Screw The “Ostrich People” (G-uno)

“Ostrich People” My term for the screwed up people in your lives that take passive aggressive behavior to an even sicker level. Ostrich because these individuals take great pleasure in believing that they are screwing you without your notice. They enjoy being horrible to you, but at the same time they still want you to like them. They have a false sense of superiority. They believe that they are much more intelligent than you are, and by sticking their heads in the ground that you will not be able to see their wretched backsides staring you directly in your face.

Taking the high road with these individuals will not work! It only encourages them to believe that you really can’t see their butts in your face. I have come to believe that it’s probably a part of the grand design to not allow humans to see a trailer of your impending relationships in order to keep you from jumping ship before you get the opportunity to meet the actual good people in your lives. A perfect example would be Mr. G-uno. If I had seen how many “Ostrich People” that were to become a part of my married life I would have missed out on the love of my life.

The problem with the “Non Ostrich People” is their inherent inability to believe that someone can truly be a horrible, deceitful, conniving “Ostrich Person.” A “Non Ostrich Person” will continuously give the “Ostrich Person” the benefit of the doubt under the false assumption that they couldn’t possibly be right about the deplorable behavior because behaving in that wretched way is something they would never have considered doing to another person.

How does one solve the problem of being a “Non Ostrich Person”? First you have to pull your own head out of the ground. Then you have to remove the “Ostrich Person’s” butt from your face. I have removed my head from the ground. Should you have any interest in knowing how this can be done my next few posts will provide you with my personal removal techniques starting with my step sister-in-law.

New Year’s Eve Is Just Not Enough To Erase 2020 (G-uno)

If you’re looking for sunshine, and rainbows don’t waste a single second reading this post. You should also go away if you’re searching for some bull crap platitude about starting the new year with some magical clean slate. I spent the entire year trying to do my best to be positive, introspective, and forgiving. What did I learn from this little experiment in enlightenment? I learned that “When people show you who they are you should believe them.”

This writer is not looking for any sympathy, or any sappy commentary regarding my piss poor attitude so with the greatest respect just go to another blog. I can assure you that the next few posts will be filled with some pretty dark, sarcastic angry diatribes. Now that you’ve been given appropriate time to escape lets begin with crappy siblings.

I will admit that I broke a promise in 2016 that started this whole crazy mess. My sibling went on vacation, and I was asked not to clean up their home. I promised I would not do it, but I broke my promise, and spotlessly cleaned their entire home from top to bottom. I had some very great intentions, and some seriously legitimate concerns behind this broken promise. This however does not excuse the fact that I was wrong. I have potty trained this sibling. I realize that sometimes I overstep from the sibling role into the parental role. We come from a particularly complicated childhood. I am the oldest child. The fixer slash protector.

You should also know that I love my sibling deeply. I have been there for them in an above average way their entire life so admittedly I’m pissed that they are happy to enjoy my crossing of sibling boundaries when it suited them. I’m also extremely pissed that they pretended to accept my sincere regret for breaking my promise, while continuing to seethe privately until the point of exploding in the most vulgar outburst which was followed by the most passive aggressive retaliation seen since the demise of our parent.

My sibling, and I have always been extremely close. A relationship so close that it would have been completely unthinkable to anyone that we are now so estranged.

so there is no point in anything (g2)

I’m having one of those moods where I feel like I have failed as a parent and as a human being. I know I’m sounding melodramatic and the time will …

nothing pisses me off more than mundane annoyances (g2)

During this time, I was hoping the only stress I would be suffering would be gaining mastery of my new job now that I’m solo.

I never seem to get off that easily.

We’re still immersed in summer, which can only be summed up as funky, wet stank. So of course, our AC at home has been hit by lightning.

Then, as Spawn is starting school online, I have a neighbor who decided to play with a chainsaw and tear up some wires along the way.

Problem 1 is denied by the warranty company as an act of God, coverage denied. Fine, I have insurance but I need something in writing as to the problem so they can move forward.

The only thing they send me in writing is some bullshit that the AC wasn’t working before the contract in effect. Excuse me, what the fuck?

I don’t know about the rest of you, maybe it’s because I have no one to allocate some of the bullshit of life too…but I have gone beyond my limit of the incompetence, fraud, swindling, lying, cheating and all out fuckery that corporate America calls “customer service.”

What I’m saying is I want to burn this fucking company to the ground and the idiot handling my case with it.

Its now been almost a month of stank heat and suffering. I had to break down to buy a portable unit to make at least Spawn’s days less like hell. Their the ones suffering the most being at home all day.

Problem 2 is the internet. We didn’t know when we moved in we had a dickhead next door, didn’t notice his tiny penis, big truck, “trespassers will be shot” sign nor the fenced in German Shepard right next to the closest pole for both power and internet. It took four visits and a supervisor call to finally get one of those technical badasses who sees every problem as having a solution.

Now that Chainsaw Charlie is on the scene, we’re back to square one and already had one visit from technician ThumbUpHisAss who blew it off and said to call when the construction was done. What construction, you lazy fuck?

There are so many people out of work, why must dead weight hinder progress from those who can and will do? While those who won’t just waste time and space?

So being able to write means sitting in almost 90 degree room with no internet and no breeze. The storms are still going and I am so pissed I could really make a long list of people I’d love to hurt. I have zero empathy anymore and have lost my faith in karma.

When you’re the common man, the one who has never had the power of a retainer, or even a little bit of influence against large overbloated corporations who believe sending mass amounts of survey links asking to rate their customer service instead of actually providing any, what do you do?

In the grand scheme of things, I know my bitching is petty but at the same time, why does this little shit, this insignificant crap have to be blown to immense proportions just to get basic fucking common sense out these greedy sacks of shit? Provide the service you claim to do, that’s all!

With that in mind, I guess it’s really no wonder why no one can figure out how viruses work or why masks are essential or just even, wash your fucking hands?

We cannot even extend common decency and fairness when paid to.

advice from the last place expected (g2)

You ever hear those jokes about the family gatherings and that one uncle whose always racist or vile as shit? The one who is a complete and utter fucking embarrassment …

i really need stop thinking heavy shit while driving (g2)

So I’m driving one very bland day with nothing whatsoever striking to catch my attention, listening to a CD Spawn selected that I have really been enjoying and letting my mind wander.

I’m not sure why my head seems to want to direct my thoughts to heavy shit when my emotional stability isn’t very much under my control, but with one of the most bigoted, sexist, racist, fuckheads that has ever walked the planet now swathed in the title of “Mr. President”, I cannot help but wonder what the hell is happening to our society, especially when I’m bombarded with the amount of stupid shit he does every day.

The job of reporter in the US is no longer about getting to the “truth” and backing it up with sound researched information, it is now bought and paid for by a corporate agenda. And that applies to all of them now, even NY Times has fallen to the bullshit.

In order for the average US citizen to find truth, you have to look to comedy or foreign news. Yes, I said comedy. Because it is the last frontier where if you wanted to suck up to the GOP or a corporate sponsorship, you’d get booed off the stage before you could finish a set.  We know when we’re being fed shit in comedy, not so much when they call it “news.”

Crime is at an all time low, and is still dropping drastically, but no one ever hears about it. The wage gap still exists, but there are plenty of pseudoscience trying to convince you it isn’t. I see the invoices, every temp company we go through has at LEAST a 2-3 buck an hour disparagement between the guy and the girl hired to do the same fucking thing. Even one of my more intelligent and fair minded coworkers sincerely believes it doesn’t exist.

However, I found my thoughts not landing on these things, so much as race.

