What, no April minirants?

The BBQ Pit
261

Yes, yes I was. I walked a couple of blocks from the bus in the morning, then I walked out and back when I got lunch, and I’ll be out in it again on my way to the bus home. No umbrella, no hat, no hood. SUCK IT.

I did, however, decide not to walk to the store to pick up fruit and bagels for tomorrow morning’s meeting like I’d planned. A big *THANK YOU *to the clueless asshole hosting the meeting, who was completely oblivious to my very direct hints that I’d prefer to just skip food entirely and only have coffee and tea available. Since, you know, the meeting is only an hour long, there will be maybe three people there, and the client works in our building. Ugh. What an asshole. (He already started on my shitlist by scheduling the meeting before my normal start time, which means I’ll be getting here about 90 minutes early tomorrow.)

262

Oh, and I forgot the best part: Nobody ever eats the food during short morning meetings. Ever. The only time people eat is when we have a working lunch or a really long morning one.

263

I did have a hood. I lose. :frowning: <----- that was about the colour of my face when I got in. :smiley:

264

Thanks to all those who’ve posted with support. I know, intellectually, all these things you’re telling me, and I’m actually holding it all together pretty well over here but some days, little things just get to me. Supportive family helps a lot, it really does.

I’ve thought a lot myself about the euthanasia question; if she were a dog we’d have had people taking us aside and telling us it was long past time and we should buck up and do the right thing. The killer part is, she cared for her own mother through dementia, and had said she never wanted this. Problem was, she had her stroke (a bad one) and recovered sort of OK for a while, but over the years her existing mental difficulties masked the developing dementia, so it’s mostly when people who haven’t seen her in a while comment that you step back and realize how bad she’s gotten. It’s been a long, slow decline, with no real “breakpoint” in her health where her family could say, “Ok, we’ll withdraw treament (looks at watch) NOW and she’ll be mercifully gone in a week.” With one exception a year and a half ago, her physical health has been stable. Stably unwell, but not in pain and not declining. Till now. And it’s only with this last episode that her husband has truly been ready to let go. And now, she’s not going. And we can’t actively help her along.

So, here’s another mini-rant: Fuck Jack Kervorkian for being such an inept ghoul that we won’t be able to have a sensible conversation on euthanasia law for probably another generation. Who would want to live like this?

265

Hey, dad shopping with toddler - your toddler did not “get into” that half-eaten banana that has to be weighed and paid for - if you didn’t notice your kid chowing down on a banana as she sat in the cart right in front of your face, you are the world’s most non-observant dad. I don’t have a problem with parents giving their kids a snack in the grocery store, but here’s an idea - make it something that they can still run through the till.

Yeah, it’s pretty mini, but the dad’s idiotic excuse got up my nose.

266

WTF is up with my daughter’s school district?

Spring break was last week. This week she has school on Passover and then has off Good Friday. Jerks.

Baby darling of mine, you are coming out either tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Your choice. But you are about to slide into the world no matter what. You have two loving parents, a delighted about to be big sister and soft cats who have been firmly warned they can cuddle but not scratch just waiting for you. It will all be worth it.

I promise!

267

Good luck with the birth, hope everything goes smoothly! I’ll be thinking of you. :slight_smile:

268

Thank you. Given my prior history the OB is hopeful it will be a mercifully short labor with no c-section.

269

Good luck!

This morning: snow. Which is, actually, preferable to sleet. At least for me.

Anti-rant: I finally found an outdoor thermometer for my balcony door and I love love love it.

270

FUCKING CALLED IT. Nobody ate *anything *during the meeting; afterwards, one of the guys from my company made a point of eating something so that I didn’t feel like it had been pointless.

Here’s a thought–next time, when I suggest that we skip the food, we just skip the fucking food.

271

GAH! Bastard ear fucking, duck squashing, Peep melting, toy breaking, scream and beat on the walls until my fists bleed son of a bitch Chinese hell of 5000 levels filled by my Og forsaken ancestors! GODDAMMIT!

I am up until 2:30 in the morning, trying to piece together a document my mom has spent two DAYS on, because her boss does not understand that RNs are not technical writers. The document is corrupted, the screenshots were not available, and half the acronyms are not explained. I had to restart the document from scratch, and sections that had five bullets of instructions, once broken down into single tasks were now THIRTY-NINE FUCKING ITEMS LONG.

I have to leave highlighted comments in the text for where screenshots (which need to be retaken, because the few I could copy were so pixelated they were illegible), ask questions about screens that may or may not exist, and sleuth through the original writer who thinks a tab, a field, a column, and a button ARE THE SAME FUCKING THING! (My mother, Og bless her, knows better.)

The printer, which usually prints with the speed of a gazelle on fucking amphetamines, when hooked up to my Ubuntu system, limps like a geriatric roach with two of its legs pulled off. So I can’t give my mom a hard copy. She has to go with the thumb drive and the copy I emailed her, and that’s one less layer of back up in Fuck Murphy, the universe IS out to get me world.

And she asked so nicely, when she had to leave at 5 in the morning, if I would please get up before 8:30 and make sure the trash had been taken out, because Dad had not done it last night. Also, he didn’t take his 9 pm meds, which I was supposed to check, but I was consumed by the fucking document I didn’t remember until 1:30, and fuck me, I am not waking my dad up that late. So now his medication schedule for today is fucking fucked as well.

