Halcyon Days

Testing... testing... is this thing on?

I was looking at my Facebook profile photos the other day; not intentionally, I just clicked on the most recent to make it bigger and that takes you to your profile photo gallery and there they are, all of them and I was struck by something. I looked happy. Well, of course I looked happy. We all look happy in our profile photos on Facebook if we're inclined to post that sort of photograph and I do fall into that category. I just didn't realize there were so many of them.

Actually, when I scrolled back over the last couple of years, like more than three, I found that pre 2009 I tended to post a very specific type of profile photo and happy didn't have as much to do with it as 'perfect' in one form or another. I don't suppose that's much of a surprise if you've been around long enough.

What shocked the shit out of me was a combination of the contextual quantity and quality of the photographs taken and posted in the last three years. If I made a montage of the sample 30 photographs I pulled off Facebook this morning I would call it

How to Pull Yourself Out of a Swamp By the Scruff of Your Neck

Who knew? Not me. OK maybe a little, but not so much as all that. I'm not going to narrate any of this I'm just going to post them in the order in which they were taken, not necessarily posted (although they were generally posted fairly quickly). I'm going to start with the profile picture that was up shortly before all hell broke loose at the end of 2008. It's a very nice picture. I look perfectly lovely. I really do. The photograph was taken right before we went to dinner at my favorite restaurant. It would have been a Friday evening and it probably ended in tears. The second photograph was taken at the end of February, 2009 and the rest just roll on out from there.

You get to decide what your life means. You get to place the value on the events and circumstances. You get to look back and decide what counts. You get to make up the story of your life. You are the narrator even if you sit back and let life happen to you, you're still the narrator.

There are A LOT of photographs on my Facebook account; Facebook is my primary method of sharing my life with my friends and family. You want to see my kids, family vacations, what's really going on in the backyard, what I did to my knee last week (I didn't do anything to my knee last week)? Get a Facebook account or know somebody who has one and friend me. This is how I do it. What I choose to use as my profile pic is something else entirely. A profile pic is a statement and generally a pretty strong statement. This is what we tell the world at large about ourselves and it's often the only thing we get to tell a lot of people; well, that and our status updates which are limited but NOT to 140 characters.

By accident of a click here and there yesterday I told myself a lot more about the last three years than I'd really taken the time to think about. And I'll tell you this, the fact that a family member left the household three years ago isn't particularly relevant anymore. It's an event, a catalyst, one of many, actually. Period.

The real question?

Who the hell IS that woman?

(I didn't ask 'was', I'm not interested in 'was', I'm interested in 'is')

Hey. Happy New Year!

Elizabeth and I have a fabulously large Contra Dance to help organize this evening. We'll be here doing this:

I like irony. I really do. This photograph was taken New Years Eve 2008. BECAUSE they haven't had anyone who actually stopped dancing long enough to go to the balcony and take pictures since then. I like to think the gap is because the dance has been waiting for me ever since. BECAUSE this is the 13th year this dance has been in existence AND there are photographs of ALMOST every dance starting from 2000 - 2008 and then NOTHING and then, well, here I am. I make up the most amazing shit, don't I?

Narrate at will, peoples... you have the floor.

Running out of time...

I am experiencing this time business like a pumpkin at midnight lately and there are gross juxtapositions; specters of what is now, was, will be, might be, all of that, all at once and it's sort of mind numbing and this sentence is even hard for me to follow. I want to be really careful here.

It's 8:30. I should be on my way to work. I've already started. The traffic is light this week. There could be something in the way. I don't have a meeting. Perception is reality. I don't want people to think I'm slacking on the way out the door. I have so much to do before I go. People are going to suffer. It isn't that it's not my problem; we've now gotten to the personal. So there's that. I'll get as far as I get and that will be that. Yesterday I began the process of vetting local small consulting firms owned by friends with resources I know or have heard of so that part of the transition can maybe occur before I leave. My boss has had Essbase shoveled into his very bright head at an alarming rate. All of this. I care. This is not about the company, just my friends. I don't fret at night.

