Caterwauling

What a treat — religion AND abortion are my subjects of the day so far! What next, my little chickadees? Do you not KNOW how much rage a menstruating woman is capable of spewing?!?!

Today’s fury is sponsored by the WaPo article, Antiabortion Proposals Advance in Va.: House Committee Backs Parental Consent Bill, Ban on Late-Term Procedure.

Tell me something, did the County of Allegheny, in the City of Pittsburgh, forget to brand it on my birth certificate, next to the “female” part, that my body is property of the U.S. government? You know, when I found myself at the crossroads in June 2001 whether or not to have an abortion, I didn’t hear any men — especially the one whose seed I was carrying — shouting and crying for me to keep the pregnancy intact for the full nine months. Oh, hell no. Yet the men in government and in anti-abortion groups keep on insisting that we serve the role of baby factories for society. And while, yes, I know I was/am blessed to have a healthy and fertile reproductive system, my decision was a difficult one that boiled down to not having the right financial and emotional supports.

I’d just started a brand-new job that was exceptionally demanding of my time and energy. And the daddy lived 350 miles away with his own two children. Tried the Depo-Provera route. That route failed. Tried the, “Hey, come out and live with me. I’ll work and you can start a new life out here,” thing. That failed. Then tried the “OK, so who’s paying for this?” route (He’d volunteered, “I’ll go halfsies.” Which he didn’t. Nor did I ever see him again, although we maintain a distant IMing relationship from time to time.) Disapointment again. I paid for it — financially, physically, emotionally. And for all the pain, I made the right decision … and I am glad that the decision was there for me to even make.

And as far as late-term procedures, while I certainly don’t favor them, it’s unavoidable. I have a friend who has a daughter with a terminal illness, and the illness was predicted to occur in any future female child she would bear. She went on — with great trepidation — to go through with two more pregnancies. Both were boys, which was a relief to that family. Because if it were a girl and it showed up during the late-natal stages that she would have this illness, there would have been a decision to make about bringing another sickly child into the world. And while their daughter is beautiful and spunky and sweet, she’s also dying. And would that family really want to lose two children that way? I don’t know, and thankfully, they won’t have to know, but again — they still would have had a choice on how to handle their situation.

On Pure as the Driven Slush, Heather wrote the most heartbreaking entry about abortion on Jan 22, and she is to be commended for her openness and honesty. She and I both would probably not choose that route again, but we acknowledge that we acted in everyone’s best interests the first time. I mean, sure I could have gone through with the pregnancy at the new job, and then given the child up for adoption, but does anyone have any idea what kind of stigma goes with women when they do that? That “there must be something wrong with her” or “she must’ve known she was knocked up when she interviewed, but didn’t tell anyone.” Or, worse, “How’s your baby? Oh, you don’t have it anymore? Ouch. Sorry!”

Not to mention the changes your body goes through. Even though I terminated early, at the six-week mark, my body felt different, as though I had stepped into someone else’s skin. I was fortunate to have no traces of morning sickness (although I’ve had friends who threw up four times a day, no matter what time of day it was). But I was so damned sleepy all the time, I had a perpetual nipple hard-on, and my mind was racing. And I was so friggin’ horny, I couldn’t stand myself. My body felt as though it were on hyper-alert — my skin was super-sensitive to light, heat, cold, etc. And it also felt like it had been beaten up — everything was so tender. If I were such a wimp for those initial weeks, could you see me in labor? Gaaah!

Add to the fact that I worked for a child welfare agency, where moms in the system were beating and neglecting their kids and where, in that same system, my tax dollars were going to pay for their sundries, when I couldn’t even afford a bag of diapers for my own potential child. Yeah. The system’s not fair, and unfortunately, idiots will continue to reproduce like rabbits, while more upright citizens like me will continue terminating pregnancies until we are financially and emotionally ready for the challenges of rearing a family. I wasn’t ready then. I still am not. But I will be. In the meantime, I will keep hoping that whatever protection I use doesn’t fail again.

