I saw the light today. It started with a Ty and ended with a -lenol AND came with a realization that I have been, indeed, coming down with an ever-loving cold.
I slept so well last night that I woke up two hours before I was supposed to be at work this morning feeling well-rested, even after having taken a nap yesterday afternoon. Taking naps, even when desperately tired, is usually stupid. They wreak havoc on a good night's sleep. But it wasn't even a question yesterday. Given yesterday's mood.
When I woke up, though, the light shone softly through the window, the mattress felt soft and cozy, the covers tucked in around my chin, and the scratchy, pre-sore throat all worked together to explain why I've been SUCH a bitch the last two weeks.
Okay. Okay! I know. I know! It doesn't excuse the actions. But it DOES explain the feelings. The overall, extended period of run down irritation with everything. I was actually relieved to wake up with a sore throat. It offered SOME suggestion of why I just kept hitting a wall week on week, long after PMS had its fun run, constantly unable to rework life's accostic ways in my mind with some sense of peaceable perspective.
But here it was. In no uncertain terms. I was run down. And drugs are great. The headache building up at work was met head-on with some extra strength acetaminophen in the analgesics/first-aid cabinet at work; and the relief with which I was able to carry out the rest of my day brought about another realization (or more of a consideration) that any discomfort or pain drastically discolors my dramatic view of the world.
Eeeek.
08 March 2009
07 March 2009
Clinical insanity
Before I gather my family and spend what remaining evening there is with them, I share this rant. Long day, many people, rudeness by one man sets off the whole day, same ol', same ol', more people, more ignorant/substandard consideration, turn-over through the roof, people sitting before tables are cleared, run-run-run, late breaks, late clock-out, run-run-run, stop.
Head full, feet throbbing, chest burning with undigested frustration (how can people treat people like that? how can people LET people get away with that?? not just work, life and friends, too, but now I am only thinking of work), home. Nap, pay bills, anger wells at shortage of cash, trying to calm, wanting to chew a bit, let it go, get perspective, overall day building up, and just desperately wanting to let it go, to not to care, to link to, to think SO MUCH about it. About stupid, rude people, about bills, about close friends and family, about kids telling kids stupid things and getting OH-WELL-ED TO DEATH.
Then other things. I'm TRYING to understand HOW to let it go, HOW to be a better person, HOW to put my life in a true, how-God-sees-it perspective but get lambasted, shot down, oh-well-ed, and sarcasm-drenched jabbed to DEATH by the people closest to me. And why do I let them?? Hell if I know. I am wrong, I am dis-illusioned, I am crazy, I am woman, I am American, I am... a MILLION things that are NOTHING. Nothing, incorrect, false LABELS that show me that no one--NO one--knows who I am. No one gets it. No one gives a shit enough to try. Because, well, I ADMIT (grrrr), it takes a freaking payload to do that.
And how could they. How could anyone. Possibly. Fathom. The entire depth with which I experience things, life. You'd have to be.... crazy.... to understand because it is a level deeper than "invested." I am invested.... in everything. Every life, every action, every reaction, every emotion (of others MORE than myself), every motion, perception, notion, or idea wells in me with a deep, deep, integral consideration. I have had to LEARN... had to teach myself, condition and otherwise monitor such intensity because people-----and it doesn't matter WHO they are, who I have ever known, ever lived with, ever befriended, ever disliked, ever associated with-----just cannot, do not know how to deal with this. They can't deal with it because they cannot fathom this. They cannot fathom this and why? Because they are self-absorbed even when they are being generous and in the meantime, I've cheapened myself into thinking and by thinking that me always going against what I want is somehow giving up a piece of myself for the overall peace. Regardless of the stupidity of such train of thought, how do I explain the depth, core-soaked level with which I feel and why would I even bother to explain ANYWAY?
I don't think for one moment this makes me better, either. It doesn't make a person better. It makes me a stupid person. It makes me SUCK. It makes me sick. I am just sick. SICK. and tired of doling out, extending the same compassion, understanding, perception-seeing, multi-side view-ability, self-denying bullshit when no one will do the same. I KNOW that the "self-denying" part of it is all choice, that I don't have to, that how much I do or don't do is up to me and that choosing to and complaining about it may, perhaps, assign me with a MARTYRDOM complex; but I CHOSE to do those things out of MY idea of living a life of Christ, what I really, truly, thought and worked hard to be what Jesus would want.
I'm sure Jesus himself didn't deny himself with the mentality I have. In fact, salvation would be screwed if that were the case. I have no more of an idea of all the things about Jesus' life and everything he did that wasn't mentioned in the Bible than anyone before me; so to know, albeitly very limited, how exactly He thought is next to impossible.
There is, at least, SOME idea (based on Bible accounts and historical contexts) and I know it is irrelevant and inapplicable when trying to micro-analyze either my life and is borderline blasphemous to think I have any comparison to His life. I just THOUGHT this way, the way I have chosen, might be one right way. You know? Not THE way, not anyone's way. Just one way. And a way that doesn't mean bleaching or bleeding my beliefs onto another person. Obviously, it's not working. People with less belief in Jesus than me are leading far less cranky lives.
I just don't get it and I am sick being disheartened by the human race. Not that I am above it. Not for a minute. I suck just the same and am at a current unrest at the constant shift in the undercurrent of things I'm still learning how to digest.
Head full, feet throbbing, chest burning with undigested frustration (how can people treat people like that? how can people LET people get away with that?? not just work, life and friends, too, but now I am only thinking of work), home. Nap, pay bills, anger wells at shortage of cash, trying to calm, wanting to chew a bit, let it go, get perspective, overall day building up, and just desperately wanting to let it go, to not to care, to link to, to think SO MUCH about it. About stupid, rude people, about bills, about close friends and family, about kids telling kids stupid things and getting OH-WELL-ED TO DEATH.
Then other things. I'm TRYING to understand HOW to let it go, HOW to be a better person, HOW to put my life in a true, how-God-sees-it perspective but get lambasted, shot down, oh-well-ed, and sarcasm-drenched jabbed to DEATH by the people closest to me. And why do I let them?? Hell if I know. I am wrong, I am dis-illusioned, I am crazy, I am woman, I am American, I am... a MILLION things that are NOTHING. Nothing, incorrect, false LABELS that show me that no one--NO one--knows who I am. No one gets it. No one gives a shit enough to try. Because, well, I ADMIT (grrrr), it takes a freaking payload to do that.
And how could they. How could anyone. Possibly. Fathom. The entire depth with which I experience things, life. You'd have to be.... crazy.... to understand because it is a level deeper than "invested." I am invested.... in everything. Every life, every action, every reaction, every emotion (of others MORE than myself), every motion, perception, notion, or idea wells in me with a deep, deep, integral consideration. I have had to LEARN... had to teach myself, condition and otherwise monitor such intensity because people-----and it doesn't matter WHO they are, who I have ever known, ever lived with, ever befriended, ever disliked, ever associated with-----just cannot, do not know how to deal with this. They can't deal with it because they cannot fathom this. They cannot fathom this and why? Because they are self-absorbed even when they are being generous and in the meantime, I've cheapened myself into thinking and by thinking that me always going against what I want is somehow giving up a piece of myself for the overall peace. Regardless of the stupidity of such train of thought, how do I explain the depth, core-soaked level with which I feel and why would I even bother to explain ANYWAY?
I don't think for one moment this makes me better, either. It doesn't make a person better. It makes me a stupid person. It makes me SUCK. It makes me sick. I am just sick. SICK. and tired of doling out, extending the same compassion, understanding, perception-seeing, multi-side view-ability, self-denying bullshit when no one will do the same. I KNOW that the "self-denying" part of it is all choice, that I don't have to, that how much I do or don't do is up to me and that choosing to and complaining about it may, perhaps, assign me with a MARTYRDOM complex; but I CHOSE to do those things out of MY idea of living a life of Christ, what I really, truly, thought and worked hard to be what Jesus would want.
I'm sure Jesus himself didn't deny himself with the mentality I have. In fact, salvation would be screwed if that were the case. I have no more of an idea of all the things about Jesus' life and everything he did that wasn't mentioned in the Bible than anyone before me; so to know, albeitly very limited, how exactly He thought is next to impossible.
There is, at least, SOME idea (based on Bible accounts and historical contexts) and I know it is irrelevant and inapplicable when trying to micro-analyze either my life and is borderline blasphemous to think I have any comparison to His life. I just THOUGHT this way, the way I have chosen, might be one right way. You know? Not THE way, not anyone's way. Just one way. And a way that doesn't mean bleaching or bleeding my beliefs onto another person. Obviously, it's not working. People with less belief in Jesus than me are leading far less cranky lives.
I just don't get it and I am sick being disheartened by the human race. Not that I am above it. Not for a minute. I suck just the same and am at a current unrest at the constant shift in the undercurrent of things I'm still learning how to digest.
04 March 2009
Brain damage
I just wish I would have had the presence of mind to deal with it better. To make decisions that came from having a sense of knowing who I was, what I wanted for my family, to be right or to be wrong, but to act with surity.
But I didn't. I guess I learned from that, and that's the point, but it doesn't change the point of reflection. I'm not really sure that any level of higher maturity would have changed the way things happened, but it would have at least made me feel less out of control about my own life scripted in Kyle's sickness.
The head trauma, dare I nudge that word again, may have had a role in the whole thing of it, looking back. It's true I'll never know, but it begs a curious question because I never, ever remember being that scatterbrained, that 'all over', that OUT of ideas in how to handle something before the accident. It's true when I had been pregnant and trying to carve something out of nothing, I had no life experience from which to draw and felt very much the same way; but in the end, I was able to find a job that paid the bills a little better (at least FULL rent and some groceries), make choices with a sense of creativity and with a sense of wanting something better for my baby and me.
The thing is, I'm starting to realize is that before and after the accident I made all these choices out of emotion. When I banged my head up so bad, the only place I knew how to process from and was most comfortable with was emotion. How I got some of it right dealing primarily out of emoting, I'll never know, and it's still in progress, but I'm grateful to the higher powers that be that I did, that I can see these beautiful children of mine process things with logic, creativity, and emotion. Logic escaped me, but I didn't see it that in that way or how the process of coping was gradually skewed by the emotional rail of thought or course of action.
