for more work – but H hasn’t sat me down and said “you gotta bring in more” – and so, I don’t. Bad me. A few times I’ve floated my resume out for in-house jobs – since if I did get a job that made more, H could retire sooner – but I’ve managed to make it into that lovely age group where folks don’t want to hire you because you’re really “way older” than your boss would be. And H actually likes me to be at home. Ha! I guess that makes me a trophy wife! LOL!

I think the $ thing was front of mind because we just did our taxes, but also because R’s always “trying to figure out” when I work. I work when work comes in. The thing is, work hasn’t come in all that often recently. My biggest client got purchased – so that work went away. Even my 2nd and 3rd largest clients have “tightened their belts” in this economy, so I can go for a month without getting much work at all – a little here, a little there. So that’s my story – and how my life works. ;-)

POSTSCRIPT:

Workout at Crossfit was: CONDITIONING
5 RFT
400M Run
20 Wall Ball
10 Dip
50 Double Under/100 Single Unders

I did it all – coming in after the “regular guys” but before Jay, his wife, and H. Wondering what R is going to say about the application….