There is way too much going on in my head lately. I feel like a jekyll/hyde creature, happy one minute and raging the next, peaceful and quiet and then suddenly crying in the kitchen floor.
Work has been stressful. We're at such a make-it-or-break-it point. Payroll has just barely eked through the bank account the last couple months, and probably wouldn't have if a couple of the managers (me included) hadn't held their paychecks until a few things came in. We need more sales, and the salespeople are trying so hard, but for some reason it's just not coming in as quickly as we want. We have a big deal on the horizon, so close yet so far out of reach. We've cut everything we can cut, even our staff, so that we can survive. I feel like we've been in survival for three years, and I'm ready to thrive instead. We're smarter now, and if we could start over we'd be in a better position than we are now, but you can't retroactively apply the lessons you learn from your mistakes. We need just one more big break.
Meanwhile, my family life, other than my husband, has taken an odd turn. My parents finally bought a house here. My husband and I were overjoyed that they would no longer be staying with us every other weekend when they came to town. But then my good-for-nothing manipulative older brother lost his job and my dad told him to come live in their house rent free. After living there a couple weeks, he then told my parents the house (a two bedroom, one bath) was too small for them to stay there too. So my parents are staying with us again. What can I do, though? I can't be a bitch and say no, can I? It's annoying and frustrating that I can see what he's doing, but for some reason my dad in particular is blind to it.
All this political nonsense has my brain reeling too. I don't know whether to pay attention, get angry, organize, protest, and rage rage rage, or turn it all off and just try to live my life and vote how I should when I can. When I was in college, I was the former. I was angry all the time and the tiniest injustices would cause me to go into a tailspin. I felt like a madwoman sometimes, but I was single and had madwomen friends, so it felt like it was what I was supposed to do. When I met my husband, I slowly but surely settled down. Different things became important. I found myself feeling actually contented with my life, and I stopped paying attention to all the little irritants in the world and just lived my life.
Those little irritants now seem to have grown exponentially, are everywhere, and are constantly bombarding me. It started this past fall when my state tried to pass an enormously outrageous anti-woman law. It ultimately failed, but it got me paying attention again, and now I see this bullshit everywhere. Calling people sluts for taking birth control, making laws saying it's ok for doctors to lie to pregnant women, dictating that girls who want an abortion can't cross state lines without a parent even if that parent is absent or abusive, forcing women to undergo painful and unnecessary medical procedures, defunding important health programs for women, reversing anti-discriminatory laws that were already on the books and doing good for women... it's just too much.
None of it affects me, though, in the sense that I could probably live my life and never be adversely affected by any of the above. But I feel a compulsion to speak out about it and worry about it because it affects women in general, and I've always felt a kinship to women. I was born a feminist at my core. All I want is to be treated fairly and equally and not have lady parts become fodder for overzealous conservative politicians. We just want to be left alone in peace.
It's all making me crazy. Last night, after reading a story about how Arizona has proposed a law that would allow employers to fire women for taking birth control, I lost it. I ended up in the dark kitchen sobbing in front of the sink. I don't really know what cracked, but I have felt so much lately like some kind of crazy person and a second-class citizen. I know work will be fine, that my parents problems aren't my problems and that having them stay with me isn't the worst thing ever, and that these new proposed laws are probably just the death throes of a party who has completely lost touch with the normal, average American, but it just feels like too much to take in, and I'm struggling with which me I want to be in response: raging? or quiet?
This morning I'm going with quiet. I want to stay informed, but I'm not going to spend an hour every day reading the news like I was. I'm going to pay attention to work details and see if I can change some things here for the better. I'm going to skip the protest march coming up in a couple weeks-- no one will notice me, there or not, but I know for my own sanity I need to back off. I'm going to give my parents some grace and put some positive thought toward my brother figuring it out and moving on.
So I'm going to do things that make me happy. I listened to loud, happy music on the way to work instead of the news. I'm going to take Friday afternoon off and go sit in the sun with a cocktail. This weekend I will plant some flowers on my back deck and get some bird seed to attract that little bluebird I've seen flitting around. These things make me happy, these things make me grateful to be here, to be alive, so these are the things that are going to fill my life right now.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
I had a beautiful, relaxing weekend. I needed it. Friday night I went to a college baseball game (we are season ticket holders), and though it was cold, as long as I was wrapped up in my coat I was fine. It was nice to sit and chat with friends about really unimportant things. Saturday I ran errands and did chores around the house, then had a quiet night at home with my husband, tuna hibachi take out, and a movie. Sunday was beautiful, so we went again to the ballpark, sat in the glorious sun, and drank a couple beers before heading home to bed before 9 p.m.
Today I've been fighting a bit of a migraine, probably brought on by the changing seasons. I feel like my right eyebrow is drooping. I recognize this face in the mirror, not because it's mine, but because it's my mother's, looking out at me like somehow no time has passed and I'm still a child, tiptoeing around her bedroom door, trying my best not to disturb her sleep. Her eyebrow used to droop, too, when she had a migraine, and the pained look on my face reminds me so much of what I saw in hers.
They have moved my grandmother to my hometown, in preparation of their own move here this summer, and I am ashamed that I have not been to visit her since her move. She doesn't know it, of course-- she doesn't know anything about the current time and space. But I know it. Somehow that alone hasn't compelled me to go see her, that guilt, because seeing her causes pain of its own that is most of the time worse than the guilt. Her face doesn't remind me of anything anymore; it's so changed simply by the look of knowing that's gone from her eyes. But I will go see her today, after work.
Today I've been fighting a bit of a migraine, probably brought on by the changing seasons. I feel like my right eyebrow is drooping. I recognize this face in the mirror, not because it's mine, but because it's my mother's, looking out at me like somehow no time has passed and I'm still a child, tiptoeing around her bedroom door, trying my best not to disturb her sleep. Her eyebrow used to droop, too, when she had a migraine, and the pained look on my face reminds me so much of what I saw in hers.
They have moved my grandmother to my hometown, in preparation of their own move here this summer, and I am ashamed that I have not been to visit her since her move. She doesn't know it, of course-- she doesn't know anything about the current time and space. But I know it. Somehow that alone hasn't compelled me to go see her, that guilt, because seeing her causes pain of its own that is most of the time worse than the guilt. Her face doesn't remind me of anything anymore; it's so changed simply by the look of knowing that's gone from her eyes. But I will go see her today, after work.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
once again...
It's probably a good thing my boss works from his home and not from our main corporate office. Today would have been his last on earth otherwise. I have worked for him for three and a half years now, and when I say he's the best boss I've ever had, I mean it. (But I haven't had great bosses either... one called me stupid to my face, one was complacent with the fact that her business was losing money since it was just "fun" to her, and another was so micromanaging that she couldn't keep employees longer than three months at a time before they ran away screaming.)
My current boss has problems of his own. He is a shiny-ball-chaser, meaning whatever captures his interest most at any given time is #1 priority. Tomorrow he may not care at all, there's no way to tell. He can't be anywhere on time, ever, and he can't finish anything on time, ever. He never finishes a project, a byproduct of the shiny-ball syndrome and the perpetually late problem both. He cancels and moves meetings for no good reason all the time, regardless of the strain it puts on me, who controls his calendar, or anyone else involved. Working with him, you are living in his world, and it's a wild, crazy ride.
He's also full of really great ideas, he's a lot of fun to be around, he cares so much about people, almost to a fault, and he would never do anything intentional to hurt me or anyone else. He's always giving positive feedback and wants everyone here to grow, learn, and succeed.
BUT. I have been begging and pleading for him to lead an internal training session (or two or three) for months to try to get some new team members up to speed on his area of knowledge. It's not something I can do myself, I'm a different department. He finally agreed last week so I set it up for today. Everyone was SO excited. We were going to do it after hours so they could all really pay attention, we had popcorn ready, people told their families not to expect them, etc.
An hour before the start time, he canceled it saying he had lost his voice.
It's ALWAYS something. Always. Something else always comes up. Maybe he lost his voice, maybe, but with his history of canceling everything I don't even care the reason anymore. The mood in the office was immediately brought down when I announced that we had to reschedule, but of course he didn't see it. I can't count on him to finish anything, and there are days I want to get up and walk out because I'm so frustrated by it.
There have been a few times I've tried to go into this with him, but seeing his face get all sad and mopey when he realizes he's made me mad is always enough for me to lay off a bit. Plus he is still my boss so I don't feel like I can totally ream him out with no consequences. I can't change him though. It's something I'm going to have to continue to live with, I suppose. Today was just particularly maddening.
My current boss has problems of his own. He is a shiny-ball-chaser, meaning whatever captures his interest most at any given time is #1 priority. Tomorrow he may not care at all, there's no way to tell. He can't be anywhere on time, ever, and he can't finish anything on time, ever. He never finishes a project, a byproduct of the shiny-ball syndrome and the perpetually late problem both. He cancels and moves meetings for no good reason all the time, regardless of the strain it puts on me, who controls his calendar, or anyone else involved. Working with him, you are living in his world, and it's a wild, crazy ride.
He's also full of really great ideas, he's a lot of fun to be around, he cares so much about people, almost to a fault, and he would never do anything intentional to hurt me or anyone else. He's always giving positive feedback and wants everyone here to grow, learn, and succeed.
BUT. I have been begging and pleading for him to lead an internal training session (or two or three) for months to try to get some new team members up to speed on his area of knowledge. It's not something I can do myself, I'm a different department. He finally agreed last week so I set it up for today. Everyone was SO excited. We were going to do it after hours so they could all really pay attention, we had popcorn ready, people told their families not to expect them, etc.
An hour before the start time, he canceled it saying he had lost his voice.
It's ALWAYS something. Always. Something else always comes up. Maybe he lost his voice, maybe, but with his history of canceling everything I don't even care the reason anymore. The mood in the office was immediately brought down when I announced that we had to reschedule, but of course he didn't see it. I can't count on him to finish anything, and there are days I want to get up and walk out because I'm so frustrated by it.
There have been a few times I've tried to go into this with him, but seeing his face get all sad and mopey when he realizes he's made me mad is always enough for me to lay off a bit. Plus he is still my boss so I don't feel like I can totally ream him out with no consequences. I can't change him though. It's something I'm going to have to continue to live with, I suppose. Today was just particularly maddening.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
ahhhhhhhhh
I AM SO FRUSTRATED.
Why is this country talking about the right to get birth control covered by insurance? Since when did someone else's religious belief become more important than my right to be able to afford the medicine that my doctor prescribed to me?
People are so mean! A woman, a mother of two of my high school friends, was just ranting on facebook about how we shouldn't have to pay for college girls to get their birth control cheaply. SERIOUSLY? I am NOT a college girl, I am a married woman, and I take birth control too, and I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for it every month! There are a ton of responsible, married, stable women out there who take it for reasons well beyond not getting pregnant, and you know what, even if that is their only reason, it's THIER CHOICE because it's THEIR BODY! There have been times in my life where I wouldn't have been able to afford my birth control without insurance coverage, and I need it to control a medical issue, not just so I can have sex without getting pregnant. Why do people not understand this?
Why is no one talking about viagra? Why does that not offend anyone's religious beliefs? Its sole purpose is to make it so men can have sex. Nothing else. Are they just assuming because these men are old, they are married, and hey they "might" be trying to have more kids, so it's cool. But birth control? Hell no, right? These women are just sluts out there having a good time, I'm not paying for that!
I responded to her post with something similar to above and now I'm afraid to go back to facebook. I know no one on her thread will listen to me. I just can't abide the stupidity anymore. I can't take it!
You know, I think the worst part of this is that I respected her and looked up to her as a kid. I never knew she was so closed-minded. It makes me sad. I thought I was going to inherit a world where women were treated as equal, where I didn't have to fight for basic freaking rights, but instead everything is a mess.
I came out of the womb a feminist, kicking and screaming against the patriarchy from the start. No one puts me down or pushes me aside, especially not just because I'm a woman. I will stand and I will fight. I'm sick to death of being a second class citizen.
