Oldies But Goodies

I was hunting through an old journal (10 years) looking for something, and realized that some of the entries are hysterical.  Here are a few excerpts:

December 31, 1999

Evening

          Obviously, a special night: the last night of the 1990s.  Also, according to most normal folks, it’s the last night of the decade, the century and the millennium.  Some extremely anal-retentive, technical people will insist to the last breath that the new decade/century/millennium doesn’t really start for another year.  But we normal people are ignoring them.  Judging from what they’re showing on TV, there are millions upon millions of normal people, and many of them are celebrating in crowded public areas. 

          I’m currently at the office, having volunteered to do “Y2K watch.”   The concern over massive computer glitches kind of mutated into concern over mass anarchy, terrorism, Armageddon, etc. etc.  Some people are behaving the way they did in the ’50s and ’60s, building bomb shelters and stocking up on staple supplies like water and canned goods. 

          Carl’s niece Terry just had a baby.  One of her mother’s co-workers “warned” his sister that if Terry’s baby wasn’t born before midnight on 12/31, “God will just take it back and it will dissolve back into nothing inside her.”  These are people who actually run around loose and operate machinery!!

Thursday, January 06, 2000

          Afternoon

          Things are looking up just the slightest bit.  Yesterday I got my pay stub and saw that it was $2 more than what I usually get.  First reaction:  “They made a mistake.”  Next reaction, “Oh, it’s more.”  Third reaction: “Oh, no, this is the new pay rate, my raise, and this is all I get??”

            I picked up Carl at work, and told him the good news/bad news.  Then awhile later, I showed him the pay stub.  He went over it, item by item, and asked me about my UNICEF donation of $25.  “Damn, baby, you send them $25 a month?”  I told him, no, it was just a one-time donation and……

          Then I realized that yes, it’s just a one-time donation, and it’s just for this pay period!  Which means my next check will be $25 more, $27 more than what I was getting in 1999, and $54 more per month.  Not a fortune, but not bad, either. 

           Wally went to school this morning in 30-degree weather, in shorts, multiple layers on top, and no hat.  I yelled at him and slammed doors and windows, waking Carl.  Then after Wally left the house, I went into his room and took all his shorts away.  He won’t be allowed to wear shorts unless the high temperature for the day is going to be at least 70 degrees, and it has to be at least 45 degrees in the morning when he leaves.  Enough is enough.  He stalls and delays as long as he can, so he knows I’ll be in a hurry to rush him out the door, and uses that tactic to wear clothes that I object to.  Jeez-Louise, we’ve been having this type of war since he was three!  I remember writing a journal entry where we argued about shorts (and woke up Doug…), back in 1994.  The little booger!

Friday, January 07, 2000

          A high-gear, frustrating sort of day.  The most recent example:  I was on the phone, dialing Brother Fax Machines, because our particular machine is malfunctioning.  I’ve been meaning to do this for days, but was delayed by other things.  The preparations for such a call include: making sure you’ve recently changed the toner, because they’ll accuse you of not doing that; getting the model & serial number written down; finding the sales receipt and warranty info; finding the correct, updated number to call; being ready to stay on hold interminably.  Well, I finally got all that in order, made the call, and wouldn’t you know it, some guy from HR calls with a request for some numbers, which I had.  I hung up from Brother, gave Mr. HR the information, and when I went to call Brother back, I got a busy signal, because their queues are full.  Shit.  It’s just that kind of day.  People are missing their paychecks, etc.

          

Later:  Der fax ist fixt.  The technician told me to put it on the table and whack it.  

Tuesday, March 07, 2000

          We just learned that Wally is:

§         Buying breakfast every day at school (even though I usually give him a pop tart or something for the bus)

§         Buying a full cafeteria lunch

§         Also buying ice cream

§         Eating the lunch I pack him (which includes lots of snacks because he says he’s “starving.”

§         Not bringing home the payment details from the cafeteria, so I now owe nearly $17 in back charges for my little eating machine, who swears up and down that he never eats the cafeteria lunch because he hates it.  The lunch lady read me an itemized list of everything he’s eaten lately:  corn dogs, hot dogs, pizza, chicken nuggets, chicken biscuits, sausage biscuits, cereal, waffles & french toast.  To quote her directly, "Honey, that child eats EVERYTHING."

Click Here to Read More..

And a good time was had by all. 'specially me.

