Ooooh, I want to know how your ginger works out! Are you going to grow the Chinese one or the North American one? A lot of herbs in the mint family don't need full sun, if you are a tea drinker!

I'm seeing my mother constantly because there's some reason to celebrate or get together every single week. Birthdays, graduations, mother's day, family visiting.

I also did something dumb. Last year I went to a food conference and had a nice chat with some stranger at lunch. Afterwards, I walked by the bookstore and saw his picture all over a bunch of books - the guy is a celebrity in his field (not the tv show kind).

I had mentioned this in passing to my mother months ago, who started shrieking about how he was her favorite, etc etc. I saw that he was going to give the keynote at this year's event, so I forwarded her the email.

Why did I do that? Now she may register for this event and follow me around. I haven't told her that I am going and guess I won't. I felt like it would be wrong to withhold the information, but now I feel like I shot myself in the foot.
I never recaptured my idea about how to live a more goal oriented life, but I *did* read an article that is sort of helping. It was about the ten minute diet, with the idea that you spend ten minutes a day making choices that support losing weight. Before choosing something, ask yourself 'does this support my goal of X?' I've been playing with that, when I remember.

With people being annoying, it's like I feel like my day is made up of aggravating interactions. I think this is probably *why* I tend to keep to myself. I find other people frustrating to deal with. I suppose it's not really *all* my interactions, but it feels that way! It's not just them annoying me, either - I know that I annoy other people. I get irritated that it's so hard to communicate, I guess. I get hung up for a really long time on little things.

For instance, I have a volunteer issue going on in one of my groups. One woman keeps sending out these emails 'OMG, we have to get X done, let's meet.' 1. No one else wants to meet 2. The last time we met, we spent the meeting entirely redoing something we had already done and had approved - and the end result was that no one ever finished the rework and it was not approved.

Last week I designed some promotional materials, sent them out for feedback, and heard nothing. I had even tried calling this woman to talk about the stuff and she never called me back.

So when I saw her email about meeting this time, I was even more annoyed than usual. And it still took me 40 minutes to draft a one sentence response saying that I couldn't meet!

Interestingly, someone else replied with a long email about how there was no reason to meet and we should just break down what had to be done and do it. And I'm all in favor of that! But I spent another hour responding to that and never came up with something I could send! (I am worried about getting stuck with all the work and/or getting stuck in a situation where I can't move forward because someone else doesn't return calls/emails).

So sometimes it feels like my day is made up of stuff like this, situations where I feel stuck and annoyed and get myself tied up in knots about the best way to proceed.

Congrats on the board game win, btw. Jumping up and down a little is certainly in order