Why is this country talking about the right to get birth control covered by insurance? Since when did someone else's religious belief become more important than my right to be able to afford the medicine that my doctor prescribed to me?
People are so mean! A woman, a mother of two of my high school friends, was just ranting on facebook about how we shouldn't have to pay for college girls to get their birth control cheaply. SERIOUSLY? I am NOT a college girl, I am a married woman, and I take birth control too, and I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for it every month! There are a ton of responsible, married, stable women out there who take it for reasons well beyond not getting pregnant, and you know what, even if that is their only reason, it's THIER CHOICE because it's THEIR BODY! There have been times in my life where I wouldn't have been able to afford my birth control without insurance coverage, and I need it to control a medical issue, not just so I can have sex without getting pregnant. Why do people not understand this?
Why is no one talking about viagra? Why does that not offend anyone's religious beliefs? Its sole purpose is to make it so men can have sex. Nothing else. Are they just assuming because these men are old, they are married, and hey they "might" be trying to have more kids, so it's cool. But birth control? Hell no, right? These women are just sluts out there having a good time, I'm not paying for that!
I responded to her post with something similar to above and now I'm afraid to go back to facebook. I know no one on her thread will listen to me. I just can't abide the stupidity anymore. I can't take it!
You know, I think the worst part of this is that I respected her and looked up to her as a kid. I never knew she was so closed-minded. It makes me sad. I thought I was going to inherit a world where women were treated as equal, where I didn't have to fight for basic freaking rights, but instead everything is a mess.
I came out of the womb a feminist, kicking and screaming against the patriarchy from the start. No one puts me down or pushes me aside, especially not just because I'm a woman. I will stand and I will fight. I'm sick to death of being a second class citizen.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Here I am
I've decided I need to come back and write again. I was frustrated last year with my blog. I think I got tied up trying to entertain and forgot the original purpose, which was to get my frustrations and my thoughts out of my own way and to open up some room to move inside my brain. So I've changed my look here and will start fresh again. I wish there was a way to archive old posts, but I suppose they'll be moved out quickly enough.
There are probably a lot of things about which I could write, a lot of frustrations and deeply felt questions brought up over the last several months, but the last straw today, what finally brought me back here, was a work interaction. It's silly, really, but I don't have anyone I feel like I can discuss this with other than my husband, and hopefully he's busy with his own work.
I have an employee who drives me to pull my hair out with her lack of attention to detail and her ability to turn the simplest of issues into a confusing, drawn-out conversation. Just today I asked her if a file she had opened for a client had been open "for more than a week." I ask yes or no questions for a reason-- most of the time I want a short answer so that I can move on with my life. I don't necessarily always need all the details. Details bog me down. I need the big picture. She answered "I opened it on the 21st," which leaves me to look up what today is and count back. I said, "does that mean yes or no?" to force her to give me what I wanted, and I'm sure she thought "what a bitch" but I don't care. I have so many things going on in one day that when someone can't give me straight answers, even after I've had several conversations with them about what I need in my time-sensitive job, I can't help but be aggravated.
She told me I'm tougher on female employees than I am on male. I suppose that could be true, but I also have a male employee on a 60-day probation right now, and I have several objective ways in which I judge employees' work (like a report that our internal contact manager software pulls to show me mistakes created in the system). She consistently falls well behind all her coworkers in these reports. She can't seem to manage to get customer interaction entered correctly, whether that's completely forgetting to log something, leaving fields blank, or putting information under the entirely wrong person. Her inactions with customers often seem confused and circular except when it's a straight-forward known issue.
You know, the more I think about it, I actually think I'm easier on her than I am on the others. It's taken me longer to get to this point with her than it has with some others. That may have more to do with her personality in general than her being a female-- she tends to cry, and I hate to see anyone cry, not because I feel sympathy, but because it annoys me and makes me feel uncomfortable so I avoid it. And I also take her excuses more often than I would from a guy. She's one of very few women on a mostly-male technical team, so I really think I give her more slack than the others because I want some diversity.
She's an entry-level employee, so I've been trying to give time and guidance to help her find her groove, but I'm getting fed up. I asked her to fill out her personal development plan, and she told me she thinks she can be the department manager in "3 to 6 months," meaning she thinks she can out maneuver the reigning department lead who's also vying for that open manager spot and who has a full year of training on her. She obviously hasn't been listening to my criticisms and had her opinion of her work suffer for it. It's time to get tough, I think, give her one last 60-day shot at it too, and then let her go if she can't perform. I don't have the luxury of time to waste, and all she seems capable of doing correctly and consistently is wasting my time. The good news is since she was hired I have developed a new way to source people for this position, and the new hires seem to be much more suitable and capable.
Running a department like this is not something I ever thought I would be doing, and I feel like I play chess with people's lives on a regular basis, but my ultimate responsibility lies with protecting the health of the company overall because a healthy company means we all get paid. I can't let a bad apple spoil the bunch, as painful as it is sometimes to pick it and throw it away.
There are probably a lot of things about which I could write, a lot of frustrations and deeply felt questions brought up over the last several months, but the last straw today, what finally brought me back here, was a work interaction. It's silly, really, but I don't have anyone I feel like I can discuss this with other than my husband, and hopefully he's busy with his own work.
I have an employee who drives me to pull my hair out with her lack of attention to detail and her ability to turn the simplest of issues into a confusing, drawn-out conversation. Just today I asked her if a file she had opened for a client had been open "for more than a week." I ask yes or no questions for a reason-- most of the time I want a short answer so that I can move on with my life. I don't necessarily always need all the details. Details bog me down. I need the big picture. She answered "I opened it on the 21st," which leaves me to look up what today is and count back. I said, "does that mean yes or no?" to force her to give me what I wanted, and I'm sure she thought "what a bitch" but I don't care. I have so many things going on in one day that when someone can't give me straight answers, even after I've had several conversations with them about what I need in my time-sensitive job, I can't help but be aggravated.
She told me I'm tougher on female employees than I am on male. I suppose that could be true, but I also have a male employee on a 60-day probation right now, and I have several objective ways in which I judge employees' work (like a report that our internal contact manager software pulls to show me mistakes created in the system). She consistently falls well behind all her coworkers in these reports. She can't seem to manage to get customer interaction entered correctly, whether that's completely forgetting to log something, leaving fields blank, or putting information under the entirely wrong person. Her inactions with customers often seem confused and circular except when it's a straight-forward known issue.
You know, the more I think about it, I actually think I'm easier on her than I am on the others. It's taken me longer to get to this point with her than it has with some others. That may have more to do with her personality in general than her being a female-- she tends to cry, and I hate to see anyone cry, not because I feel sympathy, but because it annoys me and makes me feel uncomfortable so I avoid it. And I also take her excuses more often than I would from a guy. She's one of very few women on a mostly-male technical team, so I really think I give her more slack than the others because I want some diversity.
She's an entry-level employee, so I've been trying to give time and guidance to help her find her groove, but I'm getting fed up. I asked her to fill out her personal development plan, and she told me she thinks she can be the department manager in "3 to 6 months," meaning she thinks she can out maneuver the reigning department lead who's also vying for that open manager spot and who has a full year of training on her. She obviously hasn't been listening to my criticisms and had her opinion of her work suffer for it. It's time to get tough, I think, give her one last 60-day shot at it too, and then let her go if she can't perform. I don't have the luxury of time to waste, and all she seems capable of doing correctly and consistently is wasting my time. The good news is since she was hired I have developed a new way to source people for this position, and the new hires seem to be much more suitable and capable.
Running a department like this is not something I ever thought I would be doing, and I feel like I play chess with people's lives on a regular basis, but my ultimate responsibility lies with protecting the health of the company overall because a healthy company means we all get paid. I can't let a bad apple spoil the bunch, as painful as it is sometimes to pick it and throw it away.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
my life
It's been an interesting couple of months.
My dad has always joked that one day, when we were ready to upgrade, they'd just buy our house from us. Their schedule got shifted, however, when he suddenly decided to retire earlier this year and they made plans to move here this coming spring. There just happened to be a house on the market-- 7.5 acres with a pond, 3000 square feet, in need of some tlc inside but nothing we couldn't handle-- so husband and I decided to take a look, just out of curiosity, with the plan of my parents buying our house from us. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were meeting with a mortgage lender to figure out numbers.
But, as life goes sometimes, we missed it by a day. It had been on the market for two years, and all the sudden two couples were interested at the same time, and they won.
I was heartbroken. I was already decorating it in my head, already living in it. Though it was going to be a financial stretch, I thought that's what we needed to do. One afternoon, feeling heartbroken but almost kind of relieved, I was looking around our house and had a revelation: if we actually tried, our house could be nice. If we got rid of the college furniture and cleaned up the deck a little and saved some money to redo the kitchen, we'd have a nice house. And what in the world would we do with 3000 square feet anyway? It's just the two of us and will only be the two of us for quite a while, if not forever. I like our house. I like the colors, the layout, the bathroom, the large yard, the neighborhood. Why go anywhere, really?
I think we were trying to keep up with the Jones'. Several of our friends have moved recently, and I think we were feeling left behind in our 1500 square foot "starter" home. What I forgot is that we are not just another Jones, we are us. We are different, we do things differently, think differently, and have different wants and plans for our lives. We don't need a bigger house, we need a bigger life, and buying an expensive house is only going to keep us tied down instead of out actually living.
So we're going to live. Monday we went up to Memphis furniture shopping, and this week we have given away both the college-era TV stand and the cheap torn-up couch. We have a new couch, rug, and tv cabinet, all very stylish in our own tastes, not anyone else's, and we're waiting on husband's new Stickley recliner bow-arm chair to be made and delivered. We are then going to start planning our new kitchen to be installed in the late spring, probably with concrete counters and a large wine rack. We've also decided to start saving for another trip. We're thinking Vienna this time.
We have good jobs and freedom, so we might as well enjoy it. Yes, there is a balance, and retirement saving is also happening. But I'm not going to hoard every dollar only to get hit by a bus at age 60, never having actually lived my life. My mother's best friend died last week, a stroke at 60. Last time I spoke to her, she was talking about our Italy trip and how much she wanted to go and how she'd get there eventually. Eventually is a luxury that we're not all going to get. Some people, like my friend's wife who was killed in the car wreck earlier this year, or a former coworker who died last month from pneumonia of all things, don't even get to see middle-age.
I think it's a sickness that people have, especially women, to live for someone else. We let other people make our decisions for us, push us down a certain path, toward marriage then children then retirement then, eventually, if you're lucky, some free time, then death. What if my path looks more like college, marriage, travel, adventure, career growth, exploration, charity work, possibly children while the rest is still going on, then, eventually, death. My eventually becomes death itself and not the life I want to live.
All of this has led me to the realization that I want to live every day. I already knew that, but the things that have happened this year have solidified it for me in a way that will affect my decisions from now on. I'm not going to do what other people think I should do, what is normal, what everyone else does, just because they say so. I'm going to make my own decisions and walk my own path. I don't want to live anyone else's life. I don't want to adhere to anyone else's standards. I only get this one life, and I might as well be happy in it. When I'm my parent's age, I don't want to look back and regret the things I never did; instead I want to look back and think, "Wow. Look at the life we have lived," while looking forward to more.
My dad has always joked that one day, when we were ready to upgrade, they'd just buy our house from us. Their schedule got shifted, however, when he suddenly decided to retire earlier this year and they made plans to move here this coming spring. There just happened to be a house on the market-- 7.5 acres with a pond, 3000 square feet, in need of some tlc inside but nothing we couldn't handle-- so husband and I decided to take a look, just out of curiosity, with the plan of my parents buying our house from us. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were meeting with a mortgage lender to figure out numbers.
But, as life goes sometimes, we missed it by a day. It had been on the market for two years, and all the sudden two couples were interested at the same time, and they won.
