Well, that was a heckuva holiday.
First off—I was one of the two last living bodies to flee my workplace, at 6:30 PM on Christmas Eve. Now. Let’s look at this through the distant lens of logic, which so seldom is found in my office. My work is dependent on a stream of work tickets. These tickets are provided by the first-line phone support staff, who receive requests for assistance via both phone and e-mail. If there were no first-line staff, work tickets would not be created.
So why in the name of curdled eggnog were we still there at 6:30 PM, a full TWO HOURS after the first-liners had shut off the phone, shut down their e-mail, locked the front door, and fled the vicinity on foot or by wheel???
(Answer: because the boss said we had to be there. Good enough reason, I guess.)
So Mom picked me up from work and we stopped at my place to feed the kits, and I picked up my suitcase and my bags of this and that, and went to spend the night at Mom’s, which is part of our Christmas tradition. And we did our little candle-lighting and our Bible reading, and Mom fixed a fabulous dinner, and we began the other part of our Christmas tradition: the Potato Ceremony. (This is actually part of the _real_ Christmas meal, but the preparations involved are time-consuming enough that we have to start them the night before.) And then Mom went to Midnight Mass, and I turned on WGN’s “Bozo, Gar and Ray” special, and wrapped the one present for Mom which had survived the holiday season intact; and placed it under the tree and went to bed.
And the next day, we opened gifts and finished potato-ing, and then we packed up what seemed like half the food in the house (four trays of twice-baked potatoes, two large cheesecakes, and two containers of strawberry topping, along with a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting) and trekked it down the ice-glazed walks to Mom’s car, and went to The Fun Relatives’ House. (The house belongs to my aunt-in-law; between her and the various people who bring side dishes and desserts, dinner there is a thing of beauty. And they really are fun people.)
Then I went home.
Here was my first mistake:
At about 11:00, later than the usual time that anyone calls me with GOOD news, I picked up the ringing phone to the sound of hysterical male weeping. I mean, just sobbing. My immediate thought was Oh my god, Tim’s cat died. (It was, of course, Tim. Who did you think it would be?) But no—the cat is apparently hale and hardy, though it took some time before I could pick out enough whole syllables to ascertain that such was the case. He was just…bawling. Apparently something something Squeaky’s roommate something mutual friend something tried to tell him but something something and then I just took it straight to him…which I wasn’t proud of but something something….blah blah…probably shouldn’t have called you…I’ll talk to you soon, okay. Click.
Well, I said. That was…perplexing.
At which point the phone rang again. “Listen, G? I’m gonna head out toward you, okay? I mean, it’ll be a while because of the buses and everything, but I’ll keep you posted…”
Oh. Goody.
He showed up at about 3 AM, moderately drunk, as I expected. You know for 100% sure that Tim is drunk when every other sentence that comes out of his mouth is “Seriously?” I guess if you hang around a ditzy twenty-year-old long enough, you get to sounding like one yourself. So anyway—seriously?—he calmed down enough to tell me the story. See, Squeaky’s roommate was a 60-year-old-guy, and—seriously?—he had a crush on one of Squeaky’s friends, who was like 23. Seriously. And so she (the friend) tried to dissuade him (the roomie) and—seriously? (Okay, I’ll stop, I promise. But that’s what the conversation was like—seriously.) And anyway, the roomie didn’t like it, and Tim tried to talk to him and somehow, something just blew up and punches were thrown and the friend fled the vicinity in disgust, and I STILL have no idea what the hell Tim was all hysterical about on that first call, but whatever.
So then we devolved into Various Dark Secrets of Tim’s Past and Present, of which the only one I’m at liberty to disclose is that he’s in love with Betty the Bartender and thinks it’s mutual. But there was a lot more than that, and it was about 5 AM when I finally chugged off to bed. And I was tired. I’d had a very, very busy day, what with the potatoes and the family and the socialization and this and that…
I wanted my peace and quiet, is what I wanted.
Unfortunately, before leaving the room, I had answered “yes” to a very simple, seemingly harmless question: “Hey, G, you mind if I have a shot of your vodka?” I figured, as late in the night as it was, and as stressed as he’d been, he’d have a shot and pass out on the floor for a few hours.
