Happily Phoena

On facebook today some emo ‘tard cousin was all, “Please help me support some bullshit cause about trying to make insurance companies test everyone for genetic diseases so they might get treatment earlier!!” I must be adopted because my relatives are all monumentally stupid.

Genetic testing? Um… no. People getting regular checkups is a much better and logical way to make sure they get treatment early if something goes wrong. (By that, I do not mean running to the doctor over every sniffle, but a check-up once a year wouldn’t hurt.) Why should insurance companies have to waste money to have all of us tested for every single thing that could go wrong “just in case”? It’s pretty ridiculous, not to mention dangerous.

Far be it for me to defend insurance companies, but if they had to test all of us for everything we could possibly get, that’s pretty fucking expensive. Then they’d just screw us all by drastically raising insurance rates because they don’t want to eat into their profit margin! I’d rather pay less up front and be surprised about what I’m going to get. If I knew what I’d get, I’d just fret about it my whole life. No thanks, that’s no way to live!

If YOU want to be tested for something because you’re worried about it or feel you have a family history of it, what’s to stop you from paying out of pocket for it? Oh, because you’re a cheapskate and you’d rather pass the cost along to the rest of us through higher insurance rates? Fuck you!

Here’s the really stupid part of the emo tards’ campaign to get us all tested for what might be wrong with us: Let’s say that at 20 you force your insurance company to pay for your genetic testing so you’ll find out what you’re going to get in the lucky lottery game of medical problems. Great, now you know you’ll get X, Y, and or Z. Now try and go out and get insurance coverage, emo ‘tard! All the insurance companies need to do is look at your chart, see that you’re predisposed to heart disease, breast cancer and glaucoma and they’re going to refuse to cover you. Ha ha! Game over.

I wish emo ‘tard’s came equipped with brains so they wouldn’t paint themselves into such corners. But then who would I have to laugh at and mock?

Another work related rant.

At one job, I somehow got stuck dealing with mailing people’s packets out to them. I made the mistake once of saying, “The mail isn’t that difficult,” and next thing I knew, it was MY job. I won’t make that mistake again.

So I sit back in a little cube and type up address labels and then I stuff the envelopes and put them in the cart to go to the mailroom. Luckily I don’t have to go to the mailroom or I’d be writing to you from jail after having murdered about 4 people.

The job of mail itself is not hard. It’s a little boring, sure, and sometimes challenging, as the majority of Americans are retards and they write their addresses down correctly or legibly, but I do what I can and get it done. Once it’s in the mail cart, it’s not supposed to be my problem anymore.

Only, it is.

The mailroom refuses to put out an official mail policy. This is because they want to make up new rules anytime they like, which they do. I know they only do this because they don’t want me to run out of things to bitch and moan about. Their goal is to drive me over the edge completely.

My coworkers know that I’m a very easy going person, but that the mailroom makes me turn into a Tasmanian Devil, so they try to keep me and the mailroom people as far apart as possible. But there are times when they can’t shield me from the dipshit things the mailroom clerks do.

Several months ago they decided one day, out of the blue, that I would have to start mailing the packets in boxes, citing that the paper envelopes rip too easily. It was ridiculous since few of the packets are that big, but fine, I could deal with putting them in boxes if they wanted to be dumb about it. What pissed me off was when they decided to send back all the mail I’d sent the previous few days and tell me to put all of that in boxes. Oh sure, I was dying to spend the day re-doing work I’d already done!! If they had sent out an official memo saying, “We changed our policy and would like you to now mail everything in boxes instead of paper envelopes, starting next Monday,” I wouldn’t have been nearly as mad. Don’t change your policy on a Monday, wait until Thursday to tell me of the policy change, and then punish me for not having packed the mail wrong due to your inability to notify me of the change, motherfuckers! That’s bullshit! It’s not like I sent out 4 packets a day. I probably send out 50-75 packets a day. It’s time consuming to mess with that many the first time, let alone having to do that work twice.

But fine. I got over it and went on my merry way. But then two weeks later, they changed their policy again. Actually, they claimed what they had said originally was, “Only packets over a certain weight have to be in boxes,” but that was most certainly NOT what they had said. Even if I wasn’t clear on what they said, they’d sent back ALL my mail that particular week – not just the ones over a certain weight. (Few of the packets are over that weight limit).

So this time, they sent back all the boxes I’d sent down there the previous couple of days and told me to put them back in envelopes. *fuming* That’s when I decided I was going to eviscerate someone if I ever had to go down to see those fuckers in the mailroom again!

