(no subject)
Nov. 17th, 2005 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thejunipertreeThis has probably been one of the crappest days weeks I've had in a long, long time.
Work, in particular, has been rather sucktastic. Most of the time, I'm fielding phone calls from monkey-shit-flinging-insane doctors or irate employees filing worker's compensation claims. All of this while insisting to everyone around me that I am, in fact, not the HR manager, nor will I ever be. Doctor Bad Touch, of course, is dragging his feet about hiring a new manager and constantly asking the other employees if they think we actually need a new one. Every time he sees me, I start chirping about how overwhelmed I am and how my regular work is falling behind and asking him what's going on with hiring that potential he interviewed. He's beginning to dislike the sight of me and with all the new issues coming my way, it's only going to get worse because I'm going to start plunking things down on his desk to be handled.
I. Am. Not. The. HR. Manager.
I don't have the qualifications to be one. Nor will I ever. Because it's not something I want to do. Especially not for this company. Not for all the shiny things in the world.
So, I officially declared that today was Not The Day To Fuck With Me (tm). Not having my own transportation (the car is still in the shop) for the past five days and waking up to a dead pet will generally make one feel this way. This, of course, did not really stop people from fucking with me. The moment I walked in, I had a phone call from one of the office managers. Shortly after that, I received a phone call from another office manager who's office was closed down in May, but still comes in three days a week and wants to know why she hasn't gotten a paycheck. After that, I waded through the worker's comp claims again, because they're a mess of unseen before proportions. And after that, I had a wonderful conversation with our craziest doctor who wants a letter of employment verification sent directly to her and addressed: To Whom It May Concern.
Umm. No.
Not only are letters of employment verification never sent directly to our employees, but ones addressed in such a manner are REALLY never sent directly to our employees. It's policy for our company and most other companies in the world. Doctor Crazier-Than-A-Shit-House-Rat thinks that this is "incorrect and unacceptable" and started to give me an earful. I told her repeatedly, and in my mom-voice nonetheless, that this is the way we do it and if she doesn't start speaking to me like a rational adult, I was going to hang up the phone. She didn't like that, to say the least, and told me not to threaten her. I cheerfully informed her she could tell that to the dialtone.
It's a madhouse and this was just one day of it. There's a NJ office manager meeting on Monday that I'm thinking of inviting myself to, so that I can speak to the managers (and their assistants) about how to properly hire a new employee. The pile of papers on my desk is growing to astounding heights and I haven't had time to look for new employment in ages, though my latest round of applications from last week have been met with silence.
I need to find a new job, a better paying job, ASAP. If I continue at this place, I will lose my mind.
All I wanted to do today is come home and get some ferret nose kisses, but as I was leaving work, the realization of Edgar's death finally fell around me. I knew it had happened, after all, I found his body. But, I hadn't really had any time to actually process it.
I was going to let Howard out for a run tonight, but by the time I got home and got myself fed, I was too exhausted to keep an eye on him. Which makes me sad because I know he's upset by Edgar's death. He didn't eat tonight and he's been sleeping since shortly after I got home.
And what makes it worse is that he's going to have to be alone from now on because I banned myself from getting any more ferrets. My allergies to them have grown to such magnitude that I have to wear a mask to clean the cage and even then, I still wind up being unable to breathe. If I touch them, I have to immediately scrub my skin and change my clothes or I get hives. And God help me if I get accidentially scratched. That results in welts that don't go away for hours or even sometimes days.
I can't, in good conscience, find Howard a new home, either. I've had him for quite some time and despite the fact that he likes to pretend I don't exist when I let him out to run, he's bonded to me. And I don't particularly trust anyone else to take care of him, especially a total stranger. I've heard too many horror stories of stupid people getting ferrets and feeding them junk food or allowing them to fight with their other pets or keeping them in tiny cages or getting upset when they play a little too rough and giving them up to a shelter. I can't do it.
At least here he gets plenty of healthy food, an enormous cage to make a mess of, only gets hollared at when he squeezes under the fridge, and doesn't get smacked around if he bites me a little too hard when we play. I'll just have to make sure to give him extra attention and more play-time.
And after he's gone? No. More. Ferrets.
Which sucks because they're fantastic pets and I love them. I didn't start out with these allergies when I got my first one, Midnight, so many years ago. But, my body morphed into this untrustworthy thing and now I can't do the things I used to be able to do.
hoom.
Unfair.
The rats still don't give me any trouble, except for leaving me a little welty if their claws pierce my skin. Cleaning their cages doesn't bother me, except for the trouble of moving stuff around and the annoyance of washing out their blankets.