My first notion that this was not going to be the case came when I got up to use the bathroom. “No—wait—don’t go back in the room yet—I want to ask you something—no, seriously—“ He then attempted to stop me from feeding the cats because he didn’t believe “you’ve got them on a schedule? Seriously?” And what, should you ask, was the crucial thing he needed to ask? He needed me to proofread a text-message to Squeaky. And then he came into my room—which from long roommate-ship, he knows is not appreciated—after I’d told him I was tired and I was going back to sleep now, and goodnight.
The next thing I heard was BadCat, yowling and hissing and generally sounding thoroughly outraged, alternating with “Seriously? What. What are you gonna do, huh? Seriously?”
Now, BadCat and Tim are not good friends. BadCat, from kittenhood, has been…concerned…by Tim’s existence. He expresses that concern through loud meows, yowls, and hisses whenever Tim violates his own personal feline zone of no-contact. Even a casual walk-by will elicit a mew of consternation; actual, direct attention gets a concert of yowls and moans and very very unhappy cat noises, increasing in volume. I know those yowls well enough to know that intervention was required.
I opened the door, and Tim was on all fours in the hall, with BadCat backed into a corner. “Dude. Cut it out,” I said. No response. “Dude, I said cut it OUT!” He continued. Finally I stepped forward, put my hand on Tim’s forehead, and pushed. “Tim! Stop it right now. Leave the cat alone.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” he said. I went back into the room.
Five minutes later, yowl, hiss, meow, Seriously, etc.
The conversation progressed thusly.
“Tim. Leave the cat alone, please. Go to sleep.”
“Tim. Stop it. “
“I’m not kidding. Stop aggravating the cat. You’re pissing me off.”
“You are really, seriously, pissing me off right now, Tim. Go to sleep and leave the fucking cat ALONE.”
And finally, the coup de gras: “You know what? You need to leave now.”
If I thought I’d heard the word “Seriously?” a few times earlier in the evening, it was nothing at all compared to how many times I heard it as he put his shoes on, pulled on a sweatshirt, and picked up his backpack—all in triple-slow motion, because surely I was going to change my mind, right?
I didn’t. Not through “seriously?”, not through “I’m sorry, I’m an asshole,” not through “I thought we had a stronger friendship than that, but whatever.” And he walked out the door in quadruple-slow motion, and it took a good five minutes for him to walk the length of the hallway to the elevator.
And I locked my door, gave BadCat an extra treat for being a trooper, and went to bed.
(He called me about eight times in the next four hours. He left his jacket in my closet, for one thing, and I guess he either wanted to apologize or let me hear him bitching out pedestrians who were cruel enough not to give him a cigarette when he asked. But he also called after he sobered up, and the messages sound, at least, like he recognizes what an ass he was. It’s something, anyhow.)
Christmas, man. What a freakin’ riot.
Seriously.
Showing posts with label whatever.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whatever.. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
A "Good" Busy....
...uh, no.
Not a "good" busy; not a "bad" busy, either. (A "bad" busy, I guess, would be....what, heroin-related? That's the worst "busy" I can imagine for myself, right now, and it's definitely NOT the case; then again, the only "good" busy I could imagine would be a whole lot wilder and wackier than anything I'm currently experiencing. So...it's an AVERAGE "busy"--how's that?)
The job--which I still love--is driving me bat-crap bonkerellas--is that a word? If not, I hereby stick a flag in it and declare it to be one, 'cuz it's kinda cool--anyway. I know I've said this before, but I'm repeating it regardless: if I find myself sitting in a hugely-uncomfortable chair in Joe (El Boss)'s office, waiting for 15-25 minutes to ask him a work-related question, while meantime he yammers on through his PERSONAL FRIKKIN PHONE CALL about his kids' BOY SCOUT TROOP...There is no exaggeration anywhere within that sentence, incidentally. I have, in fact, sat for 20 minutes in his office listening to his personal call about the next campout. Generally my next comment has been something along the lines of, "you know, that thing we do here--you know, WORK????" In fact, today I actually said it out loud--for once he actually interrupted his call to ask me what it was I needed, and after I told him and as I left, he clicked back to his call with an "I'm sorry about that..." At which point I turned around, stuck my head back in the office and said: "Yeah...I'm sorry I had to interrupt this personal phone call to attend to WORK matters, while I'm at my JOB..." Fortunately, the environment is such that we can all get away with talking crap to Joe on a regular basis, so this was not seen as a transgression.
