Caterwauling

I realize I’m the only person who wears jeans to my Weight Watchers weigh-ins. The leader once made a comment to the group, how she just KNOWS we all have bigger wardrobes than what she sees us in. She referred to some folks having their “lucky” weigh-in outfits.

Frankly I’m sick of looking at the same faces in the same ghastly lightweight tent dresses. I wear jeans on a normal day and that’s what I should be weighted in.

Today’s loss was only 0.2 but that brought me to 15 pounds lost, it gives me my 16-week jewelry and it earns me another five pounds down. Whee. I should have worn denim without so much silver hardware on them. 🙂

So anyway, today was about setting our fall goals. And I realize I “fly by the seat of my pantyhose,” as mom calls it. I don’t plan anything. It’s sheer luck that I’ve made it this far with life, work, weight, car repairs, and every other situation.

My fall goal? Well, I just got a text from a dear friend asking if I could meet her for dinner in New York on Dec. 18. And you know what? I’m going. Flights are $100 one-way to JFK right now. I’ll call my adopted uncle while I’m there and we’ll do it up like we did last year.

And this time I want to get to D.C. The nice thing is, I can take the train everywhere. I’m plotting how to do this. I have to do this. I won’t be able to live if I DON’T do this.

Hmm … Christmas in D.C. or Christmas in Philly? The possibilities are endless. Baltimore, even. Hell, I don’t mind working from there. I have obligations I have to meet, anyway, back here.

And hell, let’s add a 10-pound weight loss goal while we’re at it.

Christmas with people I love. I’ll put on that 10 pounds at the restaurant we’ve picked, I guarantee it. My plan is coming together …

People get cars and vacations and cash yet I can’t even get my vacation days that I earned rolled over.

Had a mini-revelation a minute ago.

So all my friends are having Life Events and I remain in my own little shitshow where the house is literally falling apart (and I have the memo from the management company telling us to stay off the balconies because they are crumbling to prove it) … both cars suck (I live on the edge, going between one car whose brake lines are rusted and one of those lines BROKE Saturday, and the car where the wheel bearings are shot and I just don’t care enough to find the money when Mom’s car is costing me $1,500 THIS MONTH ALONE) … and well, yeah. That Thing I Do All Week is just more fun than words can allow too.

Anyway, an old friend is getting married. I looked up her fiance’s profile today and see they work at the same place. Hmm. I remember her last job, which she loved, and the batshit asshole for whom she worked, who fired her for no real reason. She knew the firing was coming eventually but she was so very loved and so damn competent, she got let go for some fabricated bullshit.

Anyway, she had to be let go to find the new employment situation and, thus, to find her husband-to-be. Mind boggling.

I have been wishing for a long time that I could get back to untouchable status like I had at the job where I spent five years in D.C. I could say or do anything and I felt invincible. Sure, the tip-top brass contained some boneheads, but I had a great department and they worshiped the quicksand I walked on.

And I feel like nothing I can do anywhere else since then gets me back up on that wonderful pedestal where I felt like I was safe. Even though I’m incredibly competent and have about four times the experience I did then, I always wait. For recognition, for people to be in awe of me, for a feeling of comfort that I am so uniquely qualified and suited for my role that I couldn’t get canned if I tried.

Anyway, I’ve been holding on to these shit cars and this shit apartment in the hopes of avoiding something worse. But I look at my friend who was sad to see her job gone, and look at her now. I’m not wishing away my job — just the people who make it more difficult than it needs to be — so that can/should stay.

But if I take one big leap, that can lead to another leap and another, maybe a new home will lead to finding a single/rich/handsome neighbor and having a car that doesn’t worry me during my nutty commute will make me relaxed and friendly when I come home and I’d actually WANT to talk to a hot neighbor and maybe that neighbor is independently wealthy and I won’t WORRY all the goddamned time about being able to afford to take care of mom and me for as long as I need to and …

Yes, so many “ands.” Line ’em up.

Anyway, a giant leap is needed, and I need to be the one to do it instead of having someone else do the pushing.

Since giving special people special dispensation is absolutely against policy, I decided I’m going to give “average” a shot.

And an hour into the day, I’m ready to go throw a stapler at someone.

I’ve been bugging one department to fix something or explain to me why Outcome D is only true for Player B and how we can get Outcome C for ALL players across the board.

I’ve gotten some movement but more silence than anything.

So today I ask, where are we with the process?

I get a “this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

DO I NEED TO PRODUCE LAST WEEK’S 15-INSTALLMENT E-MAIL CHAIN?

Then there’s an “well I was fixing (some other unrelated issue)” that I’ve never requested. It WAS an issue, yes, but I never opened my trap because then I won’t get the important stuff fixed.

America’s corporations killed America’s exceptionalism. And there’s a whole new generation of ideas dying a thousand deaths as I pound the keyboard with all my might to produce this blog entry instead of doing something that will bring in revenue instead.

I just do not know why there are no exceptions for the exceptional.

Yes, I rally and cry for what’s fair. I also know that nothing is fair. And if you constantly prove yourself again and again, why should you settle for not just fair, but LESS THAN fair?

