Jobs

Sometimes you just really need to vent about work, right? Well today is that time. My boss, though great and understanding about my life problems, thinks she is absolutely 100% right about everything. I find it irritating in every way. Probably because I am the same way.

Our co-office-worker makes mistake after mistake after mistake while following all the pre-ordained guidelines while I do it my own way. Not breaking any rules, just simply doing things that seem smarter, more efficient, and more effective. But to my boss, it is wrong. To my boss, only her way is smart, efficient, and effective.

Heaven forbid I am saving the company time and money by having to send people out to fix co-girl's problems. I have not had one incident close to what she has had. Yet, I see myself being ridiculed and yelled at so much more than her. If she makes the same "mistakes" I do, which she does, she does not face what do.

That is probably because she stands there like a meek little lamb, whereas I will fight you to the death. Defend to the death. And I am horrible at surrendering. If I feel that is in everyone's best interest to simply stop fighting, I will simply say okay. And for the life of me, I cannot make it sound sincere. I am sarcastic. That is me.

I am sorry, but the job I am doing now, and the job my manager is doing, is not the most important job in the world. We are landscapers. It is not life-changing, nor life-saving. Customer service is not number one to me. It is not the most fucking important thing.

I want to just yell - tell her that I have a degree in social work. I know how to treat people. I know what it is important. I know how to sway people in one direction or another. But I am stuck here, because I cannot find a job in my field. I cannot find a job.

And I know social work is not all important either. But it is a hell of a better thing than landscaping.

Court

Court was today. His lawyer has been pushing this off for months now. Months. He took forever to call. He got 18 months of probation, has to attend NA two times a week, and continue maintaining a clean lifestyle.

I just don't quite understand this. I thought the entire goal of this was to have a reduced sentence. The felonies were dropped; he was only up for two misdemeanors. And since his lawyer kept pushing it back, I, however naively, thought his sentence would not be so long. I am not retarded. 18 months of probation is great, considering.

But come on. I thought only a year, at the most. And all I really cared about, honestly, is if our vacation to Florida would be jeopardized. It's in August. We'll see.

I am not complaining. I am not. I am happy that it is not jail. I am just confused as to what the point was of waiting so long, if this all could have been started in March.

It's so frustrating to have him call and tell me this, at work, and not answer my questions in a nice, understanding way. I want information - I crave information, I always have. And he is the kind who just gets by with the important things. Don't have a fricken attitude about things that I want and need to know.

We had one of our huge blow-outs last night. The screaming kind, the kind where I threaten to leave. What was it over? I have no clue anymore. Probably something dumb. From what I can recall, there was words and actions thrown around over household chores.

I wish he would comprehend the fact that I am working my ass off and the least thing he could do, the least, is to have the house clean when I get home from work. Do the dishes. Vacuum. Mow the lawn without whining. Make the bed. Do the laundry. Just do something.

He has a job now. I understand that. We both need to chip in. He doesn't need to tell me that he happened to work for the first 7 months of our marriage and he didn't whine when I didn't. It's a lie. I worked. Part-time, but I worked. And his work? That means nothing to me anymore.

I'm not grateful for it. I'm not okay. He may have worked but I don't know how long. He went out to smoke crack. He may have gotten foolish amounts of money, but I wouldn't know. He liked to just "get by" so he could go out. So I am not appreciative. And it's not a legitimate argument because I never saw a penny. I saw us scraping by, begging help from people.

So his job? Means nothing.

Drugs or Me

For anyone who has ever had to cope with anyone doing drugs, any kind, this song is for us. It has touched me in many ways, for years.

Drugs or Me
Jimmy Eat World

Disclaimer: The video is not what is important. It is the words.

Custard craving

Guess what, dear readers? I have lost another pound. I am purely delighted in myself! Only 16 more to go! Ha. It seems like an incredible amount, one I am not ready for. I have lost four, maybe 5 already, but that maybe not be a legitimate amount. I can't remember if the five poundage was after I had eaten or what.

Either way, I am still on my way. It is so hard. I never knew how hard it would be! Not eating after dinner. How I crave that custard that is withering into ice crystals in my freezer! It breaks my heart to the fullest.

Instigator

It’s strange really, how much the lifestyle of drugs surrounds you. Our downstairs neighbors in our building (3 family farmhouse) apparently are a family of pot-smokers. All of them. There are quite many who live there and for our little old-fashioned suburb this is quite interesting news to hear. In all honestly, I am sure there are others like this out there.

The father, the son, the friends – they all smoke pot. Chris seems to be coming friends with one of the sons, Tyler, who said he used to be completely messed up with prescription painkillers, etc. He said now he steers clear from all that. Interesting. I wonder what he does when his family smokes up. I wonder if he is lying.

Then there is my brother and his friends. His friend, I should say, the instigator. I used to babysit this friend, back when I was twelve and thirteen. I had great fun messing with these children. They were raised similar to me. Four of them, brothers. In a Christian home, stricter than anything, always feeling tied down.

