caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'b sick I�ve been sick. Again. I know, I�ve complained about this before, but it's my stupid body, so ... one of the really really annoying things about auto-immune disorders is that whole lack of an effective immune system thing (duh), one of the effects of which is that a minor sniffly nose can rapidly turn into something resembling the Vulcan Death Flu. And it can go into hiding, so that you feel better for a couple of days and go to the mall and get your hair cut and spend too much money at Target, and then suddenly, wham! you�re sick again. Ugh. And try explaining to your boss why you went home sick on Thursday, and stayed home on Friday, and then came to work on Monday and Tuesday, and then stayed home sick again on Wednesday. Uh-huh. Goes over real well. I just went to the bathroom and realized while washing my hands and staring blearily into the mirror that I neglected to put on any make-up this morning. Not that I normally wear much in the way of make-up anyway, but after one has been sick something in the way of powder and under-eye concealer might be advisable, so that one looks a little less like death warmed over. Oh well. At least there won�t be any question among my coworkers as to whether or not I was actually sick. Look at these under-eye circles, and believe! I�m still cataloging 19th century French plays, classic dramas with titles such as La passion secrete and Luxe et indigence, ou, Le m�nage parisien. Thrilling stuff, except, you know, not. And the names! Oy. Monikers like Claude Marie Emmanuel Carbon de Flins des Oliviers. Poor kid would never make it through kindergarten these days; he�d be too traumatized from having to learn to write his name. I know I�m traumatized from having to type it. And making sure all the accents and whatnot are in the right places is a huge pain in the patootie in our cataloging system. Erg. In related news, no word on the corporate sell-out job, which is looking more and more attractive the longer I stare at French microfiche. I�m concerned that at this point they�ll just decide to wait until after the holidays to do anything about it, because they�re a big corporation and they can do shit like that. Which would leave me worrying about it for weeks. No consideration, these corporate types. Blue�s had no word on any of his applications, either; he�s got the day off today and is spending the morning following-up everywhere. I don�t understand why, if you have an ad in the paper that you need a massage therapist, and then a massage therapist follows the instructions in the ad and calls you, why you don�t at least call him back? Isn�t that the point of having the ad? Are you that inundated with massage therapists? I don�t think so. Talked to Kitty on the phone last night, and even though her husband is being his usual butt-headed self, they are going to make it down for Thanksgiving weekend. He wanted to come down just for the day, and split the day, no less, between our family and his. A ten-hour round trip, with a seven-month-old, for one day. Ass. Kitty is apparently in the process of growing a pair, and put her foot down on this one, so they�ll be spending Wednesday and Thursday morning with his parents, and then Thursday-Saturday at our parents. I�m geeked to see Kitty and nephew, whom I have not seen in person since July, and to subtlely convey to Kitty yay for her, and it might be a good thing to stand up to Control Freak a little more often. The boy is rolling over and teething and gurgling, and is entering in the fun-baby stage rather than the laying-around-and-pooping stage, and I want to see him occasionally, after all. And I�d like him to recognize us, you know? So I�m looking forward to Thanksgiving despite the inevitable party-pooping presence of ControlFreak. Three day work-week, lots of sleeping, in, the Kid will be with us for the day instead of at the Dementors, both my sisters will be around, we get to play with the baby, Blue has the night before off so he will feel like participating in dinner and football-watching instead of sleeping like he had to last year, various annoying relatives have other plans and aren�t crashing our dinner, and we�re only obligated to go see my in-laws in the evening as they aren�t doing big dinner due to their house-remodeling project. If everything goes as planned (knock on wood) it should be a lovely weekend. I know with my family that�s a big if, but I�m trying this new thing. It�s called thinking positive. 10:47 a.m. - November 20, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- drama So after one has had one child, it�s kind of, erm, tacky to have another baby shower, isn�t it? Because my pregnant-with-twins cousins are having one. Not for a while, considering she�s not due until April, but I saw my aunt (her MIL) yesterday at church and she mentioned something in passing about having the shower early because twins always come early. I know financially they aren�t exactly prepared for two more children, and I�m happy (well, meh) about getting them a gift, but I am not going to another freaking baby shower. Church was, in a word, interesting yesterday. Uncle Pastor preached a rather pointed sermon about hypocrisy and Christian charity and giving one�s whole self to God, not just the parts that are easy to give up. Then after the service he called all the council members up to the altar for a quick council meeting and fired each and every one of them. He also fired the nursery school teacher (who