Category: Whining

weather whither

Commute into work tonight was horrific; I arrived, 7 minutes late and as cold as a damp grave, after leaving the house literally an hour early. Translink, which had been faithfully waking me up every fifteen minutes with pings on my phone about cancelled buses, had fallen silent so I assumed, entirely wrongly, that the buses were now running. Anyway, stood in the freezing rain for a long fucking time before a bus came, and got to watch people behave like arrestable idiots on Canada Way.

Shoveled the walkways before I left for work; if the snow stays snow I’ll have to do it again when I get home; if the rain comes it will depend whether the temperature stays above freezing or not. More salt must be purchased; this is obviously not going to be the last snow of the year, since the arctic outflow conditions over the balance of the winter will only too swiftly return….

I posted the first para on fb, now look what my friends said.

I have now learned what happens when you put bubble tea in the fridge overnight, and I have a big first world sad. The tapioca pearls become tasteless rabbit pellets of regret.

Kevin M said:  Yuck

Shane said :  Rabbit pellets of regret. BAHAHAHAHAH!
Diane said: Become?
Allegra Sloman said : I swear it was translucent and looked like fairy snot not six hours ago.
Andi said: And that was….better???

Juliana said:  Personally, I think it starts out that way but YMMV.
Andi said: I don’t drink lumpy drinks.

Debbie said: Man, you kill me, Allegra.

Lynn said: Interesting. I tried making bubble tea at home and wound up with a pot of lumpy tapioca paste (and no, I did not use the microwave!).

Janice said: Oh! That’s what regret tastes like!

Allegra said: Believe me, regret has *many* flavors.

Kevin said: I’ll have the rabbit pellets of regret please. Unless the leftover stir fry of soggy disappointment is on special

Lois said: Leftover stir fry of soggy disappointment……..Yum!

Erin said: That’s the best thing I’ve read all day!

Miles Vorkosigan said:  The Tasteless Rabbit Pellets of Regret is now the name of my Robin Thicke cover band.

5 ! days ! off

First day I’m going to hang out with Mike, because I feel like I’ve forgotten what he looks like. Then, Victoria for a flying visit and back for a Tuesday since I’ve got a shift.

UNFORTUNATELY the schedule in the f*cking office only goes until Saturday so I’ve got an email in to the manager (we have no supervisor, which is an ongoing issue of boiling hot contention for reasons I can’t get into) to confirm in writing that I don’t have to work until Tuesday night.  If I don’t have a response by noon I’m going to phone her.

shitposting

I’d like to thank my mother for invisibly preventing me from saying what I really think about a popular fantasy writer in public. The circle is small.

But Jesus, what a gendered slur.

Same for the manager at work, who has ONCE AGAIN handed out the dress code as if this will magically prevent her from getting spanked when the big boss comes in three days.  Does she ever come in on midnights to audit the housekeepers? No. Does she proactively deal with ongoing supply and consumables issues? No. Does she proactively deal with the housekeepers who sleep, steal, lie and prevent other people from doing their jobs (we know who they are…) No. Does she proactively deal with the staff who take 9 weeks to correct payroll errors including missing an entire week and causing a rent cheque to bounce? No. Does she ensure we have the equipment we need to do our jobs properly, including such new fangled telephony magic as CALL DISPLAY? (LET’S JUST THINK ABOUT THAT ONE FOR A FUCKING MINUTE NOW I WORK IN A CALL CENTRE AND THEY WON’T PAY FOR CALL DISPLAY.) There are other issues, but you get the general idea.

I made my bed. Now I’m lying in it.

Lock, load, rant ‘n roll

Ya missed me?
You duckwits.
This is now the second time I’ve unsubscribed from well.ca. How did I get back on your list? Who knows? Was it malice? Was it stupidity? Was it greed? I don’t think you’re smart enough, corporately, to find out and get back to me on that so why don’t you just assume that’s a rhetorical question?
I quit using you because your customer service people are badly trained, you send me emails when I’ve already unsubscribed, and you didn’t ship me what I needed most out of the order and DIDN’T TELL ME WHEN I’D GET IT. Just took it off and refunded.
Ya fucked up, and now ya fucked up thrice.
If I get another unsolicited email from you chuckleheads I’m reporting you to these guys.  http://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/home
So totally NOT yours,
One severely choked ex customer who up until this point has stayed off social media to complain about your company. Today is a good day to complain about well.ca!

