Death by Thirty-Eight Cuts

I have been in a horrible mood as of late. Hundreds of little irritations that I should ignore, yet I feel them poking and jabbing at me, disrupting my sleep in the morning, leaving me anxious, sharp and too apt to poke back.

Rather then leave those things in my head, where they take up unnecessary real estate and make me miserable, I am writing them down, as many as I can remember. Maybe if I send them down the tubes, I can free up that space for more important things.

A lot of these irritations are overlapping annoyances. Some of them are probably only in my head. Some of them are going to be offensive. Some of them are downright stupid. I Don’t Care. I need to get them out of my head before I explode.

In no particular order:

1. I have not had more than 2 days in a row off in two years.
2. The announced buyout of smallEmployer by corporateBehmoth meant putting our plans for a fall vacation in Europe on hold.
3. The backup invitation to join J’s family at the beach is frankly unpalatable to me.
4. The first action of corporateBehmoth upon closing the sale of smallEmployer was to serve notice (anywhere from 2 weeks to several months) to 10 people considered redundant, including one individual in my department.
5. Although I have been told my job is “safe”, I have zero confidence in my department head, as he avoids conflict at all costs and did not give my fired co-worker the courtesy of the heads up extended to the redundant employees in other departments.
6. Although I have been told my job is “safe”, I still have no idea of whether I will be retained by corporateBehmoth when the entity merger is completed in the fall.
7. Although I have been told my salary is “safe”, I have no confidence that I will be retained at my current level of pay.
8. Although I have tried to maintain a cheerful attitude, I have been worn down by the repeated, battering pessimism of an otherwise lovely coworker. Said coworker ruined one Friday for me.
9. One of the product owners is a liar and really bad at it.
10. J’s attitude, which is worse than mine. It has come to the point that I dread engaging in conversation, as most of it is about how much his job sucks.
11. J’s increasing myopia, which could best be described as “if I have not experienced it, it doesn’t exist”
12. Said myopia as the reason why the front door lock still gets jammed, locking residents of the house anywhere from several minutes to several hours.
13. Said myopia to J forgetting to leave the rear screen door unlocked, so there is alternate access into the house.
14. Said myopia to the incident of sticker shock J experienced earlier this week when I showed him the minimum amount of money it would cost to fly and accommodate three people in Europe for 2 weeks. Even though I had explained to J, on repeated occasions over the past year, replete with cost breakdowns, the current expenses of international travel.
15. J forgetting to follow up with me on miscellaneous stuff. Example: The leak underneath the sink? Up until yesterday, I assumed that J was just ignoring my complaints about it, as he had not given me an update. In fact, he is aware that it is leaking, but all the pipes have to come out in order to fix it. Which is a big job.
16. J forgetting to wash the skillet, when it is his turn to do dishes. Which means it usually sits on the stove, covered, until it is needed again. By which time, it emits a seriously unpleasant odor once the lid is raised. There have been incidents where it sat for days, with food in it.
17. Feeling like my decisions are being second-guessed, especially on items that no one else wants to take responsibility for.
18. Feeling like my decisions are being undermined, especially on items that no one else wants to take responsibility for.
19. Feeling like I am being criticized for decisions on items that no one else wants to take responsibility for.
20. Feeling like I am going to be blamed by J’s family when he forgets to tell me about an obligation. Example: J promised to help a nephew with nephew’s Eagle Scout project. J forgot to tell me, leading to me witnessing a very uncomfortable phone conversation between J and his father, as we were headed to see my parents for the day.
21. My belly, which has become a large, scarred, ugly, flapping thing that can only be semi-contained by granny-style panties.
22. I cannot find a bra that will remain comfortable for 12 hours for love or money.
23. It takes so much effort to find sexy pajamas in comfortable fabrics.
24. It takes so much effort to find skirts that I am not embarrassed to wear.
25. All the days I end up refereeing fights between J and Toddler Alien.
26. That J will not take the bus to work in the mornings, in spite of the fact that mornings go smoother when I don’t feel him tensing up with worry that he is going to be late for work.
27. Toilet training Toddler Alien.
28. All the medications I need to take to control asthma, migraines, allergies and other ailments.
29. How fatigued I am by the end of the day.
30. One of my suggestions to address the fatigue, budgeting the hiring of someone to come in and clean a once every few weeks, is rebuffed.
31. I could still hire someone to come in and clean occasionally, but it would eat into whatever discretionary funds I have and offends my sense of fairness, as the other people who benefit refuse to contribute financially.
32. Every single conversation I try to have with people about the above turns into a contest of one-upmanship.
33. The contest of one-upmanship leaves me feeling guilty and unheard.
34. I spend upwards $120.00 on diapers every month
35. The strained relationship I have with my parents, due to my father’s alcoholism and my mother’s enablement and denial of my father’s issues, her own medical issues and her tendency to make me the goat whenever something upsetting happens.
36. The sometimes-strained relationship I have with my siblings, because I have more stringent boundaries then they do in dealing with our parents.
37. Feeling guilty for spending part of my share of our tax refund on a Kindle, even though I have read far more in the past month then in the past two years.
38. Feeling like I can’t change anything, no matter how hard I try.

