Caterwauling

I did entirely too much bitching today, although if you were in my shoes (black patent thong-style high heels), you would have understood.

However, I did a lot of laughing, too. At one point, I was ranting so much I thought I was going to throw up. My friend offered, rather helpfully, “I’d hold back your hair for you.” And I think he meant it. 🙂 I declared that was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. *sniffle*

On one of my online “away” messages, I had posited whether stupidity were contagious. My friend B. (happy belated birthday!) poked me on that one, as he mused:

B: It is, you know.
Me: I was afraid of that.
B: It’s pneumonic.
Me: And incurable.
B: Sometimes curable, though the treatment is often painful.
Me: Yeah, that reading books thing can be a killer for some people.
B: Baseball bats work for others.

I need to envision myself surrounded by smart, magnificent, useful and uber-fabulous people (like the two I mentioned today). Perhaps they will somehow multiply and I will be drowning in others’ awesomeness. Lord knows I could use a little bit of faith-restoration in the human race right about now. …

Dear Oxygen Thieves,

Love,
Goddess

I was listening to “Law of Attraction” in the car this morning.

(Caveat: I MEANT to buy “Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t” but wasn’t paying attention to the author names. Rats.)

Anyway, the one I got isn’t too terrible, although I’m not loving the weird accent the female author (Esther Hicks) takes on as she’s channeling “Abraham,” the collective name for a group of folks on a higher plane of existence who adopted that name because they are teaching how to reconnect with your higher self.

In particular, the basic premise is that you attract what you think about. (Am thinking about hard, throbbing … er, wait, what was I saying?!!?) Ahem. Even if it’s bad stuff. Meaning, when I think, “What is that dumb ‘ho going to do to piss me off today?” I am thus attracting whatever antics the dumb ‘ho might be thinking up. And I get angrier and angrier that I cannot get a gun without a waiting period. 😉

Instead, I should be envisioning this person, if not being helpful for the first and perhaps only time in her miserable little life, then at least not pissing me off.

It took until Song 8 on the first CD for me to actually get into the message, and I left it on how you can’t lose weight when you use the word fat or how you can’t attract money when you consider yourself to be poor. It makes sense, because the people I know who preach prosperity aren’t exactly rolling their pennies to buy the iPhone on Friday.

Anyway, instead of saying this day is going to be a waste, I’m simply going to say that it started off with some challenges but goodness and light will triumph in the end.

Damn it.

Some e-mails can only be answered in sign language. Just because you haven’t received a written reply, don’t think you haven’t been replied to.

*grins and waves without all five fingers*

It’s been a very expensive day here in the ‘hood. Not just because I paid bills this morning, but also because I’ve been mired in detail work that would be better left to an assistant if I actually had one. 🙂 Which means the “big” stuff will wait till later. But oh well. I am just so ready to kick these projects into gear that I don’t care what order I do ’em in.

Like someone said to me today, I’m paid to be an architect but really, I have to lay my own bricks, too. So which role is more important vs. which one will help me to move forward? I figure, as long as I don’t pat anyone on the head with a brick (self included), we call it a successful day.

In other news, there’s nothing much to report right now, which is nice. Had the migraine from hell last night and couldn’t get rid of it to save my life. See, the more I think, the more headaches I get. This is why thinking is banned from my head today. 🙂

I guess I was thinking back on a lot of plans I might have made in the recent past, and how nothing looks like what I imagined. I keep refraining from reading an old blog entry from April (it’s offline, so no linklove for it) about which I remember thinking, “It’s either going to serve as a milestone or something that will make me want to stab my temple with a pencil.”

Let me put it this way; a milestone it was not. 🙂

But still, it was something to look forward to, anyway. It was one of those times in which I just felt, y’know? I didn’t question it — I just went with it. I haven’t been like that in a long time. And it may be a long time before I go with that feeling of reckless abandon again. But it was good while it lasted, so hurrah for not missing out on spontaneity and serendipity when presented with it.