Anyway, I've learned that the frontal lobe controls much of what or how we process thoughts and emotions and I wouldn't doubt it if the extreme bashing my head took bruised that lobe and therefore inhibited any ability to figure it out at all, never mind that soon after an accident (just over a year between the accident and Kyle's third diagnosis and treatment in-hospital.) Then, instead of exercising the brain, performing memory exercises, mental therapy (like physical therapy for the brain?) and working on gaining back that normal mentality, I just started a pattern of thinking from emotion (it didn't hurt like logic and reasoning did) and got into this habit of self-conditioned emotion-response, perpetuated by the stress of the circumstances and events around us.
I really see that it could be this way. I mean, I'm no expert and I have an appointment to talk with someone more qualified, but doesn't this make sense? The point worth pondering is the hypothesis suggested in brain damage: If I bash my brain inside my skull via rollover, then I will have problems processing thought and making intelligent and/or coherent decisions.
But I didn't. I guess I learned from that, and that's the point, but it doesn't change the point of reflection. I'm not really sure that any level of higher maturity would have changed the way things happened, but it would have at least made me feel less out of control about my own life scripted in Kyle's sickness.
The head trauma, dare I nudge that word again, may have had a role in the whole thing of it, looking back. It's true I'll never know, but it begs a curious question because I never, ever remember being that scatterbrained, that 'all over', that OUT of ideas in how to handle something before the accident. It's true when I had been pregnant and trying to carve something out of nothing, I had no life experience from which to draw and felt very much the same way; but in the end, I was able to find a job that paid the bills a little better (at least FULL rent and some groceries), make choices with a sense of creativity and with a sense of wanting something better for my baby and me.
The thing is, I'm starting to realize is that before and after the accident I made all these choices out of emotion. When I banged my head up so bad, the only place I knew how to process from and was most comfortable with was emotion. How I got some of it right dealing primarily out of emoting, I'll never know, and it's still in progress, but I'm grateful to the higher powers that be that I did, that I can see these beautiful children of mine process things with logic, creativity, and emotion. Logic escaped me, but I didn't see it that in that way or how the process of coping was gradually skewed by the emotional rail of thought or course of action.
Anyway, I've learned that the frontal lobe controls much of what or how we process thoughts and emotions and I wouldn't doubt it if the extreme bashing my head took bruised that lobe and therefore inhibited any ability to figure it out at all, never mind that soon after an accident (just over a year between the accident and Kyle's third diagnosis and treatment in-hospital.) Then, instead of exercising the brain, performing memory exercises, mental therapy (like physical therapy for the brain?) and working on gaining back that normal mentality, I just started a pattern of thinking from emotion (it didn't hurt like logic and reasoning did) and got into this habit of self-conditioned emotion-response, perpetuated by the stress of the circumstances and events around us.
I really see that it could be this way. I mean, I'm no expert and I have an appointment to talk with someone more qualified, but doesn't this make sense? The point worth pondering is the hypothesis suggested in brain damage: If I bash my brain inside my skull via rollover, then I will have problems processing thought and making intelligent and/or coherent decisions.
03 March 2009
Fat
When I was growing up, I heard all kinds of comments about women come from the men who were married to them, or at least attached in some formless, ambiguous way.
A lot of times, these men didn't know I was around the corner writing on inventory cards or looking through Chilton manuals, but some of them did and some of them made these comments directly to me with half amused expressions. As though I could understood this male peer kind of comedy.
As though they could control some slender, pre-real-life teen thing from turning into the old ball-and-chain blimp wife that "starts expanding at the alter" by making these sly, clever little digs to a naive sixteeen-year old.
These ranging biker varieties were hardly qualified to give advice of the marital kind to the young, impressionable daughter of a Harley repair shop owner; but there we were: them giving me the advice and me unknowingly committing it to memory as I shirked their comments off with a smile in the middle of an oil-reeked garage.
My dad added to it occasionally by inserting his own thoughts, opinions, and ideas of the unrealistic kind. "You know, women should be more like..." were the common preface. He gave me lots of good ideas! Don't nag, don't let one's self go, be graceful, try to see where he's coming from, things that maybe his biker and miner comrades shared a common plane of thought, but things that quickly translated into: how to be the perfect woman for any guy. No wonder my mother seemed so unhappy.
How it turned from the point of my dad's well-meant-though-ill-informed intention (especially because of or completely in spite of his customers and friends) to me processing my father's words as a manual to my life, I'll never know, but I do know that for what I DO know now, I didn't know anything back then; and perhaps, just maybe, the responsibility to shut the hell up about things he did not understand or accept (the female pscyhe, for one) fell on his shoulders.
But it happened. I recalled these dislikes of men, vowed silently to never gain weight (though exactly how, with zero athleticism, I thought I'd pull that off I'll never know), never left the house without makeup, dressed modestly, put what the guy would think or want on the forefront of my mind without any regard for my own feelings, development of my own thoughts, or embracement of my own female self. Ooops.
What started out as perhaps helpful suggestions based on the frustrations these men and my dad were having with their wives (or even if they were just real life comedic releases!), became notes of extreme value tucked away in my cerebellum, never to be released again until a time much later revealed how damaging these thoughts had been to my own personal development as a woman.
I am over feeling embarrassed about this lament. I'm already over it. I just don't care. I've thought about this enough times to write a book and shirked it off just as many times as I shirked off the comments of my dad's customer friends. The fact of the matter is that having such an insight to a guy's mind, and it was a mission for my dad, was to understand how they think.
And it's been helpful. I can understand how men think. I can understand them really damned good. I understand them so damned well that I can't even see what my feelings are/were/could be. To the point of reasoning away my own womanly complaint and forgetting what I could have possibly been upset/perturbed/wistful/museful about. I can understand them even better than myself (though this is changing, progressively resorting to embracing the fact that I am, indeed, a bonefied, certified, hard-wired from birth, real live woman) because I was made to understand them before I even understood what it truly meant to be a woman.
This infinite, valuable insight has been immeasurable. I've been able to modify who I am, how I react, things that come naturally to me as a woman so that I can be a man's woman and understand how, where, and why they think from where they do. But it unwittingly made me a very angry woman.
How could I ever be okay with venting, being frustrated, or anything/something I viewed as lesser value? That is to say, how could I ever possibly know that it was OK to feel the things I felt as a woman, when the man-brain in me kept reasoning it all away? I never recognized that I was letting little things built up over time to one big mess, I just thought I was being petty over one thing; and trying to find that one thing making me so angry was next to impossible. Just ask my poor husband, who saw it through a few versions. In reality, I was just not accepting that this boiling point had been brought on by a series of undigested moments.
I'm just saying...
It didn't matter that it totally screwed with me as a young woman, fiercely fighting off my femininity (rather than for my independence), to be this perfect type of woman (which does not exist and hello! why couldn't anyone have stopped me to tell me that?); I was still able to identify with the male side of any argument faster than any woman's and was excruciatingly embarrassed whenever I didn't and got caught. Even more was all the ways it affected my parenting, my whole thoughts, and the process of completely denying myself like some saint when Kyle was sick and then when he came home.
It just made things a little more difficult to process while life was slapping us in the face or while recouping the losses suffered in the consequences of our decisions; and the relief comes in knowing this now and being a better person for it. A gal able to look back at her 'silly ol' self' and reflect with wider-opened eyes.
A lot of times, these men didn't know I was around the corner writing on inventory cards or looking through Chilton manuals, but some of them did and some of them made these comments directly to me with half amused expressions. As though I could understood this male peer kind of comedy.
As though they could control some slender, pre-real-life teen thing from turning into the old ball-and-chain blimp wife that "starts expanding at the alter" by making these sly, clever little digs to a naive sixteeen-year old.
These ranging biker varieties were hardly qualified to give advice of the marital kind to the young, impressionable daughter of a Harley repair shop owner; but there we were: them giving me the advice and me unknowingly committing it to memory as I shirked their comments off with a smile in the middle of an oil-reeked garage.
My dad added to it occasionally by inserting his own thoughts, opinions, and ideas of the unrealistic kind. "You know, women should be more like..." were the common preface. He gave me lots of good ideas! Don't nag, don't let one's self go, be graceful, try to see where he's coming from, things that maybe his biker and miner comrades shared a common plane of thought, but things that quickly translated into: how to be the perfect woman for any guy. No wonder my mother seemed so unhappy.
How it turned from the point of my dad's well-meant-though-ill-informed intention (especially because of or completely in spite of his customers and friends) to me processing my father's words as a manual to my life, I'll never know, but I do know that for what I DO know now, I didn't know anything back then; and perhaps, just maybe, the responsibility to shut the hell up about things he did not understand or accept (the female pscyhe, for one) fell on his shoulders.
But it happened. I recalled these dislikes of men, vowed silently to never gain weight (though exactly how, with zero athleticism, I thought I'd pull that off I'll never know), never left the house without makeup, dressed modestly, put what the guy would think or want on the forefront of my mind without any regard for my own feelings, development of my own thoughts, or embracement of my own female self. Ooops.
What started out as perhaps helpful suggestions based on the frustrations these men and my dad were having with their wives (or even if they were just real life comedic releases!), became notes of extreme value tucked away in my cerebellum, never to be released again until a time much later revealed how damaging these thoughts had been to my own personal development as a woman.
I am over feeling embarrassed about this lament. I'm already over it. I just don't care. I've thought about this enough times to write a book and shirked it off just as many times as I shirked off the comments of my dad's customer friends. The fact of the matter is that having such an insight to a guy's mind, and it was a mission for my dad, was to understand how they think.
And it's been helpful. I can understand how men think. I can understand them really damned good. I understand them so damned well that I can't even see what my feelings are/were/could be. To the point of reasoning away my own womanly complaint and forgetting what I could have possibly been upset/perturbed/wistful/museful about. I can understand them even better than myself (though this is changing, progressively resorting to embracing the fact that I am, indeed, a bonefied, certified, hard-wired from birth, real live woman) because I was made to understand them before I even understood what it truly meant to be a woman.
