08.25.09
Posted in Hmph, Photos, Reno saga at 7:52 pm by jeci
I am aware that this couldn’t possibly be as exciting for you as it is for me, but please bear with me anyway. Because it’s exciting! To have a home! That is not squalid and filthy and covered in grit, not to mention a home that doesn’t have a miter saw on the dining room table (or toilets in the dining room for that matter!).
Annnnnnd, I’ll stop there. Because I could go on all night about the hating and the hate with all the hating of living in a mess. Which is over. So it’s okay, self, shh, shh.
Tonight I have for you the master bedroom. Complete! Clean! Yellow! My favourite colour!
Let’s start with the before, shall we?
Before
What you’re looking at: a poorly lit shot of a very drab, grubby room. The poor lighting has something to do with the fact that there is no lighting. The walls are filthy beige — and by filthy I mean when I washed them down before painting them, they turned out to be an entirely lighter shade of beige — and a filthy beige carpet. There was also, for the record, no baseboards, no closet doors, and the door to the en suite bathroom had a sizable hole in it.
During
The first order of business was to remove the filth sponge carpet. And, dudes. Carpets are gross. There were PILES OF DIRT trapped under there (you can click here to see, if you want). I was truly horrified and have sworn that I will never have carpet again, if I can help it. Next up was painting the walls with fresh paint and — hey! — a colour. OTHER THAN BEIGE.
Then it was time for new flooring…
And then ceiling paint, and closet doors, and doors, and baseboards, and curtains and…voila! A MERE THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER…
After
And we have a beautiful new master bedroom! With lighting and colour and cleanliness. SWOON. Aside: See the bedside tables? They used to be green and last weekend I painted them white to match the bed frame. This was a task I put off for several months because I thought it would be fussy and annoying, but spray painting turns out to be quite the opposite of fussy (although, I’m afraid, extremely toxic). I put it off to the point of considering buying new bedside tables, which would have cost at least $100 instead of, like, uh, $5.
Here’s a less artful shot of the room from the other side, if only to demonstrate Kieran’s handy work in that we now have closet doors that, you know, exist and entry doors without holes punched in them. It also nicely shows off the colour of the paint (it’s called Moonlit Yellow, which is apt because it has a delicate silvery undertone to it). The paint! Which is yellow! My favourite! Did I mention that already?
Tomorrow: the en suite! But for now, bbs, I have a date with Harry Potter. Oh, did I tell you? We’re relaxing this week and not doing renos. We were both gravely run down. Besides, what’s left is so negligible, I won’t even bother boring you with it. But for this week we’re enjoying what is as good as done.
Permalink
05.12.09
Posted in Hmph, My Life Is Punctuated by Useless Bouts of Panic at 7:54 pm by jeci
First, the good news: we bought a condo. There are many things to be excited about—and you can’t tell, but I am actually excited, somewhere deep down—not the least of which is living in a space over 600 square feet for the first time in years. Thousands and thousands of years. OK, that’s obviously not true. But, you know, sometimes it feels like it when I see the cats literally walking backwards in order to get out of the way should I choose to exit the bathroom at just the right moment. What unimaginable luxury lies ahead of us: living in a space with enough room for a cat to turn around!
But I can’t right now. I can’t bring the excitement because I must gravely report the bad news: in order to occupy our new condo (perhaps you should sit down)…we are going to have to move. Remember this? And this? I can’t. I CAN’T.
I have mentioned before that I have a moving sickness that has, thus far, seen me switch homes 19 times, cities eight times, and provinces five times since I first moved out of my parents’ home 16 years ago. And whatever compulsion spurred me on all those years has since ratcheted into DREAD RESISTANCE. My moving bone is broken. I am in my Unhappy Place right now. I’ve stopped sleeping almost altogether, choosing instead to lie awake fretting over imaginary problems. And the more I like awake fretting, the more I lie awake fretting. And the more I’m completely spaced out for desperate need of sleep. The other day I put the kettle on…and then LEFT THE HOUSE to watch the hockey game.
Anyway, it’s not that I’m not excited, or ecstatic for that matter, or spending many an hour doing imaginary decorating. It’s just that…20. Twenty moves. I can’t wait to tell you all about how excited I am and how pretty everything is, but that’s going to have to wait until I get through this one more time.
Permalink
01.24.08
Posted in Hmph at 2:31 pm by jeci
I just beat a hasty retreat from the gym in our building. And I’m miffed.
