Of People and Frivolity
I learned today what some of my challenges in my new role will be.
People.One guy may be telling me "Katey, I totally agree, let's shoot for the week before the official deadline due to the Thanksgiving holiday." He may then be telling others "Why is she pushing so hard on this? We have plenty of time."
Grrrrr. Let me say it again. Grrrrrrrr.
It would be one thing if we did actually have plenty of time, but since one of the areas is already behind schedule, it looks like it wasn't too early to bring this up. I'm trying to let it go. It's only hearsay that he's fighting me to others, and he and I were completely on the same page in a meeting today, and he's publicly backed me to others. Guess I'll have to wait before giving final judgement.
I hate that!
-----
I talked to
Lois last night. She's busy pissing in people's oatmeal and ruining Lane 1's life. Same old Lois.
I also had decent, if quick, conversations with my sister yesterday and today. We haven't talked much lately - I haven't had anything to say. But this week we've talked and it's been good. We haven't said anything 'real' but it hasn't been completely fake, either. And that's been okay.
I talked to BBB today as well. He was down south with some church groups in the last week, helping out down there. Talking to him again today brought some of my old feelings back, but that's okay, too.
I'm having drinks after work tomorrow with New Girl and our old boss, C. It should be interesting. I really like New Girl and C should have some gossip. It will be nice to pretend I'm out with friends.
-----
I went to Target tonight. It was so rainy that my umbrella inverted and didn't do me much good. I bought two new lipsticks, three new eyeshadow combinations, a new sports bra, two new kinds of hair stuff PLUS hairspray, in addition to the boring items like razor blades and such.
Necessities, people!
Welcome to Crazy Town
I've always been a little anal-retentive (and yes, it
is hyphenated). I used to not turn the radio off at night until the clock hit a round number. I had this whole counting thing from digital clocks - how many 'lines' would be needed or excessive when one number turned into another. Like, for example, a 3 uses five lines, but a 4 only uses four lines, so a 3 is worth one point. Shut up. I can calculate the worth of a license plate like it's nobody's business.
Anyway, that OCD type of behavior is coming into play during my runs on the treadmill. I'm beginning to understand how some people can get addicted to exercise. Sure, there's the endorphins, the stupid chemicals that make you feel all happy and shit. But the numbers themselves can be addicting.
Let's see, I've burned 146 calories. I'm going to keep going until I've burned 150.
Ah, shit. Now I've run 1.31 miles. That's not good. I need to keep going until I've run 1.40 miles. Or at least 1.35.
But, damnit, now I've been on this fucking thing for 12:38 minutes. That just won't do.
Eventually, I decide that one of these takes precedence - and I usually bow to the minutes - and I haul my ass off of there.
Yep, this is Crazy Town, alright. My weary legs and I welcome you.
They May Love You, But I Know You
Heathers was on Showtime tonight. I've gone on record before claiming this as my favorite film, and for a time it was. It's the only movie I actively hunted down for my meager collection, and the only one I have quotes memorized from.
It came out when I was in 6th or 7th grade. Life was simpler then, though it didn't seem it. I dressed much like the girls in the movie - colored tights, coordinated blazers...not following the latest trends, but not ignoring them, either. Lip gloss and mascara were the only makeup I needed or wore. I'd use my sister's hair-color mascara (yeah, you remember that shit...you wiped a mascara-like wand through your head for instant highlights!) and had a sleepover every New Year's Eve with my BFF. I wasn't allowed to date but did anyway on the sly. Whether or not Jesse was going to hold my hand or Marc was going to kiss me while his hand was in my back jean's pocket were the big questions in my world.
Now that BFF is married to a guy in the Navy, making their marriage in name only. The last time I saw her was 4 or 5 years ago and I didn't really think she was a nice person then. I'm no longer in touch with anyone who would know what happened to Jesse or Marc, and I've spent at least one of the most recent New Year's Eves alone.
I wasn't necessarily happy then, and I'm not necessarily happy now. I just hope I didn't think I would be. Shrug. You know what they say - if you're happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.
Blog Mini
Don't you love it when someone you don't like and don't see that often brags on and on about how they've been working out and losing all this weight, oh woe is me, I'm wasting away to nothing, and then you see them after a long time and they're just as fat as ever?
Dear _____,
I know you think you're fat. You know how I know? You tell me. Almost daily. You grab your rolls and you complain that none of your clothes fit and that you had to buy pants a size bigger than you were wearing just so you could breathe and you tell me what you ate over the weekend.
I get it. I never quite know what to say when you begin, but more often than I'm comfortable with, I start to share my own tales. Not that I'd ever grab my rolls in front of someone else, but whatever. We've both struggled with our weight for, like, ever, so I really do get it.
