Category Archives: Life

Easter Weekend

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In which I roll out the stunning vista of my upcoming weekend. Booyah. (Srsly.) (The pace, it’s killing me.)

Last night RB took me to see a band. We went mainly because the band in question gets A-list blues gigs here in the northwest, and we wanted to hear what the competition sounded like. They were good enough, but not terrifically impressive. I can sing circles around the chick singer they had.

I drank four or five cocktails, got three phone numbers (a girl who could be friend material, a tattoo artist, and a guy who just amused me). Then I ate three items off of the Taco Bell menu and went to bed because apparently I’m not chubby enough yet.

This morning I brought Bindu to work with me. We had a lovely walk across town, and saw many other dogs downtown and woofed at them. Work’s been really slow today, with long breaks in between calls. (I like working on Saturday because no one bothers to turn the overhead lights on and I don’t have to fight the glare on my monitor all damn day.)

At six, Gramma’s going to pick us up because she wants to go out for dinner. I really don’t need any more food – I ate an entire bag of salad and a frozen pasta dinner and half an avocado and two bottles of Naked juice – so I might just have an appetizer.

Tomorrow we’re going out for Easter brunch with the family. I think we’ll be eating at the Eagles or VFW or something. Luckily, it’s not until noon so I don’t have to roust out of bed too early. Tomorrow afternoon I intend to do laundry and clean the bathroom. Monday afternoon I’ll be at band practice. (We’ve actually got gigs lined up. We’re playing the Balloon Stampede in May!)

So, yeah. That’s my stunning life. I’m sorry you wasted moments of yours reading this post. *smooch*

Last Night

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In which I am totally reaching for material, here. Totally.

RB picked me up after work and took me to the studio, where he played a new song he’d written for me to sing (a kick-ass blues/R&B number I wish I’d written myself about leavin’ your man), helped me learn a run in another original that I’d been totally bricking, asked me my opinion on a drum track (it just laid there), and gave me A SUPER BITCHIN’ TAMBOURINE. “Now you can’t say I never gave you nothin’,” he announced.

Then we went to the Mill Creek Brew Pub and met this dude who used to play pool with Doc Severinson.

After that, I went home and went to bed. ZzzzzZzzZzzzz.

This morning I woke up and did the sit-ups and push-ups and leg lifts that I did not do before bed last night, and then fell back asleep ’cause that’s how I roll. Then I got up, had a breakfast sandwich, showered, dressed, and then walked briskly to work.

Briskly. Gah. If only I could exercise while asleep… that’d be ideal.

Oh, mah gawd!

Blurbs

In which there’s a hair emergency, bitches!

This morning I washed my new hair and conditioned it and slathered it with all the product I own, which isn’t much but should have been enough to control it.

Then I went outside, where it’s raining, and under an umbrella walked to the bus stop and then rode the bus and then walked a few blocks to work but by the time I got here my hair had stopped being sleek and straight and cute and had become instead this giant flouffy thing!

I NEED PRODUCT IN THE WORST WAY. I shall be visiting the salon on my lunch hour, OMG.

Update: Whew. I went to the salon, and they sold me productz! Yay!

Wednesday. And more about my stupid uterus.

Health, ,

In which it’s freaking growing back already.

I tried to go to Sweet Basil Pizzaria for lunch today but they were closed because they’re off having a baby or something. I wandered over to Merchant’s and ordered a sandwich, but they lost my order and I didn’t get it for a long time. I snarfed half of it and put the rest into a go box and walked back to work, where I logged in a minute late back from my break.

I have a box here at my desk containing half a veggie sandwich, some chips, and some potato salad. They also gave me a cookie for my trouble; hopefully it doesn’t have raisins or something equally gross in it.

The bad news is that I apparently possess supernatural powers of healing: I had three normal months after having my uterus scoured out (“normal” in this case meaning a schedule on which one bleeds for a few days, and then does not bleed at all the rest of the time), but now it seems the respite is over and I’m back to spotting all the time. This means my uterine lining is POSSESSED and is REPLICATING AT AN EVIL MAD RATE, A CONDITION THAT IS RIGHTLY TERRIFYING TO NATIONS AROUND THE GLOBE.

Stupid uterus.

Hair!

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In which I feel totally cute.

I got up early today and went and had my hair done.

I got highlights, I got lowlights, I got it cut using three different types of cutting devices, I got my eyebrows colored and waxed, AND I got free coffee. My hair is all blonde and straight and asymetrical bob and everything.

I’m so freakin’ happy! I shall have cute hair for GBM!

When I walked into work, everybody was all, “Your hair! It’s so cute!” and I was all, “Dude! Thanks!”

A Couple of Years in the Life

Blurbs

In which we turn and face the strange / ch-ch-changes.