It happened while I was doing leg presses. The smell. This…very bad smell encroached upon the room and then overwhelmed it. I initially shot an accusatory look at the other woman thinking it had to be her.
(Aside: Now, I’m not usually puritanical about bodily functions but I don’t like this woman. I think of her as Grumpy Face because no matter where we cross paths she glares at me [and everyone, I'm sure]. Like, she’ll get on the elevator where I’m just, you know, standing and minding my own business and she’ll make a point of holding my gaze and glowering at me in this weirdly aggressive way. She did the same thing when she entered the gym and when I smiled in an attempt to be amicable, she made an almost inaudible “Tss!” sound and sneered. Well, slightly. But still—sneered! WTF, right? So if the dumb cow had let one rip, I had no compunction about making her squirm and was even looking forward to it a little bit. Am petty.)
But it wasn’t Grumpy Face. She was busy scowling at her iPod (which she then accidentally dropped on the treadmill, which, in turn, promptly flung the iPod against the window—ha-ha!)(Petty!).
Anyway, it turned out the smell was coming from the courtyard, which was being filled with a toxic green cloud from a chemical sprayer. And if I could smell the chemicals, that meant I was breathing them in! And, worse, my eyes and throat started burning. Jesus. Call me paranoid, but the dude doing the spraying was in a full-on hazmat suit and here we were in the gym not 10 yards away breathing that shit in. HMMMMPPPPPH!
I just think I should have a say in it if the building manager has decided to douse our home in poisons. And, seriously, it’s a prim and pruned little courtyard garden, not some huge industrial fruit orchard*. What harm would a few bugs do? It’s a concrete building, so it’s not like termites can take over or something.
Anyway, I’m not just going to huff and puff about this on my blog and snap the MacBook shut with smug, self-righteous indignation. I’ve decided to bring it up with the building manager and the strata council and have already found organic gardening services in Vancouver. Surely there’s enough of a concentration of Yaletown yuppies in this building that we could get a hearty number of signatures to Go Green if we had to!
———————————-
*Not that I condone the use of pesticides in industrial orchards either. It’s just that industrial farming stupidly lends itself to chemical applications, as opposed to a few innocent laurel bushes.
Permalink
01.03.08
Posted in Hmph, Meh at 10:08 am by jeci
I wanted to post my New Year’s post in the bridge between New Year’s Day and my birthday (which is tomorrow). Having my birthday closely follow the new year is pretty cool, because I feel like I celebrate everyone else’s new year on the first and then get to ring in my own personal new year on the fourth. Anyway, I poured my heart and soul into the post because it’s one that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. I was so immersed in it, I actually broke a sweat; I was writing for three hours. I then made a huge rookie mistake: clicked Save without first copying and pasting my work into an offline doc, without first at least checking that I was still connected to the Internet. So, poof! A post about the cat snoozing in a waffle box, I back up. My heart and soul, I carelessly toss into Purgatory. I experienced an intense flare of temper, fanned my temper with its own impotence, and cursed Steve Jobs for THIS bloody nonsense that has been driving mad–MAD!–these past few weeks and which now feels personal and I hate it.
Anyway, I’m going to rewrite the damn post because it’s important to me. I hope I can bring it back to life. Certainly, if the Great Lost Term Paper Debacle of 1996 has taught me anything it’s that sometimes a whole new draft is even better the second time around AND, against all odds, I might even get the highest mark in the class. So, if my New Year’s post seems a little belated, it’s only appropriately so, since my new year doesn’t start until the fifth.
And tomorrow I’ll be twenty…SIX. Twenty-six! For the sixth time.
Permalink
12.27.07
Posted in Hmph, Sparkle, The New Apartment Saga at 5:57 am by jeci
My favourite Holiday flower: Paperwhites! They’re so dainty and fragrant.
Yesterday? On the (for us) somewhat ironically titled Boxing Day? We unpacked our last box! It was Unboxing Day! This is exciting for us because…Hello! Nightmare!
And, well…OK. I’ll tell you the truth. When we first moved in here, I hated this apartment. A lot of things about this move–indeed, our lives–were a logistical nightmare and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. It was a logistical nightmare that seemed to gather speed and snowball on an almost daily basis until it culminated in the moment when I realized there was no cutlery drawer in the kitchen and I wanted to use a dozen drawerless butter knives to kill somebody. And really, a murderous rampage with the butter knives wouldn’t have been that messy because, since there’s no linen closet here, all the towels that were spilling out of garbage bags and strewn about the floor were just waiting to helpfully sop up a mess for me.
