Drama Shmama

Here it is... the latest drama du jul!!

Decide to take the day off on Monday to do some work at my sisters house and cook them a few meals while she's out of town having surgery for a couple of days.

Coincidence No. 1
My husband takes lillun to work with him in another town. She gets bored and calls me to come pick her up. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone outside of town.

Coincidence No. 2
I'm ready to book but H asks me to see the house he's working on which is a kajillion sq. foot house on the lake. So I take some time to do that and then leave (green w/envy).

Coincidence No. 3
On the way home I accidentally get into the wrong lane and say out loud "shoot ~ I did NOT want to go this way" but continue on anyway.

Coincidence No. 4
Driving the "wrong" way home I come across an elderly woman shuffling along the side of the highway about 100 feet beyond a car pulled off on the shoulder. I turn around and ask if I can help. She lets me and we get her car towed and I drive her home.

Observations:
She seems pleasant enough. Her clothes are not the cleanest. Her pants are covered in pet hair of some kind. She smells a little bit of cat pee or spray.

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So I sort of feel like I was led to her. After hearing from people that they never would have picked her up I also feel that my work experience makes me uniquely qualified and likely to handle this situation.
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As we drive she tells me about how she used to go to the Burger King every Thurs. How she met a man there who would sit and have a sandwich and coffee with her every week. She tells me that its her birthday and that she has no plans..... nobody to spend the day with. She slips me a ten, amid protests, and heads into her house.

My sweet lillun decides we should get her a cake and card. So we do and we go back. Her house was a little run down and I knew there was some sort of cat issue so I wasn't even sure she'd invite us in.

As we pulled in about 15 cats scattered in every direction. That's NOT a good sign. Wasn't sure she'd answer the door or appreciate the interruption, but she was happy to see us and invited us in.

We walked in to a nearly solid wall of stench. A heavy lung constricting odor of cat urine and waste. I didn't know what to do. We stayed all of 10 minutes before we made our excuses and boogied. But in those 10 minutes we all absorbed the odor and smelled of it ourselves.

The woman had just rec'd flowers from her only living relative who lives in another state quite far away. On the way home I stopped at the florist, explained that I needed to get in touch with the person who sent those flowers. With a brief explanation, they gave me the name and number.

I hemmed and hawed about calling the sender (S). Who am I to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong? As my 8 year old wondered...."what if S lives the same way?" Good point. Do I really want to get involved in this? What happens if they don't do anything? Do I have to then?

I decided to look up the full name and address by the phone number on smart pages. Then I started writing a letter telling them about the horrific conditions I found their Aunt living in. But I couldn't get it right.

On a whim I decided to do a search for their names on the internet and ended up finding out that they didn't seem the type of people who would live just like the elderly woman (E from now on). I even found an e-mail address. I e-mailed them. They e-mailed back.

They had just had that discussion about E. What to do they wondered? They didn't feel they could effect any change and didn't know what options were available. So I checked it out and told them. It was either get her to fix up the place and get rid of the cats or they'd have to take legal action to forcibly remove her from the home because she wouldn't go quietly.

Now I'm all wrapped up in this. S doesn't know how to broach the subject with E and sounds very timid. So I agreed to go see E, tell her that I'd talked to S and that S was going to take some action of some kind to fix the situation.

In the mean time I thought it through, made some calls, got some info. Talked again to S to say I'd like to see if E would be willing to give up the cats, let me help her to organize the clean up and repair (hire other people at her expense), and then start fresh with just one or two cats in a clean home.

So I ended up spending two hours with E last night as part of the process of filling her in on everything that had transpired since we'd met just 48 hours before. To prepare for that I bought Vicks Vapor Rub and smeared in and around my nose. It worked well enough that I could stay there all that time. But once it wore off I had to leave. I told her as much too.

I said: The Humane Officer is coming to take as many cats as they can get their hands on. If she doesn't start being proactive about shaping up her living situation, someone else is going to be making the choices for her. If someone else makes the choices, it won't be what she hopes for. Keeping the cats is not good for them, for her, or for the neighborhood. She's being an irresponsible pet "owner."

