Some Days I Am Not Paid Enough

I was walking in the hallway right now and someone stopped me and asked me to look at something that was found on the ground. Note to future self, don't touch random things given to you. As I looked at it and tried to figure what it was the people walked away, leaving me with the device. It was small, required a battery, and had an instruction not to put on inflamed skin, or skin that had erupted, or if this device causes pain to stop using. Given it's shape and the previous description I am pretty sure I was holding part of a pocket vibrator, and had a freak out moment in my head. I went straight to the industrial size hand sanitizer and threw the piece out. I then went to the people who handed it to me in the first place, and made them use the sanitizer too. This was after having a child tantrum so hard I thought he was going to puke on my shoes. I heart Wednesdays.

Life without MaGee

I came into work this morning to find out MaGee had resigned on Friday afternoon. Well, okay to be honest I knew Friday night because Stanley told me, but I was feeling sick with an ear infection and it did not register. Today was the first day in 15 months I walked into my office and did not worry about being overwhelmed with her life. It was quiet and weird because I thought people would ask about her and no one did (at least not to me). The next few weeks will be hard trying to carry her workload until someone new is hired. In a weird sense of foreshadowing I spoke to a co-worker on Tuesday and said my life at work would be drastically less stressful if she were gone. Now I guess it's time to see what life is like without her. This decision could not have been an easy one to make, so as I sign off tonight I offer her blessings and good fortune. I hope she finds what she is looking for. And I hope I don't look back on the year of MaGee and see it as my easiest (Stanley please hire someone qualified and easy to get along with).

You Know It's A Bad Day When...

I started by waking up too late to take a shower (damn you benedryl). Walking up late also made me 10 minutes late to work. Instead of my usual walk of shame (I try to complete with no one seeing) I ended up walking into my office to find my boss waiting for me. I had to co-lead a therapy session first thing in the morning, and was asked by a small child, "who did your hair?" I realized then that I forgot to brush my hair. After being uncomfortable at work for an hour I also realized I put my underwear on backwards (thankfully not a thong). Lastly, I had to send two emails to my boss today because of screw-ups I did. All this and it's not even 5pm. I need a drink.

No, I Don't Really Feel Lucky. Thanks For Asking.

An office manager called me to let me know I was "lucky" enough to be picked to attend a training at County Mental Health on how work their online training system. Then I get to come back and teach my new skills to others. First off, I am technology challenged (which is why this blog is so no frills). Secondly, the last training I went to at CMH I wanted to stab my eyes out with knitting needles. I need to remember to bring my knitting supplies. Just in case.

Well The Upside Is That This Probably Won't Be The Worst Day Of My Life.

My mother chilled in the parking lot of my office today for hours. Her car broke down and she called to borrow mine. I thought borrow automatically implied leaving, but what she meant was smoking in my car in the parking lot. When taking a break from smoking she came in and talked to office staff about how I have a wealthy g-ma and am just doing this work because I care. Nice. I thought she had left to run errands, and it wasn't until the end of her stay in my car that I realized how long she had been there.

At one point she saw Stanley coming out of a building and shouted, "Are you Carl or Stanley? Either way I am Lore's mom and I have pictures of you on my computer." Thankfully he realized that this was not as creepy as it sounded.

My mother is also beginning to hallucinate, so before she left she warned me to watch out for other cars who may now be tailing my car. Big Sigh.

My day also included a 3 hour shopping trip with McGee, who incidentally has no concept of personal space along with her lack of appropriate conversation.

This day ended with a migraine which was a total shocker.

Because It Takes A Village To Raise An Ape...

Last week I attended training for work. As if being trapped in a car with co-workers for hours on end listening to the sob stories on Delilah isn't bad enough, the training also blew chunks. The trainer was a crier. The instance occurred when he was talking about a research study concerning gorillas in a zoo. Apparently researchers swapped babies and mommas to see how temperament affects parenting (my first question is this: how you can you definitively talk about temperament in apes, and my second question is: did they take into account that some apes might be pissed at losing their babies and being given new ones). Apparently, the study found that it took a super-ape-mommy to raise a difficult gorilla-baby. If the difficult ape-baby was raised by an average ape-mommy or even a "bad" ape-mommy, then they became isolated and ostracized in their group. But, if it was raised by a June Cleaver-ape, difficult gorillas grew up to lead the group (cue crying) and save everyone from threats (like zoo keepers trying to take away their babies?).

