Well, it was a few minutes before midnight, but I'm sure no one will disqualify me for the hundred or so words I wrote on the novel before November officially began.
I'm planning to post each session's work over here and link to it daily, for whoever's interested.
If it seems a bit foggy, where it's going, rest assured that there is a plan here and it will shortly become evident. I've had the skeleton of this story in my mind for a couple of years. I know where I want it to end; the road to that end is the part I don't quite know yet.
Enjoy--and feel free to comment.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Okay, So I Lied.
I promised I'd skip a NASCAR post, in exchange for that godawful long work post--well, it ain't gonna happen this week.
Today was the first race since last week's Hendrick Motorsports plane crash. For you non-NASCAR types, Hendrick is a dominant team--they own the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, two of the main contenders for the Nextel Cup this year. Last Sunday, a plane with ten members of the organization went down on the way to a race, and nobody survived. On that plane was Rick Hendrick's son, his brother, and two of his nieces; the team's chief engine builder, a helicopter pilot for one of the drivers, the two pilots of the plane, the team's general manager, and a DuPont executive.
It was a terrible week for racing, probably the worst since Dale Earnhardt Sr. died at Daytona. I wasn't into racing at that point, so this is really my first experience with NASCAR tragedies. I can't imagine what the Hendrick family must be going through. And Brian Vickers, a rookie with Hendrick, lost his best friend and roommate on his 21st birthday; he lived with Ricky Hendrick. What makes that even sadder is this: Brian's best friend in childhood was Adam Petty, who was killed in a crash a few years back. Brian's gone through so much loss at so young of an age...Kasey Kahne may be my favorite driver, but Brian's got my sentimental-favorite standing from this point on.
Anyway: this afternoon, Jimmie Johnson pulled out a win in the last 20 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway. And the celebration in Victory Lane was something to see. I don't think I'll make too many more "redneck" jokes for a while--I've never seen so many grown men wiping their eyes in my life.
Good job, Jimmie. On to the title!
Today was the first race since last week's Hendrick Motorsports plane crash. For you non-NASCAR types, Hendrick is a dominant team--they own the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, two of the main contenders for the Nextel Cup this year. Last Sunday, a plane with ten members of the organization went down on the way to a race, and nobody survived. On that plane was Rick Hendrick's son, his brother, and two of his nieces; the team's chief engine builder, a helicopter pilot for one of the drivers, the two pilots of the plane, the team's general manager, and a DuPont executive.
It was a terrible week for racing, probably the worst since Dale Earnhardt Sr. died at Daytona. I wasn't into racing at that point, so this is really my first experience with NASCAR tragedies. I can't imagine what the Hendrick family must be going through. And Brian Vickers, a rookie with Hendrick, lost his best friend and roommate on his 21st birthday; he lived with Ricky Hendrick. What makes that even sadder is this: Brian's best friend in childhood was Adam Petty, who was killed in a crash a few years back. Brian's gone through so much loss at so young of an age...Kasey Kahne may be my favorite driver, but Brian's got my sentimental-favorite standing from this point on.
Anyway: this afternoon, Jimmie Johnson pulled out a win in the last 20 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway. And the celebration in Victory Lane was something to see. I don't think I'll make too many more "redneck" jokes for a while--I've never seen so many grown men wiping their eyes in my life.
Good job, Jimmie. On to the title!
Saturday, October 30, 2004
What's Happened Since
Tonight, nine years ago, was the night JP died.
I think about his mom, a lot. His family, at that time in my life, treated me better than my own family. I still have the winter coat his mom and grandma gave me that fall; I wore it every winter til last year, when I reluctantly accepted the necessity of a new one. After he died I tried to keep in touch with his family, but in time it just got to be too painful for me. Selfish, I know--what was painful for me must have been unimaginable for them. Parents shouldn't outlive their children, and his mom was just the nicest lady. I miss her a lot, actually.
When I walk home from the Green Line, I walk past the spot where we bought the heroin that killed him. It took til earlier this year before that memory clicked into place--I remembered a school, and a big vacant lot with a wrought-iron fence near the alley where JP made the buy, and I remembered the street itself; it was only when I walked past one afternoon that the view struck me and I thought I remember--this is the place. It looks like every other fenced-in vacant lot with an alley behind it; no one but me would know there was anything different about it. I am the only one who knows; I was the only other one who was there.
There are too many memories like that one--memories of which I am the sole living custodian. Our life together was insular, an entirely closed system, at least at the moments of which I have the strongest memories. I suppose most couples could say the same; the moments you remember best are the ones where the only witnesses are you and the one you love. And in my case, I'm the only one left to remember them.
There was a night I remember in June, when we were living in Wicker Park in our little storefront apartment, the place in which I did heroin for the first time. This night was months later, when we were pretty-well hooked but still controlling it. It was hot, really hot, a presage of the week in July when 800 people would die in this city in a heat wave--and we had moved our mattress into the den because it had better airflow.
There was a radio station back then, in the summer of 1995--WCBR, "the Bear", a low-power station out of some northern suburb. And one night in June, we stayed up all night--just me and JP, our closed ecosystem. We did heroin, of course, but that's not the part I remember. I remember listening to this low-power radio station, calling the DJ every 20 minutes or so, requesting songs we remembered from the last few years, songs that Q101 didn't play anymore. We requested Catherine Wheel's "Show Me Mary", but they couldn't find the disk and they played "Heal" from _Happy Days_, the first time I'd ever heard the song. And they played "Work For Food" by Dramarama, and "Tomboy" by Bettie Serveert....We went for a walk around 2 AM, over to Arandas, a 24-hour Mexican place over on Division and Milwaukee; we bought tacos and then walked down by Chicago Avenue, over the expressway bridge. A homeless guy stopped us, and he was obviously drunk and not entirely coherent; I remember JP being miffed at me because I was so obviously scared. JP was always open to every new experience, and sometimes he had to drag me along behind because I was so well-conditioned. I think I've progressed, in that at least--at least a little.
We went home and stretched out on our mattress in the den, and we slept like we had all the time in the world to be together.
Four more months is not--never was, never will be--all the time in the world. And in the months after he died I remember thinking this most of all: I wasn't finished yet. There was still more he could have taught me. That, above all else, remains my biggest statement of the unfairness of it all.
I wonder sometimes what would have happened if it had been me instead--how well would he have taken it? Would he have gone on? Would he have had as hard a time getting over me as I've had getting over him? Would he do what I've done, and chase away perfectly good partners for the unpardonable sin of not being the one he lost?
Would he have kept going with his dream, and had the band? And what would have happened, had he lived, when the music world stopped believing the same things we believed? What would have happened to his unbounded optimism, his unshakeable will? Would he have given up and become bitter--and if the music failed him, what would he have done instead?
I think of all the things that have happened in the intervening nine years--not to me, but to the world. The last newsworthy event in his life was the OJ Simpson verdict; we rode around Lincoln Park that night in my little red Dodge, and he hung out the window and yelled at the yuppies: "Shame about OJ, ain't it??" We were such jackasses, laughing and taunting the wealthy, never knowing that we only had a few more weeks.
I think of all the things he'll never know. The Internet. George W. Bush. September 11th. The war in Iraq. The 2000 election. Monica Lewinsky. Boy bands. Britney Spears. Laci Peterson. Chandra Levy. Elizabeth Smart. Rap-rock. Limp Bizkit. Eminem. The Bartman ball. The Bulls' last two winning seasons. The breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins. The death of Princess Di, of Layne Staley, of William Burroughs, of Brad Nowell, of Ronald Reagan. Weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden. Duct tape. Anthrax. Courtney Love's fall from grace. Michael Jackson's repeat offense. The R Kelly tapes. Strom Thurmond. Bad _Star Wars_ movies. Y2K. John Ashcroft. Homeland Security. The Patriot Act.
I think of all the things I've learned, all the things I've done, in the nine years since his death. He will never know that I bought a house, that I got a job in computers, that I lived in North Carolina. He will never know that I had to have our cat put to sleep, or that I learned how to crochet. He will never see the pottery I painted or the quilts I've made, never see the bookshelf I've built or the cats I love, never hear any of the CD's I've bought because we talked about getting them, one day, when we quit the heroin once and for all. He will never hear the music I learned about in the effort to collect every single thing that reminded me of the time we were together. He will never see how far I've come.
I've had to learn to be proud of myself, now that he's no longer here to be proud of me. I think that was the thing that always amazed me the most about JP--that he was consistently amazed by me. He was the first person in my life who accepted me the way I was--flaws and all--and who could even see good in those flaws. He was like that with everyone.
After the funeral, we went back to his mom's apartment--all of his friends. This was the same apartment where we'd had all those amazing parties back in '91, and it was strange to be there without him. But we sat in the spare room--none of us wanted to be in his room, to think about what had happened there, least of all me--and we talked about our memories of JP. And we laughed, a lot, because that was what we'd always done when he was around.
I think of his friends a lot, too--all those people who used to be part of my life, who lost the same guy I lost. I've fallen out of touch with all of them, and I know there are a couple who still blame me for what happened. We all knew JP was a dreamer; I was the one who was supposed to have better sense than that. I was the one who should have kept our feet a little more firmly on the ground--who should have called a halt.
I know that's not a fair assessment, and I'm years past trying to assign or accept blame for what happened. It just happened, and it was stupid, small enough that we should have been given a second chance--but we weren't. Even my usual "everything happens for a reason" doesn't cut any ice in this set of circumstances: No matter WHAT the lesson might have been or who might have been the one who needed it, whether it was me, whether it was someone else--I refuse to believe that the universe would sacrifice one life--particularly not a life like JP's--to teach that lesson.
And so I'm left with this: It happened. Nine years ago tonight, it happened. And my life--and a lot of other lives--have been left poorer for it. No reason; no answers, not in this lifetime anyway. If there's something after this life, maybe I'll understand it then.
In the meantime: I think about JP.
A lot.
I think about his mom, a lot. His family, at that time in my life, treated me better than my own family. I still have the winter coat his mom and grandma gave me that fall; I wore it every winter til last year, when I reluctantly accepted the necessity of a new one. After he died I tried to keep in touch with his family, but in time it just got to be too painful for me. Selfish, I know--what was painful for me must have been unimaginable for them. Parents shouldn't outlive their children, and his mom was just the nicest lady. I miss her a lot, actually.
When I walk home from the Green Line, I walk past the spot where we bought the heroin that killed him. It took til earlier this year before that memory clicked into place--I remembered a school, and a big vacant lot with a wrought-iron fence near the alley where JP made the buy, and I remembered the street itself; it was only when I walked past one afternoon that the view struck me and I thought I remember--this is the place. It looks like every other fenced-in vacant lot with an alley behind it; no one but me would know there was anything different about it. I am the only one who knows; I was the only other one who was there.
There are too many memories like that one--memories of which I am the sole living custodian. Our life together was insular, an entirely closed system, at least at the moments of which I have the strongest memories. I suppose most couples could say the same; the moments you remember best are the ones where the only witnesses are you and the one you love. And in my case, I'm the only one left to remember them.
There was a night I remember in June, when we were living in Wicker Park in our little storefront apartment, the place in which I did heroin for the first time. This night was months later, when we were pretty-well hooked but still controlling it. It was hot, really hot, a presage of the week in July when 800 people would die in this city in a heat wave--and we had moved our mattress into the den because it had better airflow.
There was a radio station back then, in the summer of 1995--WCBR, "the Bear", a low-power station out of some northern suburb. And one night in June, we stayed up all night--just me and JP, our closed ecosystem. We did heroin, of course, but that's not the part I remember. I remember listening to this low-power radio station, calling the DJ every 20 minutes or so, requesting songs we remembered from the last few years, songs that Q101 didn't play anymore. We requested Catherine Wheel's "Show Me Mary", but they couldn't find the disk and they played "Heal" from _Happy Days_, the first time I'd ever heard the song. And they played "Work For Food" by Dramarama, and "Tomboy" by Bettie Serveert....We went for a walk around 2 AM, over to Arandas, a 24-hour Mexican place over on Division and Milwaukee; we bought tacos and then walked down by Chicago Avenue, over the expressway bridge. A homeless guy stopped us, and he was obviously drunk and not entirely coherent; I remember JP being miffed at me because I was so obviously scared. JP was always open to every new experience, and sometimes he had to drag me along behind because I was so well-conditioned. I think I've progressed, in that at least--at least a little.
We went home and stretched out on our mattress in the den, and we slept like we had all the time in the world to be together.
Four more months is not--never was, never will be--all the time in the world. And in the months after he died I remember thinking this most of all: I wasn't finished yet. There was still more he could have taught me. That, above all else, remains my biggest statement of the unfairness of it all.
I wonder sometimes what would have happened if it had been me instead--how well would he have taken it? Would he have gone on? Would he have had as hard a time getting over me as I've had getting over him? Would he do what I've done, and chase away perfectly good partners for the unpardonable sin of not being the one he lost?
Would he have kept going with his dream, and had the band? And what would have happened, had he lived, when the music world stopped believing the same things we believed? What would have happened to his unbounded optimism, his unshakeable will? Would he have given up and become bitter--and if the music failed him, what would he have done instead?
I think of all the things that have happened in the intervening nine years--not to me, but to the world. The last newsworthy event in his life was the OJ Simpson verdict; we rode around Lincoln Park that night in my little red Dodge, and he hung out the window and yelled at the yuppies: "Shame about OJ, ain't it??" We were such jackasses, laughing and taunting the wealthy, never knowing that we only had a few more weeks.
I think of all the things he'll never know. The Internet. George W. Bush. September 11th. The war in Iraq. The 2000 election. Monica Lewinsky. Boy bands. Britney Spears. Laci Peterson. Chandra Levy. Elizabeth Smart. Rap-rock. Limp Bizkit. Eminem. The Bartman ball. The Bulls' last two winning seasons. The breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins. The death of Princess Di, of Layne Staley, of William Burroughs, of Brad Nowell, of Ronald Reagan. Weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden. Duct tape. Anthrax. Courtney Love's fall from grace. Michael Jackson's repeat offense. The R Kelly tapes. Strom Thurmond. Bad _Star Wars_ movies. Y2K. John Ashcroft. Homeland Security. The Patriot Act.
I think of all the things I've learned, all the things I've done, in the nine years since his death. He will never know that I bought a house, that I got a job in computers, that I lived in North Carolina. He will never know that I had to have our cat put to sleep, or that I learned how to crochet. He will never see the pottery I painted or the quilts I've made, never see the bookshelf I've built or the cats I love, never hear any of the CD's I've bought because we talked about getting them, one day, when we quit the heroin once and for all. He will never hear the music I learned about in the effort to collect every single thing that reminded me of the time we were together. He will never see how far I've come.
I've had to learn to be proud of myself, now that he's no longer here to be proud of me. I think that was the thing that always amazed me the most about JP--that he was consistently amazed by me. He was the first person in my life who accepted me the way I was--flaws and all--and who could even see good in those flaws. He was like that with everyone.
After the funeral, we went back to his mom's apartment--all of his friends. This was the same apartment where we'd had all those amazing parties back in '91, and it was strange to be there without him. But we sat in the spare room--none of us wanted to be in his room, to think about what had happened there, least of all me--and we talked about our memories of JP. And we laughed, a lot, because that was what we'd always done when he was around.
I think of his friends a lot, too--all those people who used to be part of my life, who lost the same guy I lost. I've fallen out of touch with all of them, and I know there are a couple who still blame me for what happened. We all knew JP was a dreamer; I was the one who was supposed to have better sense than that. I was the one who should have kept our feet a little more firmly on the ground--who should have called a halt.
I know that's not a fair assessment, and I'm years past trying to assign or accept blame for what happened. It just happened, and it was stupid, small enough that we should have been given a second chance--but we weren't. Even my usual "everything happens for a reason" doesn't cut any ice in this set of circumstances: No matter WHAT the lesson might have been or who might have been the one who needed it, whether it was me, whether it was someone else--I refuse to believe that the universe would sacrifice one life--particularly not a life like JP's--to teach that lesson.
And so I'm left with this: It happened. Nine years ago tonight, it happened. And my life--and a lot of other lives--have been left poorer for it. No reason; no answers, not in this lifetime anyway. If there's something after this life, maybe I'll understand it then.
In the meantime: I think about JP.
A lot.
Friday, October 29, 2004
In Praise Of My Guy
Tomorrow is nine years since JP died. And normally--as if any of the past nine years have seemed "normal"--but normally I would be in a state of advanced chronic depression by now.
I'm not, though--my meltdown the other day notwithstanding. In fact--I'm sorta okay, sorta, and just WORLDS better than I have been any other year since then.
A huge part of that can be attributed to LJ.
I've learned, in recent days of thinking, what it is that causes me my periodic bouts of discontent with him: he's not JP. That's it. The whole "problem", right there in a nutshell. (I'm the nut; that's my shell.)
Seriously. If I evaluate him on any OBJECTIVE level--how he treats me, how seriously he takes our relationship, his sense of responsibility toward this house and what goes on here--he's wonderful.
He's not affectionate at all, not the least bit "sensitive", and he has some grossly macho attitudes (the other night, LJ and Raj and I were watching an "Oz" rerun, with some homosexual overtones, and it was sad and hilarious at once to watch the squirmy machismo that immediately descended upon the living room. Thugs are so funny sometimes--I wanted to tell them "You know, 'gay' is not the worst thing that a person can be...") But here's the thing: his family, from what I gather, is dominated by the mother and financially-supported by the father. His father works every day and gives his mother a certain allowance, and in return, she runs the family. I never get the impression that there was any love there--he's talked several times about issues that imply they're only together for the sake of their economic arrangement. This is the environment in which LJ was raised--is it any surprise that affection and sensitivity are foreign to him? Or that he'd see his main responsibility toward his girlfriend not as "spend time with her" but as "bring home money for her"?
