Caterwauling

We need a little bit of fun around here. 🙂 This meme has been whored with screaming orgasmic ecstasy from Tiff.

A – Act your age? Yes and no. I refuse to be “30” in the sense that I would have to dress like an adult. I will always be in miniskirts and trendy tops and funky jewelry, as long as I can get away with it. The thing is, people with whom I went to high school are on their second or third spouse/child by now, while others are barflies. I might someday like to have the whole familial unit thing going (or at least a regular sex partner — the idea of taking romantic weekenders to Europe sure beats changing diapers!). But I hate bars and singles events and stuff. I’d rather go out to dinner and dancing and have a night that doesn’t involve four hours dedicated to finding parking at four different establishments.

B – Born on what day of the week? Friday, May 25, 1974. Anyway, Mom says it was a Friday. She went into labor when she was watching a movie, and I popped out Saturday morning at, get this, dawn.

C – Chore you hate? Litter patrol. Maddie refuses to cover up her shit so the apartment stinks. Then she wipes her furry butt on the floor. And now Kadi has learned to do it, too. So not only am I constantly sanitizing the litterbox, I am also cleaning the fucking carpets.

D – Dad’s name? Fucking Worthless Piece of Shit.

E- Essential makeup item? Foundation. Eyeliner. Mascara. Eyeshadow. Tweezers. Lipstick. Blush. Almay Bright Eyes. Don’t make me choose!

F – Favorite actor? Johnny Depp. That’s one sexy mothafucka. *drool*

G – Gold or silver? Always silver.

H – Hometown? Scenic White Oak, Pa., just south of Pittsburgh. Born in West Mifflin, moved to McKeesport, then to White Oak, then to Pittsburgh, where I rented places in Shadyside, Bloomfield, Highland Park and Mt. Washington. The latter being my favorite. Also lived in the dorms in Downtown (better known as “Dahntahn”).

I – Instruments you play? Used to play violin and viola. My middle school didn’t have enough kids in orchestra, so I got nominated to join. But for the life of me, I couldn’t read music. So I would hear the music and mirror the girl across from me before I could play it back … and that worked, surprisingly.

J – Job title? Corporate Chew Toy. But it’s “Editor-in-Chief” on the business cards.

K – Kids? My children are two ridiculously adorable felines named Maddie (age 8) and Kadi (age 1).

L – Living arrangements? A lovely one-bedroom with a balcony in Alexandria.

M – Mom’s name? Robin. I also have a cousin named Robyn, who was named in honor of my mom.

N – Need… To grow a set and turn my life around in my favor. To get a new job, get healthy physically and get laid on a more regular basis!

O – Overnight hospital stays? One week in hell INOVA Alexandria. Fucking death-trap.

P – Phobias? Heights. Love being up high and seeing a gorgeous view, but I threw myself down some steps as a kid and broke my wrist (see X-Rays, below), so I get terrified of stepping onto an escalator and looking down.

Q – Quote you like? “There are so many selves in everybody, and to explore and exploit just one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative process.” — James Dickey

R – Religious affiliation? I guess it would be Pagan. I don’t know — I’m spiritual and attuned to the universe, but I tend to run screaming from organized religion.

S – Siblings? No biological ones. I have a half-sister and -brother somewhere. But I always refer to my friend Shannon as my sister.

T – Time you wake up? The alarm goes off at 6:35. So around 8:10 a.m., I get out of bed. On an early day.

U – Unique talent? For pulling myself out of horrible situations. I just have to be ready, then it’s full steam ahead.

V – Vegetable you refuse to eat? I remember something called wax beans. Ugh. Just as bad as lima beans. Nasty.

W – Worst habit? I have to finish the food on my plate. My ex-stepfather used to beat the shit out of me if I didn’t finish my vegetables or my dinner or whatever (when Mom wasn’t looking; I never told her until after she left him). Now it’s like I can’t have half a container of ice cream in the freezer — I must consume it all!