I was heartbroken. I was already decorating it in my head, already living in it. Though it was going to be a financial stretch, I thought that's what we needed to do. One afternoon, feeling heartbroken but almost kind of relieved, I was looking around our house and had a revelation: if we actually tried, our house could be nice. If we got rid of the college furniture and cleaned up the deck a little and saved some money to redo the kitchen, we'd have a nice house. And what in the world would we do with 3000 square feet anyway? It's just the two of us and will only be the two of us for quite a while, if not forever. I like our house. I like the colors, the layout, the bathroom, the large yard, the neighborhood. Why go anywhere, really?
I think we were trying to keep up with the Jones'. Several of our friends have moved recently, and I think we were feeling left behind in our 1500 square foot "starter" home. What I forgot is that we are not just another Jones, we are us. We are different, we do things differently, think differently, and have different wants and plans for our lives. We don't need a bigger house, we need a bigger life, and buying an expensive house is only going to keep us tied down instead of out actually living.
So we're going to live. Monday we went up to Memphis furniture shopping, and this week we have given away both the college-era TV stand and the cheap torn-up couch. We have a new couch, rug, and tv cabinet, all very stylish in our own tastes, not anyone else's, and we're waiting on husband's new Stickley recliner bow-arm chair to be made and delivered. We are then going to start planning our new kitchen to be installed in the late spring, probably with concrete counters and a large wine rack. We've also decided to start saving for another trip. We're thinking Vienna this time.
We have good jobs and freedom, so we might as well enjoy it. Yes, there is a balance, and retirement saving is also happening. But I'm not going to hoard every dollar only to get hit by a bus at age 60, never having actually lived my life. My mother's best friend died last week, a stroke at 60. Last time I spoke to her, she was talking about our Italy trip and how much she wanted to go and how she'd get there eventually. Eventually is a luxury that we're not all going to get. Some people, like my friend's wife who was killed in the car wreck earlier this year, or a former coworker who died last month from pneumonia of all things, don't even get to see middle-age.
I think it's a sickness that people have, especially women, to live for someone else. We let other people make our decisions for us, push us down a certain path, toward marriage then children then retirement then, eventually, if you're lucky, some free time, then death. What if my path looks more like college, marriage, travel, adventure, career growth, exploration, charity work, possibly children while the rest is still going on, then, eventually, death. My eventually becomes death itself and not the life I want to live.
All of this has led me to the realization that I want to live every day. I already knew that, but the things that have happened this year have solidified it for me in a way that will affect my decisions from now on. I'm not going to do what other people think I should do, what is normal, what everyone else does, just because they say so. I'm going to make my own decisions and walk my own path. I don't want to live anyone else's life. I don't want to adhere to anyone else's standards. I only get this one life, and I might as well be happy in it. When I'm my parent's age, I don't want to look back and regret the things I never did; instead I want to look back and think, "Wow. Look at the life we have lived," while looking forward to more.
Monday, July 11, 2011
chaos
There is chaos all around me lately. I started to say "I feel like there is chaos," but no, there definitely is; it's not just a feeling. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some world-wide trend, that the summer of 2011 has been particularly insane for everyone, and if it's a sign of the end of the world or the world as we know it, because it just keeps coming, relentlessly.
Two weeks ago a friend's wife died in a car crash. Snap, just like that, she's gone, head first into a tree, leaving her husband and toddler son on their own. This past weekend a newlywed coworker tried to kill himself, downing two and a half bottles of assorted pills and running out into the woods at midnight. He was found wandering down the road early the next morning, disoriented, and is still in the hospital though no longer in ICU. Another coworker and good friend's wife had a stroke today, out of the blue. She's in her 40s. They say she'll be ok but she's in the ICU now too.
My husband's new promotion means he can't take a day off work until they find the replacement for his former positions, so he's working Monday through Saturday without a break, leaving me to run all errands and do everything that he used to help out with, but also bringing in a significant raise. We also signed a new franchise deal at work which has greatly increased my workload and are about to sign another; these deals get us so much closer to success but also make my day-to-day so much more intense. My father retired officially last week, and now they are talking about selling the house and moving here. Two friends got pregnant and are moving away all in one fell swoop.
So much change all at once. Up and down, really great then really, really terrible. I am trying my best to take it all in, absorb it and feel it and then let it go, let it pass through me, but I can't process all of this so quickly. I need time. I need status quo. I need to go sit on a chair, stare at nothing, hear nothing, think about nothing, just sit and be and breathe, for a day at least, not five minutes, though I'm lucky to get five minutes. This is my five minutes today. In a minute, husband will be home wanting dinner, then we'll wash up, walk the dogs, fold some laundry, maybe watch one show, and head to bed. Tomorrow I'll be up at the crack of dawn again to start it all over.
I need a break but one isn't coming any time soon, especially with husband not able to take a day off. I need perspective. I am not my friend or my coworkers, and their situations are so much worse than anything going on for me. Husband will find help, work will ease up, my father and mother will figure it out on their own, and my friends will come visit. This can't last forever. No feeling is final.
Two weeks ago a friend's wife died in a car crash. Snap, just like that, she's gone, head first into a tree, leaving her husband and toddler son on their own. This past weekend a newlywed coworker tried to kill himself, downing two and a half bottles of assorted pills and running out into the woods at midnight. He was found wandering down the road early the next morning, disoriented, and is still in the hospital though no longer in ICU. Another coworker and good friend's wife had a stroke today, out of the blue. She's in her 40s. They say she'll be ok but she's in the ICU now too.
My husband's new promotion means he can't take a day off work until they find the replacement for his former positions, so he's working Monday through Saturday without a break, leaving me to run all errands and do everything that he used to help out with, but also bringing in a significant raise. We also signed a new franchise deal at work which has greatly increased my workload and are about to sign another; these deals get us so much closer to success but also make my day-to-day so much more intense. My father retired officially last week, and now they are talking about selling the house and moving here. Two friends got pregnant and are moving away all in one fell swoop.
So much change all at once. Up and down, really great then really, really terrible. I am trying my best to take it all in, absorb it and feel it and then let it go, let it pass through me, but I can't process all of this so quickly. I need time. I need status quo. I need to go sit on a chair, stare at nothing, hear nothing, think about nothing, just sit and be and breathe, for a day at least, not five minutes, though I'm lucky to get five minutes. This is my five minutes today. In a minute, husband will be home wanting dinner, then we'll wash up, walk the dogs, fold some laundry, maybe watch one show, and head to bed. Tomorrow I'll be up at the crack of dawn again to start it all over.
I need a break but one isn't coming any time soon, especially with husband not able to take a day off. I need perspective. I am not my friend or my coworkers, and their situations are so much worse than anything going on for me. Husband will find help, work will ease up, my father and mother will figure it out on their own, and my friends will come visit. This can't last forever. No feeling is final.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
who I am
I am mischaracterized entirely too often. Who is the real me? I guess I don't let many people know. My husband does; my parents do. My boss does. A couple coworkers, those that have taken the time, do. A couple close friends do as well. I am guarded otherwise, protecting my too-soft core from the pokes and prods I think I would feel if I didn't put up this wall. There's constant activity behind my blank stares. I'm thinking, analyzing my next word or move, calculating your motive, plotting my response.
It's not coldness, and it's not that I don't care. It takes me a while, sometimes, to come up with what I feel is an appropriate reaction. It takes a while, sometimes, for the actuality of a situation to settle on me, for my feelings to get into alignment about it. I over-analyze more than necessary, causing problems for myself by cherry-picking words into oblivion, losing their original and ultimate meaning somewhere in the fray. I have seen the damage reacting without thinking can cause, and I over correct. I need to let go, I suppose, but I have no idea how.
I do know some things. I am not passive aggressive. Aggressive, maybe, when I believe in something, but I'm never passive about my opinions. I am not a bitch. I am truthful, honest, sometimes to the point where it hurts, but it always comes from a place of caring; if I didn't care, I wouldn't bother in the first place. I am not an ice queen. I feel too much, I pull everything in. I let everything happen to me, beauty and terror, and it sticks to my soul. I am not a closed book. If you just try, I'll open up, but I'm not the kind to blurt out my innermost thoughts to people who haven't proven themselves to me. I am not black and white. There is an unlimited range inside me, the ability to flex and grow and change with the tides, as long as those tides work with me and not against me. I am me. I am wholly myself.
I am struggling against a couple coworkers. I say a couple and they are in fact a couple: they have started to date each other. We put out an "employee satisfaction" survey last month, and while there was a fair amount of criticism from everyone, most was constructive except for what we received from those two. Everything is wrong, from the way we run payroll to the way we discipline to the office lighting. We were told they were freshening up their resumes and hated coming to work. The surveys were supposed to be anonymous but neither did a good job camouflaging themselves in their answers. I, in particular, am a lazy passive aggressive bitch who gets off on making rules and coming down on people who don't follow them and on making people's lives miserable by not buying ashtrays or starting direct deposit.
I'm trying to get over it. They don't know me. The people here who know me know that when I discipline or call someone out, it's because I know in my heart they can do better, not just for me but for themselves and for this company. I believe in them. My ultimate goal is the health and success of this company and thus the success of everyone who works here. I do my best to watch our cash flow and maintain stability. I have to keep people in line because chaos here begets chaos for our customers, and we would fail in chaos. If we fail, we're all sunk, and then we wouldn't even have the luxury of our complaints. It would all be gone.
I carry this all with me, the worry of an entire company, and I do my best with it. So it hurts to be unjustly characterized. My boss talked to them about their attitude and thought he got through, explaining that I have a job to do and to give me a little grace. Maybe it worked for a while, but I don't feel like they will ever be able to fully come back into the fold. I have thought about talking to them myself, but I can't seem to come up with the right words. I go back and forth between wanting to scream and wanting to be understanding, so I have left it alone and continue to go about my business as I normally would. If they want to think of me as they do without trying to get to know the real me, it's their loss.
It's not coldness, and it's not that I don't care. It takes me a while, sometimes, to come up with what I feel is an appropriate reaction. It takes a while, sometimes, for the actuality of a situation to settle on me, for my feelings to get into alignment about it. I over-analyze more than necessary, causing problems for myself by cherry-picking words into oblivion, losing their original and ultimate meaning somewhere in the fray. I have seen the damage reacting without thinking can cause, and I over correct. I need to let go, I suppose, but I have no idea how.
I do know some things. I am not passive aggressive. Aggressive, maybe, when I believe in something, but I'm never passive about my opinions. I am not a bitch. I am truthful, honest, sometimes to the point where it hurts, but it always comes from a place of caring; if I didn't care, I wouldn't bother in the first place. I am not an ice queen. I feel too much, I pull everything in. I let everything happen to me, beauty and terror, and it sticks to my soul. I am not a closed book. If you just try, I'll open up, but I'm not the kind to blurt out my innermost thoughts to people who haven't proven themselves to me. I am not black and white. There is an unlimited range inside me, the ability to flex and grow and change with the tides, as long as those tides work with me and not against me. I am me. I am wholly myself.
I am struggling against a couple coworkers. I say a couple and they are in fact a couple: they have started to date each other. We put out an "employee satisfaction" survey last month, and while there was a fair amount of criticism from everyone, most was constructive except for what we received from those two. Everything is wrong, from the way we run payroll to the way we discipline to the office lighting. We were told they were freshening up their resumes and hated coming to work. The surveys were supposed to be anonymous but neither did a good job camouflaging themselves in their answers. I, in particular, am a lazy passive aggressive bitch who gets off on making rules and coming down on people who don't follow them and on making people's lives miserable by not buying ashtrays or starting direct deposit.
I'm trying to get over it. They don't know me. The people here who know me know that when I discipline or call someone out, it's because I know in my heart they can do better, not just for me but for themselves and for this company. I believe in them. My ultimate goal is the health and success of this company and thus the success of everyone who works here. I do my best to watch our cash flow and maintain stability. I have to keep people in line because chaos here begets chaos for our customers, and we would fail in chaos. If we fail, we're all sunk, and then we wouldn't even have the luxury of our complaints. It would all be gone.
