The air conditioner is fixed, hurray hurray, but only the central vent is working and not the auxiliary vents in the living room and bedroom, so the poor maintenance guy will have to come over and be exposed to my mess again. I've got the thermostat set at 80, as I'd more or less gotten used to the heat and anything else is cold. I mean, every time I go someplace, I carry a jacket or else I'll freeze to death.
Mr. Newman got closed in the dark laundry room for about an hour and a half while the rest of us took a nap together! I felt so bad. When I was in the kitchen I heard this faint meow, not even a loud strident one like I would have expected. Poor Schnoozer. He hasn't had a good run these past couple of days. They all detest the vacuum cleaner, for one thing, and Newman got a bath yesterday. He actually seems to look leaner -- did he lose that much hair? The other two will get baths as well. Clean house, clean cats. But how about a clean me? I stink.
Now that it's cool in here and there's actually free space on the floor, the cats are tear-assing all over the place. Good, maybe Peep will lose her gut.
I remember last autumn when I had all five of the kittens and they were just wee things, I had to lift them onto the bed and then we all would sleep together. Well, one day when we were taking a nap, I lay on my back and all of the kitties lay on my upper torso, purring and purring. With all of them there at once, it sounded like a helicopter landing pad.
I take pride in my English skills, but I still don't get "lay" and "lie." Had to look it up in the Gregg Reference Manual. Forgot I had that. Like so many things, looking at it reminds me of something deep-seated and unpleasant. In August 1998 I got laid off (or would that be lied-off? --kidding) from the accounting firm I worked for. Have I written about this before? Well, whatever, the lay-off was a thin disguise for a firing and it came about as a direct result of a conflict between the "proofreader," Karen, and me. I was a word processor, hated my fucking job of course, and the firm was stuffy, pretentious and old-fashioned, with thick lines drawn between the "staff" and the "professionals." At first I was friends with Karen, but after a while her negativity, constant complaining, and endless gossip got me down. The gossip was helpful at first in teaching me what was what at the firm; for example, I learned to stay on the good side of Stephanie, our boss, because of what had happened to my predecessor (something about how she'd defied an arbitrary and pointless directive of Stephanie's and Stephanie subsequently made her life a living hell, leading to her eventual resignation). Anywho, I tried to be mature and considerate with Karen and I thought the direct approach would be best (WRONG), so she and I sat down and I told her basically what I just said here, that I couldn't hang around with her if she continued to be so negative. Karen started crying, she said, "I know," but she didn't change of course. What did change was that she gossiped viciously about me to others. Big surprise there. This woman had no class, no decorum, and knew no limits. Know what? It was her lack of boundaries that made it impossible to hang around her. She'd go on at length about her toe fungus, for chrissake. Gross me the fuck out. Back to the story, I didn't handle things very well myself, felt persecuted at every turn. Even people who'd been friendly before became wary and distant with me. It finally came to a head when Stephanie called us both into her office (and she wasn't one to be bothered with what went on outside her threshold) and told us both to conduct ourselves with dignity and treat each other with respect. Couldn't argue with that. In the meeting, Karen was going on about, "I just want us all to work together as a *team*, to accomplish our *objectives*," blah blah blah oh puke my brains out. I put forth to them both that Karen was not qualified for her job as proofreader because her English sucked; both Anna, the other word processor, and I had far better skills than she (what it all boils down to is this: Karen was stupid--thick as pig shit). Karen consistently told us to change things from correct to incorrect. When confronted, she'd say, "Because that's the way we've always done it," rather than look it up in the Gregg Reference Manual. Well, long story longer, a few weeks after that, we got our reviews and mine was absolutely stellar; the managing partner spoke very highly of me. Stephanie herself said she'd never seen such a good review for a staff member. She asked me, "And what of the situation between yourself and Karen? Is it at a Mexican stand-off?" I said nothing and shrugged. And then a few weeks later I was "laid off." Grrrr, deep breath, deep breath. I can only hope that what comes around, goes around. It's over, it's not my concern anymore, and my job is to make sure I don't fall into a similar situation in the future.
The guy who worked in the copy room, Kerry, was studying to become a teacher. He was somewhat quirky but an alright dude. After Karen's concerted character assassination of me, I didn't know who my friends were and who wasn't, but one time I overheard something. I was passing through the copy room while Karen and Kerry were there. Karen whispered something laughingly to Kerry but he didn't join in. He said instead, "That's uncool." Karen, surprised, went, "What did you just say to me? Did you say I'm 'uncool'?" Yeah bitch, you're not only uncool, you're a steaming hot pile of cow shit. --No, he didn't reply to her. Anyway. Just goes to show, not everyone's a dick.
posted by Newpeep, N.D. (neurotic depressive) @ 2:14 PM
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