Eight oh fucking six in the morning, I hear the goddamn dedicated, efficient civil servants of my precious town, driving up the street in their dick sucking garbage truck, earlier than they have been since the creation of cunt nibbling universe. I grab a pair of shorts and haul my pasty ass downstairs, because I have .35 nanoseconds to get the garbage out before they arrive, pass us, and leave us with bin full of smelly shit. Literally. Oh, and I have to make sure that Dad takes his 5 am meds at 8:30 so he doesn’t pass out from hypotension from taking them too early (which he has done. I guess he looks at the little dish of pills and says “Fuck it, syncope is FUN!”) or blow an aneurysm from hypertension when he inevitably forgets them.

And as soon as my foot touches the first floor, Dad asks what I’m doing. Because usually, his daughter is not running around in a pajama top, three day old jean shorts, no glasses, and hair like a Yeti. I have five and half hours of sleep under my belt. I need NINE, people.

“Thing! Truck! Move the . . . THINGS!” Great. I fucking lost my native language overnight.

Miraculously, he understands. “It’s okay. I’ll do it. They’re never here this early.”

Did I mention that he’s lost half of his remaining 10% of hearing, and I can now hear Fox and its Elephant Fellating Friends clearly through my closed bedroom door?

“No!” I grunt. “Out there! Heard! Take things out! Going!”

He sighs. I am SOOOOOO trying. How does a parent cope with such a viper at their bosom?

“I’ll do it.”

In his robe and slippers, with no glasses, and it’s cold out there, and he doesn’t walk anymore, he shuffles. It will take him ten parsecs of wandering to finally get the bins out there, so I go to the garage anyways. And he follows me.

“I’ll do it!”

Open the garage door, fuck, he parked too close to the side of the garage, so I have to wrangle the bins out through the side door. Fuck me. Garbage truck is trolling the other side of the street. I wonder if I can run away with the Sanitation Workers like kids can with the circus.

“I’LL DO IT!”

So I stop, and he storms - slowly and shufflingly past me.

“Hey, how about not yelling at me when I try to help?” I ask.

Not a word.

Fine. Fuck you, Dad. I’ve cleaned up your shit, literally. I don’t say a word when you go through four bottles of amaretto in a month (seriously? Amaretto? I bought it for the hot chocolate, Dad. Did you think drinking the girlie stuff didn’t mean you were an alcoholic?) and have nearly cleared out the 155 proof rum I bought for messing with herbal concoctions (decoctions, infusions, WHATEVER).

So, what do I do? I slam the fucking door on my way back in and then I go take a mother fucking shower and I SHAVE MY GODDAMN LEGS.

That’s right, people. I am hardcore.

Do not fuck with me.

272

:cowers:

273

My 19 year old child (who is a smart obedient pretty thing, and I love her very much) just got a job interview at a bakery. She has been looking for work for many months, because she has expenses, which I pay.

She just called me up crying because she doesn’t want this job, she wants a “normal job”. Crying.

I tell you what, if I could get my hands on her right now I’d give her something to cry about.

274

Well, is she crying but taking the interview? Or is she crying and saying she’s not going to do it?

If the latter, fuck that noise. If the former, I’d say she’s entitled to a bit of self-pity if this isn’t the kind of job she wants–any job, no matter how awesome,* will suck if it’s something you’re being forced into purely for income.

*And I happen to think working in a bakery would be pretty awesome.

275

To tell you the truth, she’s been crying a lot lately. She’s stressed (as am I). And when we hear a bit of news that might herald some light at the end of the tunnel, I’m ready to dance, and she cries! I just sicked her Grandma on her. Grandma’s a lot more sympathetic than me at the moment.

And yeah, she’ll go to the interview and try to do well. I think it would be cool to work in a bakery too!

276

To you, it’s the light at the end of the tunnel. To her, it’s a job she doesn’t want to do, that she thinks she’s going to hate, that she feels that she doesn’t have any choice about because she needs the money. (Bonus: She doesn’t even have it yet, so she’s probably also worried about the additional possibility of getting rejected by an employer she doesn’t even want to work for, but needs to.) For her right now, any job is better than no job, but a job that you loathe going to every day is its own sort of hell different from unemployment.

277

The one job that had me sobbing for an entire weekend because I really didn’t want to do it ended up being the only job in my life that I stayed at for more than 2 years (I was there nearly 5). I went from temp file clerk to full time file clerk (they bought out my contract in less than 2 weeks), to assistant CSR/file clerk, to full CSR, and then got a promotion to a better CSR position.

I ended up loving that job, until that last position. I hated my final position so much (actually, it was the bitch I was forced to work with that I hated), that I left the job.
My point is that the only reason I even showed up for that job was because my boyfriend bought me $200 worth of new clothes (I hadn’t worked outside of a factory in 3 years and had no office appropriate clothes) so I kind of had to go. Every other job I’ve had, I’ve actually looked forward to starting and felt would be a good learning experience but ended up either sucking at or hating.

You never know what you’re going to find yourself enjoying until you try it. If she does get the job, even if she does end up hating it, at least it’s money coming in while she looks for another.

278

I know. I just have to take some deep cleansing breaths right now, and by the time I get home from work I’ll be Nice Mom again. Crying really tends to rub my fur the wrong way.

279

Well if you just hate crying in general, then that’s a fair rant. :smiley:

280

phouka, that was epic. You write very well when you’re sleep-deprived and pissy (but ooooh, those legs are smooove, girl!)

Here’s hoping you get a nap soon.