This is the third post I started today. Both of them got out of hand fairly fast; the first one bogged down by details, the second one just too damn hard to write, and the effort has worn me out.
I'm going to bed. It will probably seem strange to say it, but I am mostly happy right now; it's just that being happy is a tangly thing for me, and talking about my current happiness brings up memories that make me sad. So yes, I am okay; better than okay, really, but not in a way I can express at the moment.
More later.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Yupdates
8/31/09: Note: I thought I posted this, like, DAYS ago, and only the recent "Hey Gladys! New post?" alert from Miz made me realize that I hadn't. So here, in its incomplete entirety, is the Post You Didn't See...
Since there seem to be long strings trailing from a few of my recent posts, I figure I'll just toss out a couple of updates.
First things first: Eatmisery's blog is once again in the land of the living!!! Glad to have you back, Miz...I can't imagine losing six years of posts, so I can only guess how terrifying that had to have been for you, finding that message where your blog should have been. (Incidentally, short of printing it or publishing it to your own personal website, the only way to back up a blog is to use Blogger's "export" function, which sends an .xml copy of your stuff. Not ideal, IMHO; I think I'm going to start making a Word file out of this one, just in case.)
In other news, I actually had a reasonably productive conversation on Facebook with the girl who posted the link to that racially-fraught blog. She started out the next day with a status message wondering "why is it that concern for out children is automatically labeled as racism". Needless to say, I called bullshit on THAT line of inquiry, and as the conversation went on, she explained that HER predominant concerns were: 1)the barbecuers were inside the fenced-in playlot area, which--along with being meant for KIDS, not grown people--is heavily posted with signs saying "No alcohol/no open flame"; 2) that the kids playing in the playlot were being engulfed in smoke clouds from the grills; and 3) that the adults were drinking in the playlot (illegal), acting like drunken d-bags, and generally NOT being good examples. She also explained that the park renovation had been paid for with a special tax levy, directly by the residents of that area, and that it seemed unfair that their kids couldn't even play there, due to misbehavior from people who didn't even pay for it. I came back with a reply, agreeing with all those points--but then pointed out that neither the "officer's" quotes from the original blog, nor the responses posted in the comment section, made any mention of ANY of the VALID points. I took up a sequence of five Facebook comments to explain that what I was reading indicated less of a problem with WHAT was happening in the park, and much more concern regarding WHO was in the park.
At this point, one of her other friends--someone I don't know, mercifully--came back with words to the effect of "I DO have a problem with WHO, and I don't care who knows it--at least I'm being honest! Now go ahead and call me ignorant or whatever--I don't care." I replied that I had no plans to call her ANYTHING (well, not out loud--my thoughts are my own) and that we were each entitled to our own opinions, and no harm done. Normally, that would be that--right?
Well, apparently this person didn't get the memo, because she just kept going. "I think I'll take a bunch of MY friends, a grill, and a cooler to THEIR park this weekend. I'm sure NOTHING will happen to me..." As far as I can tell, she's the only one among the people I talk to who is actively celebrating her own narrowmindedness in this way; I do wonder, though, how many agree with her and just say nothing.
Since there seem to be long strings trailing from a few of my recent posts, I figure I'll just toss out a couple of updates.
First things first: Eatmisery's blog is once again in the land of the living!!! Glad to have you back, Miz...I can't imagine losing six years of posts, so I can only guess how terrifying that had to have been for you, finding that message where your blog should have been. (Incidentally, short of printing it or publishing it to your own personal website, the only way to back up a blog is to use Blogger's "export" function, which sends an .xml copy of your stuff. Not ideal, IMHO; I think I'm going to start making a Word file out of this one, just in case.)
In other news, I actually had a reasonably productive conversation on Facebook with the girl who posted the link to that racially-fraught blog. She started out the next day with a status message wondering "why is it that concern for out children is automatically labeled as racism". Needless to say, I called bullshit on THAT line of inquiry, and as the conversation went on, she explained that HER predominant concerns were: 1)the barbecuers were inside the fenced-in playlot area, which--along with being meant for KIDS, not grown people--is heavily posted with signs saying "No alcohol/no open flame"; 2) that the kids playing in the playlot were being engulfed in smoke clouds from the grills; and 3) that the adults were drinking in the playlot (illegal), acting like drunken d-bags, and generally NOT being good examples. She also explained that the park renovation had been paid for with a special tax levy, directly by the residents of that area, and that it seemed unfair that their kids couldn't even play there, due to misbehavior from people who didn't even pay for it. I came back with a reply, agreeing with all those points--but then pointed out that neither the "officer's" quotes from the original blog, nor the responses posted in the comment section, made any mention of ANY of the VALID points. I took up a sequence of five Facebook comments to explain that what I was reading indicated less of a problem with WHAT was happening in the park, and much more concern regarding WHO was in the park.
At this point, one of her other friends--someone I don't know, mercifully--came back with words to the effect of "I DO have a problem with WHO, and I don't care who knows it--at least I'm being honest! Now go ahead and call me ignorant or whatever--I don't care." I replied that I had no plans to call her ANYTHING (well, not out loud--my thoughts are my own) and that we were each entitled to our own opinions, and no harm done. Normally, that would be that--right?
Well, apparently this person didn't get the memo, because she just kept going. "I think I'll take a bunch of MY friends, a grill, and a cooler to THEIR park this weekend. I'm sure NOTHING will happen to me..." As far as I can tell, she's the only one among the people I talk to who is actively celebrating her own narrowmindedness in this way; I do wonder, though, how many agree with her and just say nothing.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
And Furthermore, Bugger All MY Problems...
...because one of the Frequent Flyers of my comments section is in some SERIOUS hot water, entirely through ZERO fault of her own!!
Eatmisery's blog, Comments From the Peanut Gallery, has been unfairly labelled by Google/Blogger as an "attack site". (Link to the particulars here...) Apparently, she has a gadget or a link on her page to a geneology site, a bloglink site, and (what I am assuming to be) some sort of ad for SOMETHING. And apparently, by placing these PERFECTLY FREAKING INNOCENT LINKS on her blog, she has been marked with the scarlet letter of "MALWARE PROVIDER!! ATTACK! BADSITE! BADSITE!! DANGER! DANGER! WOOP WOOP WOOP!" Click on the link to her blog above, if you want to see how scary they make it sound.