As much as I love the loose environment, the trash-talking, the verbal one-upmanship--and believe me, most of the time I can give as good as I get--I have a strong sense that the environment has changed for the worse within the last 3 months or so. And I can point, with a plus-or-minus-1% level of doubt, to the moment when the change began...
It was the moment we rolled out the first Windows Vista machine.
If you are (like me) a WinXP user, or even better (and God bless you, and she'll bless you even MORE if you buy one for ME) a Mac user--if, in short, the horror that is Vista has not touched your life...be grateful, dear reader, for you are Fate's own cherished tot. Windows Vista is, to computers, the equivalent of what would happen if you took bubonic plague germs, high-fructose corn syrup, the contents of the lint trap in the Chicago Sewage Treatment Plant, a 36-minute-long Michael Bolton vocal solo, the stuff at the bottom of the dumpster at a chicken shack, chili-farts, and that nightmare you have where you're running as fast as you can but you're not moving at all--if you took all those things, mixed them together with three pounds of Scotch Bonnet peppers, and reduced the whole concoction to a double-strength glaze, which you then poured into one ear through a large, sharp-pointed metal funnel. That, my friends, is called PAIN. There are simply no words on the planet Earth, nor in many of the better-known alien languages, for how very, very deeply I loathe Vista.
I am not alone.
Now, mind you, Vista by itself would be bad enough. Vista, coupled with our department's almost-phobic aversion to actually DOCUMENTING anything, has pretty much crippled our entire computer-building process. What took twenty to thirty minutes in the past--the installation and configuring of the necessary software for most of our clientele--now takes at least two days--and that's if you're LUCKY. If you're not lucky, you end up with a situation like the one I found myself in today--a pissed-off user waiting for her computer while I fiddle-faddled around trying to get one miserable, solitary, undocumented proprietary SQL-based program to act in Vista the way it always, reliably-as-the-seasons, acted under XP. At one point, both senior techs, a former senior tech, and a supervisor were all working with me to figure out what the hell this software fucking WANTED from us. "Database Error 556" was all it would tell us, and it was unGoogleable, completely opaque, utterly rage-inducing. Finally, Max the former-senior, who's been promoted to Systems, said "What if you re-create the folder it's looking for but can't find--you know, to fake it out?" I did, and it worked. Of course, that was after six hours of hair-pulling, head-desking, random Googling, reinstalling, and the rest...hours in which I could have been completing any of my OTHER ungodly number of work tickets.
And I'm just ONE person. There are FOUR of us who are doing builds, on and off; one, in particular--remember Erwin, the crank?--who does nothing BUT builds. At least we're not short-staffed anymore, thank heavens; we now have Johnny, the new Mac guy, and Dante, the new senior tech, who shares my cube. Dante seems to know his stuff; Johnny, a little less so, but both of them are still new. So now, in order of tenure, it's Alex, Erwin, me, Johnny, and Dante; Max has been promoted, and since the new guys are still...you know, new...the bulk of everything has fallen on Alex and on me. Erwin does builds. Erwin ONLY does builds. I found this out from Kevin, the helpdesk guy, when he joined Missy and I for lunch one day. (Missy...I haven't talked about her, because she makes me nervous. On the surface, she'd be the first guess of who I would pick for a friend--she's a fat white chick, like me; obnoxious and abrasive, like me; divorced, hard-headed, devil-may-care--again, like me. Unlike me, however, I wouldn't trust her farther than I could throw her. She's fun to talk to, but I'm constantly watching what I say because she seems SO very snaky and SO very two-faced--even Joe, Mr. Gullible-Isn't-In-The-Dictionary, warned me to stay away from Missy. The next day she asked me if I wanted to go for lunch. What could I do? Kevin walked out with us and she invited him along too; the newest of the help-deskers, he's already disillusioned with the place.) We were sitting at Eduardo's eating reheated nasty pizza when Kevin said "yeah, we can't give Erwin tickets anymore, just builds." I nearly spewed my Pepsi; "exCUSE me?" I squeaked. "You didn't hear that from me!" he said; "I'm tired of everything I say getting back to Joe with MY name on it!" "I won't breathe a word of where it came from," I said. And I didn't; I simply sat down in Joe's visitor-chair, waited for him to finish his personal call, and said, "So am I right in understanding that Erwin won't be doing any faculty or staff calls anymore, just builds?"
