Did you ever find out that if you don’t do what you’re meant to do, what you’re meant to do will chase you down and kick your ever-loving butt?
I knew I hoped to get a publishing company up and running, but considering how many hours my “day” job has demanded lately, coupled with the fact that my body has been doing horrible things to me, I had to set the publishing stuff mostly on hold.
Mostly.
Except… I had an appointment this weekend with a prospective author, one with a timeline. It’s important she hits her deadline, which means therefore *I* also have a deadline, if I sign her on. And considering she could become my cornerstone author (she writes educational manuals and already has a market), I kinda can’t afford to say no.
That’s the tip of the publishing venture iceberg. Yay.
Meanwhile, my day job truly has become utterly insane. Off the deep end crazy nutzoid. It went from this nice little low-stress niche to… what it is now. I spend 90% of my time at work doing reports and responding to emails. And that’s on a good day. The rest are closer to 99% reports and 1% everything else. No breaks other than lunch – which is just clocking off and stuffing my face whilst continuing to work. I applied to formally do the job. Dunno if it will pay more or not, but at least it should somewhat formalize who’s on first and what’s on second. There are only a handful of us that do this job, though it’s escalated to the point that has to change, soon. Three or four of us work overtime all the time to try – with so-so success – and get everything done.
This weekend my usual insanity also came to kind of a grinding halt. All the added hours and the usual change of season physical bullshit hit me simultaneously. I knew Thursday night I was cracking. By yesterday morning I was in sad shape, and today I crashed and burned. I did do the yard-sale rounds, but called the spousal unit and told him I was done, hit the end of my rope and ran out of money. (I didn’t take much with me.)
Before I completely passed out, I put some chicken and cream-of-stuff soups into the crockpot. A few hours later the basics would be done for a meal which also provided lotsa leftovers.
THEN I crashed. Hard.
I’m sure the last straw had nothing to do with lifting a hundred pounds of metal by myself. Lest you think I was exaggerating about the weight, my spousal unit unloaded it. He came in a few minutes later, eyes bugged out, to ask me how the hell I GOT one item in there. It was so heavy he could barely drag it out – said he didn’t think he could’ve lifted it in by himself.
And yes, I did it alone. It was a freebie and too good to pass up. But holy shit did I pay for it.
“It” is a flat dolly, or maybe the base for one of those ginormous mechanics’ toolboxes. We’re not sure what its original use was. Spouse and I already calculated it could be turned into the base for an amazing industrial coffee table, among other things. The husband’s thinking it would also be great for a rolling workbench since the wheels lock.
I’m positive it weighs at least 100 pounds, possibly more. Solid metal except for the 4-inch wheels. It’s at least 48 inches long, 24 inches wide, and heavy. I couldn’t just slide it in – I had to lift it to make it fit into the back of my little Kia. With the seats down it barely fit. I’ve hauled a 55-inch TV in the back of that vehicle, and I had to wedge this sucker in there to get it in at all. The picture below is baby brother to the behemoth I acquired from today’s trash-picking expedition.
It was an awesome find, especially for free. I still don’t think my body is going to forgive me any time soon.
If I’d realized how much it weighed I probably would’ve passed it by. As it happens, by the time I realized I was in way over my head it was gonna be harder to get it out again than to keep struggling to get it into the car.
The good news is after a brief nap and some of my chicken concoction (doctored with a ginormous bunch of stir-fried veggies and poured over rice) I am at least no longer wheezing and hacking up a lung. It took several hits from the medicine cabinet – rescue inhaler, allergy meds, CBD oil, and some Alleve – but I feel semi-human tonight again. The CBD oil calmed my knees, but I can’t bathe in it, hence the Alleve. Though come to think of it I might go steep in a hot bath with Epsom salts for good measure.
Tomorrow.
Because it’s o’dark thirty and I gotta go to sleep. It’s back to work tomorrow.
Did you ever see the tv show, “Hoarders”…?
😉
Of course I’ve seen hoarders. But this is an item for sale. We can and DO sell stuff like this all the time. We were just speculating on what we could do with it. This is a heavy-duty industrial item, so not something I can see us actually keeping, haha!
I was just teasing you. I’m reasonably sure your floor is not littered with mummified rat carcasses under all the clutter 🙂
I hope you didn’t seriously hurt yourself. Good luck with that. You are always pushing yourself to the max.
No long-term damage. My knees have even mostly forgiven me.