You see, (part of) what happened was that Kieran and I didn’t pick our apartment. Right around the time that Kieran and I were beginning to realize that the always (incredibly) expensive Vancouver has become retardedly so* and our options were to a) live in the asshole of hell** b) not live in Vancouver c) have some kind of incredible stroke of luck, we got a call from my uncle. My uncle’s retiring in two years and he and my aunt will be wintering in Vancouver! They were buying a condo downtown and would we be interested in renting it from them for the next two years at a rate that we could afford? Um, let me think about that for a sec–OK! So it was Option C that ended up choosing us, and us that ended up not choosing our home. Because, obviously, when your generous uncle offers to rent you an apartment in a really nice neighourbood at almost half the rate of what he could get from someone who could actually afford to live in this part of town, you just internalize your need for control over certain details (like cupboard space and linen closets) and thank your lucky stars. And your uncle.
Then, as we neared my uncle’s/our possession date, a bunch of really stressful and unpleasant things happened and our temporary living arrangement came to an abrupt and unforeseen end and we ended up homeless for a brief stretch, shuffling between a hostel, my brother’s living room floor, and an assortment of couches and spare bedrooms across the Lower Mainland. Then I returned to Alberta for our stuff and orchestrated the Worst Move in History and we found ourselves all but buried in boxes in our new apartment, feeling…shell-shocked and numb. Did I mention that the Holidays is a really bad time for both homelessness and moving? Because you have to, like, do stuff for the Holidays. Organize things. Which is hard when you’re packing up your suitcase for the fourth time in a week and have to put all your organizational energy into making sure you have somewhere to sleep the next day. And when THAT’S all over and you’re just exhausted, it’s time for all the family events and Holiday parties and work parties when what you want to do is crouch in a corner of your new apartment, eyeing the towers of boxes and rocking back and forth while eating your hair.
So when there was nowhere to put my cutlery? Well, obviously, the Universe hated me.
Of course, for every problem there is a solution, which for us, because we were burnt out and just needed things to be nice and peaceful as quickly as possible, amounted to throwing money at everything that didn’t work. And there were a lot of things that didn’t work. Because, while this apartment is actually bigger than our last place, it is so dramatically different. Everything is…on a different plane of existence and lots of our stuff just didn’t have anywhere to go. And every time we came up with a solution to one problem, it created another problem. For example, to amend the cupboard/drawer problem, we bought a pretty antique buffet for the dining room, which in turn displaced our bookshelf because the bookshelf doesn’t fit on any other walls. So then we had to go furniture shopping AGAIN to buy two skinny bookshelves. And so on. As a result, the whole unpacking ordeal seemed to take forever. And regardless of how it seemed, it took much, much longer than we anticipated.
Of course, what you didn’t know is that when I said “so dramatically different,” I meant “so very pretty.” And that the different plane of existence? Is a very pretty plane. With floor to ceiling windows. And a view of False Creek. A pretty, pretty view that includes the Granville Island ferry and sometimes, at night, boats that are all lit up with Holiday lights! And…I LOVE MY APARTMENT. I love it! I L-O-V-E LOVE it! Never have I done such a complete 180. And next post? I’m gonna post pictures and rave some more so that you can love it too! Whee!
——————–
*Dear City of Vancouver: Ever wonder why there’s an ever-growing population of people living in tents in the middle of downtown? YEAH. That would be because even two educated professionals with no children can’t afford to live here. Ever hear of afforable housing? Rent control? No? Well…DUH. (Jerks.)
**Again, two words: AFFORDABLE HOUSING.
And, as an aside, who the hell wrote the Wikipedia article on the Downtown East Side? The Whitewashing Committee of Vancouver?!? Way to not mention this is the poorest, most dangerous neighbourhood in Canada. Way to sidestep the fact that this is, in fact, one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the world. And, oh, did you know that, while maybe there’s a “notable” police presence, that’s only because prostitutes and runaways choose this neighbourhood because of the “tolerance” and “variety of services”:
There is a noticeable police presence as poor transitional populations including runaways, prostitutes, petty criminals, people involved with the mental health system, and drug addicts cohabit the area due to its affordability, variety of services and tolerance.