I carry this all with me, the worry of an entire company, and I do my best with it. So it hurts to be unjustly characterized. My boss talked to them about their attitude and thought he got through, explaining that I have a job to do and to give me a little grace. Maybe it worked for a while, but I don't feel like they will ever be able to fully come back into the fold. I have thought about talking to them myself, but I can't seem to come up with the right words. I go back and forth between wanting to scream and wanting to be understanding, so I have left it alone and continue to go about my business as I normally would. If they want to think of me as they do without trying to get to know the real me, it's their loss.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Wow, look at me go
I now have my twitter feed here on my blog, over there on the right. Fun stuff. Maybe I'll start blogging some again too. I'm trying to reinsert the fun in my life. Been too stressed out lately with work. I found about 15 comedians on twitter to follow right away, and that's about all I've found on it so far. It's a confusing system, what with all the # and @ and re-tweets, etc. Honestly the only reason I started it was because of this phone call:
Dad: Hey punk, it's Dad
Me: Hey, what number are you calling from?
Dad: My new phone. It's one of these new-fangled touch screen ones so if my faces hangs up on you, I'm sorry.
Me: I don't think it will do that. So are you all set up on it? Can you check email and stuff too?
Dad: Nah, I didn't get any of that. I only got this phone because your mom wanted one and they were buy one, get one free.
Me: Oh, so can she check her facebook and stuff now?
Dad: Yeah, she's getting there. She gets texts now too.
Me: Well, welcome her to the 20th century for me. Can you text now too? It's so much easier.
Dad: Nah, didn't want that either. Guess you'll just have to pick up the phone and call me.
Me: There are worse things in the world....
I'm scared of being resistant and ignorant of new technologies. Things change so fast now, I can't imagine what the world will look like in 30 years when I'm my parents age. Someone asked me the other day what I thought was an appropriate age for a kid to get a cell phone or a facebook account. I don't know? When I was growing up, we didn't have that stuff. My parents had to worry about me dialing up on our AOL account and sending emails to my friends. Didn't have a cell til my senior year, and all it did was make calls on a black and white screen. Time flies, gotta keep up.
Dad: Hey punk, it's Dad
Me: Hey, what number are you calling from?
Dad: My new phone. It's one of these new-fangled touch screen ones so if my faces hangs up on you, I'm sorry.
Me: I don't think it will do that. So are you all set up on it? Can you check email and stuff too?
Dad: Nah, I didn't get any of that. I only got this phone because your mom wanted one and they were buy one, get one free.
Me: Oh, so can she check her facebook and stuff now?
Dad: Yeah, she's getting there. She gets texts now too.
Me: Well, welcome her to the 20th century for me. Can you text now too? It's so much easier.
Dad: Nah, didn't want that either. Guess you'll just have to pick up the phone and call me.
Me: There are worse things in the world....
I'm scared of being resistant and ignorant of new technologies. Things change so fast now, I can't imagine what the world will look like in 30 years when I'm my parents age. Someone asked me the other day what I thought was an appropriate age for a kid to get a cell phone or a facebook account. I don't know? When I was growing up, we didn't have that stuff. My parents had to worry about me dialing up on our AOL account and sending emails to my friends. Didn't have a cell til my senior year, and all it did was make calls on a black and white screen. Time flies, gotta keep up.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Twits or tweets or whatever they're called
So I decided a blog is too big for me. There is too much going on in my world to sit down and write 5 paragraphs musing on this and that. Three years ago was different; now if I get 140 characters to myself I feel blessed. I'm trying twitter. I say "trying" because at this point I'm only following 10 people, none of which I personally know, and I haven't actually tweeted anything. It feels pointless to tweet with no followers, but then how do people know you exist unless you tweet? That may be my first one right there.
Anyway, follow me if you want-- @scarlethue42.
Anyway, follow me if you want-- @scarlethue42.
Monday, March 28, 2011
interviews and Italy
Too much on my mind lately.
I'm struggling with motivating low-wage employees. Too much supervision and they push back or, worse, they turn off their brains and become zombies, passionless and sleepy, uncaring about either the customers or their problems since they have no room to be creative problem-solvers, and then complain behind my back. Too little supervision, and they act like children, watching you tube videos, shopping, generally wasting time, though they are much happier and more tuned-in when a customer calls. I have one employee who thrives either way because he's driven to do a good job no matter what job is given him. The others all seem to just want work to accommodate or, at the least, not bother them.
So obviously I've hired some folks I shouldn't have. I'm going through another round of interviews later this week, to see if I can find some more self-starter types, but I'm having trouble coming up with interview questions that will gauge this for me:
Describe a work-related goal you've recently set for yourself. What was the outcome?
Can you tell me three things you've done in the past year to improve yourself, either professionally or personally?
What is your first reaction when your manager assigns a task you think is impossible?
How would you react if I told you your interview so far was terrible?
I'm not sure if these will help or not, but I suppose asking is better than not asking. What I really want to do is just look them in the eye and say, "Look, what I need are people who are going to come in here, work hard, not bitch about stupid stuff, but put their nose to the grindstone and try. I don't need lallygaggers or time-wasters or people who want to just fade into the background, get a steady paycheck, and not try to rock the boat. I want you to rock the boat, I want you to be a leader. Can you do that? If you can't, I will know in the first month and I will let you go, so you might as well tell me the truth now." I want to scare them into knowing that this job isn't for everyone, so if you're not ready to fight and fight hard, look elsewhere. But in reality, most people would just tell me what I want to hear anyway, hence the trickery in the questions instead of the outright truth.
How would you do in this interview? Would you squirm under the pressure of those questions? What if I told you the dirty truth about what I really need, would you come clean or would you placate me? I suppose it depends on how badly you need the job.
*****
We will be leaving for Italy in two weeks, for two weeks. I would be more excited except that we just got hit with about $2000 of unexpected expenses this week. First, my brakes finally got to the point of no return, and replacing those was not cheap. Then we discovered that my former bookkeeper screwed up my withholding all last year, so we owed a lot to the federal government. When we returned from our accountant's office, our garage door refused to go up-- the rotten cherry on top. While we have enough in savings to cover all that and still pay for the trip, it makes me uncomfortable. The extra padding is gone now. That's life, though, isn't it.
I don't think it's totally sunk in yet that we're going. Every time I see a friend lately that I haven't seen in a week or two, I get asked, "Aren't you getting so excited?" and yes, I am, but I'd classify it more as nervous and anxious than excited. I'm worried I haven't planned enough, I'm worried that we won't understand something or we'll get lost or confused or taken advantage of somehow, I'm worried there will be a problem with our hotel or with getting on the trains or buses, I'm worried about flying and getting to carry on all our stuff or if they'll make us check, I'm worried about the food and getting sick and not understanding everything.
But we survived London for a year, Paris for several days, Mexico for several days. It's not like we've never been anywhere or done anything. This just feels different for some reason. We will be alone, that's why. No friends or anyone to turn to if/when in need. Last time we were like that was the first month of our marriage, the first month in London, when we knew no one and understood nothing, had no money, struggled every day just to figure out what we were doing and survive. It made us so strong as a couple, to have survived that, but I still label it as the worst month of my life. I have to remind myself that Italy will not be like that. I will not be finding apartments or buying furniture or opening bank accounts. All I need is someone to point me in the direction of the nearest museum and the nearest bar, and I'll be just fine.
I'm struggling with motivating low-wage employees. Too much supervision and they push back or, worse, they turn off their brains and become zombies, passionless and sleepy, uncaring about either the customers or their problems since they have no room to be creative problem-solvers, and then complain behind my back. Too little supervision, and they act like children, watching you tube videos, shopping, generally wasting time, though they are much happier and more tuned-in when a customer calls. I have one employee who thrives either way because he's driven to do a good job no matter what job is given him. The others all seem to just want work to accommodate or, at the least, not bother them.
So obviously I've hired some folks I shouldn't have. I'm going through another round of interviews later this week, to see if I can find some more self-starter types, but I'm having trouble coming up with interview questions that will gauge this for me:
Describe a work-related goal you've recently set for yourself. What was the outcome?
Can you tell me three things you've done in the past year to improve yourself, either professionally or personally?
What is your first reaction when your manager assigns a task you think is impossible?
How would you react if I told you your interview so far was terrible?
I'm not sure if these will help or not, but I suppose asking is better than not asking. What I really want to do is just look them in the eye and say, "Look, what I need are people who are going to come in here, work hard, not bitch about stupid stuff, but put their nose to the grindstone and try. I don't need lallygaggers or time-wasters or people who want to just fade into the background, get a steady paycheck, and not try to rock the boat. I want you to rock the boat, I want you to be a leader. Can you do that? If you can't, I will know in the first month and I will let you go, so you might as well tell me the truth now." I want to scare them into knowing that this job isn't for everyone, so if you're not ready to fight and fight hard, look elsewhere. But in reality, most people would just tell me what I want to hear anyway, hence the trickery in the questions instead of the outright truth.
How would you do in this interview? Would you squirm under the pressure of those questions? What if I told you the dirty truth about what I really need, would you come clean or would you placate me? I suppose it depends on how badly you need the job.
*****
We will be leaving for Italy in two weeks, for two weeks. I would be more excited except that we just got hit with about $2000 of unexpected expenses this week. First, my brakes finally got to the point of no return, and replacing those was not cheap. Then we discovered that my former bookkeeper screwed up my withholding all last year, so we owed a lot to the federal government. When we returned from our accountant's office, our garage door refused to go up-- the rotten cherry on top. While we have enough in savings to cover all that and still pay for the trip, it makes me uncomfortable. The extra padding is gone now. That's life, though, isn't it.
I don't think it's totally sunk in yet that we're going. Every time I see a friend lately that I haven't seen in a week or two, I get asked, "Aren't you getting so excited?" and yes, I am, but I'd classify it more as nervous and anxious than excited. I'm worried I haven't planned enough, I'm worried that we won't understand something or we'll get lost or confused or taken advantage of somehow, I'm worried there will be a problem with our hotel or with getting on the trains or buses, I'm worried about flying and getting to carry on all our stuff or if they'll make us check, I'm worried about the food and getting sick and not understanding everything.
But we survived London for a year, Paris for several days, Mexico for several days. It's not like we've never been anywhere or done anything. This just feels different for some reason. We will be alone, that's why. No friends or anyone to turn to if/when in need. Last time we were like that was the first month of our marriage, the first month in London, when we knew no one and understood nothing, had no money, struggled every day just to figure out what we were doing and survive. It made us so strong as a couple, to have survived that, but I still label it as the worst month of my life. I have to remind myself that Italy will not be like that. I will not be finding apartments or buying furniture or opening bank accounts. All I need is someone to point me in the direction of the nearest museum and the nearest bar, and I'll be just fine.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
minimum wage, minimum motivation -- dream analysis
I try to remember what it was like to make minimum wage. I held several jobs throughout school and after where I was paid the legal minimum, including a video rental store. The motto there was "If you can lean, you can clean," meaning that no one was allowed to lean (or, God forbid, sit) on the counter, even at 10 a.m. when no one was in the store. You had to keep yourself busy; if all you could find to do was cleaning, you did it. We got around it every now and then, devising games of finding the spots where the cameras couldn't see you and taking a break there, or seeing who could count their change the fastest and most accurately, etc.-- it was a boring place sometimes. But usually we kept to the motto.
It's stuck with me over the years, too. Later on, when I changed employment but had only bumped myself up a dollar or two in pay, I realized that the days I kept busy and actually accomplished something were so much more rewarding and less boring than the days where I did a crossword puzzle or played Pop It all day. Unfortunately one of those years was at a university, and when you work for a big state-run facility where no one cares and is just trying to skate by unnoticed, doing extra work is sometimes frowned upon. I didn't do well in that environment.