also ran the clothes closet and food ministry) and the treasurer. Hrrmm. I don�t know anything about the politics involved, and I certainly don�t want to know, but the vestibule was not a happy place after service. Much whispering and speculation, and one man who stomped out shouting something about liars and hypocrites. Nice. In other news, I may be on my way to becoming a corporate sell-out. My dad works for a subsidiary of one of the Major Detroit Auto Companies and heard tell of a job with as a writer for said company's Corporate Relations department � overseeing web content, newsletters, corporate intranet, writing speeches and presentations for the execs, stuff like that. Dad happens to know someone who knows the person who is hiring for said position, which is really the only way to get in at the auto companies anymore (yay for nepotism!) and when he mentioned me to said person (�she�s my daughter, but I wouldn�t bring it up if she wasn�t extremely qualified�) said person was reportedly impressed and is willing to hand-carry my resume to the person doing the hiring. I wasn�t exactly looking for anything new right now, but this would almost double what I make now, so it�s not something I can exactly afford not to explore. It would be more corporate and high-pressure than what I am used to, but I think the money just might make it worth it. And it wouldn�t be nearly as deadly dull as what I happen to be doing now. Cataloging 19th century French drama. Honestly, some days I feel like a trained monkey could do this job. This would mean a way out of debt within, oh, months instead of years, and we could go ahead with the adoption, as well, which we�ve had to put on hold over the past couple of months. So keep your digits crossed for me, folks. Of course there are days when I want to kill Blue and the Kid and question the decision to have another child, but despite my most recent entry those days are getting to be fewer and farther between. Blue is working so hard at sorting his life out. This would just take off a lot of the immediate financial pressure, and that would make things easier for all of us. And now I'm off to work. C'est la vie. 9:46 a.m. - November 10, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- moving on Insane. Blue and YMB are driving me up a wall lately. They are constantly at each others throats, arguing and snipping at each other, until I want to scream. Blue gets onto YMB for the littlest things � night before last it was the number of times he spit while brushing his teeth, last night it was the way YMB was making his grilled cheese sandwich. YMB gets defensive and upset and snotty. The more snotty YMB gets, the worse Blue gets. It�s just horrid. Last night I announced that I wasn�t putting up with it anymore and that they needed to figure out a way to get along, because home isn�t a very pleasant place to be anymore. They both stared at me like I�d grown three heads. Blue declared he didn�t know anything to do about it. YMB sat at the kitchen table and pouted. It was 8:30. I went to bed. I�m tired of playing peacemaker and being the buffer zone between those two. I�m either trying to convince Blue that it�s not worth getting upset about or trying to explain to YMB the perfectly good reason that we�re upset with him; making excuses for one to to the other about bad days and lack of sleep and underlying emotional issues. It�s getting really, really old. And neither of them are happy; they wander around pouting and slamming things and grouching at each other and me and the animals until I want to run away from home. I�ve talked to my counselor about this. She says, of course, that I have to stop being the buffer; that it�s Blue�s responsibility to deal with his own issues and not mine, and I have to worry about myself. And to a certain extent I�ve been able to do that; I�ve laid off a lot of the nagging and worrying I�ve been doing about whether or not he�s doing the things he needs to be regarding looking for a massage therapy job, getting to work on time, running errands, etc. But I can�t seem to let this alone when I just see Blue repeating the same patterns his father did with him. It hasn�t done Blue any favors and I don�t want to see YMB in the same place when he�s in his thirties, blocked from succeeding because his father convinced him early on what a screw-up he is. Blue is trying; at least I think he is � he is seeing a counselor as well, for one, and he�s aware of the issues at least, whereas his father never was. The man still has no idea what his behavior did � and still does � to his son. But being aware of the problem isn�t solving it, at least not yet. He knows that yelling at YMB and picking on his actions and going into lengthy explanations of why what he did was wrong does absolutely no good as far as behavior modification is concerned, but it doesn�t seem to stop him from doing it. YMB�s arguing and whining and attitude problem is getting really old, true, and I�m losing patience as well, but he�s 10 years old. It�s to be expected, on some level, especially considering we�re still trying to train out of him the Dementors� brainwashing that he can do nothing wrong. Blue, however, is 34. I know he has major issues. But at same point it�s really time to deal with them and move on. It�s starting to occur to me that if he can�t move on, I may have to, and that�s the last thing I want. 9:34 a.m. - November 07, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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