You've said, more than once, that you want my help now that I'm sitting by you. I'm happy to help. I don't know what kind of help you want, so you should let me know what you mean by that, but within reason, I'm ready and willing to assist.
Just... stop equating sweets to a lifetime in purgatory.
Go, eat a candy bar. It's a choice. You won't go to hell for it. Go, eat baked goods. Still no hell. Go, grab another candy bar from the convenience store. Look, no hell yet. But stop with the 'I'm so bad' comments. If you want me to verbally flog you for it, I won't, so please think of other ways I can help.
And if you're not willing to work at it, that's fine too. Really. There are a lot worse things you can be than overweight. It doesn't mean you're a bad person and it doesn't mean you're a horrible lazy slacker. (Well, to some it might mean the second. But not to me, if that helps.)
Just...make up your mind, will you?
Just Do It
I'm encouraging everyone I can to go see Crash. It's a fucking fantastic movie. Absolutely thought provoking and genuine and just amazing.
The fact that I saw it at the cheap theater for $2 may have helped influence my opinion that it rocks, but seriously - it's well worth the $11.50 some of ya'll may pay.
Go. Do it.
1 Baby Step Forward...
So, Liz at
MakingGlass gave me a call today. She's the one I've spoken to every time I've tried to get into one of their classes. She let me know that they are now offering condensed sampler classes on Saturdays, and their website is updated to reflect that.
So I looked...and I found one I liked...and I'm going!!!
I thought about inviting my Dad, because I know he has done stained glass work before and expressed interest in the other classes I looked at, but ultimately declined because of the travel time. This one-day thing would make it much easier on him, but...I'm being selfish and keeping it for myself.
Isn't that terrible? I feel guilty about it. I'm sure there will come a day when I regret my selfish act, but that thought isn't enough to keep me from being unselfish.
At least, today it's not.
Technical Support
Here I am. On the phone. With my pops. Talking him through Blogspot.
I know what you're thinking - what's to talk through? It's been 26 minutes so far. And counting.
He used to be a technical guy, but lately...I don't know.
"Dad, the blog shows created by Kate's Dad because that's what you created it under."
"No, I had a different name."
"No, dad, really. Sign out of whatever you're in, log back in as Kate's Dad, and see what blogs come up."
(Pause for 10 minutes while I have to talk him through resetting his password.)
"Oh, look, there's my blog."
"Right. If you're going to use different logins for different display names, you might want to write down or email yourself with the login name and password you used for each."
"I know what I used - Kate's Dad, I know that, I don't need to write it down."
And on, and on and on, for 45 minutes. The whole concept of user names and display names was apparently a lot to comprehend.
I was patient. I love my dad, and it's not often I can help him learn something new. He asked for some blogs to look at ("since you don't want me reading yours (and I fully respect that) to see the varieties possible. (I'm guessing that if they link to yours, I wouldn't know which is yours anyway) ... but if you like I'll promise not to check any links."
He's a good guy, my pops.
But then he says things like, "Mom mentioned you and E had a falling out at work."
"Yeah, we had a disagreement yesterday."
"Well, get over it!"
Oh. Um. Gee. Thanks.
He wants to frame an article about my sister that one of the big papers ran recently, so we talked about some different options for that. I told him that - despite having read the article online and conversing with my sister about it - she mailed me a copy. So I could see the pictures of her that didn't show online. And then she called me at 10:30 last night because I hadn't called her once I received it.
"Be nice to your sister!"
Um. Yeah. I am. I just found her behavior a bit ridiculous, but apparently I'm not allowed to express that.
I'm not doing well this week, and it's getting harder and harder to pretend I am.
April 11, 1992 11:15 pm
You & Ex keep popping up in my mind. I see you two holding each other & kissing each other. You can tell that you love each other. Even though I really can't read palms - if I could I would bet that both you & Ex's palms would say you're in love.
...
I know I've hurt you a lot before & I'm really sorry. I wish you would have told me. You have given me a lot of advice & listened to me when I needed you to & I love you a lot (I'm crying now). I wish you weren't moving - I'm going to miss you more than anything. Oh KtP - you're not supposed to move! You're supposed to be here forever.
...
I think this letter is upsetting me more than helping. But I needed to let you & myself now [sic] how I feel. I guess I'll talk to you later. I love you KtP & I'm gonna miss you.
-----
I stole a random box of photos from my parents last week. That note was mixed among the 4th grade birthday parties and the pictures of people who no longer know me.
Sometimes I think only the palm readers did.
D-D-D-Drama
Saturday my gfs (L, J, and N) and I all had a leisurely lunch at a place known for their margaritas. J and N had two big-ass ones; I had one and an amaretto. Mmmm. We got back to L's mom's house (since L's house is in BFE) to continue the pre-partying and to get ready for that night's reunion festivities.
