5 days till the New Year

I do well getting through sleep deprivation (for the past 12 years), and only hope I do memorize the parts of the Audit course that I believe I memorize well with all the time I keep putting in.
My car is perfectly clean, but I still back out of the madness of the parking lots cautiously, praying I do not hit anything or anyone.

I juggle  so many things at home that I keep my toes crossed that while I am finishing up something urgent at one part of the house, the mess the Chinchillas Bros create at another part of the house will not be dangerous to them.
I have a signed contract in hand and a start date - and being back on the track brings me more relief than anything else in the world now.

I have mastered all 3 blocks and get a much better feeling of my body during the movements. I fool around and while only my partner can hear me instead of "Kiap" yell "Namaste!". "Yes, right, - grins my partner, - the vengeance in me...."

I have wrapped up 3 pile of gifts for 3 toddlers and shipped back the laptop whose CD-rom sounded like the entire thing was going to take off into the air and fly out of the window every time I was going to install QuickBooks. And I do need a functioning laptop with Quick Books, Office, Tax and Engagement for next year.

I have written 4 articles on productivity and time management in the past 6 months. I have challenged my own productivity and time management skills as I know them and - only the coming year will show what other tricks I have up my sleeve.

I have a couple of travel projects existing as dry plans. "Just add water" - that is, just add some money for the actual booking and time for the travel and follow the directions for locations, transportation and itinerary.

I have patiently introduced Arthur to swimming and he is doing great, which means I can't pull him out now, but also need to find a way to bring Adrian  to classes.

Von Zobel has booked a spring-summer trip to Europe, and the anticipation has already started for both of us. Just need to decide on a destinations for a few short trips within our vacation.

I think about all the things I want in New Year, all the new goals I need to set for myself now - and nothing comes to mind, apart from balancing all the things I am rushing into 2017 with and not letting a single thing drop out of my hands. I feel like I am already running at full speed and might need several months to get adjusted to new life style where I finally have what I wanted before I want... start to want anything else.

But then I still pencil down a couple of things  - just so I don't forget. And then two more - in case an opportunity emerges. And before I know it I have 10 specific things I want to do next year. And in the next 5 days, I'm sure I will come up with even more ideas.

In the past few days I managed to screw up some insane number of times, hurt myself, burn a plastic lid by accidentally turning on wrong over and ruin a pile of cleaning rugs by forgetting to take them out of washer for 2 days. Also broke a plastic board - this one for the sake of practice on the taekwondo class.

The bruise under the left eye is almost gone.
I have a pile of gifts for 3 toddlers to pack. 
Somehow in this one morning I managed to buy box of crayons for Arthur's whole class, sign a gift tag for each box and stick a small chocolate to finish each of the 15 creations; followed by packing and signing gifts for Arthur's teachers. I sense the work will double in a year :)

Last Saturday afternoon I found myself at a baby shower of a friend (so amazingly organized by the way!) where I was literally seating in a room full of Accountants and Financiers. A very interesting feeling - to find myself in the club house of the community we have our condo at, but as a guest (rather than showing it to potential tenants) - and be among Russian-speaking females who work for banks, mortgage companies, public accounting, industry accounting... And have kids :) So stories about hardship of lives of working moms of 2 followed and could be pretty discouraging in the light of recent events had I not had made certain decisions for the next 5 years of my life.

The evening that followed though I found myself in quite a different company, but that of accomplished professionals too, and the conversations we had could not have been more reassuring and uplifting, including the parts needed to be read between the lines. Everybody struggles with bringing up children and no one knows what your biggest struggles will be; it is possible to have 3 children and have a great life; it is possible to have 4 children even and still have a great life (including great looks and a great Christmas tree); long years of self-development and growth as a professional - is very  normal; managing many projects simultaneously- is very normal too.
My bruise works extremely well as a conversation starter, by the way, outshining the Christmas tree from a good layer of makeup. I should probably ask Arthur to hit me somewhere in the cheekbone in a couple of weeks.

The office I have to go to for the interview is 20 minutes away

that is, not considering the traffic. In traffic the drive will be about an hour long. However, none of the locations in DTC,  Greenwood Village or South Denver offer such a great position with 3 areas of specialization and flexible schedule.

I am ready for my job search to be over, to start spending my time in a much more productive way, to leverage the knowledge and experience I have. So this job looks like the right solution.