X – X-rays you’ve had? Quite a few. Broke my wrist when I was one and a half years old. Then I had a shitload of sonograms when I was trying to convince the hospital that I had appendicitis last year at this time. They didn’t believe me. The organ turned to gangrene in the meantime. Yeah, I’ve had my innards examined on camera a lot!

Y – Yummy food you make? I am best known for my party appetizers, but what keeps people talking is my alcoholic apricot slush.

Z – Zodiac Sign? Pure Gemini.

I’m overwhelmed with the public and private outpouring of support for me over my job situation. All I have to say is, “I love you guys!” I’ll be contacting a few of you separately with more information, but really, y’all have restored my faith in humanity. To have (sometimes) complete strangers taking an active interest in my well-being has knocked off my frog socks (thanks, Janna, for sending those!). And thanks for humoring me and sticking around while I alternate between whining, sharing my journey and dreaming out loud. As a blogger, you sometimes wonder if people are really out there reading this stuff, but I can attest that I have the best readers in the blogosphere. So, again, thanks. And I will be here to help you as soon as I get back on my feet!

Thanks to each and every one of you who have offered me kind and helpful comments, and a special thanks to one of you in particular who contacted me to offer personal assistance in the job search. The resume is updated, it’s been sent to my lovely reader (I’ll keep you anonymous for now!), and I also applied for a job in my area! Unfortunately, some application error ensued during the last adventure, so I will send a hard copy post-haste.

I didn’t sleep well, thinking about another fault of my boss — she criticizes the person, not the behavior. When she stepped into my office on Thursday, she said, “I am embarrassed. You embarrassed me and I apologized to (the staff person) for your behavior.” Several months ago, she’d said, “I am disappointed in you.”

Mom has been great. She said she did not abuse me as a child; she did everything she could to instill confidence and the ability to dream as well as to be proud of who I am and to share my gifts with others. And it pains her to see the “spiritual massacre” that keeps occurring at all of my jobs. She knows I’m in trouble spiritually when she doesn’t hear from me. And she’s right — the worse things get, the more inward I turn. That’s basically because my lack of brain/mouth filter will get me into even more trouble. I have always been excoriated and definitely punished for saying exactly what I think at the exact moment I feel it. I pull no punches at work — everyone, at any given time, knows where they stand with me. And I get in trouble because I fight for my job, for my product, for my well-being. I do not feel this is a punishable action. Sometimes my methods aren’t what others would view as politically correct, but I always, always put on a good face for the public and for stakeholders. Companies brag that they foster communication across departments as well as levels of management, but they sure do slap you on the wrist the second you share with them your doubts, your ideas, your struggles, your values.

Don’t worry — I will start my business someday. Isabel had asked what was holding me back. I will tell you. I give myself to my job full-throttle. And when I come home, I lie on the couch and am too tired to function, either mentally or physically. Angie says it’s like when you break up with someone — it takes twice as long to get over the relationship. Same thing with meetings, with workdays, with setbacks — you need to allow some time to lick your wounds and repair your armor so that you can get through the next day. You take eight hours of pain, then 16 hours to recuperate so you can go into your next eight hours of hell.

No more.

No more.

No MORE!!!

I registered a professional domain for myself. I am not good with the web design, though. There is a SiteStudio where I can plug in stuff and the Web host will crank out a page for me. I don’t have a lot to put on the site, other than my dreams. But I will get there. Where there is a will, there is a way, and I’ve never fallen short on having ideas.

So, anyway, bear with me during this difficult time. I took my coins and turned them into grocery money, so I am OK till payday on the 22nd. Just no going out till then, which is fine. I guess I needed a reason to sit at home and spend some time salvaging my career and my sanity. In a year from now, none of us will remember how taxing these days have been. 🙂

Psst, click the link above and get the questions for yourself!