Two years ago today, I was married and living in rural Iowa doing the American Dream thing, with the mortgage and the house under reconstruction and the quiet desperation and all that shit. The Ex was working in Cedar Rapids that week and I was very carefully not blogging about what a fucking relief it was to have him out of the house so I could have a break from the daily battle of either providing sex I didn’t want to provide or enduring a nasty fight instead. He’d been being a good husband for months by that point but I couldn’t bring myself to care. He’d waited too long, made me wait too long, and I found I just couldn’t thaw over a clean kitchen counter or a load of folded laundry… not after having literally begged for six years for just such small kindnesses.

I felt like a royal bitch but I was too fractured to stop being one. I was drinking a great deal, and working a part-time job when I wasn’t cleaning fucking house. I was miserable and rotting and totally ignoring it because I couldn’t figure out how to escape the double albatross of marriage license and mortgage. I had panic attacks all the time and I censored damn near everything I said because the vast majority of it was so terribly cruel it couldn’t be uttered. I felt frozen. If you’d asked, I’d have told you I was happy. I spent hours daydreaming about being single: not about handsome lovers or travel or riches, but about being alone in a small, clean space I had total dominion over.

One year ago today, I was separated. I was living in AmmZon’s house and starting a part-time job. I was drinking a lot and sleeping a lot and partying a lot, but I was beginning to feel more like me than I had in years. It was a transformative phase, and I remember finding incredible joy in simply not being nagged, not having to check in with anyone, not having to do anything I didn’t damn well want to do. I felt like I was decompressing, like I’d been chained at the bottom of the sea and had finally gotten free.

Today, I’m living thousands of miles away from all that. My whole life is different. These days, instead of being a wife on 27 acres with literally tons of belongings I’m a 39-year-old woman who owns no towels or flatware, no furniture or linens. [I own less right now than I did twenty years ago. If we count success by accumulation, I’m a miserable failure: I don’t even have a bicycle, let alone a car.] I’m just starting to make friends here, but for the most part I’m lonely. I live with my grandmother and work a full-time job that offers no room for growth that I’m incredibly grateful to have at all. I spend an awful lot of time alone inside my own head, thinking about ageing and what I thought I’d be doing the year I turn 40 and realizing I never had a plan: when I was younger I wanted to get married and play house but I don’t think I’d ever really visualized myself actually being that person…

Before marriage I was always looking for The One, but ever since my separation the mere idea of starting a romantic entanglement sends me into freakin’ orbit: I want nothing to do with anyone else’s desires or needs WHATSOEVER. I’m craving friendship and companionship, yes, but I’d probably gnaw my own arm off before I’d consider seeing anyone romantically. I’ve realized that when you’re in a relationship you’ve tacitly agreed to give a shit about another person and that you’re obligated to try, no matter how tired or needy you are yourself, pretty much whenever they ask you to. And I do not find the perqs of a relationship to be worth that cost. I’d rather be alone, quite frankly. It’s too expensive, to be always willing to try, to be always willing to give, to be always willing to put another first just for some dubiously good companionship and a little more money than you ever have when you’re alone.

I think I’ve finally become disabused of the notion of romantic love. Not because I’m a scrooge, but because I don’t think any such thing exists: a successful relationship is probably built of enjoyment and tolerance and understanding and honesty, and all of those things as far as I can tell are diametrically opposite of ‘romance,’ which seems to require in order to function a certain amount of misunderstanding and objectification. What I mean to say is that if you know someone well enough to actually be with them, you can’t possibly have ‘romantic’ feelings about them because by then you know they fart and you can’t possibly ever crave them in that romantic love sort of way.

The whole concept of romance has done hearts and culture more damage than fast food, I swear. Meh.

In other news, today is goblinbox’s seventh birthday! Happy birthday, goblinbox.com!

OMG So Yum!

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In which there are superdelicious foodz!

The Best Aunt Ever™ picked me up after work last night and took me to College Place for dinner at a tiny little place called Bangkok 103.

College Place is a vegetarian haven because apparently the town is comprised mainly of a Christian sect – Adventist, I believe – that is entirely vegetarian. They have a kick-ass crunchy veggie store I have yet to see the inside of, and the stores in the area all have rather extensive vegetarian food sections because of them.

Bangkok 103 is run by a wife/husband team and is reservation only. I had Thai iced tea and veggie curry with tofu and it was wonderful, as was the company of my dad’s sister (who taught me how to twist and do the monkey when I was quite little, and is therefore practically the most important figure of my formative years).

After dinner, which she paid for, we dropped by her house and she gave me two bags full of books and I fell in love with her handsome boy dog, a sweet shepherd who shared his “bunny” (all stuffed toys are bunnies to him) with me. After that I was SUDDENLY FREAKING EXHAUSTED because of this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned COLD and went home and went to bed, where I slept for fifteen hours before coming back to work.