If they would put their instructions IN WRITING then there would be no confusion, but of course, they can’t change their story that way. Duh.

I asked them (through a coworker since I wasn’t going back down there without an Uzi) to give me a postal scale so I could verify what is and what isn’t over their weight and they refused. There was a big drama fest and it was left completely unresolved but I told my coworkers if they refused to give me a scale and they sent something back because maybe it was just under or just over the limit, I was going to tear someone’s arms off and beat them with them. So now I guesstimate and the mailroom clerks haven’t been giving me problems about that issue, at least.

The mailroom did bitch a couple of months ago that they didn’t like the TYPE of envelopes I was using. Someone (not me) had ordered some extra-big envelopes and when I said, “Those aren’t the ones I can use,” I was told, “Tough, someone has to use them; we can’t send them back.” I could use them, but either I’d have to spend extra time folding them and taping them up to make them look neat (and I don’t have a lot of time to waste) or I could save time and they would be kinda messy and probably more likely to rip. Until I have less work, less packets to mail out or someone to help me, I just couldn’t justify wasting the time to make the envelopes look pretty.

So at that time, the mailroom was doing me a favor. They told me to get plastic envelopes because they don’t rip as easily or get wet as easily. Good idea. I was able to tell the supply people, “Ha ha, I can’t use your crappy envelopes anymore. Mail room says!” and I told them to order me these plastic envelopes. They said, “Which ones?” and I said, “Whatever ones the mailroom recommends. They just told us, ‘plastic.’” So supply got me plastic envelopes.

I love the plastic envelopes because they are self-adhesive so I didn’t have to mess with the tape anymore. AWESOME. For two months, I used the plastic envelopes with no problem and everything was going smoothly.

Then on June 18th, the mailroom decided they didn’t like the plastic envelopes anymore and refused to send any more of them out for me. They told me I had gotten the “wrong ones” and these were costing them more money because they say “first class” on them. (I thought all mail was first class!) Well, I didn’t order them – the supply guy did. I don’t know if he asked the mailroom which ones to order and they screwed him up, or if he fucked up on his own. Regardless, though, why didn’t they have a problem with the envelopes for the first two months?

They changed their policy on June 18th, but they didn’t tell me until June 25th. A whole week later. And at that time, they sent me a whole weeks worth of packets to re-do! Just to be asshats! Even if one could argue the policy change came from above them, they did not have to wait A WEEK to tell me of the change.

I’ve repeatedly demanded that I need an official mailroom policy and I need all official mailroom policy changes sent to me in writing. They refuse, like they don’t have to answer to anyone. My boss has tried to get some resolution through the proper chain, but nothing has happened. So now I’m writing official letters of complaint against them to people over their heads and to the government Fraud, Waste and Abuse people in hopes that there will be some consequences against them and they will have to comply with my request for official mailroom policies and official changes in writing, if nothing else.

It might go no where, but I have to try something. If it’s not this, it’s the uzi.

I do a lot of eclectic jobs, and I avoid talking too much about them online because I hate to reveal too many details publicly, but I’ll talk around this one and see if you can understand just enough without telling you what I do.

One of the part-time, contract jobs has me working in a room with three other people and we’re each doing our own thing in our own little “cubicle”. It’s a fairly big room but the official rules say that there are only supposed to be the four of us in there working and we’re not supposed to have any “distractions”.

I’ve loved doing this job in the past (it’s more play than work!), but in the last few months, they brought in a bunch of new people, most of whom are related (I hate nepotism!!) to this one fat cunt I like to refer to as “The Sea Cow”. She’s supposed to work in a different department although she’s never over there now that she can hang out with her relatives in our section. With all these new people working there, and no extra work, The Powers That Be have been taking work away from those of us who have been there a while to give some work to The Sea Cow’s relatives, which is such bullshit. But since we’re not officially employees (we’re contractors) we don’t have much legal recourse.

Here’s the problem: The Sea Cow’s buddies have started bringing their friends and, in one case, child, with them to work. They act like it’s just a big party for them. Most of the time there are 3-6 people who shouldn’t be there hanging around. None of these fuckers use their “indoor voices” so they get really loud and obnoxious. Then they laugh much louder than is necessary, so it sounds really fakey, you know? They’ll laugh at things that aren’t even funny! They act like this is a big high-school clique (despite the fact that they are middle-aged) and won’t talk to the rest of us. One time I was the last one there, and as they were leaving, they turned the light off on me and laughed about it. !!! It’s so childish! The light shining in the windows helped me to get across the room to the light switch to turn it back on, but good thing there was lights outside or I would have been trapped in the dark.