WTF? Yes. I’m sure the children being sold for sex have chosen the area for its SERVICES. And, excuse me, since when are heroin and crack dealers with gang affiliations “petty criminals?!?” But come one, come all to the 2010 Olympics! NOTHING WRONG HERE. Oh no, just a small serial killer problem. It’s wee, really. Do you have your tickets to Ice Dance? (YES I’M MAD. Fuck you, Wikipedia author!)
Uh, anyway. I really like my new apartment.
Permalink
04.26.07
Posted in Hmph, Meh, My Life Is Punctuated by Useless Bouts of Panic at 7:38 am by jeci
As part of my new “Jeci Who Will Do Her Best to Remember That She Is a Latent Lunatic Who Must Treat Herself with Kid Gloves” regime, I am not going to stir the pot of my churning anxieties by musing about all the changes on my horizon or waxing nostalgic on the series of grand mistakes that culminated in my having a meltdown on my 31st birthday. For now. No, for now I’m going to remember that it’s the little things.
Little things like how bad you smell. Not only has it taken me 31 years to discover my latent lunacy, it’s also taken me 31 years to discover my latent B.O. problem. While I’ve had the Most Temperamental Skin in the World since the onset of puberty, apparently I was spared the puberty double strike of Bad Skin/B.O. Until now. (Memo to body: Are you confused? Or maybe dyslexic? It’s 31, not 13!) It would appear that I have been able to mask this problem by routinely slathering my armpits with carcinogens. You see, a while ago, the paper ran an article about the 10 most carcinogenic common household items and antiperspirant was one of the items (deodorant is either okay, or at least not in the top 10). (I’ve searched the Internet for the electronic copy of this article and can’t find it, so you’ll just have to believe me.) I actually dismissed this news with a confident wave of my hand, saying something like, “Pbbbfft! Oh, that one’s no problem! You know, I’ve never really needed antiperspirant anyway.” Which was true, at some point. I know in high school, I used to wonder what the point of deodorant/antiperspirant was since I hardly ever sweat and didn’t really smell when I did; but I wore antiperspirant anyway just in case I DID stink but couldn’t tell.
It turns out that I certainly CAN tell when I stink, which is almost ALL THE TIME now. Always erring on the side of paranoia when it comes to cancer (and believing myself to be genetically blessed with armpits that sweat rosewater), I confidently made the switch from antiperspirant to an all natural, calendula something or other deodorant. Now either deodorant is the most gravely misnamed product ever to hit the supermarket shelves, or I have a problem. I’m not the genetically blessed delicate flower I thought I was, but am a sweaty man beast who can only be quelled by a thick layer of white carcinogenic paste!
Husband has repeatedly assured me that I don’t stink and that he can only smell my hair (and then he leans in and smells my hair and now he is becoming increasingly obsessed with my hair). And then I think that Husband only thinks that I don’t stink because he likes my pheromones anyway, which becomes obvious when he won’t let go of strands of my hair and presses them into his lips. (It’s getting to be a little like that Cripsin Glover character in the Charlie’s Angels movie.)
In the end, I asked (interrogated) my best friend the last time I saw her (numerous times) because I knew she would tell me the truth and wouldn’t be tricked by the pheromones streaming out of the ends of my hair. She said: “But I thought you didn’t sweat! Why did you switch to deodorant? Is it because you saw that article about carcinogens in the Journal? No you totally don’t stink. And you’re too paranoid about getting cancer.”
WELL. Obviously, she doesn’t know me AT ALL.
Anyway, either I’m getting more used to the more natural smelling me or I’ve finally found a deodorant that lives up to its name, so you needn’t fear running into me on the street or anything. And, perhaps ironically, my increased gym activity seems to be helping because that means I now shower twice a day and that seems to head off at the pass any encroaching funk. And SHUT UP. All super feminine dainty women like me shower twice a day just so they don’t get mistaken for some kind of yeti.
Permalink
02.03.07
Posted in Best of Blue Yon Belly, Hmph, Meh, The Man Is Such a Drag at 5:34 am by jeci
Since I have secured a new job and subsequently had a heart-to-heart with my boss wherein I had to honestly explain why I was unwilling to stay in my current position a minute longer than the requisite two weeks (”Well…truth be told, yesterday when I was away from my desk, it was because I had to go cry hysterically in private”), I feel it’s fair game for me to say that my work environment was toxic. That my disappearing for an hour to sob in the privacy of a bathroom stall was not regarded as unusual and was, instead, greeted with a commiserating and empathetic “I know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do the same,” from my boss is a pretty good indicator. And while I would love to sink my teeth into this topic, delving deeper is probably ill advised. Suffice it to say, the last year has been hell on Earth for everyone involved and I am not the only one who suffered a meltdown (three out of a team of six).
