I Was So Much Older Then (Updated!)

I'm younger than that now.

I was reminded of that line by Bob Dylan the other day when I had a series of awkward conversations with the new girl at work, who may or may not also work as a stripper as her other job.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  The Bev doesn't judge.  In fact, when I heard that one of the new advisors (a notorious but unlikely-looking playboy) was thinking of hiring one of his ultra-young paramours as an assistant, I was secretly thrilled.  I hardly socialize with any of the uptight stuffy folks here in my little office, choosing to keep to myself aside from brief, polite exchanges when proximity requires them, so the idea that someone with a little pizazz and a little raunch was coming into the office was exciting.  The fact that my other female coworkers were scandalized just sweetened the deal.  Bring.  It.  On!

Enter the new girl.  It's not clear whether or not she was/is a stripper at all, but she is very young and very pretty.  She's got a lot of tattoos, including the ever-popular upper arm barbed-wire and a tramp stamp.  She wears a lot of make up and perfume but dresses appropriately, if not a little too nicely for our laid-back office.  All of our exchanges had been brief but I helped her learn the ropes quite a bit for her first week.  She was nice but a little... off, somehow.  Socially awkward.  She had a hard time maintaining eye contact, talked very fast, and asked weird questions at weird times.

I quickly decided that she and I would interact just as I do with the rest of the coworkers with whom I have nothing in common; that is to say, only when necessary.  Next thing you know, she keeps coming by my desk awkwardly trying to chat, which is not something that I encourage.  I have work to do and an overly-talkative crazy cat lady coworker to contend with on the best of days.  Plus, I sneak in quite a bit of my own writing (including this blog!) during my down time rather than make idle, forced chit-chat with anyone.  Call me reclusive, I don't care.  I don't come to work to socialize at this point in my life.  I want to do my job, collect my paycheck, and get the heck outta Dodge.

What followed were two extremely bizarre conversations that left me scratching my head and mentally adding her to "THE LIST."

The other day I'm making copies and sending out a fax.  She enters and blurts out, "Are you married?"  I said that I was, and then she proceeded to ask me a series of increasingly personal questions.   I was already edging towards the door as politely as I could when she asked if I have kids.  I said, "Yes, I have two boys.  They are seven and three."  She then said, "Oh, I have two boys too!  But they're rats.  Their names are Collin and Brandon."

I just smiled blankly.  Did she just compare my children to her pet rodents?

I asked her a few cursory questions about the vermin, but she wouldn't let me go just yet.  She asked if I have any pets and I told her we'd just gotten a kitten.  She then launched into a 10 minute tirade about how important it is to spay or neuter your pet, and if I didn't do that then I was practically abusing my kitten.

HELLO?  First of all, I've owned more pets in my lifetime than I can count on both hands, I used to volunteer at the Humane Society, and I guarantee that I've owned pets for longer than this skinny bitch has been alive.  Plus, my kitten is 10 weeks old - far too young to be spayed.  Maybe find out a little something about me as a pet owner before lecturing me for 10 minutes about something that I already agree with, ya' fuckin' weirdo!

I walked away scratching my head and muttering under my breath, but otherwise dismissed the incident as "Okay, the new girl is kind of odd."

The next day she showed up with a bag of stuff "for me."  Turns out, Skanky McSkinny-Bones is an Herbalife consultant on the side, so she oh-so-helpfully brought me in a whole bunch of samples because I've been getting over a cold.  Sounds nice enough, right?  Completely  unwanted, but nice.  Until she hauled out packets of weight loss shakes and thrust them at me.

Oh no she di'nt!

Let's get this straight.  I definitely don't have spare cash to be dropping on overpriced echinacea tablets, nor do I have the desire to starve myself or drink my meals in an effort to be skinny.  I like my curves, even the ones that I'm currently working on paring down after enjoying a little too much BBQ & beer this summer.  More importantly, who does that?  Who just shows up and says, "You must need these weight loss shakes since you're such a cow," after working with someone for less than a week?  Bitch best step off.

