Cheese With That Whine?

I’m sitting here watching some movie on the Cartoon Network where a bunch of cats have stolen a car to gain access to medical lab wherein the inventor is creating a formula that would make anyone allergic to dogs not allergic, which means everyone could have a dog and no one would want a cat.  The cats drove the stolen car much better than about 60% of Sacramento drivers.

 

The life of a guiding force to teens is always a challenge, but I’ve been presented with one of my toughest challenges to date.  I can’t discuss it because I don’t want to violate the privacy of the teen in question, but I’m searching out information that will ensure I say and do the right things, because it’s one of those uber-critical points in life that doing the wrong thing could damage the relationship I’ve endeavored to create.  Our tentative discussion went very well, but it’s the toughest thing I’ve bumped up against so far.  Cross your fingers for me.

 

My blog brother at Red Hog Diary has been struck swiftly and soundly in the face with the difficulties and joys of single parenting.  Suddenly, he has days full of things he needs to attend to, kids who need attention and interaction, kids that need rides, and household chores and cooking that needs to be done.  He’s lucky, his stint will be relatively short since his wife will be returning from her assignment away in just a few short weeks.  He seems to be handling it with aplomb. 

 

Tomorrow, I am directed to attend a training session in San Francisco.  Anyone driving into The City on a weekday morning knows what a nightmare the entire experience is.  So, I’ll be jumping Amtrak.  Departure will be 0530 hours with a return 12 hours later.  The fact that people do this every day amazes me…I’m the one who set up her life to have a maximum 10-minute commute.  The whole idea is quite depressing.  It will be the whole team-building, practical exercise kind of training I detest and usually provides opportunity for me not to play well with others. 

 

This whine brought to you by the Id Kid in me.

Sucking Up Warmups Begin

My new boss is coming out to meet me in a few weeks.  It’s all very complicated, but they are pulling me out of the control of the person in charge of my location and putting me under some guy in Chicago.  While I think this will actually be highly effective for one third of my job and most of our offices, there are a few of us who do not fit the mold of the standardized position they are trying to create.  It’s a little daunting knowing you’ll be evaluated based on criteria that you weren’t hired for, nor would have wanted to be, but I’m going to roll with it until I can’t.  I have an evil master plan hatching, the outcome of which will be posted at a much later date. 

There are upsides to this.  I’m figuring I’ll get at least a couple of trips to Chicago every year and you know what that means – a veritable food extravaganza – especially in Andersonville, where the sightseeing is to my liking.  So much good stuff, and so little time.  Also, love to catch a show when I’m there at one of the tiny independent stage theatres.  It’s the most exciting city in the world to me—I’d live there in a heartbeat for 8 months out of the year. 

Even better, one of my old colleagues, long since moved on, who worked in our Chicago office is happy to get together when I go back.  We have a great time—she’s a kick, and a troublemaker.  I like that in a person.  She discovered I loved Port last time and I ended up being dragged, kicking and screaming to a bar with an excellent Port selection.  In the wee hours, when I at last returned to my hotel, I realized I’d had a just a bit much to drink—not a feeling I like at all.   But, would I call her up again?  You bet!  Plus she has some great stories about the inner workings of our company, and, though I don’t spread human intelligence data, I do like to absorb it from time to time.

Perhaps if I really suck up, I can get a transfer!

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
~ Drew Carey

I’m Sprung

I got a little laugh today.  My quality office sent out an email with some new information and referenced the attached photos.  Only there were no photos attached.    Quality control—got to love it.

I’ve been waiting several days for someone to get back to me.  I hate silence.  Had that in my last partnership.  You talk, you express…and you get nothing back.  It’s either they don’t give a shit what you say or they don’t know how to respond.   Either way, I’d think they could at least provide an interim response and do me the courtesy of not leaving me hanging.  Well, I’ll give it some more time.  Perhaps the answer will be worth the wait.  Either way, I’ll know I did what I needed.

Everyone but my first grade teacher seems to have cycled through the house tonight.  The night was perfect, the sky clear, the stars visible (unlike my homes of the last few years deep in the City).  I like that.  Love getting back into the groove of seeing actual people cross my threshold.  Hermit days are over, I’m thinking.

 

I think, in the words of fellow blogger Middle Girl, “I’m sprung.”  Welcome Spring!

