Month: January 2006

Work Stinks!

So, I got my review Thursday or Friday. (The days run together). My raise is pretty small. I’m not sure what a cost of living raise looks like, but it’s probably pretty close. More money is always more money so that’s a good thing. The review itself was mostly positive. I was dinged repeatedly for negativity (oh, that’s just GREAT! haha). What’s surprising about all of that is that my review was written with my boss’s direct input. My boss is so negative that she’s very far over in the negative/positive scale. She repeatedly badmouths: :::big inhale::: IT Guy 1, IT Guy 2, Training Director, HR Director, VP Of Operations, the son of the company’s owner, the CFO, a general manager, the senior accountant, the controller and the chick in accounting whose title I can’t easily explain. I am fairly certain that if my boss were to be cloned, both the original and the clone would talk about the other behind their back.

So really, if she’s going to be all PO’d about my attitude, she should really fucking think about her own, right? And if I got dinged, who else got dinged? Did the AP lady (who I think I have referred to as The Temp Who is No Longer a Temp)? She’s not exactly Mary Sunshine. And what about the Accounts Receivable girl who spends a good half hour a day on the phone (or cell phone, how taaaacky!)?

And…here’s the absolute kicker: Up until the CFO and our entire IT staff decamped we were probably going to have to make cuts in the home office. It was down to above-mentioned Accounts Receivable girl or me. WTF???

Ugh, the minute the cards and car are paid off, I am so out of there. Since we should have had our reviews 6 months ago, all the pink collars in my office were developing escape hatches (becoming realtors, etc). My escape hatch was and is the same: get to the point where my crappy little salary isn’t so fucking necessary and then get the hell out of there. Plan B or no Plan B. I’d get a job but it would be something I’d like even if it’s something horrifyingly low paid like Barnes & Noble or something. (I’m assuming that bookstores don’t pay much).

Nerds Ahoy!

(Can you BELIEVE I haven’t used that as a post title yet?)

Anyway, the geeks are here. I guess they’re back to hexing me on an every-Saturday basis. Woohoo! On the bright side, at least this means there’s one night a week where I’m not cooking dinner (because they always order Pizza Hut). On the dim side, they’re not playing poker. They’re not even playing D&D. They’re playing some sort of Conan the Barbarian role playing game. I don’t really know what’s going on but Gene’s character uses the same bad Russian accent Brandy and I used when doing dramatic readings of the book “Bijoux”, which featured a Russian character who said “I am big Russian bear!” when talking about his penis.

Join me in heaving a heavy sigh?

This is also a the boy weekend. He got his grades last Friday and they were not good. (I mean, who the hell can’t pass gym class? 90% of it is just showing up!) So, he’s still punished but he can watch TV and stay up relatively late. I guess he’s punished from the xBox. Not sure if there is more. Right now, the adults are discussing the purchase of an xBox 360 so “there is something else to take away.” Uhhhm? I’m still advocating the purchase take place a-ways in the future so some other dumbass can work out the 360’s bugs and issues.

So far this weekend: Friday we got home around 7 and I made the uber-healthy meal of Manwiches, frozen french fries and green beans. (Northern Green beans, not southern-style with big hunks of fat floating about, which is just foul). Saturday, I got to laze about while Gene and the boy took the dogs to the groomer’s and to get the humans haircuts. Sadly, they were gone about an hour. I spent that time lazing about and also vacuuming, dusting and cleaning the living room. Then, we went to lunch at a company restaurant (yummy!) and to pick up the dogs, fresh from their spa day. Next, we went chair shopping for Gene.

Anyone who has seen Gene’s chair since its purchase may remember the comfy brown leather chair and matching ottoman. Sadly, it now has holes in the leather the size of pieces of Wonder Bread. It has passed “ooh, yuck” on the Embarassing Furniture scale and gone to “Put a blanket on it and DO NOT USE THE BLANKET FOR A BLANKET, DAMMIT! The blanket stays on the chair or it gets the hose again!”

Wheee!!

News on the MIL: None at this time. She’s been home from the hospital since Monday. I’ve spoken to her and she sounds good, but tired. She actually had to get off the phone one of those times because she was too tired to talk. That’s a rarity for my MIL!

Unrelated, but here’s what’s super cool: Gene just woke up a few minutes ago and asked where his lunch is (he does this all the time and it’s super annoying). I told him I didn’t know, but since he was too full from lunch to eat dinner last night, how about he shuffle off and make quesadillas? (That was to have been last night’s dinner).

And he DID! And they are yummy!

So far today I slept late (woke up around 10) and cleaned a bathroom and the kitchen. The nerds are coming over tonight for some poker and the house was filthy. Ick. Next up, getting un-disgusting, shopping, and lazing about. Oh, and laundry. Wooooo!

The latest…

This past week has been exhausting. Work has been weird, and when it’s been weird, it’s been busy too. I think there are major changes coming for my employer. I don’t think it will directly affect (effect? I don’t remember) my position. I think the changes will be good overall.

But, the homefront has been bad, too. Anything I can post about work, my personal health (just about better, but I think I may be getting the boy’s f****ing cold) just pales in comparison to this: When I was at the doctor’s a week ago Friday, my appointment lasted two hours (they took x-rays, etc). I called to let Gene know that I hadn’t been sold to the Gypsies or anything when he told me that my MIL was in the hospital, but he didn’t know why.

We found out that MIL is in the hospital because her doctor told her to go there. She went to the doctor because her pharamcist thought she was looking jaundiced. I think we all know it’s not good when the urgent care doctor says to get thee to the ER.