Last night I looked at Facebook on the crackberry and one on top of the other were posts by two people who mean a great deal to me and due to circumstances in their lives going probably way back, their lives are extraordinarily different although they might have been very similar at one point. Some thirteen years ago one life split off from a path in one direction and the other life continued in the same direction and it didn't really make too much of a difference, at least not one to get excited about. Last night the juxtaposition of their posts knocked the wind out of me. The post on top was a link to a blog entry I haven't read yet but I know what I'll read and it will be very well written and painful and not surprising (even though we all had our collective fingers and toes crossed crossed crossed for a different outcome) just because; well, the circumstances. The other? Just a post of recent Christmas photographs and the family life. Best I can tell this family is completely untouched by the state of the world. That might not be entirely true but it appears that way and will probably remain that way or might not but it's hard to say. I also suspect that if it does not remain that way, she, my friend and her children will adjust. For a lot of reasons beginning with she's scrappy and despite all that she has in her life at the root I suspect the sense of entitlement never really took. That doesn't change the juxtaposition and the fist in the gut.

I was thinking this morning about what I was really going to do about the chickens and the garden in 2012 and suddenly feeling very tired. There was a link on Facebook I shared and I did an about face because the 'very tired' was coming out of denial and the desire to believe things just aren't so or just not yet. Because I am tired.

Gene Logsdon - No Till Farming Not So Great After All

"This is not nature at work; this is human technology at work, all in a vain attempt to free most of the people from having to help grow the food. My conclusion, as always: Until nearly everyone accepts the responsibility of food production without employing gigantic machinery and animal factories, just as they accept the responsibility of scraping food residue off their teeth every day without using a bulldozer, we will not learn how to avoid the collapse of civilizations."

The Sweep

Time to start feeding things into the fire. I hit the three year mark and realized it just before I turned the light out last night because I was looking at the crackberry to make sure the alarm was set because it IS time to go back to work and I WAS trying to work out the date to see how many days left I had before the NYE Contra (to get my shit together in terms of do we or do we not have 3 lbs of coffee from last year in bin #2 which is in my possession) and it was roughly and approximately 10 PMish. On the 26th. DING! That's it. No more, no less, three years and the clock strikes the proverbial midnight and I did a little probing to check but I didn't really need to, that tooth already got pulled and best I can tell whatever abscesses are left are near enough the surface they're going to get lanced even by accident. Good enough.

Want to make sure you REALLY can't go back without turning into a pillar of salt? Give your father enough information over Christmas to have him pronounce the man amoral. That'll about do it in this family. The word 'amoral', which is about the equivalent of a death sentence, will spread like wild fire (like it or not) through the family network and should you even appear to be turning back, well gods help you.

It makes me think about Pinoccio wanting to be a Real Boy. Of course he did. And I wanted him to be a Real Boy too. I didn't have any trouble sleeping and no desire to sift through the photo albums or avoid them either. Nor do I have any desire to punish a wooden puppet.

Now about that TeeVee.

My neck hurts. And that's all I got to say about that. 

Less Being Significantly More

We've been shrinking for a few years now out of necessity and I don't believe we'd go back if we could because too much too much was clearly too much too much if you know what I mean; the final 2008 Christmas debacle being a prime example of being buried under Mount Desperation until the final explosion blew it all to hell. I remember receiving one gift after another; almost completely unaware of anything else in the room other than the widening hole in my gut that I couldn't have explained to save my life. And that finally blew open too. I probably only worked it out completely (or completely enough to call it reconciled enough to file) this year and what it is doesn't really matter except to me. Like intercompany transactions on the P&L that never completely clear; I have a threshold I'm willing to send to the plug account and I think I've reached that.

When there isn't much under the tree (I'm speaking subjectively) and expectation shifts HARD, what might have been a paucity of love and care is something else entirely.

Elizabeth walked into the house Christmas morning and her eyes took in everything and eventually she asked the question we'd all been expecting and my father had a story to distract her so maybe she wouldn't guess about that humongous thing on the mantle except I don't think we needed it because the question wasn't about the gift. It was about the red ribbon and the bow.

"Can I have that red ribbon and bow? Can I"

And I'm thinking, shit, she's not very far from the cardboard box being the best part of the present stage, is she?

"Sure, Elizabeth, you can have the ribbon and the bow as long as you ask the right person." She wanted to know who the present was for and I said we'd get to that and she let it go.