Joe, who'd been to some "leadership" seminar a few days back, said, "Well, that was a mutual decision, between The Crazy and Erwin and I, that Erwin should be focusing his energies on doing builds for a while--so he's not distracted, so he can just set them up like an assembly-line and one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and so on til they're done."
"That's fine," I said. "I would just add, though, that if Erwin is doing all builds and no tickets, then the rest of us should be doing all tickets, and no builds."
"Yeah, well, that's the ideal, but sometimes Erwin gets snowed under, and...."
Yeah. Sometimes Erwin gets snowed under. It might help if he cut back his 90-minute lunches to the approved 60--or if, like the rest of us, he once-in-a-while worked THROUGH his lunch--you know, take a bite, click a mouse, tap a keyboard, take a bite...Anyway. Net result: Erwin does builds, no tickets; the rest of us do tickets AND builds. Thanks, Erwin. Thanks, Joe.
I can't hate TOO much on Erwin, though; he gets four times more Vista than the rest of us, so he's got his punishment already. Fucking Vista. I kid you not, my peeps--it's absolutely the WORST operating system ever created. It has, without question, poisoned the mood at my job, I'll tell you that much--and there's no chance of changing anyone's mind now. The techs hate it; more importantly, the users hate it--and let's not even TALK about Office 2007, which....oh, god, the STOOPID!--but because they're "progress", and because eventually Microfuckingsoft will stop supporting XP and Office 2003, despite the fact that they're FAR superior products to their descendents--because of that, the higher-ups have dictated that The Way Forward will include these two monstrosities--and that will happen regardless of how far behind we, the users and the techs, might happen to fall as we pursue this glittering, attractive Forward Way.
(My dearest, most beloved Microsoft. Have I told you lately that you SUCK? Oh...I have. Very well, then. But you SUCK.)
Not a "good" busy; not a "bad" busy, either. (A "bad" busy, I guess, would be....what, heroin-related? That's the worst "busy" I can imagine for myself, right now, and it's definitely NOT the case; then again, the only "good" busy I could imagine would be a whole lot wilder and wackier than anything I'm currently experiencing. So...it's an AVERAGE "busy"--how's that?)
The job--which I still love--is driving me bat-crap bonkerellas--is that a word? If not, I hereby stick a flag in it and declare it to be one, 'cuz it's kinda cool--anyway. I know I've said this before, but I'm repeating it regardless: if I find myself sitting in a hugely-uncomfortable chair in Joe (El Boss)'s office, waiting for 15-25 minutes to ask him a work-related question, while meantime he yammers on through his PERSONAL FRIKKIN PHONE CALL about his kids' BOY SCOUT TROOP...There is no exaggeration anywhere within that sentence, incidentally. I have, in fact, sat for 20 minutes in his office listening to his personal call about the next campout. Generally my next comment has been something along the lines of, "you know, that thing we do here--you know, WORK????" In fact, today I actually said it out loud--for once he actually interrupted his call to ask me what it was I needed, and after I told him and as I left, he clicked back to his call with an "I'm sorry about that..." At which point I turned around, stuck my head back in the office and said: "Yeah...I'm sorry I had to interrupt this personal phone call to attend to WORK matters, while I'm at my JOB..." Fortunately, the environment is such that we can all get away with talking crap to Joe on a regular basis, so this was not seen as a transgression.
As much as I love the loose environment, the trash-talking, the verbal one-upmanship--and believe me, most of the time I can give as good as I get--I have a strong sense that the environment has changed for the worse within the last 3 months or so. And I can point, with a plus-or-minus-1% level of doubt, to the moment when the change began...
It was the moment we rolled out the first Windows Vista machine.