The trainer then went on to talk about (and cry about) how Winston Churchill saved the Queen and her people in WWII (I think it was because he was raised by a super-gorilla).

The most screwed up part of this story is that I am a social crier, so every time monkey boy fell apart at the thought of super-gorillas, I cried with him. In case you were wondering, my training was on how to run a child group (using puppets no less, so imagine monkey boy crying about super gorillas while holding a giant puppet). Needless to say I feel ill equipped to do anything but cry about baby gorillas and the insurmountable power of the English people. Another successful training by I.Y.

I forgot to also mention that Monkey-boy had the flu during this training. After two days of watching him sweat or holding his hand to his mouth to stop the puke, he wanted to shake hands with everyone who finished the the training. Like I said it blew chunks.

“I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels”—John Calvin

At work I try really hard to be circumspect and respectful of others. For all my talking or long winded blogging I am even fairly quiet at work (or I try to be).

I work in a large organization and there are many people here I know in passing only. Which makes it even more embarrassing when I have word diarrhea of my own. Mine comes in the form of inappropriate jokes to people I hardly know (I wouldn't call it harassment, but I can't wait for my friend to finish law school so I can retain her services). Yesterday, I was speaking to someone in passing about a luncheon I attended a few days ago. Apparently, at the luncheon I was seated next to a retired gynecologist, and the lady with whom I was speaking mentioned he was her OBGYN for many years. She then said it felt like he didn't remember her. To which I said, "I would imagine that in his business it's not the faces he focused on, but he might remember the vagina's."

Call Me Irresponsible

You wouldn't be alone. This is what I was called today at work by my boss's boss. All because I didn't respond to email she sent me either today or last week. To be fair, when I spoke to her today her exact words (after I said I had been locked out of the email system for the past week) were, "(polite laughter) Oh and I was thinking you were just irresponsible." Okay so that actually doesn't sound any better. I too gave a polite laugh and assured her that as soon as I was able to I would be responsive to all email requests. When I hung up the phone I was in shock for a second. Am I getting the rep as the irresponsible one? And for something that is totally out of my control. I mean I know I won't get the rep for being the mouth (after all I do work with McGee), and she will also win for most empathetic and passionate about her work. But I thought I would be in the running for helpful or considerate.

The truly messed up aspect of this is that I can't even tell the IT person myself that my email is screwed because he is only available by email. I can't tell you how many times today I tried to tell people about my email woes and their response was, "well just send support an email." McGee herself many times today tried to have me check my email to confirm different things. When the IT came today to work on different issues, he was not directed to my area (even though I spoke with the person in charge of directing the IT guy twice in the morning). By the afternoon I called her again only to be told that she forgot I needed a computer tech because she forgot I had a cubicle (disregarding the fact I can't get in the system).

I felt like today was like a weird episode of "the Office." I ate lunch at my desk so I could spend my lunch half-hour walking to clear my head. Unfortunately this plan sucked on several levels. First, I missed a noon meeting (which I thought had been moved to 10am-I guess you can call me unreliable. Throw in undependable too). Second my quick lunch was a light meal of eggplant parm and noodles. Which made my peaceful walk more of a Michael Scott fun run moment. Luckily, there was no puke involved in my exercise. Or nipple chafing.

When I was talking to Carl his advice was that tomorrow had to be better, if for no other reason than it would not be Monday. Here's hoping. I also had to laugh as I relayed a comment McGee made to me when she came into my area to talk about all the talking going on in her area. She said, "I just don't like to talk in the office area." A major lie and I am surprised she wasn't hit with lightening or smote as she stood. I think she was just mad that everyone in her area was talking about Britney Spears, and not their cats or crazy neighbors (which are her hot topics). Here's to whatever the rest of the week brings my way.