BUT: That's not the worst of it.
NOT ONLY have they put a big scary red thing at her blog's link...
NOT ONLY has Google/Blogger been AB-SO-EFFING-GODDANG-LUTELY --ZERO TO THE INFINITE POWER-- worth of help with this issue (I've seen her increasingly-panicked posts all over the Google/Blogger support forums today)...
BUT: When you click on the "ignore this warning" link to go to her blog?
IT TELLS YOU THAT HER BLOG DOES NOT EXIST.
Now, here's the thing. Miz is expecting twins any day. She's at the end of a high-risk pregnancy, and she's been using her blog to keep distant friends and family up to date on what's going on. And suddenly, with NO warning, and with NO kind of instruction, advice, or support on how to solve this issue, her perfectly innocent, no-malware-involved blog has been, as the activists of several foreign countries phrase it, "disappeared". FOR NO GOOD REASON. And no one from Google or Blogger will answer her questions--despite their presence on the VERY THREADS she's asking for help in.
I am reasonably sure that her blog has not been deleted for good and for all--after all, how many times have we now been warned that "everything is eternal on the Internet"? But seriously--nobody, least of all a pregnant woman, should have to go through THAT kind of bullshit, then have it compounded by an unresponsive corporation. When Blogger was small, without Google's hand all up its backside, their response times were INFINITELY better--not that it would be difficult, since she's now going on several DAYS with no response.
HEY GOOGLE! We're watching this, and you're really not looking very good right now.
I know I'll be backing up every word of this blog; I'm in no way prepared to have almost six years of my past and history chewed up and spat out by a faceless monolith with a cute logo. Hell no, not for me. I'll go to Wordpress and take my OWN chances, if that's how this place is headed.
Eatmisery's blog, Comments From the Peanut Gallery, has been unfairly labelled by Google/Blogger as an "attack site". (Link to the particulars here...) Apparently, she has a gadget or a link on her page to a geneology site, a bloglink site, and (what I am assuming to be) some sort of ad for SOMETHING. And apparently, by placing these PERFECTLY FREAKING INNOCENT LINKS on her blog, she has been marked with the scarlet letter of "MALWARE PROVIDER!! ATTACK! BADSITE! BADSITE!! DANGER! DANGER! WOOP WOOP WOOP!" Click on the link to her blog above, if you want to see how scary they make it sound.
BUT: That's not the worst of it.
NOT ONLY have they put a big scary red thing at her blog's link...
NOT ONLY has Google/Blogger been AB-SO-EFFING-GODDANG-LUTELY --ZERO TO THE INFINITE POWER-- worth of help with this issue (I've seen her increasingly-panicked posts all over the Google/Blogger support forums today)...
BUT: When you click on the "ignore this warning" link to go to her blog?
IT TELLS YOU THAT HER BLOG DOES NOT EXIST.
Now, here's the thing. Miz is expecting twins any day. She's at the end of a high-risk pregnancy, and she's been using her blog to keep distant friends and family up to date on what's going on. And suddenly, with NO warning, and with NO kind of instruction, advice, or support on how to solve this issue, her perfectly innocent, no-malware-involved blog has been, as the activists of several foreign countries phrase it, "disappeared". FOR NO GOOD REASON. And no one from Google or Blogger will answer her questions--despite their presence on the VERY THREADS she's asking for help in.
I am reasonably sure that her blog has not been deleted for good and for all--after all, how many times have we now been warned that "everything is eternal on the Internet"? But seriously--nobody, least of all a pregnant woman, should have to go through THAT kind of bullshit, then have it compounded by an unresponsive corporation. When Blogger was small, without Google's hand all up its backside, their response times were INFINITELY better--not that it would be difficult, since she's now going on several DAYS with no response.
HEY GOOGLE! We're watching this, and you're really not looking very good right now.
I know I'll be backing up every word of this blog; I'm in no way prepared to have almost six years of my past and history chewed up and spat out by a faceless monolith with a cute logo. Hell no, not for me. I'll go to Wordpress and take my OWN chances, if that's how this place is headed.
I Don't Even Have a Title For This One.
In the course of one of their "status updates", I was referred, by one of my various FaceSpaceFriends, to this blog: www.inandaround60655.blogspot.com . This is the post in question; reading the comments will be especially instructive (and/or bring you to the point of reverse digestion, as it very nearly did for me). And the fact that the original diatribe was written by someone who refers to himself as "Det. Shaved Longcock" gives it an extra air of insight and maturity.
I have, as usual, gotten ahead of myself.
Mount Greenwood Park is a fairly-large park at 111th Street and Central Park Ave, or thereabouts, in the neighborhood of the same name. This is very near the area in which I grew up; not quite the same district, but close. It's known as a stronghold of city workers (To you non-Chicagoans: All employees of the City of Chicago--police, firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, anybody with a City job--must live within the boundaries of the city. Click here: Community Map Now go down near the bottom, to the leftmost part of the colored area. See that green chunk, with like a little stem hanging it onto the rest of the city? That's Mount Greenwood)...a stronghold of city workers and, not to put too fine a point on it, white people who don't want to be bothered with all those minority-types. Needless to say, as soon as I could get away from there, I did; the few times I've had to go back have been unmixed Hell. For most of my adult life I've had nothing even remotely positive to say about the neighborhood or the people who live there, and that includes the people I grew up with. My anger was based on my memories of being picked on, being teased, boys who didn't like me and girls who snickered at me behind my back; and even once I was old enough to realize that I was operating from the "victim" point-of-view in that case, by that time there was JP, and The Race Thing, to focus my anger onto. It was fairly easy to hate everybody; they were a faceless "Them" attached to bad memories and ugly politics.