Anyway, even if there are work spies reading this,* that my particular area was deemed toxic by employees and employer alike is not news to anybody. In the past few months, in an attempt to address the situation, our group has been sent to several “team building” workshops put on by various and sundry motivational speakers, none of whom did anything to challenge my perception that corporate workshop facilitators are manic lunatics from the same alien race as Tom Cruise.
The first workshop was a full two days, conducted by a woman who looked like a parody of a Russian figure skating coach: brassy dye job, blue eyeshadow, stripes of blush over leathery smoker’s skin, and both days she wore 80s era outfits with hefty shoulder pads and some kind of animal print. Her frumpy appearance was incongruous with her boundless energy and her habit of clapping and exclaiming with rabid glee, “Yaaay! Good for YOU [insert name], GOOD SHARING!” every time someone responded to one of her questions. She also responded to each personal revelation by oversharing information from her own life so that by the end of the first hour, we knew that her father never loved her, she had gone through a bitter divorce in the early 90s, and had, at one point, declared bankruptcy and lost her condo only to rebound by making, “scads of money” and marrying a man who knows how to “push her buttons.”
The purpose of this particular workshop was to get our “colours done.” Somebody somewhere has broken down the 6 billion some odd personalities of the world into four colours: blues (empathetic, sensitive), golds (organized/Type A), oranges (adventurous, outgoing), and greens (logical, analytical). The goal of the workshop was for us to use our individual colours to weave a “plaid.”
I am pretty sure this type of thing is designed specifically to torment people like me who are compulsive people pleasers suffering from a conflicting congenital cynicism.
Highlights of this workshop included: Watching a video of the fish throwing people at Pike Place Market and preparing a presentation on how having fun increases productivity; me getting a stern lecture on how I couldn’t be both blue and orange, nor an extrovert and an introvert, and having to pick one of each**; my co-worker being forced to don a tiara and wave a glittery “blue fairy” plastic wand and give us examples of how her “blue” personality is a gift (sadly, readers, I tell you this with no hyperbole whatsoever); and a dramatic demonstration wherein Oversharing Figure Skating Lady broke a single stick across her purple leopard print clad knee, but when she bundled the sticks and tied them with blue, orange, green, and gold yarn, the sticks could not be broken.
If I’m honest with myself, I must admit that most of my contempt for this workshop stems from being publicly rebuked for having equal portions of seemingly conflicting personality types.
The other workshop of note was the Laughter Workshop. Yes. A workshop to teach us how to laugh. I actually liked this facilitator because he was so good-hearted and well-intentioned that he was oblivious to how his unbridled enthusiasm was often overwhelming for many of us. You have to feel at once sorry for and touched by a man who wears a happy face tie and clown nose and bounds into a room full of hateful co-workers to force them to laugh together. You know, in the same way you at once love and are anxious about a joyful labradoodle with muddy paws who’s been set loose on a cocktail party.
Anyway, I say forced to laugh because that’s what it was. First we had a five-minute warm-up, where we had to clutch at our stomachs, saying/pretend laughing “Ha-ha-ha” (in a tenor), “Hee-hee-hee” (in a falsetto), and “HO-HO-HO” (in a booming bass), and finish each round of fake laughing by waving our hands in the air, jumping up and down, and shouting “Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy!” This was followed by several different laughing exercises that included having to waddle around the room like penguins and tittering, pretending we were chickens and “Bok-bok-bok” laughing, and grabbing our bellies so that we could feel them shaking like bowls full of jelly when we chortled “Ho-ho-ho!” like Santa Claus. The exercises culminated in knee slapping and a crescendo of “Ah-ha-ha-ha! AH-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAA! BWAH-HA-HA!!!” laughing.
Of all the things I could say at this point, I will instead say “Goodbye old job.”
————————–
*I am not being paranoid when I refer to “work spies,” as the public service actually has a department whose duties include reading e-mails and the like, which I found out when I had lunch the other day with one of that department’s employees.