Okay, guys, I have just gotten through, truly, the suckiest week at work in a long time. I will not belabor the details; that's not the purpose of this post.

This is going to be a happy post, by gum.

At 5:00-ish yesterday evening, I almost literally limped to my car. I mean, we're talking down, ragged and defeated, despite the author of my pain taking a vacation day. My circadian rhythms make the hours between 5 and 7 pm the lowest point for me, energy-wise. I typically get up at 6 a.m. and for the next several hours am very ready, willing and able to do just about anything, especially when it comes to planning and organizing. But starting around 3:30 in the afternoon, the energy starts to wane seriously. Especially on Friday, and especially if it's been a tough week. A good example of this was yesterday -- made a detour to the restroom and stood in front of the wastebasket with a crumpled paper towel in one hand and my car keys in the other -- needing about three long seconds to sort out which one I was supposed to toss in. There are some evenings when I will walk in the door, say hi to Carl, kick off the shoes and most of the clothes, and just fall into bed and be deeply asleep within 2 minutes, waking up an hour or so later not having changed position. Then, of course, I stay up until the wee morning hours, but...

So, yesterday evening, I had to rush over to the church to catch the tail-end of an important meeting, and then a half hour later it was time to attend dinner at a friend's house. I had to slap together a time sheet, as I always do on Fridays, and would have gotten it started earlier, except for having to fill in on the company switchboard from 4-5. So it's rush-rush-rush, making up the time sheet, shutting down my computer, putting away all the paperwork and getting out of Dodge. In my quest to arrive promptly at the meeting, I took a shortcut along one of the most dismal, drug-ridden streets in the city. Such was my pessimistic frame of mind that I fully anticipated encountering a flat tire, fender-bender, carjacking, or improvised explosive device along one of those 4 blocks. Perhaps my emotional sun started to peek through the clouds as I turned onto the next street and left all that squalor behind.

The church meeting was not unpleasant, but it was a somewhat confused and talk-heavy affair, and having come in so late, there was little for me to contribute. I think everybody was fairly fatigued by the time we broke up at 6:00, but I didn't want to arrive too early at the dinner, which was located just blocks away. But there was no one to hang out and chat with, so I took the long route to my friend's. I'd never previously visited them before dark. Upon arriving, I discovered that they have ample parking space behind their house, making it unnecessary to scope out an appropriate spot at the curb. One of the other guests had arrived just before me; their smiling faces were a balm to the soul as we walked into the house together.

And so went the whole evening. My friend is a wonderful host, along with her husband, and a splendid cook. I've known her just over two years and feel enormously blessed by her friendship. She is a consummate night-owl. If you even try to make conversation with her before 11 a.m. or so, you'd be advised to record it, since she won't remember much of it later. So most of the time we spend together is on weekday evenings. She's walking on air, while my ass is dragging. I was genuinely worried about how I'd hold up for 3 hours' worth of leisurely dining and conversation with six other people.

But I needn't have worried. There was wine (oh, yesss!), salad, a roast, potatoes, squash, a marvelous dessert and coffee. A few auxiliary brain cells kicked in and I was able to converse intelligently about politics, religion and society in general. I indulged briefly in a recitation of the preceding week's miseries, but all of that suddenly, miraculously felt irrelevant.

After about three hours, the inevitable exhaustion reappeared and I was the first to get up and say goodnight. I'd seen one or two discreet glances at wristwatches before that and suspected that I'd provided an opportunity for the others. Six warm hugs and then it was a short, uneventful cruise back to my (thankfully) empty street and quiet abode.

An absolutely perfect end to a day that could have been worse, at the conclusion of a week that many of us thought would just drag on forever.

I'm hoping the momentum will carry me through this weekend and enable me to do something other than stare at the computer and take naps. And then Monday it's back to the battlefield ... freshly armored. Click Here to Read More..

Workstuff

Having depleted a lot of creative and emotional reserves with the previous post, it's taken me this long to come up with any sort of new topic. And so, I resort to a rather old one: The office.

Several months ago I described my co-worker Fredi. I know that she and her teammate Louise have been very bogged down with a combination of a bug-ridden new software system, new policies and procedures, year-end cleanup, and sheer volume of work. The woman who works with me was even pulled away from her job to help Fredi and Louise a couple of days a week. She came away from it feeling she'd accomplished nothing but fall behind with her own responsibilities. "They are SO disorganized!" she said, with more than a little disgust. Fredi's desk had become the one no one wanted to go near. If someone needed a document that Louise couldn't find, they would simply wait for Fredi to return, rather than take the risk of trying to wade through tottering stacks on the desk, the floor, and the overhead compartments.