This infinite, valuable insight has been immeasurable. I've been able to modify who I am, how I react, things that come naturally to me as a woman so that I can be a man's woman and understand how, where, and why they think from where they do. But it unwittingly made me a very angry woman.
How could I ever be okay with venting, being frustrated, or anything/something I viewed as lesser value? That is to say, how could I ever possibly know that it was OK to feel the things I felt as a woman, when the man-brain in me kept reasoning it all away? I never recognized that I was letting little things built up over time to one big mess, I just thought I was being petty over one thing; and trying to find that one thing making me so angry was next to impossible. Just ask my poor husband, who saw it through a few versions. In reality, I was just not accepting that this boiling point had been brought on by a series of undigested moments.
I'm just saying...
It didn't matter that it totally screwed with me as a young woman, fiercely fighting off my femininity (rather than for my independence), to be this perfect type of woman (which does not exist and hello! why couldn't anyone have stopped me to tell me that?); I was still able to identify with the male side of any argument faster than any woman's and was excruciatingly embarrassed whenever I didn't and got caught. Even more was all the ways it affected my parenting, my whole thoughts, and the process of completely denying myself like some saint when Kyle was sick and then when he came home.
It just made things a little more difficult to process while life was slapping us in the face or while recouping the losses suffered in the consequences of our decisions; and the relief comes in knowing this now and being a better person for it. A gal able to look back at her 'silly ol' self' and reflect with wider-opened eyes.
26 February 2009
You know who some of the worst diners are? Don't even think about it. I'll tell you right here and now. The church people. More specifically, the religious ones. I know! I would have never thought it, either. But guess what... they are.
They come rushing in, all but pushing and shoving to make room for the others coming to join them; and it's like these people use their religion as a crutch, an exemption, or an excuse to behave badly or in a way less concerned with Christ himself than to be socially acceptable or even superior in some martyrish, otherwise socially inept way. They're part of a group, any group, and all groups mean strength in numbers, don't they? So they all come in with a like mind and don't have to behave or be aware, even if they're known in some other capacity without this herd, because they are in a group of people associated with some kind of piety.
I really don't mean to judge. I am just surprised to have been 'suddenly' made aware of this. I mean, I always try and see the other sides of it, see their side, their angle, other angles, other sides, let it go on the principle of not being a judge of any kind, but it's like the behavior just kept coming and coming...
The Catholics.
I would normally, sort of, kind of, in this public setting, belong to this group. I go to this church (when I'm not working ON THE SABBATH), I pray the prayers at Mass with these people, I say amen to the same things they do. But this day, just as many others prior, they all flock in to a big table. They do not rearrange the tables, but the leading lady, the dominant prayer task force leader, prayer initiator extraordinaire to be reckoned with, beckons and assigns all fellow parishoners to the table she has chosen.
I do not wait on this table. It is not in my section. But I bring them their food as a favor to another server. I have barely sat the last plate down when DomiPraytrix demands they all say grace, like a mother to forgetful children. Every other woman at the table is older than her, but they all set down their forks, stop what they are doing, and bow their heads.
I am stuck. I don't have to stay there, but I feel it too awkward to leave as they all know me and I figure maybe it would be okay to stand there in prayer with them. I am not normally this testimonious. I prefer to keep my faith quiet. But I stay. They say "amen", I say "amen", I smile nervously and huff a laugh, hoping for a smile or two for having joined them, but get nothing, and walk away feeling somehow cheapened by it all. Whether it was me or any other waitress, could they have NOT waited until said waitress left to start saying their prayer?
The Lutherans
(or so I'm assuming from the corresponding pastor to have joined them later)
They move tables, but they don't just connect them end-to-end, as the most appropriate way to be disrespectful goes. They join them perpendicularly, so as to form an "L" shape, seating a wheelchaired woman in the crook of the "L" and threatening to block the aisle with chairs from the other side. I make this discovery in near-sheer horror coming off my 15 minute break.
I hate going on breaks on Sunday because of this very thing. I leave and hell always breaks lose, though it doesn't break lose because I'm gone. It's just on-going hell loosening. This is just the usual hell loosening when the swells of people come, orders continue to be sent back to the kitchen, cooks' tempers flaring, customers barking, the remaining patient and kind customers being the only ones who truly deserve our attention.
I take stock of The "L". I cannot get out of taking this table. The other girls laugh in hearty understanding and also in "ha, ha, this one's yours." I take a breath. It's the last time I remember to breathe for a while. I approach the "L", I stand at the corner, I look everyone in the eyes, assess the drinks situation, brace my notepad, lift my pen.
The mother orders for her three children, the grandmother orders for herself, and the three other adults left take their sweetass time ordering with menus open. I offer to give them more time, but the mother orders for herself. The grandmother can't hear what the sides are for her meal. I am using all my diaphragm to project my voice. The noise is boisterous and unrestrained. The kids blurt out things and are generally rude. We all get through the order, I punch it in, bring more drinks (becase you know, one just isn't enough for each of the three kids) and actually get past The "L" to pour coffee and make a round of it.
The pastor joins. I recognize her from the Lutheran church. She is a little odd, but most pastors are, so I think nothing of it. She is joined by a man of about the same age and same oddity. THEY pull table #3 up to The "L" and extend the leg of the "L".
I am stunned. WHO would do this? Who would allow it? Who.... would ever think this was okay? I am an instant blowfish of anger, but no one sees and so I continue because no one cares about this rudeness. I make them scoot the table over less than six inches because they are starting to block traffic and I am on an anger/power trip. I am hoping someone comes over and tells me they can't do that.
Nothing.
My puffer deflates. Mainly because I have no choice. I regain my humanity. I take the newcomers' orders. But not without some getting some snide comment about the hollandaise sauce that I just, quite frankly, don't get.
I walk away feeling like their odd behavior was meant to be smoothly humourous. But it's not. It's weird. It's stupid. It doesn't even make sense. Especially when it took them sooooo long to close their menus. It is particularly disconcerting for a gal like me who usually gets the odd little reasons people do a million odd things. I also walk away wondering what in the hell just happened and why people who become men and women of the cloth somehow become licensed to keep behaving in their poorly developed social skills, as though they are superior in their retarded differences.
It does not help that I was hungover.
I bring out the food. I've made a critical error. The grandma, who'd I'd been fighting to understand amongst the crowd, wanted fish. Not chicken. I promise to fix it, go to the kitchen for the second time in twenty minutes, and apologize profusely to the cooks, but my fuse is short and my explanation turns into incoherent rambling. My eye is twitching, non-existent bobbi pins are popping loose, steam rolls out of my ears. My boss (one of them, his wife is my other boss), the main chef, comes swooping in out of nowhere, swoops my plate out of my hand, and assures me he will fix it. I am momentarily rescued. I go back out and explain apologetically to the grandmother that her fish will be ready soon. She smiles. I almost miss it.
They don't leave a tip.
Other-denominational
Two pastors walk into a bar...
Okay, they really walk into the restaurant with another patron and sit down in K's section. K wants to trade me tables. She knows a set of customers who had just sat down in my section. I oblige. I don't mind. I find out later that one of them is allegedly the one who sticks the gum under the tables and she doesn't want to deal with them. I have only dealt with the one once or twice and been put off by his classless ignorance, but the gum-sticker is not only the other pastor, but my child's friend's dad!
I think about this every time I go around with coffee or bring them food, but I forget to check the table after they leave; and the other pastor comments on the dirtiness of my shirt with humourless blatancy and, in my opinion, absolute gall. Especially considering it wasn't all that dirty, had been clean that morning, and didn't even compare to the one I'd worn the day before, which had two days' stain on the boob. To which I respond by pausing the coffee pour, looking at him in the eyes with fire in my own, and say to him,
"How dare you!"
They don't tip, either.
They come rushing in, all but pushing and shoving to make room for the others coming to join them; and it's like these people use their religion as a crutch, an exemption, or an excuse to behave badly or in a way less concerned with Christ himself than to be socially acceptable or even superior in some martyrish, otherwise socially inept way. They're part of a group, any group, and all groups mean strength in numbers, don't they? So they all come in with a like mind and don't have to behave or be aware, even if they're known in some other capacity without this herd, because they are in a group of people associated with some kind of piety.
I really don't mean to judge. I am just surprised to have been 'suddenly' made aware of this. I mean, I always try and see the other sides of it, see their side, their angle, other angles, other sides, let it go on the principle of not being a judge of any kind, but it's like the behavior just kept coming and coming...
The Catholics.
I would normally, sort of, kind of, in this public setting, belong to this group. I go to this church (when I'm not working ON THE SABBATH), I pray the prayers at Mass with these people, I say amen to the same things they do. But this day, just as many others prior, they all flock in to a big table. They do not rearrange the tables, but the leading lady, the dominant prayer task force leader, prayer initiator extraordinaire to be reckoned with, beckons and assigns all fellow parishoners to the table she has chosen.
I do not wait on this table. It is not in my section. But I bring them their food as a favor to another server. I have barely sat the last plate down when DomiPraytrix demands they all say grace, like a mother to forgetful children. Every other woman at the table is older than her, but they all set down their forks, stop what they are doing, and bow their heads.
I am stuck. I don't have to stay there, but I feel it too awkward to leave as they all know me and I figure maybe it would be okay to stand there in prayer with them. I am not normally this testimonious. I prefer to keep my faith quiet. But I stay. They say "amen", I say "amen", I smile nervously and huff a laugh, hoping for a smile or two for having joined them, but get nothing, and walk away feeling somehow cheapened by it all. Whether it was me or any other waitress, could they have NOT waited until said waitress left to start saying their prayer?
The Lutherans
(or so I'm assuming from the corresponding pastor to have joined them later)
They move tables, but they don't just connect them end-to-end, as the most appropriate way to be disrespectful goes. They join them perpendicularly, so as to form an "L" shape, seating a wheelchaired woman in the crook of the "L" and threatening to block the aisle with chairs from the other side. I make this discovery in near-sheer horror coming off my 15 minute break.
I hate going on breaks on Sunday because of this very thing. I leave and hell always breaks lose, though it doesn't break lose because I'm gone. It's just on-going hell loosening. This is just the usual hell loosening when the swells of people come, orders continue to be sent back to the kitchen, cooks' tempers flaring, customers barking, the remaining patient and kind customers being the only ones who truly deserve our attention.