With the advent of technology, though, I reconnected with quite a few of my grade-school friends. I've IMed with many of them, read their updates, and generally been pretty happy to discover that even some people I really didn't like very much when I was growing up, have turned into decent, reasonably-cool people. It's much harder to hate people when you know their day-to-day stuff, even if you DO have bad memories of them left from long ago, and so my attitude toward the old neighborhood had softened quite a bit, really, without me even noticing.
Well, as you might imagine, that opinion took a very LARGE hit this morning when I realized that one of the people I actually LIKED was pointing people toward this site and talking about "Save Mt. Greenwood Park!" I posted a status update that expressed my sadness at discovering that this kind of attitude still exists. That was about as far as I was comfortable letting myself go with it; it was a compromise wording, at best, from what I was REALLY feeling.
A few minutes later, I got an IM from another of these friends. "Everything OK? What's wrong?" I asked her if she'd read the blog the first girl had linked to, and she said yes, she had. "It just makes me really sad that people I LIKE are advocating this view," I said.
Long pause. "Well, they need to stay in their own parks and bbq there. Everybody's afraid to say anything because then they'll be called a racist, but that's bull."
Um....hm. O.....kay.....? Am I crazy, or....?
"Well, i mean, everybody has their own views," I replied.
The conversation went on for a while--a very short while, since it was evident we were discussing from two very, very different places. Then she got booted off, and I sent her a little e-mail where I finished "And I don't live there anymore, so I probably ought to stay out of it." Which is true.
But here's the thing: My mom has, for quite a while now, been agitating for me to keep her house when the inevitable day comes that her time on Earth is over. (Yeah, that's a squeamish, Irish-Catholic way of phrasing it; though she drives me bonkers sometimes, I love my mom, and don't like to think about this.) After my long-drawn saga with the Catastrophe, I've learned to appreciate a well-constructed, well-maintained building, and slowly I had begun to consider the possibility that yes, I might take over my mom's house after all, when the time came to make that decision.
Now? No. Hell no. There are houses all over the city, in places where people don't think in terms of "Us" vs. "Them", nor talk about the "fall" of a park just because some people of a different skin color have set out their lawn chairs there. They can say all they want about "liberals" and everything else--I knew what was coming when I read that sentence!!--but the fact of the matter is, THEY are the ones with the position based in fear and in lack of knowledge. "No, we don't think ANYONE of ANY race should be barbequing there..." Yeah. Okay. But if the picnickers were white, you would only notice them if they were being d-bags; because they're Those People, you just decide they don't belong, and nevermind if they're the most polite people on Earth.
I guess the real core of the matter, which reflects on me more than on them, is this: I hadn't thought about it for a while, and so it had sort of faded into the back of my mind. When you don't run into an issue, it's easier to pretend it's gone away, I guess; easier to think "hey, maybe it's not like that anymore." Well, it's "like that". It's very, very much "like that", and I don't think I'll be forgetting that any time soon.
I have, as usual, gotten ahead of myself.
Mount Greenwood Park is a fairly-large park at 111th Street and Central Park Ave, or thereabouts, in the neighborhood of the same name. This is very near the area in which I grew up; not quite the same district, but close. It's known as a stronghold of city workers (To you non-Chicagoans: All employees of the City of Chicago--police, firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, anybody with a City job--must live within the boundaries of the city. Click here: Community Map Now go down near the bottom, to the leftmost part of the colored area. See that green chunk, with like a little stem hanging it onto the rest of the city? That's Mount Greenwood)...a stronghold of city workers and, not to put too fine a point on it, white people who don't want to be bothered with all those minority-types. Needless to say, as soon as I could get away from there, I did; the few times I've had to go back have been unmixed Hell. For most of my adult life I've had nothing even remotely positive to say about the neighborhood or the people who live there, and that includes the people I grew up with. My anger was based on my memories of being picked on, being teased, boys who didn't like me and girls who snickered at me behind my back; and even once I was old enough to realize that I was operating from the "victim" point-of-view in that case, by that time there was JP, and The Race Thing, to focus my anger onto. It was fairly easy to hate everybody; they were a faceless "Them" attached to bad memories and ugly politics.
With the advent of technology, though, I reconnected with quite a few of my grade-school friends. I've IMed with many of them, read their updates, and generally been pretty happy to discover that even some people I really didn't like very much when I was growing up, have turned into decent, reasonably-cool people. It's much harder to hate people when you know their day-to-day stuff, even if you DO have bad memories of them left from long ago, and so my attitude toward the old neighborhood had softened quite a bit, really, without me even noticing.
Well, as you might imagine, that opinion took a very LARGE hit this morning when I realized that one of the people I actually LIKED was pointing people toward this site and talking about "Save Mt. Greenwood Park!" I posted a status update that expressed my sadness at discovering that this kind of attitude still exists. That was about as far as I was comfortable letting myself go with it; it was a compromise wording, at best, from what I was REALLY feeling.
A few minutes later, I got an IM from another of these friends. "Everything OK? What's wrong?" I asked her if she'd read the blog the first girl had linked to, and she said yes, she had. "It just makes me really sad that people I LIKE are advocating this view," I said.
Long pause. "Well, they need to stay in their own parks and bbq there. Everybody's afraid to say anything because then they'll be called a racist, but that's bull."
Um....hm. O.....kay.....? Am I crazy, or....?
"Well, i mean, everybody has their own views," I replied.
The conversation went on for a while--a very short while, since it was evident we were discussing from two very, very different places. Then she got booted off, and I sent her a little e-mail where I finished "And I don't live there anymore, so I probably ought to stay out of it." Which is true.
But here's the thing: My mom has, for quite a while now, been agitating for me to keep her house when the inevitable day comes that her time on Earth is over. (Yeah, that's a squeamish, Irish-Catholic way of phrasing it; though she drives me bonkers sometimes, I love my mom, and don't like to think about this.) After my long-drawn saga with the Catastrophe, I've learned to appreciate a well-constructed, well-maintained building, and slowly I had begun to consider the possibility that yes, I might take over my mom's house after all, when the time came to make that decision.