Now, on with mine. …

1. Fat, drunk … and stupid: Light beer sales are set to overtake regular beer sales for the first time, as trend-chasing cattle, er, Americans, latch on to low-carb diets. What1s wrong with this picture? And is light beer a sick joke? Discuss. Meantime, the writers of the Friday Five will keep drinking Bud and Sierra, and not watching American Idol.  

I’ve always been a fan of light beers. That is, till I tasted the sweet nectar of Yuengling. Now, Coors Light really does taste like the lead-infested water from the Potomac River. But I can get down with Miller Lite for dieting purposes. I had lots of sex after drinking Miller Lite (I’m not much of a beer drinker anymore; perhaps if I started again, I could get laid a lil more often!).

And don’t fuck with “American Idol.” The show is fine; it’s some of the contestants who make me want to stab my aorta with a letter opener. (Read: As the winner of the 2004 competition was about to be announced, Ryan Semencrest found a necklace on the floor. He asked whose it was, and Ghetto Fabulous shrieked, “It’s MINES!”)

 

2. Hershey Lite, please: Candy-makers are now making low-fat and healthy candy, while this guy is breakdancing to lose, oh, 700 pounds! If you could do one non-traditional activity that would help you lose weight, what would it be?  

Masturbating. No question. My Jelly Osaki is the best fucking invention on earth, next to the vibrating bath ball. I’d prefer to have marathon, championship sex, but like I have a dozen toys to choose from, I would need at least that many different partners in order to keep the bonus rounds more interesting!

 

3. More reasons to avoid fast food: This poor grease-eatin’ schmuck was knifed when he took too long in McDonald’s drive-through. Tragic. But let’s back up: we’ve all wanted to shank an obnoxious customer taking his or her sweet-ass time while we’re in line for something really important, like the bathroom or the bar. When was the last time this happened to you, where were you and who was the self-important jerk? What did you do?  

Oh my fucking god. I am loath to name one single time in which I went out and DIDN’T want to smack someone over the head with my organizer bag.

I’ll give you the most recent example. I was at the dollar store last week, and the schmuck in front of me gave the cashier four items. So he was charged the $4 and change for sales tax. He threw a FIT and said he only had two items. I’ll spare you the agony I witnessed; suffice to say, he’d bought two candle-holders and two candles but assumed a holder and a candle could be sold as a unit. *exasperated, heavy sigh* So he put back a candle and a holder. So now that his purchase totaled just above $2, he handed the cashier a $50 bill.

I still want to hunt that motherfucker down and hold a blowtorch to his dangly bits.

 

4. More from the creative eBay-er files: In possibly one of the greatest high school pranks of all time, this ingenius soon-to-be grad posted his high school’s building for auction on eBay. (chuckle, chuckle) Yeah, yeah, we remember the rebuffed ex-husband who posted the wedding dress and the guy who auctioned himself, but … what clever item would you dare to auction off on eBay? How would you advertise it? How would you avoid legal implications after the auction?  

At this point, where I am so beyond broke it ain’t even funny (and payday is 11 days away and I’m still half a car payment behind!), I am trying to figure out how to make some fast cash. So I think I will have to sell my bitching services online. Yes, I think that would do just fine. I would target my campaign to (wives of) husbands who get tired of their nagging old ladies — I could harass the hell out of them and withhold sex from them, and by the time they get home to the ol’ ball-and-chain, she will suddenly look appealing to them again. For extra money, I might even toss in a bad blow job. Or is there such a thing? I am sure I could do a bad hand job, though, because of my carpal tunnel.

I would avoid legal implications by saying that I am a family counselor and I went to great extents to save a marriage. 🙂

On second thought, I would rather auction my boss off to a mortuary school as a practice body. And she won’t be dead when I ship her ass fourth-class, but she should be by the time she arrives to the lucky winner!

