Well, thanks for all the insomnia advice, folks, because although I so far have only taken a portion of it, I fell asleep at 1 last night and woke up at 7, and I am actually at my desk, having had a hot breakfast with protein, sorted and started the laundry, and washed the dishes, at 9. It's not competence, exactly, that I'm proud of here, but I will accept basic functionality at this point.

I am still a tad anxiety ridden because I don't know if I start paid lessons back today or not. The store finally reopened its lessons section (they decided instead of just building the practice rooms at the new location, they would put in a coffeeshop. So we've been more or less out of our 2nd job since June.) I am supposed to be starting with four students, two vocals and two pianos, on Thursdays, but there was a mixup with the times, so I don't know if they got it worked out and I'm starting today or not. But I figure they'll tell me if I need to be there. Although I might not be able to get there if I do, with snowmelt today and more precip in the forecast. We shall see, I guess.

I feel like I should rename our cats. Miss Kitty was originally Olive at the shelter. We didn't like that and the kids kept calling her Kitty, so we just made it a touch more formal. Noodle kept her shelter name cause she is a total noodle.

Last night I had a spark of productivity. Went to the hardware store, bought a shelf to put up in the laundry room, installed it and rearranged the things I store in there. Now I want to pull out both machines, clean around them, and make that little room all spiffy.

I'm working from home today and took a break a bit ago to start a pork roast in the slow cooker (with an apple glaze).

That would be awesome. I need a shelf in my laundry, uh, closet. Actually, I need a whole cabinet in there, but I'm askeered.

Mmm, pork roast. Thursdays are my "cooking just for me all day" days, so I put out fish to thaw for Greek tilapia. My grandmother looked down her nose at tilapia, but I apparently lack her discriminating tastes. But I have pork too, and pork sounds better. Hmm.

aww, speaking of tuxedos, just saw a post on fb that the neighborhood hardware store store tuxedo cat is missing. His name is Copcar.

Liese, we have lived here over 3 years and it wasn't until a couple of days ago that I looked at all the stuff I have piled on the dryer and then looked up to see the perfect space for a shelf and went ah-ha.

It's kinda ridic. The laundry closet doors were one of the sticking points in our home inspection (i.e., they were solid and not louvered, as they were supposed to be) but they let us slide since they didn't fit tightly, so they said there'd be enough ventilation.

But they were crappy anyway, and during our Summer of Giving Our House to Random Strangers, they broke off, were reinstalled upside down, and broke off again. So since then, it's been totally open, which is really unappealing looking from the dining room. In our heads we're going to hang a curtain there or install awesome shoji doors, but it just never happens.

So maybe I have better odds if I put in a cabinet, and then at least all the visual clutter would be out of sight.

I am ridiculously relieved after my chat with my boss yesterday. I know we pissed him off with our spat, but now I also know he mostly gets why I'm pissed off. And just that--that there is some understanding in my chain of command about why I'm not as productive as I would like to be--makes me feel so much better!

I know they like my work because they're jumping through so many hoops to keep me here, but it was an abstract appreciation. I don't get a lot of people actually telling me that I'm doing a good job, or even understanding what it is I do. Partly because this place? They just don't know how to manage people.

In other news, I'm very glad I found an Aleve in my purse this morning, since my sinuses are definitely acting up. I don't think the Flonase is helping.

I take it very personally, unfortunately.

That's totally where I am. I'm apologising profusely, trying to get someone to treat *me* like I'm stupid so they can walk me through the expectations, but I feel I've accomplished the major goals--I've described a measurable functionality in a way that doesn't depend on actually understanding the application we're changing, but people, smart people, tell me they don't understand.

Seriously. I get that some of it gets a bit tricky, but I swear I should be able to explain it, and I just can't:

• Post documents only visible to [a defined subset of users] and not the rest of the users (via search and browse)
• Post documents not visible to [a defined subset of users], only the rest of the users (via search and browse)
• Extend the conditional tagging functionality so that the web team can designate chunks of HTML as visible to [a defined subset of users] only
• Extend the conditional tagging functionality so that the web team can designate chinks of HTML as invisible to [a defined subset of users]

I can go into more detail about which sorts of documents are being talked about to give a business context, but it's not relevant to the new requirement. I can talk about who the subset we need this for right away, again for context, but it's not relevant to designing the solution--just the way we can tell them apart, which I've also explained.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG???

That seems really straightforward to me, ita !. What are they not getting?

Yeah, I think I understand what you're talking about but maybe I'm making a lot of assumptions based on my own experience. Maybe it's just the lack of context that is the stumbling block? Even if the context is not relevant to the requirements?