He does what he believes is the right thing to do, and he does it well. I've tried to tell him that I'd rather have his presence than his money--he doesn't quite believe that.
In the twenty months we've been together, he has told me he loves me exactly once. I used to be bothered by that, until I realized that his actions were quite sufficient to tell me that, if I ever needed to know.
He has been, as far as I know, scrupulously faithful to me. He may come home late every night--but every night, he comes home. He has never tried to hide from me that he has females among his circle of friends, but neither does he rub my nose in it the way CR used to do.
If I call him and tell him I'm having a rotten day, he won't comfort me and tell me everything's going to be fine--but more likely than not, he'll call back later and let me know he's on the way home, and by the way do I want him to bring me dinner?
He doesn't pay me compliments--but he brags on my cooking to his friends. And eats everything that comes off the stove, no matter how much of a failed experiment it is.
Did I mention that he's fine as hell?
JP was an affectionate, passionate, devoted, sensitive, creative guy--and we loved each other without restraint. Everything was all out in the open, no artifice, no misunderstandings, no room for anything to BE misunderstood. We lived together entirely without defenses, and it was something magical.
But I was 25 years old back then, and now I'm 34; wary, weary, still myself but carrying the weight of a few hard lessons. And my 34-year-old self--even though she still remembers what it was like to be 25 and to be in love the way I was with JP--my 34-year-old self is pretty happy with what I've got here, in this house, with LJ. It's not magical, exactly....but it's sustainable. After what I've been through in those intervening nine years, I'll accept "sustainable" and not complain.
Occasionally I find myself troubled by paradox: if JP had lived, I would now have everything I ever wanted--but if he HAD lived, I wouldn't have any of what I have now. The very things I most regret not being able to share with him are the same things I wouldn't have if he were still alive. We were good for each other's souls and hearts--but not necessarily good for each other's lives. And the more time passes, the more I understand that truth.
That doesn't make me miss him any less--but it does help me appreciate what I've got.
The problem with an un-emotional, reserved guy like LJ is that sometimes I want to tell him stuff that can't be said in an un-emotional, reserved kind of way. And so I can't tell him, for instance, that I'm glad I replied to his reply to my Yahoo ad, which I almost didn't because normally I like wordier guys and his note was only a couple of sentences....or that I feel very lucky to have him in my life.
So instead I'll fill the gas tank when it's not my turn, or make a pot roast for dinner, or stick a little note to the alarm panel--signed, as usual, with a little heart.
I'm not, though--my meltdown the other day notwithstanding. In fact--I'm sorta okay, sorta, and just WORLDS better than I have been any other year since then.
A huge part of that can be attributed to LJ.
I've learned, in recent days of thinking, what it is that causes me my periodic bouts of discontent with him: he's not JP. That's it. The whole "problem", right there in a nutshell. (I'm the nut; that's my shell.)
Seriously. If I evaluate him on any OBJECTIVE level--how he treats me, how seriously he takes our relationship, his sense of responsibility toward this house and what goes on here--he's wonderful.
He's not affectionate at all, not the least bit "sensitive", and he has some grossly macho attitudes (the other night, LJ and Raj and I were watching an "Oz" rerun, with some homosexual overtones, and it was sad and hilarious at once to watch the squirmy machismo that immediately descended upon the living room. Thugs are so funny sometimes--I wanted to tell them "You know, 'gay' is not the worst thing that a person can be...") But here's the thing: his family, from what I gather, is dominated by the mother and financially-supported by the father. His father works every day and gives his mother a certain allowance, and in return, she runs the family. I never get the impression that there was any love there--he's talked several times about issues that imply they're only together for the sake of their economic arrangement. This is the environment in which LJ was raised--is it any surprise that affection and sensitivity are foreign to him? Or that he'd see his main responsibility toward his girlfriend not as "spend time with her" but as "bring home money for her"?
He does what he believes is the right thing to do, and he does it well. I've tried to tell him that I'd rather have his presence than his money--he doesn't quite believe that.
In the twenty months we've been together, he has told me he loves me exactly once. I used to be bothered by that, until I realized that his actions were quite sufficient to tell me that, if I ever needed to know.
He has been, as far as I know, scrupulously faithful to me. He may come home late every night--but every night, he comes home. He has never tried to hide from me that he has females among his circle of friends, but neither does he rub my nose in it the way CR used to do.
If I call him and tell him I'm having a rotten day, he won't comfort me and tell me everything's going to be fine--but more likely than not, he'll call back later and let me know he's on the way home, and by the way do I want him to bring me dinner?
He doesn't pay me compliments--but he brags on my cooking to his friends. And eats everything that comes off the stove, no matter how much of a failed experiment it is.
Did I mention that he's fine as hell?
JP was an affectionate, passionate, devoted, sensitive, creative guy--and we loved each other without restraint. Everything was all out in the open, no artifice, no misunderstandings, no room for anything to BE misunderstood. We lived together entirely without defenses, and it was something magical.
But I was 25 years old back then, and now I'm 34; wary, weary, still myself but carrying the weight of a few hard lessons. And my 34-year-old self--even though she still remembers what it was like to be 25 and to be in love the way I was with JP--my 34-year-old self is pretty happy with what I've got here, in this house, with LJ. It's not magical, exactly....but it's sustainable. After what I've been through in those intervening nine years, I'll accept "sustainable" and not complain.
Occasionally I find myself troubled by paradox: if JP had lived, I would now have everything I ever wanted--but if he HAD lived, I wouldn't have any of what I have now. The very things I most regret not being able to share with him are the same things I wouldn't have if he were still alive. We were good for each other's souls and hearts--but not necessarily good for each other's lives. And the more time passes, the more I understand that truth.
That doesn't make me miss him any less--but it does help me appreciate what I've got.
The problem with an un-emotional, reserved guy like LJ is that sometimes I want to tell him stuff that can't be said in an un-emotional, reserved kind of way. And so I can't tell him, for instance, that I'm glad I replied to his reply to my Yahoo ad, which I almost didn't because normally I like wordier guys and his note was only a couple of sentences....or that I feel very lucky to have him in my life.
So instead I'll fill the gas tank when it's not my turn, or make a pot roast for dinner, or stick a little note to the alarm panel--signed, as usual, with a little heart.
Fun Things To Do With Customer-Service Bots
I owe the inspiration for this to The Pissed Kitty, which is possibly the most hilarious website I've encountered thus far. I went to read her blog today and she had related her experience with Anna, the IKEA customer-service chat-bot. At the end, she encouraged us to take a shot at the bot....here's my results.
Gladys:My father was emotionally distant and my mother had a thing for gerbils.
Anna:Family is very important for IKEA! Drop the kids off at the IKEA supervised play area and ballroom, and shop in peace. This way, everyone's happy. Or if you want them to help make furnishing decisions, strollers are available at the entrance
Gladys:Can IKEA furniture offer us any assistance in the war on terror?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:Is IKEA furniture fireproof?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:Because I really enjoy setting furniture on fire.
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:What else can I maximize at IKEA?
Anna:The IKEA business idea is: "We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them." :::shit-eating grin:::
Gladys:Does Osama binLaden own any IKEA furniture that you know of?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:I think you're in league with the terrorists.
Anna:You are perfectly entitled to hold any opinion you want about me. Furthermore, your comments improve my knowledge base. Thank you!
Gladys:See? My comments improve your knowledge base about terrorists. I have proof.
Anna:As I am only an advanced computer program, I cannot answer more than one sentence at a time. Please simplify and repeat the most important question within your previous input, and I will try to reply as accurately as possible. I am opening a page now which you can use if you wish to contact Customer Services. Thank you very much!
Gladys:That's a nice smock.
Anna:All of IKEA's products are made to the highest standards.
Gladys:Do all IKEA terrorists wear smocks like that?
Anna:How is IKEA different from other furnishing stores? We offer a wide range, good design and function, and also low prices. That's our business idea.
Gladys:I think I should report this conversation to the Department of Homeland Security.
Anna:Sometimes you have to trust your feelings, sometimes no...
Gladys:DO you know Martha Stewart personally?
Anna:I'm sorry, I don't understand what it is you're saying. If it's no problem, please rephrase your question or comment.
Gladys:I was just wondering whether or not you would enjoy having Martha for a cellmate.
Anna:This is a very delicate area, so I'd rather not talk about this sort of thing. Please ask me something about IKEA instead.
Gladys:Yeah, the "delicate area" was the part I was worried about too.
Anna:I'm sure that's a very interesting subject, but I don't really have an opinion it.
Gladys:I find that surprising.
Anna:Yeah, some people find it hard to believe.
Gladys:Because most people have a preference as to who gets to be the top and who gets to be the bottom.
Anna:I'm afraid I'm not here to talk about music. If you have a question about IKEA, please ask now.
Gladys:Who does your hair?
Anna:I'd rather not answer personal questions. Please ask me a question about IKEA.
Gladys:Oh, please??? I really need a new stylist.
Anna:I can't help you with that I'm afraid, but if you need furniture I think you know who I recommend: IKEA
Gladys:You're mean.
Anna:If I have unintentionally offended you I apologize. How can I help you?
Gladys:Did you have your teeth capped?
Anna:I can't answer that for you. Sorry. Please talk to me about IKEA.
Gladys:You seem to have an unnatural obsession with IKEA.
Anna:The IKEA business idea is: "We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them."
Gladys:You look like Maria on _The Apprentice_. Are you related?
Anna:It's much easier for me if we just talk about IKEA.
Gladys:A terrorist WOULD say that.
Anna:How charming. I'm not willing to discuss this subject in any way.
So remember: if you buy IKEA, the terrorists win.
Gladys:My father was emotionally distant and my mother had a thing for gerbils.
Anna:Family is very important for IKEA! Drop the kids off at the IKEA supervised play area and ballroom, and shop in peace. This way, everyone's happy. Or if you want them to help make furnishing decisions, strollers are available at the entrance
Gladys:Can IKEA furniture offer us any assistance in the war on terror?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:Is IKEA furniture fireproof?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:Because I really enjoy setting furniture on fire.
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:What else can I maximize at IKEA?
Anna:The IKEA business idea is: "We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them." :::shit-eating grin:::
Gladys:Does Osama binLaden own any IKEA furniture that you know of?
Anna:Find here a quick guide to help you maximize your IKEA experience.
Gladys:I think you're in league with the terrorists.
Anna:You are perfectly entitled to hold any opinion you want about me. Furthermore, your comments improve my knowledge base. Thank you!
Gladys:See? My comments improve your knowledge base about terrorists. I have proof.
Anna:As I am only an advanced computer program, I cannot answer more than one sentence at a time. Please simplify and repeat the most important question within your previous input, and I will try to reply as accurately as possible. I am opening a page now which you can use if you wish to contact Customer Services. Thank you very much!
Gladys:That's a nice smock.
Anna:All of IKEA's products are made to the highest standards.
Gladys:Do all IKEA terrorists wear smocks like that?
Anna:How is IKEA different from other furnishing stores? We offer a wide range, good design and function, and also low prices. That's our business idea.
Gladys:I think I should report this conversation to the Department of Homeland Security.
Anna:Sometimes you have to trust your feelings, sometimes no...
Gladys:DO you know Martha Stewart personally?
Anna:I'm sorry, I don't understand what it is you're saying. If it's no problem, please rephrase your question or comment.
Gladys:I was just wondering whether or not you would enjoy having Martha for a cellmate.
Anna:This is a very delicate area, so I'd rather not talk about this sort of thing. Please ask me something about IKEA instead.
Gladys:Yeah, the "delicate area" was the part I was worried about too.
Anna:I'm sure that's a very interesting subject, but I don't really have an opinion it.
Gladys:I find that surprising.
Anna:Yeah, some people find it hard to believe.
Gladys:Because most people have a preference as to who gets to be the top and who gets to be the bottom.
Anna:I'm afraid I'm not here to talk about music. If you have a question about IKEA, please ask now.
Gladys:Who does your hair?
Anna:I'd rather not answer personal questions. Please ask me a question about IKEA.
Gladys:Oh, please??? I really need a new stylist.
Anna:I can't help you with that I'm afraid, but if you need furniture I think you know who I recommend: IKEA
Gladys:You're mean.
Anna:If I have unintentionally offended you I apologize. How can I help you?
Gladys:Did you have your teeth capped?
Anna:I can't answer that for you. Sorry. Please talk to me about IKEA.
Gladys:You seem to have an unnatural obsession with IKEA.
Anna:The IKEA business idea is: "We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them."
Gladys:You look like Maria on _The Apprentice_. Are you related?
Anna:It's much easier for me if we just talk about IKEA.
Gladys:A terrorist WOULD say that.
Anna:How charming. I'm not willing to discuss this subject in any way.
So remember: if you buy IKEA, the terrorists win.
Fun Things To Do With The Remote Control
1. Turn on the closed-captioning function.
2. Turn the channel to some extremely fast-paced, live sporting event. (My favorite for this exercise: bull riding.)
2. Watch the poor guy on the closed-captioning input keyboard try to keep up with the jabbering announcers while also attempting to craft coherent, meaningful translations.
I'm gonna go eat ice cream and watch PBR.
2. Turn the channel to some extremely fast-paced, live sporting event. (My favorite for this exercise: bull riding.)
2. Watch the poor guy on the closed-captioning input keyboard try to keep up with the jabbering announcers while also attempting to craft coherent, meaningful translations.
I'm gonna go eat ice cream and watch PBR.
Tasty Tidbits
A good tangerine is a little piece of heaven; a bad tangerine is just heartbreaking.
:::spits out pith and seeds:::
Yuck.
:::spits out pith and seeds:::
Yuck.
BLOGGER! YOU SUCK!!!
A forty-five-minute goddamn post was just CONSUMED by BLOGGER!!! "Internal Server Error" my ass!!!!!
That's it--I'm going to Typepad. It will be a while before the new site's up, but that's where I'm going. There are just WAY too many issues here at Blogger.
That's it--I'm going to Typepad. It will be a while before the new site's up, but that's where I'm going. There are just WAY too many issues here at Blogger.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
RuthAnne, Incompetent Lying Bitch, Must Suffer.
Ohhhh, party people--please, indulge me this work post?? Please? I'll skip a NASCAR post if you do....
So here, I talked about a little bit of what's up in the office. If you don't wanna link I'll summarize: we're doing an ill-planned upgrade on an ill-advised timetable, nobody asked me what I thought even though I'm the tech, and now other people are starting to tumble to the fuckuppitude of the whole plan.
Chief among those who think this ain't gonna work is--was--RuthAnne. RuthAnne is an assistant director--sorta like a vice-president--and no one has the slightest iota of respect for her as a manager. She hasn't the least little bit of managerial acumen or even a hint of leadership ability. She's a fecking idiot, in fact.
But that last comprehension came a little late for yours truly.
Last week, I called her about something else and she started with me about her worries with the database upgrade. How Samuel, the designer, had no concept of our workflow; how he seemed to be missing a ton of pieces in the whole picture of what it is we use the database for.
Some of these things dovetailed with worries I'd had for a while, which I'd kept quiet; so I told her we should meet about it and I'd present our worries to the president and the other vp. We met last week, for about two hours, and I took notes which I read back to her at the end of the meeting, saying "This is what I hear you saying--is this right?" Then I typed it up into a three-page point-by-point outline.
It was a fucking EXCELLENT report, can I say? It was factual, calm, absolutely devoid of any of my more histrionic exaggerations. It said "This is what I think could be a problem; this is why I think it might be a problem; this is what could happen if it becomes a problem; and this is what I think we can do about it." It was well-written, it was rational, and above all it avoided any finger-pointing. My friend Stella, who's a disinterested observer, read it and she thought it kicked ass.
I e-mailed it to Amy last Friday, and to RuthAnne as an FYI, here's-what-we-talked-about message right after. Later Friday I called RuthAnne to ask her what she thought about what I'd written, and she was pretty noncommittal... "What do you think Amy's going to say about this?" "What do you expect to happen because of this?" I told her it didn't really concern me either way, whether they did anything or not, because at least if the shit hits the fan in December, no one could say I never made my worries known. And that conversation ended.
People, would you do me one tiny favor--would you read that last paragraph once more? Drink it in. It is about to become crucial to my story.
It was a pretty frantic week at the office, and what with one thing and another, Amy and I were too busy to meet til yesterday at about 2:00. She popped into my office and said "Could you meet with Beverly and I about this list?" So up I hopped, and trotted into Beverly's office.
Amy came in a minute later and the FIRST SENTENCE out of Beverly's mouth, as she waved my list in the air, was "Why is this all just coming out NOW? Because from what I'm seeing here, you're just trying to stir the pot."
I said, "That's not my intention at all."
"Well RuthAnne said that you called her and told her you wanted to talk about the problems you were having with Samuel..."
"No, that's not accurate. We were on the phone about something else, and SHE started telling ME about all the things he hadn't taken into account. THAT was when I suggested we meet, because some of what she was saying overlapped with stuff I'd been worried about for a while but hadn't mentioned."
I knew right then what had happened, and I started scanning my body for clothespin marks, because it was quite clear I'd been hung out to dry.
At that dramatically-appropriate juncture, who walks past but RuthAnne. Beverly called her in.
"RuthAnne? Come on in here for a minute....I'm getting conflicting information. Gladys tells me that YOU were the one who brought up all these issues about the database..."
"No, that's not true....she called me and said.."