Job interviews

I am very fortunate to have a job interview today.  I know that when I’ve had 70 or 80 interviews the odds are good that I will get a job, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic.  I barked at the HR staffer on the phone who called me to set up an appointment because I didn’t recognize the number and I’d just had a big long run of writing and wasn’t in, “Hey dumdum you’re supposed to answer the phone like God’s receptionist!” mode. Which -every other time- I have done. And I got an interview anyway.  Not exactly sure how to feel.

It’s a reputable company doing reputable things, and it’s a half-hour commute by bus away, just like I’ve wanted.

But I think about job interviews where they love my resume and then they’re like this when I show up because I’m 57.

Or when I ask them about how online reviews say they’re the worst place on earth to work and she snaps, “That’s the factory in the States, not here,” and then THREE TIMES OVER THE NEXT YEAR they run an ad for the position I interviewed for (got a second interview, even), and instead of saying to myself Holy Crapstacks! dodged a bullet! you know what I do? I cry.  Because they didn’t hire me. I know I wouldn’t have lasted if it was so bad three people quit in a year, but still there’s me looking at the Craigslist ad, this last time was only six weeks ago, and thinking why didn’t they hire me?

Or I go to a headhunter and get told, “You have to spend money on clothes and wear makeup or you will never ever get a job.”

Or I go to a headhunter and get told by a woman younger than my daughter that I need to freshen up my resumé. I’d certainly like to know how, given that I haven’t worked for pay in 2 years.

“Volunteer! Spend days researching every company you want to work for and then pitch them hard! Go door to door with your resumé! You need to be looking at jobs anywhere on transit and quit with this foolishness about needing a short commute. Take any job however menial or destructive to your hearing, health or sanity, and look for a better one while you’re working! Go back to school and get something buzzy and pointless on your resumé! Have you tried …(a suggestion which implies that the person you’re talking to, whom you’ve known for 15 years, hasn’t actually spent any time learning who the hell you are)? Leave town and go where the jobs are, like Fort St John and Ft McMurray!”

I understand the world has changed; I have never expected to have a job for life.  I want a job which will feed me, stop me from destroying my life savings, and not be so demanding that I don’t have the energy to write.  If that is too much to hope for, I will adjust my hopes accordingly.  But I am not at the point where I can take just any job, because it would not be fair to my employer for me to just quit when presented with a better opportunity.  And there is always the possibility, since it’s obviously true, that there won’t be another job, and I’ll work in the dishpit of an Italian restaurant until I dissolve with the steam into a little spot of grease in a uniform, but not before my varicose veins crap out.

But it’s not like I’m the only one.

 

I’ve been here since noon

In a couple of minutes they’ll call the flight and I’ll find out if I’ve been sitting here like a fucking idiot for no good reason for the last day. Fort St John is not a fun place to fly to on passes.  PAUL WANTS TO TAKE THE SKYTRAIN HOME.  On April 4.  With no Compass card. My feelings are simple.  He can do what he likes, although with no Compass card he’s not likely to get far, as I laboriously explained to him.  I’m going home in a cab; it’s hours after my normal bedtime and I have hours to go before somebody offers up a bed for me.

later….

Home.  What a fucking waste of a day.  Three flights came and went and I’m not going to FSJ unless somebody pays for my return flight.

Some man was shot dead a few blocks from here.  I don’t think I want to live on this planet any more.

 

 

55781

Still not grinding quite as hard as I need to finish this book, but oh well.

I never go swimming with Paul any more but I haven’t told him that the real reason is because my fave bathing suit is too small and the bathing suit that fits me has become too sheer to wear in public.  So today I’m off to get a bathing suit.