Heather has learned how to perform an herbal abortion, for if/when our precious 30-year-old Roe v. Wade is overturned by these marauding assholes who claim to want to protect life (yeah, let’s look up how many of them are behind on their child support payments!). I think I may just have to remember this, because like her, while I would never outright encourage anyone to go through that procedure, if that’s what they feel they need to do, well, then, they deserve to have the choice that I was very grateful to have been able to make for myself. I remember when I did it, I sent a thank-you note to Planned Parenthood, stating, “And I did it when George W. Bush was in office! Wow! Who’d have thought that?!?!”

From the article. …“After the committee vote, a hopeful Black said “this is the first step. . . . This bill, if enacted and signed by the governor, will save more lives than any law that has ever been passed since 1619.”

Two thoughts:

1. This comes from people who look the other way every time an attack on a clinic or doctor occurs, and

2. This comes from the state that is behind only Texas in executions.

Not that I oppose executions — I’m totally in favor of offing the violent criminals who are kept alive by my tax monies. And likewise, although I do call myself a Democrat, I have some very anti-liberal stances, such as using that same tax money as an incentive for people to (ab)use the TANF (public welfare) system. And by bringing more unwanted children into this world, these folks who shouldn’t be parents are at risk for abusing their kids or are simply regaled to staying at home full-time to raise them, with no viable means of support except for federal programs that should be funnelled into our other domestic efforts (such as getting the homeless off the streets or improving care for the elderly or making the Veterans’ Hospitals less of a disgrace) or into torching bin Laden’s and Hussein’s asses once and for all.

This is a subject that should be battled out by women. Sure, you guys contribute the sperm, and you’re genetically programmed to sow your seed and to ensure that you have future generations. And if you’re ready to handle the commitment of being a father — or at least the commitment to the financial upbringing of any child you assist in creating — I would love to bestow the world’s highest honor upon you. Likewise, I have seen too many teen-agers carry a pregnancy to full-term because they were too ashamed to tell their parents about it before they started showing, which meant that they had passed the deadline to receive a safe and legal surgical abortion. So then they went on to squirt out one, two … up to seven munchkins (yes, I have seen this happen to a girl before she was 25), because in their societies, you are taught to take care of your own — that you don’t “give up” your child to another family. Particularly, as Heather pointed out, if the child isn’t “lily-white,” your chances of adopting them out isn’t all that good, anyway.

Furthermore, these scared young girls might be the products of abuse themselves, looking for love in the arms of a scrawny 14-year-old boy with braces and an erection. These are the girls who leave their babies in dumpsters and toilet stalls — they had nowhere they could turn, and couldn’t get the required consent from their parents or permission from a judge (a judge! would you have gone to a judge if you were a scared, knocked-up teen?). I’m not claiming that abortion should be a fundamental right, but it should be an accessible option for anyone who might need it.

At any rate, I am pro-choice and will always be. I am pro-firearms, even if I don’t choose to take advantage of my right to buy one. But I am still glad that the choice is there for me. Likewise, you don’t have to take advantage of a law or a right or a statute to appreciate it. While I will be the first to admit that abortion is the worst form of birth control available (especially for those who use it three or more times), I will also stand firmly beside my belief that everyone’s entitled to a “get out of jail free” card. And for many of us, abortion was that ticket to saving us from doing long-term damage … to ourselves, to taxpayers, to the fertilized egg itself.

And for the record, why don’t we get the assholes who bomb clinics (which, by the way, provide top-notch gynecological services and free contraceptives, in addition to the other surgical services — I had many a pap smear at my friendly neighborhood Planned Parenthood when I didn’t have health insurance) to make bombs to drop on Iraq? We’re spending too much money fighting what doesn’t appeal to us instead of turning the situation in our favor.

Decided to call off sick today — I’m going to actually try to eat today, despite my case of ebola or typhoid or whatever I have, and would like to have a bathroom within barfing distance –but since I’m up, I thought I’d catch up on some blog reading. Just a thought — since my sickness started on Superbowl Sunday, does that mean I have the Super-E-bowl-a Virus? (kill me. …)

Krempasky had an interesting link that I followed, which led me to Hit & Run and eventually to the New York Times’ story Archbishop of Newark Bans Eulogies at Masses. Essentially, the Archdiocese of Newark, Archbishop John J. Myers has banned eulogies by relatives and friends during funeral masses, and it seems that the Hit & Run site supports this decision.