I take stock of The "L". I cannot get out of taking this table. The other girls laugh in hearty understanding and also in "ha, ha, this one's yours." I take a breath. It's the last time I remember to breathe for a while. I approach the "L", I stand at the corner, I look everyone in the eyes, assess the drinks situation, brace my notepad, lift my pen.
The mother orders for her three children, the grandmother orders for herself, and the three other adults left take their sweetass time ordering with menus open. I offer to give them more time, but the mother orders for herself. The grandmother can't hear what the sides are for her meal. I am using all my diaphragm to project my voice. The noise is boisterous and unrestrained. The kids blurt out things and are generally rude. We all get through the order, I punch it in, bring more drinks (becase you know, one just isn't enough for each of the three kids) and actually get past The "L" to pour coffee and make a round of it.
The pastor joins. I recognize her from the Lutheran church. She is a little odd, but most pastors are, so I think nothing of it. She is joined by a man of about the same age and same oddity. THEY pull table #3 up to The "L" and extend the leg of the "L".
I am stunned. WHO would do this? Who would allow it? Who.... would ever think this was okay? I am an instant blowfish of anger, but no one sees and so I continue because no one cares about this rudeness. I make them scoot the table over less than six inches because they are starting to block traffic and I am on an anger/power trip. I am hoping someone comes over and tells me they can't do that.
Nothing.
My puffer deflates. Mainly because I have no choice. I regain my humanity. I take the newcomers' orders. But not without some getting some snide comment about the hollandaise sauce that I just, quite frankly, don't get.
I walk away feeling like their odd behavior was meant to be smoothly humourous. But it's not. It's weird. It's stupid. It doesn't even make sense. Especially when it took them sooooo long to close their menus. It is particularly disconcerting for a gal like me who usually gets the odd little reasons people do a million odd things. I also walk away wondering what in the hell just happened and why people who become men and women of the cloth somehow become licensed to keep behaving in their poorly developed social skills, as though they are superior in their retarded differences.
It does not help that I was hungover.
I bring out the food. I've made a critical error. The grandma, who'd I'd been fighting to understand amongst the crowd, wanted fish. Not chicken. I promise to fix it, go to the kitchen for the second time in twenty minutes, and apologize profusely to the cooks, but my fuse is short and my explanation turns into incoherent rambling. My eye is twitching, non-existent bobbi pins are popping loose, steam rolls out of my ears. My boss (one of them, his wife is my other boss), the main chef, comes swooping in out of nowhere, swoops my plate out of my hand, and assures me he will fix it. I am momentarily rescued. I go back out and explain apologetically to the grandmother that her fish will be ready soon. She smiles. I almost miss it.
They don't leave a tip.
Other-denominational
Two pastors walk into a bar...
Okay, they really walk into the restaurant with another patron and sit down in K's section. K wants to trade me tables. She knows a set of customers who had just sat down in my section. I oblige. I don't mind. I find out later that one of them is allegedly the one who sticks the gum under the tables and she doesn't want to deal with them. I have only dealt with the one once or twice and been put off by his classless ignorance, but the gum-sticker is not only the other pastor, but my child's friend's dad!
I think about this every time I go around with coffee or bring them food, but I forget to check the table after they leave; and the other pastor comments on the dirtiness of my shirt with humourless blatancy and, in my opinion, absolute gall. Especially considering it wasn't all that dirty, had been clean that morning, and didn't even compare to the one I'd worn the day before, which had two days' stain on the boob. To which I respond by pausing the coffee pour, looking at him in the eyes with fire in my own, and say to him,
"How dare you!"
They don't tip, either.
23 February 2009
Grrrrrrrrrr!!!
I mean it!
What IS it with people who feeled compelled to justify themselves or exhault themselves by commenting against another's opinion? There are contrasting opinions, surely, that urge further development of a topic and perhaps encourage interesting discussion; and then there are just juxtaposed assertions that people make to contradict what you JUST said.
Does this make them feel better? What is the angle of thought that brings them to those conclusions?
Speaker 1: Is that the one you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: (knowing full well of speaker 2's blatant feelings on the matter) I've never had a problem with her
Speaker 2: *silence*
Okay, so then it's just a matter of opinions, but there was a whole dialogue of facial expression and body language to lightly pepper the whole verbal exchange with other-meaning-ness. The order of comments would be redone as follows:
Speaker 1, eyebrows raised, curious but focused eyes, face rigid: Is that the one you're talking about?
Speaker 2, leaning in, head tilted slightly: Yeah.
Speaker 1: with former knowledge of speaker 2's blatant feelings on the matter, corners of mouth back, as in half smile or bitter taste, speaks through teeth: I've never had a problem with her. Recovers with smile.
Speaker 2: *silence*
What is really going on is that I am biting my tongue. To keep from saying exactly what, I'm not sure, but I feel so instantly terrible. I am bitten, defensive, and then puffed up just as fast, like a blowfish of post-indignation and fuming incredulousness. I mean WHO says these things? Why? I figure the answer is people who are looking to make themselves feel good and cover their own arses for the things they've said or done before. I suppose so. Reading back over those words even now, they seem unconvincing on virtual paper.
It's like an underlying jab, You cant handle HER? This reaction by a person I barely know making me feel though I am this underdeveloped thing--it tends to suggest who the real contestant for growth should be, even though every last moment and every last trial of my entire adult life has gone into refining and readjusting my perceptions so that I am very much a world-is-my-oyster kind of person.
I would maybe just chaulk this up to how I read things. I've been known in the past to read too far into things (this being a general theme for the way I've emoted throughout my life), but this really takes on a new theme. I have been very aware of my ability to stretch the meaning of a look, facial expression, posture, so I've kept them in check, but I need perspective.
I mean it!
What IS it with people who feeled compelled to justify themselves or exhault themselves by commenting against another's opinion? There are contrasting opinions, surely, that urge further development of a topic and perhaps encourage interesting discussion; and then there are just juxtaposed assertions that people make to contradict what you JUST said.
Does this make them feel better? What is the angle of thought that brings them to those conclusions?
Speaker 1: Is that the one you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: (knowing full well of speaker 2's blatant feelings on the matter) I've never had a problem with her
Speaker 2: *silence*
Okay, so then it's just a matter of opinions, but there was a whole dialogue of facial expression and body language to lightly pepper the whole verbal exchange with other-meaning-ness. The order of comments would be redone as follows:
Speaker 1, eyebrows raised, curious but focused eyes, face rigid: Is that the one you're talking about?
Speaker 2, leaning in, head tilted slightly: Yeah.
Speaker 1: with former knowledge of speaker 2's blatant feelings on the matter, corners of mouth back, as in half smile or bitter taste, speaks through teeth: I've never had a problem with her. Recovers with smile.
Speaker 2: *silence*
What is really going on is that I am biting my tongue. To keep from saying exactly what, I'm not sure, but I feel so instantly terrible. I am bitten, defensive, and then puffed up just as fast, like a blowfish of post-indignation and fuming incredulousness. I mean WHO says these things? Why? I figure the answer is people who are looking to make themselves feel good and cover their own arses for the things they've said or done before. I suppose so. Reading back over those words even now, they seem unconvincing on virtual paper.
It's like an underlying jab, You cant handle HER? This reaction by a person I barely know making me feel though I am this underdeveloped thing--it tends to suggest who the real contestant for growth should be, even though every last moment and every last trial of my entire adult life has gone into refining and readjusting my perceptions so that I am very much a world-is-my-oyster kind of person.
I would maybe just chaulk this up to how I read things. I've been known in the past to read too far into things (this being a general theme for the way I've emoted throughout my life), but this really takes on a new theme. I have been very aware of my ability to stretch the meaning of a look, facial expression, posture, so I've kept them in check, but I need perspective.
22 February 2009
So, let me fill in the story some more.
I am not a bitter woman. I don't really even believe I was bitter back then. I was just overwhelmed. It was the third time Kyle was in the thick of diagnosis and treatments for cancer. The girls were so little, the oldest was two, the youngest 6 months and I felt like I had so much to catch up on, catch up to, and couldn't do it. Always behind or ill-equipped or underpaid or young or all of those and doing what I had to out of blank necessity, rather than marked choice.
And then it came to be that the head of our household came under fate's fire, even before we had a chance to establish "a household." While you don't have a choice when that kind of thing happens to a family, there was another, entirely different span of life as a single mother I had just gotten out of to compound what emotions I already had about our current situation. Matters of an undefined sort, relating to years prior to getting married, cycled through the brain which I had not seperated, understood and resolved before jumping into marriage, moving out of the country, and facing expat life with a sick husband.
I am not a bitter woman. I don't really even believe I was bitter back then. I was just overwhelmed. It was the third time Kyle was in the thick of diagnosis and treatments for cancer. The girls were so little, the oldest was two, the youngest 6 months and I felt like I had so much to catch up on, catch up to, and couldn't do it. Always behind or ill-equipped or underpaid or young or all of those and doing what I had to out of blank necessity, rather than marked choice.
And then it came to be that the head of our household came under fate's fire, even before we had a chance to establish "a household." While you don't have a choice when that kind of thing happens to a family, there was another, entirely different span of life as a single mother I had just gotten out of to compound what emotions I already had about our current situation. Matters of an undefined sort, relating to years prior to getting married, cycled through the brain which I had not seperated, understood and resolved before jumping into marriage, moving out of the country, and facing expat life with a sick husband.
So there we were then, living as urban nomads between cities and people's homes, possessions literally stored in the garages, basements, and schools of people we had just met in order to answer to the demands of Kyle's prognosis. In the middle of that, I had decided to move in, against the wishes of my in-laws, with his aunt who had her own ideas of how to be helpful; and it just didn't go smoothly at all. In fact, it was the farthest thing from smooth OR amicable. It would eventually turn into something of a disaster in micro-epic proportions.
21 February 2009
To all cooks, you have my endearing heart
From the first of the morning,
To the last off the grill,
You set out the food,
ne'er to chill.
The peppers and onions,
the panfries and gravy,
and all of the food stuff
so scrumptious and savory.
