Feral

My wife and I live across from a school. The school is built along side of a hill. The hill is overrun with feral cats (Remember Boston?), and other critters (mostly skunks and coons).

A few blocks from our house, there are a couple of houses we dubbed the “Crazy Cat Lady’s” house. To be honest, one of them only has a few (3 or less) cats in front of it at any given time. While the other one, had a Dalmatian and at least 20 cats. You can smell the kitty litter and urine emitting from that house from across the street. There are cats in the house, outside the house, on the car, under the car, even in the doghouse…

This past weekend, my wife and I were walking the dog. Our usual destination, when we don’t take him to a state park, is to a near-by park half mile away. The house lays just about the middle of the route we take to this park.

On our way back, we noticed a kitty sitting on the sidewalk across the street. (one of the nearby houses were redoing there roof… major noise coming from the construction) This black kitty has a giant red eye, which my wife noticed right away. I walked across the street and notice its right eye seems to be missing. And there was HUGE inflammation around that eye. That kitty needed help…

We rushed home and look for a box, got into the car and drove back, intended to get it to a vet…

… It was no longer there …

We drove around for a bit and couldn’t find it. But we did see another kitty limping across the street. Its left rear leg was in a severe state of atrophy.

It was a pretty sad sight to behold.

I ain't doing shit today!

I am refusing to do any work today… I am NOT going to be productive in any sort of way! With the exception of breathing, feeding my belly, surfing the Internet and of course, blogging.

Let me tell you what lead to this “I give up (for today) attitude.”

I have been working on a special project at my WCJ, one that took me a few weeks to finish… finish being a subjective word.

After I thought I was finish, my boss and I met the group of people who we are doing this project for… the meeting went well, the response from them were favorable and my boss is pleased… or so I thought.

My boss tells me afterwards… “It was a good starting point” but “let’s change the looks of it.”… oooo kkkk…

It took me a few days to get several templates and a few color schemes all worked up, and submitted to her for approval. She picked one. It took me a week to transfer majority of the data to the new template, she want to check up on my progress…

Good thing too… cause now my boss tells me how “she doesn’t like the color in the template and that it’s too “square”.” (Remember, this was the template and color scheme she chose!)

“Can you make a new template?”… Sure I can, and I did. And she “loves” it.

“Can we immediately transfer all the data onto the new template?” Sure…

“How long will it take?” A few of weeks, the new template is a bit more involving, all the codes will have to be …

“You have until next Thursday, that’s the day we have to present it to everyone.” But…

So I worked all of last week, hammering the keys on my keyboard like a crazed maniac, going home with strains in my eyes. I come back and started working on it again like a zombie on speed. I was unstoppable… I am king of the Wor…

A representative from our clients meet with me on Wednesday, 1 day before D-day and tells me they reviewed what we have so far and wanted things changed. Move this here to over there, that to here, cut this out and add that in.

Couldn’t you have told me earlier? Fuckin’ Cow.

When did you find out, Miss representative from our clients? Last Thursday…

Great, and you waited until now cause you think I needed another challenge?
So challenge is what I saw it as, I abandoned what little social interaction I have with my officemates… anything fun like goofing off or surfing the web… I was once again Crazed Maniac Zombie on Crack TM… I must have clocked 140 wpm on a 75 wpm keyboard…

But I finished the project; 2 minutes AFTER we were suppose to meet with our clients.

But it’s done…

So stick a fork in me cause I am done… and I aren’t doing shit today.

White screen of Death

This blog is experiencing the white screen of death..

WTF... I am going to email the blogger people about it..

Responsiblities

No matter how you look at it… growing up really just boil down to ONE thing.

Responsibility.

When you were younger… you want to be older to go out with your friends, without chaperons.

But you were responsible for your actions… if you missed a curfew…

Then you wish that you were 18… you can then legally buy cigarettes and legally have sex (I know, who follow these two “rules” anymore…)

But you are responsible for your actions…

21… alcohol… same responsibility thing…

I found that since I am a bit older, I am become more responsible.

I am become more financially responsible: I no longer spurge on things I don’t really need. After all, the mortgage comes first. (side story: I used to *frequently* take a $20 dollar cab ride, to my $4.25 an hour job at Micky D’s. After tax and the transportation deduction… I took home like two dollars and fifty cents for the day, eight hours of work...)

I am more relational responsible: I know I have a wife, along with a dog and two cats. There are chores I need to do (god knows I don’t as much as I should, but I do what is absolutely necessary, like cleaning the kitten litter, walking the dog and throwing away the moldy trash in the kitchen). It’s ok… that’s the price I pay for being a grown up.

Why am I rambling about this? Cause I have an aunt (in-law? What is the proper way to address this woman?), who to me is … well, irresponsible.

She is actually my wife’s aunt. A woman in her mid-late 40s. With two kids, around nine and four, (well three, but only two that “counts” for the purpose of the story).

Every year, on New Years and other special occasions (usually around holidays), she and her husband would go out to parties (some of which are out of town and overnight). She would ask my sister-in-law to take care of the kids. But she doesn’t trust my sister-in-law (who is 23) enough, so she also asks my wife.

