(Yes, I priced going to Indiana for my 4 day weekend but it’s $500 to fly up and also I have many plans including cake and the Talbot’s outlet down in Cheesecake City and the Hunger Games midnight showing, so no dice)

I wanted to go somewhere for our 10th anniversary in July but we couldn’t decide between a vacation and spiffing up the house so instead we spent all our money on purses and going to dinner so now, we’re doing neither.

I hate being responsible. It sucks. I want to be all “Fuck yeah, let’s go to Hawaii and pay for it with credit cards!”* and “Sure, the Visa will pay for the after-insurance part of a round of IVF”** or “Screw it, I’m going to quit my job and let Gene support me and spend my days drinking glasses of red wine”*** because, really, I’m going to be thirty-fucking-five in a week and what the hell has being responsible gotten me?

* We don’t have any credit cards (D’oh?)

** Ugh, don’t get me started. When do I get over this?

*** Whenever I suggest quitting, Gene says “Sounds good, when do I get to quit MY job?”, which is ridiculous as my job is mostly a (mania-inducing) hobby.

If you’re guessing that it’s because Silver Dog is broken, you’re wrong. Actually, I just needed a username and password from White Dog because I had it saved here and haven’t logged onto that site in the Silver Dog era.

After we bought Silver Dog, I spent a little time on Apple’s website to look into trading it in. I was close to doing it, but I just couldn’t. I still have my first laptop, too, BTW…it hasn’t turned on in four years, but I guess this is how those hoarders on TV get their start.

Five minutes later I texted Denise: “Home w/ migraine. Tell me it’s OK to call in sick for that”

“Absolutely!” she replied 90 seconds later. She is a good and loyal friend. Next, I took half of an Ambien.

I hate calling in sick for work because inevitably I have to go back to work and I don’t wanna!

I slept again until noonish, when I theoretically felt up to heating up leftover beef stew for lunch for the humans. By 2 PM, I was asleep again. I think I took a full Ambien this time. Around 4, Gene stuck his head in our bedroom and asked if I’d be up to going to dinner at 6 at Our Favorite Local Restaurant.

“Sure!” I replied, even though I think I was hoping for sushi and my “Sure!” was kind of a “Yeahh, football!” in A Christmas Story type of “Sure”. Regardless, I woke up again at, oh, 5:45 to dress for dinner. I think I ate appetizers for dinner and ended up home with cake for dessert.

(Moral of the story: Stay home).

Oh, and at some point in the day I called in a refill for more Ambien. Yay.

Today!!!! TOOOOOODAAAAAY I woke up with a sore back. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

So now today’s been a heating pad, Aleve, walking around the Outlet Mall (we had to get tickets for the Best Picture Showcase* and also a new pillow for me **) kind of day.  Yes, I totally should have put off traipsing around the mall until…tomorrow. Or never. But I’m a woman, and a particularly stupid kind of woman who refuses to just say eff it and hole up with the laptop and Netflix episodes of Greys Anatomy.

*yeaaah, gonna make Gene see The Artist!

**and NOW I wish I’d made Gene buy the pretty purse for me that I spied in the window @ Michael Kors or at least walked through the Coach outlet (one never knows what’s in there that is not specially made for the outlet and cheap). The chance of getting him to the mall by himself tomorrow is 2% and the chance of me getting back to the mall tomorrow is exactly -500%.

(Yes, I’m excited about a coupon for a spice shop. Leave me alooooone).

I know I purchased something from this deal of the day site last year but apparently they have implemented a ridiculously stringent password system in the last few months so I managed to lock out my Gmail account. Not to be dissuaded, I set up an account using my classy sounding email (elaine.lastname@internetprovider.com)….

And then somehow got locked out of that.

Ha ha! But Crazy Elaine reaaaally wanted the coupon to the spice shop so instead I set up ANOTHER account (yes, a THIRD account) with this stupid website using another version of my grownup email address (elaine.lastname@internetprovider.net – it’s the same as the other email, but different enough to count as a separate account to…)

Get locked out again! Of my third freaking account. And the way to get unlocked… get this…you have to contact the freakin’ deal of the day site and have them reset it. But they didn’t email me my password and username on the first request.

And then on the second request, they sent me the password but not username.

I tried the password with what I assumed was my username (also my email)…

and got locked out again.

I WANT MY DAMN TEN DOLLARS OF FREE SPICES, DAMMIT.

PS – turns out my username was the same as my Twitter ID. Sometimes the internet kicks my ass.