Elizabeth played Santa and she did a fine job of it too. It took a long time. Everything was a surprise because there weren't really any lists. There weren't really any expressed desires or maybe there wasn't any expectation. I'm not sure. Numbah One Son writes things on his gift tags and mine read something about coming off my wish list and before I opened it I looked up, startled and asked how he could possibly know about my wish list even though I'd told Cletus in passing that all I wanted for Christmas was a pair of dancing shoes and a Contra dress, wasn't anybody who could buy me those shoes (without me there and besides, I already had them) and I hadn't actually TOLD Cletus where the dress could be had and what size even though I knew. There are always desires, I suppose, things we love and forget about and somebody told him when he asked and there was the book.

We got to the end and stockings had to be done before the thing on the mantle because of those bottles of beer on the wall so that happened first and not a word of complaint or anything else because somehow it wasn't relevant to her? I don't really know. Stockings are a slow process. Cletus has some expectations, or at least one and it wasn't met. She was pretending to sulk. She wanted her Solistice Jammies (just the pants, not the top) and Elizabeth got hers under the tree and I'd managed to stuff the ridiculous things (Solstice jammies in this house are ALWAYS ridiculous looking) into her stocking and this just went on until it was time and the ladder came out and Elizabeth climbed up with me to pull off the paper for whoever that present belonged to because

SHE HAD HER EYE ON THAT RIBBON AND BOW AND WAS GOING TO HAVE IT, BY GOD! (possession being nine tenths of the law and all that)

And when the paper came up and off there was a bit of a swoon and we did have to keep her steady on the ladder and boy was that fun.

I think that TeeVee was as far out of her scope of imagination as it was mine.

We spent the afternoon reading or something and not much else which is what goes on around here Christmas day and also we made the TeeVee work and we watched it a bit in a state of wonder and you'd think the three of us had never seen anything like it before.

We had dinner and sat at the table forever like we should and all Elizabeth wanted was dessert but I forgot to defrost it (because I chose to buy it because I decided not to drive myself bonkers this year) so it was very slow in coming and we watched a DVD which hasn't happened in maybe a year and a half since the old TeeVee stopped speaking to any sort of external device at all and there was finally mostly defrosted pie and Elizabeth was sent to bed because she couldn't stand up straight anymore and then the dogs and I went to bed and I could hear Cletus and Numbah One Son in the living room still and I fell asleep and didn't get up until the very next day.

Today is December 26 and Honey Badger don't care. That's not true. Honey Badger do care. Honey Badger is grateful for a good many things, many of which don't bear mentioning.

It's taken a full three years but Christmas is back in the house and in the process of being mostly MIA it's also been wiped pretty much clean.

What or how much you give is completely irrelevant if you haven't got any holes to fill.

Happy Christmas!

I'm waiting for the house to wake up. OK, not really. There are no children in the house this morning and adults should be allowed to sleep as late as they like on Christmas morning on a Sunday when there isn't anything pressing at all. Elizabeth arrives late every year with her father. We tell him 10 and then place bets on whether or not he'll arrive before 11 and we start to get really hungry. Breakfast is always before presents and when Baby Brother and his wife were still living on the East coast there was church and a good long run to be had first. The torment was delicious.

We aren't completely sadistic. She begins at her paternal grandparent's Christmas Eve and there are presents opened from uncles and grandparents and then there is early Christmas morning with her dad because he has been given the gift of his only child first thing Christmas morning in perpetuity (or until she moves out or is suddenly elsewhere by her own choice on Christmas morning which seems unlikely because she's a terrible creature of habit) and there are his presents pulled first thing from under that tree and no waiting since it is only about Elizabeth.

So. We are not so sadistic as all that.

Who am I kidding. :-)

And this year there is that thing above the mantle and when he, Elizabeth's father stopped by around 10 to drop off a few things (leaving her in the car because Santa had already come and gone and asking if he'd lost his ever-lasting mind...) he didn't even notice it and when it was pointed out he had absolutely no idea. This is good. She has a more devious and certainly more hopeful mind and everybody EXPECTED sanity out of Cletus and me in terms of the damn thing fitting in the cabinet so who would think.

Anyway... more evidence of collective sadism. I didn't grow up with this. I believe we invented it sometime in the last 9 years. It's working for us.