Later I saw that she had put a little Herbalife display up in the kitchen, leading everyone who walked in to ask who the fuck was trying to hock their wares in the break room, and IS SHE CALLING US FAT?!

For the first time ever, I actually bonded with my coworkers because of our mutual confusion caused by the crazy new girl.  So there's that.

On the way home from work I was telling Jim all about it and we had a lot of laughs at her expense.  We agreed that she is in that 20-something bubble when you think you know everything and have it all figured out, before the bottom falls out and bad shit happens in your life and you realize that you don't know your ass from your elbow about how life works.

I truly believe that age can bring wisdom, but really we just get wise to the fact that we don't know jack. 

*******UPDATE*******


Guess who was "let-go" this morning, right after I hit Publish on this post?  I'm a little freaked out.  *glancing over shoulder*  Is this place bugged?  


Yikes!  Back to the pole you go, Herb-Girl!

A rant about my iPoo'd

This morning's drive to work was an exercise in frustration, and at the risk of going all Andy Rooney ("Did ya ever notice that...?") or Jerry Seinfeld ("What's the deal with...?") I need to vent for a moment. 

It was just one of those mornings:  someone had a minor accident so traffic was backed up in town, making me run a few minutes late, my youngest son was stuck on "repeat" mode and just would NOT stop talking, the minivan in front of me was managing to slow down while going downhill without touching his brakes, and then some a-hole with out-of-state plates cut me off and proceeded to go 25 mph.  Normally I'm pretty unflappable in the mornings because I'm only semi-conscious, but today I was getting increasingly irritated.

Since my usual six radio presets were all sucking and/or stuck in commercial hell, I put on my iPod.  Lately I've been getting kind of tired of my playlists so I just put it on Shuffle thinking that with over 200 artists and 800+ songs, surely it would come up with something I felt like listening to, right?

WRONG.

Why is it that in this day and age, with all this technology, they can't come up with a decent method of shuffling songs on a portable music device?  They have just never been able to get this right!  Remember the days of the 6 CD changer?  We all thought they were so cool until you realized that:

1. The machines always pick a favorite CD and keep giving you song after song from that disk while largely ignoring the others.
2.  There is a long pause as the machine clunks and whirs and changes the disks between songs.

So now we've got iPods, which are supposed to be so freaking smart and above all of that, except they're totally NOT.

Today my iPoo'd was positive that I wanted to listen to The Doors.  Well, iPoo'd, you're dead wrong; you see I am neither drunk nor high at 8 in the morning, but thanks for the suggestion.  I push "next" and it starts up with Pink Floyd.  Ummm,  did you not hear me?  I said I WASN'T high.  Next.  Phish.  Goddamn you!  I haven't wanted to listen to Phish in about 10 years.  How did that get on there?  NEXT.  Christmas music.

#*&%!@

Okay, deep breaths.  It's all MY music, after all.  Can't blame anyone but myself for having it on there.  What bugs me is that when I skip a song by, say, The Doors, why does it give me a different song and then make the song after that another one by The goddamn motherfucking Doors?!  Why??  It's like the iPoo'd gets in moods and becomes quite insistent that I should listen to a certain artist that day.  One day every single song that came on was about sex; my husband started laughing and said, "Your iPod is horny today."  Other days it goes from Greenday to Mozart no matter how many times I skip tracks and tell it I don't feel very Mozart-y that day.  Shouldn't there be a SMART iPod shuffle function??  I mean, really!

Work with me here, people!

By the time I got to the daycare I had skipped 10 songs for every 2 I let play and I was about ready to chuck the damn thing out the window just to watch it shatter.  Sure, I could go home and laboriously make more playlists, but sometimes I want to be surprised!  No, I don't want to listen to "White Christmas" in July, but I don't want to delete it off the iPod/iTunes either; I tried to keep it from synching the songs I don't like but there it was!  If I were in charge of the world Apple, I would assign all tunes a mood and let you select shuffle by mood.