When people talk about the way the legal system is skewed to keep minorities in jail, they mean things like this… In this country, cocaine is mostly a white consumed drug (who besides lawyers or those who can keep one on retainer can afford it anyway?) Crack, being cocaine’s inbred  diluted cousin, is a mostly minority consumed drug because it is cheaper and markets to a lower income bracket. The max time a person can spend in jail for crack is almost twice what a person with cocaine would have to serve and they don’t have to carry much to get the book thrown at them.

I live in the South. Born here. Raised here. Went to a school that was about 60% black and completely freaked out when I moved to the midwest for several years and saw almost none.  It’s a real culture shock when you’re used to seeing more colors and shades in your crayola box of life and become suddenly surrounded with many shades of nothing put pink instead.

The black culture, despite or perhaps TO spite the horrific origin, have enhanced the culture in our area of the map in ways not seen anywhere else. I cannot imagine life without the blues, Creole, small pockets of held out languages, hoodoo, superstitions, or voodoo. The fierce defiance in spite of a calm facade is, to me, the mark of black culture. The passion for religion, music, family and vast support for one another.  The pride in spite of years of putting up with epic bullshit.

There’s just nothing like it.

Then I think about now when we have people who feel that since they got their white piece of shit in office, are now welcome, if not encourage, to come out and say whatever hate speech they want and they are somehow among kin. The next step being taking action? doing whatever they want without the risk of consequence, at most? For those that visit that link, fuck you CNN for just naming the victim and not billboarding the mf’ers names who actually DID the crime! Shawn Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John King, fucking die.

Those are the faces of a Trump supporter.

I think of Sandra Bland and how they ruled it “suicide” and alluded to “mental health,” as being part of her problem…if I was thrown in jail over a fucking traffic violation, you can call it “mental health” all you want, but I’d be ready to stab a bitch. I sure as shit would be making notes of badge numbers and calling any loudmouth I could to make as much noise about it as I could. On the slim chance she did really take her own life, which I don’t believe, can you blame her? After being treated like that? She’s probably put up with it her whole life.

I think of the cops that are mandatory now on school premises. Then I’m stunned when I’m trying to find the link to the ONE instance I know of, to find out abuse by cop towards CHILDREN is getting massively fucking common. The only difference between the American schools and the prison system is the latter gets a better lunch and a real recess.

This isn’t an isolated incident and it happens in a million subtle ways every single day. I go into a store where a group of minority kids are lingering near the door, chatting and laughing and just being, well kids. As i approach, they talk suddenly ceases. I can see the fear in their faces that I’m going to somehow cinch up my bags, or cross the street, or say something offensive. They brace for it. How fucked up is that? I don’t blame them in the slightest, I know why, it just kills me to still see it now.

Missing children organizations are less likely to give ideal exposure to minority children, the excuse being that too many children being posted would dilute the sense of urgency among the community. Then fix the system so it notifies those in the area, you dumbasses, keep it relevant to the people in the region they disappeared in, then move out as needed I was nowhere near the Jon-Benet Ramsey story, did I really need her face thrust in mine every day? There’s a couple thousand miles of impossibility going on there.

When they talk about the wage gap as being about 80%, they are referring to the people in office jobs like I am, but what they don’t go over is that that when you add the minority element or just compare those in service industries, that gap can be as bad as 50%. It’s no wonder that so many minority mothers have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

I even thought about how the Women’s March had a great message and sure, it’s a great cause and its kind of sad when half the population of a country kind of hates its new leader. But it didn’t represent women at all well, and here’s the problem…The women who had to go to job 2 or 3, the ones most bitterly affected by the disparagement, cannot afford to show up for fear of losing their livelihood. So there is a huge chunk of women who just couldn’t come, and they are the most needed.

The ones most heavily affected by racial and sexist bullshit don’t even have the time and energy to complain. Few are in positions where they can take vacation time or make up the time later because the system is rigged to keep them oppressed. They could be fired for not going above and beyond the expectations of their minimum wage overlords. I’m looking at you, Wal-Mart.

Then my mind wandered to the young mixed race couple who had twins not so long ago, one pale and blonde, the other more of a mocha with eyes like onyx. Both identical otherwise, both adorable. If gives me a lot of hope to read, years later, they don’t deal with racial prejudice. Then I remember. Thankfully, they aren’t American.

Otherwise, one of them was going to be privy to “the talk.”

The talk where a minority parent has to sit down and explain to their minority child to never get visibly hostile, especially in the face of “authority” because doing so might get you killed. No matter how badly you’re being treated or baited into becoming violent, don’t do it, because cops, teachers, principals, the law, and anyone of non-color could very well be out to get you, to make you a monster. To use you as an example to keep oppression and racism alive and well

.And the thought of that cherub face having to be told that the world has a deep-seeded and irrationally violent fear of her for no other reason than by the color of her skin just hit me so hard I started sobbing to the point where I nearly had to pull over to get it all out.

I spent most of the day trying not to think about it because my eyes were sore and I know Spawn was wondering if I was getting sick and I really really didn’t want to have to go into it for fear I’d be rendered unable to speak. Nothing upsets a kid more than a parent being upset, I’ve found. Even if the reason for it should upset the hell out of everyone.

At a time when we WERE showing so much promise, so much evolution to our own thinking by FINALLY electing not based on  color, but intelligence, stoicism, wisdom… and then going this… the complete opposite of the ideal of unity, equality, fairness, kindness…. I cannot help but wonder how bad this period of backsliding has to get before we’ve just had enough.

office sharing gripes (g2)

I would imagine most of us either do or did share space with our co-workers at some point in our lives. I like to think of myself as pretty lenient, but then don’t we all?

I don’t care if you have fish for lunch and eat at your desk. If you blow your nose, I won’t even notice. If you’re loud as shit, it won’t bug me unless I’m on the phone too and I can’t hear because of you. If the background noise annoys me, that’s what earbuds are for.

For the most part, I like most of my co-workers. When I don’t, I have very little to do with them and keep it strictly business and as thoroughly documented as I can and I can count on one hand (disproportionate to the number of posts in which I may bitch about them. I inflict it on you guys so I don’t inflict it at work, in case you didn’t know) those I truly dislike and most of that is just, I don’t trust them. Otherwise, I barely recall they are there.

I’m kind of dismissive like that, I really get annoyed with myself for letting anyone bug me for too long.

However, since I live in the butt-crack of Satan’s ass that is the South, and we only have three seasons, well two really… Summer, or “hey, let’s see if people can physically stew at 115 with 98% humidity”, and some bland lowered volume version of summer that fosters mass bug breeding and plant sexing with the occasional unseasonal freakish freeze just to keep us all guessing and justifies the whopping six snowplows the entire state owns….

The weather is a personal hell for me.

I would ideally have my house at 69 degrees fahrenheit all the time and have begun to miss the office I had years ago in which my two immediate neighbors were going through menopause.

Even though I was born and raised here, I’ve never been ok with outdoors. I thought I simply hated all outdoor activities until I moved to the northwest and found out outside could be really damn cool, without mass underbrush and feeding an entire legion of ticks in under ten minutes. When I found out roaches just couldn’t survive the northwest weather, I was convinced this is what utopia must be like.

I got close enough to a moose to slap it in the face… if I stood on my car.

Those damn things are huge.

Now I share an office where most of the people are on dumbfuck starvation diets or they have the blood density of ice water and while I’m coping at 73 degrees, they want to “bump it up” to “knock of the chill.”

Go eat a fucking twinkie!