This year's theme...

99 bottles of beer on the wall...

They didn't fit in the stockings because the stockings always end up stuffed full of things that are almost never quite stocking sized because we never upgraded to those super-sized Christmas stockings. We're still on the 1950's model designed by my Great-Aunt Bobbie on my mother's side and I've got two of the originals. One made for me at birth and one made for Numbah One Son before she ceased and desisted and the rest made by me from the same template. The end stockings are just as skinny so we're as limited as we always were and I stuff them with silly things (silly BECAUSE THEY DON'T FIT WITHOUT CONSIDERABLE EFFORT) like pajama bottoms without tops and pink fuzzy steering wheel covers (which I suspect WILL be used because Numbah One Son saw fit to purchase an aging old man sedan Cadillac and all its missing are the fuzzy dice from the rear view mirror and it's a pimp mobile) and the patching plaster won't go in a stocking either but the gorilla glue and the popcorn ceiling stuff will (you don't need this information, trust me) and out of print paperback books (found a goldmine) will but there isn't any room left for the Santiclaus beer and so they march across the mantle and the hardest thing will be keeping them closed until after food has been consumed. Breakfast is food.

Last year it was alcohol laced whipped cream (caramel was best but the chocolate wasn't bad) and boy did that pack a whallop. Nobody even considered wasting the gas on whippets after one ceremonial mouthful at the foot of the tree.

I hear Grandpa...

Happy Christmas!

Festivus Miracles

I want to wish you all a Happy Festivus... For the Rest of Us

Festivus is sectarian holiday celebrated on December 23 and is, you know, for the rest of us. It begins with an aluminum pole and ends with festivus miracles. You can find a miracle in just about anything, from finding the face of Jesus (or is that Nixon?) grown into a Yukon Gold to a bust of the Virgin Mary weeping for Tebow.

1. The Aluminum Pole - I've always had trouble with this one. I've seen the suggested photographs. It's supposed to look like a pole dancer's pole except it doesn't need to go ceiling to floor but really, when it comes right down to it there are no hard and fast rules so, well, define pole exactly. I have aluminum items in the house. Perhaps I should have taken out one of those now useless (to me) aluminum pots and waved it around by its pole like handle and that might have helped head our troubles off at the pass. Early, as it were.
   
   Probably not.
2. The Festivus Dinner - Check. We had a fabulous Festivus Dinner at a place called The Georgetown Saloon  where we used to be sorta kinda regulars and I have never once had a date that ended well (all dates, first, second or sixth were ALWAYS the last date at the Saloon) but Elizabeth flat out loved the place and we heard they were filing for bankruptcy because the place up the street had taken all their business and the place a bit down the street had taken the rest. Last night I understood exactly why which leads us to...
3. The Airing of Grievances - Check. Check. And Check. - Why Elizabeth's favorite watering hole has lost all but a very specific demographic: we made reservations for 7 PM because the band went on at 9:15 and we had no interest in hearing the band (although if we did, and we might have, we'd have happily gone for the band). When we arrived the dining room was maybe only a third full and it didn't get any fuller (and I drive by on Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30 to pick Elizabeth up from dance and when it used to be packed with families the dining room is now EMPTY). Having spent a few Friday nights in the bar on killer dates I suspect it filled up sometime around 9ish, especially if the band was good. At 7:45 the band came in, dragging their stuff up to the stage. OK fine. No problem. A little early but maybe they want to eat. At 8:05 the sound guy did a sound check and the drummer made some noise. And he didn't stop. He proceeded to warm up. And he didn't stop. The preview of the band began at 8:15; mostly the drummer drumming for a packed room. The grievances began. They were humorous. They involved penis size of the drummer. They were not loud enough for anyone other than our table to hear and Cletus (thank the gods) covered Elizabeth's ears. I'll leave it at that.
   