If you are (like me) a WinXP user, or even better (and God bless you, and she'll bless you even MORE if you buy one for ME) a Mac user--if, in short, the horror that is Vista has not touched your life...be grateful, dear reader, for you are Fate's own cherished tot. Windows Vista is, to computers, the equivalent of what would happen if you took bubonic plague germs, high-fructose corn syrup, the contents of the lint trap in the Chicago Sewage Treatment Plant, a 36-minute-long Michael Bolton vocal solo, the stuff at the bottom of the dumpster at a chicken shack, chili-farts, and that nightmare you have where you're running as fast as you can but you're not moving at all--if you took all those things, mixed them together with three pounds of Scotch Bonnet peppers, and reduced the whole concoction to a double-strength glaze, which you then poured into one ear through a large, sharp-pointed metal funnel. That, my friends, is called PAIN. There are simply no words on the planet Earth, nor in many of the better-known alien languages, for how very, very deeply I loathe Vista.
I am not alone.
Now, mind you, Vista by itself would be bad enough. Vista, coupled with our department's almost-phobic aversion to actually DOCUMENTING anything, has pretty much crippled our entire computer-building process. What took twenty to thirty minutes in the past--the installation and configuring of the necessary software for most of our clientele--now takes at least two days--and that's if you're LUCKY. If you're not lucky, you end up with a situation like the one I found myself in today--a pissed-off user waiting for her computer while I fiddle-faddled around trying to get one miserable, solitary, undocumented proprietary SQL-based program to act in Vista the way it always, reliably-as-the-seasons, acted under XP. At one point, both senior techs, a former senior tech, and a supervisor were all working with me to figure out what the hell this software fucking WANTED from us. "Database Error 556" was all it would tell us, and it was unGoogleable, completely opaque, utterly rage-inducing. Finally, Max the former-senior, who's been promoted to Systems, said "What if you re-create the folder it's looking for but can't find--you know, to fake it out?" I did, and it worked. Of course, that was after six hours of hair-pulling, head-desking, random Googling, reinstalling, and the rest...hours in which I could have been completing any of my OTHER ungodly number of work tickets.
And I'm just ONE person. There are FOUR of us who are doing builds, on and off; one, in particular--remember Erwin, the crank?--who does nothing BUT builds. At least we're not short-staffed anymore, thank heavens; we now have Johnny, the new Mac guy, and Dante, the new senior tech, who shares my cube. Dante seems to know his stuff; Johnny, a little less so, but both of them are still new. So now, in order of tenure, it's Alex, Erwin, me, Johnny, and Dante; Max has been promoted, and since the new guys are still...you know, new...the bulk of everything has fallen on Alex and on me. Erwin does builds. Erwin ONLY does builds. I found this out from Kevin, the helpdesk guy, when he joined Missy and I for lunch one day. (Missy...I haven't talked about her, because she makes me nervous. On the surface, she'd be the first guess of who I would pick for a friend--she's a fat white chick, like me; obnoxious and abrasive, like me; divorced, hard-headed, devil-may-care--again, like me. Unlike me, however, I wouldn't trust her farther than I could throw her. She's fun to talk to, but I'm constantly watching what I say because she seems SO very snaky and SO very two-faced--even Joe, Mr. Gullible-Isn't-In-The-Dictionary, warned me to stay away from Missy. The next day she asked me if I wanted to go for lunch. What could I do? Kevin walked out with us and she invited him along too; the newest of the help-deskers, he's already disillusioned with the place.) We were sitting at Eduardo's eating reheated nasty pizza when Kevin said "yeah, we can't give Erwin tickets anymore, just builds." I nearly spewed my Pepsi; "exCUSE me?" I squeaked. "You didn't hear that from me!" he said; "I'm tired of everything I say getting back to Joe with MY name on it!" "I won't breathe a word of where it came from," I said. And I didn't; I simply sat down in Joe's visitor-chair, waited for him to finish his personal call, and said, "So am I right in understanding that Erwin won't be doing any faculty or staff calls anymore, just builds?"
Joe, who'd been to some "leadership" seminar a few days back, said, "Well, that was a mutual decision, between The Crazy and Erwin and I, that Erwin should be focusing his energies on doing builds for a while--so he's not distracted, so he can just set them up like an assembly-line and one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and so on til they're done."
"That's fine," I said. "I would just add, though, that if Erwin is doing all builds and no tickets, then the rest of us should be doing all tickets, and no builds."
"Yeah, well, that's the ideal, but sometimes Erwin gets snowed under, and...."