That's why I do so well here. If nothing else, I am industrious. Sure, I have days where I am more idle than others, where I may read a news article or two to break up the otherwise busy day, where I may take twenty minutes and write a blog post like this one. But for the most part, I stay busy, even if busy means just reading chat logs from our call center to make sure they're doing a good job. When I get home, that's when I'm lazy (just ask my husband), but no one accuses me of being a sloth at work.
So I guess that's why I get so frustrated with our call center workers. They make between $8 and $10 an hour on average, but they act like we're paying them in peanuts. Peanuts they don't even want. I walked by earlier, and one had his feet up on his desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. I sit with my feet up a lot, too, but my fingers are always crazy dancing over this keyboard, my right hand swinging the mouse around, my shoulder holding the phone to my ear. I'm struggling trying to do my work and also find things to keep them busy. I need them to keep themselves busy, so I'm trying to motivate them to do so, but something is missing. Maybe I just need a big poster-- IF YOU CAN LEAN, YOU CAN CLEAN-- in bold letters right over their desks. Sure it doesn't really apply here as I don't them them to clean, just actively reach out to customers or troubleshoot some issues. But the message gets across. I guess I'm not doing a good job hiring leaders either. I wish I could put my finger on the resolution.
------
I had a weird dream last night. I wish I could remember more of it now; my dreams fade so quickly. In high school, my best friend was a guy. Actually he was my friend starting in 7th grade. He went away to boarding school, but we kept in touch while he was gone, and he came back in 11th. I always wanted more from him, and I still consider him my first love though nothing was ever acted upon. He has never confirmed it to me, but I think he may be gay. He doesn't have girlfriends, and he just sometimes gives off an air of... difference. His parents are very conservative, and we came from a very gossip-prone town, so I don't blame him for keeping it quiet if it's true. I talk to him now once every six months or so, and we always seem to pick up like we were never apart. That's true for all my best friends. It must be some sort of subconscious requirement I place on anyone labeled a "best" for me, that ability to pick up where we left off no matter the time that has past, because it's true of the four that I have.
I digress. I dream about him a lot. Last night I know we were walking in a garden, we were young again, I could tell by the way we looked, and we were holding hands. It wasn't a romantic dream, though, more like we had just been apart for a while and were so happy to see each other. We went swimming-- I remember my red two-piece suit, but when we came up from the water, he wasn't my friend anymore, he was my ex-boyfriend.
My high school/early college boyfriend drove me and my friend apart. He and my friend did not get along, enemies from boarding school, and when the boyfriend came around, the friend took a backseat. I shouldn't have let it happen, but I was a kid, a mess up kid, a messed up kid in what I thought was love but really turns out was probably only pity and commiseration. We never were able to get back to what we were, even after the ex was out of the picture, because we had both moved off to college and started our own lives. But he has somehow wedged himself into my subconscious. I hear that sometimes people have strong dreams like this about loved ones who have died, and every time I have a dream about him, they are strong and lifelike, and I worry about him. I told him one time that I dream about him, and he said he dreams about me too, so I guess we're just somehow linked in that way.
I wasn't unhappy to see my ex in the dream, but I did feel a loss that it was no longer my friend. The ex and I did not end on good terms. We dated four years, the last year was made up mostly of fighting and me trying to cut him loose. He was suicidal and depressed, and I was always afraid he'd jump off the deep end, but I finally decided I had to take care of myself. It took me too long to come to that conclusion, looking back. But in the end, those decisions led me to my husband, and that's all that matters now.
When I got to work this morning, I realized it's my ex's birthday today. I wonder if this all wasn't my subconscious playing with me. I get updates on him from time to time-- he still lives in my hometown and waits tables at a restaurant my parents go to often. Mom says she always makes him speak to her even though she can tell he'd rather avoid them. They thank goodness every day I didn't end up with him. I do too. The only part of our relationship I regret, though, is losing touch with my friend over it. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me to reach out to him again.
It's stuck with me over the years, too. Later on, when I changed employment but had only bumped myself up a dollar or two in pay, I realized that the days I kept busy and actually accomplished something were so much more rewarding and less boring than the days where I did a crossword puzzle or played Pop It all day. Unfortunately one of those years was at a university, and when you work for a big state-run facility where no one cares and is just trying to skate by unnoticed, doing extra work is sometimes frowned upon. I didn't do well in that environment.
That's why I do so well here. If nothing else, I am industrious. Sure, I have days where I am more idle than others, where I may read a news article or two to break up the otherwise busy day, where I may take twenty minutes and write a blog post like this one. But for the most part, I stay busy, even if busy means just reading chat logs from our call center to make sure they're doing a good job. When I get home, that's when I'm lazy (just ask my husband), but no one accuses me of being a sloth at work.
So I guess that's why I get so frustrated with our call center workers. They make between $8 and $10 an hour on average, but they act like we're paying them in peanuts. Peanuts they don't even want. I walked by earlier, and one had his feet up on his desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. I sit with my feet up a lot, too, but my fingers are always crazy dancing over this keyboard, my right hand swinging the mouse around, my shoulder holding the phone to my ear. I'm struggling trying to do my work and also find things to keep them busy. I need them to keep themselves busy, so I'm trying to motivate them to do so, but something is missing. Maybe I just need a big poster-- IF YOU CAN LEAN, YOU CAN CLEAN-- in bold letters right over their desks. Sure it doesn't really apply here as I don't them them to clean, just actively reach out to customers or troubleshoot some issues. But the message gets across. I guess I'm not doing a good job hiring leaders either. I wish I could put my finger on the resolution.
------
I had a weird dream last night. I wish I could remember more of it now; my dreams fade so quickly. In high school, my best friend was a guy. Actually he was my friend starting in 7th grade. He went away to boarding school, but we kept in touch while he was gone, and he came back in 11th. I always wanted more from him, and I still consider him my first love though nothing was ever acted upon. He has never confirmed it to me, but I think he may be gay. He doesn't have girlfriends, and he just sometimes gives off an air of... difference. His parents are very conservative, and we came from a very gossip-prone town, so I don't blame him for keeping it quiet if it's true. I talk to him now once every six months or so, and we always seem to pick up like we were never apart. That's true for all my best friends. It must be some sort of subconscious requirement I place on anyone labeled a "best" for me, that ability to pick up where we left off no matter the time that has past, because it's true of the four that I have.
I digress. I dream about him a lot. Last night I know we were walking in a garden, we were young again, I could tell by the way we looked, and we were holding hands. It wasn't a romantic dream, though, more like we had just been apart for a while and were so happy to see each other. We went swimming-- I remember my red two-piece suit, but when we came up from the water, he wasn't my friend anymore, he was my ex-boyfriend.
My high school/early college boyfriend drove me and my friend apart. He and my friend did not get along, enemies from boarding school, and when the boyfriend came around, the friend took a backseat. I shouldn't have let it happen, but I was a kid, a mess up kid, a messed up kid in what I thought was love but really turns out was probably only pity and commiseration. We never were able to get back to what we were, even after the ex was out of the picture, because we had both moved off to college and started our own lives. But he has somehow wedged himself into my subconscious. I hear that sometimes people have strong dreams like this about loved ones who have died, and every time I have a dream about him, they are strong and lifelike, and I worry about him. I told him one time that I dream about him, and he said he dreams about me too, so I guess we're just somehow linked in that way.
I wasn't unhappy to see my ex in the dream, but I did feel a loss that it was no longer my friend. The ex and I did not end on good terms. We dated four years, the last year was made up mostly of fighting and me trying to cut him loose. He was suicidal and depressed, and I was always afraid he'd jump off the deep end, but I finally decided I had to take care of myself. It took me too long to come to that conclusion, looking back. But in the end, those decisions led me to my husband, and that's all that matters now.
When I got to work this morning, I realized it's my ex's birthday today. I wonder if this all wasn't my subconscious playing with me. I get updates on him from time to time-- he still lives in my hometown and waits tables at a restaurant my parents go to often. Mom says she always makes him speak to her even though she can tell he'd rather avoid them. They thank goodness every day I didn't end up with him. I do too. The only part of our relationship I regret, though, is losing touch with my friend over it. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me to reach out to him again.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
clique mongering
I have to get this out of my head.
One day last week, I had a disciplinary conversation with an employee. Her performance has dropped off, she's spending too much time talking about non-work happenings at work, especially with a newer hire who has become a close friend, and her attitude has slipped far into a negative space. According to her, she feels unappreciated because she hasn't had a raise in a year while others are getting raises. As I explained, the people who are getting raises are minimum wage workers. She's on a much higher salary already. Finances are too tight. Then she said she thought (and others in her department think too, by the way) that there's a clique that she can't break into. I asked her to name the people in the click, and the people she named were the first 6 employees of the company.
The whole thing just leaves me so frustrated. I found out today they have a name for us, the order of protection, and they talk about it like it's an actual thing that we planned out and are perpetrating on purpose. Like we want to exclude people and make decisions that only benefit us. Like we're blind to everything else going on. The funny thing is, two of those six I hardly even talk to anymore, and one of them is on my permanent shit list until she starts acting like an adult and not a child who thinks she can come and go any time she wants and make all the trouble she wants just because she was employee #2. Of course no one outside of management knows about this. Why would I spread my disdain for her actions around? To everyone else, it must look like business as usual. I thought that would be the best way to continue.
Good grief, I'm only human. I'm trying to make the best decisions I can for the company as a whole, and I advise our management team to do the same. The management team is made up of a completely different group of 5 people, only my boss and I seem to be in both "groups." When we see potential in someone, we recognize it and give them a promotion. I guess this employee and her cronies are pissed because we don't recognize any of them as stellar performers? But they haven't done anything to deserve it. One of them does really good work, actually, and will be moving to a new department soon, but she's also a gossip so I'm not surprised at her new alignment. They all sit together, which will soon be put to an end, but even with that done, they still can talk on skype.
This negativity seems to be infiltrating this department, a department I happen to be responsible for managing, and I'm getting fed up. I don't know how to stop it. It's three girls and two guys in the department, though one of the guys is too new to be involved. The three girls have ganged up on the one guy, and the guy happens to be the one who is doing the best and the one that we're promoting most quickly. Chicken or the egg-- are they mean to him because he's doing good work and making them look lazy? Or do we just think he's doing better work and also feel sorry for him because he's somehow managed to stay out of this clique who is picking on him? Either way, the clique is not helping.
They accuse us of having a clique, but I would argue it's the other way around. My initial reaction is to shake them, ask them why in the world they think we would do things and make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the company. Maybe it's because they don't care about the company, maybe they only care about their own little worlds. I'm tired of babysitting them, though-- when an email or a phone call comes in, it's like I'm a mother hen pecking at them until one of them finally, reluctantly, picks it up. Just DO YOUR WORK. That's all I want. Maybe if you spent less time gossiping on skype about how much you hate that your coworker is getting promoted, even if you think it's unjust, and about how much you don't like things that are going on, maybe if you spent more time actually doing real work you would be the one getting promoted to a position where you could change the things you don't like instead. I need an attitude change around here, quick.
One day last week, I had a disciplinary conversation with an employee. Her performance has dropped off, she's spending too much time talking about non-work happenings at work, especially with a newer hire who has become a close friend, and her attitude has slipped far into a negative space. According to her, she feels unappreciated because she hasn't had a raise in a year while others are getting raises. As I explained, the people who are getting raises are minimum wage workers. She's on a much higher salary already. Finances are too tight. Then she said she thought (and others in her department think too, by the way) that there's a clique that she can't break into. I asked her to name the people in the click, and the people she named were the first 6 employees of the company.