I wasn't gonna hear the same bullshit line twice. "Um, no. Ruthanne? I had called YOU to ask you something totally unrelated, and YOU said to me 'I have these worries about this database thing' and I said 'You know, I've been thinking some of the same stuff--why don't you come over and we'll meet and I'll write it up and give it to Beverly and Amy.' Do you not remember that conversation?"
"And in that conversation," she said, "do you not remember that I told you these issues were all in the process of being resolved, that I'd talked to Samuel about them and he was dealing with all of them? Samuel and I are in constant contact--we meet every week, and...."
I stuck a finger in my mouth and started chewing, because I knew if my jaws were left empty during this crap-fest, I was going to open them and say something really, REALLY inappropriate.
Remember that paragraph I asked you to re-read? The one about how I sent RuthAnne a copy of exactly what Beverly and Amy were now grilling me about? And how I ASKED her her opinion of its content, and the only thing she could come up with was "What do you think Amy is going to say about this?" If the content of what I'd written was so damn wrong, don't you think she would have SAID something? That, after all, was what I was giving her the opportunity to do. But she didn't.
Furthermore--and most importantly--she was lying her ass off.
I took notes through that meeting. At the end of the meeting, I read them back to her. I summarized exactly what I was going to say. She agreed totally--no waffling about "oh, those are being resolved." She mentioned that in connection with ONE issue, which I didn't even include. So for her to say that she told me everything was all hunky-dory--Bitch, if everything was so hunky-goddamn-dory, what the fuck was that two-hour meeting about???
And then she got Republican about it.
Beverly: "I don't know if you've seen this document that Gladys sent..."
Me:"Yes, I e-mailed it to her the same day."
Beverly: "Did you read it?"
(Quick--go back again--she obviously read it or how would she know to ask me what I thought they were going to do about it?)
RuthAnne, Lying Sack Of Shit: "Not really--I skimmed it a little..."
Oh, fuck YOU, bitch. I sat there chewing my fingernail as Beverly and Amy explained to me, in the tone normally used in dealing with a moderately-retarded child, that they knew I was trying to do something good, but that the upgrade was going to proceed on schedule. Beverly: "We knew all along that people didn't agree with this timetable, and we made the decision to go ahead and do it anyway. We talked about it for weeks--you were THERE in most of those meetings!--and we gave it a lot of consideration, so the bottom line is, we're not changing it now.
"That's fine," I said. "I just wanted to make sure my concerns were clear." Which was true--I just hadn't expected RuthAnne to deny EVERYTHING she'd said, leaving me ass-out to the wind.
The meeting ended, or at least it ended for me; after I left the three of them stayed in Beverly's office with the door closed for about ten minutes. I went back to my office and tried to answer e-mail, but it was difficult because everything looked red.
A few minutes later, after the closed-door session was over, I passed Beverly in the hallway and she beckoned me over to a little alcove. Whispering, she said: "We'll talk about this later, but I want to give you a piece of advice. Don't ever put yourself in a position where you're advocating for someone else's issues. I know what you were trying to do, and I know it was good, and I'm not mad at you--but don't EVER put yourself in that kind of a position."
I said "Thank you--I appreciate your understanding on this." It was pretty clear that she'd seen through at least SOME of RuthAnne Lying Sack of Shit's denials and waffling....after all, why wouldn't she? RuthAnne does this stuff all the time!
What happened AFTERWARD, though--THAT was what put the cherry on the sundae.
My major plan for yesterday was to do OS upgrades and new-computer rollouts. One of the ones I'd scheduled--oh, irony--was RuthAnne's new laptop. So after this meeting is over, she's somewhere else and I'm in her office hooking up her machine, wishing I was the sabotaging sort.
As I'm finishing up, she comes back. I say something about the new machine, and as I'm walking away from her desk she says this:
"You know, Gladys, I'll support you, but I'm not taking a fall for you."
And that's when I strangled her and left her in a pool of her own blood. No, wait--no, that's not what happened.
What actually happened, though not as personally-satisfying as strangling her might have been, was actually way cooler of me: I said, and I quote, "That's just fine, RuthAnne,"--and walked out the door.
But oh...my....god. Do you BELIEVE that shit??? Since when is standing up in defense of what you said, acknowledging your OWN words and actions, considered "taking a fall" for someone else??? BITCH!!!
I've learned one thing from this, though--that's the last, LAST time RuthAnne can count on ANY support from me for ANYTHING. The minute she opens her quacking snout to tell me about her problems, I'm going to reply in two sentences: "I don't want to hear this. You need to go talk to Amy or Beverly about this."
Right now, in fact, if RuthAnne was on fire...
Not ONLY wouldn't I throw a bucket of water....
Not ONLY wouldn't I call the fire department....
I wouldn't even call someone to come spit on her to try to put it out.
So here, I talked about a little bit of what's up in the office. If you don't wanna link I'll summarize: we're doing an ill-planned upgrade on an ill-advised timetable, nobody asked me what I thought even though I'm the tech, and now other people are starting to tumble to the fuckuppitude of the whole plan.
Chief among those who think this ain't gonna work is--was--RuthAnne. RuthAnne is an assistant director--sorta like a vice-president--and no one has the slightest iota of respect for her as a manager. She hasn't the least little bit of managerial acumen or even a hint of leadership ability. She's a fecking idiot, in fact.
But that last comprehension came a little late for yours truly.
Last week, I called her about something else and she started with me about her worries with the database upgrade. How Samuel, the designer, had no concept of our workflow; how he seemed to be missing a ton of pieces in the whole picture of what it is we use the database for.
Some of these things dovetailed with worries I'd had for a while, which I'd kept quiet; so I told her we should meet about it and I'd present our worries to the president and the other vp. We met last week, for about two hours, and I took notes which I read back to her at the end of the meeting, saying "This is what I hear you saying--is this right?" Then I typed it up into a three-page point-by-point outline.
It was a fucking EXCELLENT report, can I say? It was factual, calm, absolutely devoid of any of my more histrionic exaggerations. It said "This is what I think could be a problem; this is why I think it might be a problem; this is what could happen if it becomes a problem; and this is what I think we can do about it." It was well-written, it was rational, and above all it avoided any finger-pointing. My friend Stella, who's a disinterested observer, read it and she thought it kicked ass.
I e-mailed it to Amy last Friday, and to RuthAnne as an FYI, here's-what-we-talked-about message right after. Later Friday I called RuthAnne to ask her what she thought about what I'd written, and she was pretty noncommittal... "What do you think Amy's going to say about this?" "What do you expect to happen because of this?" I told her it didn't really concern me either way, whether they did anything or not, because at least if the shit hits the fan in December, no one could say I never made my worries known. And that conversation ended.
People, would you do me one tiny favor--would you read that last paragraph once more? Drink it in. It is about to become crucial to my story.
It was a pretty frantic week at the office, and what with one thing and another, Amy and I were too busy to meet til yesterday at about 2:00. She popped into my office and said "Could you meet with Beverly and I about this list?" So up I hopped, and trotted into Beverly's office.
Amy came in a minute later and the FIRST SENTENCE out of Beverly's mouth, as she waved my list in the air, was "Why is this all just coming out NOW? Because from what I'm seeing here, you're just trying to stir the pot."
I said, "That's not my intention at all."
"Well RuthAnne said that you called her and told her you wanted to talk about the problems you were having with Samuel..."
"No, that's not accurate. We were on the phone about something else, and SHE started telling ME about all the things he hadn't taken into account. THAT was when I suggested we meet, because some of what she was saying overlapped with stuff I'd been worried about for a while but hadn't mentioned."
I knew right then what had happened, and I started scanning my body for clothespin marks, because it was quite clear I'd been hung out to dry.
At that dramatically-appropriate juncture, who walks past but RuthAnne. Beverly called her in.
"RuthAnne? Come on in here for a minute....I'm getting conflicting information. Gladys tells me that YOU were the one who brought up all these issues about the database..."
"No, that's not true....she called me and said.."
I wasn't gonna hear the same bullshit line twice. "Um, no. Ruthanne? I had called YOU to ask you something totally unrelated, and YOU said to me 'I have these worries about this database thing' and I said 'You know, I've been thinking some of the same stuff--why don't you come over and we'll meet and I'll write it up and give it to Beverly and Amy.' Do you not remember that conversation?"
"And in that conversation," she said, "do you not remember that I told you these issues were all in the process of being resolved, that I'd talked to Samuel about them and he was dealing with all of them? Samuel and I are in constant contact--we meet every week, and...."
I stuck a finger in my mouth and started chewing, because I knew if my jaws were left empty during this crap-fest, I was going to open them and say something really, REALLY inappropriate.
Remember that paragraph I asked you to re-read? The one about how I sent RuthAnne a copy of exactly what Beverly and Amy were now grilling me about? And how I ASKED her her opinion of its content, and the only thing she could come up with was "What do you think Amy is going to say about this?" If the content of what I'd written was so damn wrong, don't you think she would have SAID something? That, after all, was what I was giving her the opportunity to do. But she didn't.
Furthermore--and most importantly--she was lying her ass off.
I took notes through that meeting. At the end of the meeting, I read them back to her. I summarized exactly what I was going to say. She agreed totally--no waffling about "oh, those are being resolved." She mentioned that in connection with ONE issue, which I didn't even include. So for her to say that she told me everything was all hunky-dory--Bitch, if everything was so hunky-goddamn-dory, what the fuck was that two-hour meeting about???
And then she got Republican about it.
Beverly: "I don't know if you've seen this document that Gladys sent..."
Me:"Yes, I e-mailed it to her the same day."
Beverly: "Did you read it?"
(Quick--go back again--she obviously read it or how would she know to ask me what I thought they were going to do about it?)
RuthAnne, Lying Sack Of Shit: "Not really--I skimmed it a little..."
Oh, fuck YOU, bitch. I sat there chewing my fingernail as Beverly and Amy explained to me, in the tone normally used in dealing with a moderately-retarded child, that they knew I was trying to do something good, but that the upgrade was going to proceed on schedule. Beverly: "We knew all along that people didn't agree with this timetable, and we made the decision to go ahead and do it anyway. We talked about it for weeks--you were THERE in most of those meetings!--and we gave it a lot of consideration, so the bottom line is, we're not changing it now.
"That's fine," I said. "I just wanted to make sure my concerns were clear." Which was true--I just hadn't expected RuthAnne to deny EVERYTHING she'd said, leaving me ass-out to the wind.
The meeting ended, or at least it ended for me; after I left the three of them stayed in Beverly's office with the door closed for about ten minutes. I went back to my office and tried to answer e-mail, but it was difficult because everything looked red.
A few minutes later, after the closed-door session was over, I passed Beverly in the hallway and she beckoned me over to a little alcove. Whispering, she said: "We'll talk about this later, but I want to give you a piece of advice. Don't ever put yourself in a position where you're advocating for someone else's issues. I know what you were trying to do, and I know it was good, and I'm not mad at you--but don't EVER put yourself in that kind of a position."
I said "Thank you--I appreciate your understanding on this." It was pretty clear that she'd seen through at least SOME of RuthAnne Lying Sack of Shit's denials and waffling....after all, why wouldn't she? RuthAnne does this stuff all the time!
What happened AFTERWARD, though--THAT was what put the cherry on the sundae.
My major plan for yesterday was to do OS upgrades and new-computer rollouts. One of the ones I'd scheduled--oh, irony--was RuthAnne's new laptop. So after this meeting is over, she's somewhere else and I'm in her office hooking up her machine, wishing I was the sabotaging sort.
As I'm finishing up, she comes back. I say something about the new machine, and as I'm walking away from her desk she says this:
"You know, Gladys, I'll support you, but I'm not taking a fall for you."
And that's when I strangled her and left her in a pool of her own blood. No, wait--no, that's not what happened.
What actually happened, though not as personally-satisfying as strangling her might have been, was actually way cooler of me: I said, and I quote, "That's just fine, RuthAnne,"--and walked out the door.
But oh...my....god. Do you BELIEVE that shit??? Since when is standing up in defense of what you said, acknowledging your OWN words and actions, considered "taking a fall" for someone else??? BITCH!!!
I've learned one thing from this, though--that's the last, LAST time RuthAnne can count on ANY support from me for ANYTHING. The minute she opens her quacking snout to tell me about her problems, I'm going to reply in two sentences: "I don't want to hear this. You need to go talk to Amy or Beverly about this."
Right now, in fact, if RuthAnne was on fire...
Not ONLY wouldn't I throw a bucket of water....
Not ONLY wouldn't I call the fire department....
I wouldn't even call someone to come spit on her to try to put it out.
Buffer Post Between "Extremely-Sad Cat Post" and "Pissed-Off Job Post"
Just so no one thinks that the last post (Little One's untimely demise and the meltdown it led me into) is a straight-line emotional segue into the next post (in which I become so fucking angry at someone at my job that it will cause me fantasies of torture and revenge for the whole long weekend):
I'm better today. Actually, I was better last night. I came home, cried on my cats for a few minutes and hugged Whitey til he gave me the querulous little teenaged-cat meow that says "MOOOOOOOMMMMM, cut it OUUUUUUUUT!!". Then I changed my contacts (which I'd made into the world's largest deposits of lachrymal proteins, thanks to all that crying) and as I was trying not to jab myself in the eye with the second one, I caught a reflection in the mirror of a flash outside, from the window behind me. Nosy girl that I am, I went out to the porch and half the neighborhood was on the walk, watching an ambulance and two cop cars as the paramedics loaded a stretcher.
"Len, what happened?" I asked my neighbor.
"Didn't you hear everyone out here hollerin'?" he asked. "Man got hit by a car--run over his leg, then backed up and run it over AGAIN. Broke it real bad..."
Apparently the man, who's a friend of the cop across the street, was changing a tire on the street side, right under a streetlight, and this man came down the street and ran his leg over, realized he hit something, and then instead of going FORWARD to park so he could see what it was, dude backed up and ran him over AGAIN. Dumbass....
Since the guy was changing the tire for a cop's daughter, you know damn good and well the police got there with a quickness. The victim went to the hospital, and the driver went to the station. It was just a bad day to be in the road in the 'hood, it seems...for man OR kittycat.
I went in the house, watched _America's Next Top Model_---the Snout is out--and ate dinner, watched _Oliver Twist_, and waited for LJ to bring home dinner. (That is a sweet and wonderful man. He's totally NOT Mr. Cuddly Supportive Boyfriend, but he does what he can in his own way and I appreciate that.)
He came home with an Italian beef sandwich and a friend of his who stayed on the sofa overnight; this house is sort of a de facto homeless shelter for the thugs of Maywood, which is no problem in my opinion. (Though if what I saw on the TV this morning when I got up is any indication, someone owes me for a block of the Spice Channel on next month's cable bill.) We stayed up talking for an hour or so, and finally they broke out the NBA Live 2004 game and I went up to bed.
I still think what happened to Little One was barbaric. And as I was outside talking to Len, a little calico came across our street, skinny on both ends and wide in the middle. "That cat is ALWAYS pregnant," Len said. She walked up, when I called "kitty kitty", and she let me pet her head. I sat on the steps, and she walked up and rubbed on the railing, purring. Finally I picked her up and put her in my lap, and though she was a little nervous, she finally relaxed. I would have taken her in, but this isn't a six-cat house--and certainly not an eight- or ten-cat house. But I have a feeling I may get over that particular bit of logic, and find myself with a mama-cat not too long from now.
Winter's coming, after all.
So yeah--I'm better. (Except that I need to strangle a certain blonde assistant director. But that's the next post.)
I'm better today. Actually, I was better last night. I came home, cried on my cats for a few minutes and hugged Whitey til he gave me the querulous little teenaged-cat meow that says "MOOOOOOOMMMMM, cut it OUUUUUUUUT!!". Then I changed my contacts (which I'd made into the world's largest deposits of lachrymal proteins, thanks to all that crying) and as I was trying not to jab myself in the eye with the second one, I caught a reflection in the mirror of a flash outside, from the window behind me. Nosy girl that I am, I went out to the porch and half the neighborhood was on the walk, watching an ambulance and two cop cars as the paramedics loaded a stretcher.
"Len, what happened?" I asked my neighbor.
"Didn't you hear everyone out here hollerin'?" he asked. "Man got hit by a car--run over his leg, then backed up and run it over AGAIN. Broke it real bad..."
Apparently the man, who's a friend of the cop across the street, was changing a tire on the street side, right under a streetlight, and this man came down the street and ran his leg over, realized he hit something, and then instead of going FORWARD to park so he could see what it was, dude backed up and ran him over AGAIN. Dumbass....
Since the guy was changing the tire for a cop's daughter, you know damn good and well the police got there with a quickness. The victim went to the hospital, and the driver went to the station. It was just a bad day to be in the road in the 'hood, it seems...for man OR kittycat.
I went in the house, watched _America's Next Top Model_---the Snout is out--and ate dinner, watched _Oliver Twist_, and waited for LJ to bring home dinner. (That is a sweet and wonderful man. He's totally NOT Mr. Cuddly Supportive Boyfriend, but he does what he can in his own way and I appreciate that.)
He came home with an Italian beef sandwich and a friend of his who stayed on the sofa overnight; this house is sort of a de facto homeless shelter for the thugs of Maywood, which is no problem in my opinion. (Though if what I saw on the TV this morning when I got up is any indication, someone owes me for a block of the Spice Channel on next month's cable bill.) We stayed up talking for an hour or so, and finally they broke out the NBA Live 2004 game and I went up to bed.
I still think what happened to Little One was barbaric. And as I was outside talking to Len, a little calico came across our street, skinny on both ends and wide in the middle. "That cat is ALWAYS pregnant," Len said. She walked up, when I called "kitty kitty", and she let me pet her head. I sat on the steps, and she walked up and rubbed on the railing, purring. Finally I picked her up and put her in my lap, and though she was a little nervous, she finally relaxed. I would have taken her in, but this isn't a six-cat house--and certainly not an eight- or ten-cat house. But I have a feeling I may get over that particular bit of logic, and find myself with a mama-cat not too long from now.
