oh deer...

The times I despise most in my life are those times when I balk and get the dreaded deer-in-the-headlights syndrome.

I am a deer.

Maybe I am a tick on a deer.

I need to clean out 17 years of files before I leave this job. What do I do with them? I am such a bad filer, I should probably just throw them all away. It's all on my computer anyway. I am replete with junk as old as 1989, along with about 10 years of photos that need to be sorted.

This transition is causing me far more heartache than I expected. I nearly cried when I said goodbye to the graphic artist who does the newsletter I work on. He's a little man who works for a local printer part-time in semi-retirement and teaches calligraphy on the side. He probably doesn't weigh more than 110 pounds and lost his wife a couple of years ago. I didn't realize how much I would miss his old bony butt. I am going take him a dozen doughnuts one last time in a vain attempt to fatten him up. ;-)

The department I'm going to work in part-time while finishing out my last year of school is pretty volatile in terms of relationships. I will be going from a department that was too toned-down and uptight (but had 0% backstabbing) to one that might be way too high-strung, passive-aggressive and full of conflict. They are having a retreat partly to work out their personal differences. THAT scares me.

And it should.

I feel totally neurotic and am worried about everything. I'm not too good at worrying about the unknown. The anticipatory angst is driving me nuts.

That's the problem with working with one department or having one job for too long. You get worried you can't do anything else, or that leaving the safe place you're in is going to be a huge mistake.

In 10 working days we're going to find out.

Hopefully I won't implode from all the self-imposed pressure.

Poo-fargle and yippity-gargle...

I have been feeling really down lately, so blogging has slowed down. These are the times I wish my blog was anonymous so I could chat about less superficial things, but alas, this blog is only semi-anonymous, so I must be semi-cautious. I don't want get bitten in the ass by my own blog (unless of course it bites me in such a way as to give me a butt-lift to make me look like I did when I was 20 years old).

I miss knitting, but I don't have time to do it anymore. When I do have time after work, study, internship and puppy maintenance, I need to paint for the show in November. Someday I will be out of school and I will only have ONE job. Someday.

Which does bring me to the point that I will be selling a significant portion of my yarn stash on Ebay. There's no reason to keep it around at this point. By the time I get to use it, I won't be interested in all those previous selections.

I shall give proper notice to you knitters out there who might want to partake of such a wooly purge.

For a more interesting post, click here

plastic pants...

I have printed out calendars before, marking off the months, weeks and days before I quit my dead-end marketing job, but now that it's LESS than a month away, I am, as the children like to say, "pooing my pants."

Perhaps my first accident came when I figured out on paper that I would be taking a $29,000 pay cut. Yes, that was a big one; requiring an ongoing change of the undergarments. I would have had to put my plastic play pants on had I decided to go to the pool...

The next stinky accident came to pass because I couldn't transfer on the day I wanted, wreaking all kinds of havoc in my finally-got-this-schedule-squared-away mindset I had finally achieved. No, nothing is easy. I had to massage, finagle, and rebuild all of that--all over again. This morning it is mostly settled thankfully.

More smelly events are in the future, as when I walk out the door on Aug. 11 and effectively end my 18-year marketing career. I won't be an editor in the professional sense anymore. I won't get to play with the company's intranet, or blow ridiculous amounts of film trying to make boring events look exciting.

I won't get to be our online "Dear Abbeee" anymore (I managed an online Q&A for our company). I will really miss that. Before I started that forum I was a stern defender of the stance, "There are NO stupid questions." I was wrong. Dead wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. There ARE stupid questions. Really, really, really stupid questions. It was fun to read them and even more fun to try to answer them.

I won't get to play with my graphics program anymore to correct all the hideous photographs other marketing folks send me for the company-wide newsletter. But I won't miss that newsletter. Good riddance. I wash my hands of thee...blech. Pooey.

More on all that ongoing crap later. I suddenly ran out of blog-steam.

Biiig Diiiig Regular Shin-dig

In my opinion of course. I have a relative who is a geologist who is quite particular about his job. Several years ago he used to inspect materials and areas where major construction was to occur. If he identified substandard concrete or other materials he reported them to his company. Unfortunately those warnings were usually ignored and actually got him labeled as a "trouble-maker."