The article goes on to report that a single eulogy by a loved one of the deceased will be accepted, but that’s the limit, as well as that they are encouraged to do the eulogy thing during visitation rather than at services. “The new policy appears to be stricter than that called for by the Order of Christian Funerals, the national church’s Vatican-approved guidelines. The order says that a friend or family member can speak after communion and before the final procession.

“News of the ban, first reported (Jan. 22) in The Record of Hackensack, N.J., was welcomed by priests who favor refocusing on the mysteries of the faith rather than on the deceased’s love of the Jets or penchant for domestic beer.”

Hit & Run noted his belief that, without such restrictions, “This attitude reduces the priest to a functionary whose job is to help cheer up mourning people, and they’d obviously prefer to be thought of as the gatekeepers of purgatory. But it’s the consumer who calls the shots.”

**climbing on soapbox, hoping it doesn’t cave in …**

Yer damn right the consumer calls the shots. Having attended more funerals (otherwise known as family reunions in my clan) than China has rice, I have seen entirely too many of my very non-religious departed family members being bashed into the ground with a Bible. That wasn’t them during their lives, so it was out-of-place at best. Yet, if that’s what made their kids feel better, then that’s what their kids did.

And as far as eulogies, I have given a eulogy at the last three funerals I’ve attended, and I’ve written every last one of them myself. If I loved somebody enough to want to express my love in one final, public way, don’t take that right away from me. Granted, if the family truly had to pick ONE person to deliver the final goodbye, it would undoubtedly be me, as I am descended from a number of Pittsburgh rednecks who (outside of my mom, grandfather and one cousin), pronounce my new homeland as Wa(r)shington, D.C., so you get the picture that I am the literate one of the bunch. heh.

At any rate, though, my beloved great-aunt Lenna passed away a few years ago this week, and you never heard so many people get up to speak about the way she touched their lives. And while oceans of tears were cried during that time, those eulogies (mine included) gave other guests a special glimpse at yet another side of this dynamic woman, with every speaker who approached the podium. As one of the youngest relatives in attendance, I got to hear decades-old stories told with affection and clarity, giving me an added perspective on how very blessed this dysfunctional family was to count her as its blood relative.

I guess my real chagrin would be if my grandmother’s funeral in 1999 would have been dictated by religion. Gram was a fallen-away Catholic, and was against the church as well as my Bible-thumping great-uncle Ronnie, who can’t form an original thought because he’s always quoting Scripture (this same man bashes homosexuals and interracial relationships, yet has a lesbian daughter and a white niece married to an African-American gentleman). At any rate, when my grandmother died, mom felt it would be best to introduce *some* form of religion to the services, so we found a Roman Catholic priest who was liberal and open to me writing the eulogy (I couldn’t deliver it — too devastated). Before he read it, he joked with the crowd that he hadn’t read it, so be prepared for anything. 🙂 The crowd knew me as the one who spent my life pushing everybody’s buttons, so everyone kinda braced themselves for anything. But what I wrote was acceptable … and appropriate … and I also buried her with the eulogy, as well as with several trinkets that were important to her during her final years of life.

And as far as religion, well, we invited religion to the service, but we didn’t ask it to be the guest star. And per Hit & Run, perhaps we did reduce the priest’s role to someone who “cheered up mourning people,” but guess what? That is what we needed him to do. We had a very small graveside service — no visitations except for immediate family — and no church. Guess what, kids — funerals are expensive. Every hour that you clock in the funeral home is charged. Every trip around the city with the casket costs time in the hearse. Every visitation is billed on the half-hour, so the more visitations you have (auspiciously to have your pre-burial eulogies) cost you more and more. Funerals today cost as much as the weddings of yesterday, and I can count on dying much more certainly than I can depend on ever getting married.