Speaking of impulses — impulsive spending, that is — the iPhone comes out Friday. I have been saving up for a MacBook and am wondering whether to just blow it on the phone. Besides, by the time I come up with enough money to buy a laptop, Apple will have run out of jungle animals after which to name all of its operating systems. (Panther, Tiger, Leopard, etc.) Fuck, they’ll be down to rodents and reptiles by the time I can afford a computer AND software!

Forget Jaguar … by the time I get in line, it’ll be Jagoff!

Spent the day with one of my friends yesterday. At some point, his dad’s phone accidentally dialed his, and he got an earful of the family playing with their dogs. Later on, ironically enough, my phone accidentally dialed my mom’s number.

She called this morning to say, “He sounds very smart. But I wasn’t interested in the conversation, so I stopped listening.”

LOL. I hate it when Mom knows what I’m up to!

In any event, she said I sounded WAY more pleasant with him than I ever do with her. 😉

In keeping with the “all things ass” theme …

Have you tried the Juan Valdez coffee pods? I figured they’re so expensive from Senseo and El Dorado (not to mention that the latter doesn’t offer all the flavors online) that I’d get the cheap Juan Valdez wonders.

And the coffee tastes like a burro’s ass.

*squick*

I did visit the Juan Valdez cafe in Manhattan, but I don’t remember feeling like I licked an asshole that had been sitting on mud for a couple decades.

I’m just going to suck it up and order “real” coffee pods from now on. Unless that “unique” aftertaste is a usable amount of crack, I can’t finish this pack. *barf*

The reason I don’t get anything done is because there’s just too much crap flying around. Not like monkeys flinging poo, although come to think of it, that’s not a bad analogy.

I can’t get anything done between e-mail back-and-forths, phone tag and a million interruptions because I have an “open door” (and e-mail, and instant-message, and phone) policy.

I stopped putting “please do not disturb” signs on my door at my last job with FuckNut would come by, let himself in, and say something stupid just to make sure he would be the one to bother me first. Asshole. Now I don’t do it.

The problem is, I open all my messages and read them but don’t have the time to answer them. Then the computer crashes (usually just Outlook, actually) and my whole pseudo-system of organization goes into the shitter.

Yesterday started off rather auspiciously. And perhaps ended that way, too. And I guess it just means I have to bite the pillow bullet and develop/enforce a plan to at least try to catch up. I mean, I haven’t had a day quite so productive as yesterday in quite some time, but it shouldn’t have taken as many hours as it did to check off what I eventually could and still have so much uncrossed on the list before calling it a week.

Speaking of, I left at some ungodly hour, rushed to the plaza across the street to make a fast dinner order (restaurants close at a certain hour, and they’re known to refuse me 15 minutes before closing. Bastards). I managed to get in for “last call” (no, no bars — I wish, though!) only to realize I had left my phone behind at la oficina. Lord. I almost left it there, but I was good and went back for it.

OH! The day that never ends, part 90. I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up catty litter and kitteh chow. So I tossed everything in my trunk and started flying up the road. I noticed a cop was behind me, and then I noticed NO ONE was behind me. Hmm. Oh yeah, SOMEONE didn’t close her trunk all the way and not only did it fly up, but the bag o’ litter that was precariously perched on a whole bunch of shit in the trunk had started to slide out! GAH!

I stopped somewhere and got my bearings together, but man, thank god the cop didn’t have a bug up his ass and pull me over.

And don’t even talk to me about all the construction on the interstates here. I was trying to have my dinner, take a phone call and merge when no one was feeling particularly charitable about letting a girl in to the only lane that was open. When someone did let me in, I reached up to wave through the sunroof — with sammich in hand. 🙂

Speaking of too much crap, today Maddie crapped in a bag full of purses. At least she didn’t hit the carpet, although the purses aren’t smelling like roses. She did, however, vomit all over the bedroom carpet, so she’s feeling rather satisfied.