 

5. From the “you deserved to be scammed” files: Grandparents now taken for all they’re worth (fine, no more than $800, but it’s principle we’re going after here) by callers claiming to be their grandsons. How, oh how does dumb stuff like this happen? What was the dumbest scam you ever heard? And your explanation for the idiots who fell for it?

Oh, for shit’s sake, I’m sick of these scams. I just heard today about another one where scammers are calling, supposedly from Visa or Mastercard, and basically feeding you all the info about yourself and your card. All you have to do is say yes or no, then give them your three-digit security number. As soon as they have their hot mitts on that number, you suddenly see charges on your account because you were dumb enough to enable them to order shit off the Internet.

All you have to do is get Caller ID. Really. Or turn the phone off (as I am apt to do) and pretend no one is calling. Really, studies show that answering your phone is bad for your mental health anyway — does anybody ever call you just to say hello and ask how you are? Most people call because they want you to do them a favor or lend them money, or they want to say something to you that you probably don’t want to hear (admit it, how much unsolicited advice do you get?). Nobody ever calls to say, “Hi, you mean a lot to me and I just wanted to say I care.” I’d fall over dead in shock if someone other than my mom did that. Hell, I don’t even do it. Hence, you need to remember that, when you pick up the phone, it’s going to end up with you agreeing to do something you don’t want to do. And if you’re that fucking stupid to hand over your credit card information (or, for that matter, give your *real* telephone number to creditors), then you better hold your nose, ’cause you’ll be sailing down shit creek.

Not only does the job suck, but I somehow fucked up my checkbook, to the point of being in the negative numbers — negative $200 to be exact. Oh, and don’t forget the additional $30 insufficient funds fee that will be slapped on. I do keep a checkbook, but I somehow am off by about $400. Why god, why do you not love me?!?!

Subtitle: At the wrong end of a landslide

I should have taken it as a sign when I drove to work today and the front entrance to the parking lot was closed for construction. I should have kept driving instead of going to the back entrance.

Apparently I am still in kindergarten, only I get paid.

My boss just had a closed-door meeting with me to tell me that she’s embarrassed by me and that I should be embarrassed of myself, essentially. See the previous post for my snarky comment. I had sent the same words to the person who set up the conference call (a fellow staff member who hates the evil cunt bitch just as much as I do). Demure!TM apologized to the staff member for me being a jerk and came to give me hell and to suggest that I should no longer be allowed to send e-mail to anybody but Angie.

Oh was I pissed. I have hundreds of letters from readers, contributors and leaders who thank me profusely for my time, energy, patience, consideration, kindness, etc. And I told her I would be more than happy to give her a copy of each one. Hell, I had someone call me screaming about something right before this debacle ensued. And I handled it with grace. And I was not even the right person for the caller to contact, but I said I’d handle it for them and do whatever I in my limited power could do.

Anyway, the staff person is at a level higher than me, so I of course got reamed for being rude to a “director,” even though this person, for all intents and purposes, is my equal. And all I had said was that the committee’s failure to consider the publication schedule, especially when they claim they want to be helpful to the publication, seemed ironic and perhaps a sign of future obstacles. THIS is why I am an embarrassment to my boss. THIS caused her to call and apologize to this staff member. THIS incited a half-hour meeting with me to tell me what a fuck-up she thinks I am.

I think she was just fishing for something negative to go on my review that is coming this month. A reason to not give me a raise.

I never get a thank-you or a compliment when I pull off miracles or do something really creative. I never hear about my performance in general, only when she wants to tell me I’m a disappointment or an embarrassment. Indeed, that only racks up to two instances, and I am not saying I agree with either one. I beg for feedback on my performance, but this is what I get — a pitched bitch about an e-mail she thought was in poor taste. For cripes’ sake, the other staff member hates the Queen as much as I do! She hates being caught in the drama, and we have had many aside conversations about this ridiculous proposal to form a Gestapo. I wasn’t criticizing her for coordinating the call on the particular date (she’d sent a snotty e-mail my way to remind me how difficult it is to coordinate 11 people for a phone call, whereupon I admitted I was just being bitchy about the committee call in general).