At any rate, I admit to being non-religious, so someone with religion may feel differently. I just have this weird conglomeration of Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, pagan and atheistic influences from my family, which has resulted in agnosticism. I will tolerate religion, but I will not have it dictating the way I want to run my life or run a loved one’s funeral. If there is an afterlife, sure, I want to help my loved one get in, but if they spend half of their lives doubting that the Big Four (father, son, holy ghost and yes, Mary — once the boys add her to the club, I might revisit my Catholicism) exist, then I am not about to force it upon them in death.

One thing I got from the Irish side of me is the Irish wake — it is imperative to celebrate the person we once knew and loved. Death is a time to make us really appreciate the person we’ve lost, and to bond with people from near and far who loved that person just as much. Again, think “family reunions” — it’s sad but true that we don’t make enough time to see people while they’re alive, yet we drop everything to rush to their gravesides. But that also prevents us from mourning alone. And we get to see how the family has grown, and how the smallest member of the family has the deceased’s eyes or dimples or smile. And we see that the merry-go-round of life keeps on spinning, even if one member of the family has decided to ease off and let the younger ones keep the ride going.

But if I have to sit in a church and have some potential-child-molestor-in-a-robe preach to me for two hours about good and bad and the afterlife, well, that isn’t going to help me to celebrate my dearly departed. Sharing stories and memories — and even having a priest like the one we hired, with humor and understanding and without an answer to everything quoted from his big book with a cross on it — is the best way for me to say goodbye to their living bodies and to always feel their living spirits. And anyone who doesn’t have anything to say along those lines, well, won’t be invited to my funeral.

Damn stomach flu. My ass is on fire. 🙂 And I haven’t eaten anything more than a bite of a cookie in two days, as I have the Technicolor yawn thing going on, too. And woudn’t it figure that the red tide rolled in today, too? Can’t I have one easy day for a change?

Update

As I have nothing in my system, the heaves seem to have stopped. Yay! I’ve been subsisting on bismuth subsalicylate (the nasty pink peppermint stuff) and the nighttime-sniffling-sneezing-coughing etc. etc. liquid that I adore so deeply. I am now forcing myself to have some roasted-garlic-and-tomato soup, and it seems to be agreeing with me. But the headache just won’t go away. I think stress is keeping the headache active, as I just saw another stack of overdue bills arrive in the mail. Argh. I really can’t take much more. I’m going to drink my soup and wait for “Joe Millionaire.” 🙂

Creed’s lyric, “Should’ve been dead on a Sunday morning, banging my head,” is literally banging through my head. Just got a call about some glitches with the paper. So, since the 6th, I have not had 24 consecutive hours during which I didn’t have to deal with the paper (as I was there before I even went to Starbucks yesterday a.m.).

Unfortunately, I was dead asleep when they called, as I was up late. And I don’t remember much of the conversation, either. And five minutes later, they left a VM to ask when I was going to get to the office to fix this stuff. Argh. I was in the kitchen making coffee — I am NOT operating on this little sleep without java. No way in hell.

Attending a private Superbowl party today. The rule of THIS Superbowl party is that we will NOT be watching the game. LOL. Not my rule, but not a hard one to heed.

Ooh, coffee’s done. Later gators. …

Update

All fixed, for now. 🙂 The glitches were beyond my control, but I’m still sitting here, waiting for an all-clear call, three hours later. And, I think I’m starting to get sick. Ugh.

And I love reverse DNS searches. 🙂

The air just changed a few minutes ago. No, nobody’s here but Maddie and me (and no sudden draft just blew through the house, so that rules out ghosts), and the doors are locked, so there are no live intruders in the place, but I just kind of perked up and realized that something is looming. What, I have no idea, but I’m eager to find out.

Have had a few good responses to my personal ad this week. I’ve been too busy (and let’s face it, too cheap) to even think about paying the money to respond to any of them, but I am sort of intrigued by one. Another one gave me a great response but said he feared he wasn’t my type. So I read HIS ad, and as it turns out, I am the one who isn’t HIS type. He’s looking for the anorexic (read: probably doesn’t want to have to spend money to feed them) type, and well, that ain’t me. Oh well. His loss.