My current office is not cramped, but its only just big enough for the people in it and one in particular thinks that she is completely justified in planting a heater under her desk with a thermal blanket and a heating pad. It’s 80 degrees outside right now and its going up every day. Ironic, since this is also Yankee Heather…. from the North…. where it fucking snows….

Her boss is the one on the craptastic long term low-cal and massively unhealthy diet. Not surprising where her mood swings really stem from.

The others do get chilly from time to time, one piles under a blanket, we think she’s sick and just refuses to go to the doctor, another has a light sweater. But I still wonder…

What the fuck is wrong with all of you?!? Go outside until you sweat your ass off, until your shirt sticks enough to qualify for a bar contest since sweat doesn’t work here, but don’t subject the rest of society with your complete inability to insulate against anything!

RaWr!!!

I haven’t lived in the northwest in over ten years, but I miss it when summer hits here. I crawl inside and kill my a/c because I don’t want to remember where I live until it becomes bearable again… for a couple months.

So for those of you who have ever had to share space with a co-worker(s), was your biggest pet peeves?

i feel happy…i feel happy (g2)

I had a luscious amount of time off, reveled in it like you would not believe, and really, really, really did not want to go back to work…. at all. Ever.

It’s moments like this you remember that your life has become all about a vicious cycle of paychecks and there is nothing about it that really gives you any joy. Even though my annual salary is more than I used to make at my last job, the actual money I get to take home is significantly less than I was pulling four years ago… while contributing to a retirement. I’ve lowered every bill I have and I still cannot afford it.

The medical account wasn’t at the other spot, so that does play a factor,  but doesn’t amount to even half the money I’m missing these days. Of course, when you have student loans, they only see the before tax amount. Trying to get them to comprehend anything else is inexcusable and some failing on your own.

I guess that’s true. It’s something I should have noted my first year here and done what I could to find somewhere else to work instead. Back then it was a nicer place to work co-worker wise but it had a bad financial situation that spoke to the fixer in me. Apparently, I can only have one or the other working properly at any one time.

Yankee Heather and I were moved to a shared mailbox. I like them, it makes sense, it keeps others from having to remember each and every person and still be confident you will get an answer.

I used to think I was just the faster of the two in organizing it, considering about 90% of it was mine anyway. Anything that belonged to Yankee Heather was put in a directory for her alone. It wasn’t a great system, but it worked.

So the fates saw fit, when it was time to go back to the grind, to give me a nice fever and a bad cold. I felt guilt and was restless, so I checked the work email from home to see 298 unread emails.

Apparently, I wasn’t faster. I was simply the only one bothering to check the email at all.

This became ironic….

After weeks and weeks of hot/cold behavior towards me, I finally managed to get Yankee Heather alone and asked her if she had some beef with me. She said no. I asked if she was sure. She did the confused “noooo?” unconvincingly.

The facade shorted the second I asked if that was the case, could she please cut out the passive-aggressive Heathers level bullshit.

That’s when the yelling started. I was unprofessional. She didn’t like my tone. I had no business checking behind her work (that one confused me, but some of the stuff I do is preventative measures for errors for everything in the system and it does include hers). I was very unprofessional (again) to which I asked if she really preferred to do this kind of thing in an HR office because I thought we saw it the same way on that point. Then she blurted out she’d just been written up for being unprofessional and she wasn’t going to have it happen again. I asked how that was my fault, but she was gone.

The next day, I’m blocked out of the shared mailbox and now the VP forwards our email to us.

The insinuation was there were “missing things.”

I can reproduce every single email I’ve ever written ever since I started working here. I moved over every email I had out of my personal box (as long as it wasn’t personal, which was deleted) over to the shared one so everything I did and said was completely transparent. So all of this is bullshit misdirection of the emotionally immature.

Had this been my boss, she would have been swift and exacting like a pediatric neurosurgeon and this would have been long over. But the VP believes this person she hand-picked is made of gold in spite of all the apparent evidence to the contrary (the write -up was a surprise). The VP also secretly loves the drama, so she gives passive-aggression a corner office and buys it lunch. Weeks later, we’re still having our email forwarded when it was only going to be “two days, three at most.”

I have come across this personality twice before, one around my age, one from the generation before and all I know is that this will get worse until one of us is gone.

So, I updated my resume and sent it off with two placement agencies so far with the goal to relocate sometime in the summer.

I started tackling everything on my desk, every single item on a to-do list of “it can wait until I get other more important things done.” Anything that needed scanning, got scanned, named, filed. Small and large housekeeping level bullshit I’ve avoided because there were higher priority items, is all getting done.

It’s my way: leave things as clean as I can for whoever is next.

I was so caught up, that I read a book one Friday. I had nothing else.

I also got my review… after 3 years of nothing, and under the pretense they revamped the way they did the reviews, I only rated mid-range. It was worse than my last when their complaint was I didn’t eat lunch. I got a small raise and yet again I was told I need to work on communication.

I’m getting fucking tired of hearing this. It’s like a broken fucking record replayed by the VP that started during a time when most of my day was spent “communicating” nicely that we couldn’t pay anyone.

Translation: “why can’t you make anyone happy that we’re not paying them?”

You know what happens when you owe someone?

They call, they write, then call again. If they could show up at your house, they would. Hell, they’d call your mom if they could find their number. We sure as hell did when it was from our end (Seriously, we called a customer’ mother….). What they never said was “wow, that person just doesn’t communicate effectively when they told me they would check on our payment schedule and get back to me, I should recommend they work on that.”

You know what people want to know when you owe them?

When its coming.

That’s it.

Since I didn’t know that a good majority of the time, nothing was effective.

Don’t get me wrong. I get there is a lesson with everything and I asked for examples. I said walk me through a scenario when I had done something that was lacking in the communication area and how I could have done better.

I left feeling nothing but frustrated because all I was given was the most broad and ambiguous of answers. Trump kind of answers. Long, nonsensical word salad with no actual content.

It makes you wonder what the fuck the point was of bringing up something you could not cite any kind of demonstration for? In almost four years, I’ve done nothing to give you one example, even a vague one you can point to and give me some direction on how I’m not communicating to your standard?

So after a year of putting aside the pepcid bottle, I’m back on it. And right now, just typing all of this out is giving me such an epic headache that I feel like my eyeballs will pop.

I also asked a couple co-workers from other departments if they could give me feedback on this area. I figured people I knew well enough would be more forthcoming if there is a problem. So far, still nothing.

At this point, the only thing I can venture to guess is that the VP is mainly complaining that she wants to know every move and fart I make. It would make sense, given her character. Doing remedial bullshit gives her something to complain about since it detracts from “her real job” and makes her feel important. She complained about having to forward email, but it was her idea to set it up. Her real job is basically to balance the co-owners bank book and take his shit. Past that, everything else has sort of … created? In her head or his doesn’t really matter. However, there is a reason that no matter how long she is out, things run as they always have… but with less drama.

We seem to conflict a lot on the way we see things. She reports everything she overhears to HR.  I tend to believe you clean your shit in-house and always have a unified front. Unless it is something about retirement, benefits or something I have grounds for a lawsuit on, I have no reason to take anything to HR. Petty melodramatic crap should be able to be ironed out in a single conversation and eliminated. I don’t care if I hate your guts, anyone outside our department should think we’re besties.

And when it comes to communication, trust the people you hired to do a job unless given a real cause to doubt.  There is a culture here that is based on tattling. The VP is very much one of the worst offenders, but then will become equally irate when its done to our department. I appreciate the latter, but her karma really works against us. We have a couple of managers who LOVE to try to report our department for not doing our job.