Other annoying things they do: Sometimes they’ll play their radio and I don’t want to hear their crappy music. The kid the one gal brings in is about 7 and loves to kick the floor to make the squeak noise of the rubber hitting the tile, which is really obnoxious. The noise level has gotten worse every week! Last week was the absolute worst. As part of the job, occasionally (not often) we have to be on the phone and Thursday night I could NOT hear the other person because there was so much noise in the room!

Complaints have been made to The Powers That Be (not just by me – even people in another department affected by ours have complained), but TPTB just say, “Well, we’ll look into it” and they never do anything about it. The Sea Cow seems too friendly with TPTB, which is why I think they don’t do anything about this problem. Sometimes I think she’s sucking their dicks or blackmailing them to get away with all this. I’m serious! I’m not even telling you all the other problems going on. Something just isn’t kosher.

Someone else told me the new gals’ work is shoddy, so I went back and checked. It’s true! They don’t even do the work correctly. They do part of it, but they half-ass the rest. This is not hard work at all! But they are too busy socializing and acting like this is a party house to even do their jobs correctly! The Powers That Be must know this; other departments have complained about how it affects them, so they can’t not know.

But that’s okay, I wasn’t going to worry about it. I just concentrate on doing my work well. I might not be rewarded for being good at my job, but I can still take a lot of pride in a job well done. My only problem was the noise, and to combat that, I’ve taken to bringing my MP3 player to work the last couple of months. This seemed a reasonable solution – if I can’t shut them up, at least I can drown them out and get my work done. My work has not suffered since I started wearing headphones; it’s probably improved.

Sunday night TPTB sent out an email to everyone saying, “It’s against the rules to be playing with your electronic devices while working, so we’d better not see you with your MP3 players or cell phones or you’re fired! It’s unprofessional!!” That was the last straw for me. These asshole PTB won’t fire the stupid, skanky cunts for doing the job half-assed. They won’t fire the stupid, skanky cunts for bringing their friends and kids to work with them. They won’t fire the stupid, skanky cunts for making so much noise it’s making it hard for the rest of us to work, but they are threatening to fire ME for bringing my MP3 player in just so I can hear myself think?!

I can only think that The Sea Cow is behind this. My music wasn’t affecting anyone else since no one else could hear it. It wasn’t affecting my job. No one from the other department is complaining about my work or the non-noise from me wearing headphones! There is no reason for them to be giving me grief about it. The Sea Cow and her relatives just want me out of there so that they can get more work for themselves! It’s sickening.

Why TPTB are caving to The Sea Cow is beyond me. It’s not like I get paid more so that getting rid of me saves them money. Unless The Sea Cow and her relatives are giving them kickbacks, and they are mad they don’t get kickbacks from me! Maybe that’s it. Really, I can’t see any better explanation.

Well, I’m not going to work in that cacophony without my MP3 player. While I didn’t officially quit, I sent them an email saying (among other things), “You don’t know the MEANING of the word ‘professionalism’ so you look like ignorant children when you try to use it.” Somehow I bet they won’t be offering me more contract work. Oh well, it’s not like I needed the money. At least I won’t have to put up with the aggravation anymore. I’ll miss the fun part of the job, though. *shrug*

Hubby was out and about this afternoon and I’d expected him back around a certain time, and he was long overdue. So I tried to call his cell phone and it was off or out of juice or something. This always ticks me off, because the purpose of a cell phone is for people to be able to reach you, so you should have it turned on and available to answer, otherwise it’s just an overpriced paperweight! For real, sometimes I wonder why he has a cell phone.

I was irritated that he’d forgotten we were supposed to go somewhere, I sent him an unkind text message about forgetting. I think it went something like, “Hey Retard! Did you forget we were going to the dollar theater tonight?” A few minutes later, I sent him another text message accusing him of having a problem with his cranium being up his rectum. And I think there was a third message, too.

I realize this makes me sound bad, and I’m willing to face that charge. I’m not really that bad. I just want him to know the exact times I was missing him and I just like to use colorful terms of endearment. It annoys me, though, that predictive text does not recognize the words “Assfucker,” “Dickhead” or “Prick” causing me to spend extra time typing out those words. Damn them! Those are important words!!

Now before you think my husband is so abused, let me reassure you that I would never call him those words in person – I just somehow find them amusing to text at people occasionally. The words aren’t half as much fun out loud as they are in a text. I don’t know why.

