Pants party.

Things are still progressing around here. I don't have the energy to devote to regular blogging, but that means that any time I pop in, I feel like I'm just doing the same update every time:
1. Nora is still the fucking coolest. She just wants to hang out and I desperately wish our finances made it possible for me to stay home with her and M, but I know that going into debt to do so is a bad idea in the long run.
2. Nothing really to report with M's case. Her dad has been so inconsistent that the new worker (who is still doing as little with the case as she can while our worker's on maternity leave) decided to only extend one of his visits instead of both, so now she has up to three hours of visits a week. They had to change the visits to the morning so now Andy and I can't pick her up, which makes me sad. The termination paperwork still hasn't been filed. I also had to make a few phone calls today because we haven't been paid in two months - we've been having our mail forwarded and it turns out they won't forward checks from the county. Would've been fucking cool for M's temporary worker, her regular worker, or our worker to have mentioned that, since they all knew we were moving. We're not desperate for the money or anything, but I'm certain the county wouldn't have ever tried to make up those two months if I hadn't called.
3. The hardwoods are being done in the house this week, and we're going to start painting on Sunday. There's a lot of painting that we want to do and we're trying to figure out the logistics of painting with two little kids. Any suggestions there would be welcome.

And now, something a little more interesting. Here are words and phrases that I've heard in the rhythmic noises produced by my breast pump:
- Rachael (I hear this a lot, and it's kind of creepy)
- Apple
- Westeros (why yes, I had been watching a lot of Game of Thrones)
- Bob Ross
- Wacko
- Cello
- Let's go

If you have experience with pumping, please reassure me that this isn't just me.

Blogging break over!

Hello, internet friends. Here is what is happening around here:

1. Our baby is still the greatest. She's eleven weeks old and so happy and laid back and she just wants to hang out all the time.

2. It's awesome that she's so awesome, but it makes it way harder to be back at work. I went back three weeks ago and I hate being away from her so, so much. We talked about me going part-time, but our benefits are through my job so if I dropped my hours we'd have to get them through Andy's work, for more money and less coverage. So mostly I just get really teary a lot, and Andy does drop-off so I'm not a weepy mess. I rush to pick the girls up every afternoon and spend as much time in the evening holding Nora as is possible.

3. M is still a funny sweet lovely kid, and she still adores Nora. Today she walked by me and smooched the top of Nora's head, absentmindedly almost, as I was holding the baby. Our usual worker is still out on leave, and the new worker is in no rush to do anything at all with M's case. This is good in that her dad's visits haven't been extended (which the judge ordered in July), and really really shitty in that she hasn't done anything to get the paperwork filed to terminate M's parents' rights. Our usual worker is back next month so I'm trying to not freak too much.

4. We're still waiting for a closing date on our house. It is frustrating to have to wait on banks and mortgage dudes and appraisers and who even knows who else. But I'm daydreaming about autumn in our new-old house, with pumpkins on the front porch and pretty leaves changing color on our street!

I'm fucking tired a lot still so I've been keeping up with reading the internets while I'm pumping at work (p.s. I HATE pumping at work) but can't be bothered to post here much. I'll try not to be away for a month again though!

I haven't slept through the night since October.

The title of this post isn't an exaggeration. I got knocked up again in September, and I started waking up every night to pee in early October. In fact, for a few solid months now I've been waking up two or three times a night. It is some bullshit. Other than that, the pregnancy has been kind of awesome, but it is pretty grating to never feel like I've gotten enough sleep.

Things are progressing smoothly with the house. Our realtor had an interior designer come over on Saturday to help us stage the house. She had a lot of good suggestions along the lines of "Move that lamp here! Put some houseplants here! Take out that bookcase and shift that one over here! Try centering the kitchen table like this!" It was really interesting and I think it would be kind of awesome to hire an interior designer to come do a consult like that after we're settled in a new house. Some of the suggestions definitely make things look better but make the house slightly less comfortable to live in, like how the lamp that used to be right behind the chair I'm sitting in is now across the room. She wants us to get some accent pillows for our bed, which I think is silly because I am NOT into spending money on pillows that will sit on the floor most of the time, especially since they cost like twenty bucks a goddamn pillow. Did you know that? Throw pillows are fucking expensive! And stupid!

I've got a friend who works for a children's book publisher, and I do some occasional freelance work for them. I just signed on to work on a year-long book project and they want me to come to Pennsylvania for training on Wednesday and Thursday this week. So that should be fun and not at all overwhelming to add an overnight business trip midweek while six and a half months pregnant and putting my house on the market.