I feel like I’m at the wrong end of a landslide. I feel today like I have no peace. I dread work, I dread e-mail, I dread hearing what everybody thinks is wrong with me. I’m fine. I am a hell of a worker and person in general. I do not question my worth. I do, however, question why I deal with shit from people who no longer (or never did) matter.

So the Queen of the Underworld, the asshole who is trying to form a Gestapo to oversee newspaper operations (she would be the self-appointed leader of said Gestapo, despite no qualification to do anything but make people miserable), has ordained that we must all be on a conference call on June 23. The problem? That’s the day my paper goes to press! You know, if you’re going to create another worthless committee and it’s going to discuss how they can supposedly help me, wouldn’t you THINK that they’d find out the fucking publication SCHEDULE?!?! I refuse to participate in a call that talks about how they can overrun my job when I have to go DO the job!

That I filled out an extensive survey commanded by the Cruise Director of Club Medicated that will probably end up collecting dust in my personnel file. And it ain’t an anonymous survey.

In my “drafts” folder, I preserved my survey in its entirety, being that it will probably be ignored or I will be punished for it, which I did note in the “additional comments” section at the end. Cruise Director says he will be the only one to read the surveys, and he will present a summary to the other execs. Which means that the people who either couldn’t be bothered to write real answers or those who simply went all Stepford on us and said they love Club Med and have no complaints, well, those will probably be presented, and the rest of us (okay, just me) who went apeshit and wrote five full pages of commentary will have wasted a hell of a lot of time and effort for, probably, nothing.

Anyway, here is part of my completed survey. And yes, I have no problem telling the CEO what’s on my mind. He usually rejects my ideas to my face anyway or embarrasses me in public. I owed him a piece of my mind. Unlike a few of my colleagues, I can spare it.

3. Name three things that prevent you from doing a better job here at (the Veggie Patch).

Semantics. I am very much a decision-maker and if I don’t make a decision (or get an answer) on the spot, I lose my sense of urgency. When we have to schedule five meetings and run the idea up the flagpole, I forget why I even asked or involved anyone else in my process. Sometimes, I don’t feel like I own my decisions. I’ve got a great title and job, but I don’t possess a great sense of empowerment. I just feel like I have to check with everyone on decisions I make, or solicit input on trivial things, just to Cover My A**. The whole CYA mentality that mandates us to copy 10 people on our correspondence (or be one of the people copied) is tiring. I personally don’t give a hoot who’s responsible for what, just as long as the work gets done. And I don’t get why people can’t forward an e-mail to the right person, instead making us re-direct our requests. What a waste of time! I can’t count how many times I say, “Forget it, I’ll do (whatever the task) myself,” and that only serves to reward bad behavior and keep me from my work.

Even though you may see three answers in that statement, that was only my first answer. 🙂

Is every workplace like this?

So I was sitting at my desk, headbanging, today to a nice little tune by Motley Crue (I was downloading some Dokken at the time as well). I was happily singing “Girls Girls Girls” when I tossed my hair and noticed one of the executives standing in my doorway. I tried to explain that I was inspired by the “hair metal” specials on VH1, but he kind of Krispy Kremed and got all glazed and confused. Oh well. I think he was just shocked to see me happy at work!

Another colleague noted that I’ve been smiling a lot today. Yes, I have. 🙂 Life is good. I’ve got hair metal on the iTunes, lots of plans for the summer and no desire to succumb to stress that I didn’t create. I’m so very Zen today. That, and I just downloaded some Vinnie Vincent Invasion! 😉

Town Crier looks more like hell than usual today. Seriously, she paid somebody to make her look like a toilet brush. Her hair is all bleached on top and dark shit brown at the nape of her neck. It looks like a feathered bowl cut. I want to turn her upside down and clean the shit streaks out of the ladies’ room bowls.