Winter's coming, after all.
So yeah--I'm better. (Except that I need to strangle a certain blonde assistant director. But that's the next post.)
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
I'm Full
This morning I left the house in a decent mood. As I rounded the corner, I saw Little One, one of the neighborhood strays, and watched as he came towards me, then veered away at the last second. I smiled and walked on toward my bus stop.
Standing and waiting a few minutes later, I saw Little One again, this time crossing Jackson. I silently urged him on, holding my breath as he dodged away from a car, since he was taking his own sweet time and Jackson is a busy street, even at that time. He disappeared into the bushes along the schoolyard, no doubt looking for something tasty.
And then, about five minutes later, he came back out, and stepped back into Jackson.
Out of nowhere came the speeding car, and I thought no, he'll swerve--but he didn't. I heard the wheels thump as they hit Little One.
I ran into the street, praying for some small miracle--just a broken leg, perhaps--but there weren't going to be any miracles this morning. He was trying to pull himself up on his front paws, his hindquarters unmoving. After one weak attempt, he lay down on the pavement, twitched a couple of times, and then stopped moving.
I was standing in the middle of Jackson with traffic coming towards me, and thinking I should pick him up...maybe the emergency vet...maybe I can... I didn't want to move him, in case there was some tiny spark of life left in him, because even if there was, it was so clear that this poor little kitty wasn't going to make it and anything I did was going to prolong his agony, if there was any left to prolong--I didn't want to move him over to the side of the street because...well, if he WAS still even a little bit alive, it would end more quickly for him where he was. On the side of the road he could have lingered for another ten or fifteen painful minutes; where he was, his pain wouldn't last more than another few seconds. I think I was a little bit afraid that he WASN'T dead, and not quite sure enough that he was. And even if he was, even if I could have given him a little more dignity in death, I was standing in oncoming traffic and there wasn't any time...
So I told him I was sorry, and then I walked away, to the next bus stop, with my hands over my ears because I didn't want to hear what there might have been to hear.
That's right: I'm a coward. I know this. I have always had a fear of creatures sick or broken or dead; and I don't always think clearly in a crisis. I'm not proud of what I did today--even if it might have been the merciful thing to do, in some brutal way.
A few minutes later, I got on the bus and started thinking about it.
I'm sure it would be a source of amusement, to most people in my neighborhood, seeing me all shook up over the death of a little cat. That neighborhood just teems with human pain; if I knocked on any door, I'm sure I could hear about their own tragedies: a brother or nephew shot on the street, a father jailed or a grandfather lynched, a sister killed by her boyfriend, a daughter who overdosed. And in the face of that, the death of a little cat is a small, small thing--but every life is huge, to the one who's living it.
I did okay, though, til I got on the train. I had planned to sleep on the train, as usual; I stayed up way too late last night, and I really needed the extra hour. And so I put in my earplugs and closed my eyes, and I just couldn't get past that memory, past wondering if there was something more I could have done.
I tried to do what I always do when something is too huge for me to deal with--swallow it down and promise myself I'd deal with it later. It seems I'm always somewhere inappropriate and public when it comes time to experience big painful thoughts; always on a train, always at work, always with somewhere to be or something to do that makes it impractical to feel or react. And so I tried to take this new sadness and put it in the pile with the rest, the great To-Do box of emotion that never seems to empty.
But it wouldn't go. It wouldn't fit, and what's worse, it made me realize how tired I am of even HAVING these things, of keeping all these things inside. I have no more room inside me, not even for the small things. The big things take up too much space. The huge mountain that is my memory of JP. My job. The things I know and haven't been admitting to myself about this whole thing with LJ. All the past ten years of false starts, next-big-things, and maybe-this-time's. All that big pile that I've been carrying, ignited by the death of one little white-and-black cat.
I sat on the Purple Line and just bawled.
I can't do this too much longer, I don't think.
Standing and waiting a few minutes later, I saw Little One again, this time crossing Jackson. I silently urged him on, holding my breath as he dodged away from a car, since he was taking his own sweet time and Jackson is a busy street, even at that time. He disappeared into the bushes along the schoolyard, no doubt looking for something tasty.
And then, about five minutes later, he came back out, and stepped back into Jackson.
Out of nowhere came the speeding car, and I thought no, he'll swerve--but he didn't. I heard the wheels thump as they hit Little One.
I ran into the street, praying for some small miracle--just a broken leg, perhaps--but there weren't going to be any miracles this morning. He was trying to pull himself up on his front paws, his hindquarters unmoving. After one weak attempt, he lay down on the pavement, twitched a couple of times, and then stopped moving.
I was standing in the middle of Jackson with traffic coming towards me, and thinking I should pick him up...maybe the emergency vet...maybe I can... I didn't want to move him, in case there was some tiny spark of life left in him, because even if there was, it was so clear that this poor little kitty wasn't going to make it and anything I did was going to prolong his agony, if there was any left to prolong--I didn't want to move him over to the side of the street because...well, if he WAS still even a little bit alive, it would end more quickly for him where he was. On the side of the road he could have lingered for another ten or fifteen painful minutes; where he was, his pain wouldn't last more than another few seconds. I think I was a little bit afraid that he WASN'T dead, and not quite sure enough that he was. And even if he was, even if I could have given him a little more dignity in death, I was standing in oncoming traffic and there wasn't any time...
So I told him I was sorry, and then I walked away, to the next bus stop, with my hands over my ears because I didn't want to hear what there might have been to hear.
That's right: I'm a coward. I know this. I have always had a fear of creatures sick or broken or dead; and I don't always think clearly in a crisis. I'm not proud of what I did today--even if it might have been the merciful thing to do, in some brutal way.
A few minutes later, I got on the bus and started thinking about it.
I'm sure it would be a source of amusement, to most people in my neighborhood, seeing me all shook up over the death of a little cat. That neighborhood just teems with human pain; if I knocked on any door, I'm sure I could hear about their own tragedies: a brother or nephew shot on the street, a father jailed or a grandfather lynched, a sister killed by her boyfriend, a daughter who overdosed. And in the face of that, the death of a little cat is a small, small thing--but every life is huge, to the one who's living it.
I did okay, though, til I got on the train. I had planned to sleep on the train, as usual; I stayed up way too late last night, and I really needed the extra hour. And so I put in my earplugs and closed my eyes, and I just couldn't get past that memory, past wondering if there was something more I could have done.
I tried to do what I always do when something is too huge for me to deal with--swallow it down and promise myself I'd deal with it later. It seems I'm always somewhere inappropriate and public when it comes time to experience big painful thoughts; always on a train, always at work, always with somewhere to be or something to do that makes it impractical to feel or react. And so I tried to take this new sadness and put it in the pile with the rest, the great To-Do box of emotion that never seems to empty.
But it wouldn't go. It wouldn't fit, and what's worse, it made me realize how tired I am of even HAVING these things, of keeping all these things inside. I have no more room inside me, not even for the small things. The big things take up too much space. The huge mountain that is my memory of JP. My job. The things I know and haven't been admitting to myself about this whole thing with LJ. All the past ten years of false starts, next-big-things, and maybe-this-time's. All that big pile that I've been carrying, ignited by the death of one little white-and-black cat.
I sat on the Purple Line and just bawled.
I can't do this too much longer, I don't think.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
T-Shirt I Most Want To See
Since Television Without Pity was nice enough to fulfill my wishes and create a shirt that says "My Ox Is Broken!" ...
I offer them the next candidate:
"I was in denial about my snout. But now I know."
I would SO wear that.
I offer them the next candidate:
"I was in denial about my snout. But now I know."
I would SO wear that.
Would Someone Tell Me, Please, What I'm Doing Wrong?
There are mysteries in this world that will not yield to my repeated inquisitions.
Among these mysteries is one which has plagued me since I first encountered it; a mystery which seems to be something that many other people seem to understand effortlessly, but which for the life of me I cannot comprehend.
I speak, of course, of the appeal of polenta.
I have tried, repeatedly, to eat and enjoy it. I've tried. I've tried topping it with cheese, with tomato sauce, with butter. I've tried making crisps out of it, tried it hot, tried it warm. And it still tastes like what it is: a starchy, bland, vaguely-salted tasteless mass of slightly-gritty mush.
The hell of it is, I LOVE corn tortillas--essentially the same creature, with a little flour added--and I'll eat THEM in almost any permutation--but polenta's appeal still totally eludes me.
And let's not even get me STARTED about yogurt.
Among these mysteries is one which has plagued me since I first encountered it; a mystery which seems to be something that many other people seem to understand effortlessly, but which for the life of me I cannot comprehend.
I speak, of course, of the appeal of polenta.
I have tried, repeatedly, to eat and enjoy it. I've tried. I've tried topping it with cheese, with tomato sauce, with butter. I've tried making crisps out of it, tried it hot, tried it warm. And it still tastes like what it is: a starchy, bland, vaguely-salted tasteless mass of slightly-gritty mush.
The hell of it is, I LOVE corn tortillas--essentially the same creature, with a little flour added--and I'll eat THEM in almost any permutation--but polenta's appeal still totally eludes me.
And let's not even get me STARTED about yogurt.
Musicals Are Bad For Me
Thoughts while watching My Fair Lady:
If I could pick anyone to look like, I think I'd have to pick Audrey Hepburn.
However, if I was Audrey Hepburn, I would have kicked Rex Harrison's ass most profoundly. He deserved it.
If I could pick anyone to look like, I think I'd have to pick Audrey Hepburn.
However, if I was Audrey Hepburn, I would have kicked Rex Harrison's ass most profoundly. He deserved it.
Another Prediction From The 0-for-1 Psychic
I'm gonna have these cats forever.
Conversation between me and Tim, the cats' owner....
Me: "Such-and-such a place called today and left a message--they want you for an interview."
Tim: "Oh, MAN...I just filed for unemployment today!"
Me: "What happened to that job you were supposed to start last week?"
Tim: "Oh, man--see, G, what happened was...he said 'come see me on Sunday and I'll see if I have time for you,' so I went Sunday and he didn't have time--and he said 'come back Monday', so I went back Monday and he STILL didn't have time for me--so I was like, fuck THAT."
Me: :::sigh::: "Yeah, I can imagine."
Tim: "Plus, one of my guys said it would be better if I just filed unemployment and did some cash work on the side--he knows someone who does painting...."
Me:"Well, couldn't you do both?"
Tim: "No--if I get that other job, I can't collect unemployment."
:::short pause while I beat myself about the head with the telephone receiver::: "No, I mean take the job AND do the painting too."
Tim: "Well....I mean....See, how I see it is this--why kill myself? I mean--c'mon...FREE MONEY!"
Conversations like this are almost enough to turn me into a conservative, I swear. Meanwhile, I'm stuck cleaning up after his nasty cats, who have questionable litterbox habits and foul intestines. My White Cat hasn't put his back-hackles down ONCE since the night Tim walked into the house with the carrier; he's got a permanent kitty back-mohawk. Poor baby--his house has been invaded.
MY house has been invaded, damn it, and though I love cats, I don't love having other peoples' cats foisted upon me. Particularly since they're three of the most personality-less kitties I've ever come across--Cassidy, in particular, is like a loaf of bread with feet and whiskers. He's almost bovine in his complete disinterest in the world. Sosa and Mikey at least have the gumption to run around like heathens, but Cass just sits there like a bump on a log. Even Foof, who's 13 years old and hyperthyroid, at least has some LIFE to her.
The litter bill has tripled, at least; the food bill, about the same. And if Tim is too busy making "free money" (and excuse me, but there's a line-item on my paycheck that says his "free" money isn't exactly "free"--it's called FEDERAL TAX and frankly, I can think of things I'd rather do with that money than pass it along to people who see it as a viable alternative to "killing himself" by actually WORKING for a freakin' change) he's not making money with which to pay me back for the care and feeding of his little methane-factories.
What's worse: this is the SAME Tim who laid up on my sofa for EIGHT MONTHS once, without working one flat DAY of it. He's a MASTER of excuses as to why he can't get a job; he's also got the most monumental persecution complex I've ever experienced (with the possible exception of CR, who was his best friend for years). EVERYTHING and everybody is against him--that's why his life sucks so badly. It has nothing to do with the poor choices he makes at every turn--no, that's got nothing to do with it.
I know I sound harsh. Actually, I FEEL a bit harsh--like I should know better about getting past an addiction, how hard it is, or about how much compassion is needed to get over the poor choices we made in the past.
But here's the thing, see: I've never--NEVER--said that my poor choices were caused by anyone else. The closest I've ever come has been to bitch about how I was never given a full picture of the spectrum of opportunities and choices, how I was never allowed to take the consequences for my own fuck-ups til I was old enough to fuck up BIG time. Otherwise, I've tried to take full responsibility for all my shortcomings--even some that may not BE my fault entirely. And while I try not to hold others to standards as harsh as those by which I judge myself, sometimes compassion is difficult---especially when the people in question don't seem to learn anything from their mistakes.
This is not a five-cat household. I'm going to have to do something about this.
Conversation between me and Tim, the cats' owner....
Me: "Such-and-such a place called today and left a message--they want you for an interview."
Tim: "Oh, MAN...I just filed for unemployment today!"
Me: "What happened to that job you were supposed to start last week?"
Tim: "Oh, man--see, G, what happened was...he said 'come see me on Sunday and I'll see if I have time for you,' so I went Sunday and he didn't have time--and he said 'come back Monday', so I went back Monday and he STILL didn't have time for me--so I was like, fuck THAT."
Me: :::sigh::: "Yeah, I can imagine."
Tim: "Plus, one of my guys said it would be better if I just filed unemployment and did some cash work on the side--he knows someone who does painting...."
Me:"Well, couldn't you do both?"
Tim: "No--if I get that other job, I can't collect unemployment."
:::short pause while I beat myself about the head with the telephone receiver::: "No, I mean take the job AND do the painting too."
Tim: "Well....I mean....See, how I see it is this--why kill myself? I mean--c'mon...FREE MONEY!"
Conversations like this are almost enough to turn me into a conservative, I swear. Meanwhile, I'm stuck cleaning up after his nasty cats, who have questionable litterbox habits and foul intestines. My White Cat hasn't put his back-hackles down ONCE since the night Tim walked into the house with the carrier; he's got a permanent kitty back-mohawk. Poor baby--his house has been invaded.
MY house has been invaded, damn it, and though I love cats, I don't love having other peoples' cats foisted upon me. Particularly since they're three of the most personality-less kitties I've ever come across--Cassidy, in particular, is like a loaf of bread with feet and whiskers. He's almost bovine in his complete disinterest in the world. Sosa and Mikey at least have the gumption to run around like heathens, but Cass just sits there like a bump on a log. Even Foof, who's 13 years old and hyperthyroid, at least has some LIFE to her.
The litter bill has tripled, at least; the food bill, about the same. And if Tim is too busy making "free money" (and excuse me, but there's a line-item on my paycheck that says his "free" money isn't exactly "free"--it's called FEDERAL TAX and frankly, I can think of things I'd rather do with that money than pass it along to people who see it as a viable alternative to "killing himself" by actually WORKING for a freakin' change) he's not making money with which to pay me back for the care and feeding of his little methane-factories.
What's worse: this is the SAME Tim who laid up on my sofa for EIGHT MONTHS once, without working one flat DAY of it. He's a MASTER of excuses as to why he can't get a job; he's also got the most monumental persecution complex I've ever experienced (with the possible exception of CR, who was his best friend for years). EVERYTHING and everybody is against him--that's why his life sucks so badly. It has nothing to do with the poor choices he makes at every turn--no, that's got nothing to do with it.
I know I sound harsh. Actually, I FEEL a bit harsh--like I should know better about getting past an addiction, how hard it is, or about how much compassion is needed to get over the poor choices we made in the past.
But here's the thing, see: I've never--NEVER--said that my poor choices were caused by anyone else. The closest I've ever come has been to bitch about how I was never given a full picture of the spectrum of opportunities and choices, how I was never allowed to take the consequences for my own fuck-ups til I was old enough to fuck up BIG time. Otherwise, I've tried to take full responsibility for all my shortcomings--even some that may not BE my fault entirely. And while I try not to hold others to standards as harsh as those by which I judge myself, sometimes compassion is difficult---especially when the people in question don't seem to learn anything from their mistakes.
This is not a five-cat household. I'm going to have to do something about this.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Why I'm Not A Psychic, Either
In other news: I got my vacation days!!!
(Does anyone else think it's at least mildly pathetic that I'm THAT damn excited about two little itty-bitty vacation days? Seriously.)
But I have a feeling I'm gonna need it.
Things are getting really, really, really, really ugly at work. I'm in a position where I have to defend the whole department against some ill-considered changes being made to the database system--which I administer but which (because I was too busy with trivia that someone else could do, if only there was someone else to do it) I wasn't chosen to design. They want to do a massive rollout over Thanksgiving weekend, springing it on us when we return the following Monday--and the designer, the only guy who actually has control over the design (and who doesn't know a damn thing about our workflow, if his changes are any indication) is leaving for two weeks' vacation in Mid-December. And will be unreachable.
Meanwhile, everyone's programs will be at crucial points between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We won't be able to revert to the old system once the new system is up--regardless of any catastrophe. And if something goes wrong, I won't be able to fix it--because I've been completely shut out of the design loop.
I have to try to explain to the powers-that-be why this is a BAD thing. I have to try to tell them why we need more time and more testing before we make such a massive change, and why there's not the slightest chance that it's a good idea to do it one month from today.