And THEN I heard from my gender-neutral personal ad account, from a person with whom I’d been e-mailing for weeks until the Xmas holidays came and went. And maybe I’ve read entirely too many pages of my Melissa Etheridge, “The Truth Is: My Life in Love and Music,” but maybe the stunning disappointment (anybody remember G3?)that I’ve been feeling with the men I’ve been meeting recently might be a biological indicator that I need to broaden my horizons for a little while, to see what it is that I’ve been possibly denying for years. 🙂 I will always love and worship men, but it’ll be interesting to broaden my horizons. … There’s a bit of a geographical distance, which has made me feel safe because it’s not like there is a date in the near future. I get to kind of talk and share and learn, and maybe, eventually even consider something different. I like the personality so far and hope to gain a good friend out of this process.

At any rate, the Melissa book is wonderful. I’ve been highlighting passages that totally sound like they could have been typed by me. She called her (boring) job one day and said she quit, and she went and got a nightclub gig that very night. She wrote, “If I was going to have a job, it was going to be playing music. Music and nothing else.”

While I have the musical talent of a deaf-mute, insert my own talents in there. She wanted to follow her heart, and everything else be damned. And look where she is today.

She also wrote about the exact moments when her grandmother and dad died. Those hit waaaayyy too close to home for me. I cried over both, remembering similar conversations and circumstances.

She wrote about the tingling sensation your body goes through when something important (wonderful or wretched) is about to happen. I get flashes of that feeling every now and again. And I just felt it.

In an ideal world, I’d get the promotion at work, I could stay there and make enough money to move so that I can set up a home office, and then open up my own business. Or, save up some money and invest in Shan’s business, so that when it takes off, I will earn back my money and then do my own business. And in an ideal world, I’d start dating again, as I’ve had a bit of a dry spell lately. And in a TRULY ideal world, those who lost their chances with me will kick themselves in the ass for letting me walk away from them. 🙂

I’ve been cleaning house on the links, and it’s about time I added Michele and Rachel Lucas to the list. As a blogger I’ve long stopped following has decided to de-link them, I will gladly (and “glee”fully) recommend them to my five loyal readers. 🙂

It’s just a shame in this day and age that there are still so many people who view homosexuality as a condemnable sin, and I am pleased with these gals for standing up for our gay and lesbian friends and for continuing to blog about real political matters. Anyone who wants the rest of my opinion (and what triggered this) can e-mail me, as I do not provide links here to “people” who promote hatred.

As the only money I’ve spent in the past few weeks has been on pizza and other hideous fast food disasters, I decided that it was time to celebrate surviving the past few weeks of work with some bargain shopping. And although I spent waaaaayyyy too much money, I am a happy girl right now.

Poor Shan is tied up with work stuff through tomorrow, so I braved the shopping plazas alone. I found a bunch of super-discounted shirts at Ross, and also found a Hilfiger skirt I’d wanted for months (for which I’d refused to pay retail) as well as a great olive-green suit for a mere $27.99. That was the easiest $90 I’ve spent, but as I have bags of goodies waiting to be unpacked, I am pretty darned pleased. Besides, I got five shirts, three of which were $3.49, and the others were $7.99 and $12.99. My theme today was trendy but timeless — they’re not warm enough for this ridiculous cold snap we’re having, so I think they’ll still be in fashion for the springtime. 🙂

And then I hit the grocery store, for the first time in ages. I never really wander around in the supermarket, as cash is always severely limited and I only stick to essentials, but today I treated myself to some new, frivolous items as well as some old standbys. The damage was too much to mention, but I’m deliriously pleased with the new coffee-and-cream Oreo cookies that I opened before I even stuck the beer in the fridge. Oh, yeah, that’s another treasure. I haven’t had a Yuengling since I left Pittsburgh in June — it’s brewed in Pottsville, Pa., and it’s dirt cheap above the Mason-Dixon line. And it’s good, too! But I hadn’t seen it in bars or stores down here until today, and hell yeah, I got a six-pack! w00t!

As I was wandering through Kingstowne, I did a lot of thinking. I wish I were motivated enough to write down all of my thoughts, because I had about six thousand ideas for businesses to start, things to do, things I should’ve said, etc. Sitting in front of a computer really isn’t my point of inspiration — it’s being out and about, eavesdropping and observing. I really should bring along a tape recorder every time I leave the house, because I already talk to myself — at least the tape recorder would justify my sudden little verbal outbursts.