   The Airing of Grievances continued right into midnight on two subjects: Politics and the state of the world (that's one subject) and my confessions about the state of my divorce - things I failed to really tell anyone - and to be fair, things I didn't really discover until recently mostly because I didn't want to look. There was really only one question I had to think hard about and that was, 'what else did you sign?' 
4. The Feats of Strength- Ack. This did us in. Numbah One Son failed to show up for dinner because we failed to inform him that his presence was required until, oh, 5:45ish and he had plans therefore we had the oldest male family member but not the youngest (you CANNOT throw Elizabeth's father under the bus by making him youngest family member by proxy). I am convinced this did us in. Aluminum pole or not (I HAVE aluminum in the house), without the Feats of Strength there can be no...
5. Festivus Miracles -
   
   

WHAT the hell were Cletus and I thinking anyway? At Walmart you can get an awful lot of TeeVee bang for your buck and when the TeeVee Christmas check arrived in the mail early so we could march ourselves out and purchase the Christmas TeeVee so that Elizabeth would be surprised Christmas morning and we found out just exactly how much bang could be gotten for how much buck and I looked at Cletus and asked, really, Cletus, that's going in our cabinet? and Cletus shook her head vigorously up and down and I said, OK, if you say so (REALLY, Alecto? how much is six inches?) and we brought it up from downstairs last night after dinner because Elizabeth was gone with her father until Christmas morning and we took it out of the box and oh holy hell we were truly and seriously EXPECTING a miracle and my dad and his wife sat back on the couch and just about split a gut watching the two of us try to work this out having slid it out of the box.

I insisted that we not tear any of the wrapping or remove any pieces parts from their containers in case we could not so that it could go back and Cletus was VERY CLEAR THAT IT WAS NOT GOING BACK.

And in the end it went here:

A Festivus Miracle would involve Alecto ALLOWING A SHRINE TO THE TEEVEE to occur in the living room. This is not permanent. We already know this. Plans are being made. Plotting and scheming is occurring. But for now, there it sits waiting for Elizabeth to show up Christmas morning and swoon into the arms of the dog (because nobody else is likely to catch her after all this).

Go back to the top. The rainbow. Yesterday we went to the tree farm after I did a drive by of one of those expensive nurseries that sell pre-cut trees for between $70 and $80 and was expecting a fire sale and found $96 trees instead (they were NOT super-sized) and before I drove away I asked when the trees would be on sale and was told never and then I asked what would happen to the remaining stock come Christmas Day (there was A LOT of remaining stock) and was told Trash Heap.

Daaaamn.

Where was I? Off to one of the local farms in one of the less expensive towns where you cut your own but can also buy the pre-cuts but the time to buy pre-cuts is just about over because they DO NOT want to be throwing them on the Trash Heap I suppose and off we went to cut down our tree at the week day rate and it sprinkled a bit and there was this amazing rainbow. I would have had to back up two miles to capture the whole thing end to end and the crackberry did a terrible job and I've hardly caught any color at all but there it is anyway.

A pre-festivus miracle. I'll take it. We cut down a tree, haven't done that in years, tied it to the top of the car, drove it home, hauled it into the house and went to work. It's not an aluminum pole but it makes a mighty fine Solstice tree all lit up against the dark, sparkly and bright and full of hope.

Calm

Now I'm sitting at my clean desk staring at my screen wondering what to do because nothing is on fire and nobody but nobody is asking me for a damn thing. (ok, I confess that it isn't as clean as all that but it could be that clean very, very quickly and it is that clean in my mind)

Nobody. Not really.

I am allowed to get up and walk around and tell people and when we came back from Christmas lunch at about 2:30 I did that and it took a long time because it wasn't just a quick head into the office or cube it was an entire conversation apparently and not even the same conversation over and over again which was a relief but wore me out anyway. And there was a long conversation with my boss about what I think he needed to do and how much had changed in almost six years in terms of skill sets or combinations of skill sets and what was really needed to run the pieces parts and what he might find in house and what he'd have to go outside for and basically a planning session or the deconstructing of Alecto's job. That was sort of fun for me, actually. I hadn't deconstructed the pieces parts since the upgrade and it's really very different.

The hardest conversations were with the Assistant Controller and Controller. I didn't realize it would be that bad quite honestly. It wasn't so much that they didn't understand. They did. But at year end, Alecto?! Yep. No time is a good time when there's only one of me. And it's not like I'm abandoning you, I'm just moving down the road a bit and I don't work for you anymore and you're going to have to find another body to keep your systems afloat asapish and all that but the bat phone still works at night and on weekends and you can still call me when you're thoroughly confused and I WILL answer your questions. Don't be silly.