The whole thing just leaves me so frustrated. I found out today they have a name for us, the order of protection, and they talk about it like it's an actual thing that we planned out and are perpetrating on purpose. Like we want to exclude people and make decisions that only benefit us. Like we're blind to everything else going on. The funny thing is, two of those six I hardly even talk to anymore, and one of them is on my permanent shit list until she starts acting like an adult and not a child who thinks she can come and go any time she wants and make all the trouble she wants just because she was employee #2. Of course no one outside of management knows about this. Why would I spread my disdain for her actions around? To everyone else, it must look like business as usual. I thought that would be the best way to continue.
Good grief, I'm only human. I'm trying to make the best decisions I can for the company as a whole, and I advise our management team to do the same. The management team is made up of a completely different group of 5 people, only my boss and I seem to be in both "groups." When we see potential in someone, we recognize it and give them a promotion. I guess this employee and her cronies are pissed because we don't recognize any of them as stellar performers? But they haven't done anything to deserve it. One of them does really good work, actually, and will be moving to a new department soon, but she's also a gossip so I'm not surprised at her new alignment. They all sit together, which will soon be put to an end, but even with that done, they still can talk on skype.
This negativity seems to be infiltrating this department, a department I happen to be responsible for managing, and I'm getting fed up. I don't know how to stop it. It's three girls and two guys in the department, though one of the guys is too new to be involved. The three girls have ganged up on the one guy, and the guy happens to be the one who is doing the best and the one that we're promoting most quickly. Chicken or the egg-- are they mean to him because he's doing good work and making them look lazy? Or do we just think he's doing better work and also feel sorry for him because he's somehow managed to stay out of this clique who is picking on him? Either way, the clique is not helping.
They accuse us of having a clique, but I would argue it's the other way around. My initial reaction is to shake them, ask them why in the world they think we would do things and make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the company. Maybe it's because they don't care about the company, maybe they only care about their own little worlds. I'm tired of babysitting them, though-- when an email or a phone call comes in, it's like I'm a mother hen pecking at them until one of them finally, reluctantly, picks it up. Just DO YOUR WORK. That's all I want. Maybe if you spent less time gossiping on skype about how much you hate that your coworker is getting promoted, even if you think it's unjust, and about how much you don't like things that are going on, maybe if you spent more time actually doing real work you would be the one getting promoted to a position where you could change the things you don't like instead. I need an attitude change around here, quick.
Friday, February 25, 2011
last day
I have a lot on my mind this morning. Here's a breakdown of my last 15 hours:
8 pm-- eating dinner with several girlfriends at one of their houses, the subject of religion comes up, and one of them looks directly at me, the girl who has suddenly gone quiet, and says, "So what are you?" As if that's an easy question to answer, like I can give one word (Presbyterian, Methodist, something) and have this question go away. But I'm truthful to myself and say the word that I then have to spend 10 minutes explaining while I get looks of disdain and confusion and replies of "well I figure it's better to believe than not believe, since I have a choice" (you're so not getting it, I think). Agnostic is my reply. Nothing, the meaning.
9:30 pm-- sitting on the couch after dinner, my inquisitor having already left to go take care of her babies and husband who can't be without her for longer than a couple hours, I check the weather on my phone and notice I have three emails, all voicemail-to-text emails from my coworker's wife to my boss (I get his emails too). She sounds... desperate. Something has happened. I call my boss, no answer, so I call his partner, who is crying. Dead. My coworker is dead. He was playing tennis, had a massive heart attack, and they couldn't revive him.
10 pm-- I'm finally together enough to have left my friend's house and call my husband, who is at a bar with his buddies. I meet him there. I can't bring myself to order a drink, because the only drink I can think of is my coworker's favorite, a salty dog, and I hate grapefruit juice. But to drink anything else seems wrong.
11 pm-- Finally in bed, I start sobbing. Why am I sobbing? Where did he go keeps playing in my mind, and I think about my grandfather and my aunt and the people I know and loved that are gone, but gone where? Husband rubs my back and comforts me, and I feel stupid because it's a loss for me but no great loss, and I'm mad at myself for thinking about the money the company is saving not having him (he was expensive) and how we didn't really need him anyway so this saves us the trouble of the phase-out we were about to do with him, and I fall asleep thinking about what a horrible person I am.
4 am-- A bad dream where I was at a funeral and people were whispering that the departed went to Hell, and I found myself believing it and being scared even though I don't believe in Hell, and I can't reconcile it all and wake up confused and very hot. I have been grinding my teeth, I can tell, and have a hard time moving my neck as I get up to get some water. Luckily it doesn't take too long to fall back to sleep.
6:50 am-- My alarms sounds and rips me from another uncomfortable dream. This time I'm at a doctor's office getting a vaccination, but for some reason the shot has to go in my lip, and it's bloody and gross, like a collagen injection gone wrong. Getting up and out of bed is even harder than it was at 4 am.
8:30 am-- Now at work, I stand in the hallway whispering with my boss, his partner, and our bookkeeper. Who knows? Who doesn't know yet? We need to make an announcement.
9 am-- Everyone is gathered now, my boss starts to weep, I cry, everyone cries. Again I feel like I'm crying over a bad dream, spilled milk. Nothing seems real. It's more like shock than grief. Who am I to grieve anyway, I think. I'm just a coworker, a coworker conspiring against him until his last minutes. "He was a nice guy, a caring guy," everyone says. He was, and I know I will miss our non-work conversations. Sniffles, and we go back to our desks, hearts heavy.
11 am-- The insurance agent has been called, our clients have been contacted, we've had a meeting about gathering up his projects. We're going to be ok, we all know it, but it's so quiet in here I can't stand it anymore. I make myself a massage appointment at 5:30 this afternoon. I make plans for Thai for dinner and Subway for lunch. Anything to take my mind off of it. Then I start this post because maybe, maybe if I get these thoughts out of my head I can have some peace. I'm not a terrible person. We all have crazy thoughts at crazy times. He was a funny, warm, engaging, and dedicated guy who will be missed severely by his friends and family and everyone here too. It's still not real, though, and I keep expecting my phone to ring for my daily check-in call. It probably won't be real til Monday when our extended management board gets together and he is glaringly absent.
12 noon-- Post done. I have to get out of here.
8 pm-- eating dinner with several girlfriends at one of their houses, the subject of religion comes up, and one of them looks directly at me, the girl who has suddenly gone quiet, and says, "So what are you?" As if that's an easy question to answer, like I can give one word (Presbyterian, Methodist, something) and have this question go away. But I'm truthful to myself and say the word that I then have to spend 10 minutes explaining while I get looks of disdain and confusion and replies of "well I figure it's better to believe than not believe, since I have a choice" (you're so not getting it, I think). Agnostic is my reply. Nothing, the meaning.
9:30 pm-- sitting on the couch after dinner, my inquisitor having already left to go take care of her babies and husband who can't be without her for longer than a couple hours, I check the weather on my phone and notice I have three emails, all voicemail-to-text emails from my coworker's wife to my boss (I get his emails too). She sounds... desperate. Something has happened. I call my boss, no answer, so I call his partner, who is crying. Dead. My coworker is dead. He was playing tennis, had a massive heart attack, and they couldn't revive him.
10 pm-- I'm finally together enough to have left my friend's house and call my husband, who is at a bar with his buddies. I meet him there. I can't bring myself to order a drink, because the only drink I can think of is my coworker's favorite, a salty dog, and I hate grapefruit juice. But to drink anything else seems wrong.
11 pm-- Finally in bed, I start sobbing. Why am I sobbing? Where did he go keeps playing in my mind, and I think about my grandfather and my aunt and the people I know and loved that are gone, but gone where? Husband rubs my back and comforts me, and I feel stupid because it's a loss for me but no great loss, and I'm mad at myself for thinking about the money the company is saving not having him (he was expensive) and how we didn't really need him anyway so this saves us the trouble of the phase-out we were about to do with him, and I fall asleep thinking about what a horrible person I am.
4 am-- A bad dream where I was at a funeral and people were whispering that the departed went to Hell, and I found myself believing it and being scared even though I don't believe in Hell, and I can't reconcile it all and wake up confused and very hot. I have been grinding my teeth, I can tell, and have a hard time moving my neck as I get up to get some water. Luckily it doesn't take too long to fall back to sleep.
6:50 am-- My alarms sounds and rips me from another uncomfortable dream. This time I'm at a doctor's office getting a vaccination, but for some reason the shot has to go in my lip, and it's bloody and gross, like a collagen injection gone wrong. Getting up and out of bed is even harder than it was at 4 am.
8:30 am-- Now at work, I stand in the hallway whispering with my boss, his partner, and our bookkeeper. Who knows? Who doesn't know yet? We need to make an announcement.
9 am-- Everyone is gathered now, my boss starts to weep, I cry, everyone cries. Again I feel like I'm crying over a bad dream, spilled milk. Nothing seems real. It's more like shock than grief. Who am I to grieve anyway, I think. I'm just a coworker, a coworker conspiring against him until his last minutes. "He was a nice guy, a caring guy," everyone says. He was, and I know I will miss our non-work conversations. Sniffles, and we go back to our desks, hearts heavy.
11 am-- The insurance agent has been called, our clients have been contacted, we've had a meeting about gathering up his projects. We're going to be ok, we all know it, but it's so quiet in here I can't stand it anymore. I make myself a massage appointment at 5:30 this afternoon. I make plans for Thai for dinner and Subway for lunch. Anything to take my mind off of it. Then I start this post because maybe, maybe if I get these thoughts out of my head I can have some peace. I'm not a terrible person. We all have crazy thoughts at crazy times. He was a funny, warm, engaging, and dedicated guy who will be missed severely by his friends and family and everyone here too. It's still not real, though, and I keep expecting my phone to ring for my daily check-in call. It probably won't be real til Monday when our extended management board gets together and he is glaringly absent.
12 noon-- Post done. I have to get out of here.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
sharing of pain/rules and regulations/the choice
1.
On occasion, I come across someone I want to collect. It could be a friend, a coworker, random acquaintance, a one-time interaction, a person passed on the street, or someone I have never met. There will be something about this person that makes me believe they belong in my life, something that draws me to them, leads me to want to keep them always. Attitude is a big draw-- I'm pulled toward people with a laid-back, calm, positive outlook on life, the kind of people that could weather a storm and come out on the other side with a determined smile. I also tend to feel a pull toward independent types, the ones that walk or talk or dress or act in an original way, not affected or fake, but just fully themselves. Another draw, I have discovered, seems to be common pain, crippling pain, like a migraine. People who have true migraines know the meaning of hurt, and when we find someone else who shares this, we tend to want to swap and compare sympathy, tips, and war stories, but we also feel drawn to keep these in a special place in our hearts and minds. I recently discovered that John Mayer, the musician, has a type of migraine similar to mine-- with aura, brought on by weather changes-- and though I have always enjoyed his music, I now feel a kind of kinship that I didn't think was really possible with someone I don't actually know. I feel like we should be friends on that basis alone. Because of our shared pain, a pain that no one else can really understand, I'd like to add him to my collection of similar souls.
2.
People need rules to survive, not to mention succeed. How many times and what type of food to eat every day. Share. Bathe frequently. How to tie your shoes. Look before you cross the street. Etc. It makes sense, then, that at work most people need rules and regulations to follow to ensure that they meet the goals and objectives of the company. Unfortunately, we've been lackadaisical thus far in creating these processes for people, relying solely on good will and trust for work to be done. No longer. Without rules, people get lazy. Apparently most people, if they don't think anyone's watching, will test the boundaries, and when they don't get in trouble, they stop work altogether. We tried to motivate by inspiration, saying Look! We'll be a great company, we'll all have great success if we work hard together, but for most people, all they really care about is the paycheck. This is simply a bump in a long road, not a lifetime commitment like it is for those of us who started it. If we want them to succeed, we must give them the means. The means can also cause failure, which for some of them may be more likely. This is my life lately.
3.