Now? No. Hell no. There are houses all over the city, in places where people don't think in terms of "Us" vs. "Them", nor talk about the "fall" of a park just because some people of a different skin color have set out their lawn chairs there. They can say all they want about "liberals" and everything else--I knew what was coming when I read that sentence!!--but the fact of the matter is, THEY are the ones with the position based in fear and in lack of knowledge. "No, we don't think ANYONE of ANY race should be barbequing there..." Yeah. Okay. But if the picnickers were white, you would only notice them if they were being d-bags; because they're Those People, you just decide they don't belong, and nevermind if they're the most polite people on Earth.
I guess the real core of the matter, which reflects on me more than on them, is this: I hadn't thought about it for a while, and so it had sort of faded into the back of my mind. When you don't run into an issue, it's easier to pretend it's gone away, I guess; easier to think "hey, maybe it's not like that anymore." Well, it's "like that". It's very, very much "like that", and I don't think I'll be forgetting that any time soon.
Monday, August 17, 2009
It WAS Gonna Be a Comment, But Now It's A Post.
Well...Regarding "charity" vs "enabling", I'm going to have to say one thing first: It's become apparent here that I'm dealing with two entirely separate but grievously interlinked situations. While Tim is absolutely irreedeemable in terms of work ethic, Squeaky is a whoooole different critter. She has unfortunately chosen to hitch her wagon to ENTIRELY the wrong horse, but that's her problem and no concern of mine....
Here's the thing. She has put in many, many, many apps for jobs, and for the most part, the "no" answers have been fairly reluctant and given with a side-glance at the extremely prominent Belly. Who's gonna hire a pregnant woman, knowing she'll take off days for dr appointments, pukiness, labor, delivery, and all the rest?? Of course they never SAY as much, but still. My points: a) at least SOMEONE is trying, and has the chance to potentially have a decent job once she's not so obviously preggo; and b)at least SOMEONE is TRYING. She has actually lined up people willing to rent to her--even knowing her situation, finances, and all--if only she could get a cosigner with good credit--which fortunately leaves me RIGHT out. She's working her ass off to find a workable situation for her, the kid, and MAYBE Tim. I am beginning to believe that, aside from being young and possibly a wee bit silly and/or naive, Squeaky may have the tools to survive in this world. Right now she's just in a real, REAL bad place.
So, re: charity/enabling: I am absolutely ENABLING Tim. I told him as much, in fact. "I think we're now past the point where allowing you to stay here is doing you ANY good whatsoever," I said one night. "I don't think I'm helping you anymore by doing this." He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I know what you mean." Doesn't CHANGE anything, but at least I know, and he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know. If it were just him, I think I'd have been able to put him out at that point.
BUT: I do NOT believe I am enabling Squeaky. If I told her "Sure, bring the baby here when you get out of the hospital--what's one more squalling, eating, crapping mouth to feed?"--now THAT would be enabling. But I have made the line very bright indeed: No way is a newborn coming here. Nuh-uh, no way, no how, no ma'am. Have you ever SEEN an apartment burst at the seams??? Me neither, and I really have no desire to. Plus there's the extra added issue: None of them--not Tim, not Squeaky, not the Timlet, not the kitters--are on the lease for this place. You know who is? Me. Me, and Snick, and BadCat. THREE organisms--not EIGHT. So there's that, as well. The really cool building manager who would overlook anything as long as it was quiet and non-pyrogenic? He's gone now. So this is a dangerous game, and I've made the whole crew (well, other than the cats) aware of that. The first peep from the management, and --> out the door you must go.
So what I have here is a situation where (as I see it, anyway) I am helping the one party who's trying to make something of her life, and part of that (at the moment) unfortunately includes accepting the fact that I am enabling her albatross to continue his dangling. I am also clear on the fact that allowing them to stay here after the baby is born would put me very much over the line into "enabling EVERYBODY". So in essence, it's a self-limiting situation; they've got less than two months to work something out. She knows this; he knows this. It has spurred her to greater effort, and him to greater indolence. That's their little dynamic and--again--not my concern. I don't care WHO solves the problem; I care only that the problem is solved.
And yes, I have said all this, in not-so-many words; but to hear Squeaky talk, she's very much aware of the situation. She is pissed, should you wonder, at Tim's inaction, even as she extols his perceived "excitement" over the approaching Timlet. In this, Squeaky and I are very much alike: we've both fallen for sub-prime men. (Yes, that's EXACTLY the connotation I intended.)I've had my congenitally-unemployables, my "I don't WANNA go to work" types, my own versions of Tim. My situations were mitigated for the most part by my ability to support myself; she's trying, I think, to make sure hers are the same. The only difference is, I didn't get pregnant--which made my road a much simpler one than hers will be. But then again, she'll probably learn much more from her life than I have from mine, so there's that.
But--lest anyone think I'm keeping them here intentionally!--the only thing that keeps me from just chucking them out the door, bag and baggage (and stealing their littlest cat into the bargain--god, I LOVE this CAT!) is the ever-increasing presence of the Timlet. Were Squeaky not pregnant, this whole situation would be well and truly behind me by now; in fact, had it not been for that #**#@*^@ girl downstate's boyfriend's sister's whatever-it-was, I would be writing from an empty apartment for the first time in months--and in fact, if they weren't here, I wouldn't be writing this at all; I'd probably be doing something ridiculous like filling the bathtub with fudge-ripple ice cream and wallowing in it til I was wearing a shake.*
*not an actual plan--in fact, not an image anyone should even attempt to register. Brain bleach is available at the exits.
