It's the little things that annoy me...

Okay, so I just need to let.it.go. I know, I know, get on with it. Don't let it get to me. Well, isn't that what a journal is for? Write about it & then get over it. So I'll share it with you...the blog that no one is reading (LOL...I'm laughing alone here, I know).

So today I receive in the mail a membership drive packet for an association for which I am a member. Not only that, I serve on the board. Not only that, I designed some of the original documents for last year's drive. The printing looks great. The color is good. The concept works. The design is screwy.

Okay, so I'm a stickler for detail...I'm picky about layout & design...alright, I'll admit it, I'm anal (that always looks so much worse in print than it does when you say it out loud).

You see, my eye is automatically drawn to typos (not my own of course) and layout flow. So on the very first page I see a bulleted list that isn't set correctly. Okay, so I designed this thing in the latest MS Word (.docx) and the new person needed old Word (.doc). So someone did a save-as for them (I knew it shoulda been me!) and they obviously didn't know how to format bullets.

Okay, breathe Shelly, it's okay, no big deal, let.it.go.

Next page, whew, not one of mine. Oh ick! It's a survey page and they used spaces instead of tabs to line things up, oh ick, they put the answer lines at the END of the sentences! Okay, visual needed here...imagine this...

Survey question number one.      _ _ _ _ _
Survey question number is longer.       _ _ _ _ _
Question for the survey.                _ _ _ _ _

Well, you get the picture. And why put them at the end? Never mind that they used some weird dotted line thingie - why not put them at the beginning of each sentence? ugh.

Okay, last "marketing" page is the application. This one WAS mine (& by "was" I mean it no longer is because someone else made changes to it). All of my check boxes were changed to some weird character (that I later learn is a Euro money symbol). So rather than checking the boxes for your interests, or for your payment choices, etc., you're supposed to what, circle your choice?

Oh the horror of layout and design!

Okay, I'm feeling much better now. Thank you for listening...er reading...er, who am I kidding, I'm alone out here! Well, if it weren't for the whole Facebook thingie, my blog would never get read...so thanks to all my FB peeps....but if you feel compelled to leave a comment, please click on the "View Original Post" link & put it on my blog. It would make me feel more loved. I'm just kidding folks! No really, I'm serious......Okay, I really need a fresh cup of tea now.

life observations...

so i sit down at our production meeting & my dear husband (& biz partner) is still talking on the phone (instead of coming to the meeting). i was totally frustrated because my computer had been running SO s-l-o-w all day that i couldn't get prepared for the meeting (so i essentially had nothing to add to the meeting!). someone says - maybe you should talk to "the IT dept" about it (that was a joke..my dh is the IT dept!). of course, that won't help me at all because i have a multitude of IT issues going on that he has yet to fix...so why would my slow day prompt any kind of action at this point?!

after entertaining the troops with my long tirade of what i've been going thru today (i didn't say it was a productive production meeting, did i? LOL)...my dh finally comes to help me find out why my computer is running so slow. turns out i had tried to send an email with a 30 MB file attached to it! D.U.E. my dh calls to me as he walks out (that's pronounced doo-eee & it stands for Dumb User Error). great - i've been annoyed all day & it was my own durn fault? life just doesn't get any better than this does it!! /me rolls my eyes...

so i announce to the meeting attendees that i REALLY need to get out of work early today (one of them looks at their watch & sez "you know it's already 4:30, right?")....and i then explain that leaving at 5pm for me is "early". of course, i still didn't get out until 5:40 which means i'm hauling butt to get to daycare to p/up the kids. i really must get this life & work balance thing figured out.

i saw an interesting quote today....it was paraphrased but i can't find it...but i did find the original:
I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing. (Gloria Steinem)

this is SO true in my life. i swear my dh takes for granted that i'm the one that drops off the kids at daycare & picks them up (mostly). i'm the one that takes them to the dr visits & talks to their teachers. i'm the one (seems) to do most of the caregiving because he's so busy at work. but we work together and we both have our biz responsibilities...but i don't think that he feels a need to find work/life balance....but i do. and i want that for both of us...but how can you get someone else to view that need when they are seemingly happy just being busy at work all the time instead of "wanting" to be at home with the family? i'm not saying he doesn't want to be home...and i'm not saying that he doesn't spend time at home...but i look at my work/life balance and i recognize that it's lopsided to the work side of things...and i can see that his life is even more lopsided to the work side of things....and i want us both to find more balance. i'm afraid that the harder i work to make the life side more balanced, the more he'll "think" he has to work harder to enable me to have that time.