I know, some of you are already saying, what is the big deal? People get baby sitters all the time.

Let me explain why it brothers me so…

I have had the dog for almost 7 years now. I found him when I was going to school, on my way to my finals. After my wife and I decided to keep him, I know that I have made a commitment, to take care of it. Which means sacrifices from my end.

For 7 years now, I have taken ONE vacation without the dog, which was my honeymoon to Japan. Every other vacation, I have look for close to home, dog friendly places. We look for a hotel with a kennel in Reno (So he can play in the snow in Donna Summit), we book dog friendly rooms in inns, and dog-friendly getaways places.

I am ok with that, it was my decision. I can live with it.

My wife’s aunt, having two kids also made the decision (if not the decision to have kids, she made the decision to have sex). And she should have to live with it. I already have it in my head that when I have kids, my going-out-or-go-on-vacation-alone-with-wife life is over for 18 or so years.

I am ok with that, it will be my decision. I can live with it.

I don’t know why, but it bugs the shit out of me…

Maybe it’s because she is such a bitch… (I have yet to have a “conversation” with her in the 9 years I have known her. She only recently RESPONDED to me saying hi to her)

Maybe it’s because she doesn’t even trust a 23 year old with her kids, she wants two adults there… (ok, so my sister-in-law can be a bit… untrustworthy… at times…)

Maybe it’s because she once replied “twelve to never” to my wife, when my wife inquired when she could baby-sit the kids.

Maybe it’s because her kids (at least the nine year old, but four year old is starting to show it too…) are total brats. They act bratty when they are in public, they act bratty when there is a family gather… they are just… brats!

Maybe it’s because she once claimed that her son (20 something, who doesn’t live at home anymore) wasn’t really hers, that the hospital had made a mistake…

Maybe it’s because she waits till the very last minute to ask (She emailed my wife Monday, waiting her to baby-sit on Friday). A bit more notice would be nice… I refuse to believe she didn’t know about wherever she is going earlier…

Maybe I am just weird and have inner issues… which makes me glad and happy that I don’t speak to anyone from my side of the family.


(To make it perfectly clear, my wife likes babysitting them. She likes spending time with her cousins. And the Uncle is a totally cool guy!)

Trust...

I think I have trust issues…

I am working on it… with my friends, with my family and with my two jobs.

Part of the problem is that I think I am the only person that can do certain things, and have it turn out the way I want it to. Some may say that is because I am a control freak. Perhaps I am…

In my WCJ, I have an assistant and a “co-worker” who shares the same title as me. The assistant is great, she quickly adapted to her duties and has become and valuable part of this office. But she has made mistakes in the past. But who hasn’t? We are human, after all.

My “co-worker-who-shares-the-same-title-as-me-but-gets-pay-more-than-me-cause-she-has-been-around-longer-gawd-how-I-hate-Union-Jobs-sometimes” on the other hand does the bare minimum. Which, believe me, is being generous. She is supposed to learn my job duties. For two purposes, 1) so that we can tackle and manage the overwhelming workload that is before us, and once we get it down to a manageable size 2) reassign me to something else more challenging (I have been told by my manager and I hope she is not yanking my chains).

Well, my co-worker is super resistant at learning the new duties… and she will give you her standard response to any duty:

She will argue with you and then proceed to do what she wants, the way she wants.

Or she will argue with you, questioning things every step of the way,

Or she will badger you with questions, then act as if she has never done anything before and ask for confirmation, on everything

Needless to say, she drives me nuts.

We have a very causal working environment that allows us to bullshit around and still get (a majority of) our work done. One time while we were BSing about age and stuff, we asked her how old she was. Now I know the whole thing about asking female and their age and such (WHAT *IS* up with that anyways?)… but during this conversation, there were 4 other females present. And they were the one ask her the question. She just sat there; not saying anything. But her facial express is apparent and the steam coming out of her head was hot enough to boil water. It was then she turned and glared at us as if we are gossiping about her husband who can’t get it up.

I don’t know if the term glare is correct, it was more like “Staring hard”, “Dogging”, “Mean Mugging”.

Look bitch, if it wasn’t work and if I was half the ass I used to be 10 years ago, I would have slapped you silly and gouge your eyes out. You unsocial fuck.

Ahhh… I have stray far from my intro… trust…

I guess I don’t trust that bitch…or my manager…

Recently, my manager gave me this special assignment. Deadline is coming up on Thursday. No biggie, it’s just to present the idea to the people in charge. Think in terms of outline to a story, or premise of a movie. So we spoke briefly yesterday and told her, not to worry.

“Everything will be fine, trust me.” I assured her

She wanted to meet today and tomorrow and right before the real meeting with people in charge. I told her it would be a waste of time.

“Everything will be fine, trust me.” I assured her

Yesterday, she said ok, and that we will just meet on Wednesday.

Today she comes up and says that we should just meet today briefly, to touch base with each other.

Look bitch, fuck your managerial school taught terms, touch base my ass. Just say you don’t trust me and you want to check up on my progress…

Maybe, just maybe, I am not the one with the trust issue…