Believe me: I want them to go. The problem of making them go is the same problem that led me to take them in: I don't have the heart to leave a pregnant barely-21-year-old, with limited life skills, out on the street. But I can definitely set and enforce a deadline: they have til labor strikes. After that, they're on they're own--and unless I'm wrong, the irrevocable presence of a small hostage to fortune will light a fire under SOMEBODY's ass. And no, I'm not going to be soft-hearted about it either; I didn't have the fun of getting pregnant, so I shouldn't have to contend with the squalling, pooping outcome. (See, what you all don't know about me, which is the thing that makes the birth of the Timlet the Ultimate Line In The Sand: There are several lines in my world which shall not be crossed, circumstances be damned. Bumpy protrusions under the skin are one of them--all those people who are like "Here! Feel this dislodged bone in my broken leg as it wiggles around inside my shin--doesn't that feel coooooool???" are invariably met with HELL no, I ain't touchin' that shit!--oh, yeah, and "Hey--the baby's kicking! Here--feel that!" gets the same reaction. Stuff shouldn't be MOVING in there, is how I see it....Anyway, one of my other BIIIIG hell-no-I-ain'ts is poop. I had to wipe my grandmother's behind when she lived with my mom, and despite the fact that I loved my grandma dearly, if I could have performed that action from a separate building, in another zip code, and with a remote-controlled robot arm, I would have done so without a second thought. I don't do poop. I can barely deal with my OWN, let alone anyone else's. Page Dr. Freud if you'd like, but I don't care--NO. POOP. EVER. Even when I walk into the ladies' room and somebody hasn't flushed, my gag reflex instantly goes into overdrive. This is yet another of the many and varied reasons I've decided I'm not suited for motherhood--and it makes it reeeeeal easy indeed to say "Nope. No baby allowed. Sorry, guys--don't care how cute he is--he poops, therefore he's gone." And it's an indelible line, as well: no matter how soft may be my heart, my stomach of jello rules the day.)
See? Problem will solve itself.
Here's the thing. She has put in many, many, many apps for jobs, and for the most part, the "no" answers have been fairly reluctant and given with a side-glance at the extremely prominent Belly. Who's gonna hire a pregnant woman, knowing she'll take off days for dr appointments, pukiness, labor, delivery, and all the rest?? Of course they never SAY as much, but still. My points: a) at least SOMEONE is trying, and has the chance to potentially have a decent job once she's not so obviously preggo; and b)at least SOMEONE is TRYING. She has actually lined up people willing to rent to her--even knowing her situation, finances, and all--if only she could get a cosigner with good credit--which fortunately leaves me RIGHT out. She's working her ass off to find a workable situation for her, the kid, and MAYBE Tim. I am beginning to believe that, aside from being young and possibly a wee bit silly and/or naive, Squeaky may have the tools to survive in this world. Right now she's just in a real, REAL bad place.
So, re: charity/enabling: I am absolutely ENABLING Tim. I told him as much, in fact. "I think we're now past the point where allowing you to stay here is doing you ANY good whatsoever," I said one night. "I don't think I'm helping you anymore by doing this." He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I know what you mean." Doesn't CHANGE anything, but at least I know, and he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know. If it were just him, I think I'd have been able to put him out at that point.
BUT: I do NOT believe I am enabling Squeaky. If I told her "Sure, bring the baby here when you get out of the hospital--what's one more squalling, eating, crapping mouth to feed?"--now THAT would be enabling. But I have made the line very bright indeed: No way is a newborn coming here. Nuh-uh, no way, no how, no ma'am. Have you ever SEEN an apartment burst at the seams??? Me neither, and I really have no desire to. Plus there's the extra added issue: None of them--not Tim, not Squeaky, not the Timlet, not the kitters--are on the lease for this place. You know who is? Me. Me, and Snick, and BadCat. THREE organisms--not EIGHT. So there's that, as well. The really cool building manager who would overlook anything as long as it was quiet and non-pyrogenic? He's gone now. So this is a dangerous game, and I've made the whole crew (well, other than the cats) aware of that. The first peep from the management, and --> out the door you must go.
So what I have here is a situation where (as I see it, anyway) I am helping the one party who's trying to make something of her life, and part of that (at the moment) unfortunately includes accepting the fact that I am enabling her albatross to continue his dangling. I am also clear on the fact that allowing them to stay here after the baby is born would put me very much over the line into "enabling EVERYBODY". So in essence, it's a self-limiting situation; they've got less than two months to work something out. She knows this; he knows this. It has spurred her to greater effort, and him to greater indolence. That's their little dynamic and--again--not my concern. I don't care WHO solves the problem; I care only that the problem is solved.
And yes, I have said all this, in not-so-many words; but to hear Squeaky talk, she's very much aware of the situation. She is pissed, should you wonder, at Tim's inaction, even as she extols his perceived "excitement" over the approaching Timlet. In this, Squeaky and I are very much alike: we've both fallen for sub-prime men. (Yes, that's EXACTLY the connotation I intended.)I've had my congenitally-unemployables, my "I don't WANNA go to work" types, my own versions of Tim. My situations were mitigated for the most part by my ability to support myself; she's trying, I think, to make sure hers are the same. The only difference is, I didn't get pregnant--which made my road a much simpler one than hers will be. But then again, she'll probably learn much more from her life than I have from mine, so there's that.
But--lest anyone think I'm keeping them here intentionally!--the only thing that keeps me from just chucking them out the door, bag and baggage (and stealing their littlest cat into the bargain--god, I LOVE this CAT!) is the ever-increasing presence of the Timlet. Were Squeaky not pregnant, this whole situation would be well and truly behind me by now; in fact, had it not been for that #**#@*^@ girl downstate's boyfriend's sister's whatever-it-was, I would be writing from an empty apartment for the first time in months--and in fact, if they weren't here, I wouldn't be writing this at all; I'd probably be doing something ridiculous like filling the bathtub with fudge-ripple ice cream and wallowing in it til I was wearing a shake.*
*not an actual plan--in fact, not an image anyone should even attempt to register. Brain bleach is available at the exits.
