Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Sparkly Feeling

28 Monday Dec 2015

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I just began the sequel to my WriMo, in which the cats (and I) consult a cousin chart and then more or less give up on the “once removed” and whatnot: They are looking for a missing cousin, leave it at that, and her wife. I have no idea what happened to them or how they are to be found; I have an image of Darjeeling in his panther form slinking through a field of wheat, but I don’t know if it actually occurs. I am in a place of mystery, and it sparkles.

I need some sparkle this morning; I had to leave a message with Boston Housing to tell them I am now essentially unemployed; I’ll keep leaving messages for a few days. I also filled out a tax form (badly), only just now spying the information which I should have put in a couple of boxes. I have other tax forms awaiting me, as now that I don’t have a child in college, I haven’t coaxed said child into filing my taxes for me. (I am so, so, SO phobic about paperwork. I’m not sure why. I’m pretty sure it began with poverty–very inconvenient of it.) Still ahead is knocking on the door of the food stamp people. Sigh.

But my brain is already feeling better about not having to Go Back There. It was all just so stressful, and I really do think that the “convenience” of having paratransit made it much worse. Paratransit is when you’re too disabled to use public transit well, so they send a car or a weird little truck to your door. It’s about twice as expensive as taking the train, but a fraction of what a cab would cost. When my right meniscus finally shredded itself to bits, I couldn’t walk up the half-mile hill to work anymore. Sigh. So not only did I end up waiting impatiently for their very random arrival and departure times, I lost some cardio and gained some weight. Grrr. More stress.

I’m also unsure about my fitness to continue working in what’s called direct service, which much of the time means dealing with highly stressed out people who have major life problems. It’s a brutal challenge to your patience and compassion, especially if you’re me and they have continence issues. I suspect it triggers me back to my unimaginably squalid childhood in the hands of a psychotic and alcoholic, which is my personal problem, but it wears on the brain nonetheless: I need to work somewhere where I don’t smell pee-pee. This all limits my options as a peer specialist, so the writing needs to take off.

At least that is still sparkly, although I have some horribly triggering stuff in Terry’s story to wade through. But I’ll wait til later; til my brain grows back somewhat. For now, sparkly.

The Music! The Trees! The Dead Cats!

06 Sunday Dec 2015

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I have about a zillion tiny changes to make in a bunch of Publisher files, and seeing as tomorrow I’m unavailable from roughly 1pm to bedtime, guess what? I’m avoiding doing it now! Yay me!

I also have to finish looking at somebody’s YA novel–50 more pages; thank mercy it’s a) better than usual and b) I dimly recall the first one, done 18 months ago. Then there’s a write-up. Also stalling there. Instead, I decided to catch you up (read: whinge) for a bit.

How do y’all feel about holiday music? I go all over the place, from fist-shaking and snarling (usually in stores, and when Mariah Carey is involved) to enjoying it (usually when doing something holiday-esque, and when the Rat Pack is involved). I am sad to say, though, that I’m not feeling the feels as a young neighbor practices Jingle Bells on some simple wind instrument. He just can’t get that G to save his little life. ( E-E-E! E-E-E! E . . .F?)

The issue is problematic at work. As far as I can tell, I have a few uncaring people, a whole bunch of rabid Christmas people–and one sad, lonely, angry guy who finds holiday music triggering and depressing. Oh sheep. Last week we were lucky, because he had a cold, but this week is going to be–unpleasant. I can see it now. We will probably resort to Mozart and please nobody but me. But I’m the boss, so hey now.

We are buying our first live tree in years next weekend, and I’m already nervous about it, as if it’s a temporary pet: I’m afraid of it dying on me almost immediately. That happened once; through the universe’s bad taste in black humor, one of our cats died right underneath it as well. (Probably a heart attack–sweet little guy, but he looked like he swallowed a bowling ball.) So I loaded up the tree, took it back to the lot, and was hysterical and incoherent. The poor, poor guy patted my hand a lot and gave me another tree for free. The kitty suffered the ultimate ignominy of ending up in the dumpster, seeing as the ground was frozen and what with Christmas and all, we didn’t have the funds for cremation. The whole experience was, shall we say, scarring.

And then there was the Christmas where we were new in town and discovered that the trees weren’t drilled for our spike stand. I remember digging into the pine with a pair of scissors and getting nowhere . . . I think twine played a part in tree support that year, and since we put it right near the heating duct on the floor, duhhhhh, of course it died too.

On the other hand, both kids hate the fake tree with a passion that ruins the tree trimming. So this year, I’m getting a real tree, baking me some cookies, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

Caught in the Middle of the Non-Profit Funding Wars

01 Tuesday Dec 2015

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Back at my day job. I’ll try not to go berserk until I leave in a couple of months for my knee surgery, when they’re expecting me to be gone. Maybe oddly, it helps to know that this isn’t my real place in the world; that I’m not stuck here.

Unfortunately, I walked into the center of why this has turned into such a crappy situation: There is toner in my desk printer, but my computer died at the beginning of October. There’s a computer here at the so-called receptionist’s desk–but the laser printer has run out of toner, which I ordered like a good little bunny before my two-week hiatus. No word yet. I don’t (much) mind doing the bulk of the web stuff at home, but sheeped if I’m going to do the copying there too.

There is some vaguely theoretical chunk of money floating around that’s supposed to fix all this. It came from our grantor at the end of the fiscal year, but it’s been floating around Big Faceless Hospital for months. Nobody knows where it is. You’d think we were the government or something.

The temporary answer is to schlep over my desktop printer, but that’s heavy and cabley and might make me cry. Sigh.

On the bright side, I touched base with my personal trainer this morning (the only bennie to this job is that it has a gym, and the gym guy likes me enough to train me for free). And the peers were glad to see me. Social service jobs rarely have a lack of love–just a lack of money.

And I can’t fundraise, because fiscally we’re Big Faceless Hospital, and people would laugh in my non-501 (c)(3) face. Nope, when it comes down to it, it ain’t the thefts, or even the triggering smell of urine. It’s the feeling of being in the wilderness with a dull Bowie knife.