A month or so ago, I made a conscious choice to be happy. I looked despair and frustration and worry straight in the face, and I said no. I forced a smile on my face and added a bounce to my step, and after a couple minutes, I felt a release. I wondered why I was ever unhappy in the first place. Now when I feel myself brooding, that process of choosing to be happy takes a lot less time. I remember that it's possible, and a contented, peaceful feeling spreads over me. It's almost like knowing that I have a choice whether or not to be happy makes me happy in itself, and thus the choice is made for me. I suppose it sounds too good to be true, that the secret to happiness is just to choose it. The first couple of times there was more of a process, a train of thought I had to follow, about how all the terrible things happening were, in a grand view, not that terrible, and even if they were, there was nothing I could do to fix them. All I can change is my reaction to them. I choose my reaction now, and my reaction is to smile, laugh knowing that this too will pass, and move on to better thoughts. It's a trick I want to teach every unhappy person I know, but unfortunately it seems too many people are making conscious choices for unhappiness. I would worry about them... but I choose not to.
On occasion, I come across someone I want to collect. It could be a friend, a coworker, random acquaintance, a one-time interaction, a person passed on the street, or someone I have never met. There will be something about this person that makes me believe they belong in my life, something that draws me to them, leads me to want to keep them always. Attitude is a big draw-- I'm pulled toward people with a laid-back, calm, positive outlook on life, the kind of people that could weather a storm and come out on the other side with a determined smile. I also tend to feel a pull toward independent types, the ones that walk or talk or dress or act in an original way, not affected or fake, but just fully themselves. Another draw, I have discovered, seems to be common pain, crippling pain, like a migraine. People who have true migraines know the meaning of hurt, and when we find someone else who shares this, we tend to want to swap and compare sympathy, tips, and war stories, but we also feel drawn to keep these in a special place in our hearts and minds. I recently discovered that John Mayer, the musician, has a type of migraine similar to mine-- with aura, brought on by weather changes-- and though I have always enjoyed his music, I now feel a kind of kinship that I didn't think was really possible with someone I don't actually know. I feel like we should be friends on that basis alone. Because of our shared pain, a pain that no one else can really understand, I'd like to add him to my collection of similar souls.
2.
People need rules to survive, not to mention succeed. How many times and what type of food to eat every day. Share. Bathe frequently. How to tie your shoes. Look before you cross the street. Etc. It makes sense, then, that at work most people need rules and regulations to follow to ensure that they meet the goals and objectives of the company. Unfortunately, we've been lackadaisical thus far in creating these processes for people, relying solely on good will and trust for work to be done. No longer. Without rules, people get lazy. Apparently most people, if they don't think anyone's watching, will test the boundaries, and when they don't get in trouble, they stop work altogether. We tried to motivate by inspiration, saying Look! We'll be a great company, we'll all have great success if we work hard together, but for most people, all they really care about is the paycheck. This is simply a bump in a long road, not a lifetime commitment like it is for those of us who started it. If we want them to succeed, we must give them the means. The means can also cause failure, which for some of them may be more likely. This is my life lately.
3.
A month or so ago, I made a conscious choice to be happy. I looked despair and frustration and worry straight in the face, and I said no. I forced a smile on my face and added a bounce to my step, and after a couple minutes, I felt a release. I wondered why I was ever unhappy in the first place. Now when I feel myself brooding, that process of choosing to be happy takes a lot less time. I remember that it's possible, and a contented, peaceful feeling spreads over me. It's almost like knowing that I have a choice whether or not to be happy makes me happy in itself, and thus the choice is made for me. I suppose it sounds too good to be true, that the secret to happiness is just to choose it. The first couple of times there was more of a process, a train of thought I had to follow, about how all the terrible things happening were, in a grand view, not that terrible, and even if they were, there was nothing I could do to fix them. All I can change is my reaction to them. I choose my reaction now, and my reaction is to smile, laugh knowing that this too will pass, and move on to better thoughts. It's a trick I want to teach every unhappy person I know, but unfortunately it seems too many people are making conscious choices for unhappiness. I would worry about them... but I choose not to.
Friday, February 18, 2011
follow up
There's a line that I've formed somewhere in some sand, a line that once crossed can not be uncrossed. I never know what will cause someone to trip over or even run past that line, but once it's done no one can undo it, make that feeling go away, not them and not even me, no matter how quickly they come back to my side and stay there. It's like a stain that won't fade, even with the strongest bleach.
You have to do something pretty drastic to be marked like this. For one girl, it was getting so drunk that I had to carry her around all night, she stole something from a bar, and then she yelled at me. For one guy, it was returning a dog he had adopted from the shelter because of an issue that would have been easily trained away. For my brother, it took years worth of mental abuse. For the latest additions, it was being so dumb as to fall into bed with a coworker when you know one of you is married, then gossip about it at work.
It's a loss of respect, I suppose. I hold people to a high standard, but it's nothing I don't ask of myself. Once it's lost, I tend to hold people at a distance, sometimes a larger distance than others, but I never fully let down my guard and open up again. It's been years since some of these transgressions, but I still feel it, that steeling of my heart when their name is mentioned or I see their face. I'm usually very normal and casual with them, though I'm sure they can sense my hesitancy, at least in part.
So what if lots of people cheat on their spouses. I expect more from the people that I allow into my life and my heart. If you make a promise, you keep it. If you know someone else has made a promise, you don't help them break it. If you love someone, you treat them with honesty and respect. Am I really asking too much of people?
You have to do something pretty drastic to be marked like this. For one girl, it was getting so drunk that I had to carry her around all night, she stole something from a bar, and then she yelled at me. For one guy, it was returning a dog he had adopted from the shelter because of an issue that would have been easily trained away. For my brother, it took years worth of mental abuse. For the latest additions, it was being so dumb as to fall into bed with a coworker when you know one of you is married, then gossip about it at work.
It's a loss of respect, I suppose. I hold people to a high standard, but it's nothing I don't ask of myself. Once it's lost, I tend to hold people at a distance, sometimes a larger distance than others, but I never fully let down my guard and open up again. It's been years since some of these transgressions, but I still feel it, that steeling of my heart when their name is mentioned or I see their face. I'm usually very normal and casual with them, though I'm sure they can sense my hesitancy, at least in part.
So what if lots of people cheat on their spouses. I expect more from the people that I allow into my life and my heart. If you make a promise, you keep it. If you know someone else has made a promise, you don't help them break it. If you love someone, you treat them with honesty and respect. Am I really asking too much of people?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
people never cease to amaze me
I just found out from my boss that two of my coworkers slept together just after one of them returned from their honeymoon. These are supposed to be adults, managers, competent human beings. To make it worse, one of them told one of the people they "manage" and now they gossip about it all day. No wonder their department has been suffering. I am so wide-eyed with shock right now. It's amazing what people will do to each other and themselves. And I get to clean up the professional mess left in their wake.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Valentine ramblings
I signed on today with no real thought as to what I would write, just that I wanted to write something. Before I clicked the "new post" button, I noticed this will supposedly be my 300th post. I feel like I should make it a special one, then, with some sort of well-prepared, engaging prose. But there are several things working against me, and I feel certain I will dissolve into rambling shortly.
First, my pupils have totally taken over my irises. It's like someone injected black ink into my eyeballs, making them look like cartoon versions of the real thing, all black and white, no spotted brown-green to be seen. I look high. I'm not, I'm just dialated. I had my yearly eye exam this morning.
It's a good thing it's only a yearly exam. $680. I'm trying to imagine all the fun things I could do with $680 but it just makes me sick to my stomach. This does cover the exam, a year's worth of contacts, and a new pair of glasses (I haven't gotten new frames in three years). But when the nurse looked up at me over her rimless specs and exhaled the total at me, in a low whistle, I could no longer tell if it was the lack of being able to see clearly or the number that made me feel like vomiting and passing out all at once. I dumbly handed her my debit card. I was already playing out the phone call to my husband to explain why I spent that huge amount, but I couldn't come up with a good explanation even for myself, other than needing to see. Is needing to see worth $700? I suppose so.
Of course we can cover it, as long as no one spends any other money today or tomorrow until our paychecks are in. But I should have given her my credit card, just in case. I don't like having under $200 in the account, which is where we currently stand. It makes me nervous.
We have no Valentine's plans, thank goodness. We had brunch together yesterday instead, and when we left the bakery/cafe, they had a plate of freshly made red velvet cupcakes for sale, and we took 2 for after dinner tonight. It's a normal day other than the cupcakes (and the $700 bomb)-- work, gym, cook dinner, tv, and sleep. In the middle of all that, of course, is taking care of our puppies.
My parents lost their black lab a couple months ago. I suppose she was "mine" too. We got her as a puppy when I was 13. She was 15 this year, and her arthritis and old heart finally caught up to her. What a sweetheart, totally irreplaceable, my old Sammy girl. They still have two-- Beau, the clueless and laughable chocolate lab/great dane mix, about 8 years old, and Daisy, the lover and protector, a 2-year-old bassett hound mix. When I was a kid, we had Maxie, the first canine love of my life, a gray miniature schanuzer. She was super scary smart, loyal, and a big lap baby. She passed right before I left for college. My parents have always wanted another schnauzer but for a long time resisted because Maxie was such a one-of-a-kind dog. They are now thinking they may want to give it a go, but they're going to adopt from the shelter, which means it may be a mix, and they want to get an older dog, at least a full year.
When my husband comments on our dog's behavior (when they are bad, they are "my" dogs, not his), I can point to my parents to see where my affinity for having a houseful of furry creatures was born. They are such a comfort and bring so much joy. I am a huge proponent of adoption over buying pets, though. Unless you're showing, breeding (and they do that just fine on their own, not sure why they need our help), or maybe have a severe allergy, there is absolutely no reason to go after a "pure-bred" dog. In fact, mixes tend to have fewer health problems as a general rule. Maxie, a pure-bred, had some kind of weird itchy skin condition all her life, started having seizures at middle age, and went blind before she passed, all known issues with miniature schnauzers. Bub, on the other hand, my little terrier terror, had a luxating patella (his kneecap shifted) at age 7, but it was quickly fixed, and now he's fine. He's almost 9. Beau, other than eating strange things and making himself sick, which is attributable only to his lack of common sense and not breeding as there are many dumb pure-breds out there too, hasn't had any health problems. For a dog his size and his age, that's saying something.
The most important consideration for me, though, is the overpopulation of pets in our country. It depresses me to see the amount of animals that filter in and out of our local shelter every year-- people abandon their supposedly beloved pets every day. But they also never spay or neuter them, they jump fences and climb walls, and have millions of unneeded puppies and kittens every year, that the owners then just drop at the shelter, like a bag of unwanted old clothes. Add to that the cruel and idiotic puppy mill owners who breed, breed, breed the same female over and over again until the puppies hardly have a chance, born with weird defects and abnormalities. But they're sold to unsuspecting and equally idiotic buyers.
Bottom line-- if you want a pure-bred, for whatever reason, first try a rescue group. Every breed has them. Second, find a licensed breeder, check out their facilities, and even check their BBB rating. Do your due diligence. If you just want a dog that will love you and be your friend, go to the shelter, pick out a couple you like, ask lots of questions, play with them, take them for a walk, and take one home with you. They'll already be spayed or neutered and will probably be up to date on vaccinations too. You can't ask for much more than that.
This post turned into what I thought it would-- rambling. Please excuse typos, since I still can't see. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Valentine's day.
First, my pupils have totally taken over my irises. It's like someone injected black ink into my eyeballs, making them look like cartoon versions of the real thing, all black and white, no spotted brown-green to be seen. I look high. I'm not, I'm just dialated. I had my yearly eye exam this morning.
It's a good thing it's only a yearly exam. $680. I'm trying to imagine all the fun things I could do with $680 but it just makes me sick to my stomach. This does cover the exam, a year's worth of contacts, and a new pair of glasses (I haven't gotten new frames in three years). But when the nurse looked up at me over her rimless specs and exhaled the total at me, in a low whistle, I could no longer tell if it was the lack of being able to see clearly or the number that made me feel like vomiting and passing out all at once. I dumbly handed her my debit card. I was already playing out the phone call to my husband to explain why I spent that huge amount, but I couldn't come up with a good explanation even for myself, other than needing to see. Is needing to see worth $700? I suppose so.