Believe me: I want them to go. The problem of making them go is the same problem that led me to take them in: I don't have the heart to leave a pregnant barely-21-year-old, with limited life skills, out on the street. But I can definitely set and enforce a deadline: they have til labor strikes. After that, they're on they're own--and unless I'm wrong, the irrevocable presence of a small hostage to fortune will light a fire under SOMEBODY's ass. And no, I'm not going to be soft-hearted about it either; I didn't have the fun of getting pregnant, so I shouldn't have to contend with the squalling, pooping outcome. (See, what you all don't know about me, which is the thing that makes the birth of the Timlet the Ultimate Line In The Sand: There are several lines in my world which shall not be crossed, circumstances be damned. Bumpy protrusions under the skin are one of them--all those people who are like "Here! Feel this dislodged bone in my broken leg as it wiggles around inside my shin--doesn't that feel coooooool???" are invariably met with HELL no, I ain't touchin' that shit!--oh, yeah, and "Hey--the baby's kicking! Here--feel that!" gets the same reaction. Stuff shouldn't be MOVING in there, is how I see it....Anyway, one of my other BIIIIG hell-no-I-ain'ts is poop. I had to wipe my grandmother's behind when she lived with my mom, and despite the fact that I loved my grandma dearly, if I could have performed that action from a separate building, in another zip code, and with a remote-controlled robot arm, I would have done so without a second thought. I don't do poop. I can barely deal with my OWN, let alone anyone else's. Page Dr. Freud if you'd like, but I don't care--NO. POOP. EVER. Even when I walk into the ladies' room and somebody hasn't flushed, my gag reflex instantly goes into overdrive. This is yet another of the many and varied reasons I've decided I'm not suited for motherhood--and it makes it reeeeeal easy indeed to say "Nope. No baby allowed. Sorry, guys--don't care how cute he is--he poops, therefore he's gone." And it's an indelible line, as well: no matter how soft may be my heart, my stomach of jello rules the day.)
See? Problem will solve itself.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
This Is Why I Don't...
This is why I don't post about exciting news until after it's an accomplished fact.
For the past two weeks, Squeaky has been over the moon about an old friend of hers and how this girl was "saving her life", how she now "has (her) life together" and all the rest. The source of all this excitement was to happen on Monday, when she and Tim were to board a bus to the southern part of the state, where said friend lives. There, she had been assured, there were jobs, cheap housing, assistance for poor pregnant families, and the rest--a veritable land of milk and honey (or Cheetos and barbeque sauce, if you're Tim and Squeak.) They had been assured that the wait for public housing was negligible--less than a month--and that in the meantime, they could stay at the house of this friend of Squeaky's, who she hadn't seen in a while but who she'd run into on Facebook and reconnected with.
And so for the past two weeks I have been subjected to hours upon hours of "Is Tim going or isn't he?" and "I can't wait to get there" and "Should we take Megabus or Amtrak or should my friend come up and get us, or...?" Hours and hours and hours. And yes, I have been INTENSELY interested in the outcome--not so much the planning, just the point on Monday night when, for the first time since EARLY APRIL, I would come through the front door to a home that belonged--entirely and completely--to ONLY ME. I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to a large number of things at least partially contingent upon that, as well. (Yes, CR figures in a couple of them. I'm only human, for god's sake.)
Well, as of about noon today, all of them are dust. Squeaky sent me a message on Facebook: "I just got fucked over again. My friend totally backed out on me."
I called her at home and talked to her for about half an hour about this. Apparently, the friend's boyfriend something something her brother, whose girlfriend was crazy and wanted to kill him but is now also staying there with her kids, something something not enough space blah blah sorry. ("So what did you write back?" I asked. "Nothing--I was just totally in shock," she said. I don't normally interfere in other people's friendships, but I would give my right pinkie-finger right about now for that woman's e-mail addy. Even if Squeaky doesn't have the ability to say anything in the face of this situation, please feel free to bet your ENTIRE GLUTEAL REGION on the fact that I would retain no such compunction. Squeaky's life is not the ONLY one that's been fucked with by this decision.)
"I'm not talking to any of these people anymore," says Squeaky tearfully, then goes on to enumerate all the other friends she's going to call to see if she can get housing space from them. "Or we could get an apartment"--the "we" in this case does not include me, as I've already signed my lease for the year and I have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed--"I only need a co-signer," she says, "since I don't make enough money." Or have a job, or have a man with a job, or have anyone giving you any sort of financial assistance whatsoever... so where this mythical apartment-for-free is coming from is a whole 'nother question.
In the meantime: Squeaky is "depressed". Up until yesterday, Tim had not spoken more than three words to me over the previous ten days; he "just doesn't feel like talking", evidently, and this apparently includes talking to the person who has been giving him free floor space nearly full-time since 2008. Civility is a BITCH, I tell ya. So that's two in the "depressed" column.
Meanwhile, my job has given me a right-proper screwing--wait, let's find a better metaphor, since "a right-proper screwing" would be on the short list of things that might actually IMPROVE my temperament. (There's a CR story that fits in here, but in the interest of "not jinxing it", I'll forbear. However: man, if 10% of what he says is valid, real, anything--if he really means even 10% of what he says, I will have found the biggest turnaround of a human life since I quit heroin in '99. Seriously. I've got so much to tell on this subject, but in some ways I'm reluctant to expose it to skeptics. Not because skepticism will change my opinion of him, or of what he's claiming--only time and experience could do that, and if they do, it will officially mark the end of my belief that people really can change--but because every possible thing anyone could say against him is something I've already said to him directly, or thought to myself--mostly said to him directly, really. The first day he called me after being gone for six years, I promised myself that the days of staying silent and choking on my rage were over. If I had anything to say to him I was going to say it, all guns blazing if necessary. So far, we've talked on and off for a year, and there's not been any time I've broken that promise to myself. It's been his reactions which have startled me--acceptance, apology, a total lack of defensiveness or excuses or ANYTHING. "I did that. I was wrong, and I realize now what the consequences were." That's been the bulk of his reactions....I'm going off track here, but...Yeah.Short form: I am ready to be hurt again, or not to. Neither of these outcomes will upscuttle my life in any serious way; if it goes bad, then it's just a case of the leopard not changing his spots. In fact, it might actually upheave me more if it DOES work out well.)