In addition to a crushing workload, Fredi is also contending now with her mother, who fell recently and appears to be straying far off the road to recovery. As the elderly often will, she has decided she's "too old" to make the effort at rehab. Fredi had hoped she'd rally, but this seems not to be in the cards.

Last Friday I stayed late and heard Fredi & Louise's manager direct each of them to speak to him in his office -- Fredi first and then Louise. There was a tone to it that put me on the alert, whereas usually I'm so wrapped up in my own work, I'm oblivious to conversations around me unless they become unusually loud. I listened for Fredi, believing that if she got bad news from Taylor (i.e. a layoff), there would be a significant emotional reaction. But, she came out of Taylor's office and said to Louise "Your turn." All well and good, I thought, and went back to my own little world. Fredi left in her usual fashion: At top speed, with nary a word to anyone.

So Monday, I arrived at the office and saw out the corner of my eye that Fredi's cube was empty. This did not alarm me unduly -- with her mother's situation, she's already had to take time here and there for caregiver conferences and meetings to determine future placements. She tries to schedule them first thing in the morning, rather than cut a large chunk out of the day. It's been very stressful for her. She would often tell me how sleep was eluding her, due to worry and the feeling that there was no relief in sight.

A few minutes later, though, after I'd clocked in, hung up my jacket and started focusing on the day ahead, I took a second look at Fredi's cube and saw that all her many, many personal items were gone. Her workspace was stripped ... and her nameplate was blank.

Holy shit, I thought. I had few illusions about Fredi's stellar work habits and doubted very much that anyone else did ... but to pull the plug on someone who's maybe 6 years from retirement, someone with a disabled spouse, a house that won't sell, and now a mother headed into a decline, was truly heart-rending. I hoped they had at least offered her some sort of halfway decent severance -- she'd been with the company about ten years, I thought. And was Louise going to have to pull the entire load now? What was Fredi's husband, who still worked here, going to do? Would he quit in protest, or deliberately slack off at his job?

What a way to start a week.

And I spent the next half hour or so wondering how they'd managed to do this. Did they call her later Friday, or Saturday, perhaps? Or did she arrive first thing Monday morning and receive instructions to clean out her desk? It was, needless to say, difficult to concentrate on much else. I wanted badly to ask someone, but my manager and the others were walking back and forth, making casual conversation a bad option.

Interestingly, it was my manager who explained it. "We've had layoffs over the weekend," she said. I jerked my thumb toward Fredi's cube and said "So I've noticed."

My boss waved her hand in dismissal. "Oh, Fredi's fine. They sent her over to the local branch." The local branch is where all Fredi's closest friends are -- she left their group to come to our office about 3 years ago and has frequently talked about how much she missed them and their informal camaraderie. They are not a "corporate" bunch. They're a half-hour breakfast-at-your-desk and take-an-hour-to-peruse-the-new-Avon-catalog bunch.

It was by far the happiest moment I've had at work in a long time. I'm very glad for Fredi -- she still has her job and has escaped from this pressure cooker the rest of us are in. We exchanged a couple of brief e-mails and she confirmed what I'd surmised -- she's in the best of all possible worlds. She still gets to see her husband, since his work takes him here, there and everywhere.

It's been so busy since Monday, I haven't had a chance to ask Louise how she's holding up. I suppose I'll soon get a taste of whatever she's got going. The other person who does what I do is going in for some surgery tomorrow. It's a repeat of something she had before and that time, it kept her home for a few months. She claims she's determined to be out no more than a week, but I'll believe it when it happens. The timing's bad, though. My boss later went on to tell me that 2 other people DID get laid off Friday, and we're already seeing a lot of doubling-up of work loads.

The frantic pace does make the days and weeks go by faster. There is that. Click Here to Read More..

Inauguration Day

Wonderful, uplifting, historic. Even if it did take about 8 hours to actually see it.

Due to an early morning physical therapy appointment, I had to work through lunch, and clocking out for lunch was the only way anyone at my place of employment would have gotten to see it. One brave soul (about 6 months away from retirement and a true-blue I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-threaten-me-with type) tuned in on her computer. Everybody else headed over to the break room or continued working as though it were just another day. Maybe those who appeared indifferent were doing exactly as I did -- going home to watch it on You Tube or news rebroadcasts on cable. But the atmosphere in the office was distinctly one of "We didn't vote for him and therefore we have no interest in anything other than making snide remarks to each other about him. And if you leave here to go watch it, well, we know all about YOU, don't we?"