Unfortunately, by the time I’ve even had a chance to see it and respond to resolve it, its already had half a dozen unrelated people flipping their shit over nothing. Not once  has the source of the discourse not also been the actual cause of the problem, and given my track record of saving emails, I usually have a lot of proof to shut it down.

But its too late, they’d flipped their shit and now it has no outlet so we still get the backlash. I’ve yet to figure out how that works.

As for Yankee Heather, they decided to bandage the gunshot wound and are trying to separate us further workwise. I made a list of things I’d happily turn over for Yankee Heather to do instead. I’ve done this dance before. It never works. I pointed out that when you had more than one person doing the same thing, they were going to inevitably travel into one another’s territory and most people should not only find that doable, but pleasant. If they didn’t, there was no amount of separation that fixes a person’s character.

The VP said she was aware of everything that was going on and they would do their best to handle it and and address it when she could.

Horseshit.

i think i’ll go for a walk… (g2)

I hit the end of the year and had 12 days of vacation time to take by the end of the year or lose it. I was able to roll over five days but it still left me a bit over a work week to figure out when to fit it all in. Of all the BS that’s occurred these last few months, not being sick much at all this year kind of blows my mind.

With the holidays kind of slammed together and the time we already had off, I got about two weeks where I only showed up for one day each week and that was it. I could totally get used to that…

We had my favorite temp in while I was out during that time since he had school holiday and could use the cash, bless him. He’d picked up things so quickly I trained him on pretty much the bulk of everything I did without involving the complex stuff, so when I did come back, I was in pretty good shape and if he had any problems, he would just text me.

I love a good team.

Unfortunately, it makes the discord going on with others that should technically be part of my team just more blaringly obvious.

It was wonderful not to be around the mood swing bullshit. Yankee Heather is prone to wild mood swings and passive aggressive crap these days. Her sidekick is our buyer downstairs in purchasing. Anytime I said something that pissed her off, he would storm out and be gone for a while. Bitch session I guess.

The catalyst seems to have started about the time she made some disparaging remarks about another of our co-workers and I said I liked the person quite a lot and found them wonderful. I went further, as I’m prone to doing, and made a remark that if the person in question found her caustic, Yankee Heather and her abrasive personality were probably the culprit… and she probably owed her an apology.

I think that is when I went on the shit list for good.

Course, it could also be when I attributed her “Back in Bumfuck, Newbrahoma…” remarks as sounding like the band camp girl from American Pie.

With me, it’s hard to tell.

I know that I was the topic of some group chat bashing, a confession only made by the Hippy shortly after her last revelation without elaboration since she was being baited into joining in it, she said, but it didn’t much surprise me.

Apparently, the disparaged co-worker and their boss (the Hippy is on the same team) were more forthcoming in regards to just how bad Yankee Heather is, the former having saved all interactions in writing, while the latter threatened to run her off should she try to trespass into their department.

It makes a terrible impression of my department, not least of which during the same period when right around Christmas, the VP of our department decided to lodge a complaint against some kid she didn’t like and accused him of being drunk at work.

I liked the kid a lot, most of us in my department did, with one very loud exception. But his termination was being blamed on my department. So I went to the source of the problem and discussed it with her and how completely fucking wrong she was.

What the bitch didn’t know was the kid had been mugged not even a couple days before and in the midst of trying to get away from his attacker, hit a brick wall so hard he gave himself a concussion. He wouldn’t tell anyone that because he was embarrassed. It wasn’t manly. The goose egg on his head, the bandage and slow speech were all indicative of painkillers and yes, he should have had his ass at home. He didn’t. He came to work, decided while he was outside at some point that he needed to pee and went in the nearest bush… on camera.

With that footage and combined complaint, he was toast. This was a kid I sat next to outside of work and got to know and watched nurse one beer for three hours and left when his grandmother needed him. That’s not the behavior of a drunk. Better point being what the VP guzzles down in one weekend, by their own admission, would take that kid and myself a year to plow through, so who’s being judgey?

Yes, pissing in a bush at work was a stupid decision, but not enough to be fired. I addressed all of this with the VP, my penance for getting sucked up in all the bashing of a prior time. Go to the source, resolve it, don’t let it fester. Don’t be like my family 😉

Yankee Heather went downstairs and cried to her sidekick, effectively making it all about herself. When she’d bled that turnip dry, she returned and thanked me for saying something. I was in the middle of telling her to go fuck herself when our respective bosses came in and I didn’t get the chance.

Spawn often tells me my face and expressions are an open book to what I want to say, so I can only hope the surprised expression Tammy Faye had on her face meant she knew how to read the message written across mine.

i feel fine… (g2)

Somewhere near the end of the year, with the doom of Thanksgiving and Christmas looming, I got a wild streak to basically throw everything out and scrub it all down with bleach.

Sometimes, I wish I could do this with my brain.

The Yankee is steadily showing herself to be more of a Heather. The Hippy, who has stuck up for her for the longest time  suddenly said one afternoon after work “Put some distance from her, for your own sake.” She didn’t elaborate and at the time, I didn’t feel I needed to ask. I kind of got the gist.

God, I’m too old for this shit.

The Yankee made a shit first impression from the get go. You don’t move to the South, shit on southern education (which you’ve never personally experienced) for which most of your co-workers are by-products of.

You don’t go off about how your Master’s degree should exempt you from doing shitty work, like my job. Especially not if you keep reminding me what you do when I catch your bullshit mistakes in the process of doing my own job. If you don’t want me to catch your mistakes, stop making them.

I also have to appreciate the irony of me, the southerner, having to explain to said Yankee that making remarks like “only some blacks actually fall under the N word” is indeed a racist statement. For someone whose boyfriend likes to reiterate they won “the war,” his girlfriend doesn’t seem to understand what that means.

Perhaps its because I cannot pour bleach on her to flush her away that I felt the need to purge my world. We’ve made several trips to Goodwill. Spawn still has some stuffed animals to cover. What idiot bought this kid this many toys?

I finally dismantled the bed and took it to my co-worker who lost so much when we had the storms and flooding.

It felt good. I even tossed the curtains that had been hanging since Spawn was a baby and bought new ones I really couldn’t afford but my sense of well being couldn’t afford me not to. I’m pretty sure I won’t be taking them with me if I move, but I feel better and more refreshed in my home now. Spawn was unusually supportive and worked with me as I went. Maybe I wasn’t the only one needing to purge.

Of course, when the bulk of it was done and there was almost an echo in the house, my instinct is seeking out anything else to eliminate, measuring out what I can break down to nothing as keep worthy, while Spawn’s response was to point how little clothing they had left that actually fit.

Damn.

so vp think she’s good with spreadsheets… (g2)

I think I’ve already gone over how the VP in our department thinks I’m a fucking idiot, something even the Yankee picked up on even though my boss tries her best to play the diplomatic card as much as possible. My boss rocks as they are not the type to get into drama and will get pissed at the issue, not the person. They also have a tendency to try to see the best in others and want to explain bad behavior under a more rational light. Sometimes a bitch is just a bitch. Also, like I told my boss… I have to value the opinion to give a shit what it is.

The VP has more than once told me I scare her. I’m starting to wonder if she isn’t kidding.

The owners decided they wanted to see more training since our financial situation (i.e. people finally started paying their fucking bills and we got bitchier about getting them paid) started getting better. My stress level once this occurred plummeted. Up until that point, the VP wanted to send me to a class on communication skills, which in a meeting with one of the owners and the VP present, I pointed out “There’s only so many ways you can communicate ‘we can’t pay you because we’re not getting paid.'” The owner readily agreed, the VP stfu about it, but it was still on the to-do that we should have training of some sort.