So I got the resolution my vacation request.

Let me put it this way.

They had a chance in one instant to tell me something that would keep me there for the next five years.

They didn’t.

Why should I even dare to think that if you put in the longest workweeks, bring the platinum roldex nobody seems to care about and have experience that no one else can replicate, they’d see that and reward you for being amazing because you can’t help but dance circles around others without even trying?

Silly Goddess.

You know what’s stuck in my craw today? (And since 2006, really.) How employers allow folks to claim their spouses and kids on their insurance but I can’t claim my parent.

I have no plans to marry. Hopes, but not plans. And certainly no desire to have kids without said mythical partner. But if we can support all those people — people those workers rush out every day at 4:57 p.m. To see — why can’t my momma have a shot at survival when I give till it hurts us both?

I’m not looking to get myself disciplined or fired. I just think that if we are as a society increasingly covering life partners, well, what about mine?

Made it home from work in time for the end of “Undercover Boss” last night. A guy was just given $20K to buy a new car because he stays late and has a long commute. I almost choked on my cold dinner.

The nice dinner mom lovingly made at my request with the expectation I’d leave work at 6 and be home at 7. Something that never happens in my world but God a girl’s got to strive toward something

On the same day the CEO bugged me again about when am I going to go lease a new car. Whereupon I reminded him again that you can only put 12,000 miles on a lease and I drove 35,000 miles just last year to work.

He’s in the process of moving the office closer to civilization. But not close enough. I said if he can get it closer to my neighborhood, I’ll finally be able to get a safe car that I can afford.

Of course, then that would fuck up HIS lease with added miles. But he didn’t say that and I thank him for being classy enough not to.

I see this Undercover Boss shit also on the same day I finally had enough and went to H.R. about the unfairness of losing 168 vacation hours when I work 12-hour days and not only do we not have the staff to back me up, but now that I DO have a person who can learn how to do my job, WE DON’T HAVE THE FUCKING TECHNOLOGY to make it happen.

So yeah. A guy works late and has a long drive and gets a new car. I get reminded on a weekly basis that I should really go lease a new car and everyone’s eyes glaze like Krispy Kreme when I say “day off.”

Like I told H.R., I like what I do. I am just tired of hopping from job to job, working myself into the ground, losing vacation days, being promised bonuses, and in the end I am just burned out and my only vacation ends up being the days off between old jobs and new. It’s time I started preserving me and I want this to be the company that cares enough to let me do that.

Writer’s block is manifesting in my world as “Editor’s Block.” Which is really shorthand for “DON’T WANNA!”

The Mai-Tai crowd is looking for things from me, which they could very well help with if they didn’t believe with all their hearts that the building burns down after 5 p.m.

And I’ve got a list of things I need from the Mai-Tai crowd. Which I would appreciate them doing before my customers light me ablaze. Alas, their priorities are set by a different arm, one that seems to backhand our requests to the bottom of the pile.

Alas, speaking of “Don’t Wanna,” I don’t want anymore shooters in my beloved adopted city. And yet …

Send some prayers for the police officers who were shot just a few minutes ago at Constitution Avenue and Second, will ya? Everyone should realize that THEY ARE WORKING UNPAID RIGHT NOW.

And furthermore, those are MY streets, motherfucker. I drove them often. They belong to US, you moron. Don’t wipe your ass on them. I’m glad you’re in custody and I hope they Tase your nuts every 10 minutes.

Is it wrong that I blame Allen West? I kind of blame him for everything. And I totally wrote to his welcomed replacement to thank God I don’t have to be ashamed for Florida because I know I don’t have a Tea-bagger representing me and BOY am I proud.

While CNBC wets its pants over what they dub the “Shutdown Showdown” (What is this, the parallel-universe “The Price is Right”?), let’s take a moment to mourn the fact that the Panda Cam has gone dark.

You know I have PLENTY to say about those Tea Party twits. But Obamacare launched today. Hell. Yeah. Thank you that my mom has a SHOT at having some quality of life. If only I could get into the website without it breaking …

I remember working at a D.C. nonprofit and being on furlough. At my paid-nothing job. That required I spend one weekend a month working at a well-known print house. Whose contract I negotiated over a year in advance. Workers whom I could not let down because I was small potatoes and they just couldn’t move dates without it being a cost.

I worked through all our furlough dates. My staff did too but I took the brunt of it. Which I was OK with because once you miss publication dates, they run into the NEXT set of publication dates. It was either “keep working hard at a normal pace” or “renegotiate deadlines and BUST ASS EVEN HARDER” when everyone else came back rested from their unpaid vacation days.

I never got retro pay. I never got much of anything, really. Not even a thank-you.

I guess I’ve always understood the concept of Choose Yourself, even if it is choosing the lesser of two evils. As was pointed out to me yesterday though, the lesser of evils is still evil.

Speaking of evils, isn’t it time we called it quits on this Congressional experiment and move on with our futures? Quit rewarding the sequester/fiscal cliff/shutdown masterminds (really, 40 people in the House) and clean, well, House!