Cesar Chavez

I suspect Google's decision to celebrate Cesar Chavez's birthday (instead of noting Easter) is not going to sit well with certain factions of the population.

Edit 1: 7:25pm

Two of my in-laws complained about the doodle at dinner. Not surprised.

Edit 2: 9:12pm

The outrage has hit the series of tubes. A roundup of comments from twitter and other online media at Salon.

Edit 3: 10:00pm (Child Alien is having trouble sleeping. I'm hanging upstairs to run interference so J can get some work done. Thus, I have nothing better to do than troll a series of tubes, seeking  out hurt feelings).

1. Commentary from Slate.
2. Google did an Easter Doodle in 2000.

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

My paternal grandfather died last Saturday, March 23, 2013. He was 92 years old. For the past several years of his life he had a slow moving blood cancer, the kind that grinds you down but doesn’t kill you outright. I don’t think the cancer was the cause of his death, but I am unsure.

He didn’t want a memorial service or funeral, so there will not be one. He didn’t want an obituary, so none was published. He donated his body to science, so his last act as a human is to be dissected by others. His wife of 72 years, my grandmother, will follow the same path when she passes away.

I am surprised at how I am affected by this. Not by his passing or the choices he made on how he wanted his death handled. My grandfather was religious enough to believe that death was not a reason for mourning; it was the passage to the next part of a soul’s journey. When my dad, resorting to a bit of dark humor, told me about the medical donation, he finished with the comment “There wasn’t much left of him to donate”. I replied that [my grandfather] would have enjoyed having the last laugh on the subject.

I mourn the opportunities I missed to know him better. Up until high school I saw them every 1-2 years. My paternal grandmother (his wife) was incredibly critical of my mother, to the point that she blamed my mother for my father’s problems, which lead to a breach between the two of them that lasted almost 20 years.

My grandfather tried to mediate between his wife and my mother, but was unsuccessful. They became such a contentious subject that for several years after the final fight between my grandmother and my mother, I did not talk about them in my mother’s presence and I saw them only twice more between high school and last Saturday.

So I missed out. I missed out on knowing sooner that my grandfather was not the teetotaler of my childhood memories, but the type of man who enjoyed a glass of champagne on a Sunday afternoon. I missed out on knowing sooner that he had been stationed in France during World War II and part of his work, as an Army Private, was to transport the officer’s liquor rations from Paris to the camp. That he loved Paris. I will never know of his love of champagne is connected to the time he spent in France.

I will never know many things about him now. And that makes me sadder then anything.

Testing Blogger iPad App

Because if I am going to follow through on my resolution to write more, I should probably utilize some of some of the tools to make it easier.

I would like to be able to compose an entry offline and publish when I have wireless access.

Today's Public Service Suggestion

Scenario: You learn that a family member has put plans for fall trip to Europe on hold due to the possibility of unemployment in the next year because of the acquisition of her current employer by a multi-national firm with 50K+ employees:

Appropriate Response: Wow, that really sucks. I'm sure things will work out for you.

Inappropriate Response: Since you are not going to Europe, you can join us at the beach this summer!

Ugh.