Yankee and I both saw an advanced Excel class we thought might be interesting, so we requested that. VP is not so skilled in Excel, in fact usually asking for Yankee’s help and marveling at the skills, even when its a minor thing. VP and I don’t really interact much work-wise, so it became apparent she had no clue of my skill level when she suggested it would be too much for me, and I just said “I highly doubt it considering I’ve already taken the advanced certification courses. This would be little more than a refresher unless they’re getting into the actual VB coding or in-depth macros without the step-through recorder.”

I lost her somewhere in the first ten words, I could see it in her face. She backpedaled a bit, and it wasn’t long before she had signed up for the same course but before ours.

She came back afterwards and said she learned a couple small things but they didn’t go over anything she didn’t already know. Before I could stop myself I said “well that’s disappointing, I thought it was supposed to be an advanced class.”

The Yankee coughed to hide their snort, but we were rather concerned that we wouldn’t be getting much out of this. It looked like the only classes that were more of our cup of tea were a minimum of two days and about five times the cost. We were told point blank we were not allowed to be gone over one day.

Either way, we finagled it so our project cohort, the Hippy, is also scheduled for this same class (at the Yankee’s house, Hippy mentioned they had no clue how to even request training and they too used spreadsheets a lot, so I put a bug in the VP’s ear. Sometimes, she is useful).

So we get out from having to deal with the VP for at least one day. For that alone, I guess I don’t really mind if I don’t take a lot away from this class, though I’ve never walked away not learning at least something, even if its small. I’m also curious as to whether the VP just didn’t understand a lot of what was being said and filtered it out. Will be interesting to find out. At least the company will be worth it anyway.

i deign to socialize on independance day but be damned if i saw one firework (g2)

One of my rules of thumb: If I’ve refused invites about 7 times in a row, I HAVE to accept the next one. It’s my hermit prevention methodology.  I usually don’t get to 7 unless I’m having a really rough time personally.

So I accepted the invite to the Yankee’s house for the 4th of July. My housewarming gift was a multi-pack of Charmin. Yes, toilet tissue. The amount of time the Yankee spends talking about the inner workings of their digestive system, it was warranted. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so either since they also also received another multi-pack, Poo-pourri, and a stainless steel aerated plunger.

I was in good company.

I brought onion dip, well because I always bring fucking onion dip. It’s never what anyone expects. It’s easy, and BFG told me to when I was once stumped with what to contribute so some gathering that required something aside from a bag of ice or some fucking potato chips. It’s my go-to if I cannot think of anything and/or I don’t want to spend a lot of time. It goes down like:

• 1 cup mayo
• 1 cup shredded cheddar, sharper the better
• 1/4 cup ground/chopped/smashed walnuts OR almonds.
• 1 red onion, chopped to tiny bits.
• *stir*
• *put in container and smear flat*
• *chill*
• Now, I usually use the microwave to soften it, but mine likes to go nuclear after 52 seconds of tepid so I’ve had to switch to hot water on the outside of the jar. If you used almonds, take strawberry marmelade and glaze the top of the dip with it, in a thin layer. If you used walnuts, use raspberry marmelade. I use the whole damn jar usually.
• *chill*

Didn’t know there was going to be gourmet lessons and shit up in this blog, did you?

I use a food processor when I’m not thinking about the cleaning afterword. I’ve also been known to use a bag and a hammer/rolling pin when I do.

It may sound weird, but try it. Two of my cousins, also siblings, who I’ve never been around while they weren’t fighting/screaming/bashing the shit out fo each other, damn near sat on top of one another and silently devoured a container of this shit.

It’s powerful, people.

With that said, I got to see my homeboy, the Yankee’s (we bonded over turkey ice cream cake and dirty jokes) boyfriend. I also got to meet one of the project department newbies, one I’ve been really impressed with as far as their work performance and their significant (we too bonded over lewd topics and dirty innuendo, in fact I seem to have hit idol status for out-lewding him?), a gal from purchasing that I already was friends with came and brought her mom (I wanted to adopt her too), a guy from the design department I once freaked out by sitting next to him at a company-sponsored holiday function and introducing myself (I also wanted to name him Marcus apparently), and their OCD former neighbor who spent a lot of time listening from the sidelines or navigating the wall.

We talked shop, we made cracks about our various diagnoses: which just in that room alone we had a couple of depressions, one bipolar (Yankee’s bf, ironically), OCD (the neighbor has issues with things that close and lock, he doesn’t trust them), our own special version of Turret’s (as I like to call it), etc. The former neighbor was awesome, but very ackward. He wanted to join but didn’t know how while staying on topic, though I give him massive props for his attempts, but man… he had a sharp wit when Yankee’s BF brought it out of him. It was a blast. I cannot ever make anyone understand the vast comfort I get from exploring so many different personalities. Enjoying our differences because we know its welcome and safe is probably one of the best experiences ever.

The Hippy, the epic newcomer to the project department, and I talked extensively of our own dealings with our company. I have to say her insight into the psyche of many of our co-workers was astounding. Yes, the VP really is operating on feelings of insecurity and is desperately seeking validation. Yes, I do think your boss has to be forced to acknowledge their humanity before interacting with them. Yes, I do think that senior head is big bag of narcissistic, immature dicks. I nodded a lot on her insights. We also covered the perceptions they had about my department. Ironically, it all stemmed from the VP and how she treats people.

Although some were a bit on the polite side, the rest of us dove right into the sexual experiences and innuendo, even I disclosed one of my personal best being when my former spouse was not home. I even made an offhand remark at one point that the Hippy looked like she was glowing and did she get some, to which she responded, “why do you think we were late?” When her significant came back in from chatting with Yankee BF, she grew immediately silent and just blushed all over. It was totes adorbs. I couldn’t resist, I teased them a bit. He seemed to have no issue with this topic, but she was shy while he was there.

It was over a hundred degrees outside and Yankee’s bf was hellbent on grilling. We left him to it. At one point even closing the blinds just to escape the heat coming through the windows. I’ve never gone without at least seeing a few fireworks but somehow this year, we missed it altogether. Maybe I’ll make a small bomb and set it off in my yard when the temperature gets below the crack of hell’s ass again.

Spawn was near silent for most of this, and only nibbled. They’d spent the night with their BFF the night before, gone swimming and failed to reapply sunscreen on their pale ass skin in 100 degree weather. So my kid was also barely able to move and suffering a bit from the burn on their top half.

By the way, whoever said vinegar is good thing to put on a sunburn should be punched in the dick. Don’t do it. Greek yogurt, coconut skin oil, olive oil with tea tree in it, aftersun aloe gel with echinacea, lidocaine but only in the spray (touching too much is bad)… all good. Fucking vinegar, bad! If you want someone to have an hour and half of scream/crying, then by all means go with vinegar.

I had originally thought this might be a really awkward outing, and had a deal with Spawn that they were to feign illness at a certain time. Well, it wasn’t feigned with the burn,  but we ended up leaving about two hours or so after our designated time. It was worth it though. Spawn finally piped in their two cents on the way home, they always seem to have a better time than they let on. Those who meet Spawn just think they are the most well-behaved child on the planet. I’m wondering what kind of long con this kid is running to have so many fooled.