Every morning when I wake up and every day when I come home from work, I expect to find Miss Aleister dead. She's really rather elderly and her body is starting to give out. Her back legs don't work so well anymore, so I moved the food dish down to the lower level of the girls' cage and adjusted the water bottle to sit at the lowest notch. And Speck is overgrooming her to the point of bald patches. She has a small tumour that I've been keeping watch over and it hasn't grown in any noticeable fashion. Putting her in for surgery would surely kill her and I can't do that. Right now, she doesn't seem to be in any sort of pain and I would prefer to keep her comfortable and at home, rather then dragging her to the vet's office. She's not suffering, she's just living out the end of her days. The second she appears to be in distress or pain, I'll take her to be euthanized. For right now however, she stays home with her sister and bruxes wildly whenever I pick her up for a cuddle. Especially when I scratch behind her ears.
And when she finally goes, no more girl rats. Her sister, Speck, will have to go the way of Howard and live out the rest of her days without a cage mate because I can't continue keeping up two seperate cages. The boys are younger than her and I expect them to live considerably longer, so a male cage is what I'm going to continue having. I feel bad for Speck because she'll be alone, but I don't expect her to live much longer than Aleister does.
My poor old ladies. They're such good girls.
Depression is seeping in from every angle. The one year anniversary of my mother's death just passed, which feels very weird to me. I'm still not used to it and I suspect I never will be. My car is currently sick beyond belief, though hopefully that will be straightened out soon. The holidays are creeping up, which is never a good time for me. And money is unbelievably tight, which it always is.
I'm starting to really be effected by how little money I actually make. Nine dollars an hour just does not cut it and I know I'll never receive a raise at this place, at least without selling my soul. I work constant overtime, just to be able to pay my bills and sometimes that doesn't even cut it.
My rent got raised a little while ago and despite the fact that it's only about twenty-five dollars more than I used to pay, I notice the difference. I've been trying to keep a good eye on my spending, without a lot of frivolous bullshit, but it's difficult. My bills are all paid for this month, but it put a serious dent in my savings. I'm attempting to save the last little bit of my life insurance money from my mother, to build up some sort of nest egg that I can hoarde and feel somewhat safe. But, it keeps being slowly chipped away at.
Paying my last round of bills put me below a thousand, which has made me extraordinarily unhappy. I'm going to attempt to pad it out a little with my next paycheck, but I know that's not going to be a full check because I called out with the plague one day and wasn't able to work last Saturday because of my car issue. This week has been full of leaving early because The Engineer picked me up every day, due to the no car thing, and that's going to severely effect my pay. He tells me that he can just come and get me whenever I need him to, but I can't expect him to come home from work, get settled in, then come out to pick up my sorry ass when I say 'jump'. It's not fair to him. So, I just have him get me on his way home. Which is far earlier than I normally leave.
I'm going to attempt to sell off my mother's bride doll collection, which will involve a lot of eBaying. That, however, will have to wait until I can get to my dad's house to get them out of the basement and I'll have to have someone take photos of them all for me, since my digital camera is a piece of shit that I don't even think works anymore. All of that money I'll sock away, if I can. But, looking at auctions from other people, it doesn't look like they really sell all that well. I don't care if I get twenty dollars a doll. I want them out of my life and I want money for them.
Same for all of her Boyd's bears, which need to be cleaned up and thusly photographed. But, again with the eBay thing.
There's a lot of things I'm going to start selling, to get rid of them and to try and get some money. A lot of them being my actual possessions. A year or so ago, I made the decision to severely scale down what I own. All the stuff in my father's basement from previous households. Get rid of it. Clothes I'll never wear again. Get rid of them. I don't need all this Eeyore shit. Get rid of it. I don't need to buy every shiny toy I come across. Get rid of them and don't buy more. I don't need to own every Living Dead Doll that catches my eye. Don't buy them and possibly sell some of the ones I already own.
Something in my brain clicked one day and I decided to stop collecting crap. No more toys (though that didn't stop me from buying that stuffed possum I found in Target, because well, it was a stuffed possum). No more goddamn toys. No more crap.
Even my BPAL collection is subject to this. If I don't wear it on a frequent basis, into the sell box it goes. My wishlist is scaled down enough that I pretty much know everything I like and don't like. And I've severely scaled down my collection of the oils I like, to the point of even getting rid of ones I love, but just don't wear. I just got my three bottles of Samhain, which I'm going to try to age to see if the scent morphs into something more similar to the 2004 version, but if it doesn't? They go, too. I'm currently collecting imps of all the voodoo blends, because I'm going to make a 'working oils' box for my altar, but they will only be the voodoo ones and any Twilight Alchemy Lab stuff I can find imps of, which are scarce. All of that will be reserved for boo spooky purposes.