He reported it because it was IMPORTANT.

I'm sure this wasn't exactly the same situation, but this kind of slop goes on all the time. Some of the things he told me really made me mad...that the stuff they were using wouldn't stand up to pressure, etc. But HE was a "trouble-maker."

Why doesn't it matter until someone dies, or even more feared by them, sues.

Which brings me to another sore spot...

...The slow death of small business thanks to white-collar thieves. When I am late on a payment for something, I get a call from some slob in upper New York with personal anger management issues. And I find a way to get caught up. When a small business provides a service and the client doesn't pay on time, they get a call from the company. And then they ignore it. And then they NEVER PAY.

This is otherwise known as stealing.

And it happens all the time at my husband's company. They purchase services. They receive the services. They don't pay--for months and sometimes not at all.

Why? Because they know a small business won't have the money to sue.

Personally, I think these fuckers need to go to jail. It's one of the reasons why we struggled so hard financially while hubby was in training. In a 100 percent commission job, you have to get paid to eat. And they weren't paying. Fortunately, there are some other clients in the mix right now that get the cash flow going.

And that's what I'm worried about as I look "forward" to going part-time next month. A couple more good paychecks and my income drops by about 60 percent and my benefit cost triples (part-timers get screwed on benefits at our company). So, small-business-thieves can make our lives miserable.

Pay small businesses on-time, please! (Or I'll strangle you with yarn from my obscenely large stash that just-sits-there-because-I-don't-have-time-to-knit-anymore.)

But that's another post.

the dumbest neighbor EVER...

That would be me.

We've been working with our dogs on socialization and leash-walking lately, so while my husband was working out a couple of nights ago I took each dog around the block separately. First Petey and I made the trek and then I came back and got Pepper, who is the dog we most need to socialize because of her shyness.

So.

So, I'm walking around the block and my neighbor comes out with his girlfriend and their three fairly large dogs. Pepper gets a little bent out of shape over the excited dogs, but not too bad. We say "hi" and then he asks me if I am a "professional dog-walker" now.

This is where I get stupid. No, make that stoopid.

I say, "No, I'm your neighbor." I point at my house and add, "I live right there."

No shit.

Apparently Pepper ate my brains and shat them out on the backside of the city block. Because they weren't with me with I said that.

They took pity on me and didn't laugh out loud or let their jaws drop open...at least not right then, because perhaps they knew my rancid brains were around the corner steaming in the Tennessee humidity.

A few steps later and after thinking, well, I have lived here 10 years, I came to the high-powered conclusion that he probably DID RECOGNIZE ME AFTER ALL. And, just perhaps, he was utilizing that humor thing. Just PERHAPS.

I thought I heard Pepper whine, "duh, really?"

But it's too late. It's all gone down in the annals of unexplainable, STOOPID behavior. I probably elicited a block-long conversation on the finer points of being STOOPID.

STOOPID NEIGHBOR.

Dat's me. Somebody get me the pooper scooper. I'm going back to get my brains.

mowing down the pounds...

Too bad THIS GUY doesn't live in my neighborhood. I would have been the first taker.

You disgust me...

All you people who park in handcapped designated spots because you are LAZY and SELFISH.

I went to the grocery store at lunch to pick up some goodies and when I drove in I stopped for two ladies to cross from the door into the parking lot. One lady had a grocery cart totally full of items. She pushed her cart on to her car somewhere in the bowels of the lot. The other lady had nothing, was jabbering on a cell phone, casually walked in front of me and got into a van in the very first handicapped spot in front of the door. Then she just sat there yacking on the phone. No hangtag, no plate, no anything--just a big beeyotch with an over-sprayed blonde bob and a cellphone jammed in her ear. I tried to give her a dirty look as I parked and walked into the store, but she was so absorbed in her conversation and rearranging the contents of her purse that she was oblivious to all that was around her.

She was well-dressed, in her late 40's and didn't limp, cough, or lurch. In fact she seemed extremely relaxed and not in a hurry at all.

I see so many really old and slightly handicapped people purposely NOT park in these spaces because they want to give those spaces to people who have wheelchairs or crutches--and because they want to function as normally as possible.

I suppose not having a brain or a heart would be considered a handicap...