Somehow I ended up with a very busy day off yesterday. So busy I didn’t have time to exercise. I got up and began working on two dishes to take to an evening meal with friends (the Edgington fam and Barb Phillips). I wanted to make a vegetarian curry and a chicken stir fry. I baked an eggplant, diced it and marinaded it. I sliced up chicken and marinaded it. Eileen was off to Grand Rapids. I did the Mom book task (go get her old library books, take them back and find new ones for her). Went to church and prepared for this morning including practicing organ. Got this done just in time to grab lunch then show up at college to accompany visiting Joffrey Ballet auditions.

The chair at the dance department assured me I would be paid $50 an hour for this work. The visiting ballet dude made me sign a receipt for $80 for an hour and a half worth of work. Earlier this year Blue Lake Fine Arts camp paid me $100 for the same amount of work. But I’m happy with the $80 since last year this same person gave me an envelope with $31 in it (I just checked my records to get this amount). I complained last year but nothing was done. It reminds me of Friday morning when I braved the (very) cold and made it to the 8:30 class only to notice that around 8:30 no one was there. I emailed the teacher via my phone twice. Finally a student showed and when asked told me they had delayed the class until 9 AM. The teacher showed and didn’t say anything about the late start. I billed for the extra half hour.

All of this is sort of petty, but it bothers me more in the concept than the actually pennies. It gives me the self image of someone who is thin skinned and overly worried about their own treatment. Bah.

Anyway after the Ballet auditions, the rest of the day was pretty smooth sailing. I came home and began working on the two dishes I wanted to take to supper. I also fixed white rice to go under the chicken and brown rice to go under the curry. I thought the food turned out pretty well.

After supper at the Edgingtons we trooped off to see a long evening of college dancing. There were nine pieces on the program. By the end of the evening I was so tired I just longed for it to be over. The dancing was good. But this old fart was tired.

I think there’s something to the comments of my fam that I am not taking enough time off. I just don’t see much of it coming up with the beginning of Lent at work and other projects I have my hand in. I need to think about doing some gentle unentanglement, but don’t see just how to proceed.

I have pointed out to Eileen that according to Friedman theory it would help things if she would take back some of her anxiety. According to Friedman anxiety in a relationship or system simply floats around so that when one person, say who has happily and successfully lowered their own anxiety by retiring and buying a loom and weaving another person say an old half ass musician ends up taking on the extra anxiety and stress.

For some reason Eileen just laughs  when I say this.