Even a friend of mine from church, who works for a different company in the same building (a major sponsor of liberal events in our city), reported something similar. They had a TV there, but people who went over to watch felt vaguely uncomfortable, as though something were being recorded unfavorably in their personnel file.

I remember about 10 years ago, when I lived in Atlanta, the company I worked for installed a TV on every floor so we could watch -- are you ready? John Glenn participating in a space shuttle mission!

Some people recognize that history is a force that transcends personal opinion.

Best wishes for success and happiness, President Obama! Click Here to Read More..

Improvement

I haven't done any kind of daily chronicle of my ankle injury, simply because I'm obviously not the first person ever to have had an ankle injury, and by comparison, it's a pretty minor injury. Boring, in fact. The 4-day Christmas weekend was stultifyingly boring because the most exciting thing I did was polish off most of a box of Cheezits in front of the tube (actually quite novel...I haven't pigged out like that in years). I also rearranged my home office space. That was almost anticlimactic.

But the ankle sprain itself has had little effect on me other than making me want to sleep a lot. And that's mainly what I did for 4 days. Carl worked every day except Christmas and people were considerate enough to refrain from calling me on the phone and waking me up.

I wasn't able to use the boots the clinic gave me because when they put them on me, I didn't pay proper attention so as to put them on right next time. I remedied that today when I went for the follow-up visit. Now I can look semi-fashionable. The ace bandages are already somewhat worn and stretched out of shape (they were originally Wally's). This morning my gait wasn't quite as stiff and slow as previous days. The pain is noticeably less severe. The bruising, however, will be with me for awhile. My entire ankle is this scary eggplant shade.

Given the variety of pain medication I have lying around the house, I've used relatively little of it.

It felt good to get back to work yesterday. People have been nice. There wasn't any awkwardness about it being a w/c claim; I think everybody is just extremely relieved that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been. It didn't even count as "lost time" (which would have deprived us all of our quarterly Wal-mart gift card, the universe forbid), since the manager adjusted the time clock to cover the time I spent getting checked out at the clinic), and I've already made up the extra half hour that my appointment today took up. The last few days have been productive and low-stress, since da boss is out for the week.

Still ... this year began on a sucky note (we were burglarized in January, before I started posting here full-time) and I won't be sorry to see it go. Click Here to Read More..

Sore and Wondering

Yesterday I mis-stepped on some stairs while at work and messed up my ankle. Not broken, probably not even technically sprained, but painful as hell. Though quite a few people warned me that it would hurt "a lot more the second and third day," I'm doing fine and hope to be walking normally again a week from now. The timing on the holiday is good, giving me a 4-day weekend to do little or nothing while it heals.

That's the "sore" part. What I'm wondering about is my mother.

In 1973, while in the midst of yet another beer-soaked battle, my father grabbed my mother by the ankles and pulled her off the bed and onto a bare floor. Her right hip didn't fracture initially, I don't think, because she walked on it for 2 or 3 more days. My grandfather died the day after this happened, so instead of seeking medical help, she traveled a few hundred miles and back to the funeral, self-medicated with whiskey on the way home, then sat down on the sofa and could not get back up again until the paramedics carried her out some 24 hours later.

I remember the wail of despair she let out when the doctor told her her hip was broken. She had steadfastly denied the possibility all that long day while she sat on the sofa. She suffered for years with that hip. Despite having pins put in to restore function, exercises and various types of medication, it never healed right and eventually, about 5 years later, she had surgery to correct the mistakes made the first time. The worst part, I think, was that she never regained the regal posture she'd always prided herself on. And the hostility between her and Dad never went away, even when she was getting around on a walker and then a cane. This terrible lifestyle change for my mother came at the age of 53.

Moreover, I can only imagine the financial hit we must have taken from this. Two weeks or so in the hospital, doctor visits...then a re-do on the first fracture. Dad made only $15K a year, max, and while Blue Cross is one of the top insurance companies, there's no way they would have covered all of this 100%. How my father managed to hold onto a house and pay bills when he was the sole earner is a mystery I will never know the answer to. I do know that we never received charity. If we had, it would have been the subject of the rantings and ravings that went on in our home every weekend.

