January 2007

If someone says “you should have the pneumonia vaccination” and “when was your last tetanus booster” take a few things into consideration.

1. Tetanus shots make your arm, shoulder and part of your back sore. You might be lucky and get away with a sore little knot; I of course am not lucky and get the whole gamut of OUCH.

2. Pneumonia shots may induce flu-like symptoms, as in, ALL of them. I’ve missed work because I’m so fatigued.

Pills good. Lots of pills better.

They gave me the shots in my right arm, so now it hurts to drive my new car. Waa!

If only the ugly red strip down my arm would go away. I keep stopping myself from scratching. It’s also not useful that the cat will insist on bonking her head against my right shoulder.

Speaking of the cat, I’ve resorted to throwing a blanket over the hood and windshield — she likes to sit on the warm hood when I’ve parked in the garage, which is of course where I park a shiny new sporty vehicle with a nice stereo. Little paw prints show up real well on a white car.

And of course, I put one of my white Apple decals on the rear window.

What should I name my car? Any suggestions? The Mach 5 is right out.

The car is at the dealership to be detailed (buying over the weekend means the car can’t be washed, the shop guys are all off, so they said I could come back).

I haven’t taken a picture yet. But I can steal one.

I have a new car.

Zoom Zoom!

Nothing says love like standing around in the hallway yowling plaintively while Big Person is labeling eleventy jillion wires as a precursor to swapping thermostats, then eating random bits dropped on the floor. Plaster bits, a page of sticky labels, a stray wire… a screw….

…

She may have played with the screw and batted it into a corner. But, she also tried to bat around the hammer. Kitty needs a new brain cell or two.

Action: Gas company sends honkin’ huge gas bill.
Reaction: I run out to get a) a digital programmable thermostat and b) hot water heater blanket.

Action: Friend’s electronics stolen from his apartment, calls me.
Reaction: FREAK the heck OUT because it’s happened to me twice before, then spend the week obsessing over how to make my apartment more secure, even though I know full well that anyone who wanted to could simply break a window.

Action: Boss gets confused and unfocused about what I’m trying to say.
Reaction: I provide detail and proceed slowly and with enough context so that she can tell who I am discussing from moment to moment.
Reaction: Boss laughs and says she doesn’t need that much detail, even though she did just fifteen minutes ago.
Reaction: as I walk from her office and across the building… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!

Action: Friday at 5 pm comes, as expected.
Reaction: hit the door running and don’t look back!

Test driving more cars tomorrow. Yay. Arg.

And here I am doing ten things at once to distract my brain from workplace politics (gah), funny looks from parental units (ARG) who don’t quite believe in therapy but feel they need to drag in the kids to convince other entities they are doing due diligence (OF COURSE they have the best interests of the kid in mind, no question of that, we just sort of disagree what that is…), and the fifteen mistakes I made in pacing myself, overbooking myself and generally underestimating my Superhuman Qualities that led to not eating lunch….

So of course I’m working on the website, watching an episode of SG1, working on a story, and googling myself. Which leads me to discover random bits of what other people are saying about my fic, and also that Google leads me to other people’s link lists that include my handle, my stories, my livejournal…. I don’t remember google being so thorough before. All kinds of those fake link farm pages turned up, too. Also a bazillion posts to ASC echoed through various forums.

I should probably be reading a book instead, but it just isn’t enough at the moment. Maybe after I do some yoga and clear my head a little.

Or maybe take something to kill the head cold. Since there is no official cure, it may take some time to trial-and-error myself something that works. I’m thinking of starting with cheesecake and working my way through the ice cream, chocolate, caffienated beverage, and alcohol food groups. Of course, the cold may be preferable to a diabetic coma, but I’ll take my chances. I have a whole weekend to figure it out. If I exhaust all the options in the alcohol group I bet I can count on sleeping through next week. By then, the head cold should be gone.

I have hit the point at which I am slogging. No shows, cancellations, and some really tough cases to assess that take hours of phoning people and collecting collateral info. What do you do when a kid has no parents? You talk to social workers, cousins, group home administrators, teachers…. Ayi yi yi.

Also, kids keep bringing in colds. I keep taking pills.

Also, there’s ice. Pockets, in the gutters and shady spots. It’s cold!

It’s interesting that the stress results in fic. I should be good to go, now.