Hope y'all had a lovely Easter and the like!

Work and temporary single momming

I've been in my new position at work for almost a month now, and I had my first monthly review meeting with my boss today. She said she's gotten good reports from the trainer and I'm doing really well. Yay! I even asked if she had any concerns or things I needed to work on and she said she didn't. So that's cool. It's nice to hear that I'm doing well.

Andy's been on a business trip since early Wednesday morning, so I have gained even more respect for single moms - and I already thought they were incredible, so that's saying something. The baby has a cold and wants her pacifier in all the time but frequently spits it out with coughing, so I got up seven times between 1:00 and 2:30 in the morning to put it back in for her. That sucked. It's been weird having to take care of every single thing that needed doing around here - dogs and baby and self and food and not destroying the home. He gets back in very late tonight and I can't wait to see him.

I think in the morning we'll go to the farmer's market to get fresh local strawberries and asparagus (hooray! things are growing!) and see if we can find something decent for our moms for Mother's Day, because I totally forgot that was this weekend. Oops.

Home visit

So Sunday my niece was born, Monday we had court and I started a new position at work, Tuesday I had a WIC appointment (always THE WORST), and yesterday we had a home visit with the baby's worker and also we brought dinner to my bro and his wife and the new baby twenty minutes away. Oh, and tonight we have dinner with my parents. Because of course we do. I am so, so glad that tomorrow is Friday.

So the home visits are scheduled for half an hour and are basically for the worker to confirm that the child is alive and the home is still standing. The old worker would stop in, say hello, ask if we had any questions, answer them if I did, usually check the baby's sleeping area, and then bounce. Yesterday the worker was here for an hour and a half.

This worker is pretty great. She answers all of my million questions and is way more forthcoming about information that might not be considered crucial for our case - like she'll share pieces of history about the brother's case or tell us about the dad's other kids' mom's situation - in a way that our first worker didn't. She also is really good at answering my questions about the process, so that's helpful in me seeing what possibilities are ahead of us.

She confirmed for me yesterday that there is very, very little chance that the baby will go anywhere between now and the scheduled court case in July. For her to go anywhere, the grandma's lawyer would have to petition the court to place the baby with the grandma, and I think there would have to be a hearing. The worker also reassured me that the county still wouldn't support that, even if her lawyer did petition the court (which is itself incredibly unlikely - it's just that I asked the worker exactly what would have to happen for her to go somewhere before July). The worker also told me that sometime in the next few months she'll talk to the mom about surrendering her rights. That isn't a likely outcome, but the worker says that the mom is doing very little to show any progress and might be persuaded to stop dragging it out. I asked what that would mean about the grandma wanting custody, and the worker said that if the mom voluntarily surrenders her rights, that removes the grandma from the equation. I did confirm that the dad would have to surrender his rights too (he's the adjudicated father, which means he has attested in court that he is her dad) and he might fight it because he's a pretty proud dude (and also because it gives him some power over the mom).

This is by far the longest we will have gone without a court date, which is really cool. We know we'll have the baby for my first niece's first birthday party. I can buy even more summery outfits for her. (Also, and this isn't a minor thing, I am going two months before my next WIC appointment instead of the every-month bullshit I had to do until now.) It is nice to think about our time together as a family doubling by July!

Do you guys have any questions about any of this shit, like the process or how it all works or anything? I'll answer if I can!

Overheard at work

Bald, good-natured manager: Hey! Love the short haircut! Maybe go even shorter next time, so I won't be the only bald one in the office! Ha! Ha!
Very quiet, mild-mannered twenty-something who just cut his hair: [quiet agreement, haha]
Two loud, bossy, middle-aged crones: LOUD DISCUSSION ON THEIR PREFERRED HAIR LENGTHS, BOTH IN GENERAL AND ON COWORKER IN PARTICULAR.

I haven't dyed my hair in, like, a year - this is an incredible thing for me - and I can honestly say, while I miss having blue hair, I do not miss the monthly inane conversations like this.

Is every job like this? Isn't there anywhere I could work that doesn't have these people?

Holiday spirit!

I'm already home for my Christmas long weekend! I usually don't get out of work until 4 at the earliest, but here's an awesome thing: at our work Christmas party, my work-best-friend won a game and got herself four extra hours of vacation time for this week. She knew my sister and Brian and the best baby in the world were coming into town (they arrived last night), so she asked my boss in secret if she could split it with me. Boss said yes, so work-best-friend and I both got two extra hours of vacation time, and I get to be home early!