At least, though, I don’t speak directly to people. But they don’t return the favor.

Retail Agony

I had the Church Lady chatting with me in Ross, as she picked up ugly tops and admired them and did the “Isn’t this gorgeous?” conversational entree to me. Sweet Jesus. Then she showed me all the other shit she had in her hands, Xmas books and tapes for kids. She bragged that she’ll put those aside for next Xmas, but she fretted that she wants her grandkids to learn more than the meaning of Xmas. Initially, I thought that was cool, because I assumed she meant that she wanted to teach them that Xmas isn’t the only important holiday and Christianity isn’t the only faith in the world, but I was wrong. She started launching into this diatribe about how all the Disney shit in her hands wasn’t the true meaning of the holiday, but the Bible is. And she went on to tell me that she has Xmas-themed religious books for the kids, to balance this trash that she was buying. Christ. I scooted away quickly after that. I mean, I respect all religions and have no problem with people having faith in whatever they choose to believe or celebrate, but for god’s sakes, if you’re denting my bargain-hunting time with it, well, I get pissed. Then again, my own spirituality is a private thing, and I hate when people assume that I am thrilled to hear about theirs.

But I digress. Again, I keep to myself when I’m not among friends.

The joy of finding bargains was once again overshadowed in the checkout line. I was third in line, and a girl walked over to the couple in front of me and said, “I can take the next in line,” and she motioned to her desk. They stared at her. She said it two more times before the couple in front of THEM told the salesgirl to speak in Spanish. So she did, and they understood and followed happily.

And then everyone looked at me, as if for my approval or jubilance or something. Yeah, whatever. I was pissed. I kind of blew my bangs out of my eyes and sighed deeply. I wanted to klunk their heads together. I mean, if they can’t even comprehend conversational English, between the two of them, what the fuck are they doing in my country? I mean, I can’t believe that when I go into CVS, I can’t find a CVS Care Card application in English, but there are two displays full of them in Spanish. When I got my card, I didn’t even fill out a form, because I couldn’t read the damn thing. Believe me, I can only imagine how frustrating it is for a non-native to learn English, as there are millions of Americans who take English for 12 years in school, then for another four years in college, and still can’t pronounce a third of our vocabulary.

Blah. At any rate, I treated myself to coffee and a cinnamon scone at Starbucks, which is absolutely my favorite breakfast in the land. I’d wanted Columbian coffee, but they hadn’t brewed it, and the cashier asked me to pick among some other flavors, and she offered to put a shot of hazelnut in whatever I chose, to give me the Columbian flavor. I asked her to surprise me, as my brain had not been caffeinated yet and therefore I was rendered incapable of making this decision. She seemed pissed that I wouldn’t pick for myself, so she made some concoction that ended up being fabulous for me. What I did not mention is that I couldn’t UNDERSTAND what she was asking me to pick from, as her accent was too thick, and I couldn’t be bothered with my Gibberish-to-English translating capabilities at 10 a.m. on a Saturday. And I tried to joke with her a little bit, but she didn’t understand me, either. We were equally glad when I took my scone and java and went to the coffee condiments station.

In Other News

Looks like Chris and Shawn’s wedding reception will be on-or-around July 26 in Minneapolis!!! And Leslie from Ireland called me for a long chat, and she will be in town for it. Woo hoo! She will fly into Dulles Airport earlier than that, and we will bum around D.C. for a few days before wandering out to Minnesota together. One can only hope that I have my life a little bit more on-track by then, so that I can afford the trip as well as the drinking that I KNOW we’re going to do! 🙂 When we were last in Pittsburgh together, she also entrusted me with her wedding present for our friends — here’s to hoping I will remember where I put it by then!!! Ooooh, goody. I can’t wait for her to meet Shan — my two Pissed Off Irish Princesses, together at last!!!