So, the deal is this: My MIL has what everyone thinks is liver cancer. Early in the week there were hopes for chemotherapy but no one has mentioned it in the past few days. Instead, everyone is talking about timeframes. My little bit of research suggested untreated liver cancer patients have about 3-4 months to live, but MIL’s oncologist is suggesting 6-12. I assume it’s really an unknown time and I don’t know where they’re getting timeframe ideas from.

I never thought I’d be so enormously heartened to hear that she has a year to live (if that makes sense to you and if it doesn’t, please keep it to yourself). If the oncologist is right, that means that she’ll live to see another birthday, maybe another Xmas. The thing that made me saddest was realizing that she’d miss my nephew’s first birthday in May. I knew that no matter what happened (barring a serious Miracle of Science) she’d never see Future Maybe Baby D’s emergence into the world, but the unfairness of her missing Nephew’s first birthday just broke my heart. So, there’s a pretty good chance that she’ll be there.

1) We haven’t told the boy yet. We will eventually, but he’s been so edgy lately that we don’t want him to worry about things he can’t solve. At some point we will take him up to OH.
2) Gene’s doing OK, as are the OH relatives. We haven’t discussed it much. He’s so much more pragmatic and logical than I am anyway, so me saying things like “It’s not fair!” really won’t do him any good. I think that when he wants to talk about it he will and in the meantime I’m just trying to keep things as normal as possible.
3) I am just so sad about this. Everyone knows that she’s made me fucking crazy in a lot of ways, but in even more ways she’s done an admirable job of welcoming me to the family, of taking what life has dealt her and really making it work for her. I really don’t know what the family is going to do when she’s gone. I think forward to that inevitable and I just can’t imagine it. I feel that she’s being robbed, that we’re being robbed of years and years of her presence. It’s not fucking fair. I love her and I take back every crappy thing I’ve ever said.

Julie has a good idea…

Julie comments on my last post:
“yeah…good luck with a less lazy husband. Whatever you have now is what you will have when you need bedrest. So, save up some money for hired help. =) =) Or just have Don Henley’s child and he can pay for the help. =)”

And there you have it. The hot rumor on Eaglesfans.com is that he has 3 nannies for his kids (3 of them, all younger than the boy). I wonder if that is one for each kid or if one works the 11-7, another the 7-3 and the final one the 3-11 swing shift.

Edited To Add: I was, however, successful in getting Gene to take the garbage out for me. Yea!

Things I’ve Learned…

(This is not the complete list, just the things that I’ve noticed over the past two or so weeks)

1) When you have a day off from work, don’t celebrate by getting a communicable disease.
2) My Grandmother and MIL are right – the Game Show Network ROCKS.
3) The only thing more stupid than Lingo must be CELEBRITY Lingo, wherein F-grade celebrities try to play the game. Who knew that Trista from the Bachelorette was smarter than George Wendt? Well, she is.
4) Trying to acheive smooth elbows with the same drug you’re taking to rid yourself of a hacking cough will only make you sicker.
5) Cough syrup w/ codeine is a miracle drug. Chris Rock should skip civilian grade ‘Tussin and go straight for this stuff. It’s either made me better faster than anything else or has just made me sleep so much that I don’t give a crap how I feel.
6) When Elaine gets sick, NOTHING GETS DONE. No garbage gathered, no plates cleared, no dishwasher loaded or unloaded…I made breakfast casserole for one dinner (I think on 1/3) and the 1/2 eaten bowl of it was still in my kitchen sink. I think the pan I baked it in will require sandblasting, but I’m going to try soaking and the dishwasher first. If something happened that required me to stay in bed for weeks (such as forced bedrest while growing a Plan B), I think we’d have to have live in help. Or a less lazy-ass husband. Ugh.

what do you mean?

what do you MEAN it’s possible to get a cold the week after Thanksgiving, try to take of yourself, drink an entire bottle of Robitussin (in doses, duh), take an entire ‘course’ of Luscious Prednisone (again, in doses, DUH) and then….

END UP WITH A COLD AGAIN??

This is too much. It just cannot be possible. But alas, and alack, it is. We went to see Walk the Line last night (fabulous, really enjoyed it even if not a big Cash fan*) and then got drive thru from Steak n’ Shake (real food, not a sippable sundae) and I ate it and it was deeeelicious and then I went to bed and Gene came to bed around 5 complaining of killer heartburn. That’s when I noticed, Huh, my nose has that “you’re getting a cold” feeling. And then, then I did what any smart girl would do. I wept.

I’m just going to let the bird flu take me. On the bright side, I’m going to post my abbreviated will right now:

Scooby and Betty get all the consumable food in the house, except the chocolate.
D gets all the chocolate.
Brandy’s baby gets all the cash in my wallet, plus the Gymbucks in my wallet and on my desk.
My little brother gets all of my DVDs.
I would like to be buried in my wedding dress and carrying my iPod. Actually, can I be buried in my PJ pants and a gigantic tshirt? In true Egyptian fashion, I’d like to be buried with stuff for the afterlife, so if someone could pick up some Pepsi, Peanut Butter cups and cookies w/ sprinkles, that would be great.

(*actually, while I’m not a Cash fan, I have tentatively agreed to give a future son the middle name Cash. I like verbs as middle names, what can I say?)

Happy New Year, Party People…

Impressively, I was able to stay awake this year to ring in 2006. (I’m not always able to).

2006 Resolutions
1) Cook more
2) Get a new job
3) Pay off credit cards, car
4) Stop chewing things that shouldn’t be chewed (fingers, etc)

For New Year’s Eve, Gene and I stayed home. Dinner at Mor(t)on’s really depleted our dining budget so we opted to stay in and cook a turducken breast (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken). We also cooked a sweet potato mess that never solidified due to an error in the recipe. I baked a banana cake that turned out pretty nicely.

I think now it’s bedtime.

Goodnight!