Bah. I’m going to go move laundry around and get the hell away from the twin demons of Shoebuy and Bag Borrow or Steal. I should probably disconnect the internet altogether and hide my cell phone. And debit card. And car keys.

Thursday, I drove Gene to a doctor’s appointment and guess what I did while he was there? I drove to work (which was literally across the street from his doctor’s office) so I could cobble together a client’s file because I forgot to tell anyone about it. Actually, that’s a big lie. I remembered, I just didn’t feel like explaining to anyone why we do this; the answer is

:: shrug :: “I dunno”

And my boss Belinda does not like that answer. If it were up to her we would do no extra stuff for clients at all. Admittedly the file is pretty easy to put together (although I suspect it would take Broomhilda an hour and 47 phone calls to me to figure it out) so really the client  should do it her own darn self but… well, the client more or less screamed for this file earlier this year and so I do it for her every week.

(Freaking weekly payrolls).

The good news about this week is that I will be so crazy busy that hopefully I won’t have time to complain, even to myself. Or maybe I’ll show up tomorrow and get fired for not telling my team about the client with the file, or the necessity of running a report every day to tell us who we need to nag about their payroll. Hmm. Yeah, I should probably have done that. I also think I didn’t tell anyone about running empty payrolls when clients don’t need a preexisting check date.

Oh boy! Now instead of dreading returning to work I’m also super anxious about it. YAY. (Speaking of anxious, my search for a therapist hasn’t gone anywhere, so good luck to me with finding a doctor who’s nearby, accepts my insurance, has evening hours and can deal with my effed up schedule for the next 120 or more days).

(Then again, if I get fired then I will be less anxious and my schedule will open up tremendously).

2) And yes, I still miss Target. Mostly for the frozen Cokes.

3) I sped-read all three Hunger Games books in about a week and a half. I had barely finished the first one (which I borrowed from the library) before I went ahead and ordered the second and third books for my Kindle (or, my Kindle app on my phone and on White Dog). So good. The first movie comes out the day after my birthday in March so I think there’s a pretty good chance I am going to force a certain husband of mine to attend a midnight showing (OK, maybe not).

4) And yes, if you haven’t read them, you should. For no other reason than to get the taste of the Twilight saga out of your mouth. (Ptooey).

5) So, remember what I wrote last night about ‘working off the clock to make myself feel some peace’? Yeah. So I did that tonight, worked until 6:45 (only the last 45 minutes were off the clock of course) and felt amazing until I got home and sat down and it all crept in. I had four tasks to complete. Finished one of them (they got to go first because the client called and read me the mfing riot act), got about 90% done on another (just have to pull the trigger once I verify that the client understands that they will have to pay ~$200 for us to amend a tax return), and glanced a little at the third. The fourth, arguably the biggest, remains untouched. Boss returns from her trip on Monday so maybe I’ll luck out and manage to get it all done tomorrow.

6) Fumbling towards getting back into therapy. My old therapist is rather booked up so I have left a message with another doctor, whose specialty is Life After Infertility. What’s making me crazy isn’t really the infertility thing, but it’s always there anyway. What I really want from therapy is for someone to say “Hmm, yes, your work situation is awful. Quit immediately and get a job folding tshirts at Kohls.” Doctor’s orders, right?

7) It’s not that I’m eager to work for minimum wage, but spending my work day folding tshirts and organizing stock at Kohl’s sounds so relaxing. No one would ask me how questions, no constant phone calls, emails, etc. I could probably pretend to be mute. I would never wake up at 5:30 in the morning for weeks on end worrying, “Did I remember to put the blue shirts next to the brown pants?” Is it wrong that my idea of a happy place is envisioning an entirely tidy dressing room at a department store? What if I point out how much I hate to clean at home?

My team lead said something fairly rude today to Broomhilda and my first thought was “Aww, crap, I’m going to be alone with Broom for an hour or so later today and all she’s going to want to do is bitch about that.” I was right. I had an hour off the clock to try and get Huge Things Done and instead I had to help her out with her crises and listen to her complain about what the team lead said. I could have finished another item off my to-do list of To-Doom if it hadn’t been for that. Ugh!

9) For the record, I think team lead was about 30% in the right and 70% in the wrong. Tomorrow’s his last day and I’m not sure why he picked today to be the day to get all leader-y and why he picked that particular topic to be the Hill to Die On. As of tomorrow by about 5:30 our team will be down another member (down to 5 from 6, originally 8, members), and with it goes about 30% of the brain power. Look at it this way: Not counting Boss Belinda, I’ll be the most senior member of our team.