People wonder sometimes why tech-folk are so arrogant, smug, and intolerable; why we act as though everyone is an idiot but us....
Well, this a prime example of why.
I don't expect anyone to listen--which means November and December, and possibly much longer, are going to be really rough for me. If they don't listen, and everything happens as I foresee, I might have to quit. I know I need to get out of that job, but I'd rather not go out like that!
So I'm gonna savor these two teeny little vacation days...believe me.
(Does anyone else think it's at least mildly pathetic that I'm THAT damn excited about two little itty-bitty vacation days? Seriously.)
But I have a feeling I'm gonna need it.
Things are getting really, really, really, really ugly at work. I'm in a position where I have to defend the whole department against some ill-considered changes being made to the database system--which I administer but which (because I was too busy with trivia that someone else could do, if only there was someone else to do it) I wasn't chosen to design. They want to do a massive rollout over Thanksgiving weekend, springing it on us when we return the following Monday--and the designer, the only guy who actually has control over the design (and who doesn't know a damn thing about our workflow, if his changes are any indication) is leaving for two weeks' vacation in Mid-December. And will be unreachable.
Meanwhile, everyone's programs will be at crucial points between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We won't be able to revert to the old system once the new system is up--regardless of any catastrophe. And if something goes wrong, I won't be able to fix it--because I've been completely shut out of the design loop.
I have to try to explain to the powers-that-be why this is a BAD thing. I have to try to tell them why we need more time and more testing before we make such a massive change, and why there's not the slightest chance that it's a good idea to do it one month from today.
People wonder sometimes why tech-folk are so arrogant, smug, and intolerable; why we act as though everyone is an idiot but us....
Well, this a prime example of why.
I don't expect anyone to listen--which means November and December, and possibly much longer, are going to be really rough for me. If they don't listen, and everything happens as I foresee, I might have to quit. I know I need to get out of that job, but I'd rather not go out like that!
So I'm gonna savor these two teeny little vacation days...believe me.
About That Novel
The other night in the shower I figured out what the novel is going to be.
I'm not sure which half of that sentence is more informative about me--the fact that I now know what the novel will be, or that I realized it in the shower.
I do most of my best thinking in the shower, for some reason; always have. I tend to stay under the hot water til my fingers get all pruney. And during this particular shower, I scared White Cat--White Cat enjoys showering with me, which--I know!--is just weird--by yelling "THAT'S IT!" (He fell off the edge of the bathtub and took off running. Poor little kitty has such a hard life...)
No, I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to read, when I start writing. Which I will, come November. Because otherwise it would be cheating.
I'm not sure which half of that sentence is more informative about me--the fact that I now know what the novel will be, or that I realized it in the shower.
I do most of my best thinking in the shower, for some reason; always have. I tend to stay under the hot water til my fingers get all pruney. And during this particular shower, I scared White Cat--White Cat enjoys showering with me, which--I know!--is just weird--by yelling "THAT'S IT!" (He fell off the edge of the bathtub and took off running. Poor little kitty has such a hard life...)
No, I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to read, when I start writing. Which I will, come November. Because otherwise it would be cheating.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
A Prediction
Gladys's Psychic Friends Network Says:
The following sentence, or a near variant thereof, will proceed from the mouth of Amy, my supervisor, between 9 AM and 3 PM tomorrow:
"I don't think this is a good time for you to take any vacation days."
I asked for Friday and Monday off. I have already lost 3 vacation days because I'm over the limit; apparently the only "good time" for me to take vacation days is a one-week period in May or the week between Christmas and New Years'. Small problem--I get 3 weeks a year--and if I don't use that extra week, I'm going to lose it.
That's not gonna happen---I'm taking those days if it kills me!
The following sentence, or a near variant thereof, will proceed from the mouth of Amy, my supervisor, between 9 AM and 3 PM tomorrow:
"I don't think this is a good time for you to take any vacation days."
I asked for Friday and Monday off. I have already lost 3 vacation days because I'm over the limit; apparently the only "good time" for me to take vacation days is a one-week period in May or the week between Christmas and New Years'. Small problem--I get 3 weeks a year--and if I don't use that extra week, I'm going to lose it.
That's not gonna happen---I'm taking those days if it kills me!
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Happy Wiggle Dance!!!!
Everyone, right now, go look at my profile.
As a tech geek, I'm embarrassed to admit this--but I just learned how to add images to my blog. Or, for that matter, to anything.
I am SO PROUD of myself!!!
(Incidentally--that pic is as close to me as I could get with the Portrait Illustrator....picture me substantially rounder, a little pinker, maybe with a slightly-scowlier mouth--oh, and the cute little kitty in my hand is about 1/25 scale for the actual White Cat. Other than that, it's pretty close.)
As a tech geek, I'm embarrassed to admit this--but I just learned how to add images to my blog. Or, for that matter, to anything.
I am SO PROUD of myself!!!
(Incidentally--that pic is as close to me as I could get with the Portrait Illustrator....picture me substantially rounder, a little pinker, maybe with a slightly-scowlier mouth--oh, and the cute little kitty in my hand is about 1/25 scale for the actual White Cat. Other than that, it's pretty close.)
Friday, October 22, 2004
Apropos of Nothing...
Though I don't have time to blog the reasons, I just have to say this::
I love my guy!!
He really is just great. You'll have to take my word for it.
I love my guy!!
He really is just great. You'll have to take my word for it.
Life Tip # 549,432
Gladys's Life Tip Number 549,432 is:
Don't ever expect to "just go look something up quickly" in Blogger Help.
I went to Blogger Help to find out about how to host images, as I have been playing with some new toys (inspired by Barb, as usual).
Instead I found this. And--since "write something" was on my list of goals for November (about which more some other time)--I decided "why the hell not?"
Thus: the novel which will shortly be in progress. I'll Blogroll myself once I get well and truly started, but come the first of November, there will be novel-bits posted at that site.
My novel-writing history, alas, is a checkered one. When I was in eighth grade I started one, but never got far. Then, my freshman year in high-school, I got about 120 pages into what became known, among my friends, as "Gladys's Trashy Nuclear War Novel". Maybe someday I'll post excerpts; I actually have the hard copy somewhere.
That lasted til junior year, when Chris (the First Boy) came into the picture. It's hard to write anything substantive when you're making out like crazed weasels all the time. Teenage hormones fucked up my typing skills. (Okay, actually it was more than that--my senior year was a very fraught time in my life. Again, that's another post, but it was characterized by an incredible one-sided rivalry between my best friend Maura and I. Anything I could do, she could do better--and that included writing.)
Freshman year in college, however, I started again--a novel called "The Lost Children", based on a projection of what I imagined my life could become. It was cast with the four people who made up my tight-knit little circle--Darius, Debbi, Artie, and Samantha--and imagined what might happen, one day in the distant future, if we were all to just give in to the nascent sexual tensions within our little enclave. (Eventually, most of us did--to one degree or another. That's ANOTHER another post--is anyone keeping a list??--but this group is still significant in my life for two reasons: Darius was the one who introduced me to JP, and Artie was the cause of my original meeting with Firefly.) That novel--remember, we were talking about novels?--got to be about 140 pages or so...I'm still trying to find a way to read the disk it's saved on.
The next novel was started my junior year in college. This was while Firefly and I were roomies; the novel was what I did while everyone else was either studying or socializing. It was called "The Amethyst" and it was a fantasy novel--again, based on something that had happened to me. (Another post. That's now four, I think.)
I got over 200 pages into that one by the time I moved back to Chicago for my student teaching, at the end of the summer of 1991. About two weeks later, Darius took me to a party and I met JP and Stephen and Justin and Frank and all their hangers-on...and suddenly what was happening in my life was no longer as interesting as what COULD happen.
It was my next novel that got me in real trouble. I was only about 20 pages into it when David, my husband at the time, found the disk in our computer--the disk which contained not only the novel, but also my journal. That was how he found out that I was sleeping with JP--in fact, I managed to hold his suspicions off for a couple of days by telling him that the journal was fiction too, part of the novel I was writing. Eventually he found me out, of course.
For the next year, I wrote nothing but poetry--lots and lots of it. Some of it was even good. And that became part of the dream--JP was going to be a rock god and I was going to be his exotic poet girlfriend, following him all over and changing the world every time I picked up my pen, the two of us cocooning in famous hotels, shooting up in the finest suites and lying to everyone but each other. We were going to be legends.
And then JP died, and the dream died with him--I was suddenly Courtney with no Kurt, Nancy with no Sid. Half of me was gone, and it was the half that believed in anything. I quit heroin, started drinking, took up the guitar, and started trying to write. The first few months were drunken crap, composed in the middle of the night in the back bedroom at my mother's house--whole pages barely coherent, raw and bleeding, dripping with grief and terror at any future that didn't include JP. I gave up in disgust and did all my writing in chatrooms and IMs for nearly a year.
About halfway through my stay in North Carolina, I started to write a story which had been percolating in my mind since 1991, shortly after my first party at JP's. I was in a phase where I was compensating for what seemed to be months of excessive self-pity and wallowing--otherwise known as Perfectly Reasonable Depression--and so I put myself on a rigid schedule: I was working two jobs, leaving at 7 AM and getting home at 7 PM, and I would then force myself to write at least 8 pages before I could go to bed. I even had a little wall-chart for my progress--anything, anything but unregulated conscious thought seemed to be my strategy. Had I stayed in North Carolina, I might have made it; as it was, I was well over 225 pages by the time I moved back to Chicago.
I drove back with Lou, the guitarist who'd lived with JP and I, who'd confessed a few months later that he'd always been at least half in love with me. I knew I didn't love him but I needed to hang on to whatever pieces of that past were left; he came to North Carolina and drove my car back while I drove the U-Haul, and we weren't in Chicago more than an hour before we scored our first bags of heroin in over a year. From there it was all downhill; less than three months later I was forced to admit defeat and move back to my mother's house. By October, four months after leaving Charlotte, I was in rehab.
That was where I met CR. A few weeks after we met, he told me he loved me; not long after that, I gave him a binder full of my poetry to read. He took it home, to the trailer where he lived with his "roommate". The next time I saw it, it was a drift of torn pages scudding across the snowbanks of the trailer park, catching in the pine trees, as his "roommate"--really his girlfriend--stood in the doorway throwing pieces of CR's belongings, including my binder, toward my car-- all the while calling me every kind of bitch there was.
I gave up. I remember sitting in the front seat of that crappy red Dodge with the caved-in Bondo roof, thinking That's it. I'm done. I've had enough--it's over and I'm not even going to bother to write anymore. (It never occurred to me that it would be better to keep writing and swear off CR forever. Well, not THEN, anyway.)
That was in 1997, and til I started this blog, I really HAD written nothing since then. E-mails, of course, but no poetry, no novels, nothing. And let me tell you--that gets tiresome. It's like trying not to pee for seven years--not only is it painful, it's not terribly healthy. But I didn't really know I missed it--after all, there was CR, and all that drama, and there was heroin; then there was more drama with CR, culminating with the point at which he left; and there was the job, the job, the job...and suddenly here I am, seven years later, wondering what happened to my late 20's and my early 30's, and realizing: I'm not going to be a child prodigy, am I.
It takes off some of the pressure--but it's a sad realization anyway. I've wasted so much time trying not to remember, just holding my breath and waiting for the ache to go away. I'll write when I feel better. I'll write when I'm over it. I'll write...someday. Maybe. And here I am, another October, and in a few days it will be nine years since I lost JP. I'm happier now than I've been at any time since that night in 1995--but when you dig down to the center of the earth, you're still in a hole no matter how many ladders you climb. I don't think I'll ever be "over it"--I don't think I'm ever going to be "okay" in the sense that most people mean it. I think it's time to adjust myself to that fact, and try to make the best of what's left--because at any other time in my life, what I have now--the infamous what's left--would have made me fucking ecstatic.
So--time to write. (Actually, time to go to bed, since I unaccountably have to go to work tomorrow. Again: another post.) Do me a favor, though, and read it once in a while--will you?? I'd hate to do all that work in a vacuum.
Don't ever expect to "just go look something up quickly" in Blogger Help.
I went to Blogger Help to find out about how to host images, as I have been playing with some new toys (inspired by Barb, as usual).
Instead I found this. And--since "write something" was on my list of goals for November (about which more some other time)--I decided "why the hell not?"
Thus: the novel which will shortly be in progress. I'll Blogroll myself once I get well and truly started, but come the first of November, there will be novel-bits posted at that site.
My novel-writing history, alas, is a checkered one. When I was in eighth grade I started one, but never got far. Then, my freshman year in high-school, I got about 120 pages into what became known, among my friends, as "Gladys's Trashy Nuclear War Novel". Maybe someday I'll post excerpts; I actually have the hard copy somewhere.
That lasted til junior year, when Chris (the First Boy) came into the picture. It's hard to write anything substantive when you're making out like crazed weasels all the time. Teenage hormones fucked up my typing skills. (Okay, actually it was more than that--my senior year was a very fraught time in my life. Again, that's another post, but it was characterized by an incredible one-sided rivalry between my best friend Maura and I. Anything I could do, she could do better--and that included writing.)
Freshman year in college, however, I started again--a novel called "The Lost Children", based on a projection of what I imagined my life could become. It was cast with the four people who made up my tight-knit little circle--Darius, Debbi, Artie, and Samantha--and imagined what might happen, one day in the distant future, if we were all to just give in to the nascent sexual tensions within our little enclave. (Eventually, most of us did--to one degree or another. That's ANOTHER another post--is anyone keeping a list??--but this group is still significant in my life for two reasons: Darius was the one who introduced me to JP, and Artie was the cause of my original meeting with Firefly.) That novel--remember, we were talking about novels?--got to be about 140 pages or so...I'm still trying to find a way to read the disk it's saved on.
The next novel was started my junior year in college. This was while Firefly and I were roomies; the novel was what I did while everyone else was either studying or socializing. It was called "The Amethyst" and it was a fantasy novel--again, based on something that had happened to me. (Another post. That's now four, I think.)
I got over 200 pages into that one by the time I moved back to Chicago for my student teaching, at the end of the summer of 1991. About two weeks later, Darius took me to a party and I met JP and Stephen and Justin and Frank and all their hangers-on...and suddenly what was happening in my life was no longer as interesting as what COULD happen.
It was my next novel that got me in real trouble. I was only about 20 pages into it when David, my husband at the time, found the disk in our computer--the disk which contained not only the novel, but also my journal. That was how he found out that I was sleeping with JP--in fact, I managed to hold his suspicions off for a couple of days by telling him that the journal was fiction too, part of the novel I was writing. Eventually he found me out, of course.
For the next year, I wrote nothing but poetry--lots and lots of it. Some of it was even good. And that became part of the dream--JP was going to be a rock god and I was going to be his exotic poet girlfriend, following him all over and changing the world every time I picked up my pen, the two of us cocooning in famous hotels, shooting up in the finest suites and lying to everyone but each other. We were going to be legends.
And then JP died, and the dream died with him--I was suddenly Courtney with no Kurt, Nancy with no Sid. Half of me was gone, and it was the half that believed in anything. I quit heroin, started drinking, took up the guitar, and started trying to write. The first few months were drunken crap, composed in the middle of the night in the back bedroom at my mother's house--whole pages barely coherent, raw and bleeding, dripping with grief and terror at any future that didn't include JP. I gave up in disgust and did all my writing in chatrooms and IMs for nearly a year.
About halfway through my stay in North Carolina, I started to write a story which had been percolating in my mind since 1991, shortly after my first party at JP's. I was in a phase where I was compensating for what seemed to be months of excessive self-pity and wallowing--otherwise known as Perfectly Reasonable Depression--and so I put myself on a rigid schedule: I was working two jobs, leaving at 7 AM and getting home at 7 PM, and I would then force myself to write at least 8 pages before I could go to bed. I even had a little wall-chart for my progress--anything, anything but unregulated conscious thought seemed to be my strategy. Had I stayed in North Carolina, I might have made it; as it was, I was well over 225 pages by the time I moved back to Chicago.
I drove back with Lou, the guitarist who'd lived with JP and I, who'd confessed a few months later that he'd always been at least half in love with me. I knew I didn't love him but I needed to hang on to whatever pieces of that past were left; he came to North Carolina and drove my car back while I drove the U-Haul, and we weren't in Chicago more than an hour before we scored our first bags of heroin in over a year. From there it was all downhill; less than three months later I was forced to admit defeat and move back to my mother's house. By October, four months after leaving Charlotte, I was in rehab.
That was where I met CR. A few weeks after we met, he told me he loved me; not long after that, I gave him a binder full of my poetry to read. He took it home, to the trailer where he lived with his "roommate". The next time I saw it, it was a drift of torn pages scudding across the snowbanks of the trailer park, catching in the pine trees, as his "roommate"--really his girlfriend--stood in the doorway throwing pieces of CR's belongings, including my binder, toward my car-- all the while calling me every kind of bitch there was.
I gave up. I remember sitting in the front seat of that crappy red Dodge with the caved-in Bondo roof, thinking That's it. I'm done. I've had enough--it's over and I'm not even going to bother to write anymore. (It never occurred to me that it would be better to keep writing and swear off CR forever. Well, not THEN, anyway.)
That was in 1997, and til I started this blog, I really HAD written nothing since then. E-mails, of course, but no poetry, no novels, nothing. And let me tell you--that gets tiresome. It's like trying not to pee for seven years--not only is it painful, it's not terribly healthy. But I didn't really know I missed it--after all, there was CR, and all that drama, and there was heroin; then there was more drama with CR, culminating with the point at which he left; and there was the job, the job, the job...and suddenly here I am, seven years later, wondering what happened to my late 20's and my early 30's, and realizing: I'm not going to be a child prodigy, am I.