Yeah. Sometimes Erwin gets snowed under. It might help if he cut back his 90-minute lunches to the approved 60--or if, like the rest of us, he once-in-a-while worked THROUGH his lunch--you know, take a bite, click a mouse, tap a keyboard, take a bite...Anyway. Net result: Erwin does builds, no tickets; the rest of us do tickets AND builds. Thanks, Erwin. Thanks, Joe.
I can't hate TOO much on Erwin, though; he gets four times more Vista than the rest of us, so he's got his punishment already. Fucking Vista. I kid you not, my peeps--it's absolutely the WORST operating system ever created. It has, without question, poisoned the mood at my job, I'll tell you that much--and there's no chance of changing anyone's mind now. The techs hate it; more importantly, the users hate it--and let's not even TALK about Office 2007, which....oh, god, the STOOPID!--but because they're "progress", and because eventually Microfuckingsoft will stop supporting XP and Office 2003, despite the fact that they're FAR superior products to their descendents--because of that, the higher-ups have dictated that The Way Forward will include these two monstrosities--and that will happen regardless of how far behind we, the users and the techs, might happen to fall as we pursue this glittering, attractive Forward Way.
(My dearest, most beloved Microsoft. Have I told you lately that you SUCK? Oh...I have. Very well, then. But you SUCK.)
Monday, August 25, 2008
Happy Things
Okay. Since I am personally now BORED by my own ranty-panty-pissy-pity-party, I shall move on to Many Happier Things. Because--believe it or not?--they're STILL THERE.
But first of all, in fairness, I owe Firefly an apology.
From that last post, one would think that all she does is bitch me out for my bad choices, which could not in a billion years be further from the truth. I mean that. We are the Head Bitches In Charge Of Picking Up Each Other's Pieces, and for me to characterize her the way that last post came off was...just not cool. I think I was going by how hard I would beat HER ass under the same circumstances, and it's always a mistake to ascribe your OWN deficiencies to someone ELSE. So, FF--I'm sorry, monster. That came out WAYYYY worse than I meant for it to do.
Moving right along to happyland:
Item One, Happy Report.
My computer?? Is ALIVE!!! Is HEALTHY!!!!! Totally FAILED to cost me the $300-odd dollars I had braced myself to pay!!!! Cost me only $60--including installation!--to repair my frizzle-frazzled power supply. I seriously almost did the Happy Wiggle-Dance in front of the Firedog guy at Circuit City. But I was afraid it would turn him on, so I forbore.
But for SERIOUS--$60 instead of $300? is CAUSE for the wiggle-dance. I could simply NOT be any more happy about the outcome of that whole debacle.
Item Two, Happy Report:
This neighborhood I've moved into?
Is THA SHIZZ. No kidding. I knew it was all artsy and progressive and stuff, but: there is the Place-Where-I-Live-Now Art Center. And yes, I'm late to the party, and yes, I could have been doing this for MONTHS now, but I wasn't even introduced to the Maroonland Art Center til the beginning of summer. Their summer session? Looked promising, but didn't grab me enough to make me plunk down cash and drag my butt out of work early to get to a class on time.
Their FALL session?
Practically sexual in nature.
So Indecisive-Little-Ol-Me is now faced with the choice of the following--and this is pared down only to the stuff that INTERESTS me at the moment:
Abstract Painting/Drawing--Acrylic Painting--Beginning Drawing--Beginning Painting--Ceramic Tiles--Intro to Printmaking--Knitting--Mosaics--Photography I--Quick Quilting--Silkscreen.
First: NOT COOL. Too many choices makes Gladys go Wocka-Wocka-Wocka.
Second: OMFG SOOOOOOO EFFING COOL! Because what I don't do in the fall? I can do in the spring. And what I don't do in the spring? I can do NEXT fall. Which is so very OMFG as to require smelling-salts.
To say the very very least, I am looking forward to the fall.
Item Three: Happy Report--
No word from CR.
Yes, I know, that's a Happy and a Sad all boiled up together. Don't care. He's...I don't really have words for what he is, just now. "A mommy-fixated infant" comes about as close to the meat of things as I care to go. I'd just so very much forgotten: a) how many things about him I actually LIKED, once; and b)how very, utterly toxic and hateful and soul-draining he could be. So, yeah, I still have feelings for him; but no, that's not something that will ever come to fruition. I've learned--even since just this last time, I've learned--but still I'm pissed at myself for letting it go even THAT far. I feel played, actually. I was lucky to escape as easily as I have, but I still feel ashamed of myself. (And on some level, I'm afraid he may instigate some more chaos, so to speak--waiting for the other shoe to drop, the way it always did in the past. We shall see what happens there.)