It’s so strange — many of my friends are finding true love and/or even welcoming the next generations of their lives into the world. Many times, I’ve wished for a great relationship, but it’s just not in the cards for me right now. I’m OK with that, but it still doesn’t help when everyone else around me seems to have someone to complete their lives. I guess my real hope is that, after all of this wishing and wondering, the person I eventually meet will have been worth this insufferable wait. In the meantime, I have a litany of self-improvements I need to make for myself, so that when the right one comes along, I will be able to lavish affection upon them without having any outstanding issues of my own to resolve. Unfortunately, at my age, people are still getting over or even just beginning to face their own demons. My dream of dreams is to find a normal person to complement me, and to be that normal person that they themselves have been searching for.

So I am back at work. Oh goody, just the way I wanna spend a Friday night. Christ. I got a call from the publishing house b/c they couldn’t log in to my folder where I had electronically transmitted the ads. Accordingly, I’d had trouble logging in to my server and had to have somebody called at home to find out why my passcodes weren’t working. But then they worked, and I got the hell outta here.

Unfortunately, I was gone no more than five minutes when I had to get BACK in the car (as I was buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in celebration of supposedly being done) and drag my ass back up here. So I put the PDFs on their public server, and I’ve been waiting for a return call from my buddy Gisele over there to find out if it worked this time. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I put in 42 hours of work during the past three days alone, and have worked every day since Jan. 6. On my pathetic salary. Sheesh. For all y’all religious folk who are afraid you’re going to hell — guess what? You’re in it right now, baby! Don’t even tell me that I’m going to get through this life and go somewhere worse. I stay out of trouble, I do good work, I am nothing but supportive of my friends and family, and I try to make somewhat of a small difference in this world. I want people to remember that I was here. I don’t give a shit if they love me or hate me — I only care that they remember, and maybe years down the road even appreciate, me and/or what I contributed to their lives.

I haven’t had a cigarette since Sunday night, but I bought a pack tonight. Haven’t had time to even open it, but I simply cannot WAIT to have one. Since the previous occupant had a smoke in here on his last day, it’s only appropriate that I should light up, too. But these folks here seem to know every move I have made during the past few weeks. And I am bitter that my job wasn’t guaranteed three weeks ago, and that even though I’d done nothing wrong up until that point, I was rendered guilty without a trial. And still, I have to compete for this new job, even after all the tears (and there were a few, trust me) and aggravation I had to endure for this one. And that my paycheck was only slightly better than Mac Guy’s — only his was for two days, mine for 15 days — still scorches my s’mores.

I was impressed with him to a degree, but as I ended up re-doing a percentage of his work, well, I can’t say I’m so impressed. But I will give him one more chance next month, as I do have to commend what he did manage to learn in the two days he was here. And he came in for an hour or so today because he was feeling bad that I had to continue working on the layout that he’d thought he’d finished. His timing was good, because he knows shortcuts that were taking me hours to figure out, and it’s nice to have someone else here, because I’ve really been feeling like I’m alone on the Titanic. *

(*And before I see another comment, e-mail or posting that I am a martyr for not asking for help, well, remember that a martyr dies for a cause. I lived for one, and I also lived through it. And I am stronger and more skilled because of it. And I am damn proud of myself, because the only person’s opinion who matters in this situation is, well, mine.*)

Next month will be better, I am certain, although it kinda upsets me that the paper is due after my grandfather’s birthday, and it’s not like he has a lot of them left, so I won’t be able to be in Pittsburgh for it. Jobs are supposed to make you financially able to live your life, not keep you from celebrating it.

Oooh, just got off the phone with Gisele. It worked this time!!! Now to get the fuck OUTTA HERE!!!

That’s all, folks.

I survived. w00t!!!

Time to go HOME!!!

Just a few little aggravating things to do, like make room for an ad that was yanked and then it was suddenly back on the schedule as of five minutes ago (and I’d filled the space already), update all the lost images (ugh) and do a final last-minute sweep for glaring errors and for empty spaces or missing conclusions to stories.

I’m pleased to report that I will have a weekend after all!!!

Sidenote

The Veggie Patch (workplace) leaders are doing a training on “Who Moved My Cheese” today at a posh hotel. And what happened but a little mouse went ripping across the conference room during the training. Heh. Perfect.