The dinner was at the local country club and S, L's sister, agreed to drive us up there. I made sure my girls were kept stocked with liquor. Shots, drinks, whatever. The bar manager was part of our reunion and cut us some fat deals. $10 for five shots? Sold! I spent close to $100 that night. It was a lot of alcohol.
When we were ready to leave the club and go bar-hopping, we called L's mom, who had offered to get us. Mom didn't answer her phone, so we tried S. Knowing her sister quite well, L asked S if she had been drinking. The answer? "We just started. I've had one beer."
Okay, cool. Come get us.
N was pretty drunk at that time. Her baby is 11 months old, so it's been quite some time since she's gone balls-to-the-wall. L was on her way to being drunk and J was just rounding the corner. I was buzzing pretty well but wasn't drunk quite yet. We were all damn happy and starting to enter the hysterically funny stage. I swear, I almost peed my pants a dozen different times at the dinner alone. Ah, good times.
So, S drives her big-ass pickup up to get us. Her friend, A, was with, which meant that my three gfs and I had to fit in the back of the pickup. Which we did, suprisingly with ease. HUGE pickup.
Something about being in the fresh air (windows down on the pickup), or just being together and drunk, made us all pretty giddy. Camera flashes were popping off, stupid sayings were being shouted, people were trading seats, phone calls to the absentee-bfs/hubbies were made...we were all laughing our heads off. Just being loud, obnoxious drunks having the time of our lives.
Sometimes, when you're sober and everyone else is drunk, it's a pain in the ass to be around them. S and A, though, just laughed right along with us. S doesn't get to see us that often, and while A doesn't really know us, S was glad we were together and having fun. She's hung out with us before and actually went out with us the previous night. She was also our DD (as she was underage) for N's bachelorette party, so she's done the routine before.
We drove down to Bar #1, hopped out, went inside. The bar was dead, despite being the hangout of the local boys we were friends with. So, we turned back around and drove to Bar #2, which was also dead. We didn't even go inside #2, we just drove through the lot and headed back to #1, where we knew people would show eventually.
Out of the blue, S tells us to hang on, we're getting pulled over. What none of us had realized until then was that S had an open beer in the truck with her, and two more cans ready to be popped. We stashed the empty open under our four pairs of feet in the back.
The first thing the cop said was that he clocked her going 60 in a 55. WTF? My standard speed is about 8miles over. He asked if she'd been drinking, b/c of course liquor wafted off of all of us, and she said she had had two (the beer we knew about and then the empty). He ran her license and then called her back to his car.
Copper did the pen test, then gave her a breathalyzer. We saw her look at the reading; we saw her hold up her cuffed hands and get in the backseat. When the cop came back to the pickup, he told us she blew a .11, and the legal limit is .08. We were all like, what the fuck? There's no way you can drink two beers and have a .11 unless you haven't eaten in days and weigh 95lbs. Neither qualifies. He asked about open containers, but luckily, with four pairs of legs in the backseat, he couldn't see anything.
He asked if anyone else could drive, and A said she could, and took a breathalyzer to prove it (.56, not legally drunk, and certainly less than the rest of us). She drove us back to the bar (hello, where else would we go?) while S got hauled off for a blood test. She's on a shitload of meds that can impact how her body metabolizes alcohol - anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, allergy...a whole cocktail that's finally in the right combination to work for her. So it's possible that the breathalyzer was right, but also wrong.
As you can probably guess from the meds, S has had some hard times. She has a couple facial piercings and multiple tattoos, all in an effort to look tough. She's a welder and while she can definitely kick most anyone's ass, she's also a complete sweetheart. She's worked hard the past couple years to get her life straightened out, and while she doesn't always make good choices (hello, open container), she certainly wasn't drunk to the point of a DUI. She had a prior DUI dismissed just last month that was bullshit (she wasn't in a car when she got charged - wasn't even leaving a car - but it's a long story that I won't go into). A friend was driving her pickup a few weeks ago when said friend got a DUI. Since it's a small town, her pickup is pretty recognizable. That didn't help. L and I aren't sure if she's just an unlucky person or if she just continuously makes bad decisions. Probably a little of both, but as I said, she tries.
Anyway, we got back to Bar #1, where I saw CK, one of my high school crushes. God I adore him. First thing he asked was if I was still in Chicago, and then if I had gotten his message a few years ago. Apparently I had emailed him my # (no memory of that) and while he was out here visiting his sister, he called me. Yeah, no memory of that, either. He was having a house party that night, but of course we had to go get S out of the tank, so his party was out of the question. I got a few hugs from CK, his number, a swat on the ass, and that's about it. I was disappointed, but J and N thought they'd be sick, so we made a Taco Bell run while we were waiting for S to get cleared.