You make this all happen
with a flick of the wrist,
with a pinch of green onions,
and, well, you get the gist.
From chicken sans bones
To special du jour,
Your plates come out steaming,
Your saucer's couture.
From pasta al dente
to denvers with cheese,
we only see part of
what the cook sees.
You re-do our orders,
you fix our mistakes,
you give us the job,
you do what it takes.
We know you are special,
a little whacky, too,
but it's because of your breed
and how you make do.
We take off our hats
and tip them to you
because you're our cooks
and in our own ways, we love you, too!
To the last off the grill,
You set out the food,
ne'er to chill.
The peppers and onions,
the panfries and gravy,
and all of the food stuff
so scrumptious and savory.
You make this all happen
with a flick of the wrist,
with a pinch of green onions,
and, well, you get the gist.
From chicken sans bones
To special du jour,
Your plates come out steaming,
Your saucer's couture.
From pasta al dente
to denvers with cheese,
we only see part of
what the cook sees.
You re-do our orders,
you fix our mistakes,
you give us the job,
you do what it takes.
We know you are special,
a little whacky, too,
but it's because of your breed
and how you make do.
We take off our hats
and tip them to you
because you're our cooks
and in our own ways, we love you, too!
19 February 2009
I remember being SOOO angry at her every time I went down the stairs. If it wasn't for me being on the computer late at night, it was for the way I did the dishes or disciplined (or didn't discipline) my girls or borrowed hangers or cleaned the house or fed my then-6-month-old. I had HAD enough. Every. Single. Time. I did something, I heard about it.
She had missed the polo vaccine by a year. Her limping gait was painfully pulled to one side and she had the gall to wear shorts in April, which revealed gargantuan scars from multiple corrective surgeries. She waddled her way around everywhere she went, including a house she could barely maneuver in, and did her best to live the most normal life she could live and gaining everyone's sympathy doing it.
But she was the closest thing to the antichrist.
If she wasn't aimlessly waiting to find some weird, piddling chore for me to do or craft for her to make herself, she was rearranging her cupboards for the fifty-millionth time or eating Honeycomb cereal dry in a bowl. Think little old lady in the gingerbread house with OCD.
I am not making this up.
One night, she was so intensely into her rearranging that she fell off the stepstool she should have NEVER been on and laid passed out on the kitchen floor. I was thinking, good, she's dead, but her daughter's face was crumpled with fear at the sight of her mother, so we called an ambulance. Neither of us were about to lift her to the car ourselves. Especially when we would have had get my girls in the car along with a heavy, passed out woman.
In the hospital late that night, she cried to me with contrived quivering. She was "so" sorry and was I mad at her. Mad at her? MAD at her? For what? Falling off the stool? For using absolutely zero common sense to stay off it when she had problems balancing at the best of times? For making my life a living hell when my husband, HER nephew, was sick with cancer in the hospital? For making me drag my two little girls out of bed at that late hour? For scaring the bejeezus out of me when the last thing I wanted to do was give a shit? Hell yeah, I was!
But I just swallowed it. No, I said, I'm not mad and how could I be mad, it was just an accident.
But seriously. What was one more thing going to do? One more incident? Drama session? What MORE damage could possibly be done that hadn't been done by ONE more thing? What single thing could have caused any more discord, heartache, and resentment than there already was? I was beyond exhausted. Beyond seasoned. Beyond the flip out point. Beyond recognition of all things congnitive. I was fucked.
* * *
She was also the assistant director of an inner city-type daycare. The very same one that SHE suggested my girls went to during the day so that I could be at the hospital with Kyle. I really don't know how someone like her gets a job in that field. You can preach a love for kids all you want and then straddle a 6-month-old, whose poor neck can only take so much, on your decrepit hip. Or enforce spoon feeding. Or coloring. Or building with blocks. If the kid is disinterested, he's disinterested. You can't make him interested by continuing to shove that spoon, that toy, that crayon down their proverbial throats.
Somehow, I let this happen. I let myself believe that enrolling them there would at least provide them with some normalcy while I spent the day at the hospital. At least that's what I figure because it bothered me deeply to leave them there alone--"alone" as in, without me and yet, I did it anyway. It didn't feel right, but maybe that's because I just hated her. And I never hated anyone. I needed to know they would be well taken care of, I needed proof, and I just didn't trust her. The daycare worked, though. The girls got to spend the days surrounded by toys, activities, scheduled meals, naps, friends, and a staff that didn't necessarily always include her while I sat in a sterile hospital room with an alien husband watching re-runs of Three's Company, Northern Exposure, and MacGyver with him.
Plus she was allergic (allegedly allergic) to just about everything: nuts, milk, bananas, lotion, medical tape, sitting, standing, wool, cotton (I think; a few of those I just made up, but then so did she, so I guess we're even?), common sense. When she wasn't spending my $650/month rent payments on craft crap from Michael's, 32-inch television sets, new computers, bedroom sets for their daughter or more, she was "helping" me to the hospital, carrying my 6-month-old, head bobbing side-to-side to the erratic rhythm of her lopsided steps.
Everything about her dichotomous ways curdled my blood.
She had missed the polo vaccine by a year. Her limping gait was painfully pulled to one side and she had the gall to wear shorts in April, which revealed gargantuan scars from multiple corrective surgeries. She waddled her way around everywhere she went, including a house she could barely maneuver in, and did her best to live the most normal life she could live and gaining everyone's sympathy doing it.
But she was the closest thing to the antichrist.
If she wasn't aimlessly waiting to find some weird, piddling chore for me to do or craft for her to make herself, she was rearranging her cupboards for the fifty-millionth time or eating Honeycomb cereal dry in a bowl. Think little old lady in the gingerbread house with OCD.
I am not making this up.
One night, she was so intensely into her rearranging that she fell off the stepstool she should have NEVER been on and laid passed out on the kitchen floor. I was thinking, good, she's dead, but her daughter's face was crumpled with fear at the sight of her mother, so we called an ambulance. Neither of us were about to lift her to the car ourselves. Especially when we would have had get my girls in the car along with a heavy, passed out woman.
In the hospital late that night, she cried to me with contrived quivering. She was "so" sorry and was I mad at her. Mad at her? MAD at her? For what? Falling off the stool? For using absolutely zero common sense to stay off it when she had problems balancing at the best of times? For making my life a living hell when my husband, HER nephew, was sick with cancer in the hospital? For making me drag my two little girls out of bed at that late hour? For scaring the bejeezus out of me when the last thing I wanted to do was give a shit? Hell yeah, I was!
But I just swallowed it. No, I said, I'm not mad and how could I be mad, it was just an accident.
But seriously. What was one more thing going to do? One more incident? Drama session? What MORE damage could possibly be done that hadn't been done by ONE more thing? What single thing could have caused any more discord, heartache, and resentment than there already was? I was beyond exhausted. Beyond seasoned. Beyond the flip out point. Beyond recognition of all things congnitive. I was fucked.
* * *
She was also the assistant director of an inner city-type daycare. The very same one that SHE suggested my girls went to during the day so that I could be at the hospital with Kyle. I really don't know how someone like her gets a job in that field. You can preach a love for kids all you want and then straddle a 6-month-old, whose poor neck can only take so much, on your decrepit hip. Or enforce spoon feeding. Or coloring. Or building with blocks. If the kid is disinterested, he's disinterested. You can't make him interested by continuing to shove that spoon, that toy, that crayon down their proverbial throats.
Somehow, I let this happen. I let myself believe that enrolling them there would at least provide them with some normalcy while I spent the day at the hospital. At least that's what I figure because it bothered me deeply to leave them there alone--"alone" as in, without me and yet, I did it anyway. It didn't feel right, but maybe that's because I just hated her. And I never hated anyone. I needed to know they would be well taken care of, I needed proof, and I just didn't trust her. The daycare worked, though. The girls got to spend the days surrounded by toys, activities, scheduled meals, naps, friends, and a staff that didn't necessarily always include her while I sat in a sterile hospital room with an alien husband watching re-runs of Three's Company, Northern Exposure, and MacGyver with him.
Plus she was allergic (allegedly allergic) to just about everything: nuts, milk, bananas, lotion, medical tape, sitting, standing, wool, cotton (I think; a few of those I just made up, but then so did she, so I guess we're even?), common sense. When she wasn't spending my $650/month rent payments on craft crap from Michael's, 32-inch television sets, new computers, bedroom sets for their daughter or more, she was "helping" me to the hospital, carrying my 6-month-old, head bobbing side-to-side to the erratic rhythm of her lopsided steps.
Everything about her dichotomous ways curdled my blood.
18 February 2009
Tonight I was taking care of the dining room while my co-closing partner-in-crime waitress-friend, K, was covering my back with all the side chores when "SHE" comes in.
I barely notice her, I'm around and around with the coffee, getting drinks, taking orders, punching them in, covering everyone. She comes in with someone I assume to be her boyfriend. I've seen them together before. She is pregnant. Not that that matters. Except I could never roundhouse her grouchy ass if my life depended on it.
Take one: I stop at the table, ask for drinks. The snotface boyfriend straightens up and orders a chicken burger. I have my hands full. I say okay. I smile. I am still trying to commit other requests to memory and think if I could just get over to the till, set these down...
"Just plain. But with pickles."
Say what? Back up, dishes, cloth and coffee pot. "What's that?" What I mean: "what the fuck do you want NOW, you whiny, bitter, unhappy little prick?"
At that instant, I am in danger of forgetting table 6's request. Pie. Platter. No. Ice cream? No, cheese, but... gotta put these down. Just give me two seconds, please. I'll be right back.
No dice. He's not reading the dish-laden pleading in my eyes OR hands, probably because it's overlaced with sheer albeit momentary hate. In fact, he's not even looking her eyes. They look scowled and disconnected. Was he bitterly caught up in this pregnancy? Did she have him by the cranky, snotty, sour-faced balls? Has every moment in their lives been one trapped moment to another?
I don't hate anyone. I also don't care. They deserve each other for all I can tell. A match made in the respites of hell.
I say, "so you just want chicken and pickles?" This is not the strangest request I've heard. And I say in a way that means "just the chicken burger and pickles. No lettuce, tomato, or mayo."