But these brothers had it rough. They were rarely allowed to watch TV and when they did, it was carefully monitored. No PG, certainly no PG-13. And the one cable channel they were allowed to watch was the Discovery Channel.

I babysat these kids and we would spend hours playing board games. When lunch was served, I would entertain them with childish jokes and stories, hoping to corrupt their little minds with things such as "boogers" and "bloody fingers." They laughed until their little bellies jiggled.

But now the oldest brother has turned into something unfortunate. He uses prescription drugs mostly, for his own highs. And over the weekend, he passed it on to my brother, and their mutual friend. It was nothing major, nothing big, but it was still quite shocking to me.

No matter where I turn, someone in my life will have used some kind of drug to the point of trouble. Tragic, in my opinion, that it is the way life is. That innocence can be so quickly lost.

There is always an instigator though, isn't there? Someone who starts it and transfers it to someone else. It doesn't matter the age. There is always someone. Peer pressure. It's tough, even for the strongest person.

I wonder - can someone be an instigator for a good thing?

I want it and I want it now.

The first day went easier than planned. I assumed it would be miserable, smaller portions, barely eating at all. It was fine, in actuality, and that was probably because I was so excited about the end result. But the thing about me is that I am so incredibly impatient. If I want something, I will have it right then. I do not think of the consequences or reactions or anything before I do it.

If I want a tattoo, I will go do it. I will not sit and think about it for weeks, wondering if I should. I will not contemplate what I want or where I want it. For the most part, if I know what I want on my body for the rest of my life, I will go do it. And so far, that plan has worked well for me. I do not regret any of the tattoos I have, or any of the piercings.

But weight is different. I do not get to just lose weight the second I want to. I woke up this morning weighing the same as yesterday morning, which I suppose is all fine and well, but I was hoping to be at least one pound lighter. I am aware that one pound a day is probably not the most healthy way to go about losing weight, but like I said, I am incredibly impatient.

So this morning, as I headed to work and sat in my office staring at my screen, the hunger pains took over my body. Yesterday it was so much easier to fight them, but today I just couldn't do it. I had some custard in the freezer in the work kitchen, so I made my way to it, hastily I might add, and could hardly wait for it to be come soft enough to shove that plastic spoon in. In fact, I waited for about two minutes before taking a bite out of the delicious hard cream.

I only had a couple bites, and even now I do not feel guilty. If anything, I just feel mad that I did not lose one more pound. If anything, I hate how I don't fit into those skirts. I hate how skinny I used to be, and now I am still pounds away from that. It sucks. Patience is not something I possess.

I already thought about dinner tonight and how after I ate the minimum portion so as not to fill myself, Chris and I go walk around the neighborhood again. But I remembered that today is Wednesday, however strange that seems, and NA is today. Now that I am typing it, I am sure he will call me shortly, on his break from work (work!) to inquire about giving his friend a ride.

I gave myself to the end of June, at most, to reach my goal of weight loss. My extreme goal was by the end of next week, and I will still aim for that. But if that fails, I will certainly be okay with the end of June. I think. I hope. If I can manage to wait that long. I don't really have much of a choice. I guess I could simply starve myself. Or just eat and eat and eat and forget about this stupid diet thing. Absolute ludicrous. Never in a million years did I think I would be on a diet.

Then again, never in a million years did I think I would be married a crack addict.

Weight Decrease

Today is the first day of my weight loss. I have never had to go on a diet before in my life, and I certainly do not need to now. But I used to be a lot smaller and as I was trying to put on my summer clothes this weekend, I found that it was not going quite as well as before. I used to just be able to pull this cute little jean skirt right up, and it would ride on my hips. But now, my hips could barely squeeze into it!

Chris insisted it is just my hips getting wider with age. I told him he had no clue what he was talking about and was very emotional as I needed his help in yanking it off. It broke my heart. And so by the end of this week, I have a goal. I will not tell you what the goal weight is, but I WILL achieve it. I want to be what I once was.

This is very hard for me. So hard in fact, it is hard to even write about. But my metabolism used to be incredible. I could eat and eat and eat and not gain a single pound. But not only have I gained one pound, I have gained more than ten. I could attribute this to sitting at home, waiting for my husband to call or just come home, so I ate, ate and ate. Ice cream is my favorite.

The thing is, I can't ENTIRELY blame it on him because I used to eat all the time. Even before his stupidity and before I was married. So my metabolism is either catching up, or the eating late at night is.

Either way, I crave to fit into those skirts again and I WILL by the end of two weeks at most. It is time to limit my intake. Big time.

At the same time this is happening to me, Chris is blossoming up before my eyes. I quite like it actually. Before, he was so skinny, so thin. Not unhealthy looking, but completely thin and not gaining weight. Now his little tummy is popping out, the way it was when we were teenagers, and he is fattening up in healthiness. He never stops eating. He could eat dinner and five minutes later, be hungry for more. He eats ICEE-S like there's no tomorrow, and drinks Mountain Dew like it's going out of style.

So we are both fighting weight battles together. He is gaining happily, while I am trying to lose. However unhappily it is for me.