Turns out, the iPoo'd got it right only four times this morning: Dancing on My Own by Robyn, Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2, A Night Like This by The Cure, and Marching Bands of Manhattan by DCFC.  Turns out I was feeling a little emo this morning.  Who knew?  Did I know I wanted to hear those songs?  No, no I did not, so there's no way I could have made a playlist with those tunes.

Shuffle can be wonderful that way, when it's not causing me to drive into traffic as I fumble for the "next" button over and over and over again.  It's either insisting that I play certain artists or playing random shit that I don't remember downloading at all.  The other day mine played a song in French.  Yeah, French.  Why?  I have no fucking clue.

Does your iPod ever come out with some random crap and you have no idea how it got on there?  Does it have an agenda of its own?  Please tell me I'm not alone.

Today kinda sucks, so let's have a laugh.

Hey there, beautiful people. How's it hangin'?

I'm having a rather shiteous day, but I'm doing my best to pull myself out of it*. It's a gorgeous day out and I woke up in such high spirits, but one thing lead to another and now, yadda yadda yadda, life sucks.

No, no, that's being melodramatic. It's not that bad. All of the important things are still okay in Bevland, but I did have to deal with the following irritants all before noon today:

* I weighed myself this morning for the first time in months. Motherfucker! That scale simply must be broken.

* The daycare charged us $20 because J got stuck in construction traffic and was exactly 2 minutes late to pick up the kid last week. Two minutes = $20. I feel like for that price we should at least get a handjob out of it or something.

* The internet was down at work when I got in. I'll bet you didn't know that in addition to being my office's chief ass-wiper, bad smell-hunter, and complaint-listener, I'm also the closest thing to an I.T. person that we have. Turns out it was nothing that 3 hours of my time and a $287 switch couldn't fix. But, at least I had the joy of listening to all of my a-hole coworkers bitch and moan about their lost productivity while I figured out what was wrong, so that made it all very satisfying.   /sarcasm

Screw you guys!  I'm going home.

ANYWHO.  Enough of me kvetching!  These problems are teeny tiny compared to others, so let's watch something funny and have a larf, shall we?  Yesterday the family and I took a little road trip over to the seacoast.  On the way there, the kids were clamoring for Happy Meals and we were hoping to have 5 minutes in which they'd stop talking for a goddamn second so we could hear ourselves think, so we stopped at McD's.  They each got a Batman toy, which seemed harmless enough until we examined it closely.  Then we noticed something... not quite kid-friendly about Batman.  Take a look:

Uuummm, yeah.  Does it look to anyone else like Batman is... um... well.  YOU KNOW.

Oh, look who I'm asking.  Of course you see it too!  That's why we get along so well!  :-p

There.  I feel more cheerful already, though probably not as cheerful as Batman feels right now.  Hope you're all surviving your Monday!

*That's what HE said.

Finally!

Hey guys! Blogger was such a massive bitch this morning. It's 4 PM and I am just now able to get into my dashboard and make a new post, and of course... now I've forgotten what I was gonna write about this morning because my brain is full of Swiss Cheese, empty Twizzler wrappers, and the odd tumbleweed.

What? I smoked a lot of dope in college, shut up.



Anyway, at this point I just want to kick someone's ass and make them my bitch. If Blogger were a real-life human, I'd be cracking my knuckles and squaring off.



Since I can't kick Blogger's ass, I will just grumble angrily and cast vicious aspersions about it. Take that!

Okay, kiddies, since I don't have anything nice to say I'm gonna go ahead and shut my pie hole. Just wanted to say hi and let you know I'm not, you know, dead from the random violent storms and tornadoes we had in New Hampshire yesterday.

I would normally promise a better post tomorrow, but who knows if Blogger will cooperate, eh? I know better than to write checks my ass can't cash.

TTFN!
XOXO

Screw you, pooch! (updated)

Boy, did I fuck up this morning. I'm so, so embarrassed and annoyed right now, but am comforting myself with the fact that today's "oops" will only cost me money, time, and inconvenience and nothing more important.