W.W.S.D.What Would Sam Do? (G-uno)

I must admit to you all that with so much of my mind being preoccupied with thoughts of Sam the massacre in Orlando has taken a huge toll on me emotionally. I am dazed by the mass destruction one individual can cause in the lives of so many. I also have to believe that if one person is capable of so much change then if the rest of us band together we could be even more powerful, more impacting in a positive way. Acts of terror are designed to daze, and intimidate you. We are all being emotionally abused by those who have a clear understanding that fear is an effective way to try to control the masses.

The problem is that they think we are helpless, even worse that we are lazy. I love seeing the mass support for the law officers who risked their own lives for the sake of helping others. I love the massive show of love in the social medias for those who paid the ultimate price for simply being who they were. I know that those who choose to terrorize us use this outpouring of unity as a way of gaining publicity for their deplorable actions. I believe it is one of the most sinister acts of manipulation.

They believe that long after we have all moved on to the next crisis that they will have won because the horrific act will never be able to be erased from our history. They are counting on the fact that people will turn their heads because the people who share their bigotry against the gay community will mourn this atrocity, but then fade back to their lives where this may not affect them directly.

This is something that I have also been guilty of doing. I care deeply, but often feel powerless to make necessary changes. I think when we label abuses with the words that are adjectives describing the people who have been abused we unknowingly create a division amongst  ourselves. Maybe it’s time to point out the biggest truth in this unforgivable act of terror. The truth is that innocent, tax paying, law abiding, loving, fellow AMERICANS were attacked in their own country.

I’m not sure what the solution is for this horrific loss, but I am sure that if one person can create such a negative impact then more than one person can make an even larger impact. We owe it to our fellow AMERICANS to carefully, and peacefully find a way to make sure their lives were not taken in vain. Monuments are beautiful expressions of honor, but we must go many steps farther. United we can make as much of a lasting impact in history as one person filled with misguided hatred did.

Boones Farm & The Railroad Tracks

There were some mornings when the idea of sitting in class just wasn’t doable. Sam showed up at my back door with a black eye, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a bottle of Boone’s Farm in hand. He didn’t need to say a word, I grabbed my jacket, and off to the tracks we went. There’s not a whole lot to do in a small southern town, especially when you have no money, no car, and your ditching class for the day. So for us that meant heading through the woods to hang out by the tracks.

I would always be a little nervous about cutting class. Getting caught was always the perfect excuse for my father to dole out a justifiable beating, but then I would always come to the rationalization that if I didn’t provide him with a reason he would just come up with one on his own. Sam was staring at the road as we made our way to the woods. I reached into my pocket pulling out the banana bread I had wrapped up in a paper towel. My home was always like walking on a mine field of anger, and violence.You could only move so far in one direction before there would be some kind of explosion.

The strange thing about our home was that there was always, food, electricity, our father was a good provider. In Sam’s home these things were a luxury that didn’t often occur. His mother’s drug habit used up any small amount of money that actually came into the house. I always found this ironic since her occupation was selling drugs. Whenever she would over indulge in her own profitable part of her stash (which was more often than not) it would result in a higher amount of male traffic within the household.

Some of the men she would service herself, and some of the men preferred Sam. Most of Sam’s beatings were a result of being objectionable to their sexual demands. A good fight back would deter most of them, but then there were those who thought of Sam’s struggle as foreplay. I may have dealt with constant physical violence, and emotional  abuse, but Sam dealt with abuses that were far worse. Sam was five foot three, and maybe a hundred & ten pounds. He was very effeminate in is mannerism, and as I pointed out before those with the most horrible agendas always seem to possess googles that see the broken.

There is a kind of profiling  that goes on amongst abusers of which children to go after. In Sam’s case it was pretty easy since his mother couldn’t have given a shit less. When we finally made it to the tracks we stepped into our own little world. A place where we could be ourselves. We would bury our reality with a joint or two, a bottle of Boone’s Farm and the comforting sound of the trains passing by on the tracks.

kicking diabetes ass: week 2, day 4: smugness gone and damn, I’m hungry (g2)

I enjoyed my moment of smugness, it only takes a mirror or a visit to a scale to slap my ass back to reality though so I revel in it when I can.

I have my doctor’s appointment soon, so I have to remember to print out everything I’ve been eating so I can either get chastised or commended depending on how they feel about things.

Last night was probably one of the single most annoying days I’ve had yet. I was ravenous. I wanted anything and everything. A co-worker brought in lemon ricotta cookies, and I made the massive mistake of having one. I’m drawn to new things, food being only one subject that this applies to. It’s like it triggered a starvation response.

I wanted meat, copious amount of it. I ate an entire head of cooked cabbage for dinner and was genuinely sad when there was no more. I had a bite of Spawn’s mac and cheese, just a bite, but I would have happily licked the bowl clean when they were done. I still kept my calories within in check, but my carb exceeded what I wanted.

I don’t know where this is coming from. Perhaps my body is finally going “oh fuck, you’re still not going to eat more than this?!?!” Or maybe the sugar and carb in the cookie set off the diabetic desire for yet more sugar and carbs. Or maybe, its time to add a little meat/egg to see if that helps.

It was frustrating to say the least, but I don’t seem to be having the same issue today. Maybe, regardless of calories, the carb level is the only thing I really need to watch when this is over. Below 50, I don’t have problems, but above it… and I get massive cravings.

It will be something to watch at least.

A nurse at my chiropractor’s said that her joints started feeling better when she eliminated all MSG from her diet and really watched her salt. My sister-in-law made sure her daughter got at least 50g of protein a day because it helped her focus in spite of her ADHD.

Do any of you have to watch certain aspects of what you eat in this way? What happens if you don’t? How did you discover the anomaly?

“The Demon You Knew” (G-uno)

Sam once told me his parents knew what he was even before he did. His mother always looked at him with such disgust. He ached for her acceptance, and she made a lifelong choice to withhold giving it to him. Which is why I nicknamed her ” The Bitch.” I openly called her this to her face, because she openly humiliated Sam to mine.

Listening to her never ending beratement of her (in her words) fairy son was difficult enough to swallow, but nothing was more excruciating than watching Sam’s longing for her acceptance. I hated her with every ounce of my being. The fine line here was that being a broken kid myself I knew the only thing worse than having a fucked up parent was having your friends look at you like the star of some after school movie special of the week.

Correction the absolute worst part of being broken was the friends who were so shocked by your homelife that they tried to rescue you. They always thought that by exposing what was going on in your life there would be some sort of happy ending. When the truth was that even the other adults knew that going for that after school special happy ending was not how things worked. The thing about being broken is that not only did the others with” broken goggles” see you, but so did every other adult with the agenda to break you.

The appeal of having some stranger to deal with was overwhelmingly more frightening than dealing with the demon you knew. Sam’s mother was a drug addict, and his father was a drunken pedofile who had started abusing his son before he had even started school. His father left when he was six years old, after a teacher filed a complaint with social services.

There was this brief moment in time when Sam believed his life would be better, but “The Bitch” was no more a fairy godmother than her son was a fairy.

kicking diabetic ass: day five, a bowl of spinach should not make anyone this excited (g2)

Since my prior ranting, I am ending up with another problem. I seem to be lingering more around 450-480 calories a day, but too many carbs. My goal is below 50 on the carb stuff.

The super nutritious, tastes like vanilla-flavored ass shakes are 30 of them. So I’ve been splitting them in half and use those on their own. Instead adding its companion add-on of super nutritious, lawn cuttings with no carbs to the one that actually tastes better than a yoohoo ever dreamed of, but got a nutrition grade of D.