I am just TIRED unto the edges of the universe of feeling SORRY. For myself, for others, for mistakes I've made; for who I am and what I believe. I think sometimes--god help me--but if my mom wasn't around? That I'd be able to be ME with much more energy and valor than I've ever yet been able to do, with eleven months' exception. I want to wear long foofy dresses and get a tattoo and piercings and a girlfriend, and wear my hair LONG LONG LONG. And the only reason I DON'T is because of the constant stream of criticism that would ensue. And don't think for a red moment that that means I don't love my mother--I do, very much, and I will miss her when she's gone--but I wish she didn't need for me to be so much a carbon copy of her, or some validation of her choices, or whatever-it-is I am to her. I'm certainly not an individual, or a person, or a separate human being. (The other day she said something about "we never had such technology when -I- was growing up!" As if, at nearly-40, I'm still "growing up". There are some things that I just can't get around, you know? I'll be 39 next birthday and in some ways I still--because my mother does too--see myself as "a kid". How do you go about making a separate, sensible, functioning life for yourself when you still, subconsciously, see yourself as a twelve-year-old?? Debbi and I have talked about that at length, but with no conclusions.)
I am not sad. I am not -very- sad, anyway. My life is a great thing, if I look at it from MY OWN standpoint. If I stop judging by "what should have been" or "what I -should have- done" or "what was expected"--I have had an incredible, colorful, adventurous life. Punctuated by tragedy and the occasional hardship, sure--but what amazing life HASN'T been strewn with wreckage? I'd rather have MORE wreckage, than less--if only I didn't have to EXPLAIN it to anyone. If only I could just say "You know what? Yeah, I did that. It is what it is. It's MINE, is what it is, and unless you're me--which you are TOTALLY not--you're in no position to make value judgements."
If anything? My life would have MORE excitement, not less. I don't know what that says about me, other than: a) I'm alive; and b) at some sad, pathetic core level, I am every bit as subjected to one person's judgements, as CR is to another's. Maybe THAT's why we always got along so well--because in one way or another, each of us was forever being controlled by that shady, behind-the-scenes female puppeteer, each polling our strings and trying, for her own ends, to control us--even if it was done with love, even if it was done with the understanding of "what was best" for each of us. Maybe that's why he and I are, emotionally at least, tangled together, even though each of us recognizes how very, very STUPID that entanglement really is.
I don't know. What I know: I'm happy, really; and there is spaghetti on the stove with my name on it, and everything in my life, when you subtract the STOOPID shit, is really well-and-truly better than it has been in a long, long while.
So...um....yeah. That's it. :)
But first of all, in fairness, I owe Firefly an apology.
From that last post, one would think that all she does is bitch me out for my bad choices, which could not in a billion years be further from the truth. I mean that. We are the Head Bitches In Charge Of Picking Up Each Other's Pieces, and for me to characterize her the way that last post came off was...just not cool. I think I was going by how hard I would beat HER ass under the same circumstances, and it's always a mistake to ascribe your OWN deficiencies to someone ELSE. So, FF--I'm sorry, monster. That came out WAYYYY worse than I meant for it to do.
Moving right along to happyland:
Item One, Happy Report.
My computer?? Is ALIVE!!! Is HEALTHY!!!!! Totally FAILED to cost me the $300-odd dollars I had braced myself to pay!!!! Cost me only $60--including installation!--to repair my frizzle-frazzled power supply. I seriously almost did the Happy Wiggle-Dance in front of the Firedog guy at Circuit City. But I was afraid it would turn him on, so I forbore.
But for SERIOUS--$60 instead of $300? is CAUSE for the wiggle-dance. I could simply NOT be any more happy about the outcome of that whole debacle.
Item Two, Happy Report:
This neighborhood I've moved into?
Is THA SHIZZ. No kidding. I knew it was all artsy and progressive and stuff, but: there is the Place-Where-I-Live-Now Art Center. And yes, I'm late to the party, and yes, I could have been doing this for MONTHS now, but I wasn't even introduced to the Maroonland Art Center til the beginning of summer. Their summer session? Looked promising, but didn't grab me enough to make me plunk down cash and drag my butt out of work early to get to a class on time.