I made Yuletide nipples yesterday, and I think I'll try to fit in a batch of m&m cookies this afternoon before we head to family dinner at my parents' house. My grandparents are in town for Christmas, which should certainly keep things from being boring.

I hope you all are having the best holiday season EVER.

In which I get worked up about grammar.

I was told by a coworker today that it is “not our style” to hyphenate an entire adjectival phrase if it’s “too long.” “Too long” seems to be totally arbitrary but agreement between that coworker and another topped out at about two words.

I know this means precisely nothing to most of you, but to those of you who know what the hell I mean, let’s have a moment of silence for proper grammar. This is ridiculous. The argument, I guess, is that “it doesn’t help readability” – um, yes it freaking does; that’s the whole point – and it’s a pain for our typists to have to insert line-breaks, as our computer program sees hyphenated words as single entities. Well, coworker, the thing is, we hyphenate them because they are intended to be seen as single entities, stupid.

I am seriously way more worked up about this than is reasonable. We are a publication company. We apply rules of style and grammar to other people’s words. Unless, I guess, some of us don’t feel like it sometimes.

For anyone still reading who doesn’t know what an adjectival phrase is, it’s a group of words combined to describe a single noun: for example, “my always-ten-minutes-late friend.” Or a “city-registered electrician.” Or “banana-flavored-smoothie-hating self.” I don’t know, I’m really grumpy about this and I don’t know anyone who would possibly get this worked up, so I’m ranting to myself and can’t think of a good example.

Come on, guys, give me some hyphenated adjectival phrases to cheer me up!

Work!

I am such a neurotic mess. My last job did such a freaking doozy on my at-work confidence that I am a serious ball of anxiety for the days leading up to any meeting with my boss. I had my annual review today, and despite not having had any flat-out bad meetings with the boss in the last year, I have been stressed about it since Monday.

Last night at our friends’ going-away party, I knocked over three different drinks because I was so tense and clumsy. Three delicious homebrewed beers were lost to this damn review. It was criminal. Then, of course, I had a hard time falling asleep (no joke, at the old job I started having to take Nyquil to fall asleep the night before a meeting with the Horrible Boss. Then I started taking a combo antidepressant/antianxiety pill, and it turns out that was a much better idea.), so I made Andy snuggle me extra-well and play with my hair, which I’ve found soothing since I was a baby. (Please note that “play with” here means “run his fingers through it repeatedly,” not “french-braid it and add ribbons” or some such shit.)

This morning, I made Andy take care of the garbage (we take it over to his parents’ house five minutes away instead of paying for pickup, because we’re cheap), even though I usually handle it, hollered at the dogs who were being their usual doggish selves, and knocked my knuckles really hard against a wall by being clumsy again. In the two and a half hours I had at work before my meeting, I did the following things:

·         Tried to meditate at my desk while the woman who sits in the cubicle next to mine ate Cracker Jack with her mouth open.

·         Listened to “No Woman, No Cry” on my reggae Pandora station and imagined that the Wailers were telling me, specifically, that everything gonna be alright.

·         Read the Stuart Smalley Wikipedia page and reminded myself that I, too, was good enough, and smart enough, and that doggone it, people like me to.

·         Repeated “competent and confident” as a sort of mantra to myself every time my heart started to pound. (I started doing this when things were at their worst at the old job, and can’t say whether or not it does a damn thing. It’s just sort of a habit now.)

·         Reviewed my notes to myself about why I deserved a bigger raise this year than I got last year for the seventeenth time this week.

·         Reminded myself that I haven’t gotten any negative feedback from my boss since January, when she suggested double-checking a few small things, but that the mistakes I had made were typically the sort that got caught before the work went out to customers, so, you know, not that big a deal. Still felt panicked.

·         Played the “What’s the worst that could happen?” game, which some therapists suggest as a way to come to grips with the idea that you can live through a bad situation. It went like this: “Okay, the worst that could happen is that I don’t get the raise. No, the worst is that she’ll tell me that I’m terrible at my job and that they’re firing me. Okay, so getting fired is the worst that could happen. So what? So what if I get fired? What’s the worst that could happen? IN THIS ECONOMY? I’d lose my house! We’d have to move in with my parents! I have an ENGLISH DEGREE, I’d never find another job!” So I guess you could say it backfired.