Deleted Chipper

Chipper, if you’re reading this, quit sending emails.  Talk to your friends.  Quit reminding me how lonely you are by sending detailed lists of how fucked up I am.  It’s quite as crazy as it sounds, so stop. Remember you yelling into the phone at the American Express telemarketers?  While Paul and I had to listen?  Yeah.  I’m asking you to stop in a much quieter voice.

For the rest of you poor sods, some of whom have known her longer than I have:

I have very regretfully had to delete her user ID, as she’s threatened to use it as a soap box to announce my failings to the world (as if I don’t already do that in double handsful on a reg’lar basis, but whatevs.) She has her own blog, that she pays for, that belongs to her. But I’ve had to take that off my sidebar, at no loss to her.  She’s never gotten a single booking referred from this website or she would have phoned me to tell me.

I have happy memories, and I’m going to hang on to them, because they are part of the family lore.

I’d say that one of my issues is setting boundaries, but now that I’m post menopausal and feeling my calling and surrounded by a working model of adult friendship, I’m learning how to do that.  What I experienced was abuse, and nobody else ESPECIALLY NOT THE ABUSER gets to call it civil discourse and gracious hospitality.  If she wants to try to talk me out of how she abused me by sending abusive emails, that’s heading over to the place where the judge gets to make the call, and I don’t want to go there. She said it was very convenient for me that Paul witnessed most of the yelling.  Yes, being yelled at while there was a witness was er, convenient.  Definitely convenient.  That’s the word I’d use.

I should not have visited her while she was sick.  But colds go away. Boundaries stay in place.  I should have rented a cabin and left her to yell at her house (she does that a lot.)

And maybe I was depressed when I went, but I really don’t feel that way now.  I have communed with the spirits, I have walked in the woods, and I feel like helping someone who has helped me. I’m going to help Paul with his Restorative Justice talk, and then I’m going to start writing again on Monday, since I’ve had a nice long, weird, horrible, exciting, heartening and thought-provoking break, and on Tuesday I’ll spend part of my grandson’s first birthday with him, and I’m going to paint a picture of the dream I had, where I was climbing Moore’s Falls.  I will practice my mandolin and cook for my household and try out Terry’s cookie recipe which is so good I could DIE. I will write down more songs, and keep adding to the book of kind words (wrote some more in Cornwall), and prep Theo for surgery (not really but almost.)

I will check in with the editrix of awesomesauce and make a list of friends to call. I’ll do my taxes, although not before I put them off some more. I will continue to live a satisfactory life and when life hands me difficulties and worries, I’ll have friends and family who trust me, and who reciprocate my love and care and trust and appreciation with deeds of shining worth. And words spoken at a conversational volume, because candidly, that was the best thing about going to Cornwall and then getting back to town.

Dropped off

Katie and Alex and I saw humpback whales (two of them) from the stern of the ferry boat yesterday.  It was so marvellous!

The first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning around 3 am was Alex.  He has a memorable face, and such merry blue eyes.  Katie and I had a talk and I told her that I won’t try to pick him up or cuddle him again until he wants me to; I may wait years, or forever, but he’s just not that into me, so I’ll let myself be baby driven.

I was not able to get as much of the mOm-assisted edits done this time and while I’m disappointed I think it will be fine.  I’m not feeling any pull toward writing today so I’ll work on other things instead.

I very much enjoyed driving the Modo car, which is a Prius.  I didn’t enjoy the gas card not working so I have to make sure I get my money back.

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH TURDS. There’s no picture, but some of you ****ers be squeamish.

I took a book by a Christian (Phil Ryan) out of the library.  It’s called After the New Atheist Debate and it’s a sort of Point Counterpoint on the New Atheist positions and the Defenders of the Faiths – including the horrifyingly sexist and racist Theodore Beale.  BUT it contained this gem: Alasdair MacIntyre is paraphrased by Ryan as saying “modern moral debates (are) ‘interminable’ because of the ‘conceptual incommensurability’ of rival positions”.

