kitewithfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kitewithfish) wrote2020-03-29 11:05 am
kitewithfish) wrote2020-03-29 11:05 am
(no subject)
I didn't quite mean to go dark!
Work:
The Powers That Be determined that, in addition to our normal fundraising divisions, we're also going to be focusing on fundraising for a few particular programs and have created new collaborative teams across divisions to target those fields. This seems like a potential disaster to me - our leadership tends to lean hard on Big Ideas and not actually doing any thought about how they'll be implemented, and this seems like basically adding a major project on top of a major panic on top of a major disruption. My organization has never had a large number of people working remotely, and a huge number of our fundraisers are untested in their efficacy at fundraising while 'social distancing'.
The impact on my workload is not clear - largely, it just seems like everyone is constantly setting up new plans and then tossing them aside and demanding that my team pivot to give them new information on short notice.
Dog:
She's recovering well from the allergies and the first round of steroid treatment is getting tapered off. Her skin on her face and paws looks less red, and the rheumy, teary eyes that were a major feature of her first few days with us have tapered off dramatically.
But new dog ownership is humbling. I fed her apples, which she adored as a treat but which seemed to trigger a worse allergic reaction that evening in a way that really hadn't happened before, so she may be allergic to apples. We totally fucked up on feeding her correctly - the discussion we had with the shelter people and my notes gave me the wrong idea entirely. We had to refer to the old vet's instructions, which had abbreviations in Latin about how many meals she should be taking per day, in order to figure out that we were essentially shorting her a meal's worth of food every day. I feel generally awful about it, but there's no fixing the past, just making the future better. We figured that out on Friday - so we've had a couple of days of the right diet and she seems to be a bit calmer, generally.
Some things remain well sorted! She's doing fine with the crate in the bedroom, she's playing with us a bit, and she's done actually a very good job of letting us know when she needs to go out to relieve herself. (Tho given that her signal for that is, Go stare at the humans and whine like they have food you want, it's sometimes a process of elimination that she needs to engage in a more literal process of elimination.)
Mental Health:
The Partners In Health advice I mentioned in my last post was very very helpful. The idea of budgeting my news intake has been very helpful - instead of reading story after story about Covid and social distancing, I check my local area papers for updates, read the important things, pick one or two short human interest stories to read, and then stop and do something else - usually I go walk the dog.
I have received my delivery of fabric from my Local Yarn Shop (which is also a sewing machine salon) and I'm planning on spending a good deal of this rainy day making cotton masks that I will mostly donate to the stockpile for local hospitals to hold in reserve.
I am also using a fabric mask when I go to any place where I'm going to be around people. When I come home, I enter the house via the basement side door, strip off my outside clothes directly into a waiting wash bag, wash my hands and face in the sink down there, and come up from the basement in my undies and shoes to change into indoor clothes. Given that our basement is unfinished, and mostly used as storage, I feel very lucky to have that as a transition space to keep a buffer.
Media I am Currently Enjoying:
-The Magnus Archives: a technically horror podcast that doesn't actually scare me much so far because it's all in the form of a dude reading a report of someone who survived a weird encounter with the supernatural. I am on season 1, and just finished the episode Piecemeal. Listen here
-Schitt's Creek is a Canadian TV show about a super rich family who lose all their fortune in the first ten minutes of the pilot and have to go live in a small town and learn about themselves. The show actually seems to be nailing the elements of character growth and the second season is showing these people, never unredeemable, starting to really care and be engaged in the life of the people around them. I really like that this is not a sitcom where the family all hate each other and are unkind - they are not! They are shallow and selfish and disengaged from each other at first, but have a strong affection that keeps it from becoming awful. These people are blossoming before my eyes. We call that Growth.gif. Good for comfort watching in social distancing.
-Brooklyn 99 - Adorable and kind to each other. I love it. An ongoing fave.
-The Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Team are all cooking at home! Watch it here!
Work:
The Powers That Be determined that, in addition to our normal fundraising divisions, we're also going to be focusing on fundraising for a few particular programs and have created new collaborative teams across divisions to target those fields. This seems like a potential disaster to me - our leadership tends to lean hard on Big Ideas and not actually doing any thought about how they'll be implemented, and this seems like basically adding a major project on top of a major panic on top of a major disruption. My organization has never had a large number of people working remotely, and a huge number of our fundraisers are untested in their efficacy at fundraising while 'social distancing'.
The impact on my workload is not clear - largely, it just seems like everyone is constantly setting up new plans and then tossing them aside and demanding that my team pivot to give them new information on short notice.
Dog:
She's recovering well from the allergies and the first round of steroid treatment is getting tapered off. Her skin on her face and paws looks less red, and the rheumy, teary eyes that were a major feature of her first few days with us have tapered off dramatically.
But new dog ownership is humbling. I fed her apples, which she adored as a treat but which seemed to trigger a worse allergic reaction that evening in a way that really hadn't happened before, so she may be allergic to apples. We totally fucked up on feeding her correctly - the discussion we had with the shelter people and my notes gave me the wrong idea entirely. We had to refer to the old vet's instructions, which had abbreviations in Latin about how many meals she should be taking per day, in order to figure out that we were essentially shorting her a meal's worth of food every day. I feel generally awful about it, but there's no fixing the past, just making the future better. We figured that out on Friday - so we've had a couple of days of the right diet and she seems to be a bit calmer, generally.
Some things remain well sorted! She's doing fine with the crate in the bedroom, she's playing with us a bit, and she's done actually a very good job of letting us know when she needs to go out to relieve herself. (Tho given that her signal for that is, Go stare at the humans and whine like they have food you want, it's sometimes a process of elimination that she needs to engage in a more literal process of elimination.)
Mental Health:
The Partners In Health advice I mentioned in my last post was very very helpful. The idea of budgeting my news intake has been very helpful - instead of reading story after story about Covid and social distancing, I check my local area papers for updates, read the important things, pick one or two short human interest stories to read, and then stop and do something else - usually I go walk the dog.
I have received my delivery of fabric from my Local Yarn Shop (which is also a sewing machine salon) and I'm planning on spending a good deal of this rainy day making cotton masks that I will mostly donate to the stockpile for local hospitals to hold in reserve.
I am also using a fabric mask when I go to any place where I'm going to be around people. When I come home, I enter the house via the basement side door, strip off my outside clothes directly into a waiting wash bag, wash my hands and face in the sink down there, and come up from the basement in my undies and shoes to change into indoor clothes. Given that our basement is unfinished, and mostly used as storage, I feel very lucky to have that as a transition space to keep a buffer.
Media I am Currently Enjoying:
-The Magnus Archives: a technically horror podcast that doesn't actually scare me much so far because it's all in the form of a dude reading a report of someone who survived a weird encounter with the supernatural. I am on season 1, and just finished the episode Piecemeal. Listen here
-Schitt's Creek is a Canadian TV show about a super rich family who lose all their fortune in the first ten minutes of the pilot and have to go live in a small town and learn about themselves. The show actually seems to be nailing the elements of character growth and the second season is showing these people, never unredeemable, starting to really care and be engaged in the life of the people around them. I really like that this is not a sitcom where the family all hate each other and are unkind - they are not! They are shallow and selfish and disengaged from each other at first, but have a strong affection that keeps it from becoming awful. These people are blossoming before my eyes. We call that Growth.gif. Good for comfort watching in social distancing.
-Brooklyn 99 - Adorable and kind to each other. I love it. An ongoing fave.
-The Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Team are all cooking at home! Watch it here!
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Oh dear...