It takes off some of the pressure--but it's a sad realization anyway. I've wasted so much time trying not to remember, just holding my breath and waiting for the ache to go away. I'll write when I feel better. I'll write when I'm over it. I'll write...someday. Maybe. And here I am, another October, and in a few days it will be nine years since I lost JP. I'm happier now than I've been at any time since that night in 1995--but when you dig down to the center of the earth, you're still in a hole no matter how many ladders you climb. I don't think I'll ever be "over it"--I don't think I'm ever going to be "okay" in the sense that most people mean it. I think it's time to adjust myself to that fact, and try to make the best of what's left--because at any other time in my life, what I have now--the infamous what's left--would have made me fucking ecstatic.
So--time to write. (Actually, time to go to bed, since I unaccountably have to go to work tomorrow. Again: another post.) Do me a favor, though, and read it once in a while--will you?? I'd hate to do all that work in a vacuum.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Scrunchy Leaves Are In This Year
Actually I can't quite make up my mind which of these trees I like better. I think this one wins, though, because after I snapped it, I got to scrunch through all the fallen leaves as I walked back to the Crap-Wagon. 
You Know Your Life Is Boring When...
Since I have nothing to say, here are some pretty trees from Sheridan Road near Northwestern. (Hey, it's fall, I gotta digital camera, and I like red things. What would YOU do?)
Monday, October 18, 2004
Cats, Cats, CATS!
Did I mention? I have five cats now. My two, and Tim's three.
And one of them--not sure which one--has BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD kitty-gas.
I cleaned the box. Both of them. But my living room still smells like cat-farts.
And I have a cold--so if I can smell it, you KNOW it's funky in here.
And one of them--not sure which one--has BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD kitty-gas.
I cleaned the box. Both of them. But my living room still smells like cat-farts.
And I have a cold--so if I can smell it, you KNOW it's funky in here.
I Am Sick.
It got me, boys and girls.
The Cold--the very same Cold I was so proud to have successfully dodged thus far--has come to get me.
Could it have been from sleeping in a 52-degree house next to a very certifiably not-healthy LJ? Quite possibly. Or could my immune system have been weakened a bit from spending four hours in the damp cold while Tim played jigsaw-puzzles with his life in the back of my truck? Could be...Of course, it was ALSO going around The Office. Actually, come to think of it, it's a miracle I made it so far!
Anyway. Last night I woke up doing the Machine-Gun Sneezing thing, and when I got up at 6:15 I thought "nuh-uh." I went downstairs and called into work.
"And then I went back to bed."
Oh, wait--no, I didn't. I started to think about all the things I had promised people for today. So I wrote some e-mails. Then I started thinking "you know, I'd feel really bad if I didn't get Faith that data I promised her last week..." This necessitated some more e-mails. And then there was the e-mail to Pham, the guy who was gonna figure out what was wrong with the FTP server...and then by that time everyone had gotten to work and started answering my e-mails and reminding me of stuff I was supposed to do for them (Noreen most prominent among them--the evil beeeeeyotch won't even let me be SICK in peace!)
It was 1:30 before I felt comfortable enough to quit working on stuff. You read that right: 1:30 PM. As in, I've now been working for 7 hours and I stayed home because I'm sick.
Finally, around 3, I turned off the PBS kids' shows (hey, what can I say--I just like cartoons, is all) and took a nap. Got up--cooked dinner, ate dinner, changed the catboxes (about which more momentarily!) and now it's 10:00 and I have to be up at 6 tomorrow.
Something ain't quite right here.
The Cold--the very same Cold I was so proud to have successfully dodged thus far--has come to get me.
Could it have been from sleeping in a 52-degree house next to a very certifiably not-healthy LJ? Quite possibly. Or could my immune system have been weakened a bit from spending four hours in the damp cold while Tim played jigsaw-puzzles with his life in the back of my truck? Could be...Of course, it was ALSO going around The Office. Actually, come to think of it, it's a miracle I made it so far!
Anyway. Last night I woke up doing the Machine-Gun Sneezing thing, and when I got up at 6:15 I thought "nuh-uh." I went downstairs and called into work.
"And then I went back to bed."
Oh, wait--no, I didn't. I started to think about all the things I had promised people for today. So I wrote some e-mails. Then I started thinking "you know, I'd feel really bad if I didn't get Faith that data I promised her last week..." This necessitated some more e-mails. And then there was the e-mail to Pham, the guy who was gonna figure out what was wrong with the FTP server...and then by that time everyone had gotten to work and started answering my e-mails and reminding me of stuff I was supposed to do for them (Noreen most prominent among them--the evil beeeeeyotch won't even let me be SICK in peace!)
It was 1:30 before I felt comfortable enough to quit working on stuff. You read that right: 1:30 PM. As in, I've now been working for 7 hours and I stayed home because I'm sick.
Finally, around 3, I turned off the PBS kids' shows (hey, what can I say--I just like cartoons, is all) and took a nap. Got up--cooked dinner, ate dinner, changed the catboxes (about which more momentarily!) and now it's 10:00 and I have to be up at 6 tomorrow.
Something ain't quite right here.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
You Have Gotta Be Freakin' Kidding Me, Part 2
Insert Cheap Shot Here
And another question: WHY hasn't anyone brought up the elephant in the living room??? If he was a Democrat, you know damn good and well the media would've dragged him all over creation by now. NOT that I'm saying I want to see the girls put through that--nobody deserves it--but things being what they are, WHY hasn't anyone told this fool to shut the hell up, that he's only making himself look dumber and more hypocritical every time the "G" word comes up???
I may just go to Canada regardless. This place is just TOO fucked-up for me.
And another question: WHY hasn't anyone brought up the elephant in the living room??? If he was a Democrat, you know damn good and well the media would've dragged him all over creation by now. NOT that I'm saying I want to see the girls put through that--nobody deserves it--but things being what they are, WHY hasn't anyone told this fool to shut the hell up, that he's only making himself look dumber and more hypocritical every time the "G" word comes up???
I may just go to Canada regardless. This place is just TOO fucked-up for me.
You Have Gotta Be Freakin' Kidding Me.
I would like to save all of you precious minutes of your life by summarizing:
"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't."
Apparently, that's true even when the devil you know is irrational, brainless, and messianically dangerous.
I'd boycott the Tribune, if I actually subscribed--but I only read it online anyway.
"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't."
Apparently, that's true even when the devil you know is irrational, brainless, and messianically dangerous.
I'd boycott the Tribune, if I actually subscribed--but I only read it online anyway.
Friday, October 15, 2004
I Better Get A Spot In Heaven
It's almost 2 AM and I'm just now getting "wound down " for the night. I've been up since 6 AM, my feet hurt, and I am just one hundred percent ass-whupped.
The cause of all this exhaustion is Tim, my former roomie, CR's former best friend.
(Minds out of the gutter, everyone. Tim is NOT my type--a scrawny balding white guy, about my height, with a drinking problem and a persecution complex. I'll take LJ--an extremely-non-scrawny 6'7" black man with a fondness for cannabis and no complexes at all.)
No, in fact, if this exhaustion was at all sexually-based, I'd probably feel better about it; instead, I spent six hours after work getting Tim and his belongings out of his old apartment. It was more of a race, really; it was either me or the Cook County Sheriff's Police that were going to do the honors, and Tim decided that he actually would rather KEEP his belongings, instead of having them strewn all over Kenmore Avenue in the rain.
Tim's drinking, as you may have figured out, has screwed him up yet again. It wasn't bad enough that he lost his job for repeatedly coming into work under the influence--in fact, he was fired on the day his daughter was born. It wasn't enough that his baby's mother finally got fed up and left him when the baby was about six months old, after giving him chance after chance to clean up his act and get a job so they could move out from her mother's house. It wasn't enough that she did this shortly AFTER he rented an apartment for them--and calculated his ability to pay the rent based on BOTH their incomes, an apartment he couldn't begin to afford on his own even if he DID have a job. It wasn't enough that the baby's mother then took up with a guy with even more problems than Tim had; it wasn't enough that he hasn't been able to keep a job for more than a few weeks, and can't seem to get called back even though he's filled out dozens of applications at every restaurant in town.
No, none of that was enough to give him a revelation--so finally his luck and time ran out, and he got evicted. So now, in addition to the charges for the LAST lease he broke being on his credit, he's also going to have a judgment against him entered into the record. Instead of just coming clean with his landlords about what was going on with his work situation, he made promises to pay money he didn't have, and when he didn't pay, they did what landlords do: reported it to the credit agencies and sent it to collections.
He's been calling me for weeks, reporting on the progress of the eviction proceedings. When the Crap-Wagon was in the shop last time, he called and said he wanted to get his stuff out of the apartment as soon as possible, and could he use a little corner of my basement?
What could I say? I mean, no matter how messed-up he is, it's a little harsh to expect him to just lose everything because he can't find anywhere to put it. "It's just a LITTLE stuff," he said. So I told him I'd come by after work today, we'd throw all his stuff in the truck, and we'd ride back and put it in my basement.
His "little stuff" included a 4'x 5' box of clothes, two huge Rubbermaid bins also full of clothes, a video camera, his pool cue, his Bob-Marley-smoking-a-joint poster, three HUGE boxes of CD's, two boxes of cassettes, his stereo speakers and stereo, a ton of other small boxes, and three cats and their paraphernalia. The ENTIRE back of the Crap-Wagon--with the seats folded down and everything--was cram-jam-full, to the point that I couldn't see out the back window. "A little stuff", my portly white ass.
What's worse is, I had promised LJ that I would get this over with as soon as possible so he could have the truck. He didn't complain--he's a sweetie--but what I envisioned as an hour's work took THREE hours. And that was just to get all the stuff in the truck. It would have been easier if Tim hadn't gotten super-anal about the packing order. If he would have just hauled all the crap out to the area around the truck, then looked it over and put pieces in where they fit....but no. First he brought out the big box, then rotated it through every angle. Then he studied the truck again, went back upstairs, brought out another box. EVERY SINGLE BOX went in just like this. I kept dro[pping hints about needing to get home--he kept apologizing, assuring me that he was going as fast as he could, and then returning to his one-box-at-a-time jigsaw puzzle. And I really couldn't bitch--after all, those boxes contain his whole life, or what's left of it.
Oh yeah. Three cats. Did I mention them? Mikey, Sosa, and Cassidy. Cassidy is a huge tortoiseshell who lived with Tim and I in the studio, and then with Tim and CR and I in the place we all shared. Mikey and Sosa are littermates, orange and white shorthairs, and Sosa is a polydactyl--he has six toes on his front paws. The three of them together were all in one carrier, and when we brought them into the house, Whitey and Foof were waiting at the door to greet me. You could almost SEE their little expressions change when they realized there was something in the carrier...
So now the three newcomers have been placed in my office room, with their accoutrements, and with the door closed. White Cat is PISSED. I mean, he is one BOTHERED kittycat. He's been stalking around the house with his back-hackles standing on end, his tail aswish all night, occasionally pausing near the door of the office room to let out an unearthly growl and a hiss meant to strike fear into the hearts of all feline intruders. (Foof-cat is lying at my feet like half-past give-a-shit. Poor old girl...)
I walked Tim to the Blue Line at about 10:30, and gave him train fare for the ride home; then I asked him who he was staying with tonight. He said no one--he had nowhere to go--but when I offered him the sofa, he turned it down, several times. So I put him on the train and walked back home, wondering what else I could do. You can't make people take things they don't want, I suppose, but it's the end of October, and freezing cold outside. I feel bad for him...and part of me wonders what it's going to take to make him realize "I don't like this kind of life anymore," and do something about it. He came close when the baby was born, but then when the girlfriend left him, he decided it wasn't worth staying sober...which, to me, seems like he's letting too many other people determine his courses of action.
But then again, I can talk; I'm not the one who has to make the changes. I just have to cat-sit, probably forever, or thereabouts.
The cause of all this exhaustion is Tim, my former roomie, CR's former best friend.
(Minds out of the gutter, everyone. Tim is NOT my type--a scrawny balding white guy, about my height, with a drinking problem and a persecution complex. I'll take LJ--an extremely-non-scrawny 6'7" black man with a fondness for cannabis and no complexes at all.)
No, in fact, if this exhaustion was at all sexually-based, I'd probably feel better about it; instead, I spent six hours after work getting Tim and his belongings out of his old apartment. It was more of a race, really; it was either me or the Cook County Sheriff's Police that were going to do the honors, and Tim decided that he actually would rather KEEP his belongings, instead of having them strewn all over Kenmore Avenue in the rain.
Tim's drinking, as you may have figured out, has screwed him up yet again. It wasn't bad enough that he lost his job for repeatedly coming into work under the influence--in fact, he was fired on the day his daughter was born. It wasn't enough that his baby's mother finally got fed up and left him when the baby was about six months old, after giving him chance after chance to clean up his act and get a job so they could move out from her mother's house. It wasn't enough that she did this shortly AFTER he rented an apartment for them--and calculated his ability to pay the rent based on BOTH their incomes, an apartment he couldn't begin to afford on his own even if he DID have a job. It wasn't enough that the baby's mother then took up with a guy with even more problems than Tim had; it wasn't enough that he hasn't been able to keep a job for more than a few weeks, and can't seem to get called back even though he's filled out dozens of applications at every restaurant in town.
No, none of that was enough to give him a revelation--so finally his luck and time ran out, and he got evicted. So now, in addition to the charges for the LAST lease he broke being on his credit, he's also going to have a judgment against him entered into the record. Instead of just coming clean with his landlords about what was going on with his work situation, he made promises to pay money he didn't have, and when he didn't pay, they did what landlords do: reported it to the credit agencies and sent it to collections.
He's been calling me for weeks, reporting on the progress of the eviction proceedings. When the Crap-Wagon was in the shop last time, he called and said he wanted to get his stuff out of the apartment as soon as possible, and could he use a little corner of my basement?
What could I say? I mean, no matter how messed-up he is, it's a little harsh to expect him to just lose everything because he can't find anywhere to put it. "It's just a LITTLE stuff," he said. So I told him I'd come by after work today, we'd throw all his stuff in the truck, and we'd ride back and put it in my basement.
His "little stuff" included a 4'x 5' box of clothes, two huge Rubbermaid bins also full of clothes, a video camera, his pool cue, his Bob-Marley-smoking-a-joint poster, three HUGE boxes of CD's, two boxes of cassettes, his stereo speakers and stereo, a ton of other small boxes, and three cats and their paraphernalia. The ENTIRE back of the Crap-Wagon--with the seats folded down and everything--was cram-jam-full, to the point that I couldn't see out the back window. "A little stuff", my portly white ass.
What's worse is, I had promised LJ that I would get this over with as soon as possible so he could have the truck. He didn't complain--he's a sweetie--but what I envisioned as an hour's work took THREE hours. And that was just to get all the stuff in the truck. It would have been easier if Tim hadn't gotten super-anal about the packing order. If he would have just hauled all the crap out to the area around the truck, then looked it over and put pieces in where they fit....but no. First he brought out the big box, then rotated it through every angle. Then he studied the truck again, went back upstairs, brought out another box. EVERY SINGLE BOX went in just like this. I kept dro[pping hints about needing to get home--he kept apologizing, assuring me that he was going as fast as he could, and then returning to his one-box-at-a-time jigsaw puzzle. And I really couldn't bitch--after all, those boxes contain his whole life, or what's left of it.
Oh yeah. Three cats. Did I mention them? Mikey, Sosa, and Cassidy. Cassidy is a huge tortoiseshell who lived with Tim and I in the studio, and then with Tim and CR and I in the place we all shared. Mikey and Sosa are littermates, orange and white shorthairs, and Sosa is a polydactyl--he has six toes on his front paws. The three of them together were all in one carrier, and when we brought them into the house, Whitey and Foof were waiting at the door to greet me. You could almost SEE their little expressions change when they realized there was something in the carrier...
So now the three newcomers have been placed in my office room, with their accoutrements, and with the door closed. White Cat is PISSED. I mean, he is one BOTHERED kittycat. He's been stalking around the house with his back-hackles standing on end, his tail aswish all night, occasionally pausing near the door of the office room to let out an unearthly growl and a hiss meant to strike fear into the hearts of all feline intruders. (Foof-cat is lying at my feet like half-past give-a-shit. Poor old girl...)
I walked Tim to the Blue Line at about 10:30, and gave him train fare for the ride home; then I asked him who he was staying with tonight. He said no one--he had nowhere to go--but when I offered him the sofa, he turned it down, several times. So I put him on the train and walked back home, wondering what else I could do. You can't make people take things they don't want, I suppose, but it's the end of October, and freezing cold outside. I feel bad for him...and part of me wonders what it's going to take to make him realize "I don't like this kind of life anymore," and do something about it. He came close when the baby was born, but then when the girlfriend left him, he decided it wasn't worth staying sober...which, to me, seems like he's letting too many other people determine his courses of action.
But then again, I can talk; I'm not the one who has to make the changes. I just have to cat-sit, probably forever, or thereabouts.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Motivated
I have a lot to do this weekend.
1. Clean this miserable house. It would be less miserable if it was clean; however, it would be cleaner if it was less-miserable. It's a vicious cycle, and I can't really get inspired to SERIOUSLY clean until I'm no longer living in a construction zone.
2. Go through my bills and make an HONEST inventory of my finances. Being broke has a bad effect on me; I tend to go into a mild state of denial around the 10th of the month, once the main bills are paid. I stop opening the mail; I try not to think about the other bills, the ones that aren't getting paid. Every so often, guilt-ridden, I get very organized, go through all the bills, and look at where I really am, instead of where I wish I was.