Anyway, as I was saying: Job. So in the last post I told you about my new, "temporary" location...well, I've finished my first week there, and the verdict is in: please, send help, for I am dying here. The trip to the new place now adds 2 hours of commuting time to my day, each day, and changes my schedule drastically. Where before, I could get up at 9:15 and be at work at 10:00 as scheduled, I now start work at 8:30 and need to get out the door by 7:00 or risk lateness. And I arrive home only half an hour earlier, despite getting off work a full 90 minutes sooner each day. Supposedly, it's just temporary, but--and I don't know if I have ever mentioned this?--I am not a morning person. At. All. Not even a little bit. So getting up at that hour--admittedly not quite the ass-crack of dawn, but definitely beneath dawn's waist somewhere--It's not improving me, is what I'm saying. And then today--admittedly, a day I'd be working anyhow--I had to catch the bus early, and it was really crowded but I was lucky enough to get a seat--but then an old guy sat next to me and like, LEANED on me the whole ride, which wouldn't have been NEARLY as awful if he'd showered or changed his shirt since 1982. So all day long I have been smelling--whether it's real or imagined--Old Man Funk. I have actually been going out of my way to stand away from civilized folk so they can't smell what I smell. I believe I shall BURN this shirt when I get home.
Later:
It's hard to be here and know they're not going anywhere any time soon. I've been reading back over the past couple of years, and I've realized: this is not the first time I've had quite enough of these two, or even just of Tim himself. (He DID, however, manage a conversation when I got home; later translation from Squeaky explained that he really hadn't wanted to move, that he was happy they weren't moving because he knew he'd hate it, and thus his silence for the last...whenever.) I think this friendship is effectively over, once they leave; I really don't want that to be the case, but it really has been one-sided for quite a while now. And then I wonder if I'm really being fair; after all, I -am- the one who has the resources, the education and the easy employability; maybe this is just my role in this friendship, to be the one who's there for Tim when he needs me. But all the same, there's something wrong; I could live with the financial unbalance in our friendship, but lately he's just been a butthead, and the butthead differential can be a killer in ANY friendship. I don't know; time will tell. But in a year or two, when Tim comes back at me with a list of Ways In Which Gladys Failed As A Friend: Squeaky's Pregnancy Edition, I don't think I'll be as willing to accept the blame as I have been in the past.
For the past two weeks, Squeaky has been over the moon about an old friend of hers and how this girl was "saving her life", how she now "has (her) life together" and all the rest. The source of all this excitement was to happen on Monday, when she and Tim were to board a bus to the southern part of the state, where said friend lives. There, she had been assured, there were jobs, cheap housing, assistance for poor pregnant families, and the rest--a veritable land of milk and honey (or Cheetos and barbeque sauce, if you're Tim and Squeak.) They had been assured that the wait for public housing was negligible--less than a month--and that in the meantime, they could stay at the house of this friend of Squeaky's, who she hadn't seen in a while but who she'd run into on Facebook and reconnected with.
And so for the past two weeks I have been subjected to hours upon hours of "Is Tim going or isn't he?" and "I can't wait to get there" and "Should we take Megabus or Amtrak or should my friend come up and get us, or...?" Hours and hours and hours. And yes, I have been INTENSELY interested in the outcome--not so much the planning, just the point on Monday night when, for the first time since EARLY APRIL, I would come through the front door to a home that belonged--entirely and completely--to ONLY ME. I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to a large number of things at least partially contingent upon that, as well. (Yes, CR figures in a couple of them. I'm only human, for god's sake.)
Well, as of about noon today, all of them are dust. Squeaky sent me a message on Facebook: "I just got fucked over again. My friend totally backed out on me."
I called her at home and talked to her for about half an hour about this. Apparently, the friend's boyfriend something something her brother, whose girlfriend was crazy and wanted to kill him but is now also staying there with her kids, something something not enough space blah blah sorry. ("So what did you write back?" I asked. "Nothing--I was just totally in shock," she said. I don't normally interfere in other people's friendships, but I would give my right pinkie-finger right about now for that woman's e-mail addy. Even if Squeaky doesn't have the ability to say anything in the face of this situation, please feel free to bet your ENTIRE GLUTEAL REGION on the fact that I would retain no such compunction. Squeaky's life is not the ONLY one that's been fucked with by this decision.)
"I'm not talking to any of these people anymore," says Squeaky tearfully, then goes on to enumerate all the other friends she's going to call to see if she can get housing space from them. "Or we could get an apartment"--the "we" in this case does not include me, as I've already signed my lease for the year and I have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed--"I only need a co-signer," she says, "since I don't make enough money." Or have a job, or have a man with a job, or have anyone giving you any sort of financial assistance whatsoever... so where this mythical apartment-for-free is coming from is a whole 'nother question.
In the meantime: Squeaky is "depressed". Up until yesterday, Tim had not spoken more than three words to me over the previous ten days; he "just doesn't feel like talking", evidently, and this apparently includes talking to the person who has been giving him free floor space nearly full-time since 2008. Civility is a BITCH, I tell ya. So that's two in the "depressed" column.
Meanwhile, my job has given me a right-proper screwing--wait, let's find a better metaphor, since "a right-proper screwing" would be on the short list of things that might actually IMPROVE my temperament. (There's a CR story that fits in here, but in the interest of "not jinxing it", I'll forbear. However: man, if 10% of what he says is valid, real, anything--if he really means even 10% of what he says, I will have found the biggest turnaround of a human life since I quit heroin in '99. Seriously. I've got so much to tell on this subject, but in some ways I'm reluctant to expose it to skeptics. Not because skepticism will change my opinion of him, or of what he's claiming--only time and experience could do that, and if they do, it will officially mark the end of my belief that people really can change--but because every possible thing anyone could say against him is something I've already said to him directly, or thought to myself--mostly said to him directly, really. The first day he called me after being gone for six years, I promised myself that the days of staying silent and choking on my rage were over. If I had anything to say to him I was going to say it, all guns blazing if necessary. So far, we've talked on and off for a year, and there's not been any time I've broken that promise to myself. It's been his reactions which have startled me--acceptance, apology, a total lack of defensiveness or excuses or ANYTHING. "I did that. I was wrong, and I realize now what the consequences were." That's been the bulk of his reactions....I'm going off track here, but...Yeah.Short form: I am ready to be hurt again, or not to. Neither of these outcomes will upscuttle my life in any serious way; if it goes bad, then it's just a case of the leopard not changing his spots. In fact, it might actually upheave me more if it DOES work out well.)