·         Pretended that I was as confident as some of my idiot coworkers, who make bizarre mistakes and never hit their numbers but still walk around like they own the joint.

·         Noted with dismay that my hands were trembling like crazy.

So then I had the actual meeting, and, no exaggeration, my boss didn’t have a single piece of criticism. I have made way more money for the company in the last year than anyone else in my department, and at first she thought that would mean that if I were working that much more quickly than other editors, I’d likely be making more mistakes, but that hasn’t been the case. We went over the stupid self-evaluation form I had to submit, and she agreed with all of my answers, commended me on an idea I had to make the company look better to our customers, and told me she already had some other (more advanced/I’m the only one working on them) projects in mind for me. Then she told me the average raise at our company this year was about 2.5%, but that she had requested (from her boss, our division manager, or whatever, I’m not up on my corporate lingo) that they give me a 9% raise. I had planned to ask for 10.5%, but reassessed – by which I mean, I pussied out – and happily took the 9%.

I texted Andy that the review went fine and the info about the raise, and he texted back, “See? You are as great as everyone tells you you are!” which naturally made me tear up at my desk (not hard, as I was still shaking like a leaf) and suggested we get sushi tonight to celebrate.

I must be freaking tiresome to deal with around these things every year. My husband has the patience of a goddamn saint.

P.S. Is it bad form to share the percentage of the raise? I seriously hate evasive language like "I was going to ask for a healthy raise, but they offered me a pretty great one, so I took it, even though it wasn't as good as the healthy one, because everyone else is apparently getting a low-but-kind-of-standard raise..." It's so much more work that way! If anyone in HR reads this, let me know if your company would want me to take any of this shit out. I'M STILL PARANOID ABOUT GETTING FIRED OH MY GOD I'M A FUCKING MESS.

Let's make this an official trend.

Here are several more unrelated things, so we can call this "the week where Rachael wrote all disjointed nonsense entries, as opposed to her carefully planned, powerful writing the rest of the time."

Today's post, in a special tribute to "cleaning out my email inbox, which is where I send stuff to myself so I don't forget about it," will be a series of snippets of stuff I have emailed to myself or others.

First: a single-line email to my work best friend, regarding a coworker who is very smug about the way she lives her life. Said coworker does not seem to realize that several of the main tenets in her life scheme outright contradict each other. She also is the kind of human who would get very, very unpleasant if anyone were to suggest this to her. The single line was quite poetic, though: "MY CHOICES DEFINE WHAT I AM AND BY EXCLUSION WHAT YOU ARE NOT. LET ME SHARE THEM WITH YOU AT LENGTH."

Second: a seriously old entry by Mimi Smartypants, whose archives I have been slowly perusing for weeks because I am a creep (I am back in 2004 right now, no joke), in which she describes her aversion to showering. Reproduced here because it captures pretty neatly the inconvenient mess that is actually taking a shower: "I bathe every day, barring an episode of suicidal despair or the occasional housebound Sunday (provided my head does not stink like an ashtray from the night before). But I do not enjoy bathing. Or showering. Many times I have expressed the wish that there was a magical way to be shiny soap-smelling clean without all the nudity, water, and washing. I find it tedious and I would rather not. But I don't like being dirty or smelling bad, so until that magical non-shower is invented it looks like I am screwed. I guess I could develop a heroin problem, since heroin addicts also find showering unpleasant but they are too messed up (on the heroin!) to care what they smell like. I am an expert at finding big, messy, dangerous solutions to tiny problems, as anyone who has ever watched me try to kill a spider or unclog a drain can attest. Maybe I should get a government job."

I agree fully, except the suggestion that nudity is a pain. I would so much rather hang out in my undies - as in, just briefs - than be fully clothed, any day. And the whole not-fully-naked is mostly due to a combination of hygiene (who'd want to sit on the couch after a naked person?) and stubble-itching.

Third, two recipes via V-Neck and a Cardigan, both of which look amazing, and which I emailed myself so I wouldn't forget about them:
Cocoa brownies with browned butter
Funfetti sandwich cookies

Fourth, I am running the new version of Firefox at home and the old one at work, and what the fuck, Firefox? Why did you move the home button way the fuck over there, away from the back-and-forth buttons? And because the little right-click menu is slightly different, I keep opening neat stuff in new windows instead of new tabs, the way God intended. It is mildly irritating! By golly, I intend to do absolutely nothing about it!

So there, internet! I'll be better next week, or something.

Two thoughts on work and one on dogs.