Crazy Pat: Kein Gott, keine kinder at Pandagon

Every time I run across a quote from Pat Robertson, it makes me wonder if part of my insanity is due to early exposure - I used to sit in my bedroom reading science fiction while madre and padre watched this loon on the tube on the other side of the wall. A thin wall.

I have difficulty seeing how, even if properly in context, he could possibly defend himself for this one. Good grief. You’d think at some point that the ‘faithful’ would detect the insanity — if only the faithful are multiplying, how come there are so many heathens around us?

I learned:

1. my cat purrs so hard she squeaks
2. it’s not going to snow here after all, but it will be freezing cold
3. the condescending and confusing person obliquely referred to previously in this blog is GOING AWAY. Thus solving a problem only a couple of weeks in the making.

Tomorrow, I go a-librarying. And possibly test driving.

Edible squid-flavored postcards ::: Pink Tentacle

In other news - an unforeseen fringe benefit of being a therapist: get out of jury duty free card. A peer (therapist from a different department, therefore not a coworker) was telling us today that he was called in and nearly picked for a jury on a famous (locally, anyway) murder case. The minute he said he was a therapist he was dismissed. I’m not sure if this is because we’re too soft on criminals or what, but me, I tend to side with ‘personal responsibility’ and not so much with ‘it’s his mother’s fault for beating him with a wire hanger.’

Well, it still runs and has oomph. But it burns oil, has no air conditioning, the paint is fading, the clear coat peeling, the upholstery falling off the interior in little flakes, and there’s this sort of misfiring(?) hesitation that ends with the car either nearly dying in traffic or me throwing it in a lower gear and pushing the engine to nearly 4k RPM to “clear its throat.” It idles rough. It’s getting worse mileage. The motors in the rear passenger doors no longer move the windows up and down, and the one on the driver’s side will inch downward until you get out and shove it up by hand. It will cost upwards of $4000 to fix the things that ail it, and that’s a conservative estimate.

I was informed of a rough estimate to rebuild the engine over the phone - and I said … never mind what I said. It isn’t fit to repeat. Anyway, I’m thinking a Corolla. And I’m so not looking forward to a car payment, but oy, this cannot continue, this oil burning thing, and the windows are driving me crazy, and the vibration at stoplights is worrying me.

Snakes on a Plane, Shrimp on a Treadmill, next it will be Slugs on a Stairmaster…

I am gone for two days. Convenient explanation for the lack of blog presence = lack of actual presence in the proximity of a computer.

So as usual I am debating whether to post something about what’s going on. Wondering a) who really reads this anyway and b) whether they’re anyone I know in the flesh.

What’s going on? Stress. I should never go into such detail here that it’s recognizable, I’ve decided, so I’ll leave it at this: disagreements and condescension and manipulation and politics. I hate politics. I hate condescension. I try to be straight and fair, and honest with coworkers. I try to let petty things go. But this is not petty, and it’s unfair.

So, document and document and wait for things to settle down, or work themselves up to a sort of frenzied defend-myself level. I’ve seen this game before.

In other news, I’m swearing off many book purchases, limiting myself to one a month. Of course, I had to order 6 books for the one purchase. They’re mostly used, and less than 10 bucks a book, but still. I also requested ones I didn’t order from the library.

This weekend, for the first time in months, I am visiting the family. It’s not exactly going to be fun. I chose a two day weekend to limit the hours I had to spend gnawing mum’s iron grip off my ankle. She’s already complaining about that.

I had to sit in a training yesterday for most of the day. The dude couldn’t figure out powerpoint so I was yelling answers. Mum said I had to fix their new printer. I will never get away from computer geeking for others, I fear.

There are no words to describe how very frustrated I am right now.

I haven’t even really filled my schedule and I’m behind on paperwork. That after a couple of holidays and slow weeks wherein all the kids went away on vacation. And I have spent two months trying to get three people to call back, and they just… won’t.

(Normally, a therapist would simply document this failure to communicate and then close the file. I don’t work for a ‘normal’ sort of program.)

I could say a lot of other things but of course - I can’t do that in a public blog. Or a private one, really. The kids are cute. The parents are a) anxious b) indifferent or c) somewhere in between and vacillating rapidly.

Oy.

I still like my job, however.