What happened?

I'm an idiot, that's what happened.

This morning I was running a few minutes behind schedule to catch D's bus. He ran down the road to wait at the bus stop, and as is my habit, I loaded M into the car and started to drive the 1/10th of a mile down the street to wait with D until the bus picked him up before continuing on to daycare/work. Except today it was cold out for the first time this Fall and my window was frosted. Instead of waiting for the defroster to do its job or rummaging around in the car for my ice scraper, I decided to drive down the driveway with only a little patch of cleared windshield to see out of.

Bad fucking idea. BAD IDEA. Fuck ME.

My left front tire hooked over the edge of our steep drive way and I slid sideways down towards the lawn until I was stopped by a small, half-dead birch tree, which wedged itself between the front corner panel and my side view mirror. For a minute, I thought I could just put it in reverse and back up, but after a quick assessment I became fearful that it was too steep to back up and doing so might A. cause further damage or B. make the car roll over.

So I got out and took out my little son from his car seat in the back (on the other side of the car, thank goodness), then I went down and saw D onto the bus and came back to check it out further. It was clear I needed help getting it out, so I did something that to the Vermonter in me was second-nature - I walked to my neighbor's house and rang the bell. Bear in mind that our neighborhood is not a close one; we are all nice to each other but don't talk a lot, and the neighbor I chose is the newest to the block and our least favorite. However, the husband is a tow truck driver, so I thought if anyone could help, it'd be him.

After several rings of the bell I was about to give up and call AAA when a man emerged and said he'd help. He wasn't the guy I expected, but said he was a roommate (didn't even know they had one, but whatev). The good news is he was extremely nice and helpful, and he got out their big truck and chain and, after several huge pulls which I thought might just pull off my front tire, he got the damn thing unstuck and even drove it up onto the road for me. Meanwhile I'm standing well clear of it, holding my son while he says repeatedly, "Mommy not careful." Ha... yes, well-observed. True 'dat, kiddo.

Then the neighbor crawled underneath the car and assessed the damage, reattached my dangling front headlight, and told me it was safe to drive. He refused payment of any kind and I felt very much like Blanche DuBois all of a sudden. Like her, I've always relied upon the kindness of strangers.

I stopped at an autobody shop in town and they looked it over and said I should go through insurance. It's gonna be pricey, even though it's driveable and doesn't look THAT bad. But, my A/C compressor is punctured ($300+), the side quarter panel needs replacing ($300-400), and my headlight is busted ($300-400). There are a few other minor repairs to make as well, plus labor... plus a rental car because the work might take a week....



Yeah. F.M.L. x 1000.

I'm an idiot. It's a damn good thing I don't care about cars or money, because I'm going to be without both for a while!

EDITED TO ADD:

Ok, now that I've talked to the insurance company and found out that most of the collision repairs will be covered I'm feeling a little bit better. I'm still a moron, but at least I can laugh about myself again. I suppose it could be worse:

I'm in a baaad, bad mood.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.


Yeah. I'm fucking grumpy today. If I haven't stopped by your blog in a day or two and left my usual pithy and loving comments, please don't be offended. I'm just pissy as hell for no good reason. Hormones, maybe, or the phase of the moon again, or maybe I'm just overdue for a case of the grumps. IDK, but whatever it is is PISSING ME OFF.

See? Told ya. Bad mood.

Anywho, here's some stuff that is contributing to my shitty attitude. Let's do a little listy-poo, shall we?

1. My crap job is boring; I don't have enough to do, and the work I do have sucks. My boss is on vacay this week, which I usually love because I can slack off with reckless abandon and take long lunches, etc., but this week I'm just irked every time one of our asshole clients calls with one of their asshole problems. Don't even get me started on my asshole coworkers, because we'd be here all day. Why don't I go get a new job? Because I fear change, and I'm lazy and unmotivated and have no career ambition anymore, that's why. I honestly think I am meant to be an heiress or socialite or something, because all I want to do is have a good time. Stupid life.