My dinner last night was the best ever. I find it easiest just to nuke a bag of frozen veg and just eat that, but I was trying to branch out. With summer on us, I crave salads (you should see the shit I get from my kid when winter is on and I’m all about soup).

I got to eat a massive bowl full of food. Ok, so it was medium size mixing bowl, but it was full, damnit. I was so overjoyed. The chewing. I had fresh spinach in the fridge, then found some tomatoes, limes, and salsa. I don’t care what you say, but this makes a jam-up salad, especially when you don’t eat solid food during most of the day. It wasn’t enough calories, so I found me some olives and tossed those in. Yus!

I noshed until it was spotless again and just laid out like a lion after a fresh kill.

480 calories/51 carbs for the day…. DAMN! I was full, I didn’t want anything else, but I just couldn’t think of anything I had that would give me the calories without the carb. I realize now I could have added more olives, but whatever. I’ll polish the damn jar off like candy if this keeps up. I would have been happier eating 600 calories and 40 carbs.

This is a pain in the ass, is what I’m saying.

I have a business lunch I have to attend tomorrow. Thankfully, its being catered by a place that has nutritional info on their website and its salad and sandwiches.

Yes, I kind of influenced this decision, mildly.

The lowest carb one was still 48g, but half of that and a salad and I should be in the clear. I don’t want to attract any questions by eating around the bread or something (unless I can find a way to do this suavely), so I just opted for what I could fit.

Yes, I’m very private about my goings on with work people. They are work people. I will discuss in detail my past adventures of my drunken 20’s (at least the ones that won’t keep me out of public office), but if I’m currently trying some insane diet that will garner either criticism or advice from others who think they know more, hell no.

I welcome advice from you guys, but I can’t escape work people and I don’t tend to tell them enough for them to get the background info on my life and the way I come to a decision. It’s too much of a bother.

I’m a research junkie, I really don’t try shit unless I feel I can do it pretty safely. If I started getting chest pains, migraines, massive hair loss or some other such, I would stop, or adjust,  or head to the doc. I’m a little concerned with my fiber intake, so yes, I’m watching all my nutrients as well.

I meet up with my doctor at the beginning of next month and have my research material already ready to hand over with my food log.

Oh and here’s another secret. I have no idea what I weighed when I started and no clue if I’ve dropped anything. I didn’t want that to be a focus in my mind. I’ll figure that out when I see my doc. I have the chills I expected, but not always. I’m usually the one still sweltering at 69 degrees, so that’s probably normal for me. I’m also tired more often, so fine, I sleep more. That was also expected.

I guess the part I didn’t expect was that I thought I would be much hungrier. Now I would have given money to have one bite of the mac and cheese Spawn had made with their dinner last night, but one bite would have sufficed. It was also easier to turn down than I thought.

Ugh, I could go for some sashimi though…

kicking diabetic ass: day three, coffee without goop sucks butt (g2)

So from my prior posts, I read the study of about 800 calories a day for 8 weeks. My personal goal was actually 500. I found a couple shakes to try, figured I’d mix and match since I really couldn’t find one that I would call perfect, that had the right calories/carb ratio I was looking for while still being nutritionally sound.

One was pretty good taste-wise, but the other sucked. Of course the sucky one was the one who got the nutritional grade of A on my little tracker app. I also got a third powder that is extremely low calorie but gives a veggie boost to other shakes. It does not go in the sucky one, even if it was meant to…. no. Mix some vanilla extract with grass from your lawnmower if you want that sensation.

The surprise in all this was the hostility I got from my kid. Spawn seemed to be under the impression I was suddenly going to morph into one of those people who talks protein, carb load, cyclic somethingorother, synergetic flibbertygibbet and bumfiddle twiddlesticks.

Example: when I took Spawn to a running shoe store to get them properly sized and outfitted with good shoes, Spawn picked up one of those energy gels packets and asked “what’s this?”

Me:”Boob milk from a cyborg.” (The Oatmeal)

The poor guy who helped us about choked and just said “W…What?!?!” in fits of laughter. At least his skinniness didn’t kill his sense of humor.

That is me getting down with the fitness lingo, folks.

Spawn got annoying enough I lashed out with “No, I’d just like to keep my legs attached, along with my eyes and my kidneys, ok?” I upset them, but I got sick of the incessant nitpicking and rude remarks. Apparently, they were convinced I was going to make them do this as well.

The only problem we have come across is that when I don’t “eat,” Spawn doesn’t want to eat either and then ends up starving in the middle of night. I tried to make some more creative things, but still on the OK list for Spawn’s pallette. They didn’t eat much though. This turned into another argument, but I think Spawn is finally started getting it.

I slept a lot that first day, but I wasn’t hungry and I felt ok.

The next day I ended up with a headache, today too. I realized I was consuming even less calories than the 500 I’d allotted for myself, another thing to fix.

Spawn actually had my shake made for me this morning, even asking questions about why potatoes were a no no and what calories really were. It was cool. I explained protein, carbs and fats, and why runners ate carbs right before a run, but why a diabetic should never do this. Why peas, corn and even bananas were more akin to cake to the diabetic body than other vegetables.

I also told Spawn I already had a cheat day lined up on my birthday in a couple weeks, as I didn’t want to use it as an excuse to wait until later to start what I was doing now, so I’d already picked out what kind of cake I wanted and that I wanted to eat at my favorite sandwich and salad spot.

Oddly, I got excited when I found out I could eat an entire bag of brussel sprouts. I miss chewing mostly. Sure, when smelling good food, its tempting to try it, but just being able to chew something is oddly calming when you do nothing but drink all day (shut up, you lushes!). You’d think gum would be more my thing.

I’m waiting for the ravenous, frothing beast to show up though.

I haven’t spoken about any of this to my co-workers and it looks like the owners are forcing my department into a “working lunch” sometime soon. I’m not terribly sure how to handle that one. Cross that bridge when I come to it, I suppose.

I usually have coffee in the morning at work and not having it would start a conversation I’d rather not have. You’d think most people would ignore others, but I have coworkers who are oddly honed into the subtle changes in the habits of those around them.

Coffee in an office is not the greatest, nor is the crap you put into it to make it tolerable, but still, its more tolerable because the crap is in it. I have no room in this diet for any coffee crap. This makes me sad. It also makes for a large cup of coffee that is rather skanky.

*sigh*

Hi God, Great News! A Person On FB Is Going To Lighten Your Workload (G-uno)

You know what also happens when you take your Mom to a Drag Club for the first time, and post some pics on your FB page? You get a private message on how disgusted someone on your friends list is about the entire evening. Apparently this friend has a private line that runs directly to God, and he is also disgusted by our behavior. According to this person’s point of view I am encouraging deviant behavior.

I understand that a drag club may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine if it’s not for you then don’t go. I have the greatest respect for everyone being allowed to have their own beliefs, but stepping on mine is crossing the line. I’m old enough to know that you cannot change someone’s opinions, particularly when one is waving the “God banner” in your face so I don’t even bother going in that direction.

I did however thank this person for lightening God’s tremendous workload by stepping in to judge me. 😉

adventures in mom (g2)

I will likely revisit this but my last entry and the timing got me thinking about my mom. She was largely absent from my life, as I’ve said before, but she was this… buzz in the background, but blinding whenever she was in sight. She flitted in and out of my life throughout most of my childhood like a pixie just in the peripheral.

When I was little, my mother ran around barefoot, her soles blackened and flat from the years she refused shoes, in short shorts and a strawberry blonde ponytail. She spent more time under the hood of her ugly brown car than she ever spent behind the wheel of it. She loved animals, all animals, and she was equally allergic to most of them. She could get a wild squirrel and other random animals to eat out of her hand in little time. I used to refer to her as the tomboy version of Snow White.