It’s spring fever…. You don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” ~ Mark Twain

Hey, Murph

Remember Murphy Brown?  The pit-bull Mike Wallace of a fictional newsmagazine, recovering alcoholic, globetrotter, insider’s insider inside the Beltway; Candace Bergen as Murphy Brown was all that.  Murphy had a couple of weak spots—she could never keep a man (I don’t want one) and she had a different assistant in every episode. Sometimes, the assistant, with his/her 30 seconds of airtime, would steal the show. 

My assistant quit today after six glorious days under my tutelage.  I’ve begun the hunt anew.  Murph had 93 assistants all told in her 10 years, not including her multiple nannies.  Oy, what have I gotten myself into?  I hope I don’t end up Murphy Brown incarnate.   Well, not unless I get $45,000 per episode, er, I mean workday. 

I am so tired.

I was waiting for the universe to dispense some justice but sometimes the universe is just too damn slow. The effects of putting Nair in someone’s styling gel, however, only take a few minutes. ~ Murphy Brown

Superboss

You know, I guess, as in most things, I’m pretty damned lucky.  I have this boss.  We bicker like old married people.  Today, one of our staff called us “Mom and Dad,” as we traversed the office righting wrongs and insisting on the development of good habits on the new office space.

While he’s not old enough to be their father, I am old enough to be mother to most of them.  He drives me stark-raving mad for at least two hours out of every day.  However, I can let him know in my usual subtle way.  Like on those days when I whisper and motion to him, “Boss, come closer…no, closer….here…” and he gets near, and then I reach out with my hands extended, and growl, “Just let me just wrap my hands around your neck.”  And, some days, he needs to be talked off the ledge.  It all balances out.

He’s the only man in an office of 13.  Yesterday, I was saying how we have a serious testosterone deficiency in the office and should consider hiring a man next time around—it would help the “balance” in the office—some days more than others, especially.  I was going one way with this conversation and he was going another. The conversation went on and I placed an inappropriately timed, “Yeah, right,” when he referred to his extreme manliness…when I was already off on another tangent with “Boss’ Angels” and how I think he just likes having all those women around.  It didn’t come out that way.  It sounded very much as though I was casting aspersions on his masculinity.  It took me a minute to realize that he was grabbing his heart, telling me he’d been “stabbed.”   I did backpedal profusely, apologizing, to no avail.  I really hadn’t meant it that way, but it was too late.  I slunk away and contemplated how long it would take me to fill in the 20-foot hole I’d just dug for myself.

This morning, I was multi-tasking while brushing my teeth and ran across a picture of the new Superman—I ripped out the page, ran into the office, scanned it and fired up Photoshop.  I even forgot to floss.  I grabbed part of his bio photo and slapped it onto Superman.  I mean, Superman is the epitome of masculinity, right—except for the tights part, but Superman is about the only guy that can pull that off.  It looked great.  I printed it in color and I put it on his desk.

It was gone next time I went into his office.  I asked how he liked Superman.  We had a little laugh about how I had dug myself a deep hole on that one.  But, I think he saved my little peace offering.  He’s extremely macho, of course, but he’s still a pretty nice guy.

The freedom of authentic masculinity is an amazing thing to see. It produces a “divine elasticity” in men. Finally they can lead with firmness, then submit with humility. They can challenge with a cutting edge, then encourage with enthusiasm. They can fight aggressively for just causes, then moments later weep over suffering. ~ Billy Hybels

Help Wanted

 

In the jobs I’ve held over the years, I’ve been involved in hiring staff.  I’d love to help these poor, fresh-out-of-school kids who have $60k of student debt and no job—call me altruistic—okay, don’t.  So, here are my tips for job hunters:

• There is no “a” in college
• Do your research—don’t tell me that you heard from someone it might be “fun” to work here
• Know what our company does, then tell me how you can help—don’t tell me you think it would be great to “work with people;” trust me, you’ll hate them all soon enough and will need specific skills you can focus on once you start wishing you didn’t have any clients at all
• If you have had a ding in your career history, tell me why—briefly—then stop talking.  If you trash your old company and associates, I know you’ll trash mine
• Don’t give me an oral history of your life back to the 3rd grade when you wont the “most helpful” award from the lunchroom monitor.
• No matter what great things you think you’ve done as an intern, you aren’t nearly as good as the people interviewing you
• We are doing you a service by making you “pay your dues;” to get promoted, you have to show skill in all of the areas of the position you are in and some of those of the position above you—it’s not magic and you are really not that special, except to your mom, and if you have to move back home because you can’t find work or keep a job, she won’t think you are either
• Write a thank-you note; people do notice
• Don’t wear your low-cut blouse and your CFM heels and for the guys, jeez, learn how to tie a tie and polish your shoes, huh?
• And, no, I don’t care what your professor says you should be able to make, the starting pay is not $50k.   

