Things that are Keeping me Sane

Okay so I had a bit of a bad day yesterday. We have a client who's project I've worked on since last year, along with a handful of other people. And yesterday our Project Manager received a second snotty email. Seriously. One of those emails where I was impressed she didn't stand right up, grab her bag and leave the office for the day. I think I would've. So the email wasn't directed at me personally or anything. But it did really attack the effort and time our team has put into the project (refering to our "shit slack work") and that left me with a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know how much effort we've put in. I know how incoherent the client himself and his requirements have been thruout the project - seriously! I KNOW how many additional extras I've had to build that are out of scope (including one yesterday even!) because he just keeps wanting more or something different etc. It was pretty depressing actually.

So I decided to do something that I usually don't, and that's to count up the good things. I was honestly sitting here thinking how dreadful everything was yesterday when someone sent me a short little twitter message that turned my mindset around. And it really helped.

So here's my list of things to be grateful for or things that make me warm with happiness:

1. Varen. Mostly. Most especially when he makes me lunch for work (isn't that the sweetest?). He does loads of sweet little things (like buying me my favourite yogurt and helping me with a linux problem at work over Google Talk even tho he was super busy - and those were just yesterday!) that go unmentioned here. But he does them and I love and appreciate them :) Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention ... he has a 2nd interview for that job he really wants today. Yay :)

2. My boons. Coal and Lily are the cutest little things, I could watch them for hours on end and they'll always bring a smile to my face with their antics. Yesterday afternoon I took a whole lot of little videos trying to catch them in the act of zooming around or hopping - hopefully I'll be able to turn it into something I can post, but we'll see.

3. I just had a lovely weekend in Cape Town with my family and got to reconnect with some lovely friends.

4. Cooking. It's gone from something that stressed me out to something I'm quite enjoying. Yesterday's dinner was fabulous :) Although it took absolute ages from start to eat, it was well worth it. I hand-stuffed conchiglioni (Large, stuffable seashell shaped pasta) with a spinach, ricotta and cottage cheese mixture and then baked it for an hour with tomato past sauce. Was delish!

5. The bloggirls. Meeting new people is hard, but this is a fantastic bunch of ladies and I have such fun when we all get together - which reminds me, I really must organise March's event, slack, I know ... but I was away :)

6. We're going to see Elections & Erections by Pieter Dirk Uys on Thursday eve - thanks to Noodle for the heads up :)

Okay, yesterday when I was thinking up this post, I'm sure I had more ... but I think that'll do for now :) Finger's crossed it'll be a good day!