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo..... as it stands now. I will be going back this weekend to inspect the whole house (I've only seen the kitchen, living room, and dining room.), determine how much work there is to do, clean up a little bit of mess ~ papers and obvious poop, and get started on writing the specs to get bids.

What have I gotten myself into?

A Serious Issue

Recently discovered that my 12 year old daughter is hoarding, stashing, hiding food in her room. Mostly junk food, but it could be anything.

We limit snacking in our house, encourage healthy choices for snacks, make healthy meals. We don't allow the kids to get hot lunch except on rare occasions because it's all grease and fat and not heart healthy. We once let the kids have it for one full week and my oldest visibly put on about 7 pounds. True.

Anyway I've discovered that she's hoarding food. She trades food, or asks friends for their leftover "stuff" and puts it in a zip loc and brings it home. I don't know if she eats it same day, or keeps it for when she has the craving, but she's hiding it in her closets.

We thought we had confronted the issue and sorted it out. We explained the reasons for our healthier choices and also encouraged her to talk to us if she had a particular craving or desire for a certain type of food. In moderation that could typically be accomodated. No prob. But never to have food in her room and NEVER to hide it.

But yesterday I confronted her about her unbelievably messy room. She becomes so stressed about it and it's so bad that she can't face it. It's a very strange psychological dynamic. Well ~ not so strange because I have read that it is typical with this age group and that it will get worse before it gets better.

Anyway I recognized that the best way for us to deal with this would be to deal with it as a team. So I went into her room with her, and without criticizing, I began working along side her picking up garbage, sorting through clothes, straightening up cd's, etc. I had found more food in her room and reminded her of the problem we'd discussed and told her to take it downstairs. Funny thing - she didn't come back. Soon I realized that I was cleaning her room.

Then I spotted the empty zip loc that clearly contained chocolate and some type of white filling ~ somebody's cupcake or ho ho or something. I called her on it. Also made her come back up stairs and help me.

Soon she was stressed over the likelihood that she was going to miss American Idol. It was a HUGE deal for her. We tried to explain that nobody was watching tv at that time ~ it wasn't as though we were being unfair. We tried to explain that it was just tv, just a show, just people that she doesn't know. But it was SO important to her. In the end we agreed to tape it.

I'm feeling as though there is a control struggle going on. Whenever we tell her to do something she begins to cry as though we have just ended her world. She will bargain, plead, try to apply conditions. To no avail...well sometimes to some avail.

Typically, when she's gone through phases like this, all the way back to toddler hood, it can be attributed to a mental and/or emotional growth period. A child develops more abilities or thinking and speaking skills and the parents have to recognize that and adjust their parenting to recognize that and to give the child more opportunity to put those abilities and skills to use.

Same now I suppose. She needs more challenge, more responsibility, to put her skills and abilities into practice. She needs more autonomy and support at the same time. I just don't know how to create that balance.

There is of course the concept of PMS as well. She's 12 1/2 and hasn't yet started her period. I've talked with her about it, explained what occurs, what it means, how to deal with it, about mood changes, etc. That doesn't mean she can control it or that we'll know when it occurs. PMS does also bring about a lot of food cravings and strange eating behaviors. For me I am absolutely starving 24, 7 for a week or so. I can eat and eat and eat and not gain a pound.

Maybe we need to talk more about those symptoms. I don't know. I'm worried about the lying. I'm worried about the food hoarding and hiding. Mostly I'm worried about the lying. I'm worried that I can't trust her over the tiniest things. I'm worried that the wall is going up.

I'm open to suggestions.

I've lost all motivation. My guess is that its related to meds. I haven't been taking them consistently. Half of me thinks its just because I've forgotten. But the truth is that I can clearly remember making a conscious decision not to take them on several occasions. Don't ask me why ~ I don't know.

Not taking them will only make me feel worse ~ I'll be moody, tired, achy, lethargic, forgetful, ravenously hungry...constantly, depressed, inefficient, non-productive, without motivation, and my throat will hurt. How in the world could that possibly appeal to me?