2. We have two car payments at the same bank. I sent one check in with two payment coupons, one for each loan. I wrote in the exact amount on each slip, AND I wrote the account numbers in the memo of the check. I got a note the other day saying we were late on one of the loans, so clearly the idiots applied it all to just one loan and nothing to the other. Stupid jerks.

3. My husband is going to his college buddy's (2nd) wedding on Labor Day weekend. It's in Oregon. Has he booked a flight or done anything other than commit to going? Nope. I just checked for him and the flights are all over $500 and don't work for his schedule. When I told him, he got all annoyed and tried looking himself, then said, "Ugh. I'll just do this later when you're home to help me." Goddamn it! I just helped you! I just looked, just now, and told you what I saw! Which was nothing! So now I get to look forward to figuring this out for him when I get home later, and to paying out the ass for him to go across the country to get drunk with his old friends while I do something super fun and glamorous that weekend.

What will I be doing, you may wonder? Well, I will be driving myself, my two children, and my mother to New York for my grandmother's funeral, that's what. WOOT! Party in the minivan! Jealous? Yeah, I thought so.

4. Everyone keeps dying. I've been coping with the loss of my father two months ago; most days I am able to think good thoughts about him, and I find myself bringing him up in conversation a lot. "Dad always loved 'such-and-such'," or "Dad used to say, 'blah blah blah'." But the other day I found a server full of photos that I had completely forgotten about, and I found a picture of my dad laughing at a birthday party 5 years ago. My sister is at his feet, gazing up at him adoringly, and it's just such a good example of why we loved him that I lost it. I cried and cried and cried, just because I miss him. I know he's okay, I know that it was his life's plan and all that good stuff; I have peace about his passing. But I miss him and will always miss him, and that pisses me off.

5. I'm a slacker daughter who dreads calling her depressed mother because is makes me sad. I'm selfish. I do it because I must, but I drink a glass of wine to steel myself beforehand. All she talks about is cleaning out my dad's belongings, and who said what in their sympathy cards, and the business of death. I offer to drive the 2 hours up north to take her out to dinner to cheer her up, but instead I get roped into spending my Sunday cleaning out her garage. FUCK. MY. LIFE.

6. It's humid. So humid that you can't see the horizon. So humid that I can't get my rings off of my sausage fingers. So humid my straight hair is frizzing.

7. Pictures from yesterday's beach trip reveal troubling truths about the state of my upper thighs. Skirted bathing suits, here I come. What's next? MuuMuus?

8. I snapped at my husband the other night and hurt his feelings. I apologized, and he is fine, but I still feel like shit. I just haven't been appreciating him as much as I should be. He's a great father, and I should be more grateful.

9. Nobody around me ever shuts the fuck up. Well, almost nobody. Last night we were out to dinner with Mala & her family, and it suddenly dawned on me why she and I get along so well. We were in the middle of the table, across from each other. On one side, our children were yammering away and blowing bubbles with their milk and generally being obnoxious, on the other side, our husbands were blabbing away about some boring shit, and she and I were just sitting there eating our salads. I looked across the table at her and grinned, and she grinned back.

Sometimes, you don't have to talk. Sometimes, you can just sit there and fucking eat and not fucking TALK. She gets it.

10. I am an idiot who didn't put on enough sunblock yesterday, so now I'm Lobster Girl. WTF is wrong with me? I managed to keep my children from burning, but I am now sporting a ridiculous halter-shaped sunburn which hurts like holy hell. I've been rubbing the lotion on its skin, but it's not helping so far. Goddamn me.

I could keep going, I'm that grumpy, but I'll stop now. Ten reasons to be peeved are more than enough. This too will pass; my bad moods don't typically last more than a day or two, but right now I'm going to keep wallowing.

Truthful Tuesday

AKA: It's my blog and I'll rant if I want to.