1a. What do you wear to work? My office is what I suppose we'd call "business casual," in that the owner of the company typically wears a button-down and chinos and I have never seen him wearing a tie. Pretty much the only people who wear ties are our outside sales people, but everyone else is an interesting mix. I had a meeting this morning, and in between paying attention I noted that eleven of the twenty-six people were wearing jeans. My boss was wearing flip-flops. I have a work friend (in a different department) who wears jeans every single day. I have a hard time trying to decide how to work this whole thing. I wear dark-rinse, dressy-ish jeans once or twice during the week and more casual jeans on Fridays, but I also have been known to dress the hell up and wear things like sequined dresses and heels on a Tuesday.  If you're supposed to "dress for the job you want" but your boss's boss wears cargo pants, and they aren't flattering on you, what then?

1b. Warning: bathroom-related discussion ahead. There really isn't a polite way to bring this up, so here goes: Sometimes it smells like poop at my desk. I sit close to a bathroom, and I have coworkers who have no problem taking care of bodily business at work. One person went so far as to bring in Oust spray to leave in the bathroom. Now, I understand that people poop. Everybody poops - in fact, they wrote a book about that. But I seriously disagree with people blowing up the bathroom so bad that I have to use my shirt as an air filter, and I have an even bigger problem with people spraying twenty-second bursts of toxic phthalates into my air. Coworkers of mine complained and we got the cleaning people to stock Method-brand air freshener instead, but that product was discontinued, and every time the Oust is removed from the bathroom, Madam Poops-A-Lot replaces it.

I'm not saying people shouldn't poop at work. I'm saying that if you get to work at 8:15 and have destroyed the air quality up to four cubicles away from the bathroom by 8:40, maybe you should examine your diet. Because I'm really grossed out by it. Our company is moving to a new building next month, and as much as it will be a giant pain to have to leave our part of the building to use the public bathroom (and to have to use our official swipe card to get back in, every single time), I'm really excited about not having to smell poop or cancer-causing chemicals several times a day.

2. I have somehow managed to pick not one but TWO dogs who don't really understand the idea of "fetch." Both dogs get really excited about having toys thrown and about bringing them back towards the thrower, but neither Rooster nor Pancakes have a single fuck about tennis balls or frisbees, and neither will fetch more than twice while outdoors. That means that any and all games of fetch (and remember, Pancakes is a maniac, so when we can't walk we need to get her exercise somehow) take place in our too-small living room with things like rope bones. Also, both dogs firmly believe that the thrower must be standing to play correctly, and will not ever bring a toy back to someone seated on the couch. I do not know who taught them these rules, but according to the dogs they are immutable.

How do you handle work clothes? How do you handle work bathroom situations? How would you handle my two duds of dogs?

Note to self.

Yo, next time you decide to cut your almost-back-to-normal hair into a mohawk, maybe check to see if you have a department meeting the next day. There is no way to debut a new hairstyle at a department meeting without having to talk about it for ten minutes. Even if you've had that hairstyle more than once since you started this job two years ago.

Also, on the same topic, maybe plan ahead a little better so you have some clean clothes that aren't black. Your middle-aged-and-older coworkers might not literally jump out of the way when you say "good morning" next time.

All about blending in, right?

On begging the question

I work for a publishing company. We have a staff of fully trained editors, the kind of people who laugh at jokes about punctuation. We also have a sales staff, people without a background in Latinate roots and so on, people who can't be convinced that it's a good idea for the editors to glance at the things we'll be sending to thousands of our clients. This leads to frustration.

So when we have an editors' meeting, I look forward to passing a meeting without gritting my teeth at whatever horrible things are going on, grammar-wise.

Today, however, we had an editors' meeting, and my teeth were gritted anyway. One of the editors said that something "begs the question" of why we hadn't done such-and-such. Thing is, "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question." Never has, and never will, no matter how many times people use it wrong.

"Begging the question" is a very specific logical fallacy. It's similar to circular reasoning. When one begs the question, one uses one's premise as proof for itself: "Paranormal phenomena exist because I have had experiences that can only be described as paranormal." 


I know that we can't all know every single thing there is to know about the English language. I just hate when my coworkers don't know the things I do. And I know an awful lot of things.


What grammar goofs drive you nuts? Have you ever misused "begs the question"? If so, do you promise to stop now that you know better?