Grinding

Final count is just under a thousand words for yesterday.  I got myself set up for today’s big scene.

I’ll just leave this here for mOm.  Permanent reference – glow in the dark fingering weight yarn.  Tom Smith of filking fame posted it to facebook and crafters were immediately hauling out their alien fairisle patterns.  I think it would make great babywear, but what do I know, I don’t craft except once in a very long while and never with particular succes.

Keith was supposed to come by yesterday and never did.  I publicly express disappointment.

Hot as balls, weatherwise.  I’m quoting my cousin.

Bingewatch of S1 West Wing continues.

Roxane Gay rules and this post is TMI

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED…..

So my very favourite Bad Feminist Roxane Gay, who has to deal with so much more intersectionality than I do, has participated in a puff piece in stylist.co.uk talking about her hygiene routine.  I told her I would follow her example.

At this point I can hear Jeff saying something, and then when I ask him to repeat it, he says, ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’

I probably should shower more frequently than I do, being about three times a week, but as I get older I get dryer, and I feel like I’m turning into a desiccated old piece of sod.  I use Belle de Provence Honeysuckle soap because it smells very good, lasts a long time and is the one piece of luxury in my hygiene routine. Hardly anyone carries it and since it’s 6 bucks a pop I tend to buy in bulk when I find it.  I use Head and Shoulders brand shampoo/conditioner and buy it in the large pump size as it’s cheaper.  I use no other soap products.  I wash my hands every time I handle the cat, before I prep food and after I come in from being out in public as well as after I groom myself or go to the toilet.  I didn’t give a shit about washing my hands before I ran a restaurant.  Now I really, really do care about it, and it’s the simplest, fastest and easiest way to prevent illness, so why the hell not.

I hate all deodorants but I stink if I don’t use them.  When I’m feeling radical I wash, dry thoroughly and apply baby powder to my pits, but that’s good for about 12 hours before Jeff’s eyebrows do something improbable (the fan in the basement blows my effluent in his direction when we’re watching tv, so … yeah.)  Otherwise I use whatever kind of bo juice isn’t loathsome, and I’m like a lightning rod for deodorant being discontinued, so I try to be cool, but right now it’s a pretty loathsome vanilla smelly thing.  Gak.   Still better than the alternative.

I use two different kinds of eyedrops, thanks to the amazingly practical and super unjudgey Lady Miss Banjola, one for day, one for night, and I am not consistent in their use but by gar it’s a good thing to have them, because when you need them you’re like ACK MY EYES MY EYES I CAN’T GET MY EYES oh thank goodness I can see!  Also, thanks to her I found out that dryness amidships can be ameliorated by the twice weekly anointing of der ladygel, and she made brand recommendations, and I can get them reasonably cheap on line.  With that one small recommendation she made my life go from a meepy, withered parody of what Beeker sounds like after he’s been mugged, to me being able to contemplate having a boyfriend.  I don’t actually want a boyfriend, and the men in my life who squire me around do not wish to fill this or candidly any other vacancy wheresoever situated, but at least the prospect shifted from being painfully impossible to being ludicrously improbable, and only the Rumi’s Beloved could parse that shift in meaningful terms, but I view it as an improvement.

I pluck my eyebrows every day.  I watched the best eyebrow guy on the planet do a tutorial on youtube, and I thought “Hey, my OCD and some grooming tips wa-ho!” but I tell you my brow game is fierce, and it helps with the performative feminity, although I have not recently been mistaken for a man (it only happened the once, and I think the person was altered.)

This upping of the eyebrow game was subsequent to Keith picking out to extremely flattering and stylish frames for me.  I was looking really hard for a job and I wanted to be ready to interview at a moment’s notice, and now, provided I have a clean dress, I really am.   I pluck my chin hairs, and my (sigh, fuck my life) chest hairs.  I do not shave my legs or pits and anybody who wants me to can shave his or her legs and pits all they want but this lovely, amazing, FEATURE of adult life called BODILY AUTONOMY does not stop being awesome just because you are creeped out by my hairy legs, and the next time somebody calls me on it I’ll just say that sexism is uglier than hairy legs and any sensible person knows that.  Body hair sure makes men who have basic issues with mansplaining and feminism go away right quick, and smell ya later, ya squirrelfondling preverts.