And for some reason that seemed to make a difference and I guess it would because if, after six years, an administrator understands a particular business model and a new admin does not there's this security blanket of the old admin where you can pick up the bat phone and say: Does this sound COMPLETELY RETARDED? and the old admin will say, Why yes, Assistant Controller, it does sound COMPLETELY RETARDED. Just like it sounded completely retarded the last time you asked if it sounded completely retarded but what the hell do I know since I no longer have visibility into your system? And that will be that and it will go on for only as long as it takes for a decision to be made under fire and that will be that (that won't be long).

I'm not abandoning you, I'm just packing all my shit and moving out. In other words, I'm leaving you but I'm happy to look back and I'm glad it doesn't appear that you will throw rocks at me on the way out the door.

There was a brief happy hour afterwards and there is never a brief happy hour (wrong. there are often brief happy hours I just don't go) which turned out to be a good thing because I relaxed so that when I got home I wasn't emotional wreckage, just exhausted.

The girls and my dad and wife (his, not mine. I don't have a wife) were getting ready to play a card game and the pizzas were being delivered cold because the poor delivery guy was driving around in circles looking for a house number that didn't exist and I just sat in the rocking chair and watched and talked and let go just a little bit more.

**********************

My brain though. It's still going. I want to login because I know my time to login and play with what is still MY system is almost over. No, bad Alecto, don't go there. I wonder if I'll be bored at my new job. Is that possible? What if I don't know how to work in an environment that isn't completely under fire anymore? What if what if what if?

My Lizard needs a case of lipstick and a shiney new mirror for Solstice or Christmas or New Year's and maybe a pink tu-tu because she's going to need some distraction, being so used to the perpetual wind up dance and all that.

And on the Brink of the Solstice...

I picked up the phone and dialed four digits that would voip (voip is a verb now, even if it wasn't already it's high time and I just made it so because if you can dial a four digit office extension and be delivered to a home office...) me 200 plus miles and one state North into the home office of Beloved Boss.

Ever notice how sometimes when somebody close to you or someone else suddenly passes they go from being mildly tolerable to downright sainthood? Like when my paternal grandparents were living in close quaters in their later years used to fight like cats and dogs; or to be more specific my grandmother would needle, complain and bitch within four to six feet of my grandfather's head (I swear half the time just to get a rise out of the man) and he'd sit there in his recliner with his Manhattan in hand as if she hadn't said a thing. Drove the woman absolutely batshit. The minute he died he attained instant sainthood. These things happen and I do believe it's perfectly natural in a lot of cases (and in some cases definitely not so much) and I'm not going to get into the psychological implications past I'm pretty sure it's part of the grieving process and what we choose to remember when all is said and done.

Anyway, Boss has been elevated to the status of Beloved Boss and there is a truckload of evidence to support that elevation (begin with February 2008) in the last 5 years and 8 months despite the fact that he has the capability of pissing me off to the point of absolute hysteria (all stealth like, of course, into a paper bag. for the most part because when the paper bag blows out and stuff well stuff happens but generally I make it to the ladies or the stairwell before the gnashing of teeth gets really loud).

The truth is I'm homesick. Already. Oh, don't worry. I haven't forgotten why I'm leaving and what I won't miss and I'm not having regrets or second thoughts but I'm painfully aware of what I will miss and I think that's a good thing. I'm also perfectly aware that I'm scared shitless. On the brink of the solstice. Well, yesterday it was the brink of the solstice. Today it is.

I was laying in bed last night trying to decide if this was really Part II of my life because there have been some rather abrupt shifts in the last almost 48 years but when it comes right down to it this really is the big one. There are enough distinctions, or maybe one major distinction that makes it so. I am not running away from home, I am walking and not to some other House of My Father either. There is no safety net over there although all safety nets are illusions and based on the results of the last net, well there wasn't anything safe about that at all. Let's call that a venus fly trap without taking shots at people because I'd like to remain accountable, just circumstances and choices.

I was cornered in the mall by the CFO.

I was done with my last minute in the mall type shopping and he was on his cell phone and I saw him and he didn't have his glasses on and it was out of context and I was standing there torn between wait in case I should wave or run like hell when he looked up from his conversation and instead of giving me a friendly nod or wave which he would anyway he put up the wait for a minute finger signal and got the hell off the phone.