Luckily he knows it’s just one of my personality quirks and doesn’t get all offended. He’ll usually reply with, “I love you, too, dear” which always makes me laugh out loud.

When he got home he had an excuse for where he’d been (he was out looking for something for me, actually) and he said he hadn’t been able to find his cell phone since yesterday. So. I felt a little bad about cussing him out. I hope someone else doesn’t find his cell phone and charge it and think this guy is married to a real shrew. It’s probably around the house somewhere, but now that it’s out of juice, we can’t call it.

I don’t know how he can’t keep track of that thing. *eyeroll*

I wonder if the people at the cell company have access to and if they ever read the text messages? Or the CIA or something. If they do, they must think my poor husband is married to a real shrew!! One would think they wouldn’t have the time, but you never know! I can just imagine some guy out there saying, “Take this number down. If you ever meet the woman with this number, back away slowly.” Just the idea of it cracks me up.

Now off to bed. Some of us have to work tomorrow!

This is my memory of the Michael Jackson craze back in the 80s: My older sisters and their good friend were wild about MJ and one of them had a poster on their wall of him in a lemon-yellow sweater. I dismissed MJ as “a girl” for his squeaky, hiccup-y voice and his lemon-yellow sweater. I didn’t find his songs “thrilling” at all. (Since then I’ve come to enjoy some of his songs, but I’ve never been wild about any of them. The hiccups in his songs annoy the fuck out of me.)

My Wicked Witch sister told me I couldn’t watch his videos because they were “too scary”. (She meant more than just his Thriller video). It wasn’t like I was a LITTLE kid, but I don’t want to date myself so i won’t reveal how old I was then. Anyway, when I eventually did see them I thought, “Where’s the scary part?” (especially in the non-Thriller videos). Was I supposed to be afraid that he could light up the street lights and sidewalk in “Billie Jean”? Was I supposed to be afraid of the gangs in “Beat It”?

Meanwhile, I was crazy for Madonna and Cyndi Lauper instead of MJ. I was in love with the songs “Material Girl” and “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and wanted those albums. I remember buying them, or at least, I remember getting the Madonna album (on tape). Then my Wicked Witch sister told Mom that Madonna was “too scandalous” and I shouldn’t be allowed to listen to her “sick” songs like, “Like a Virgin”. I never (not then and not since) liked “Like a Virgin” so I wasn’t even listening to that song – I’d fast forward over it (still do). Still, Wicked Witch sister convinced our mother that I shouldn’t be listening to that album and they took it away from me! Bitch.

Years later I owned a Prince album, and this was right after the “Parental Advisory” stickers came out. I happened to be at my parent’s house at the same time as Wicked Witch sister, and I happened to have that CD case laying out. Wicked Witch sister freaked out, trying to tell Mom that I shouldn’t be allowed to listen to that “filth”. She read the names of the songs off the back and was scandalized by the song title “Sexy M.F.”

“OMG!” she said. “You know what that stands for?!” I told her if she knew, she must have a dirty mind. She tried to convince Mom to take the CD away from me, even though I wasn’t a kid anymore and I didn’t even live there anymore. What was Mom going to do, ground me? If the store sold it to me even with the advisory on it, that meant I didn’t need my mommy’s permission to listen to it.

After that, I went out and bought Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” CD to replace the tape she’d taken away from me years ago, and played that dreadful song the next time I saw her, just to irk her.

All these years I’ve been wishing a house would fall on her but it hasn’t yet. Still have my fingers crossed, though!

(Now I really have to go work on Chapter 7.)

Earlier in the week I tore up what I’d written of Chapter 7 and picked out each scene and did a big game of mixing up the puzzle pieces and deciding how to put it back together. I decided some of it doesn’t even belong in Chapter 7. When I figured out what I wanted, I decided that Friday and Saturday I’d totally get the chapter re-written. It wasn’t fully written to begin with, but what I had written I decided I didn’t like, so I was practically starting from scratch.

It shouldn’t have been that hard to accomplish; it’s what? Twenty pages in Word, max? Well, I dicked around all day Friday (we were going to the Ball! I had more important things to worry about! Like finding a pair of nylons that hadn’t self-destructed yet!) and dicked around most of the day yesterday. I got six pages done yesterday, so I must finish the rest before noon today when Hubster gets home. How much you want to bet I won’t do it? DARE ME. If you dare me I might get it accomplished.

