I know; what is normal? Normally, I wake up before the alarm, but today is Monday and I slept in all weekend, so my sleep timer in my head was a little off and the alarm woke me up. When and if that occurs, I wake up shaky and foggy, but today I must have been in the best part of my sleep cycle, because I was good. I won’t go as far as saying “golden” but somewhere above bronze.

The steam “wall” of summer smacked me in the face hard this morning. 80° and 94% humidity at 5:57am. Stepping out of a 70° dehumidified house to that is like stepping into the shower. Instant sweat bath. Every morning I ask myself the same question after spending time drying off from the shower and coaxing my wet hair into a presentable style; “why bother?” Oddly I haven’t yet learned.

On the way to drying off with the car AC on high blowing as directly on me as it will, I encountered more wildlife this morning than usual. This was a quite robust morning for the fauna. Several deer passed in front of or beside me on the drive in. Bunnies, a fox and even a white peacock crossed my path this morning. I don’t know what it is with deer this year. They have proven to be quite prolific. In 20 years I haven’t seen this many in such a concentrated time period.

To recap my progress to this point; slept until forced to wake up, dried my hair for no reason, was bombarded with wildlife and arrived at work to discover the office network has no internet. Sorry I had not added that yet so it’s really not a recap, but newly introduced information. Like the time Gary, the GM, attempted to make me look bad at my review by blaming the weak server staff on me, when he had assigned them to me within the last two weeks- outside of the review period, and the area manager was present, so that when I stood up for myself and said, as respectfully as possible, “Wait, you just assigned that staff to me, and they were under your purview during the rating period, and isn’t this supposed to be a “review?” Since you have never brought these concerns to my attention, wouldn’t this be new information and as stated not a review? Perhaps you should review the work I did during the rating period.“ the Area Mgr took Gary aside and when they returned told me that my review was postponed until it could be accurately recorded, and Gary was very embarrassed.

I guess I got off topic a little. I’ll just say, I don’t have “normal “ days and I don’t have “normal” work performance reviews either. I don’t know why I invite such tom foolery to my life. But I have learned to put on the brakes and use work policies to defend myself.

Normally, I would end this with my usual signature, but why be normal?

Until such time as I am once again inspired,

Tracy, who remains- You Friend.