Gratitude

 
- We had a terrible storm/blizzard last week. One silver lining is that Doris was off Friday (Dec 23) and we got to spend the whole day together

- And I think that made Christmas Eve a bit better. She left around 10 to go help her mom. Thanks to my conversation last week with Ann, I had a whole plan of how to spend the time waiting for it to be late enough to go to the in-laws. Like I mentioned, having spent the whole previous day with Doris definitely helped me not feel the 'i never see her' that I often feel, so that was a blessing. And I was never bored, even when Doris texted around 2:00 and said, "Don't arrive till 5:30. We haven't even started cooking or cleaning". (Usually I arrive at 4:00.) And hey, when I did get there, it was fun. I enjoyed chatting with Adan (brother in law) and Ursulo (nephew). And our friend Eric joined us which made it more fun!

- Christmas Day was lovely too. Eric slept overnight at our place. My parents both had mild COVID (they are fine now), so instead of getting together with them, we did a "drive by" to exchange gifts and food. We Zoomed with the fam later on. Mom's pasta was amazing as always. Then Eric, Doris, and I spent the rest of Christmas binging gay Christmas movies and Drag Race. It was nice

- And Doris got me a Cameo from Sachin which was great! Sachin also messaged me on Cameo yesterday. YAY!

- And our power did not go out during the crazy weather! And the past few days, it warmed way up and I was able to get outside and take long walks

- And Eric reminded me that there's a ton of great content on WOW Presents, and I'm glad he did and glad I did pay for that year's subscription

- And another fandom friend asked me if I'd seen a 2015 Christmas movie that Jarod (Sachin's boyfriend on The 100 :) was in. I somehow had overlooked this one! I saw it and really liked it. He's got a pretty big part in it

- NYE party is tomorrow! 

And now here is something interesting that I wanted to write about. I want to do more for animals. It's kinda hard to do that. (For a ton of reasons I won't get into, but they tend to center around the fact that farmed animals have no rights to even be treated like not-brutally and a lot of the work that activists do involves undercover investigations and social media). I looked on Mercy for Animals' website. They are hiring for a job that I think I can do! Long story short, it's an Admin Assistant, you can do it from home (they have no offices), the pay was actually good though it'd be a huge pay cut for me, they have medical benefits and a retirement plan, etc. They even said they are open to anyone; you don't need to have been on an Admin career path before. I went to take a walk to think about it, and my heart pounded. I wanted to apply. It all seemed do-able. It's time for me to get a job that aligns with my values and I've worked at the same place for 26 years.

But. I am on a team of 4 people, and next year, one is going on sabbatical and one on maternity leave. The timing is bad. If I left, my boss would likely have to cancel her sabbatical (since Erika can't cancel her maternity leave). So I decided not to apply. But I am going to keep my eyes and ears open for opportunities once my coworkers are back. Interestingly, I was talking about it with Chris. At first he seemed to think that you can't make big decisions like that just based on not wanting to hurt your coworkers. But I reminded him that I'd worked with these people for 10 years and I care about them, and he agreed that good coworkers are worth a lot. (Also, gratitude to Chris for caulking the thing in the basement or whatever that was that Doris needed) And Mercy for Animals is doing a volunteer orientation on January 4, so maybe I can get some ideas of how I can get more involved there. (I also signed up to be a vegan mentor with Vegan Outreach. They emailed back to say that they have more mentors than mentees so it might be a while before I have anything to do there)