From now on, I'll only be buying bottles of catalog scents to replace ones I've used up (which takes a lot of time) or bottles of limited edition stuff that catches my eye. And all of this is still subject to the 'haven't worn it in a long time, so sell it' clause.
Other stuff? Books? Fine. New clothes? Fine, but only if I can generally wear them to work. Stuff to redo the apartment with? Fine. Worthless bits of things that only take up space and suck away money? Not fine.
Stop. Fucking. Hoarding.
Enough. I don't need it and it serves no purpose, other than to fill that strange empty part of myself that just keeps screaming for more junk.
Is this growing up?
I don't know. And I'm not going to attempt to understand it.
But, I do know that I came out of the fire that was taking care of my mother/coping with her death a completely different person. I don't know if I like this person or not just yet, that will take some time.
I am learning to build my nest, like the magpie told me to do. It's going to take a long time and it's going to sometimes be painful, but it has to be done.
If you've read this entire entry, I'll be mighty surprised. For those of you who decided to skip to the end, you didn't really miss anything. Just a lot of me working some stuff out in my head that needed to come out.
Work, in particular, has been rather sucktastic. Most of the time, I'm fielding phone calls from monkey-shit-flinging-insane doctors or irate employees filing worker's compensation claims. All of this while insisting to everyone around me that I am, in fact, not the HR manager, nor will I ever be. Doctor Bad Touch, of course, is dragging his feet about hiring a new manager and constantly asking the other employees if they think we actually need a new one. Every time he sees me, I start chirping about how overwhelmed I am and how my regular work is falling behind and asking him what's going on with hiring that potential he interviewed. He's beginning to dislike the sight of me and with all the new issues coming my way, it's only going to get worse because I'm going to start plunking things down on his desk to be handled.
I. Am. Not. The. HR. Manager.
I don't have the qualifications to be one. Nor will I ever. Because it's not something I want to do. Especially not for this company. Not for all the shiny things in the world.
So, I officially declared that today was Not The Day To Fuck With Me (tm). Not having my own transportation (the car is still in the shop) for the past five days and waking up to a dead pet will generally make one feel this way. This, of course, did not really stop people from fucking with me. The moment I walked in, I had a phone call from one of the office managers. Shortly after that, I received a phone call from another office manager who's office was closed down in May, but still comes in three days a week and wants to know why she hasn't gotten a paycheck. After that, I waded through the worker's comp claims again, because they're a mess of unseen before proportions. And after that, I had a wonderful conversation with our craziest doctor who wants a letter of employment verification sent directly to her and addressed: To Whom It May Concern.
Umm. No.
Not only are letters of employment verification never sent directly to our employees, but ones addressed in such a manner are REALLY never sent directly to our employees. It's policy for our company and most other companies in the world. Doctor Crazier-Than-A-Shit-House-Rat thinks that this is "incorrect and unacceptable" and started to give me an earful. I told her repeatedly, and in my mom-voice nonetheless, that this is the way we do it and if she doesn't start speaking to me like a rational adult, I was going to hang up the phone. She didn't like that, to say the least, and told me not to threaten her. I cheerfully informed her she could tell that to the dialtone.
It's a madhouse and this was just one day of it. There's a NJ office manager meeting on Monday that I'm thinking of inviting myself to, so that I can speak to the managers (and their assistants) about how to properly hire a new employee. The pile of papers on my desk is growing to astounding heights and I haven't had time to look for new employment in ages, though my latest round of applications from last week have been met with silence.
I need to find a new job, a better paying job, ASAP. If I continue at this place, I will lose my mind.
All I wanted to do today is come home and get some ferret nose kisses, but as I was leaving work, the realization of Edgar's death finally fell around me. I knew it had happened, after all, I found his body. But, I hadn't really had any time to actually process it.
I was going to let Howard out for a run tonight, but by the time I got home and got myself fed, I was too exhausted to keep an eye on him. Which makes me sad because I know he's upset by Edgar's death. He didn't eat tonight and he's been sleeping since shortly after I got home.
And what makes it worse is that he's going to have to be alone from now on because I banned myself from getting any more ferrets. My allergies to them have grown to such magnitude that I have to wear a mask to clean the cage and even then, I still wind up being unable to breathe. If I touch them, I have to immediately scrub my skin and change my clothes or I get hives. And God help me if I get accidentially scratched. That results in welts that don't go away for hours or even sometimes days.