Anyway I have a little of my previous dosage left ~ a higher dosage ~ so I'm taking that to kick start my new dedication to taking my meds. Just for a few days. Plus I'm drinking "smart water". No, no I don't think it will make me smarter. But it has electrolytes ~ so it's like pediacare, but without the yucky taste and no sugar.

Sometimes ~ and I encourage everyone to do this ~ I drink pedialyte all day. Pedialyte is a drink for children and infants who are sick. It's a water based drink infused with electrolytes, potassium, sodium, etc. All of the things necessary to prevent or relieve dehydration. It tastes pretty crappy, but if you get the orange kind and drink it ice cold and through a straw....or if you water it down or add it to 7-up, it's completely palatable. It makes an amazing difference in the way you feel in just one day. But no wonder kids and babies put up such a stink when moms and dads try to get them to drink this stuff!

Ok Im rambling ~ all in attempt to fill a few minutes during which I haven't been able to focus on what really needs to be done. So, off I go.

Backdated Post No. 2 (Feb 15, 2006)

Happy Valentine’s Day To Me….

We celebrated V-Day early. On Monday evening H and I doled out the heart shaped boxes of chocolates (every girls fave) and we all exchanged cards. Then we sat on the upstairs landing in our pj’s sampling each others chocolates. Yummmmmm! That was really kind of neat. Yes, I did say “neat.”

The actual Valentine’s day had a much different feel. I had been up since 3:30-ish – not out of anticipation or anything. I just couldn’t sleep. Since I had already told the girls that from now on I’d be getting them up much earlier I took advantage of my sleeplessness and roused them promptly at 6:00. This was a full one hour early. Now, they MUST be able to get ready with an extra hour of awake time, right? Right! Yay!

Off to work – a relatively uneventful day. Oh God! I just realized that I fired someone on Valentine’s Day! Oh My GOSH! I can hardly believe that! That sucks! Details: she was getting canned the hard way. From the top it was said that she would be terminated effective the 15th – with no advance notice. Uh uh – Whitey don’t play dat. I insisted that we give a full review, keep it positive – with constructive criticism – and give advance notice. Therein it became my responsibility. I was actually highly praised for taking the high road and for the quality of my follow through and review. So I guess there was a “little” love on V-day. Yay me?

Ah, but home is a different story. A cheerful call from H is received during the day. He’s had a good day at school, got done early, and was headed home. He even mentioned that he might get dinner started. Sure enough he was cooking when I got home…for him. Then he grumbled because all the ingredients weren’t there.

So I arrive home, immediately get to work cooking dinner FOR THE FAMILY and find that we have one extra kid who is also staying for dinner. As I’m doing that H is totally in my way cleaning out the fridge and grumbling about it the whole time.

Let’s not forget that he then decided he didn’t like what I was cooking and the kids wouldn’t either. So he puts on a pot of water for Mac N Cheese ~ also leaving me to work that out. No, he doesn’t want potatoes. He wants rice, again. So I switch to sweet taters instead of baked taters (who doesn’t like sweet taters with brown sugar n butter??) AND rice.

Then he decides he doesn’t like baked chicken – especially w/bones! Eeeew. What about when I make Chicken soup??? That comes from bones. Eeeeww.

THEN he continues to grumble about my choices, about what I’ve done or NOT done. Then we remember E has guitar lessons – natch I’ll be taking her. Then H is yacking on the phone w/his feet up and I’m trying to get dinner done and kids fed before I leave. All of that is done just as E and I have to leave. H is still on the phone.

While I’m gone H eats. The extra kid goes home. The table sits with all of the dishes and food out. The kitchen sits with all of the pots and pans and the pot of H’s food that he never finished cooking. I eat.

Then I clear the table while H watches a movie. Finally he comes in and starts the dishwasher. Of course he leaves any pots or pans – wouldn’t want to hand wash anything. I’m doing laundry. I’m folding the piles of laundry H has washed but left in piles in the basement and our bedroom. I’m discovering the stuff piled on our bed isn’t even clean and he’s brought dirty laundry back up from the basement as though it were clean.