In other very tragic news. Lips the Office Fish died today. It’s a sad day for the entire office.

Sickness Redux

Health

In which I can barely even think.

Sunday I woke up sick. And pissed off about it, too, because if you’ll recall I WAS JUST SICK and it isn’t time yet to be sick again. But sick I was. And pissed off about it, too, but I already said that.

Point is, my aunt was calling because my uncle was sick too and needed help setting up his computer and his ‘net connection at the new shop. So I let her come pick me up and then spent about four hours plugging stuff in and then cursing at a stupid little USB wireless adapter until it finally agreed to respeck my authoriteh.

I finally got home and collapsed into bed, where I promptly began to have a terrible fever.

It hurt. It sucked. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I finally managed to crawl to my purse and get a Tylenol into my body and the rest of the weekend passed somewhat more coherently. The few hours I was actually awake, that is.

Now I’m at work. I am dizzy and cold, but I don’t actually feel too bad. I mean, when I’m not coughing I feel alright. Mostly I’m just out of it.

I came to work today because I close, and if I call in sick someone else has to work a ten-hour day. Not to mention that I’m taking 3 days off in two weeks to go to GBM and I’ve only been working here for four months and I don’t want them to know I’m a flake quite just yet.

God, I feel like crap. Stupid germs.

Tech Support Purgatory

Blurbs,

In which I give you a picture of call center life.

Yesterday, for my first call of the day I was on the phone with a customer for 106 minutes trying to set up his DSL. It should have been a 10 minute call, tops.

The hardware was properly cabled and all the correct lights were lit on the router, but Vista would not let him login to the modem GUI. I manually put the machine on the proper subnet, disabled all other connectoids, and IE still wouldn’t let the customer into the damned GUI.

It was frustrating because I don’t know Vista, and all Vista users are over 60. Which means I can’t just say, “Close out of that window,” or “Open your firewall application,” because they don’t know what statements like that mean. They need to be directed through absolutely every single click – especially those stupid Windows Vista security pop-ups – and it’s hard because I don’t know exactly what they’re looking at and, to make it even betterer, most people can’t read very well. If I say, “What does the window say?” they gurgle and mumble and I have to guess.

Later I had a guy who was super upset that I couldn’t help him – not wouldn’t, but couldn’t. The problem was that he wanted to connect his computer via USB to a DSL modem but he didn’t have the driver disc. I explained that he had to have the driver disc to go any further, and that since he hadn’t bought the modem from us I didn’t have one I could send him. He insisted that we “should be able to go into Control Panel and Internet Options and install the USB driver in there” because he’d “done it that way before.” (Which is, for you non-techies, utter bullshit and just plain wrong.) While I was trying to explain to him that drivers can only be installed three ways: from files stored in Windows, from a driver disc, or from the Internet, he hung up on me in a fit of pique, but not before telling me that he’d never had such bad service from our company before. And I was being NICE!

I’ve been doing this computer shit for a long time now, and while Windows will typically find drivers for USB cards themselves, there are very specific and particular drivers for weird USB peripherals like, say, ebook readers or DSL FUCKING MODEMS FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

Then there was the guy who ran the CD he got from the telco after ordering DSL from my company, even after we specifically told him not to, and it killed his WinME machine. Killed it, dead. The thing won’t even boot. And I had to tell him it wasn’t our fault and there was really nothing we could do about it. I felt so bad.

Then there were about five calls from DSL orders that had gone strangely awry and had weird, totally unusual things wrong with them. No path, or strange hardware failure, or actual telco outages…

Damn near every call was an exception call, the whole day. My call time average yesterday was about 45 minutes and when I left – after working a nine hour shift – the queue had still not been cleared.

Today my department supervisor was agro because he’d been yelled at all morning by customers who didn’t get called back yesterday. He fired off a few emails to us techs that made me agro too.

Because shit, as they say, flows downhill.

Today it’s slower, thank god, but the morning was all angry voice mails left by customers who can’t connect because they don’t know how to type but think it’s my personal fault and that I’m maliciously keeping them from being able to surf for porn over their cheapo dial-up connections… Okay, maybe it’s not that much about me, but STILL.

Right this second, I’m on my second DSL call in a row with a customer whose order was lost or halted for some reason only the telco knows, and of course it’s after five so I can’t do anything about it until tomorrow…

And even though it’s a new day, the attitude of the great unwashed “them” is pretty much what it was yesterday: pissed off and petulant. And I really do take it personally when I can’t fix it for them, because that’s why I do this job: I like to be able to fix shit for people.

Long story short:: work’s been kicking my arse these past two days. Gah.