The cat has no butt fur right now — she’s a long-haired Calico so I try to keep her as dingleberry-free as I can. So when she can’t drag her shitty ass fur all over the carpet, she instead leaves “shitty kisses” on the floors and walls. Yep, tiny round globs of ass juice for my personal cleanup endeavors. I love being me.

Looking forward to a crap-free day (at least, cat-crap-free). Now to go scrub the carpets I treated just before I started typing this suicide note missive!

Someone out of my past, out of the blue, asked me to serve as a reference. For what, I have no idea.

I’m not really clear why my name would immediately come to mind as a potential cheerleader. I’m guessing that they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

They don’t expect me to be truthful, do they? Or is their perception of their own work/personality/contributions so painfully skewed that they aren’t even considering the fact that someone may NOT think as highly of them as they think of themselves?

When someone leaves a company, it’s easy to refer any future callers to H.R. to confirm employment dates and titles and stuff. But when everyone goes their separate ways, how do I transfer the call across state lines?

I realize that I often get stuck in that “nice guy” trap, that I will do people favors because others helped me when I needed — and maybe didn’t wholly deserve — it. Although there is a part of me that gave that up for lent about four years ago and doesn’t want to look back.

I learned the hard way that one favor always leads to another. And if my heart wasn’t in it? Made it that much more excruciating. Because I didn’t do favors to get them back — I did them so that my phone would stop ringing, in some cases, and because I really wanted to see someone get a leg up, in most other instances.

If I CAN be of assistance, really, there’s no reason NOT to be.

But there’s this hardass part of me now that’s like, nope, don’t refer anyone my way in hopes that I will brag about you. I clearly didn’t think enough of you to maintain any sorts of ties — not that this is necessarily an indicator because I just suck at communicating with people I DO like overall. But I have an inbox full of e-mails on which I need to hit “reply” and quite honestly, they will come first when I get to it.

I don’t know. I always knew days like this would come, when someone who I would never recommend that anyone hire even if the world were coming to an end would look toward me to vouch for them.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m well-versed enough to know that I can veil my distaste in cheerful, well-crafted phrases that won’t get my ass sued. I might not call you a 14-karat fuckup (out loud, anyway), but that you have “creative approaches to integrating a dream world with reality” can mean whatever that new employer wants it to mean.

OTOH, perhaps the goodwill I can exhibit in this scenario is my chance to thank God that I’ll never have to see you on a daily basis again. 🙂

I once got mad when I found out someone else was using my name as a reference, but then I thought, “Bring it — I’d LOVE to have a conversation about that one.” Luckily (for them), no one called.

I’m still undecided whether to laugh in the current requestor’s face, though, or seize the opportunity to use my tone of voice instead of my words to warn anyone who may call in reference to said individual, who has probably said more than a few unflattering things about me.

I dunno. How can you ask someone to vouch for you when you never valued their leadership in the first place?

Reflection, originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn.

Mandalay Bay’s beach in Las Vegas. Where sitting in 98-degree dry heat felt a lot cooler than 70 degrees in the dog-breath humidity of D.C.

I wasn’t there long, as I only had a couple hours before my (thankfully late) checkout time. But yeah, all my distaste for Vegas melted away as I sat with my toes in the wave pool and contemplated absolutely nothing because I was happy to be who and where I was.

A million more photos to upload from my last trip, but this is one of my favorites.

Note to applicants: If you’re going to lie on your resume — like, say, fudging employment dates (or establishments) — be careful when mass-blasting your rez to prospective hiring managers.

In particular, don’t claim you (still) work at Company A when you might just have its sister company in your broadcast rotation. Because if Company B likes your resume and goes into the universal address book and doesn’t see you there (when, according to you, they SHOULD), well, try not to wonder why they don’t give ya a call.

Just sayin’.