 

I just need to find a way to integrate my own tax practice into my new schedule.  And Arthur's swimming classes. And my taekwondo lessons, - apart from gym that is. And I need to negotiate new work hours with the nanny, and find a way to cook a meal in 15 minutes and to clean the entire house in 1 hour, apparently... And right now I have no idea how I will manage to get there but I now I will, because now I only have 1 exam left and the studying is exhausting and tedious, and I have a black eye that is impossible to hide under make up now, even for the interview, and a shin splint which becomes worse now that I wear high heals, and I should have eaten something substantial before the interview - if only I had time. And everything around me becomes so heavy and tiresome, even that lead snow cloud that I'm driving under, that I almost feel tears dripping down the bruise concealing make up all the way to my blouse and trousers. As if what I really need right now to make this year complete is to burst into tears right during the interview.

 

But the harder and more confusing it becomes to navigate any segment of my life, the most certain it is that I will find all the right answers and put together the best strategy to get further. And to be honest, I prefer facing any difficulties and turbulence than being stuck at one point with no change at all. Swamp of routine is never good. Chaos - is somewhat a good sign though, a good start. I might not have a cheat sheet with all the right moves, and I do waste a great deal of my resources and every step up comes at a high price,- but at least 30 years down my life (almost) running up an ice hill still makes more practical sense than waiting for a right time and thus slowly gliding down.

A year from now I will look back and smile. I always do.

Chaos is definitely a good beginning.

 

When your 3 year old suddenly listens to you, but the moment is wrong.

- Mom, help me!
- Chinchill, get dressed. You do it well!
- No, help me!
- But you're big enough to do it yourself!
- No, I'm a little boy.
- Ok, I'll hold your pants for you. Jump in!

And at the moment I bent holding Dr. Chill's pants low for him, he came right below my face and actually jumped.

...He did accuse me or hurting him in the head with my face later. I was just happy my left eye was spared and that a 3 year old can't actually sue his Mom for throwing her face on his head. He would have won.  Nine months of exclusive breast feeding do show now when it comes to strength, brain and development.

...Told my Taekwondo instructor that my blackeye is the result of practicing the newly acquired MA skills, for a moment he seemed to have believed me. And I can't wait to get my uniform already so I can officially look like a kung fu panda :)

Mum emerged at the horizon.

Crystalized out of thin air after a few years of not talking to me.
Saying she regretted not being a part of my life for so long, not taking interest in her grandsons or me, not reaching out to me with even a word of support or a piece of advice when I felt worst and needed some help most. Saying she not wants to come over and help with her grandsons, and watch them grow, and maybe start her life over at a new place, start a small seamstress/tailor business...

...Just kidding of course, all she wanted from me was money. Urgently.

Of course, now I am her "daughter and friend", and this time a fraudulent employer got her into trouble, and...

Damn! Where did I take a wrong turn in my life to have my own family sincerely approach me whenever they need financial support, time with my kids, assistance with property acquisition, help job search, banking... And what happens with their sincerity, niceness and sweetness during... other times? Bloody hell, these are not even relationships within Corporate America or the scope of those acquaintances that end up on Facebook for the benefit of mutual like'ing and vain superficial comments! Am I sending wrong signals? Am I sending wrong signals to everyone else too then? Making an impression of a go-to person for trivial stuff, a pair of actively listening ears, endless empathy? How would I even occur to somebody as a girl with a variety of unlimited resources? Time, emotional, psychological and intellectual resources in the first place, and I guess - some willingness to blow it all?

Ok, I got it. It's a conspiracy.

The washer never really washes our dirty clothes, and they just appear to look spotless and smell fresh for a couple of days (1/2 day if they are chinchillas' pants or couple of hours if they are my gym tank tops and shorts) but soon expose their true soiled nature soon and end up in the dirty laundry pile. This is why our laundry basket is always full even a day after a full load washing. It's a conspiracy.

Same with dirty dishes, cups and cutlery - it's a conspiracy, or a pandemic - as soon as you start running a fully loaded dishwasher - more glasses and plates will be discovered. As soon as you hand-wash toddler sippy cups or bottles - they will appear in every corner of the house, with milk, compot or water in them.

If you've picked all leaves from the ground in your backyard - the moment you tie the 7th trash bag and walk inside the house - more leaves will crawl over the fence over your neighbors' backyards straight into yours. Or maybe as the darkness falls - they go through the entire growth cycle over again during the night to fall by morning. This seems to be the only explanation on why fallen leaves in our backyard never end.

The fridge eats most of the food we put in it. Otherwise - where's all our food I buy and cook?! Does the trunk of my car absorb some on the way home? Is there a collusion between them?

Dust and crumbs on the floors just clone themselves non-stop. Otherwise - how can the colour of the water from washing the floor and the ample contents of the vacuum cleaner be explained?

Most important of all - there's a magnetic anomaly six feet below our house: it acts as a magnet to toys and any interesting items within reach of both Chinchillas. As soon as everything in house is in place - the magnet starts working again and soon toys, my studying materials, bottles of shampoo and body wash from the shower, dental floss, chalk, shoes - are all over the place. It's a force of nature. Definitely.