Starting 2013 with a Sense of Schedefraude

My FIL is annoyed because residents of Pennsylvania can no longer put items such as televisions and computers out with the bulk trash, in an attempt to keep items containing hazardous wastes out of the landfills. Naturally, because my FIL gets this information “on the internet” from sources that I am kindly defining as “dubious”, his facts had a high level of distortion.

To wit the passing of the state law was a socialist directive straight from Obama’s lips to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania legislature’s collective ears, and that consumers and businesses would have to pay for the disposal of such items.

In the same conversation, he informed us that he would never donate anything to Goodwill as it was a for-profit organization owned by a single individual who was making millions of dollars off of selling other’s donated cast-offs. When J asked him where he got this information, he replied “on the internet” and “in the newspaper”, but could provide us with any additional information. J’s mother also backed this assertion, leaving J and I to look at each other and shrug.

A hunt to track down source material turned up several ask.com type websites where people were asking whether Goodwill was a for-profit organization, a handful of references to news articles published in 2008 about the CEO of Goodwill in Portland Oregon, who was drawing a rather impressive $829,000 (give or take a few thousand) salary, and a lukewarm Wikipedia article that listed Goodwill Industries as a non-profit organization.

My skim through all these sources lead me to the conclusion that Goodwill was dancing along the same line as other high profile non-profits that also overpaid their executive directors and spent copious amounts of money on overhead expenses.

These two disparate items came to a neat convergence this morning with the publication of an article outlining the new rules for disposal of electronic items. Goodwill of Southwestern PA has been granted a permit by the DEP to recycle the electronics that cannot be put out with the trash.

I laughed.

The One with the Hand Truck

Several years ago, while driving on Second Avenue, J had to dodge a tire thrown from an overpass. It was a slightly surreal experience, watching the tire bouncing down the road, traffic at a standstill until it stopped moving, exchanging puzzled looks with our neighbor in the next lane over.

Tonight, while driving back from my dinner date with TA, I experienced my second encounter with an item that should-not-be-on-the-road in the form of a hand truck (illustration approximate. Your hand truck may vary in appearance). Unlike the tire, it rolled across the road from the left, hit the front end of my hastily stopped car with a crash and a bang, bounced off the vehicle and into traffic on my right.

To quote TA, happily sitting unaware in his seat, “Whoa. That was loud!”

And completely infuriating, as I had agreed this week to trade in the car that was just HIT BY THE HAND TRUCK.

Changing IV

I’m home with a migraine today, a malady that I am experiencing with increasing periodic (literally) frequency as my body shifts from post-pregnancy back into menopausal mode. The massive mood swings, increase in pre-period of migraines, erratic timing and cramps from hell make me long for the days when I would only wake up drenched in sweat and shivering.

The migraines have also changed, making it more difficult to detect when one is coming. This morning I discovered a new symptom – gag level sensitivity to phantom-like odors, which began at 5:40am when I J, freshly shampooed, leaned over to cuddle me for a moment. In my semi-coherent state I was unable to effectively communicate to him why I could not get away from him fast enough.

Only to pick up the odor again as I sat up in bed, as we use the same shampoo and the smell still lingered in my hair. I did not catch on when I stepped out of the shower and found myself wondering why things seemed to far away. It was only upon attempting to dress and realizing that I was becoming nauseated and incapable of choosing a shirt that I realized that I was about to be in a world of pain unless I took my medication immediately.

I took the medication. Comforted TA, who was angry about being forced to wear pants, then angry because he wanted to take a Dr. Seuss book in for show and tell (theme: seasons) instead of The Snowy Day. We settled on Ten Apples up On Top, which I thought could be stretched as a “fall” kind of book, because otherwise how would the characters have access to so many apples?

J and TA left, and I settled into a dark room and contemplated my life. The awfulness of the mood swings, which leave me feeling depressed and lonely. Last night I planned on going out and running some errands – except that I had no place to go and no one to meet. I ended up coming home and hiding in the bedroom while J and TA played downstairs. I find myself missing my former best friend and fighting the urge to reach out to her, even though I know it is for the best that we are not in contact any longer.

I hate this. I have limited options on how to alleviate the symptoms and none of them are really great. I can’t imagine going through 10+ years of this shit.