Caterwauling

Interesting.

My alma mater is having a freshman phonathon whereby the school’s top brass call to check in on the kids, to see how they’re assimilating during their first weeks away from home.

I don’t have too much snarky to say about it, other than I remember the throngs of people who dropped out as soon as the semester started, for whatever reason. Most people were pissed off because we had no athletics (other than dance, and those dancers were bitchy and sweaty and annoying, giggling freaks). Or because it was a small school, you had to wait six semesters before your required core classes in your major would finally show up on the schedule, and they’d fill up early and be closed off to the people who really needed them to graduate. Or because we were absolutely incompatible with our roommates — not to mention the fact that we were required to co-exist with strangers with varying cleaning/hygiene issues in 10′ by 15′ cells rooms.

I wonder if the top brass will DO anything with such complaints, ’cause they’re gonna hear that and more, if memory serves. 🙂

At any rate, if they’d called me, I would have been whining because, of my group of a dozen female friends, all of us got on the same menstrual cycle within a couple of weeks. My god, to walk down the hallway of the 18th floor and hear us moaning … no WONDER people moved off our floor and headed for the hills!

If this WaPo article is right, power won’t be fully restored in Virginia till Friday night.

Fuck you, Pepco and Dominion. 🙂

Despite my aching staples, I dragged down shitloads of rotted food and cat poop to our trash room. I made several trips and threw up in my hand during the final run, when I accidentally breathed through my nose, because of the stench. Everybody dragged the contents of their refrigerators down there during the last 24 hours, and it’s funkin’ up the stairwell in the whole building. What really sucks is that, when the garbage men come, they have to drag all that trash back up the steps to take it outside. *gag*

Took my cold ‘ho bath. It wasn’t so bad, but that’s because I didn’t wash my hair. I needed the coldness, actually, after walking down into that steamy pit of trash downstairs. I couldn’t catch my breath for a half hour, and I was sweating profusely by the time I dragged my ragged ass back up to my apartment.

Ah, the joys of life. 🙂

My neighbors Sue and Bob invited me over for dinner last night. I had gone out to my car, headed to Dave’s for my glorious hot shower, and they had mentioned that there would be plenty of spaghetti ready at 5. And sure enough, at quarter to five, they sent their son Eddie over here to say that I’m welcome to wander over whenever I was ready, and that if I didn’t feel like coming over, he’d be glad to bring me a plate. (Eddie’s 20 — damn, if only I were 10 years younger. …)

I did go over, and I loved the whole bunch of them — three generations’ worth. Shawn drove in from Pittsburgh, bringing my microwave oven and other assorted goodies that Mom had sent (including chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies — home-baked. Yum!), and they said to bring him on over. The food was great, and it was cool to develop some cameraderie with my neighbors across the way. In all, there were about three different apartments represented there — they have friends and family throughout the complex. They even said we should come back tonight for leftovers, as they tried to send us home with food but as the rest of us don’t have electricity in our kitchens, we had to pass. 🙂

Yeah, I just dumped out the entire contents of my fridge and freezer. Two full garbage bags and counting. Even the condiments have to go. It’s hotter than hell inside the fridge and freezer — everything’s skunked. Oh the pleasure.

I get my damn staples out today, in honor of which I will take a cold ‘ho bath. I drove by Staples (the store) yesterday, and I cringed and flipped it off. 🙂 Made my side hurt, just to see the word in 22-foot-tall letters.

Kadi (Short Bus cat) is wearing me out. In addition to jumping on my side where my staples are, she has farted on her sister, farted on my head and farted on everything in the apartment. And she keeps eating the flowers that work sent, no matter how much I try to punish her. They sent red and yellow flowers. The bouquet is … unique. 😉

I’ve got to get with it and clean the litter station. It’s stankin’ to high heaven. It just hurts to lift stuff, but if I’ve got to drag 40 pounds of rotting food down to the sub-basement today, I might as well drag 100 pounds of cat poop with it. Ah, the joy of being me.

I have NOT missed being at work. Not in the least. To not have meetings and people hovering has been sheer pleasure. I spent a lot of time thinking about how, if I only worked for myself, I would’ve been compensated for all the long hours I had already put in, and therefore I could rest and recover and not worry about all the bullshit that is associated with a leave of absence — particularly the fact that every employee feels the need to stand in your doorway and view you like a zoo exhibit, asking questions and giving you fake concern that you neither need nor want.

Shan and I were wishing that someone had kept track of all the nights and weekends we had worked, so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the semantics associated with sick leave. I mean, shit, I definitely put in more than two weeks of personal time during the course of seven months on staff by myself, but they’re gonna be calculating (I’m sure) down to the minute how much leave I needed to take. Because that’s just the way of the world.

I have a lot more to say about the work, but I’ll save it for the book I should write about it. Why give ’em even more fodder to fire me? 😉

On that note, Shawn’s former employer keeps reading my page. In fact, they are one of my most frequent readers. I just have to laugh — I never mention them, so somebody is whacking off in their IT department, probably reading me for pleasure. Maybe that person should get fired for wasting their time reading this mindless mess instead of doing his or her job? 😉 Or IS it the job of the IT people to surf the Internet and read what their employees are/were reading? Oh well. It’s driving up my number of hits quite nicely, so I really can’t complain. Come in, kick off your shoes, and won’t you be … my neighbor? 🙂