Post-election. Day 1.

My day started at 4.35 in the morning (courtesy of Chinchilla Jr) and it was fun to watch Internet go crazy then already. Adequate people turning into drama queens, throwing vain promises, emphasizing meaningless opinions and foregoing facts. All out of sudden the world feels like it's not just a freaking manager of a country has been elected on a 4-year contract basis, but a point of no return has been reached for the entire mankind. It's amusing how close to heart people take the results of the election, and irritating to see how much time and energy they spent on whining, complaining and projecting gloom and doom.

Funny how quiet everybody was this morning. Gym was awkwardly soundless, no usual chit-chatting, and people on treadmills, elliptical and bicycles were staring at the screens watching culinary shows, movies - not the actual news though! (Colorado voted for Hillary).
No discussions of the results in the changing room. Quiet.
Uneasiness in the air at the library - I had to use their Copy  - a librarian I asked a question almost whispered the answer to me. No discussions, no mentioning of anything.

Driving to Granite Tower in the Downtown - people are jumpy, careless. On the bright note- the construction on Business School building of UC Denver is nearly finished :) Going up to the 28th floor I see for the first time mentioning of Trump's twits on the screen in the elevator TV. Recruiter's office - no small talk; unless a receptionist answers the phone, it is quiet.
At daycare - no jokes, no comments about the Elections between the parents or the teachers. There had been none even with our nanny this morning!

And so throughout the town -  no discussion of "last night". Denial? Anger? Trying to bargain - coming up next?

Came to Bonfils after not-so-smooth morning

with not-so-smooth news, and the reception lady told me I should have received my 1 Gallon donor badge on my last donation. And she did give me a badge that did read "1 Gallon Donor" (which made me picture a plastic 1 gallon milk jug filled with blood). There was something funny and comforting about it :)

Got another article published by ReFresh School - this one on making time, playing with a couple of potential new topics in my mind now. ReFresh has also published my short profile in social media while I was in FL - extremely nice of them!

Went to a corporate Cooking Class event with Von Zobel. Being in a industrial kitchen was quite a throw back to Glion days. The company in the kitchen and wine made quite a difference though :) In fact there was such a substantial amount of wine consumed that night, the good shape of the participants could have probably been attributed in greatest part to the French cuisine with its abundance of butter - we had on the menu ( slash - cooking instructions). Almost felt jealous to a lady I met on the even who had 2 sets of twins (3 years apart). 2 sets of twins!!  My pregnancies would have been twice as productive now, and there would have been no vital life decisions to be made! :)(Dear Royal Family, what are your plans on Royal Baby 3#?)

On Saturday we made it out to a concert of ex-Moscow String quartet, which is a trio now, bringing in the Cello and 1st Violin from the Quartet. Shame. We could never make it to  their last performance as a quartet. Almost felt jealous again - to Rachmaninov this time :) as well as for all those who have an undoubted talent that - apart from creating - helps them expressing their feelings, going through tough times, keeping their sanity and self-awareness at the same time.
Time to develop at least one talent. I have a lot to say :)

Anna Maria - definitely a great place to live a quiet, slow-paced life.

Although Chinchillas  tend to disagree and use a brief family vacation for running around by ocean-side, scream (especially when refusing to go too close to the ocean) and enjoying the pool. The latter though, seems to have been their favourite pastime: splashing in the pool completely naked and running around the pool with one toy or another, also... aerating their bottoms. Ocean, beach buckets and towels, sea shells - we're just like a real family on a beach vacation now.
And 3 hour flight feels like a piece of cake now after almost 24 total hours spent in International traveling each way this summer!

As for Von Zobel and I, we finally tried bicycles with child chariots - and they did turn out to be a fun and convenient way to get around the island with kids. Apart from all the loading and unloading the kids, and buckling them up, of course - Chinchillas did not enjoy this either. Should we buy a couple in Colorado though, we would stick to riding mountain bikes with hand-brakes (yes, our bicycles in FL were old-fashioned!), but the little "honking" parrots on the wheel were a good idea and made Chinchillas laugh.

A Full-bodied polar fox.

Lyolik telegrammed it to me the other day, with a brief annotation Полный Песец , which was such a great laconic description of my life right now I could not help setting it as my laptop desktop.

*****

Sometimes it becomes hard to just pull myself up off the floor and go and do anything useful at all.

In the midst of job search.