Their FALL session?
Practically sexual in nature.
So Indecisive-Little-Ol-Me is now faced with the choice of the following--and this is pared down only to the stuff that INTERESTS me at the moment:
Abstract Painting/Drawing--Acrylic Painting--Beginning Drawing--Beginning Painting--Ceramic Tiles--Intro to Printmaking--Knitting--Mosaics--Photography I--Quick Quilting--Silkscreen.
First: NOT COOL. Too many choices makes Gladys go Wocka-Wocka-Wocka.
Second: OMFG SOOOOOOO EFFING COOL! Because what I don't do in the fall? I can do in the spring. And what I don't do in the spring? I can do NEXT fall. Which is so very OMFG as to require smelling-salts.
To say the very very least, I am looking forward to the fall.
Item Three: Happy Report--
No word from CR.
Yes, I know, that's a Happy and a Sad all boiled up together. Don't care. He's...I don't really have words for what he is, just now. "A mommy-fixated infant" comes about as close to the meat of things as I care to go. I'd just so very much forgotten: a) how many things about him I actually LIKED, once; and b)how very, utterly toxic and hateful and soul-draining he could be. So, yeah, I still have feelings for him; but no, that's not something that will ever come to fruition. I've learned--even since just this last time, I've learned--but still I'm pissed at myself for letting it go even THAT far. I feel played, actually. I was lucky to escape as easily as I have, but I still feel ashamed of myself. (And on some level, I'm afraid he may instigate some more chaos, so to speak--waiting for the other shoe to drop, the way it always did in the past. We shall see what happens there.)
I am just TIRED unto the edges of the universe of feeling SORRY. For myself, for others, for mistakes I've made; for who I am and what I believe. I think sometimes--god help me--but if my mom wasn't around? That I'd be able to be ME with much more energy and valor than I've ever yet been able to do, with eleven months' exception. I want to wear long foofy dresses and get a tattoo and piercings and a girlfriend, and wear my hair LONG LONG LONG. And the only reason I DON'T is because of the constant stream of criticism that would ensue. And don't think for a red moment that that means I don't love my mother--I do, very much, and I will miss her when she's gone--but I wish she didn't need for me to be so much a carbon copy of her, or some validation of her choices, or whatever-it-is I am to her. I'm certainly not an individual, or a person, or a separate human being. (The other day she said something about "we never had such technology when -I- was growing up!" As if, at nearly-40, I'm still "growing up". There are some things that I just can't get around, you know? I'll be 39 next birthday and in some ways I still--because my mother does too--see myself as "a kid". How do you go about making a separate, sensible, functioning life for yourself when you still, subconsciously, see yourself as a twelve-year-old?? Debbi and I have talked about that at length, but with no conclusions.)
I am not sad. I am not -very- sad, anyway. My life is a great thing, if I look at it from MY OWN standpoint. If I stop judging by "what should have been" or "what I -should have- done" or "what was expected"--I have had an incredible, colorful, adventurous life. Punctuated by tragedy and the occasional hardship, sure--but what amazing life HASN'T been strewn with wreckage? I'd rather have MORE wreckage, than less--if only I didn't have to EXPLAIN it to anyone. If only I could just say "You know what? Yeah, I did that. It is what it is. It's MINE, is what it is, and unless you're me--which you are TOTALLY not--you're in no position to make value judgements."
If anything? My life would have MORE excitement, not less. I don't know what that says about me, other than: a) I'm alive; and b) at some sad, pathetic core level, I am every bit as subjected to one person's judgements, as CR is to another's. Maybe THAT's why we always got along so well--because in one way or another, each of us was forever being controlled by that shady, behind-the-scenes female puppeteer, each polling our strings and trying, for her own ends, to control us--even if it was done with love, even if it was done with the understanding of "what was best" for each of us. Maybe that's why he and I are, emotionally at least, tangled together, even though each of us recognizes how very, very STUPID that entanglement really is.
I don't know. What I know: I'm happy, really; and there is spaghetti on the stove with my name on it, and everything in my life, when you subtract the STOOPID shit, is really well-and-truly better than it has been in a long, long while.
So...um....yeah. That's it. :)
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