Friday, September 30, 2011

Bleah

It feels as though the compliment from Dr. N. was the last good thing that happened to me. There have been daily frustrations at work that I cannot write about and maintain client confidentiality because the situations are too unique to disguise. The weather has been chilly, which is good, but also rainy, which aggravates my allergies. And every time I bother Mom on her vacation with a work problem, I feel guilty for not being able to solve it on my own.

I am declaring that tomorrow is the start of a new week. Goldilocks and I are going to the Ohio Mart in the morning, then at dinnertime I am picking up Mom and Dad, and we are going out to dinner and will NOT talk about work at all.

It's gotta get better!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Crying at work is not professional

To sum up:

It's been cold and rainy the last couple of days, my mom is out of town and I miss her, I had the whole thing with the dog mutilation and the oversleeping and my allergies have been kicking my butt, and then this morning I totally whiffed a telephone interview, so by lunchtime I was not a happy camper.

Then a client called. This client is someone Mom has known since the dawn of time. Okay, since they both taught at The University of Akron (as did his wife, who Mom knew first). He wrote a book, and Mom and I both read through it and made suggestions and copyread and all that in July and August. When he called today, he asked me how to spell my name, and I spelled Pamela for him. Then he asked how I spelled my last name, and I shot off all eleven letters the way I usually do.

"No," he said, "That's how you spell your boss's last name."

"Yes. Same last name."

"That's odd that you have the same last name."

"No, she's my mother."

*total astonishment on his part*

*laughing apology on mine* "I thought you knew--I thought all of the University folks knew!"

Anyway, he asked if I was going to be in for the next hour or so and I said yes, and while I sort of wondered why he wanted to know how to spell my name, I figured it was maybe for a little paragraph of acknowledgement at the end of his book.

Nope. He showed up with a check made out to me for $100, and more importantly, the news that he had used 80% of the changes I had suggested.

At the end of a long few days of irritations and such, validation like that made me blink REALLY hard so I didn't cry right then and there.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Cage Match: House of Blood 2011

In the northeast corner, wearing a blue dress and wielding a nail clipper, Jammies!

In the southwest corner, wearing a sage green sock and a martyred expression, Little Miss Piggie Pie!

Friday night, I noticed that the little beast's toenails were overgrown, so I got out the clippers and grabbed the dog. Between the yelping and the piddling and the nipping and the squirming, I got most of her nails trimmed, but I hit the quick on one of them, and then could not get it to stop bleeding. The fact that the dog kept panicking didn't help, nor did the fact that the blood just flowed right over the styptic swab and swamped it. When I finally did get the bleeding to stop, LMPP chewed on it until it started up again.

I finally bribed her into staying still by giving her a rawhide chew, then stuffed a bunch of gauze pads into the bottom of one of my socks, pulled the sock onto the leg and taped it in place with medical paper tape. It actually stayed on until Sunday morning, so that was good.

Saturday morning, Mom and I were planning to work as long as needed to get the office ready for her to be gone for two weeks. Unfortunately, my allergies decided to attack screaming, so I went in, took two benadrool, wrote checks and sneezed until the benadrool kicked in, and then made copies and other non-thinking activities. Mom chased me out at 11:30 and promised not to stay longer than another hour.

Because Mom and Dad's flight was leaving from the Akron-Canton airport, they were going to pick me up at 5:45 this morning. We would then go to the airport, and I would go to work. Unfortunately, either I didn't turn my alarm on last night or I woke up, got out of bed, turned it off and went back to sleep.

Either way, I woke up at 5:48 to my father calling on the phone and asking my answering machine if I was there. Eeek! I threw the dog in the basement, put a sweatsuit on over my nightgown, grabbed my glasses and house keys, and jumped in the car.

Thankfully, they made their plane, and I came home and had a shower and some coffee, neither of which helped with the sneezing (allergies still going strong, woo-freaking-hoo) or the headache.

I went in to work for half a day, then came home and took a nap. Mom and Dad called, and I told Mom about the various clients who'd called me demanding things, and then told them both to have fun, and while I love them, I hope I don't hear from them until October 1st!

*whew*

Busy weekend!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Yup, still alive

Just haven't felt very post-y. And just in case anyone was missing me, I'll stop that nonsense with the following whine about my Monday:


I started my day by flinging the dog's water all over the floor, discovered I was almost out of lettuce for my lunch salad, forgot to bring the hard copy of the work stuff I've been working on at home for the last three weekends and then got startled by a spider reeling down from my visor while I was driving!

Then work was fairly horrible, although I can actually say that someone literally moved my water dish--Vegan Lawyer rearranged the conference room and waiting room and took the water cooler out of the former and put it in the latter. Unlike a cat, though, I didn't die of dehydration.

Then some really tiny-dicked idiot in a compact felt it necessary to tailgate a middle-aged lady in a white Saturn wagon for three miles, because yeah, that does wonders for your street cred, asshole. Finally, at the store I found out that the food I researched so carefully to give Little Miss Piggie Pie the maximum amount of nutrition for the smallest impact on my wallet has completely reformulated and gone for a higher price point. Thank goodness for a lovely sales associate who knew what she was doing and helped me find a comparable brand.

Okay, whining over.