Also, I got really really bad frostbite on my lower legs when I was in public school, so bad that the skin on my lower legs (the shaving zone) is burst-into-tears sensitive, so yeah, no, fuck your leg shaving.  It HURTS.  I bleed, and then all the little hairs growing back in catch in my bedding, so fuck you and go AWAY if you think I should shave my legs for any reason whatsoever.  As for my armpits.  When more than 50 percent of north American men shave their armpits, I’ll sign up for one of those monthly boxes of shaving gear, but until that day (bwa ha ha, coming soon!) yeah, just no.

I used to use Garnier number 60 hair dye and I still have some tucked away, but it really really bothers Jeff and I’m not a fan of doing it, I am a fan of having it done. Fortunately the colour is almost exactly the same as the two remaining stripes of colour I have in the mounting nest of grey that is my hair so even when I let it grow out it looks reasonably okay.  If I get another interview, which will be hard, as I am officially as of this moment no longer looking for work since hey we’re in a recession, and nobody would want to hire me even if I wanted to trade the best part of me for 24K net a year, which I don’t, and which makes me an elitist asshole. Ok.

I make my own perfume, which is called Cyprus, and has a secret blend of floral oil ingredients, and which smells fantastic on me (to the point where other women have demanded I sell them some, which I did) but everybody from my mOm to my brO thinks it smells like I’m hanging truck stop air freshener from my pits AND about 40% of my friends have chemical sensitivities and find it overpowering even when I’m using it gingerly so it’s only for special occasions.

My last pedicure made me limp for THREE FUCKING MONTHS and I am never paying for one again as Hecate may bear witness; now I cut off the parts of the toenail that stick out and abrade down the rest with a number of different kinds of pedicure gear.  I occasionally soak my feet and use footrub on myself or get somebody else like Katie to help out.  I am very very on top of my toenails because I can go from Happy Feet to ballerina outtakes (thankfully not shown here) in less than a week.  My hair, feet and nails grow at a tremendous rate, which is great because I get rid of heavy metals that way, but I must cut, hack, saw and file away with vigour.

I used to be an assclown about dental hygiene but I brush and floss every single day now (occasional lapses, but not many) since I can’t afford to lose the use of any more teeth when toothpaste and floss is so cheap.  I buy firm or super firm brushes and brush whatever way feels right and I pay for getting my teeth cleaned professionally once a year.  I am seriously considering investing in dental picks.

I have incredibly clean ear canals.  I hate the feeling of anything in there except air, but I no longer scrape them out with anything hard because it removes the hair that grows in the canal and I’m so clumsy I might deafen myself.

I wash my face with soap once a week.  Any more and I dry out like something that went with Scott to the Pole.

Once every three months I apply a clay facial mask.  I like how my skin feels afterward.

Once in a very long while I get a massage or a spa half day, but I can get the same results from rolling around on Wreck Beach and probably get exposed to the same amount of coliform in the process.

 

And there you have it.  Nobody asked for it, but that is my hygiene routine.

70 words yesterday

SO HOT MELTED YESTERDAY.

Watched movies and the second episode of Mr. Robot.  Made salads.

Buster’s picked up more scratches.

I didn’t rinse out and drain the milk cartons properly for the recycling, so I feel very guilty about Jeff’s cry of disgust as he was dealing with the trash this morning.  I will do better.

Especially since he made coffee.

 

I’m up to 516 words already so you can probably tell that it’s cooler in Vancouver.

Up since midnight

A coyote and a raccoon got into a death match in the alley and woke me up and now I can’t sleep.  Work on the novel having slowed down considerably, I am editing the 50K words or so in a book that I can epublish right away, the book of Homilies.

I can’t find a complete Garbage Day homily oh yeah I have to transcribe it as it’s only in mp3 format.