Important Facts, June 2009

1. Birthdays are alternately sucky and awesome. The "pondering the passage of time, the wasted years and my own eventual death" part = sucky. The "really awesome present from Mom, upon which this blog entry is being written from the privacy of my own room AND wirelessly" = awesome. Also, not being in the hospital for my birthday, a la 2005 = also awesome.

2. My boss is a....no, don't want to be QUITE that profane.
My boss is a....no, I'd probably get sent straight to hell just for TYPING that.
My boss is...Okay, look. My boss is a FU----G B---H, is the point I'm heading towards here. (In fact, I'll even go back and redact the middle letters there, just so no one can go tut-tut at me. But she IS that, and worse, to the uttermost degree.) Today was the Office Picnic. It was moved inside due to an infestation of mud in the usual picnic ground; otherwise, though, it was a repeat of last year...in all aspects but one. See, last year, the picnic ended at 2, and afterwards everyone could go home. THIS year, however, Ms BossLady decided to buttonhole a departing Help Desk staffer and question his decision to leave. When my immediate boss objected, saying "that's not what happened last year," she insisted that it WAS. So while EVERY DEPARTMENT BUT OURS left to go home for the day, my colleagues and I labored on--even though we are a technical-support department and there was no one to support but ourselves! AND--to add icing to this crapcake--Ms BossLady left at 5, my immediate boss left at 4:15, and I? Had to stay til 6:30, just like every day. What a crock of crap.

3. I am not moving in November. I have told Tim this; I am not moving. It is not in my best interests to move. He and Squeaky are welcome to stay and work out what they're doing next, but the baby will not be brought "home" to here in December. We all have limits. Tim understands this and thinks it's fine, and he says he's grateful for my straightforwardness. Despite his many flaws, I will not be shaken from my opinion: Tim is a good guy, with bad judgement and worse luck, who's gotten himself in waaaaaaaaaaaaay over his head in life. He isn't trying to take advantage; if it does come out that way sometimes, it's unintentional. I fully expect that Tim and I will end up as roomies in the old-age home, if his liver makes it that long.

4. Squeaky, though, I can take or leave, and would prefer to leave. She spent Mother's Day with me at my mom's house--a last-minute invite for dinner, since Tim had gone all Asshole-Boy and went off to hang with his friends--and even my MOM said Squeak is extremely self-centered. Every conversation came back around to "I'm pregnant!" She's not a bad person--in fact, I think the thing that disturbs me most about her is that I see in her a lot of who I might have easily become, had my life not turned in the direction that it had. If I had continued on the pampered-darling path I was heading down when I was 18 or 19 or 20, I could very well have remained unconscious, invested my entire energy, heart, and soul into a Man, and been somebody's little shadow, someone's mouthpiece, for the rest of my days. I can't pinpoint the moment my life turned--it was before I met JP, probably, but not LONG before--but I thank X every day for it.

4a. "You thank WHO? Who's 'X'?" Okay, look. I know some of you might be religious, and I begrudge no one their deity, but seriously: if people do not stop whacking me upside the head with their Lord and Savior, I'm gonna get REAL heathenish, REAL quick. Yesterday I left work early with a bad stomach; before I left, my cubemate PUT HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER (big no-no--I'm practically Asperger-y about unsolicited touch) and PRAYED that I would be HEALED in the name of JESUS. (And no, there was NO irony intended at all--he was dead serious.) Today, when he brought his wife and kids in for the picnic, he announced to them "I prayed for Gladys yesterday when she was sick, and she got better." I WANTED to say, "I was gonna get better ANYWAY, nimbot--this happens pretty much EVERY month for a day or two," but I figured, if it made him happy to believe that he'd "cured" my monthly case of premenstrual bubbleguts, who was I to harsh his God-buzz? But seriously: between him, Mom, and random kindly strangers who take entirely too much interest in the condition of my alleged immortal soul, I am distancing myself ENTIRELY from this whole Judeo-Christian-normativity complex. In other words: please remove your higher power from my grill. He is not happy there; it's not the kind of 'hood He wants to inhabit. K, thx, BAI!!!

5. Summary: I'm good. Not great--sometimes not even functioning, alas--but taking things on the balance, I'm doing okay. A few improvements could be made, but that will come in time, I hope.

(but my boss is still a bitch...)