While we’re on the subject, Dear Work Spies: That time I Googled “Pete Burns pussy lips,” I was not being pervy, but was instead trying to see Pete Burns’ botched lip implants and the resulting pus-filled blisters and only realized how “pus-sy” and “pussy” lips are interchangeable after my unfortunate search results appeared. Please remove any resulting red flags off of my account.
**Note that Oversharing Figure Skating Lading was not a trained psychologist. Also note that I filled out the questionnaires honestly and that’s how my results came out. This sort of blurring the lines is, apparently, unacceptable in Four Colour World. (I chose blue and introvert, for the record.)
Permalink
06.20.06
Posted in Hmph, My Beloved Oilers at 12:56 pm by jeci
It breaks a girl’s heart. Seriously, I can’t look at this picture and not want to hug them.
Indeed.
(See? Don’t you want to hug Pronger? Look at his face!)
First team seeded eighth to make it to the finals, first goal on a penalty shot in Stanley Cup history (yeah, Pronger!), and first shorthanded goal in sudden death overtime (yeah, Pisani!). Just not the first team since 1942 to win the cup after a 3-1 deficit. Forced seven games though–with a shutout no less.
If memory serves, back in the day, didn’t the Oilers lose to the Islanders and then come back the next year with a dynasty in the making and beat the Islanders? I’m just saying – in case the Universe is listening – it would be cool if we could make another run for the cup next year and actually win it.
Photo credit: CBC.
Permalink
12.13.05
Posted in Hmph, Meh, The Man Is Such a Drag at 10:38 am by jeci
I started the new job and never get to sleep. Ever.
EV-VER.
This spurred a downward spiral, wherein I awake each morning in complete despair and come home each day to collapse on the couch and wait for death. I contemplated giving up on the blog altogether, as my evenings are dominated by the collosal effort of putting together a meal and then maybe, MAYBE, going to the gym, but probably watching an hour of TV and then it’s time to go to bed, be woken up 900,000 times by the cat, finally fall asleep only to find that minutes after I drift away, the alarm is shrieking away again and it’s time to repeat the whole ordeal.
But then I got a comment. A comment! (That’s brings the tally to three comments, thank you very much.) And, remembering the cathartic power of the blogging and how it made me like writing again, it lit a fire under my tail to take up the blogging again.
So here I am on my lunch hour, kinda but not REALLY blogging about work (for obvious reasons).
This whole fiasco begs the question: Why, Why, WHY is it that I can’t handle working? Can’t handle working from home and can’t handle working from an office. (I was worried/kinda knew this would happen, but what could I do? I needed a new job!)
I have to ask myself whether maybe I am one of those people who is overwhelmed by the pressure of working. You know, those people. The ones who can never hold down a job for one reason or another and they spend their lives switching jobs and complaining. I mean, all I do is edit the passive voice out of people’s letters and stuff, which is no actual pressure at all. So it’s not the WORK per se, so much as the NEVER GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP and the wearing SLACKS and nerdy blouses and the not being able to swear or express political views. You know, basically having to smother my personality and ignore my needs. It totally kills me, this stuff. Seriously, am I normal? Is it normal to hate working? Does everyone else just not talk about how they feel like the whole thing is soul-sucking? Are there any other 29-year-olds thinking, “MY GODDESS, there’s THIRTY-SIX MORE YEARS until I can retire. THIRTY-SIX MORE YEARS! How can I go on?!”
Or is it that I just haven’t found my place in the world yet? Once I have the “right job,” will I be content? Will I no longer dread going to work in the morning? Will I no longer care about not getting to wear my sneaks and having to wait until precisely noon to be able to eat lunch, even though I prefer to eat lunch at 11:30? Are there people out there who really do like their jobs? Or is it my attitude? Maybe I HAVE the right job but just can’t see it because of my bad attitude and finely honed ability to focus on the negative with laser precision.
Helllllppppppp meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Finally, if anyone anywhere has any idea of how to get my cat to shut the fuck up at night and let me get more than three hours’ sleep, I beg of you, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. By the way, those three hours aren’t consecutive. The ignoring/not-reinforcing worked briefly and then spurred her on to new heights of insanity.
(Sorry about the swearing. But, well, I swear. A lot. And I never get to swear anymore. And the words build in me like some kind of pending Tourette’s outburst, so there may be more swearing in the blog to make up for having to say things like “Ffffffffffffuu–Fooor Goodness sake!” when I kick the power supply and lose all my work.)
Permalink