I can't, in good conscience, find Howard a new home, either. I've had him for quite some time and despite the fact that he likes to pretend I don't exist when I let him out to run, he's bonded to me. And I don't particularly trust anyone else to take care of him, especially a total stranger. I've heard too many horror stories of stupid people getting ferrets and feeding them junk food or allowing them to fight with their other pets or keeping them in tiny cages or getting upset when they play a little too rough and giving them up to a shelter. I can't do it.
At least here he gets plenty of healthy food, an enormous cage to make a mess of, only gets hollared at when he squeezes under the fridge, and doesn't get smacked around if he bites me a little too hard when we play. I'll just have to make sure to give him extra attention and more play-time.
And after he's gone? No. More. Ferrets.
Which sucks because they're fantastic pets and I love them. I didn't start out with these allergies when I got my first one, Midnight, so many years ago. But, my body morphed into this untrustworthy thing and now I can't do the things I used to be able to do.
hoom.
Unfair.
The rats still don't give me any trouble, except for leaving me a little welty if their claws pierce my skin. Cleaning their cages doesn't bother me, except for the trouble of moving stuff around and the annoyance of washing out their blankets.
Every morning when I wake up and every day when I come home from work, I expect to find Miss Aleister dead. She's really rather elderly and her body is starting to give out. Her back legs don't work so well anymore, so I moved the food dish down to the lower level of the girls' cage and adjusted the water bottle to sit at the lowest notch. And Speck is overgrooming her to the point of bald patches. She has a small tumour that I've been keeping watch over and it hasn't grown in any noticeable fashion. Putting her in for surgery would surely kill her and I can't do that. Right now, she doesn't seem to be in any sort of pain and I would prefer to keep her comfortable and at home, rather then dragging her to the vet's office. She's not suffering, she's just living out the end of her days. The second she appears to be in distress or pain, I'll take her to be euthanized. For right now however, she stays home with her sister and bruxes wildly whenever I pick her up for a cuddle. Especially when I scratch behind her ears.
And when she finally goes, no more girl rats. Her sister, Speck, will have to go the way of Howard and live out the rest of her days without a cage mate because I can't continue keeping up two seperate cages. The boys are younger than her and I expect them to live considerably longer, so a male cage is what I'm going to continue having. I feel bad for Speck because she'll be alone, but I don't expect her to live much longer than Aleister does.
My poor old ladies. They're such good girls.
Depression is seeping in from every angle. The one year anniversary of my mother's death just passed, which feels very weird to me. I'm still not used to it and I suspect I never will be. My car is currently sick beyond belief, though hopefully that will be straightened out soon. The holidays are creeping up, which is never a good time for me. And money is unbelievably tight, which it always is.
I'm starting to really be effected by how little money I actually make. Nine dollars an hour just does not cut it and I know I'll never receive a raise at this place, at least without selling my soul. I work constant overtime, just to be able to pay my bills and sometimes that doesn't even cut it.
My rent got raised a little while ago and despite the fact that it's only about twenty-five dollars more than I used to pay, I notice the difference. I've been trying to keep a good eye on my spending, without a lot of frivolous bullshit, but it's difficult. My bills are all paid for this month, but it put a serious dent in my savings. I'm attempting to save the last little bit of my life insurance money from my mother, to build up some sort of nest egg that I can hoarde and feel somewhat safe. But, it keeps being slowly chipped away at.
Paying my last round of bills put me below a thousand, which has made me extraordinarily unhappy. I'm going to attempt to pad it out a little with my next paycheck, but I know that's not going to be a full check because I called out with the plague one day and wasn't able to work last Saturday because of my car issue. This week has been full of leaving early because The Engineer picked me up every day, due to the no car thing, and that's going to severely effect my pay. He tells me that he can just come and get me whenever I need him to, but I can't expect him to come home from work, get settled in, then come out to pick up my sorry ass when I say 'jump'. It's not fair to him. So, I just have him get me on his way home. Which is far earlier than I normally leave.
I'm going to attempt to sell off my mother's bride doll collection, which will involve a lot of eBaying. That, however, will have to wait until I can get to my dad's house to get them out of the basement and I'll have to have someone take photos of them all for me, since my digital camera is a piece of shit that I don't even think works anymore. All of that money I'll sock away, if I can. But, looking at auctions from other people, it doesn't look like they really sell all that well. I don't care if I get twenty dollars a doll. I want them out of my life and I want money for them.
Same for all of her Boyd's bears, which need to be cleaned up and thusly photographed. But, again with the eBay thing.