I’m so proud of myself. Yesterday while hubby was out and about, the toilet in the hall bathroom broke. It wouldn’t flush when you hit the lever. I always joke about how I’m incapable of doing all those “man” things and that although it’s unfeminist, I got married so someone else could deal with that shit. But I’m not entirely helpless. I opened up the tank and saw what had gotten lose and reattached one dohickey to another dohickey and it started working again.

I know it’s not a real accomplishment, but I know a lot of people (male and female) who would be too lazy to even LOOK to see if it was a minor issue. They’d rather wait and let someone else look at it or hire someone to come out and fix it. Morons.

Before I tried fixing it, i went and looked at the other toilet to see how the dohickey in there was attached, because I didn’t want to royally fuck anything up. Turns out, the other toilet got a much better dohickey. Imagine that. Toilets come with different types of dohickeys. Who’d have thunk it?

Anyway, next time you need a plumber, why not pay ME to take a look. Maybe it’s just the dohickey. I feel like an expert on toilet dohickey’s now and want to fix some more!

Dohickey.

I’m feeling a little bit guilty. Hubby had some work out of town this weekend but it was close enough for him to come home last night. He had a long, hard day yesterday and was so sore and exhausted when he came home. But since he is only doing a half-day today, he wanted me to go with him and I originally was going to, but I changed my mind.

Maybe he only wanted me to go with him because he felt bad I was cooped up all weekend, but actually, I like being cooped up! Unlike him, I have to go to work tomorrow, so I wanted to relax today! But maybe he really wanted my company and so I should have gone with him. I just felt I’d get more writing done if I stayed here.

Also, if I’d gone, he’d have felt obligated to go shopping or something afterward, since we don’t get out of town much. Even if he wasn’t feeling up to it, he’d lie, not wanting to disappoint me. So it’s probably best I stayed home.

In other news, they paid him in cash (!!), up front, so he laughed that he didn’t have to show up today – they’d already paid him for it and they didn’t even make him sign anything saying he’d been paid so he could have screwed them. “Hey, we paid you for working today, too!” they could say and he could say, “Yea? Prove it!” lol But he’s too honest for something like that. Not to mention, it would screw him out of future gigs.

We know that many people like getting paid in cash so they don’t have to report it, but Hubby prefers a good, old fashioned check. This way they have proof they paid him, he has proof, and no one can steal someone else’s money. Yesterday before he left, one of the other guys said that someone was claiming there was an envelope of cash missing. You know, if you hand out checks, it’s harder for anyone to steal anyone else’s pay. It’s way too easy to pilfer someone’s cash.

Anyway, he’s making a nice chunk of cash for a day and a half’s work, and he sees it as more “fun” than work anyway, most of the time. So it’s all good.

He left pretty early this morning but he should be home by noon. Then, depending on how he feels, and how much writing I get done between now and then, we may or may not go to this book signing with those two suspense novelists. I’m not sure I care, but I’m morbidly curious to see how big a crowd shows up. After all, not that many people read anymore, but will even non-readers show up, just for a couple of autographs? I wonder.

If I did go, I’d be tempted to get their autographs, too, even though I don’t read their stuff (at least not yet). But hard cover books are so overpriced, I don’t want to have to buy their books (I wasn’t able to find them used anywhere recently) and it seems too cheap to get them to sign a paperback (which isn’t cheap anymore, either!). So maybe I should just stay home and work on my own book.

I can’t get all that upset about either MJ or FF dying. I’m much more moved and saddened at someone who dies at the height of their career than people who are years past being relevant. I was so upset at Bernie Mac dying last year because he was still funny and performing and so alive. These two just seemed like they were on their way out for a while now.

I think the news media is going too crazy over MJ’s death to generate more hype. I’m annoyed by it all.

All these years, I thought eclectic toothbrushes were just a gimmick to get people to pay more for them. But recently I found a coupon for the new one and since it was already pretty cheap at the store I shop at, I picked it up. I paid $6 for it, or maybe $7. The replacement heads aren’t that expensive, either. I’m a cheapskate, after all.

I tried it out today. It feels weird but I suppose I can get used to that. My mouth feels so much cleaner now and I find myself wanting to brush my teeth more often! I’m not even sure I want to eat as much, lest my mouth stop feeling so fresh and clean! Ha ha!

Someone needs to make a PSA about this: “Electric Toothbrushes Are Worth The Extra Money! They Are Not Just A Gimmick! They Make Your Mouth Cleaner! You Spit Less! They Are The Best!”

Why do they even sell the non-electric toothbrushes anymore?! Everyone should be using electric toothbrushes, esp if they can get them for under $10!!

I’m going to go brush my teeth again, just for fun.