I came back to work today, and am regretting that decision. My boss hasn't darkened the doorstep yet, but I'm dreading the moment he does. He'll be nice and all, but he's just so self-involved that it's bound to be one of these conversations:

Boss: "I'm so sorry about your dad. Are you ok?"
Me: "Thanks. I'm doing ok. Not great, but ok."
Boss: "When my wife's father died... blah blah blah, lots of redundant crap that's supposed to somehow make me feel sorry for his wife for her loss a YEAR ago."
Me: "Yes, that's very sad. I remember. How's she doing now?"
Boss: "She's alright. She still gets sad... more stupid annoying tripe about himself and their coping mechanisms from the death of an 86-yr-old man a YEAR ago."
Me: nodding sympathetically and making low sounds of consolation.
Boss: "So anyway, about those TPS reports...."

*SIGH*

So far the rest of the office is leaving me alone, thank goodness, but I'm sure that won't last. I'm just glad my crazy cat-lady coworker isn't in today, because all she will do is blab for five straight hours about every person she's ever known who has died, EVER. Because that is exactly how she rolls. Jerk Store! I might just snap and kill the bitch. It's been 6 years of listening to that harpy drone on and on and on, and this might just be the event that snaps my patience in two!

On a funny note, a friend of mine recently suggested that I get an air horn and give her a good blast whenever she starts up. HAHAHAHA! I think that's an excellent idea, but she is old, and I don't want to kill her, just shut her up. Still... I might consider it.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, boss came in, and the conversation went exactly as I had predicted. HA! I rule! Also, I was just thinking that I was a teeny bit peeved that no one from the office bothered to send me a card or some damn flowers, and Boss tells me that he and his wife are having a tree planted in Israel for me. Um, thanks. That's very... thoughtful, I guess. Whatever, dude.

Ok, more truths.... Things that have bummed me out this week:
Ads for Father's Day
My father's empty chair at the lunch table
Mala's woes... I will be busting some skulls if need be. Trust.
Being forced to shop yesterday for clothes to wear to this big family wedding we have this week.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. Jim's brother is getting hitched on Saturday. I LOVE this BIL, love him silly, and I love his bride-to-be (BTB). But, do I feel like schlepping my entire family onto a plane to Philly on Thursday, getting us all looking halfway decent, and putting on a smiley face for the entire group of in-laws and BTB's family all weekend long? HELL to the muthafuckin' NO.

Things that have made me happy this week:
My friends are awesome
Online chats
Plans for future fun
Getting mobile web for my phone (it's the little things)

One last bit of truth for now: My boss is sitting at crazy coworker's desk today for no good reason. He does this now and then, and it pisses me OFF. I mean, the man's got a perfectly good office, yet he sits 4 feet away from me? He's not even working, he's looking at CNN and ESPN. Goddamn it!

I VANT TO BE ALONE!

Ok, anyway. That's what's new today. Aren't you glad you checked my blog? Ha ha... sigh. Ha.

Greeeeeat!

I got my very first anonymous hater comment today. Woo-freakin-hoo! I guess I have finally arrived as a blogger.

Apparently someone who wished to remain nameless read my comment about no-talent assclown Clay Aiken (a comment that I made here on my own personal blog containing nothing but my very own opinions and ideas, mind you) and decided that the reason I don't like Clay Aiken is because he's gay. Or, more specifically, that I think he shouldn't have any fans because he's gay.

(pardon me while I try to stop my eyes from compulsively rolling back in their sockets)

I think maybe someone missed my point; I don't hate him because he's gay, I hate him because I think his music sucks. Also, I think it's funny that some women slobber over him when he's clearly not interested.

But hey, it sure was nice of Anonymous to stop by to tell me I was "trying too hard to be cool." Awesome. Thanks for taking a couple of moments out of your busy day of yelling at waitresses, kicking puppies, and luring jailbait into your van to seek out the blog of someone you don't know and try to ruin their day! You obviously rock! Good luck being you!