I’m helping with homework. I’m avoiding him at all costs. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

Backdated Post No. 1 (November)

Written months ago:

I am feeling incredibly frustrated and anxious today. Not sure if it’s work, home, or PMS. It could be any of those, or all of them, I just hate chalking things up to PMS because then it becomes completely random and out of my control. It’s like admitting you’re mentally deficient.

Anyway. B came into my office today to say that I need to account for every minute of time spent on my various responsibilities so that we can see if there’s some source of support out there. Otherwise, we just can’t sustain it….me.

So howz that a couple of days before Thanksgiving? “Julie, you need to justify your existence in this company because, although there’s a whole department worth of work to do, we just can’t justify paying you to do it.”

How frustrating is it to see the adjoining department wallowing in their multi-million dollar budget, sucking up thousands in annual bonuses – the purpose of which is simply to eat up admin by the end of the contract performance period – while I am asked to justify my existence as the sole labor resource in the department that is at the core of my company’s mission? How frustrating?

What I think happened is this. The BB (Big boss) decided that another layer of executive management would help her to manage the whole company more effectively. It takes some of the pressure and load off of her, and allows her to take credit for all that they help her achieve. To do that, they had to redirect and create more admin.

So….when the capital investment returns came to my department – from activities generated by my department - they were ciphoned into other dept.s to fund in part or in whole their new executive level umbrella managers. When lump sums of admin came into my department – generated by activities from within my department – they were sucked up into accounting hyper space never to be seen again.

Now – there’s no money. Nothings making any money. So, therefore, the activities within my dept. cannot be sustained. More to the point, I cannot be sustained.

I’m not saying that my dept. was the only one affected – just illustrating the lack of fairness in this most recent development.

No, indeed, many other departments suffered downsizing. Workload staying the same, staff hours cut or staff eliminated or laid off. Even better, shift some revenue producing work out of a dept. struggling to make ends meet – but providing the greatest amount of mission specific direct client services – and give that work to the department that has the biggest admin budget in the whole company. Take a resource away from the one’s who need it and give it to the one’s that don’t.


But wait – it gets better. When you shift that work to the rich dept., you also don’t increase their staffing levels. Figures.

I have a feeling that the wealthy neighbor dept. will be in for a rude awakening when no $5k bonuses are handed out because much of that was spent on funding the much much needed upgrade to the physical appearance and functionality of our building. Least that’s the latest rumor.

The fairness point being that they apparently see it better to eliminate my position and load my work onto my boss – the “new” exec. Level umbrella manager guy person – rather than keep me. It stands to reason you will get more out of a person with a Masters than a person with on the job experience. I understand that. I just think it’s wrong. It’s almost as if we’re working against our own mission. We’re almost – and not necessarily in my case – creating the people and situations we work so hard to help and overcome.

SO…..I thought I’d apply at Lowe’s since there will be a new one here in the next year. Then I ran across this website called retailers.com. It is a discussion forum for retail employees to share info, ask questions, or vent. Seems Lowe’s is a sucky place if you’re not upper management. Seems they’re very Wal-Mart-ish in their approach to providing full time employment and/or benefits. Oops – you’re seasonal…see ya next summer.

Plus, they force(d) their employees to participate in a gallup survey about working conditions. Each person was assigned a pin number that they had to enter before completing the phone survey. The phone survey took place at work – frequently at an assigned time and in the presence of management staff. Leads to a lot of conspiratorial thought and not a lot of freedom of expression.

Now I just don’t know what to do. Wait for the axe? Or head for the hills? If only If ONLY…If only H was capable of supporting the fam.

Peace~Love~Lottery Winnings,
Me

Halleluja!!

CC'd on an e-mail from my boss to Control Freak ~ unsolicited mind you. It began... "No, I do not concur."

Praise Jesus and Hallelujah, somebody has taken a step towards helping him to see the light!! What a great way to start a message when the most irritating thing about the message you're responding to is the smarmy "[bosses] do you concur?" GAG! (sorry I can't repeat that phrase w/out gagging)

That was great and really stepped up my mood. That is awesome! Happy happy day.