Ack.

I'll leave the conversation to your imagination. I'm not going to repeat it here. I've still got a bad case of the willies. Let's just say in the big picture it was very nice. Probing, but nice.

My departure is still not really public knowledge and the project has gone belly up. I sent the consultant home at 11:30 yesterday. That the project has gone belly up isn't public knowledge yet either. We are in the process of determining what to do next. What to do next will not begin until January 31 at the earliest because it's another one of those scorched earth situations where it got so bad we're going to have to wipe the whole thing out and start over and this time there's going to need to be a different approach. I guess I'm going to help drive that decision, the plan and the time line and then walk out the door.

Beloved Boss told PM he felt like he'd been hit by a truck.

I'm sorry. But everybody leaves sometime and I'm still sorry on a personal level that you feel like you've been hit by a truck. I'm sorry because the time you had a family emergency and disappeared off the face of the earth abruptly and I thought you were gone I felt like I'd been hit by a truck too.

This was a really hard thing to do. As hard as I thought and not so hard because nobody was mad. I had to wait for my boss to process on the phone after I told him and then he asked for me to send him something in email he could give to HR and I asked what it should contain and he said I should figure that out and then we moved right into the project debrief and then after we did that and he'd settled down he said, 'I'm not happy about this' and I said, 'I'm not either, but you know I have to do this' and he said, 'I know and that's why I'm not going to ask you not to do it' and I said, 'I've never wanted to leave a company less' (and THAT actually is the truth because by the time I generally get around to leaving I'm about ready to run all the way to Texas).

And then I went back to my desk and tried to work out what I should send in an email and came up with two lines and then got on the first of a whole bunch of conference calls that would in the end take down the project for good. In the mean time I was wondering when HR was going to show up in my cube and take me away mid-sentence but they never did. Beloved Boss was pretty sure they would not but you never do know and he could see why I would be worried about that and I told him I'd done everything I could to make sure he'd have a lot of doc to walk him through the hot spots if that happened.

Gracefully. I think I finally figured out how to do this. What happens next is entirely up to the company but I'm OK.

Hokey. I know.

But I really sort of like the bit about the monolith being in the water and the water only having ripples, not crashing waves.

Predicaments

My dog is still tethered to a 15 foot boingy boingy leash and may be kept that way for the rest of her natural life which may be, at the rate she's going, rather short. This morning I found her hanging off the big dog by her collar. I only noticed because of the horrible gagging sound coming from the living room.

Here's how this works. If I let her loose in the house, even confined to a small area she decides I'm not watching and gets all terrier on my ass and pees and poops at will EVEN IF I'M LOOKING RIGHT AT HER. Even if she was out 20 minutes ago and peed and pooped right in front of me. If I keep her on the leash, boingy boingy aside (I lock it at 15 feet) and then tie the leash off just barely, and I do mean just barely because I loop it around the back of a light weight dining room chair of the sort she could sneeze at and send halfway across the house and then leave the room she's about 98% accident free these days (I don't always leave the room, the point is that I can). The leash is her god. And in bed? One accident and only one and that was back when she thought if Mom gets out of bed and doesn't get me out of bed ASAP AND I'm not leashed then I'm gonna have myself a little wee right here on the bed just so as Mom GETS THE FREAKIN' POINT OVER HERE. I don't THINK so. And that never happened again. Voice. Mine. It'll make yer eyes bleed and I don't really even have to raise it although with her I sure did and you never saw a dog go over on her belly that fast with her eyes rolled back, whole body all aquiver - ohgodohgodohgod that was SO not a good idea... sorry Mom, won't happen again.

Anyway, so here she is approaching her six month doggy, erm terrier (fine distinction there) birthday and she's still tethered as her breeder puts it and her breeder also accepts that it can take, MONTHS, YEARS to house break a terrier depending on the breed and personality because THEY JUST. DON'T. CARE. And I do care. And she's fine in her crate and she's good in my bed from 8:30 to 8:30 on weekends and man can that little girl hold her water. So I'm off track again.

The gagging from the living room.