Anyway, as I was saying: Job. So in the last post I told you about my new, "temporary" location...well, I've finished my first week there, and the verdict is in: please, send help, for I am dying here. The trip to the new place now adds 2 hours of commuting time to my day, each day, and changes my schedule drastically. Where before, I could get up at 9:15 and be at work at 10:00 as scheduled, I now start work at 8:30 and need to get out the door by 7:00 or risk lateness. And I arrive home only half an hour earlier, despite getting off work a full 90 minutes sooner each day. Supposedly, it's just temporary, but--and I don't know if I have ever mentioned this?--I am not a morning person. At. All. Not even a little bit. So getting up at that hour--admittedly not quite the ass-crack of dawn, but definitely beneath dawn's waist somewhere--It's not improving me, is what I'm saying. And then today--admittedly, a day I'd be working anyhow--I had to catch the bus early, and it was really crowded but I was lucky enough to get a seat--but then an old guy sat next to me and like, LEANED on me the whole ride, which wouldn't have been NEARLY as awful if he'd showered or changed his shirt since 1982. So all day long I have been smelling--whether it's real or imagined--Old Man Funk. I have actually been going out of my way to stand away from civilized folk so they can't smell what I smell. I believe I shall BURN this shirt when I get home.
Later:
It's hard to be here and know they're not going anywhere any time soon. I've been reading back over the past couple of years, and I've realized: this is not the first time I've had quite enough of these two, or even just of Tim himself. (He DID, however, manage a conversation when I got home; later translation from Squeaky explained that he really hadn't wanted to move, that he was happy they weren't moving because he knew he'd hate it, and thus his silence for the last...whenever.) I think this friendship is effectively over, once they leave; I really don't want that to be the case, but it really has been one-sided for quite a while now. And then I wonder if I'm really being fair; after all, I -am- the one who has the resources, the education and the easy employability; maybe this is just my role in this friendship, to be the one who's there for Tim when he needs me. But all the same, there's something wrong; I could live with the financial unbalance in our friendship, but lately he's just been a butthead, and the butthead differential can be a killer in ANY friendship. I don't know; time will tell. But in a year or two, when Tim comes back at me with a list of Ways In Which Gladys Failed As A Friend: Squeaky's Pregnancy Edition, I don't think I'll be as willing to accept the blame as I have been in the past.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Time For A New Post...
Yup. Sure is!!
And in a few days, I may have actual concrete news to put in one (hint: it involves a drastic reduction in the head-count here in Gladystopia--but since it's not an accomplished fact yet, I refuse to get my hopes up. We've been down THIS road before!)
In other news:
My delightful employers (may a trillion centipedes take up residence in their sock-drawer) have decided, as a "temporary" solution to a problem they themselves created, to move me to the downtown building, changing my start time from 10 AM to 8 AM, til further notice.
Have I mentioned that my current building is TWO BLOCKS AWAY from where I live?
Have I also mentioned that I LOVE my schedule? Or that I am NOT a morning person??
Well, I know I mentioned the first two to D-Bag, the boss from the last post; I also asked him flat-out if this was a further instance of Punishment for the Remedial Tech--they've already implemented this theory twice before, both times as "response" to some mistake or inefficiency on my part. (Sidebar: If you were a manager, and one of your employees had a difficult time accomplishing something as quickly as the others--for whatever reason, or possibly for no reason at all other than that she's not as well-educated in what she's doing as some of the others--but if you had an employee who had a hard time doing something quickly, what would be your response? (pauses for everyone to think about it) Okay. Did any of you say "Take that responsibility away from her, thus making it harder on all her co-workers, while making it perfectly clear to all why she no longer has this responsibility"?? What?? You DIDN'T think of that? You think that's a pretty effing cockamamie damn way to run a railroad?? Well, my friends, THIS is why you don't work where I do--because apparently YOU are in possession of some common sense. Incidentally--having thought long and hard about this myself, for reasons which I'm sure are apparent--my answer was "Give her a smaller number of tasks of this kind, while working closely with her to see what the problem areas are and to improve her speed in performing this task." Which just shows why I'M not suitable for management either.)
There's actually a lot more going on--not all of it great--but it's going to have to wait til I have definite confirmation on the other news, since it all ties in one way or another.
And in a few days, I may have actual concrete news to put in one (hint: it involves a drastic reduction in the head-count here in Gladystopia--but since it's not an accomplished fact yet, I refuse to get my hopes up. We've been down THIS road before!)
In other news:
My delightful employers (may a trillion centipedes take up residence in their sock-drawer) have decided, as a "temporary" solution to a problem they themselves created, to move me to the downtown building, changing my start time from 10 AM to 8 AM, til further notice.
Have I mentioned that my current building is TWO BLOCKS AWAY from where I live?
Have I also mentioned that I LOVE my schedule? Or that I am NOT a morning person??
Well, I know I mentioned the first two to D-Bag, the boss from the last post; I also asked him flat-out if this was a further instance of Punishment for the Remedial Tech--they've already implemented this theory twice before, both times as "response" to some mistake or inefficiency on my part. (Sidebar: If you were a manager, and one of your employees had a difficult time accomplishing something as quickly as the others--for whatever reason, or possibly for no reason at all other than that she's not as well-educated in what she's doing as some of the others--but if you had an employee who had a hard time doing something quickly, what would be your response? (pauses for everyone to think about it) Okay. Did any of you say "Take that responsibility away from her, thus making it harder on all her co-workers, while making it perfectly clear to all why she no longer has this responsibility"?? What?? You DIDN'T think of that? You think that's a pretty effing cockamamie damn way to run a railroad?? Well, my friends, THIS is why you don't work where I do--because apparently YOU are in possession of some common sense. Incidentally--having thought long and hard about this myself, for reasons which I'm sure are apparent--my answer was "Give her a smaller number of tasks of this kind, while working closely with her to see what the problem areas are and to improve her speed in performing this task." Which just shows why I'M not suitable for management either.)
There's actually a lot more going on--not all of it great--but it's going to have to wait til I have definite confirmation on the other news, since it all ties in one way or another.
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