Once we picked S up from the tank, S and A went to a friend's house party, but my girls were tired. I knew if we went along that we'd be stuck there until like 6am, so we went back to L & S's mom's house to stay the night.
S told us that the reading she saw said .25, which is suspect. There's no way in hell she was that drunk, and I would never have gotten into the car with her if she acted like someone who would blow a .25. Her blood tests will come back at the end of the month; those results will determine what kind of fine she gets and whether or not she loses her license. She just found out (this week) that she was offered a position as a power plant manager here in WI. She's trying to break some ties with some unsavory characters and give herself a fresh start, and I'm proud of her for that.
It was a pretty crappy ending to an otherwise great night. I have a few pics back from the night before that I'll post soon, and I'll have more pics in a few weeks.
Until then, though...S damn well better drive safe.
Here's the Deal
I will tell the DD/DUI story soon. It's a pretty good one, even if it was a TOTAL buzzkill and SHOT TO HELL my opportunity to make out with CK, a boy I crushed on in high school. Goddamn is he still fine.
The delay is all this thinking I've been doing since I've been back. Home. Here. Because I've been thinking of moving back. Home.
There. Do you have any idea how good it would feel to have friends around? Locally? Good friends. Friends who love me and make me feel loved and who get me. Not many people get me. Well, I suppose you do know how it would feel, because 99.3% of you have that.
I don't. I haven't for a while. I crave that.
But would it be as good if I lived there as it is when I visit?
And how much career suicide am I prepared to take? Because, let's not forget, it's NoDak out there. And while the town is getting a BestBuy, a Kohls, and PetCo, and while they do have a large Barnes & Noble, a TJ Maxx, and a TGIFridays...
they are just. now. getting a BestBuy. Not to mention, it's fucking cold there for, like, 9 months out of the year.
But, I could buy a house. A nice house. My gf bought her house - at 2208sq feet, with a 2car garage and a hot tub - for $154,000. And her taxes are $1100 a year. ELEVEN HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS A YEAR.
I'd miss my family, but let's face it - we'd visit. And do I stay in an unhappy place, literally, because of family I see once a month?
My sister called me tonight to tell me that she'd support me 100% in whatever decision I make. And while she'd miss me if I moved, I need to do what's right and best for me, and she knows I love the girls and how happy I am when I get to see them. And my friend at work told me yesterday that I seemed happy. Peaceful.
But I have a career here. I'd have to take, like, a $15,000 paycut to move there. Of course, I could still live in the lifestyle I've become accustomed to there, with the paycut.
But I kind of see it as...stupid. That's the most descriptive word, right? I see it as a step backwards. There, that's better. Who the hell leaves a good ass job - a CAREER - to move to NoDak? Sure, it's a good place to raise a family, but I don't have one to raise.
And I see all these people from high school who still live there, or who moved back, and part of me pities them. Part of me thinks, "Damn, why the hell didn't you get out? Don't you know how much is out there to see?" And then I realize that out of the 20-30ish people I talked to at the reunion, THREE of them are single without kids - and I'm one of them. Everyone else - and that's not an exaggeration - is either married or with kids, or married with kids. While I want to be married, I also want people in my life who have goals and ambitions and drive.
Which isn't to imply that you can't or don't have that once you have that marriage license or pop a kid out of your coochie, but...it's not the same.
So, I'm stuck. Limbo. Purgatory. I talked at length to a gf about it this weekend. How long do I keep trying to make it work for me here? And am I trying hard enough? Sometimes I feel I am; sometimes I feel I'm not. The fact is, it's been 5 years here and I still don't have a gf I can call to grab a bite or a movie with. No one has a spare set of keys to my place. I don't rely on people because outside of family, there's no one here to rely on. The numbers in my cell phone all have area codes of 701 or 262 or 804.
So, that's my story. Real, actual reunion stories will follow at an undisclosed, somewhat-future time.
When Your DD Gets a DUI
and other fun stories from Reunion 2005.
Coming soon to a blog near you.
Buh-bye
I'm off to my high school reunion tomorrow. Guess I should finish my laundry, eh?
Ya'll behave. I'll see youse on the flip side.
I can't even express my frustration right now. Stupid FUCKING IT guy tells me my server is gone. It's not on the old computer. It's not on the new computer. Regardless of the fact that it was here Tuesday and he didn't believe me when I told him yesterday it was gone, it's now completely missing, he can't help, but oh if I find out what happened let him know.
I tried 829 times to get him to say that I've lost everything on that server and he never would. He would just start repeating in his stupid, stuttering, non-sentence forming voice that "The server is no longer there."
I'm so fucking pissed right now. I would really, really like to kick someone's ass, preferably his.