The patience of a saint. Simon. My God. He'll tolerate almost anything these days up to and including being hog tied by that little shit when she's pulling her kibbles and bits routine where the little dog hops up and down over the big dog over and over again except she's going from front to back side to side and underneath too until neither of them can move and he just lays there on the ground without much of a look on his face at all anymore. As a matter of fact he looks rather peaceful for the most part. One time He appeared to be sleeping and she'd just given up; hog tied so successfully they were collar to collar down on the floor. Really, I should have seen this coming.

I think she must have done something to piss him off. Periodically he will correct her and he does this rather well. It doesn't take much. He's never hurt her (the cat on the other hand has left a scar on her face and I'm sure there will be a few more before THAT relationship is finally worked out) but he does make his point. This time I think he just got fed up and stood up. Or maybe he was standing up the whole time and she went over the top one time too many and the leash didn't reach and there she was hanging off the side by her collar gasping, choking, gagging, making the most horrible retching sounds.

I was tempted, people, I really was. I walked over and unsnapped the leash. I'm going to have to get a quick release collar for the house. Or never leave her alone with him. Or accept her untimely demise. Or put up with the peeing and pooping. Or something. I haven't decided yet.

I REALLY wish I had video.

I REALLY wish I'd managed to capture the look on Cletus's face as she came down the hall just before I'd started moving in toward a rescue.

I think she was sure I was just going to let her dangle until she passed out. I noticed she wasn't moving either.

Boss:    Not in the office yesterday.

Boss:    Not going to be in the office today.

Project:    Belly up at approximately 4 PM yesterday.

Team:    Unresponsive to 10:30 disaster meeting request.

You can't make this shit up.

 

 

Happy Solstice

 

And remembering Sparky, who's been holding my hand an awful lot these days

February 25, 1956 - December 21, 2007

A Little Frothy at the Moment

That would be me. Yesterday. My very pregnant co-worker (PM) who has gone and gotten herself pregnant with twins and is now at about 19 weeks but tall enough to hide it if you don't know is at that stage (a little late if you ask me) where the hormones have gone wild and she's super sensitive to just about everything and periodically she swallows her filter whole.

Yesterday she asked why I was behaving exactly the same way. Right after she suggested I smelled like dog poop at which point I told her we were NOT going to the mall together to buy our annual ties for our boss.

And you know what? I almost confessed.

Me:    I REALLY need Boss to be in this building tomorrow (with more emphasis than is necessary because normally I say it and then give her a resigned shrug as if to say, it's on his head if the poo poo hits the fan because he's not here to stop the shrapnel before it gets down to us).

PM:    Why?

Me:    Well, I'll tell you. (oh shit, did I really just commit myself to telling her?)

PM:    I'm waiting.

Me:    erm.

PM:    ....

Me:    Because this project is sort of on track now but could go sideways again at any moment and we have NOT informed our buddies upstairs about any of this and they're going to find out sooner or later and *I* do not want to do the telling. Do you?

PM:    Do you really think it's going to crash and burn?

Me:    I think we need to stick one of those oven probes into consultant and check it hourly.

PM:    Really?

Me:    Really.

Later on the phone with Boss and PM.

Me:    Boss, are you going to be here tomorrow.

Boss:    So far that's the plan.

Me:    You really need to be here tomorrow.

Boss:    Haven't we had this conversation about you not getting to dictate my schedule?

Me:    Yes. Yes we have but it's really NOT COOL, DUDE!

Boss:    You two just want to give me my two ties and make sure I get rid of two more ties PM has deemed unacceptable and you want your Christmas presents on time.

Me:    Yeah. That's it. For sure.

And then I spent the rest of the day vibrating and wrapped it up with an escalation to the vendor when my consultant went to pieces at 5 PM because the project really did go sideways.

Decisions. They need to be made. Communication. It needs to happen. I don't want this on my head. Or I want the knowledge that I'm leaving to be part of the decisions as early as possible. Or something like that.

I realize this isn't really my problem but that hasn't stopped me from frothing.

And the water thingie that filters the water as it comes into the tank is making funny whirring sounds every five or six minutes and for the life of me I cannot remember what I'm supposed to do about that. Crap. Dammit. Bugger it.

Gak.

And then there's this. I'm afraid I may periodically be making this sort of face as well. Without the hand part though. At least I hope without the hand part...