"No. I just want---" blah, blah, blah, his voice fades. I get short.
Me: "Let me set these down 'cause otherwise I'll forget." I say this with my own trickling snotiness. I call it attitude. I walk away.
I've waited on this unhappy miserable couple before. She is usually the only female among two or more males accompanying her. Who really knows why, but I'm just sayin'... Maybe she is the cool, one-of-the-guys girls, but she is just too snotty to be cool. And they all seem as snotty as she is. So when I figure THAT just can't be, I figure the obvious opposite. I mean, she IS pregnant.
Yes, that wild snickering you hear is me.
I was warned about her the first time I waited on her. She didn't seem that bad. I've worked with worse. My mission in life is to take what seems impossible and work it over to a possibility. I walk away from the experience unscathed. I say this so you can know how much worse it gets...
I don't have time to think about how to better deal with this table. I have six other tables on the go and the coffee crowd is trickling in. They are my first stop every round I make. They'll survive. Put in all the orders, drop off my dishes, regain my brain, go around with the coffee again. I am ready, I brace myself to confirm Thorn In Ass-Man's order.
Take two: "Okay," smile, "you wanted a chicken burger with pickles?
TIAM: "Myeah-s."
Me: "Okay." Half-smile. Nod. Around I go again. Everyone is happy. It is somewhere around nine. Anyone coming in to order food is chatting and content, even the picky coffee-crowd food orders are happy.
Or at least I try to go around.
"And could I get a glass of water?" She Devil blurts out.
Hmm? Again, back up, pause, double check.
Me: "Water? Sure." Around I go. Note to self: GET WATER BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!
I go around, put the chicken burger into the system, check on everyone, get to the back. I forget the water. Chicken burger comes out, I coffee the other male to have joined the table. I still don't bring water. Let me side note by saying this is NOT the kind of woman who is appreciative of good service in the best of moments. And this was a lesser moment for me.
I begin to make another pass of coffee, water not even on the brain, go by Miserable Bitch's and TIAM's table. As I go by, she barks at me.
"Could I GET my water?" I systematically feel bad for forgetting, then it passes. She is snippy and sneery and I feel like slapping little hoochies like this across the face at the best of times. There's no reason for that kind of attitude. Didn't your mama teach you? No? Okay, I'll do it, I'll slap your face, I'll knock you clean off your ass, b****!
I think about spitting in her water, horking a loogie in it. I go back to the kitchen to hide for a moment.
Let me back up and say that it is important to note that I have an instant temper in this very exact kind of situation. Actually, that is an understatement. I actually feel muscles in my body recoil and patience snapping like a bow string, and everything goes into some kind of Joker-like senselessness in my brain. I'm not going to go apeshit or fly into a murerous rage. It DOES make me want to start backhanding assholes. Just backhand them so hard they feel knuckle, head bobbling backward, lips hitting their teeth, their reactions stunned, maybe a little trickle of blood because obviously their mamas didn't teach them how to be good little boys and girls.
I grunt. K laughs because she knows what I am going through. I go back and get two waters. I'm thinking about which cup is hers, not wanting to fill one, not wanting to bring it to her, not WANTING... her to get her way. Her snotty, snotty way. I fill it anyway. I don't spit in it. I don't even stick my dirty, bleachy, greasy finger in it.
I bring it to her table and slam it down. I do not go by their table again. They leave and they don't tip. All I can think of is...
"Don't F*** with the people who serve you your food!" (Don't watch past the kitchen scene if you gag easy.)
Disclaimer: This does not, nor will this apply to anyone else, any other customer, anyone else I have ever waited on or will wait on. This is just for my sick, sick amusement.
I barely notice her, I'm around and around with the coffee, getting drinks, taking orders, punching them in, covering everyone. She comes in with someone I assume to be her boyfriend. I've seen them together before. She is pregnant. Not that that matters. Except I could never roundhouse her grouchy ass if my life depended on it.
Take one: I stop at the table, ask for drinks. The snotface boyfriend straightens up and orders a chicken burger. I have my hands full. I say okay. I smile. I am still trying to commit other requests to memory and think if I could just get over to the till, set these down...
"Just plain. But with pickles."
Say what? Back up, dishes, cloth and coffee pot. "What's that?" What I mean: "what the fuck do you want NOW, you whiny, bitter, unhappy little prick?"
At that instant, I am in danger of forgetting table 6's request. Pie. Platter. No. Ice cream? No, cheese, but... gotta put these down. Just give me two seconds, please. I'll be right back.
No dice. He's not reading the dish-laden pleading in my eyes OR hands, probably because it's overlaced with sheer albeit momentary hate. In fact, he's not even looking her eyes. They look scowled and disconnected. Was he bitterly caught up in this pregnancy? Did she have him by the cranky, snotty, sour-faced balls? Has every moment in their lives been one trapped moment to another?
I don't hate anyone. I also don't care. They deserve each other for all I can tell. A match made in the respites of hell.
I say, "so you just want chicken and pickles?" This is not the strangest request I've heard. And I say in a way that means "just the chicken burger and pickles. No lettuce, tomato, or mayo."
"No. I just want---" blah, blah, blah, his voice fades. I get short.
Me: "Let me set these down 'cause otherwise I'll forget." I say this with my own trickling snotiness. I call it attitude. I walk away.
I've waited on this unhappy miserable couple before. She is usually the only female among two or more males accompanying her. Who really knows why, but I'm just sayin'... Maybe she is the cool, one-of-the-guys girls, but she is just too snotty to be cool. And they all seem as snotty as she is. So when I figure THAT just can't be, I figure the obvious opposite. I mean, she IS pregnant.
Yes, that wild snickering you hear is me.
I was warned about her the first time I waited on her. She didn't seem that bad. I've worked with worse. My mission in life is to take what seems impossible and work it over to a possibility. I walk away from the experience unscathed. I say this so you can know how much worse it gets...
I don't have time to think about how to better deal with this table. I have six other tables on the go and the coffee crowd is trickling in. They are my first stop every round I make. They'll survive. Put in all the orders, drop off my dishes, regain my brain, go around with the coffee again. I am ready, I brace myself to confirm Thorn In Ass-Man's order.
Take two: "Okay," smile, "you wanted a chicken burger with pickles?
TIAM: "Myeah-s."
Me: "Okay." Half-smile. Nod. Around I go again. Everyone is happy. It is somewhere around nine. Anyone coming in to order food is chatting and content, even the picky coffee-crowd food orders are happy.
Or at least I try to go around.
"And could I get a glass of water?" She Devil blurts out.
Hmm? Again, back up, pause, double check.
Me: "Water? Sure." Around I go. Note to self: GET WATER BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!
I go around, put the chicken burger into the system, check on everyone, get to the back. I forget the water. Chicken burger comes out, I coffee the other male to have joined the table. I still don't bring water. Let me side note by saying this is NOT the kind of woman who is appreciative of good service in the best of moments. And this was a lesser moment for me.
I begin to make another pass of coffee, water not even on the brain, go by Miserable Bitch's and TIAM's table. As I go by, she barks at me.
"Could I GET my water?" I systematically feel bad for forgetting, then it passes. She is snippy and sneery and I feel like slapping little hoochies like this across the face at the best of times. There's no reason for that kind of attitude. Didn't your mama teach you? No? Okay, I'll do it, I'll slap your face, I'll knock you clean off your ass, b****!
I think about spitting in her water, horking a loogie in it. I go back to the kitchen to hide for a moment.
Let me back up and say that it is important to note that I have an instant temper in this very exact kind of situation. Actually, that is an understatement. I actually feel muscles in my body recoil and patience snapping like a bow string, and everything goes into some kind of Joker-like senselessness in my brain. I'm not going to go apeshit or fly into a murerous rage. It DOES make me want to start backhanding assholes. Just backhand them so hard they feel knuckle, head bobbling backward, lips hitting their teeth, their reactions stunned, maybe a little trickle of blood because obviously their mamas didn't teach them how to be good little boys and girls.
I grunt. K laughs because she knows what I am going through. I go back and get two waters. I'm thinking about which cup is hers, not wanting to fill one, not wanting to bring it to her, not WANTING... her to get her way. Her snotty, snotty way. I fill it anyway. I don't spit in it. I don't even stick my dirty, bleachy, greasy finger in it.
I bring it to her table and slam it down. I do not go by their table again. They leave and they don't tip. All I can think of is...
"Don't F*** with the people who serve you your food!" (Don't watch past the kitchen scene if you gag easy.)
Disclaimer: This does not, nor will this apply to anyone else, any other customer, anyone else I have ever waited on or will wait on. This is just for my sick, sick amusement.
When I was 21, I walked into Kyle's hospital room by myself, ahead of the girls by either a few steps or my mother-in-law keeping them in the hall, and timidly approached the corner of the in-room bathroom wall, relieved to be near Kyle again.
The girls were little. Aurora was two and a half, Celia just 6 months old and still needing to be carried. We'd trekked the two hours it takes to get from where I was living with friends in Brandon to the city of Winnipeg, over to Health Sciences, parked in the parkade, baby brigade stuffed, into the elevator, up to D6 (cancer ward), down the hall, through the double doors that locked on one side until the other side was shut, and down the everlasting hall towards Kyle's room.
It was the second visit since moving him into the hospital. He was going to be staying there a whole long while the plans were to chemo the hell out of him and then do something-can't remember-something when he was something-something-better.
But nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see as my legs carried me around the corner and my husband, 24 and with a full, thick head of hair the last time I saw him, was bald as a baby's behind. His beard was gone, his eyebrows were gone, his moustache was gone, even his smile was gone, but it wasn't that which catapulted me forward and threw me backwards all at once. It was his eyes. They were stark and sunken and very, very wide. I realized his eyelashes were gone, too, and it made his eyes look very, very bulging and very unfamiliar.
I didn't want to react. I didn't want him to see my face or feel my reaction or read negativity or feel inadequate in any way, even though it was spurning. This could not have been my husband. Did I step into the wrong room? I would have looked back to check, except if it hadn't been, Linda wouldn't have been outside the door. I was in absolute shock. I wasn't repulsed, but I had fleetingly wished I could do the moment over, wished someone would have told me what I was going to see. He looked at me with strange eyes and for having been an eye-girl my whole life, this was deeply unnerving. I wanted to cry.