Funny enough, the most interesting, promising and juicy positions are in the middle of nowhere. Near Broadway and the 17th, that is. Recruiters are aggressive and email almost daily. Companies in search of personnel email daily in and out of sequence, offers being from staff accountant to manager of logistics.
Employers inquire about Excel skills - Pivot table & V-lookup.
Recruiters  sound exited about Customer Relations and Project Management experience.
I am being aggressive in my inquiries about salary, benefits, location and flexibility. That must have come with experience. And because I have no other choice but to make it work my way, probably.
Employers want a plain AP/AR person, to be compensated accordingly.
Recruiters encourage to come to them for applications to any worthy position, since they have vast network of growing and high net-worth clients, and to never submit application to the same position more than once (wasn't it how I got my first official job? Three times was a charm...)
I keep thinking of how to integrate a full-time demanding position into my life schedule, or rather - how to construct a new schedule where there would be time for meetings, business trips, toddler swimming lessons, parents' nights at kindergarten and ways to take care of my boys when they are sick without compromising my professional attitude at work.
Employers say "Hey, we have a Sales Managers position at our Insurance Company you might be interested in!"
Recruiters say "Hey, we are going to send your resume to an Oil&Gas company"
I say "No, thank you". "Yes, thank you!". Can't waste any more time. Can't waste any more time on something that I won't be able to leverage in the next 5 years.

I hardly ever have repeating dreams.

If I ever had, I can't remember them now.
Now, twice this week with slight variations, I've seen myself coming to an interview in some 20+ floor office building; second time - a hotel, but still being somewhere on 20+ floor. The interview goes as normal, but for some reason I bring in my teal laptop bag full of my lehrstoff, the bag is heavy as usual, but I keep carrying it on my shoulder as the interviewer shows me around after the interview. And once we say goodbye and I walk outside I find myself walking on a glass floor, above the offices, next to the building's wall but with no wall outside.
I walk till I see there is no exit on this side, neither a way to get back inside the building and turn around to go back.
But by this time the width of glass ledge is only about a third of what it used to be.
I keep walking, and this time there is no way to get back into the building at all, as the ledge is getting more and more narrow as I walk until finally my laptop bag starts to gets hit by the wind gusts and pull me down and make me start losing my balance.
In the second dream though, a woman, another interviewee appears behind a window to ask how my interview was and say good bye. I can't help thinking what a moron she is - seeing that I can neither move on the thin ledge anymore - in my high heals and a heavy bag, but not offering any help. So I smile and ask her ironically:
- Could I please trouble you with opening this window?
She shrugs, face is blank. Clearly, she can't understand why I would ask her that.
- If that's so crucial for you...
"Of course it's crucial for me!" - I think, annoyed. Try not to fall down while she opens the window out - right above my head, barely manage to lift up my heavy laptop bag and start to climb in.

Little Steps to just moderate progress

When after having cried and screamed "Mama no!!" for 10 minutes in the pool, your three year old finally masters jumping into your arms from the side of the pool, and smiles, and glances proudly at the baby girls nearby.

When after 2 days of having mental meltdowns and being enormously tired you see that Audit problems finally start to make sense and the scores begin to go up.

When having just recovered off to the whole family cold Marathon you can run your daily 5k again, even with that uneasiness in lungs.

 

When your 15 month old's bottom left molar finally shows and he can sleep through the night without painkillers, and even go through the day without teething tablets, crying in pain and trying to lay his head on your shoulder and whine every time you pick him up.

 

When instead of running away after 3 minutes of listening to you reading a book before bed, your 3 year old reaches out to his shelf, grabs "Buratino" and asks you to read him. And then listens for half a dozen pages.

 

Many little steps. Just keep on taking many little steps until things get better.

 

Found on smb's FB account. Note sure about credits :)

This beautiful sunny morning my native country

has given me  yet another wonderful gift: a six-meter high fence. Simply speaking, Russian PM and ex-president has blocked me on Twitter.
My best guess is that was somehow supposed to teach me a lesson in how to ask a politician uncomfortable questions in public place (social media). Yep.
My best guess #2 is that many people who know me personally would love to be able to mute me in critical moments simply by pushing a button.

Amoung that dozen of books I got on Library book sale for just only $20 (mainly for Chill Sr)

I bought a small hardcover edition of Orwell's Animal Farm and finally got to read it. Sad, predictable, very sad and very predictable. I wonder why we have never hear of it in our Literature classes in school, let alone it being part of the school program. The 90-ies were the perfect time for studying works of this kind in school - things would have probably been different now, had our generation been raised able to be self-conscious, reasonable, critically thinking and analytical.

By the way, I still love book sales and am so happy to see book sales as part of US's culture and events! This time I tripped over Bulgakov, books of beginner's Japanese and Latin (seriously?! When would I have time for all this?), bunch of country travel guides... had to restrain myself and take none of that, of course :)  I still sometimes joke of having had a "hungry childhood" when being pointed at my excessive love for fresh fruit and veggies or some peculiar gastronomic preferences... but I definitely always had books in abundance as a kid - more in our home library than I ever read, - yet here I am :)