3. Gather all the documentation for my lawsuit against Bob the Plumber. Incidentally, I would like to take this opportunity to provide you all a public service: MidAmerica Bank is a bunch of crooks and you should run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Do you know how much they want for a copy of a cancelled check, front and back? $7.50. PER CHECK. I need eight cancelled checks for this lawsuit--and I wouldn't need ANYTHING if they actually sent my checks back in the statement--the way they USED to do, when they were MidTown Bank, before they got bought out.
4. Do the writeup for my Attorney General's complaint against B the P. I think I might even get Target 5--the consumer-affairs arm of the local NBC affiliate--into the story.
5. Make my business plan for my holiday business.
That's right, boys and girls: Gladys is going into business. I'm going to start it out as just a seasonal thing, but if it works out, who knows?
And what, you ask, might this business venture be?
Caramel corn. The best, most delicious caramel corn you have ever encountered.
This started two years ago, actually. My first Christmas at my job, I figured it would be a very good idea to make a good impression; and what better way to make a good impression than by bringing a ton of homemade yummies into the office on the last day before the holidays? So I baked. I made spritz cookies and fudge and lemon bars and raspberry-oatmeal bars and these wonderful, WONDERFUL chocolate-caramel sugar cookies which barely made it out of the house because I couldn't keep my paws off them. And everyone was duly impressed.
Being a glutton for praise, I did it again the next year, with a few variations, and one of the variations was the addition of caramel corn. Well, Beverly (the boss) glommed onto that caramel corn, and at the end of the party I told her she could take the leftovers home to her husband and daughters.
So last October, she tells me "I want to give that caramel corn as gifts this Christmas. I'll pay for materials and you can charge me whatever you want over and above that." I didn't quite know what I was getting into--I believe the final count was twenty-three batches, hand-delivered to her house in two big lawn-and-leaf-sized Hefty bags by my mom (who lives WAY closer to Beverly's house than I do.) But everyone raved about it--in fact, her husband, who is a dentist and should know better, issued a veto order against one of the planned recipients, and kept THAT basket for himself! I didn't make a huge profit, of course, but then again I would have charged more if she hadn't been my boss!
And it got me thinking. If I had a better space for the production end of it--a rental kitchen, in a church or a school or something, and facilities to do a lot of popcorn at once--I could sell it in little gift baskets--you know, for teacher gifts and the like. And I think I could do a pretty good business, provided I didn't price myself out of the market...
The thing is, this stuff is GOOD. Buttery and rich and just...yummy. :::pause as I wipe my chin:::... If I could give out some little samples, I'd absolutely get some business. And god knows I travel through enough of the city that delivery wouldn't be much of an issue...
I think I could do this. And this weekend, I'm going to figure out how.
1. Clean this miserable house. It would be less miserable if it was clean; however, it would be cleaner if it was less-miserable. It's a vicious cycle, and I can't really get inspired to SERIOUSLY clean until I'm no longer living in a construction zone.
2. Go through my bills and make an HONEST inventory of my finances. Being broke has a bad effect on me; I tend to go into a mild state of denial around the 10th of the month, once the main bills are paid. I stop opening the mail; I try not to think about the other bills, the ones that aren't getting paid. Every so often, guilt-ridden, I get very organized, go through all the bills, and look at where I really am, instead of where I wish I was.
3. Gather all the documentation for my lawsuit against Bob the Plumber. Incidentally, I would like to take this opportunity to provide you all a public service: MidAmerica Bank is a bunch of crooks and you should run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Do you know how much they want for a copy of a cancelled check, front and back? $7.50. PER CHECK. I need eight cancelled checks for this lawsuit--and I wouldn't need ANYTHING if they actually sent my checks back in the statement--the way they USED to do, when they were MidTown Bank, before they got bought out.
4. Do the writeup for my Attorney General's complaint against B the P. I think I might even get Target 5--the consumer-affairs arm of the local NBC affiliate--into the story.
5. Make my business plan for my holiday business.
That's right, boys and girls: Gladys is going into business. I'm going to start it out as just a seasonal thing, but if it works out, who knows?
And what, you ask, might this business venture be?
Caramel corn. The best, most delicious caramel corn you have ever encountered.
This started two years ago, actually. My first Christmas at my job, I figured it would be a very good idea to make a good impression; and what better way to make a good impression than by bringing a ton of homemade yummies into the office on the last day before the holidays? So I baked. I made spritz cookies and fudge and lemon bars and raspberry-oatmeal bars and these wonderful, WONDERFUL chocolate-caramel sugar cookies which barely made it out of the house because I couldn't keep my paws off them. And everyone was duly impressed.
Being a glutton for praise, I did it again the next year, with a few variations, and one of the variations was the addition of caramel corn. Well, Beverly (the boss) glommed onto that caramel corn, and at the end of the party I told her she could take the leftovers home to her husband and daughters.
So last October, she tells me "I want to give that caramel corn as gifts this Christmas. I'll pay for materials and you can charge me whatever you want over and above that." I didn't quite know what I was getting into--I believe the final count was twenty-three batches, hand-delivered to her house in two big lawn-and-leaf-sized Hefty bags by my mom (who lives WAY closer to Beverly's house than I do.) But everyone raved about it--in fact, her husband, who is a dentist and should know better, issued a veto order against one of the planned recipients, and kept THAT basket for himself! I didn't make a huge profit, of course, but then again I would have charged more if she hadn't been my boss!
And it got me thinking. If I had a better space for the production end of it--a rental kitchen, in a church or a school or something, and facilities to do a lot of popcorn at once--I could sell it in little gift baskets--you know, for teacher gifts and the like. And I think I could do a pretty good business, provided I didn't price myself out of the market...
The thing is, this stuff is GOOD. Buttery and rich and just...yummy. :::pause as I wipe my chin:::... If I could give out some little samples, I'd absolutely get some business. And god knows I travel through enough of the city that delivery wouldn't be much of an issue...
I think I could do this. And this weekend, I'm going to figure out how.
Oh, I'm Sorry--I Didn't Realize You Were Reading!
So this morning, I came here to my lovely office (blarf) and checked my blogstats, as is my habit. And I noticed that I had quite a number of referrals from Chillinois, which is outstandingly cool in and of itself because...well, like, that's an actual well-known blog and everything! And then I actually went OVER there, and found this post.
You know the girl everyone had in their junior-high class--the one whose mother made her wear dresses all the time and her slip was always showing, the one with those pop-bottle glasses with the horn rims, and hair the color of mouse-turds? And one day her dad, the car mechanic, changed a fan belt on Duran Duran's tour bus and she actually got to MEET them--and in awe of this stunning accomplishment, for one grand and glorious week, the popular girls let her sit at the COOL LUNCH TABLE?
That's how I feel.
Which actually makes it WORSE that I have no witty, stunningly-written dialogue with which to offer you a payoff, oh you who clicked on the link in the Chillinois post...in fact, I don't even have a proper climax to the story.
What actually happened (God, have I EVER been more tempted to fictionalize an ending? I don't think so) What actually happened was....well, nothing. The little green notebook sat on the end table til the next day, though the money of course got snapped up immediately; then the little green notebook disappeared. I saw it again a few days later, when I was picking up things in the living room and went to put some lighters and stuff in LJ's drawer in the TV table, but neither the notebook nor its contents were ever discussed.
I know, I know....back to the "dork" table for Gladys. :::sigh::::
You know the girl everyone had in their junior-high class--the one whose mother made her wear dresses all the time and her slip was always showing, the one with those pop-bottle glasses with the horn rims, and hair the color of mouse-turds? And one day her dad, the car mechanic, changed a fan belt on Duran Duran's tour bus and she actually got to MEET them--and in awe of this stunning accomplishment, for one grand and glorious week, the popular girls let her sit at the COOL LUNCH TABLE?
That's how I feel.
Which actually makes it WORSE that I have no witty, stunningly-written dialogue with which to offer you a payoff, oh you who clicked on the link in the Chillinois post...in fact, I don't even have a proper climax to the story.
What actually happened (God, have I EVER been more tempted to fictionalize an ending? I don't think so) What actually happened was....well, nothing. The little green notebook sat on the end table til the next day, though the money of course got snapped up immediately; then the little green notebook disappeared. I saw it again a few days later, when I was picking up things in the living room and went to put some lighters and stuff in LJ's drawer in the TV table, but neither the notebook nor its contents were ever discussed.
I know, I know....back to the "dork" table for Gladys. :::sigh::::
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
And They Say MY 'Hood is Bad....
Okay, this is just funny. Please, if I ever complain about my neighbors, remind me that I could be this poor child.
Overload! OVERLOAD! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!
Ladies and gentlemen, and those of you who haven't decided yet:
I submit to you what I consider to be the stupidest collection of people in one blog post/comment section, EVER.
First, read this. Note:
a) what site it's on
b) its title
c) its tone.
Then read its comment section. Read 'em all--there are lots, but don't worry, they're worth it.
I'll wait. ........................................................................
Are you done?? Does that entire exchange not make you want to weep for poor lost humanity as we descend into the morass of Unutterable Stupidity???
This is, like, a pinnacle of dumbness--yes, yes, I know my metaphors are mixed but my GOD!--a pinnacle of dumbness to which I never once believed the human soul could aspire. I mean, these folks aren't stupid; they're not even stOOpid. I don't know if there's a typographical conceit that could accurately capture the awesome stOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOOoopidity of these people.
If this is representative of the "best posts", as the website claims, I don't want to see the WORST. My heart couldn't handle it.
I submit to you what I consider to be the stupidest collection of people in one blog post/comment section, EVER.
First, read this. Note:
a) what site it's on
b) its title
c) its tone.
Then read its comment section. Read 'em all--there are lots, but don't worry, they're worth it.
I'll wait. ........................................................................
Are you done?? Does that entire exchange not make you want to weep for poor lost humanity as we descend into the morass of Unutterable Stupidity???
This is, like, a pinnacle of dumbness--yes, yes, I know my metaphors are mixed but my GOD!--a pinnacle of dumbness to which I never once believed the human soul could aspire. I mean, these folks aren't stupid; they're not even stOOpid. I don't know if there's a typographical conceit that could accurately capture the awesome stOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOOoopidity of these people.
If this is representative of the "best posts", as the website claims, I don't want to see the WORST. My heart couldn't handle it.
My New Mission In Life Is To Steal Everything From Barb.
First of all: all props where they're due: almost everything on the sidebar of this blog, Barb did first. The talking kitty, Bumpus in his basket, and now this lovely little soTHAT'swhata"meme"is! So the moral of this story: Barb's blog has cool stuff. You should go there.
1. What household appliance are you most like and why?
Blender. I'm noisy, fragile, hard to clean, and I have a button marked "frappe". Also, I make very good milkshakes, and I'm generally stored in the darkest, spidery-est cabinet.
2. What are the pros and cons of having a white tiger as a pet?
Pro: That yappy little Peke-a-poo next door will no longer think he's the shit.
Con: Being eaten.
3. Why do you torment me so?
It's either that, or actually do the work I'm paid to do. Which would YOU pick?
4. Whatcha gonna do when your little bird flies away?
Put a philodendron in its empty cage and name it "Tweety". Insist on pouring in a fresh bowl of seed and changing its newspaper daily. Attempt to teach it to talk and/or sing "Isn't It Romantic". Refer to the dead leaves as "moulting".
5. What are the functions of hair? How would it affect one to be without it?
Hair is mainly a scam propagated by the vast shampoo cartels of Canada. They would like us to believe that if we all did away with our hair, we'd be chilly, bald, and undesired by the opposite sex--but in reality, the amount of money consumed by shampoo, conditioner, styling gel, and mousses, to say nothing of the barber-and-beauty appointments for cutting, curling, and coloring, could all be used to purchase a very satisfactory vibrator. Oh, and a hat. Because your ears would get REALLY freakin' cold.
1. What household appliance are you most like and why?
Blender. I'm noisy, fragile, hard to clean, and I have a button marked "frappe". Also, I make very good milkshakes, and I'm generally stored in the darkest, spidery-est cabinet.
2. What are the pros and cons of having a white tiger as a pet?
Pro: That yappy little Peke-a-poo next door will no longer think he's the shit.
Con: Being eaten.
3. Why do you torment me so?
It's either that, or actually do the work I'm paid to do. Which would YOU pick?
4. Whatcha gonna do when your little bird flies away?
Put a philodendron in its empty cage and name it "Tweety". Insist on pouring in a fresh bowl of seed and changing its newspaper daily. Attempt to teach it to talk and/or sing "Isn't It Romantic". Refer to the dead leaves as "moulting".
5. What are the functions of hair? How would it affect one to be without it?
Hair is mainly a scam propagated by the vast shampoo cartels of Canada. They would like us to believe that if we all did away with our hair, we'd be chilly, bald, and undesired by the opposite sex--but in reality, the amount of money consumed by shampoo, conditioner, styling gel, and mousses, to say nothing of the barber-and-beauty appointments for cutting, curling, and coloring, could all be used to purchase a very satisfactory vibrator. Oh, and a hat. Because your ears would get REALLY freakin' cold.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Yeah, That's About It For Tonight.
Well, though I'm not honestly certain quite what got me here, I am in a mood most exceedingly foul. And so--leaving the pot roast in the oven on "auto-shutoff"--I am going to bed now.
I woke up this morning not wanting to go to work. I can't imagine tomorrow being too much different.
Something's gotta give, you know? I can't keep going this same way for too much longer before I just say "screw it" and stop getting out of bed at all.
I woke up this morning not wanting to go to work. I can't imagine tomorrow being too much different.
Something's gotta give, you know? I can't keep going this same way for too much longer before I just say "screw it" and stop getting out of bed at all.
Wow!
Time it took to get from 0 to 1000 visits: 112 days
Time it took to get from 1001 to 2000 visits: 42 days
I'm impressed!
Time it took to get from 1001 to 2000 visits: 42 days
I'm impressed!
Monday, October 11, 2004
Fun With Electricity
Mondays at work are never fun. But today actually came close.
I was puttering around when Stella said something about her "ghetto-wrapped" computer monitor. (Stella can say that; she's also kind enough to ignore my Caucasianosity and say them around me.) She has a laptop, and since it's a Mac, it requires a little connector between the plug-end of the monitor cable and the teeny little plug on the Mac. Every time Stella wiggled the cord or moved the computer in any way, the monitor screen would turn a sickly, gastric green. I assumed--because this has happened on several other monitors, always with the same cause--that it had something to do with the little transformer on the monitor cord, and was something not worth fixing. (Monitors are cheap; repairs are expensive.)
So I had showed Stella, the first time this happened, how to get around it--by finding the perfect position for the cord, and making it stay that way. In her case, this meant wrapping it around her computer a couple of times, which as you might imagine looked pretty silly.
But looking at it today, I had another thought. So I went up to the attic, got a new connector, and went back to her office.
I reached for the monitor cable...unscrewed the little screws...
>>>>>KABLAMMMMMM!<<<<< and the ENTIRE BUILDING went completely...dark.
I mean, this was a BIG boom. This was like, an M-80-in-a-metal-trash-drum boom; a pipe-bomb-in-the-next-building boom. And everyone in the room--Stella, Nancy, Maude, and Charles--all looked at me, standing guiltily with half a monitor cable in each hand, and all yelled at the same time: "Gladys!!"
I have a feeling I'll never hear the end of this, even though it turned out in the end to have been nothing more than a blown transformer--apparently one of the North Shore squirrels fricaseed himself on the high-voltage lines again. This happens once or twice a year, at least; you'd think they'd squirrel-proof the power grid or something.
The lights were out for three hours. On the plus side, though, I fixed Stella's monitor--the cord on her little connector was just kinked. (We should all be so lucky.)
I was puttering around when Stella said something about her "ghetto-wrapped" computer monitor. (Stella can say that; she's also kind enough to ignore my Caucasianosity and say them around me.) She has a laptop, and since it's a Mac, it requires a little connector between the plug-end of the monitor cable and the teeny little plug on the Mac. Every time Stella wiggled the cord or moved the computer in any way, the monitor screen would turn a sickly, gastric green. I assumed--because this has happened on several other monitors, always with the same cause--that it had something to do with the little transformer on the monitor cord, and was something not worth fixing. (Monitors are cheap; repairs are expensive.)
So I had showed Stella, the first time this happened, how to get around it--by finding the perfect position for the cord, and making it stay that way. In her case, this meant wrapping it around her computer a couple of times, which as you might imagine looked pretty silly.
But looking at it today, I had another thought. So I went up to the attic, got a new connector, and went back to her office.
I reached for the monitor cable...unscrewed the little screws...
>>>>>KABLAMMMMMM!<<<<< and the ENTIRE BUILDING went completely...dark.
I mean, this was a BIG boom. This was like, an M-80-in-a-metal-trash-drum boom; a pipe-bomb-in-the-next-building boom. And everyone in the room--Stella, Nancy, Maude, and Charles--all looked at me, standing guiltily with half a monitor cable in each hand, and all yelled at the same time: "Gladys!!"
I have a feeling I'll never hear the end of this, even though it turned out in the end to have been nothing more than a blown transformer--apparently one of the North Shore squirrels fricaseed himself on the high-voltage lines again. This happens once or twice a year, at least; you'd think they'd squirrel-proof the power grid or something.
The lights were out for three hours. On the plus side, though, I fixed Stella's monitor--the cord on her little connector was just kinked. (We should all be so lucky.)
I Am a Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Person.
Okay. It's time for me to say this, and then you can all gasp in astonished horror, loudly enough to suck in a housefly or a stray child, and stalk off in outrage to some other blog; some nice, civilized blog written by a blood-drinking, Bush-voting, baby-slapping stinkbug who was raised by wolves and blogs without using vowels, punctuation, or the word "the".