But I didn't. In a flash and without them fully forming in my mind, thoughts of how could I have-- what if he doesn-- look at him!-- married-- really??-- how can we-- how are we-- is there-- what if this doesn't-- how can you-- crossed my mind. I had no idea, no creative way, no place to think of something more concrete, more positive or a way to deal with what I had just seen, what I was still seeing, this situation, the unbelievable course our lives were taking, and the whole unknown of Kyle's outcome--when and if he'd heal, if he would live, what kind of state or quality of life he'd have if he did survive all of that, all of what had already made him...
...that starkly hairless.
I didn't even know that I didn't know which thoughts exactly I was having. But without any sense of acceptance or bracing myself, I went to the next moment. This is how my life went in those days. One dramatic moment to the next, no time to chew, digest, accept and move on in between. No chance to heal or completely grow (or at least grow more than just a mere fraction) from one thing life flung at me to the next and I was just so, so young and the furthest thing from being an "old soul."
* * *
I just did what I had to. A lot of where I'd been in my life before this was a culmination of results directly related to choices I had made. And while that seems obvious, it wasn't to me. Rather than see the bigger picture for what it was and where I needed to go while doing for myself, I just made these partitioned decisions, out of those specific moments, thinking of immediate consequences, those solo sections of time, and from an emotional place; and when I did think of the future, it was with removed, idealistic, and marginal concept from where to perceive or relate to some unreachable, unknown future date.
As I discover (remember) more of my childhood over time and as I listen to Enigma's "Return To Innocence" right now and wonder how it ALL... just ever... went so wrong.... I put it together. I recall the rollover we were in where I suffered a major concussion. To this day I don't know the extent of damage, but it bothers me that don't know. It bothers me that I was in ICU for three days, but released without full report. Hell, I would have taken a partial report. I don't know what the doctors told Kyle, my mom, my dad. Anyway, I have major difficulty in remembering these things, remembering things I've learned time and again, and I think it's just me, but then I talk to Kyle and he says I was never that way before the accident.
So. It begs the question which lobes were affected and what do each lobe of the brain control? Is this why I am having such difficulty keeping a hold of the things I have learned? Is there any relation to this head trauma--trauma I thought I'd healed from--and these weird jostlings of memory?
For some reason, there is just this entire seperate chunk of remembering my childhood, hearing and seeing things that remind me of if and remembering things I have long forgotten, and the entire seperate chunks of my life after leaving home, having a child so young, the accident, cancer, even moving to Canada without so much as a second thought, and all the transitional agonies in between. Why do I feel so at odds with myself in these fleeting moments? It is embarrassing to move on, go through the stages of moving on, feeling resolved and then regressing back to those, as though I've never put the issue away.
It's just all so confusing. Even as I write this, my brain is wanting to go off in a million directions. There's gotta be a reason for this, for thinking here, there, then back over here, then over there, and back again. After a while, a gal starts to realize that not even female hardwiring can make a brain jump around like that and remember odd memories that may or may not even be memories, just dreams, or random thoughts.
*Sigh. It's time to get ready for work now.
The girls were little. Aurora was two and a half, Celia just 6 months old and still needing to be carried. We'd trekked the two hours it takes to get from where I was living with friends in Brandon to the city of Winnipeg, over to Health Sciences, parked in the parkade, baby brigade stuffed, into the elevator, up to D6 (cancer ward), down the hall, through the double doors that locked on one side until the other side was shut, and down the everlasting hall towards Kyle's room.
It was the second visit since moving him into the hospital. He was going to be staying there a whole long while the plans were to chemo the hell out of him and then do something-can't remember-something when he was something-something-better.
But nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see as my legs carried me around the corner and my husband, 24 and with a full, thick head of hair the last time I saw him, was bald as a baby's behind. His beard was gone, his eyebrows were gone, his moustache was gone, even his smile was gone, but it wasn't that which catapulted me forward and threw me backwards all at once. It was his eyes. They were stark and sunken and very, very wide. I realized his eyelashes were gone, too, and it made his eyes look very, very bulging and very unfamiliar.
I didn't want to react. I didn't want him to see my face or feel my reaction or read negativity or feel inadequate in any way, even though it was spurning. This could not have been my husband. Did I step into the wrong room? I would have looked back to check, except if it hadn't been, Linda wouldn't have been outside the door. I was in absolute shock. I wasn't repulsed, but I had fleetingly wished I could do the moment over, wished someone would have told me what I was going to see. He looked at me with strange eyes and for having been an eye-girl my whole life, this was deeply unnerving. I wanted to cry.
But I didn't. In a flash and without them fully forming in my mind, thoughts of how could I have-- what if he doesn-- look at him!-- married-- really??-- how can we-- how are we-- is there-- what if this doesn't-- how can you-- crossed my mind. I had no idea, no creative way, no place to think of something more concrete, more positive or a way to deal with what I had just seen, what I was still seeing, this situation, the unbelievable course our lives were taking, and the whole unknown of Kyle's outcome--when and if he'd heal, if he would live, what kind of state or quality of life he'd have if he did survive all of that, all of what had already made him...
...that starkly hairless.
I didn't even know that I didn't know which thoughts exactly I was having. But without any sense of acceptance or bracing myself, I went to the next moment. This is how my life went in those days. One dramatic moment to the next, no time to chew, digest, accept and move on in between. No chance to heal or completely grow (or at least grow more than just a mere fraction) from one thing life flung at me to the next and I was just so, so young and the furthest thing from being an "old soul."
* * *
I just did what I had to. A lot of where I'd been in my life before this was a culmination of results directly related to choices I had made. And while that seems obvious, it wasn't to me. Rather than see the bigger picture for what it was and where I needed to go while doing for myself, I just made these partitioned decisions, out of those specific moments, thinking of immediate consequences, those solo sections of time, and from an emotional place; and when I did think of the future, it was with removed, idealistic, and marginal concept from where to perceive or relate to some unreachable, unknown future date.
As I discover (remember) more of my childhood over time and as I listen to Enigma's "Return To Innocence" right now and wonder how it ALL... just ever... went so wrong.... I put it together. I recall the rollover we were in where I suffered a major concussion. To this day I don't know the extent of damage, but it bothers me that don't know. It bothers me that I was in ICU for three days, but released without full report. Hell, I would have taken a partial report. I don't know what the doctors told Kyle, my mom, my dad. Anyway, I have major difficulty in remembering these things, remembering things I've learned time and again, and I think it's just me, but then I talk to Kyle and he says I was never that way before the accident.
So. It begs the question which lobes were affected and what do each lobe of the brain control? Is this why I am having such difficulty keeping a hold of the things I have learned? Is there any relation to this head trauma--trauma I thought I'd healed from--and these weird jostlings of memory?
For some reason, there is just this entire seperate chunk of remembering my childhood, hearing and seeing things that remind me of if and remembering things I have long forgotten, and the entire seperate chunks of my life after leaving home, having a child so young, the accident, cancer, even moving to Canada without so much as a second thought, and all the transitional agonies in between. Why do I feel so at odds with myself in these fleeting moments? It is embarrassing to move on, go through the stages of moving on, feeling resolved and then regressing back to those, as though I've never put the issue away.
It's just all so confusing. Even as I write this, my brain is wanting to go off in a million directions. There's gotta be a reason for this, for thinking here, there, then back over here, then over there, and back again. After a while, a gal starts to realize that not even female hardwiring can make a brain jump around like that and remember odd memories that may or may not even be memories, just dreams, or random thoughts.
*Sigh. It's time to get ready for work now.
17 February 2009
Myspace import: October 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
The word "nice"
Category: Writing and Poetry
When I hear the word "nice", I want to write. Nice, as per agreement to those discussing it in the staffroom today, is far too general a word. It is barely a descriptive thing as it only compares to what is NOT nice. And so, what is that? It drives me crazy that it is so general when there are thousands (well, okay, maybe just a mere 'several') of other words and ways to term an object, describe the emotion, paint the picture.
Points should not be given for a descriptive paragraph that reads "she had a nice bike." Well so what? Nice in the quickest sense that it wasn't a piece of crap. Well good. NICE-ly done. But WHAT? about it? What MAKES it nice? Is it nice because it has handle bars at all when others do not? Would "nice" be the lines or the color of the bike? The type? The brand? Could "nice" be that it was from the store as opposed to the junkyard? Could a bike from the junkyard BE nice in the sense that it was built from scraps and therefore implies PRIDE which can be considered "nice"?
Furthermore, how do we get kids to care? To GIVE a crap about writing? To submit and produce works of art, of ethic, and of pride? In today's generation, it's a do-what-I-can-to-just-squeeze-by lazy fair, even though the earliest generations of our time and further back produced great works of prose, poetry, narrative, and novel--treasures for us, the younger generation to compare ourselves to, to aspire to, to find inspiration, truth, opinion, imagination, and most of all freedom.
To defend these slackers somewhat, the number of humans in the world has not doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in one hundred years, when Teddy Roosevelt was in office, but has risen nearly 670%! That is a staggering boom of human minds to be born and thusly compete for the light of recognition in a contemporary society where 'letting the other guy have it' has become more popular, if not banal, concession to working really hard to achieve something actually worth merit, praise, and to this end, good marks in school.
It makes sense in a very consumeristic culture, where the volume of humanity is crowding itself out, that we are losing steam, finding the lazy way out, and being content to simply let someone else take care of it, write it, paint it, create it, develop it. There ARE many others out there willing to do it for you, for someone else, for those unable, but especially unwilling to do it and enabling this atmosphere of blaze-ness. It is undoubtedly creating a sterile apathy in the younger generations, where the numbers of kids in classrooms are ever-oozing into barely-manageable crowds, and undoubtedly establishing a dichotomous society.
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1908.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
But, if this is any indication where we could be headed, it is also another just-is era of many eras to have dominated the cultures and societies of our time and the times which existed along time ago.
