Stressy

At any given time, with work and the kids and Penny's diabetes and Alex's encroaching Two-ness and the diet and the working out and everything, my stress factor generally floats around a 4. (It's a scale of 1-10.)

Last night, I could feel PMS setting in. Stress factor: 6.

I've got a contract shutting down at work today, which means that I've got to put together a final delivery package -- and naturally the project manager has changed their mind multiple times on a) exactly when we're delivering it (it was originally going to be two weeks ago) and b) exactly what it's going to contain. Today is the drop-dead date, but as far as I know, they were still making changes to the software when I went home last night. Stress factor: 7.

We're also working on a major proposal at work. I hate working proposals at the best of times, but on top of contract closeouts, it's making me crazy. Luckily, I'm (so far) only in charge of getting peoples' resumes together. So far, one person has sent me an excellent resume, to which I made minor grammatical changes. One person sent me a sloppy resume that took me an hour to edit. Two people sent me one-paragraph career summaries instead of the two pages I asked for, and I had to send them back and ask for more. One person didn't even try -- he wrote back and said, "My resume from the last proposal is around on the LAN somewhere." And the other two people haven't responded at all. I've also been helping out one of the other people on the proposal team, which is great, except now the proposal coordinator (a person from corporate who has actually moved into our office for the duration) is getting us confused and sending stuff to me that is really meant for her. Stress factor: 6.

And yesterday I had to lay the smackdown on the Beast project manager and the local supporting manager because they were trying to poach my people for Beast tasks that -- between the contract close-out and the proposal on top of their other everyday work -- they don't have time for. Seriously, if there's an emergency with the person who usually does those tasks, of course we'll do our best to pitch in, but if they're just overloaded... Well, tough titties. So are we. Granted, this kind of protective snarling is my job as a manager, but I don't usually have to get quite as forceful as I did yesterday. And I suspect it's going to come with consequences for me, so I'm waiting for that shoe to drop. Stress factor: 5.

On the plus side, I did get to the gym last night, finally. Stress factor: -1.

Adding that all up... Yeah, I'm kind of overloaded. The effing daycare manager noticed that I was looking a little strained around the edges this morning. Possibly because I spent half my night with stress nightmares. I dreamed about the contract delivery package today. I dreamed that my big toe got moldy and fell off. I dreamed about the contract delivery package some more. I dreamed about emails that slid off the screen and wrapped around my skin and couldn't come off.

So I'm going to go get myself a big mug of coffee, and fix my breakfast, and then I'm going to go bang my head against the wall of spikes that is this delivery package.

And when I fill in my Weight Watchers plan for today, I think I might save myself a few extra points, so that tonight after the kids are in bed, I can have a couple of Drinks.