I.....
(covering my head)
neverlikedchristopherreeve.
There. It's out. I've said it, and I meant it, and I'll say it again if I have to.
I agree--it was tragic, what happened to him. And yes, he devoted the rest of his life to helping others after his tragedy and yada yada yada wocka wocka wocka.
But.
If he was Joseph P. "I-Never-Starred-In-Superman" Blow, and he had fallen off a horse and ended up paralyzed, and spent ten years in a wheelchair, nearly....would we have known anything about him? Even if he'd spent the intervening ten years agitating for the rights of the disabled and for research for funding? Would we have ever seen him on TV, or known of his death?
(Hint: no.)
So basically, we're mourning him not because of the work he did for stem-cell research, or for his activism for the disabled: we're mourning him because he could fly, twenty-five years ago.
Somehow I have a hard time with that.
You may now all pummel me with Wiffle-ball bats, table legs, and sockfuls of pennies. I will accept my penance stoically.
I.....
(covering my head)
neverlikedchristopherreeve.
There. It's out. I've said it, and I meant it, and I'll say it again if I have to.
I agree--it was tragic, what happened to him. And yes, he devoted the rest of his life to helping others after his tragedy and yada yada yada wocka wocka wocka.
But.
If he was Joseph P. "I-Never-Starred-In-Superman" Blow, and he had fallen off a horse and ended up paralyzed, and spent ten years in a wheelchair, nearly....would we have known anything about him? Even if he'd spent the intervening ten years agitating for the rights of the disabled and for research for funding? Would we have ever seen him on TV, or known of his death?
(Hint: no.)
So basically, we're mourning him not because of the work he did for stem-cell research, or for his activism for the disabled: we're mourning him because he could fly, twenty-five years ago.
Somehow I have a hard time with that.
You may now all pummel me with Wiffle-ball bats, table legs, and sockfuls of pennies. I will accept my penance stoically.
Go Here, Now, Because I Said So.
In the interest of supporting fledgling bloggers (especially those who I know personally, in Real Life), I give you this:
...a brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-oven slice of bloggery!
Let's just say that I know who SHE is, and she knows who I is, but neither of us is going to tell on the other.
...a brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-oven slice of bloggery!
Let's just say that I know who SHE is, and she knows who I is, but neither of us is going to tell on the other.
Houseaversary!!
I knew it was coming up, but I somehow thought it was the 17th....
Today is the one-year anniversary of the day LJ and I moved into The Catastrophe With A Roof On.
Tempted though I am to say If I Knew Then What I Know Now...., I still have to admit that I'm thrilled to have my house, even if it is a money-sucking vortex of destruction--because it's MY money-sucking vortex of destruction. And even if I have a "Please Screw Me Over" sign on my forehead that only contractors and real-estate folks can see, I live in the hope of one day getting the place whipped into the shape it's capable of--which will be GORGEOUS, if I have my way.
Back to work....
Today is the one-year anniversary of the day LJ and I moved into The Catastrophe With A Roof On.
Tempted though I am to say If I Knew Then What I Know Now...., I still have to admit that I'm thrilled to have my house, even if it is a money-sucking vortex of destruction--because it's MY money-sucking vortex of destruction. And even if I have a "Please Screw Me Over" sign on my forehead that only contractors and real-estate folks can see, I live in the hope of one day getting the place whipped into the shape it's capable of--which will be GORGEOUS, if I have my way.
Back to work....
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Just A Possibility...
I'm thinking of moving this blog over to typepad.com. Anyone got any good/bad experiences that might influence my thinking on this?
Saturday, October 9, 2004
Damn You, Bloggovia!!!
This is all your fault. All of you. Every last bleedin' rat-infested one of you.
I walked down the stairs this afternoon (hey, I'm DEPRESSED, okay? Jeez. Like none of you have ever stayed in bed til 1:30 PM.) and, after all that sleep, was ready for a fairly-productive day. I had already cleaned out the tiling debris, which had been sitting in a corner of the bathroom waiting patiently for the never-gonna-happen return of Bob the Plumber; thrown away a huge sack of trash from that endeavor; and even put on The Work Clothes--one of my rattier t-shirts and the Pair of Jeans With The Gaping Thigh-Hole. (Stop laughing. Now. I mean it.)
And I gathered up the giant basket of laundry, waddled it down the stairs (it's really heavy) and walked through the living room toward the kitchen, where the basement awaited my attention.
Unfortunately, that entailed walking past the computer.
That was now almost three hours ago.
Damn you, Bloggovia!!!
On the plus side: check my Blogroll for a few new additions...oh, and TV Without Pity has a t-shirt with my favorite Amazing Race quote of all time, ever! I also had a minor breakthrough, which I will catalog later tonight after I do all the other stuff I have to get done--Mom's letter to the airlines about her noisy plane ride, my complaint about Bob the Plumber for the Illinois Attorney General, and my room-by-room Project Breakdown for the renevation, top to bottom, of The Catastrophe. (This is what comes of watching the series finale of _The Complex: Malibu_, which was a crappy show but oddly inspiring.)
Now I need some wings. There's nothing to eat in this house.
I walked down the stairs this afternoon (hey, I'm DEPRESSED, okay? Jeez. Like none of you have ever stayed in bed til 1:30 PM.) and, after all that sleep, was ready for a fairly-productive day. I had already cleaned out the tiling debris, which had been sitting in a corner of the bathroom waiting patiently for the never-gonna-happen return of Bob the Plumber; thrown away a huge sack of trash from that endeavor; and even put on The Work Clothes--one of my rattier t-shirts and the Pair of Jeans With The Gaping Thigh-Hole. (Stop laughing. Now. I mean it.)
And I gathered up the giant basket of laundry, waddled it down the stairs (it's really heavy) and walked through the living room toward the kitchen, where the basement awaited my attention.
Unfortunately, that entailed walking past the computer.
That was now almost three hours ago.
Damn you, Bloggovia!!!
On the plus side: check my Blogroll for a few new additions...oh, and TV Without Pity has a t-shirt with my favorite Amazing Race quote of all time, ever! I also had a minor breakthrough, which I will catalog later tonight after I do all the other stuff I have to get done--Mom's letter to the airlines about her noisy plane ride, my complaint about Bob the Plumber for the Illinois Attorney General, and my room-by-room Project Breakdown for the renevation, top to bottom, of The Catastrophe. (This is what comes of watching the series finale of _The Complex: Malibu_, which was a crappy show but oddly inspiring.)
Now I need some wings. There's nothing to eat in this house.
Somebody STILL Needs to Tell Me What The Hell A "Meme" Is
JUNE:
Thinksfar with vision. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having lots of ideas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating, tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous. Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Abiding. Able to show character. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Brand conscious. Executive. Stubborn.
Thinks
On The Marketability Of Blogs
There's a micro-mini-debate going on in the comments section of my last post, regarding the question of whether it's possible to make a living blogging. I've noticed that personal blogs, while probably the largest portion of Bloggovia, are considered the black sheep of the blog world--down on the lowest rung of legitimacy and viewership, alas. There are exceptions, of course--Mimi Smartypants, Dooce, One Good Thing--but for the most part....
(Hey, waitaminit--Has anybody else noticed that ALL those bloggers have kids, and blog about them more-than-occasionally? This bears examination, methinks.)
Anyway, the whole question of "marketability" was in my mind when I ran across this in the Chicago Tribune.
Maybe it's because I'm a blogger and because I try to be as honest as I can in what I write, but this makes me want to kill someone. I mean, what the hell??!!?? Isn't there enough bullshit in the world already? Marketers, haven't you invaded every other aspect of our lives? Could you just for once stumble across something real and then leave it the hell alone???? Just to prove you CAN? Just so when some over-serious dumbass like myself comes charging at you, casting aspersions upon your chosen career and saying you can't leave any new idea alone, you can point to it and say "Yeah, that's true, but look over HERE...there was this one time..."?
Yeah, of course I know better. But--I mean, damn. That's just WEAK.
(Hey, waitaminit--Has anybody else noticed that ALL those bloggers have kids, and blog about them more-than-occasionally? This bears examination, methinks.)
Anyway, the whole question of "marketability" was in my mind when I ran across this in the Chicago Tribune.
Maybe it's because I'm a blogger and because I try to be as honest as I can in what I write, but this makes me want to kill someone. I mean, what the hell??!!?? Isn't there enough bullshit in the world already? Marketers, haven't you invaded every other aspect of our lives? Could you just for once stumble across something real and then leave it the hell alone???? Just to prove you CAN? Just so when some over-serious dumbass like myself comes charging at you, casting aspersions upon your chosen career and saying you can't leave any new idea alone, you can point to it and say "Yeah, that's true, but look over HERE...there was this one time..."?
Yeah, of course I know better. But--I mean, damn. That's just WEAK.
Thursday, October 7, 2004
The Mood Swing
I want a guitar.
I want an electric guitar and a distortion pedal and a pair of Doc Martens. And a scream--my scream, my one way of saying everything I had to say back then, and even now.
I want my 20's back. I want my chances back.
I don't blame heroin for what I lost; I don't entirely even blame my own decisions for what I lost--not entirely. I blame the passage of time for what I lost, because the kind of person I want to be doesn't even EXIST in this world that's left.
I just remember a time before everything got so damn corporate, and now even the act of being anti-corporate is in itself a cliche. They sell us products with our own rebellion--"Be yourself, be unique, drink this mass-marketed beverage that you bought in a Wal-Mart." Even the act of saying that--of questioning it--is marketed back to us, an ironic hipster pose found in every bar between Western Avenue and the lake. They even have a little dismissive philosophical term for it: "oh, how meta." But when you come to a point where the questioning becomes too earnest, too real--when not only do you question, not only do you question the question, and even question the mechanism by which the question is questioned--when you actually MEAN it, when you're not just being "meta" but when, like me, you've hinged your whole identity and mission and purpose on the very act of peeling back the layers--well, then you're one step down from that kid in the playground who eats boogers--long past cool, just kinda weird and embarrassing anymore.
Oh, we can question now--but no one listens. Bloggovia is swarming with questioners and screamers--but the old guard has learned the art of deflection, of tossing buzzwords at a problem til it goes away--or even just ignoring it. And the act of questioning has become just part of the routine--so banal, so expected, so rote, that when the question is answered with some meaningless dada word-salad marketing-fed drivel, the public at large accepts it as an answer and we turn our attention to the next shiny bauble. "No comment" used to be the red flag to the bull; now we smile and say "Oh! Okay..." and go find something easier to do.
And I want it back, the time when the existence of the question was not assumed by every newly-hired marketing intern, when it wasn't the first automatic parry to the commercial thrust--when the question itself meant something, and the act of even asking was tantamount to heresy. I want the time when one scream could actually be heard, wasn't something lost and silenced in a chorus of many screamers, most of whom don't even know why they scream, except that it's expected.
More than anything I want someone in my life who understands this. Of all the things I miss about JP, that's the thing I miss the most. This would have been an all-night conversation-with-soundtrack, back then...instead I'm sitting in the living room of a broken-down and empty house, listening to Tori Amos playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on VH1, and wishing for a piece of my life that will never come back.
And I don't even know how to move forward anymore. I look at the people who are in my peer group--they're all off married, having kids, pursuing careers. Their priorities have shifted in ten years, and somehow I'm stuck ten years in the past. I don't want what they've got--but I don't want what I've got either.I feel like if I had some money, I could take the risk of making a change, at least in what I do every day--but not only don't I have enough money to take that risk, I don't even have enough money to pay the bills and keep up with all the little unexpected things. It would be easy to blame LJ for this--but the sad fact of the matter is, even if LJ wasn't around, I'd be in exactly the same situation, except lonelier. And it's not as though I've reached beyond my grasp in buying this house--at least, I don't think I did--and I don't live beyond my means. I don't want to stay in this job forever--partly because of the environment, but mainly because it's not what I really want for the rest of my life. I never saw myself working in an office, and though I love the problem-solving aspect of this job, I have other things that I really want to do. I want to be a creative person--I mean, I AM a creative person, but I want to make a living through it, or at least to have that as a viable, workable option.
But even if I could--even if I had the money--I still have that fear that everything I want to say has already been said, that no one wants to hear about the things that actually have meaning to me. In a way, I'm scared of having no choice but to sell out--to create things that mean nothing to me, that go directly against my vision of myself, and to have a choice between unacceptable compromise and survival.
There has to be a way--but I don't know what it is, or even if it's ultimately worth the effort it would take to find it.
I want an electric guitar and a distortion pedal and a pair of Doc Martens. And a scream--my scream, my one way of saying everything I had to say back then, and even now.
I want my 20's back. I want my chances back.
I don't blame heroin for what I lost; I don't entirely even blame my own decisions for what I lost--not entirely. I blame the passage of time for what I lost, because the kind of person I want to be doesn't even EXIST in this world that's left.
I just remember a time before everything got so damn corporate, and now even the act of being anti-corporate is in itself a cliche. They sell us products with our own rebellion--"Be yourself, be unique, drink this mass-marketed beverage that you bought in a Wal-Mart." Even the act of saying that--of questioning it--is marketed back to us, an ironic hipster pose found in every bar between Western Avenue and the lake. They even have a little dismissive philosophical term for it: "oh, how meta." But when you come to a point where the questioning becomes too earnest, too real--when not only do you question, not only do you question the question, and even question the mechanism by which the question is questioned--when you actually MEAN it, when you're not just being "meta" but when, like me, you've hinged your whole identity and mission and purpose on the very act of peeling back the layers--well, then you're one step down from that kid in the playground who eats boogers--long past cool, just kinda weird and embarrassing anymore.
Oh, we can question now--but no one listens. Bloggovia is swarming with questioners and screamers--but the old guard has learned the art of deflection, of tossing buzzwords at a problem til it goes away--or even just ignoring it. And the act of questioning has become just part of the routine--so banal, so expected, so rote, that when the question is answered with some meaningless dada word-salad marketing-fed drivel, the public at large accepts it as an answer and we turn our attention to the next shiny bauble. "No comment" used to be the red flag to the bull; now we smile and say "Oh! Okay..." and go find something easier to do.
And I want it back, the time when the existence of the question was not assumed by every newly-hired marketing intern, when it wasn't the first automatic parry to the commercial thrust--when the question itself meant something, and the act of even asking was tantamount to heresy. I want the time when one scream could actually be heard, wasn't something lost and silenced in a chorus of many screamers, most of whom don't even know why they scream, except that it's expected.
More than anything I want someone in my life who understands this. Of all the things I miss about JP, that's the thing I miss the most. This would have been an all-night conversation-with-soundtrack, back then...instead I'm sitting in the living room of a broken-down and empty house, listening to Tori Amos playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on VH1, and wishing for a piece of my life that will never come back.
And I don't even know how to move forward anymore. I look at the people who are in my peer group--they're all off married, having kids, pursuing careers. Their priorities have shifted in ten years, and somehow I'm stuck ten years in the past. I don't want what they've got--but I don't want what I've got either.I feel like if I had some money, I could take the risk of making a change, at least in what I do every day--but not only don't I have enough money to take that risk, I don't even have enough money to pay the bills and keep up with all the little unexpected things. It would be easy to blame LJ for this--but the sad fact of the matter is, even if LJ wasn't around, I'd be in exactly the same situation, except lonelier. And it's not as though I've reached beyond my grasp in buying this house--at least, I don't think I did--and I don't live beyond my means. I don't want to stay in this job forever--partly because of the environment, but mainly because it's not what I really want for the rest of my life. I never saw myself working in an office, and though I love the problem-solving aspect of this job, I have other things that I really want to do. I want to be a creative person--I mean, I AM a creative person, but I want to make a living through it, or at least to have that as a viable, workable option.
But even if I could--even if I had the money--I still have that fear that everything I want to say has already been said, that no one wants to hear about the things that actually have meaning to me. In a way, I'm scared of having no choice but to sell out--to create things that mean nothing to me, that go directly against my vision of myself, and to have a choice between unacceptable compromise and survival.
There has to be a way--but I don't know what it is, or even if it's ultimately worth the effort it would take to find it.
Because I Can
Sign that I am contemplating for the front panel of my desk here at work:
"Every time you nag me, God kills a bunny rabbit."
"Every time you nag me, God kills a bunny rabbit."
Tuesday, October 5, 2004
Confessions, Part Two
I am also a bratty girlfriend today.
I came home and there was a little green notebook on the side table. I knew it wasn't mine; I picked it up anyway.
I contemplated a well-placed post-it note--"Gee, that's a lot of females. I wonder what the little stars next to their names mean?"
I settled for something nearly as snarky--I had promised LJ that I'd pay him back half the money for the latest Crap-Wagon repair, so I stopped at the ATM on the way home.
Guess where I left the money??
That's right--right in front of the page with all the stars.
Either he's doing nothing and that's an old list--it looks old-ish---or he IS doing something, in which case, once he finds it, he knows I know. Either way, I'm fine and I've made my point.
AND I ate one of his pork chops. So there.
I came home and there was a little green notebook on the side table. I knew it wasn't mine; I picked it up anyway.
I contemplated a well-placed post-it note--"Gee, that's a lot of females. I wonder what the little stars next to their names mean?"
I settled for something nearly as snarky--I had promised LJ that I'd pay him back half the money for the latest Crap-Wagon repair, so I stopped at the ATM on the way home.
Guess where I left the money??
That's right--right in front of the page with all the stars.
Either he's doing nothing and that's an old list--it looks old-ish---or he IS doing something, in which case, once he finds it, he knows I know. Either way, I'm fine and I've made my point.
AND I ate one of his pork chops. So there.
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