Of course we can cover it, as long as no one spends any other money today or tomorrow until our paychecks are in. But I should have given her my credit card, just in case. I don't like having under $200 in the account, which is where we currently stand. It makes me nervous.
We have no Valentine's plans, thank goodness. We had brunch together yesterday instead, and when we left the bakery/cafe, they had a plate of freshly made red velvet cupcakes for sale, and we took 2 for after dinner tonight. It's a normal day other than the cupcakes (and the $700 bomb)-- work, gym, cook dinner, tv, and sleep. In the middle of all that, of course, is taking care of our puppies.
My parents lost their black lab a couple months ago. I suppose she was "mine" too. We got her as a puppy when I was 13. She was 15 this year, and her arthritis and old heart finally caught up to her. What a sweetheart, totally irreplaceable, my old Sammy girl. They still have two-- Beau, the clueless and laughable chocolate lab/great dane mix, about 8 years old, and Daisy, the lover and protector, a 2-year-old bassett hound mix. When I was a kid, we had Maxie, the first canine love of my life, a gray miniature schanuzer. She was super scary smart, loyal, and a big lap baby. She passed right before I left for college. My parents have always wanted another schnauzer but for a long time resisted because Maxie was such a one-of-a-kind dog. They are now thinking they may want to give it a go, but they're going to adopt from the shelter, which means it may be a mix, and they want to get an older dog, at least a full year.
When my husband comments on our dog's behavior (when they are bad, they are "my" dogs, not his), I can point to my parents to see where my affinity for having a houseful of furry creatures was born. They are such a comfort and bring so much joy. I am a huge proponent of adoption over buying pets, though. Unless you're showing, breeding (and they do that just fine on their own, not sure why they need our help), or maybe have a severe allergy, there is absolutely no reason to go after a "pure-bred" dog. In fact, mixes tend to have fewer health problems as a general rule. Maxie, a pure-bred, had some kind of weird itchy skin condition all her life, started having seizures at middle age, and went blind before she passed, all known issues with miniature schnauzers. Bub, on the other hand, my little terrier terror, had a luxating patella (his kneecap shifted) at age 7, but it was quickly fixed, and now he's fine. He's almost 9. Beau, other than eating strange things and making himself sick, which is attributable only to his lack of common sense and not breeding as there are many dumb pure-breds out there too, hasn't had any health problems. For a dog his size and his age, that's saying something.
The most important consideration for me, though, is the overpopulation of pets in our country. It depresses me to see the amount of animals that filter in and out of our local shelter every year-- people abandon their supposedly beloved pets every day. But they also never spay or neuter them, they jump fences and climb walls, and have millions of unneeded puppies and kittens every year, that the owners then just drop at the shelter, like a bag of unwanted old clothes. Add to that the cruel and idiotic puppy mill owners who breed, breed, breed the same female over and over again until the puppies hardly have a chance, born with weird defects and abnormalities. But they're sold to unsuspecting and equally idiotic buyers.
Bottom line-- if you want a pure-bred, for whatever reason, first try a rescue group. Every breed has them. Second, find a licensed breeder, check out their facilities, and even check their BBB rating. Do your due diligence. If you just want a dog that will love you and be your friend, go to the shelter, pick out a couple you like, ask lots of questions, play with them, take them for a walk, and take one home with you. They'll already be spayed or neutered and will probably be up to date on vaccinations too. You can't ask for much more than that.
This post turned into what I thought it would-- rambling. Please excuse typos, since I still can't see. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Valentine's day.
Friday, February 4, 2011
circles
Boone's circling again, chasing that mean ol' tail. You can tell when he's full of puppy spunk because he starts to put his butt into things, like Bub's face, my knee, anything that looks like it might play with him. He doesn't know his own strength though, in typical puppy fashion, and he's sat on poor Bub's head more than once. What Bub must think of us, having brought this crazy wild creature into our home. The tail is the last resort-- if no one else will play, there's always the trusty tail. It never goes away or says no, no.
I'm sitting at the gray formica kitchen counter (I hate it, I crave solid surface) waiting on a text from my husband. He should be leaving work right now, on his way to the gym, but we were invited to dinner with friends. Mexican. Although not really "Mexican," more a conglomeration of Mexican, Texan, and general Southeastern cuisine. In the Southeast, Mexican restaurants have a white cheese dip made from Asadero cheese that is so much tastier-- salty, naturally spicy, rich-- than other quesos. Oh, how I pined for that when we were living in London.
I hear a ripping noise and look over at Boone, now too near my couch. For a second I think he's tearing into my Granny's blue and pink handmade quilt, but no, he's got his rope toy laid in the floor, pulling strands between his teeth. This one has lasted a surprisingly long time-- a whole week now, and it's probably still got a week left in it. I've attracted his attention now, by coming over to look, and he wants to play. A couple tugs and he gets that "gotta go" look on his face, and it's out the back door. I wouldn't mind except it's pouring out, again, sleet and rain, which means I'll have to dry him off, again, in a few minutes, and with all that wound-up energy he thinks the towel is the most fun game ever. The goal? Leaving me as dirty as he was when he scratched at the door.
Phone rings. He had a late customer and is finishing up the paperwork. He sounds tired, haggard, worn down. He needs a new job, one that he loves. We used to say at least this one pays the bills, but with the downturn in sales, it's just barely doing that. But we're frugal. Even Mexican is only $20, and we need some socializing. Boone needs some socializing too. Maybe a walk in the park tomorrow, on my much-needed day off. That is if it's not still raining. Otherwise it'll just be tail-chasing on the rug.
I'm sitting at the gray formica kitchen counter (I hate it, I crave solid surface) waiting on a text from my husband. He should be leaving work right now, on his way to the gym, but we were invited to dinner with friends. Mexican. Although not really "Mexican," more a conglomeration of Mexican, Texan, and general Southeastern cuisine. In the Southeast, Mexican restaurants have a white cheese dip made from Asadero cheese that is so much tastier-- salty, naturally spicy, rich-- than other quesos. Oh, how I pined for that when we were living in London.
I hear a ripping noise and look over at Boone, now too near my couch. For a second I think he's tearing into my Granny's blue and pink handmade quilt, but no, he's got his rope toy laid in the floor, pulling strands between his teeth. This one has lasted a surprisingly long time-- a whole week now, and it's probably still got a week left in it. I've attracted his attention now, by coming over to look, and he wants to play. A couple tugs and he gets that "gotta go" look on his face, and it's out the back door. I wouldn't mind except it's pouring out, again, sleet and rain, which means I'll have to dry him off, again, in a few minutes, and with all that wound-up energy he thinks the towel is the most fun game ever. The goal? Leaving me as dirty as he was when he scratched at the door.
Phone rings. He had a late customer and is finishing up the paperwork. He sounds tired, haggard, worn down. He needs a new job, one that he loves. We used to say at least this one pays the bills, but with the downturn in sales, it's just barely doing that. But we're frugal. Even Mexican is only $20, and we need some socializing. Boone needs some socializing too. Maybe a walk in the park tomorrow, on my much-needed day off. That is if it's not still raining. Otherwise it'll just be tail-chasing on the rug.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
sweet vices
Apparently I can no longer function without coffee in the morning.
I blame it on my husband-- he bent to my whim and bought me a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas. I suppose I did twist his arm pretty hard, ohhing and ahhing every time the commercial came on tv. To be able to make one cup at a time (because we never needed more than two on a random Sunday), to have all those different flavors and brews there waiting, trying something new every time....
I do love coffee. I fell in love with it when we were living in London; the stuff over there in Europe, like most everything else, is so much better. So much more real and natural and flavorful. Why do Americans water down and pasteurize and muck up everything? Don't even mention American cheese to me. I'll take a French brie or an English Roquefort any day. And bread? We make "Wonder;" they make fresh loafs of ciabatta and foccacia and rye. The saddest part is that most Americans have no idea what they're missing.
There's a coffee shop on Charing Cross Road down near Leicester Square in London, Caffe Vergnano 1882. It's been almost 5 years, but in my mind's eye I could lead you there, down the windy road, past the Tesco, several theaters, and used book stores. You can smell it as you walk, the bitter richness of coffee mixed with the sweet smell of chocolate and cream. They pour their brews into large glass mugs or squat ceramic cups, an inch of froth on the top of each, from the giant chrome dome-shaped brewer on their counter. Order a mocha or a hot chocolate and they stencil 1882 in chocolate powder across the foam. What I wouldn't give for one of those right now.
I started ordering my coffee black then and continue to drink it black even though until my Keurig I couldn't find a decent tasting coffee to save my life. Even the Starbucks over there tasted better than anything you can get here, or so I thought. The Keurig has reminded me what good coffee should taste like-- rich, strong, slightly bitter but also smooth, smoky or chocolaty depending on the brew. Today I had a Kona extra-bold blend, which was very smooth and light, lighter than what I would usually pick, but good for a change. My favorites so far have been the Green Mountain French Roast and the Caribou Mahogany. I'm almost out and plan on shopping for some more varieties tonight.
The last few days I have been tired at work after lunch, and I think it's because I was refraining from a cup of coffee in the morning. Today I had a cup and am feeling much more awake. I'm torn between worrying that I should cut back (I don't like to be on anything, from caffeine to alcohol to medicine-- it's a control issue) and thinking that I don't allow myself much, so I should at least allow myself to indulge in one relatively harmless thing I enjoy-- a good, rich, dark cup of black coffee.
I blame it on my husband-- he bent to my whim and bought me a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas. I suppose I did twist his arm pretty hard, ohhing and ahhing every time the commercial came on tv. To be able to make one cup at a time (because we never needed more than two on a random Sunday), to have all those different flavors and brews there waiting, trying something new every time....
I do love coffee. I fell in love with it when we were living in London; the stuff over there in Europe, like most everything else, is so much better. So much more real and natural and flavorful. Why do Americans water down and pasteurize and muck up everything? Don't even mention American cheese to me. I'll take a French brie or an English Roquefort any day. And bread? We make "Wonder;" they make fresh loafs of ciabatta and foccacia and rye. The saddest part is that most Americans have no idea what they're missing.
There's a coffee shop on Charing Cross Road down near Leicester Square in London, Caffe Vergnano 1882. It's been almost 5 years, but in my mind's eye I could lead you there, down the windy road, past the Tesco, several theaters, and used book stores. You can smell it as you walk, the bitter richness of coffee mixed with the sweet smell of chocolate and cream. They pour their brews into large glass mugs or squat ceramic cups, an inch of froth on the top of each, from the giant chrome dome-shaped brewer on their counter. Order a mocha or a hot chocolate and they stencil 1882 in chocolate powder across the foam. What I wouldn't give for one of those right now.
I started ordering my coffee black then and continue to drink it black even though until my Keurig I couldn't find a decent tasting coffee to save my life. Even the Starbucks over there tasted better than anything you can get here, or so I thought. The Keurig has reminded me what good coffee should taste like-- rich, strong, slightly bitter but also smooth, smoky or chocolaty depending on the brew. Today I had a Kona extra-bold blend, which was very smooth and light, lighter than what I would usually pick, but good for a change. My favorites so far have been the Green Mountain French Roast and the Caribou Mahogany. I'm almost out and plan on shopping for some more varieties tonight.
The last few days I have been tired at work after lunch, and I think it's because I was refraining from a cup of coffee in the morning. Today I had a cup and am feeling much more awake. I'm torn between worrying that I should cut back (I don't like to be on anything, from caffeine to alcohol to medicine-- it's a control issue) and thinking that I don't allow myself much, so I should at least allow myself to indulge in one relatively harmless thing I enjoy-- a good, rich, dark cup of black coffee.
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