The word "nice"
Category: Writing and Poetry
When I hear the word "nice", I want to write. Nice, as per agreement to those discussing it in the staffroom today, is far too general a word. It is barely a descriptive thing as it only compares to what is NOT nice. And so, what is that? It drives me crazy that it is so general when there are thousands (well, okay, maybe just a mere 'several') of other words and ways to term an object, describe the emotion, paint the picture.
Points should not be given for a descriptive paragraph that reads "she had a nice bike." Well so what? Nice in the quickest sense that it wasn't a piece of crap. Well good. NICE-ly done. But WHAT? about it? What MAKES it nice? Is it nice because it has handle bars at all when others do not? Would "nice" be the lines or the color of the bike? The type? The brand? Could "nice" be that it was from the store as opposed to the junkyard? Could a bike from the junkyard BE nice in the sense that it was built from scraps and therefore implies PRIDE which can be considered "nice"?
Furthermore, how do we get kids to care? To GIVE a crap about writing? To submit and produce works of art, of ethic, and of pride? In today's generation, it's a do-what-I-can-to-just-squeeze-by lazy fair, even though the earliest generations of our time and further back produced great works of prose, poetry, narrative, and novel--treasures for us, the younger generation to compare ourselves to, to aspire to, to find inspiration, truth, opinion, imagination, and most of all freedom.
To defend these slackers somewhat, the number of humans in the world has not doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in one hundred years, when Teddy Roosevelt was in office, but has risen nearly 670%! That is a staggering boom of human minds to be born and thusly compete for the light of recognition in a contemporary society where 'letting the other guy have it' has become more popular, if not banal, concession to working really hard to achieve something actually worth merit, praise, and to this end, good marks in school.
It makes sense in a very consumeristic culture, where the volume of humanity is crowding itself out, that we are losing steam, finding the lazy way out, and being content to simply let someone else take care of it, write it, paint it, create it, develop it. There ARE many others out there willing to do it for you, for someone else, for those unable, but especially unwilling to do it and enabling this atmosphere of blaze-ness. It is undoubtedly creating a sterile apathy in the younger generations, where the numbers of kids in classrooms are ever-oozing into barely-manageable crowds, and undoubtedly establishing a dichotomous society.
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1908.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
But, if this is any indication where we could be headed, it is also another just-is era of many eras to have dominated the cultures and societies of our time and the times which existed along time ago.
Geminian postables
Gehhhhht up.
Get up.
Get up, get up, get up. Go. Now. Get up and go to the gym. Get up and go now.
Gehhhhht up, gettin' up. *even tone*
--But I don't WAN-NA
Get up. You can feel your belly resting on its own self, can't you?
--Yeahhhh. But I don't wahhhh-na.
I know. So get up. You know you feel better when you've been going.
--Yeahhh, but it's harrrd. I don't have the time. I don't wannnnna.
Make the time. You've been working evenings. You have time in the mornings. You knowwwww you feel better in the mornings and your overall day.
--Yeahhh. True. I do. But that means giving up sleeping in.
Well that's a tough one. We DO like to sleep in.
--Yeah.
Yeah.
--Well.
Well.
--Well maybe we could just this once. But then what about when my work schedule changes? 'Cause you KNOW we hate change. Hate reaccomodating.
Yeah. It's too bad, hey? I used to think I adapted easier.
--Yeah, me, too.
But look at the overall picture. Wouldn't you rather lead by example? Show your daughters how to take care of themselves?
--Absolutely
And you have a pass already. You found Kyle's pass today, so you know the number to sign in at the gym.
--Yeah.
--Okay fine.
*Gemini post #1
Get up.
Get up, get up, get up. Go. Now. Get up and go to the gym. Get up and go now.
Gehhhhht up, gettin' up. *even tone*
--But I don't WAN-NA
Get up. You can feel your belly resting on its own self, can't you?
--Yeahhhh. But I don't wahhhh-na.
I know. So get up. You know you feel better when you've been going.
--Yeahhh, but it's harrrd. I don't have the time. I don't wannnnna.
Make the time. You've been working evenings. You have time in the mornings. You knowwwww you feel better in the mornings and your overall day.
--Yeahhh. True. I do. But that means giving up sleeping in.
Well that's a tough one. We DO like to sleep in.
--Yeah.
Yeah.
--Well.
Well.
--Well maybe we could just this once. But then what about when my work schedule changes? 'Cause you KNOW we hate change. Hate reaccomodating.
Yeah. It's too bad, hey? I used to think I adapted easier.
--Yeah, me, too.
But look at the overall picture. Wouldn't you rather lead by example? Show your daughters how to take care of themselves?
--Absolutely
And you have a pass already. You found Kyle's pass today, so you know the number to sign in at the gym.
--Yeah.
--Okay fine.
*Gemini post #1
15 February 2009
Yo. *click click* She-Bitch. Let's go.
I know I'm PMSing. I know it because this kind of grumpy doesn't just get reasoned away. I am beyond reasoning. It's never seemed that extreme, but I know I must have been downplaying it for years because I've always put the filter on between my brain and actually broadcasting it.
One. Everyone and everything pisses me off when I'm PMSing. There are exceptions, but I will get irritated by everything. I don't know WHERE this comes from or WHY, but I know that I become a sight-losing, objectivity-thrown-out-the-window, perceptiveless she-bitch. I try and steer Kyle clear of this She-Hulk metamorphasis, but sometimes he gets caught in the crossfire, poor guy.
Two. It's gradual and blindsighting. For Kyle. For everyone else, there's Mastercard. (Or is it VISA?) Okay, comedic flitting break done. It's gradual and blindsighting and creeps in like the plague, unaware, unassuming, and then BAM! it, that, those, them... are culprits in everything. People. Dummies. Co-workers. Acquaintances. Former high school classmates. A scheming circle around me to somehow fall out of the Stupid Tree and crawl under my skin. As though fate has nothing better to do than spite me. Psh. Whatevs.
Three. I am beyond reasoning. Far beyond. Trying to put things in perspective, context, reality---gone. All gone. The ability TO reason and to be reasoned WITH leave and float to a place of magic and mystery that I still have yet to chance upon in my journies, extract, GRAB... and pull back, rendering me a useless bulk of hideous transformation with no ETA of my sanity. Experiences that have made me a better person are forgotten and experiences that could make me a better person or matter don't even make the radar.
Not really that bad, you say? Shyeah! You try living in this head. I'm hungry, I'm tired, have to get up early, and am watching an old replay of The Bodyguard on CMT. I'm just not really helping myself here. Will check in another time soon...
One. Everyone and everything pisses me off when I'm PMSing. There are exceptions, but I will get irritated by everything. I don't know WHERE this comes from or WHY, but I know that I become a sight-losing, objectivity-thrown-out-the-window, perceptiveless she-bitch. I try and steer Kyle clear of this She-Hulk metamorphasis, but sometimes he gets caught in the crossfire, poor guy.
Two. It's gradual and blindsighting. For Kyle. For everyone else, there's Mastercard. (Or is it VISA?) Okay, comedic flitting break done. It's gradual and blindsighting and creeps in like the plague, unaware, unassuming, and then BAM! it, that, those, them... are culprits in everything. People. Dummies. Co-workers. Acquaintances. Former high school classmates. A scheming circle around me to somehow fall out of the Stupid Tree and crawl under my skin. As though fate has nothing better to do than spite me. Psh. Whatevs.
Three. I am beyond reasoning. Far beyond. Trying to put things in perspective, context, reality---gone. All gone. The ability TO reason and to be reasoned WITH leave and float to a place of magic and mystery that I still have yet to chance upon in my journies, extract, GRAB... and pull back, rendering me a useless bulk of hideous transformation with no ETA of my sanity. Experiences that have made me a better person are forgotten and experiences that could make me a better person or matter don't even make the radar.
Not really that bad, you say? Shyeah! You try living in this head. I'm hungry, I'm tired, have to get up early, and am watching an old replay of The Bodyguard on CMT. I'm just not really helping myself here. Will check in another time soon...
12 February 2009
Ooogey boogey
Not happy. No, no, no. I just came from a meeting I organized to TRY and get as many piano players in one spot as possible and organize a schedule of sorts (only for the willing--I wasn't going to suck someone in and/or staple their feet to the floor) for, at the moment, the churches in the community who are lacking for steady players. Namely, the ones that call me repeatedly and a few others, who are also repetitively called (bombarbed, lambasted, guilted... okay, okay, not really.)
It wasn't going to be to sucker anyone in. I SWEAR. When I vocalize my idea, it sounds a lot better. It sounds more casual than it looks. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone sitting behind the keyboard in existing accompanist arrangements. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone hesitant about trying. Or anything in between. At all. JUST bulk. It was only about getting a bunch of people together to rotate services. Hell, anyone. Anyone at all interested in playing piano. I'd teach you piano just to have people in a group who play piano. (Wait, let's not go that far.)
All right. I'm defensive. Because there was no one at the meeting. No one. No one showed, no one came. It was just me and the maintenance lady out in the hall, listening to me bang my head numerous times on the piano in bitter annoyance and defeat in the bandroom down front over the top of her vacuum like a ragdoll bobble clown.
I am also not without understanding **SIGH** as it IS (was) a school night, a weeknight, busy with activities around the community in which people are involved, and scheduled against Dinner Theatre (WHICH I did not know.)
It wasn't going to be to sucker anyone in. I SWEAR. When I vocalize my idea, it sounds a lot better. It sounds more casual than it looks. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone sitting behind the keyboard in existing accompanist arrangements. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone hesitant about trying. Or anything in between. At all. JUST bulk. It was only about getting a bunch of people together to rotate services. Hell, anyone. Anyone at all interested in playing piano. I'd teach you piano just to have people in a group who play piano. (Wait, let's not go that far.)
All right. I'm defensive. Because there was no one at the meeting. No one. No one showed, no one came. It was just me and the maintenance lady out in the hall, listening to me bang my head numerous times on the piano in bitter annoyance and defeat in the bandroom down front over the top of her vacuum like a ragdoll bobble clown.
I am also not without understanding **SIGH** as it IS (was) a school night, a weeknight, busy with activities around the community in which people are involved, and scheduled against Dinner Theatre (WHICH I did not know.)
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