She was an especially good cook but her trademark was spaghetti, which I had many times, and the most elaborate lasagna (twelve cheese minimum) which I had only twice. She was a smartass, she turned into a big child when the holidays came around and adored each and every one of them. She got into them to a level I have never been able to compete with, even at my youngest and most caffeine-induced. Even me hammering all the bells flat that she would pin to her clothes and shoes during Christmas did not daunt her in the slightest, she would simply pull out a bag of them she kept hidden and replace every single one.

She taught me how to play pool, ride a mechanical bull, play backgammon, fish, play poker and spite & malice all before the age of ten. She worked at bars, in construction, laying asphalt at the highway department, did taxes and software testing. She taught me how to drive and shoot when I was thirteen. I don’t think she ever once checked a movie rating before letting me watch something. Our bonding moments, especially from age ten on, were over coffee and Bugs Bunny on Saturday mornings. We would do the same when Star Trek and X-Files came on. We played deathmatch Quake together on more than one occasion, first person shooters were definitely her preferred genre.

She could always brush out tangles without ever hurting, splinters too. She was very pretty and always smelled nice. She had cool hands and long fingers she cracked often, roughened from all the stuff she did in a day. The way she ran her fingers through the hair on my head at bedtime always put me at such ease. She enjoyed playing the piano, her favorite piece being Moonlight Sonata. I could listen to her play for hours. I still have trouble listening to that song these days without having a mini-breakdown.

I used to wish I looked anything like her and often doubted my parentage. In my mind, she was more wisp and I was more troll in appearance. It was the seventies, so my only advantage was the ability to tan while my highly fair-skinned, freckled mother could not. The one time she ever successfully got to a coloration she was proud of, they tried to admit her to the hospital for jaundice.

I spent much of my early childhood standing at a screen door for hours waiting for her to come like she promised, disappointed more often than not. I spent most of my preteen and teen years hating and avoiding her. It wasn’t until sometime in high school that I realized the only one that hate hurts is the hater (me), it was a tough lesson to embrace, but I felt so much better once I did it. I let the hate go, learned to forgive and we managed to build a pseudo parent/sibling/friend relationship.

She was always in motion and moved often, never seeming able to settle in any one place or any one job. When I got married and moved out west, she followed two weeks later. I only secretly admitted how happy that made my heart.

After a few years, my marriage fell apart just as my mother was finding her roots in this new terrain, so full of wildlife and outdoor joys. I was glad she was there to lean on while I put my life back together. We ended up living less than fourteen blocks apart. She bought her first house, of which she was so proud. I got to watch her nest for the very first time and helped her do whatever I could. I found I had a knack for removing wallpaper and creatively altering beat up furniture to be presentable.

Deep down, my mother was always the girl who wanted the small dream. She wanted the husband, the white picket fence, the 2.4 kids, 2 dogs, and 2 cats. In her pursuit of this, she made every awful choice in dating partner a person could make: married, drunk, losers, cheaters and abusers. She was a great example in what not to do for me.

But here in the west, I also got to see her finally date someone worthy of her affections. He was nice, but I was always bothered by the fact I could hear the pitch in her voice increase whenever he was around and she seemed to behave more wifely and girly than usual. I couldn’t understand why she felt the need to put on a front when I knew her to be so awesome just as she was, he would surely see that too. I usually opted to stay away when he was around just because she would act weird.

I was working a double shift one Thursday night and my mom and I were instant messaging back and forth about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and what we would be doing. She said that he would be there for the holidays and was also due to arrive that weekend. I grimaced. She got tired, we said goodnight and agreed to meet up the following Tuesday when we watched our shows together. An hour or so later, I sent her a text politely bowing out of the holidays and telling her to have fun with boyfriend. I felt like an ass.

Saturday morning at work, with a hundred sets of eyes on me, I got a call from the coroner’s office that my mother had been found dead not an hour before. I was pissed. My mom would kick his ass for  pulling this kind of prank on me. There was no way my mother, the invincible pixie, could be dead.

I held it together long enough to find a back office to go in and argued with the man on the phone. He had the wrong person. He didn’t know what he was talking about, we chatted barely two days ago and she was fine. Then one of my friends got there, one of my friends whose number my mom had for emergencies, with my mom’s boyfriend. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know but didn’t want to.

My next call was to tell Grand that their youngest was gone. I don’t remember much of the rest, but I only ended up able to sleep that night by heading over to her house and curling up on the couch where she’d been found. I spent a large number of days there not moving much and not taking calls. I checked her email. The email I sent bowing out of the holidays sat unread, I cried from the relief alone.

We had her cremated. I completely fucked up the whole final services thing, most of our family was on the other side of the states so barely anyone came. She should have had a street party, Weekend at Bernie’s style. She should have had more fucking people in massive pain just from the huge void she left behind. Everything happened in a whirlwind, and when I fulfilled all of my daily obligations of clearing out her things, I went out to drink. A lot.

One of my uncles called, her eldest brother, barely able to contain the tears and just started apologizing. I told him there really wasn’t anything to apologize for, but he said there was. I was raised my entire life believing  my mom had given birth to me and left me behind. He told me that when I was still a baby, I was still with my mom and it was my Grand who had convinced him that his baby sister was unfit to take care of me and he simply didn’t have any reason to not believe it. So he took me from my mother, and Grand promptly put a restraining order on her. My Grand and their deceased spouse especially were a pillar of the community with a lot of high ranking friends (judges, lawyers and the like), my mom just a powerless teen.

I think the sum of my emotional output at that moment was… “huh.” I simply did not have enough with which to give the slightest shit. My uncle was going into his list of regrets about what he didn’t get to tell her. It wasn’t long before I interrupted him.

me: “Was she talking to you?”

uncle:”huh?”

me:”Were you on speaking terms when she died?”

uncle:”Well yeah, we chatted and emailed every so often”

me:”Then she already forgave you.”

uncle:”What do you mean?”

me:”If she hadn’t forgiven you, she would never have had anything to do with you again. You know that.”

uncle:”true….”

me:”Then you have your answer, it went unsaid but she did forgive you and she probably knew how you felt about it. She was well aware of the mastermind behind it.”

uncle:”I…. true… but, can you forgive me?:

me:”There is nothing for me to forgive. I don’t regret the person I turned out to be and the fact that my mom never trashed her parent for this or told me about it just made her jump several levels in my book. I’m in awe of her. Had it been me instead of my mom, no one would have ever found any trace of your body or of me and my kid, but I’m not my mom and this wasn’t my fight.”

uncle:”…”

I hope he felt a little better about what I said, death threat aside, but it made me sit down and do math. In the almost thirty years I had been alive, my mom and I only had seven functional years together, much of it based on unfounded hate on my part. I think that hurt me more than anything else. I found out she was engaged but hadn’t told me yet. She was just about to touch that tiny dream with that tiny white fence, only to have it snatched away from her. Life, fate… whatever you want to call it, it was one fucking unfair piece of shit.

The anniversary of her death is in exactly one week. I’m not sure what my kid and I will do to honor her that day. My kid never met her grandmother, they came along later, but I always find it so… beautiful when I see the mark of my mom on my kid, from the shade of their eyes, the freckles that speckle their cheeks, the fair skin, the love of all animals and ability to bring even the shyest forth, the desire to run around like a mad person until breathless, the smartass comebacks….She is still there, even if just a little bit.