There's a lot of things I'm going to start selling, to get rid of them and to try and get some money. A lot of them being my actual possessions. A year or so ago, I made the decision to severely scale down what I own. All the stuff in my father's basement from previous households. Get rid of it. Clothes I'll never wear again. Get rid of them. I don't need all this Eeyore shit. Get rid of it. I don't need to buy every shiny toy I come across. Get rid of them and don't buy more. I don't need to own every Living Dead Doll that catches my eye. Don't buy them and possibly sell some of the ones I already own.
Something in my brain clicked one day and I decided to stop collecting crap. No more toys (though that didn't stop me from buying that stuffed possum I found in Target, because well, it was a stuffed possum). No more goddamn toys. No more crap.
Even my BPAL collection is subject to this. If I don't wear it on a frequent basis, into the sell box it goes. My wishlist is scaled down enough that I pretty much know everything I like and don't like. And I've severely scaled down my collection of the oils I like, to the point of even getting rid of ones I love, but just don't wear. I just got my three bottles of Samhain, which I'm going to try to age to see if the scent morphs into something more similar to the 2004 version, but if it doesn't? They go, too. I'm currently collecting imps of all the voodoo blends, because I'm going to make a 'working oils' box for my altar, but they will only be the voodoo ones and any Twilight Alchemy Lab stuff I can find imps of, which are scarce. All of that will be reserved for boo spooky purposes.
From now on, I'll only be buying bottles of catalog scents to replace ones I've used up (which takes a lot of time) or bottles of limited edition stuff that catches my eye. And all of this is still subject to the 'haven't worn it in a long time, so sell it' clause.
Other stuff? Books? Fine. New clothes? Fine, but only if I can generally wear them to work. Stuff to redo the apartment with? Fine. Worthless bits of things that only take up space and suck away money? Not fine.
Stop. Fucking. Hoarding.
Enough. I don't need it and it serves no purpose, other than to fill that strange empty part of myself that just keeps screaming for more junk.
Is this growing up?
I don't know. And I'm not going to attempt to understand it.
But, I do know that I came out of the fire that was taking care of my mother/coping with her death a completely different person. I don't know if I like this person or not just yet, that will take some time.
I am learning to build my nest, like the magpie told me to do. It's going to take a long time and it's going to sometimes be painful, but it has to be done.
If you've read this entire entry, I'll be mighty surprised. For those of you who decided to skip to the end, you didn't really miss anything. Just a lot of me working some stuff out in my head that needed to come out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 10:24 am (UTC)*hugs* I'll be thinking of you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 05:54 am (UTC)You understand pretty much most of all out of everybody, since you also have the ratses.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 11:45 am (UTC)I think the hoarding becomes less of a draw bc you realise that it's not the objects that keep you safe & that stuff takes up room in your life that could be occupied by better things. I still hoard like a mofo, but less so.
also, MEH, EDGAR! I'm sorry, lady. he was such a sweet little critter.
also, dammit, i need to get my head out of my ass & come see you or come kidnap you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 05:55 am (UTC)How do we go about getting your head out of your ass for a visit? You HAVE to see everything I've done to the apartment! You will die of the boospooky.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 05:56 am (UTC)I knew you would.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 05:57 am (UTC)I think that may have more to do with your current chosen partner, rather then any hoarding tendancies on your part. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 05:58 am (UTC)I do that a lot, especially during the time of year that we just came out. Halloween always kills my wallet, no matter how hard I try. It's just worse that I've been redecorating the apartment.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-17 04:03 pm (UTC)He is a crackhead, pure and simple....oh that and his mother never told him "no" enough times as a kid...
The animal stuff is really tough...that really sucks that you've become allergic to your kids....Hand in there, Howard still needs you...
You *so* need to get another job...or plan b, find someone who wants to sponsor you and put you through mortician school....Unfortunately, I don't have a line on someone like that, but I do have a digital camera, so we can take pics of stuff you want to ebay, 'k?
As far as the clothes, I sent you an email about having a naked lady party, in which you can get rid of clothes you need to retire or give a new home and (have the option) to get some clothes that are new to you...you in?
The anti-hoarding movement is weird...we all seem to be going through it....I'm slowly going through stuff and making tough choices...I'm not ready to get rid of everything, but I idea of streamline everything (and having more room), is really appealing...I'm calmer when there is less clutter....
Call me.
E.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 06:00 am (UTC)My head's in an odd place lately.
But yeah. I'll most likely give you a call Friday.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 06:36 am (UTC)Take a day of grace and just let yourself re-group. I used to be all about the day of mourn and let yourself just accept depression. Now I just say just celebrate a you day. Tell people you love them, let them say fabulous things about you and listen to loud sing along music. Eat fun things.
And remember you deserve happiness and a well paid job where they dont treat you like crap.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-18 09:26 am (UTC)I love you muchly.