What I did and didn't say

So here is this client. She wants me to write, let's call it a work excuse. For her relative in the hospital this week, and she wants me to state he can't make it next week, the week after that, and into March. I told her, politely, ten times, I could write and fax the excuse from the time to admission until the day she wants it written but no one gives excuses out for the future. Hoo boy. She bitched and wailed and waved what was left of the tips on her nails and yelled about me getting him in trouble until the nurses at the station almost lost their heads from craning their necks while rolling their eyes at her stupidity.
What I was dying to say but waited until I got back to my office and verbalized it to my cubicle co-slave: "Bitch, if I could predict the future your sorry ass wouldn't know what I looked like, because I'd have my lottery winnings and be locked behind a big gate with a mean, bald Israeli security force."

The Well-trained Cat Owner

My half-wild ginger man purred at a lady three streets over and she read his collar and called me. My fella went over and fetched him home, screaming dismally in the truck. He promptly ate half a pound of kibble, purred around charmingly, and took the plumbing panel off the closet in the night and went back outside. Heated the subdivision on my dime. He opened the panel to come both in and out several times over the next few days; a cute trick but costly on the heating bill. I got my fella to put a catflap in the panel and nail the panel itself more securely. Ginger man and his pudgy calico sister wasted no time poking their heads through it. He's gone out through it twice in two days, but he's still coming in through the people door. I thought little dim chubby calico sister was too timid to go out through it, but I came home just now and she was waiting in the driveway after I had left her in the house. I was proud of her initiative initially, but then I opened the door and decided that the evident reason she felt compelled to leave was the stench of the heinous shit she had taken in the catpot before going OUTSIDE where other cats are smart enough to go to take a dump. So now I have cat egress which is not being used until after the home is befouled. Not hard to see who the dim one is here.

One month later

It's really pretty out today, finally some sunshine. I got a candy-striped crinum lily, some asian lilies in pink and white, a white amaryllis, and some white peruvian daffodils. I planted them on my Lily dog's grave while the cat hovered around watching anxiously. I'd like to have something bloom there all year, and wish I'd ever had success with lily-of-the valley for winter/spring. I've got some paperwhites out back and daylilies and spider lilies out front. That should have something like a lily blooming there most of the year. I still can't talk about her, and I honestly don't feel better even with this done, but maybe when something blooms I will.

Loving them state holidays

I had a better week at work even though the crazies were barking loudly. My new plan, to not call the seconds in command, just get advice from people who do this job and let the big boss know what the bad crazy potentials were, made things a lot smoother. We are supposed to get some help soon that should get the crazies out of my hair and onto another set of burdened backs. Can. Not. Wait. It will let me just sleepwalk through the soul-killing parts of the job and just focus on the fact that I have one and it has state benefits. Best of all are the nearly monthly three-day weekends. Just as my jaw and neck and leg pain get the worst, along comes some Monday off or another. December's were pretty great. Some other things work better, like the HSA; I filed my first, big hit from the year's deductibles for my stunningly expensive medicine and the HSA put the money back in my checking account in less than a week. My former HSA took two or three weeks to send me a check, so that was nice. It gives me the money to eat on until the end of the month.
Working with people who don't have jobs or health insurance really brings it home that in our country, you either have or have not. If you don't have a job with insurance and you get sick, there's no real safety net; one good illness and you can find yourself living under a bridge. I do not care for algae in general so under-bridge life appeals to me much less than a soul-killing job. There is a remote possibility that holding onto the soul-killing job for a year could bring me a less awful one in this big organization, so I spend a small part of each day drinking a cup of tea and rationalizing going back out to the Faustian bargain that pays my heating bill and my blessed swim club membership. Water therapy is the only thing that really keeps the RSD from being total misery, and hitting that pool every day makes everything seem like it will be okay. Tomorrow I will be doing it  as a holiday, which is brilliant.

How to Have a Happy Birthday

Have your kid bring you one of your favorite sandwiches from a restaurant you went to back when times were easier. Introduce her to your co-workers and listen to them croon at her loveliness. Introduce her to a few of your docs and impress them with her grad school. Yay. A fun day. The crazies did not bother me today, and they were out in full force. Bring it.

Plotting and Planning

I had a horrible week at work; seven days of training instead of the ten or fifteen usual ones granted most other new hires didn't give me a lot of depth and I ran into a lot of crazy stuff. Every time I called the bosses for advice, they'd grab the situation away from me and things would get wild fast. My big boss, the nice but either ditzy or memory-impaired one, was out all week. So I came up with a new strategy; not ask those heifers anything. Call the few coworkers who have been nice to me for advice, run stuff by the big boss if she's available (ha, as if). I've got to hang on to this dreadful job. There's nothing else out there right now.
A super bright spot is that my child's too-short visit got extended through next weekend so we will have two more free days together before she has to go back. Plus she's home at night when I get here. So awesome. I get to smell her head; it never gets old.