He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career. ~ George Bernard Shaw

FOAD

Dear A-Hole:

 

Annoyed, annoyed, annoyed, and then just flat out pissed off.  No, strike that—double-I want to stick your head so far up your ass that something in your tiny little bureaucratic world might actually make sense viewed through your intestines pissed off. 

I’ve worked for the bulk of my life for large institutions and corporations.  The bureaucracy doesn’t normally get to me.   But, when I run into such blatant head up your assness over the course of several hours and which ends up involving several people who have so way more better things to do as I did today, then it’s time, my fatuous, f*tard, bureaucratic friend, for you to step off before you infect anyone with your miserable, myopic, muddled middle-management incompetence.

Love,

Hahn at Home

cc:  God’s Ear, My Ass, and my favorite SPAMMER who now has your e-mail address (hey, pay attention to those penile enhancement e-mails, okay?)

 Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss. ~ Lord Byron

Frustration

For my employer, it was a good day.  For me, it was stressful and chaotic and I’m crossing everything, including my ovaries, that it all worked out.  Will know tomorrow.  I’ve spent most of the last seven months stress-free, so I guess I was due.  If I smoked pot, this would be one of those times it might come in handy.  I have heard, however, that a “nickel bag” is no longer $5.  I could use a case of the munchies too—five bags of Tostitos and some cheese dip sounds mighty cathartic.

 

Stress: The confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it. ~ Unknown

Dr. Jekyll & Hahnathome

Okay, funny story, really.  I think.  Well, hell, in my hormonal state, what do I know.  So, we had something that needed the boss’ signature in several places tomorrow.  I had signed his name in many places, fully planning to sign it in the remainder of the places, not yet ready for signature.  Unfortunately, I will not be there tomorrow to sign them, so my boss will actually have to sign them himself.  I looked at him and said, “You do know how to forge me forging you, right?”  Then, I gave him a forgery sample to follow for his own signature.

 

Oy I’m glad I have a doctor’s appointment coming very soon.  I think today’s heading says it all.  I’m up, I’m down.  I’m thinking the world sucks, and then I’m on top of said same world.  The inferno flames, then dies down.  I found this little poem that sums things up nicely:

MY MENOPAUSE
And I’m afraid ~ yours too ~ by Shirl courtesy of www.minniepauz.com  (edited)

I know that I am different now
I know I’m not the same
There is a demon in my mouth
That makes me act insane

I feel so hot and sweaty now
My mind is full of rage
I’m sure this shouldn’t be happening
Not yet, not at my age

One day it will descend on you
From somewhere out of hell
You’ll think the maddest witch on earth
Has blessed you with her spell

This is my existence
A strange and manic place
I do not mean to hurt you
Just don’t get in my face

It’s so damned hot throughout the night
Central heating I don’t need
I know what will calm me down
I think I’ll smoke some weed

My memory has abandoned me
My balance, not too good
Restful sleep, is in the past
Anyone not happy can kiss my ass

So if you should come across me
Crying like a buffoon
It won’t be long before I start
Laughing like a loon

Back Seat Driver

What a day at work.  We’re jamming, trying to get a big proposal out the door and little things were going wrong here and there.  Oh, that and trying to get 50 chefs to contribute in the way and in the time I need to complete my part of a 7-course meal is next to impossible.  So, I’ll continue jamming on my part through the weekend.  Hopefully all the information will trickle in.

 

Funny though, my boss and I were in his office with him and his computer on one side and me on the other side.  I insisted on “driving” the keyboard and entering the data that we needed to work on.  He spent much of the time correcting me on this or that, wanting to drive as he would.  Finally, in a very low voice, I grumbled, “back seat driver.”  He laughed and said, “I know, but you insisted on driving.”  Yes, boss, I thought, I will always insist on driving.  Do you not know me at all?    When I got home, I IM’d him, since I know he will be in the office until long after the traffic clears to remind him I had a very fine margarita in my hand and he didn’t.

 

My friend of the stolen car is coming tonight for a brief visit and then I get to babysit her dog for the weekend.  What the hell.  It’s catch up at home weekend anyway.