What astonishes me now, as I deal with this relatively minor injury, making my way carefully from room to room at home, planning every movement and reviewing ways to prevent something like this from ever happening again, is the fact that after that first hip fracture, my mother went on to break her ankle a year and a half later and then her other hip a year and a half after that. The second hip fracture was just before I started college. Three major fractures in less than three years! Certainly, the first one was perpetrated by my father (though I doubt he really understood what the result would be of his mindless action -- actors in such plays rarely do), the ankle and second hip fracture came about when my mother was entirely alone in a room and my father was either out of the house or asleep. Both of those times, she was intoxicated. Mom claimed that the ankle fracture was the result of "a wet leaf on the bottom of her shoe," but still, she was drinking. And the other hip was broken when she attempted to get out of bed and her feet became tangled in the sheets. "It could happen to anyone," she later said, but when you've had so much to drink that you can't feel where the sheets end and your feet begin, how surprising is it to land on a hard floor when all you wanted to do was walk 20 feet to the bathroom?

I am not accident- or injury-prone. That's why, for me, this ankle injury is a revelation. I don't like it, not one little bit, and you can bet that I will never again carry an object with two hands down a flight of stairs, no matter how short. I will be even more careful walking than before, looking down, checking for obstacles, measuring curb heights, etc. I am hugely grateful that the accident took place while I was on the clock, even though the items I was carrying down the steps were intended for a holiday luncheon. So far as I am aware right now, this is worker's comp, so it's not going to drain me financially. And yes, you know the first order of business at the clinic was a drug screen for Volly. I'm immensely grateful that the screen will reveal nary a questionable substance of any kind, for I had not taken so much as an aspirin in the previous three days.

I will also think twice about consuming alcohol. Since Carl doesn't drive, I'm usually the one behind the wheel so I'm designated driver by default and that doesn't leave much room for imbibing. But even if I'm "just walking somewhere," I'm now much more aware of how easy it is to screw up while under the influence. This accident yesterday did not involve alcohol -- I think of how much more serious it could have been otherwise.

And so, my thoughts return once again to my mother. Three fractures in three years, and still she kept on drinking. I shake my head in disbelief that someone could be so cavalier, knowing what a bad fracture could mean, and then to carelessly let it happen twice more.

I've learned a lot from my accident. I'm still trying to figure out what, if anything, my mother learned from all of hers? Click Here to Read More..

Introverts Hate This

Going on a "group weekend" with a bunch of folks, and trying not to think about what it will entail. Sharing sleeping space with several others ... the old "what'll I wear?" dilemma...my period's going to start any second now and it's already more than a week late. Overall, I'm sure it will be fine, but when you're an introvert you're always thinking "Where can I go off by myself and hide?" I don't know if I'll have the opportunity. At least it ends around noonish on Sunday so I'll be able to get home and unwind a bit before starting the work week.

In other news, I found a kindred spirit among the local folks in town, who can't just "up and go" on a 2-hour lunch anytime he wants. I encountered that last year -- my boss gave me hell about it months after the fact -- so I haven't been able to make any of the periodic lunch gatherings they have. Possibility of using some vacation days later in the year...that's something to look forward to. Click Here to Read More..

Oh, Carl, Wait Until You Get Home!!!

Carl got his schedule changed this week and has to work a very different shift 2x. He is so pissed. He thinks his boss deliberately changed his schedule because she got wind that he's actively looking for another job. I think he's paranoid, although granted, she is a biotch. But at any rate, he's been discouraged because first he had to delay going for an interview several times last week due to things being extremely busy where he works now, and then when he finally got over to the place, a person he didn't know blew him off by saying they weren't hiring at all. Well, today the answering machine had a message from the same place he's been trying to get hired at, and they are interested.

I wrote him a note and stuck it on the fridge for when he finally gets home.

---
Marilyn is now my next-door neighbor. She's been catty-corner from me since last May when we moved to our new office space. At first she wanted a window cubicle like mine but was afraid the windows would produce too much glare. By the time she realized she was wrong about this, it was too late. She was already ensconced in the aisle-side cube, and the IT guys were very busy with everyone else's installations, so she stayed put. But after Miss K left a couple of weeks ago, Marilyn saw her opportunity and got permission to move. Now I'm sure she'll be peeking around the dividing wall to talk to me several times a day.

Maybe she'll bypass me altogether and talk to Linda, who sits on the other side of me and is also the gabby type. Click Here to Read More..