On that note, my regulahs may notice that I have painstakingly gone through and deleted all of my family member's names. Sorry to make things more confusing for you, but obviously, the ol' blogaroonie has attracted a crazy or two. Well, crazies we don't know, that is. So, going forward, BS = Big Son, LS = Little Son, DH = Dear Husband, and all of my friend's kids will be referred to by their initials only. I've also changed my location to the more generic "New England."

*sigh*

Oh, and by the way,

The people at Spanx are lie-tellers.

After wriggling into the scuba suit I ordered from them in an effort to NOT look like I never exercise, I was sorely disappointed to discover that instead of sucking in the flab, it simply made it smoother.

I've bought control garments that redistributed the fat so you have unholy bulges and rolls in places that God never intended women to have bulges and rolls, but this was not the same. $82 later and I looked like a much tauter chubby chick instead of Cindy Crawford circa 1985, as I had hoped.

Mothereffers forced me back to the gym, which is where I'm heading right now. Bastards.

How quickly it can all go sour

I was in a great mood this morning. It's Friday, I slept in a bit, the birds are singing and all that good shit. Then I got to work.

Ugh. I know I said I wouldn't complain about my craptastic office space existence anymore, and I really meant it... bit fuck it, I give up! If I can't bitch about my ridiculous coworkers and their ridiculous issues than what's the point of having a blog?

Anywho. Here's a recap:

Nasty Bitch Nancy (NBN) ~ This woman is just not happy unless she is complaining about something. She recently took a couple of exams so now she feels like she's Queen of the Fucking Galaxy, when in reality she's still just a glorified assistant like the rest of us. She is outwardly nice to people most of the time, but don't be fooled - she loves to backstab and bitch about you when you're not around. Trust.

Incidentally, the copy machine seems to be on the same menstrual cycle as NBN, because it seems to act up whenever she's in the bitchiest mood. Or, we all just deal with the fact that it sometimes sucks in more than one piece of paper at a time (because it's a freaking COPY MACHINE and they do that!), whereas she finds it necessary to shout wildy and exclaim, "I hate this thing! Can't we (and by we, she means ME) do something about this damn machine?!"

Crazy Ass Janet (CAJ) ~ Those of you who know me know that CAJ is my own personal demon. She is 70 years old, drives 90 minutes ONE WAY to work a 5 hour shift, and never, ever, ever shuts the fuck up. She remembers every compliment that anyone has ever paid her EVER, and regales me with them at any opportunity. I've been here for 5 years and I still haven't quite figured out what she does, except be an enormous pain in my ass. She sits 4 ft. away from me and talks to the back of my head while I dutifully ignore her.

It's not in my nature to ignore people, and it's not in my nature to be openly rude to people. I'm kind of a friendly gal, if I do say so myself. But this job has beaten the friendly right out of me. If I speak too much or even make EYE contact with CAJ, she will talk non-stop for the next 2 hours. About knitting, or her cats, or she will list every freaking thing she ate from Friday till Sunday and how she prepared it. Oh, and she once made something called "Hot Dog Pie" and made me eat it. She sucks.

There are many more characters in this motley crew, but I will stop here because I'm getting all blotchy and aggitated just thinking about them. But, I'm done holding it in. These people are sucking my soul out of my eyeballs on a daily basis and I need to vent. So suck it.

Angry blogging

Let me preface this post with the following caveat: I'm in a foul mood, and I dislike my work intensely. I also don't feel good, and it's my first day back after 5 days off. That being said, I don't think it would take much to push me off into the deep end right about now, so this particularly curmudgeonly client just reeeeeeally got under my skin.

Is there any phrase more infuriating than "you people?"

WTF does that mean? I hold a personal grudge against people who use that expression. I just had a client bitching to me about something my boss didn't do before going on his vacation (shocking, I know!) and he actually said, "This is costing me money because of you people."

Look, dickhead, I'm a pee-on. I answer his damn phone. When have I ever cost you money? "You people."

You just made the list, buddy!