Is It Wrong To Contemplate Murder???

Every freaking time that I try to do my job, there he is questioning whether or not I'm doing it right. There he is issuing 10 page memo's and e-mails cc'd to half the company trying to override my processes and decisions and always adding to the powers that be..."do you concur?". OH GAG ME WITH A SHOVEL!!!!!!!!!

How can a grown man be such a sniveling kiss ass? How can a grown man have such an incredible need to try to pleeeeeeeeeeease people in authority??? I don't mean just do a good job, I mean just absolute groveling, sniveling, smarmy, brown nosing, kiss ass CRAP!!

And what the hell is his issue with me??? I can't do a thing without him questioning me and my abilities. He's yanking out contracts and policies, misinterpreting and mis-applying them, and incorrectly quoting them to try to prove his point. The problem is that I've been doing this for 10 years and he's trying to appear like an expert with hardly a clue. I don't deem to think that I know everything, but I also don't insist that I know his job better than he does.

So if I ask for something, he has to contradict it, cc my boss and his boss and their boss and say "I believe it should be done like this, [bosses] do you concur?" OHMYGOSH!! just writing that make me want to puke!!

Somehow he's gotten the idea that he, for some reason, needs to provide oversight and decision making for me. Yesterday his 10 page memo TO me actually didn't even speak to me. It was just a list of "I need" statements about all that he wants to ensure that I'm doing the transaction properly. One of them was that before I could submit a request for payment - which I've done for 10 years now, "I need to know who YOUR boss will authorize to sign such documents." So, I faxed him a copy of an authorization, signed by my boss's boss, that I AM AUTHORIZED!!

Right now I have child molester walking around, smelling like mothballs and a musty attic, emptying garbages and that only adds to my attitude. He is so creepy! Ok so I don't KNOW he's a child molester, but I'm 99% sure. He's not on a registered list, but he has the look and the characteristics and I am NEVER wrong about that. EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!! That smell is just grossing me out!

Oh, and this morning there was a boy about 11 or 12 standing in front of my house. 7:00 a.m., it was FREEEEEEEEEEZING cold, and he's only wearing a sweatshirt and hat, but no gloves. He's carrying a school book but it's at least an hour before school starts and he's just standing in front of my house looking around. I opened the door and asked him if he was ok - he seemed startled. He said 'of course' and I let it go and he walked off about a minute later. But it keeps bothering me. Parents do weird things and I wonder if he got kicked out or locked out of his house this morning....on the coldest day in weeks. I probably should have asked him if he wanted to come in and get warm and have some breakfast. Hindsight.

A blog by any other name.....

Did you know...... That the average blog lasts 3 to 4 months before it is deleted or abandoned by the blogger?

Blogging is more than journaling. If you journal, you pretty much know that NOBODY else is going to read your ramblings. They are truly between you and the paper on which you write them.

The interesting thing about blogs is that you can feel as though you are keeping a secret, and at the same time open yourself up to scrutiny. It makes me wonder if all bloggers are people who have rec'd an extra helping of voyeurism in their genetic make up???

There's hardly anything worth blogging for me any more and RARELY any opportunity. As I've said before I am still longing for the perfect paper journal so that I can transition back to the dark ages of thought analysis.

I've created about 10 blogs. The first one - the most dangerous one - deleted, every last consanant. This is probably the most me on a daily basis. The others are shades of me. Some of them I'm not so proud of, but which I feel are necessary in order for me to maintain that delicate balance between reality and insanity.

Recently I checked in on several blogs I used to read regularly. Only one of them is still regularly posting and maintaining the same writing style and content that he began with. Of course, he may have 40 other blogs ~ who knows. But everyone seems to reach a point where they announce their departure.....but then they start up somewhere else.....then someone finds them there....and they announce their departure again ~ this time for good.

Does anyone really ever quit blogging? Or is it really that addictive? This is the only one I've posted to in eons, but I did recently get a comment from someone on a blog I'd forgotten existed.

Truthfully I wonder how many of my personal thoughts, rants, ramblings, epiphonies, and vents are out there that I would take back....if only I could remember where the heck they are???