Two updates and a video

I don't have much today, so here are two brief updates:

1. Pancakes is doing pretty well, and is now obeying commands something like 8% of the time. She obeys "off" every single time, which is great, but she only sits maybe 2% of the times she's told to, so it's a work in progress. We did learn that she's much calmer when she's had a nice long walk. Too bad it's gross out today. Which brings me to update number two:

2. The weather in my city is doing pretty much the same thing the weather does every single March. To hear my coworkers discuss it, you'd think that sunshine and rain and snow and higher temperatures and lower temperatures were all brand-new things. And if we have a thunderstorm, seriously, one of my coworkers gets so excited she doesn't get any work done for an hour. Ugh.

And now, because it's precious and I have nothing more to talk about, here's a video. I think I maybe found it via not martha?

On work-related worrying

I might have mentioned that I worry about work-related stuff. Any time I have a meeting with my boss, I assume it's because I'm going to be "talked to," which in the business world means "chewed out" or "put on warning" or whatever.

Part of this - actually, nine-tenths of this - is because at my last job, my first "big kid" job, my boss straight-out lied to me about how she was reporting my progress (told me it was all fine, but told the big bosses there were problems), then without warning put me on probation, watched me to the point of me almost filing a report on her harassing me, and essentially told me I could quit or get fired. Please note that all of this was despite frequent positive reports from the people I worked for (my clients, if you will), and the best results in the area two years in a row, by a whole lot. Said boss would tell you that it wasn't personal, but there were a lot of people doing a lot worse than I was who weren't on probation, and I had made it clear (foolishly, when asked) that I disagreed with some of the policies we followed.

So now, I don't trust anything any boss says, even when the boss seems like a decent boss, because I've been fooled once, right? My annual review was pretty great, and I'm not having weekly dressings-down or anything, but I still just don't ever feel like I'm not about to land on the chopping block. It sucks.

All of this is in the forefront of my mind today, because my boss has been on vacation for the last week, so I haven't had to review any small talk we've made for hints, or worry about her walking by when I'm taking my (totally legit!) break and reading a book, or whatever.

Except today, she came in unannounced for a little bit. I passed her when she was at her desk, and had a minor freak out, because the last time she took a week's vacation, she came in just to fire someone.

I didn't get fired, though, and she didn't even see me, so I'm just going to go ahead and have some whiskey and chill the fuck out.

Anyone else out there a weirdo sissy worrier like me? Reassure me, please!

Lumberg?

Generic office worker with creepy article about long hours contributing to dementia via

 You know that scene in Office Space where Peter says that every day is the worst day of his life? My job is a little like that this week, but substitute "most boring" for "worst." The Corolla is being fixed for the next eight years, approximately, so Andy and I are carpooling. Andy has much more rigid work hours than I do, so this means that he drops me off around 7:15 or so and picks me up around 5:30 or 5:45.

My usual hours are from 8 to 4.

This has caused massive brain sluggishness and significantly increased levels of boredom.

It's not that my job is awful. It's just that reading legal documents for ten hours tends to turn my brain to a puddle of mush. And it means that all I want after work is a beer, except that I'm not drinking beer during the week, and to curl up on the couch and watch Bones, except that I get home at the same time as Andy and he (pretends he) hates that show, so I only watch it with him when a new episode is airing. So instead, we'll find another truly bad movie to watch on my sister's dime (so far, Worst Movie I've Ever Seen goes to Crank 2, with Hellboy a reasonably close second) and drink a glass of water or some bullshit.

Oh, and I forgot that all of this was happening this week and scheduled a meter read for this afternoon between 4 and 7. You know those gas and electric companies are really reasonable about stuff like that and make it super easy to change your appointment, right? J/K, they're going to charge me $25 if I don't have it read before my next billing cycle begins. Cool.

The really awesomely great part about putting up with this for a while - and I'm being sincere for once - is that I can leave early on Friday, whenever I've hit my 40 hours for the week. So you had better believe I will be baking something outrageously delicious and also watching like nine episodes of Bones, even though scientific research shows that I get creeped out and jumpy after four.

(No news on the dog situation yet. We're working under the assumption that we'll end up with the girl dog on Wednesday, seeing as how I haven't heard from the lady at the pound yet. Further bulletins as events warrant.)

How do you handle a week that will be a total grind? Help!

On being twelve inside

Image depicting how I felt today via

Any time I get feedback from a boss that is less than perfectly positive, I feel like a twelve-year-old who's getting in trouble. Today my boss told me (in a regular one-on-one meeting) that my numbers are totally awesome, but that they're that great at the expense of my accuracy. The people who work on my jobs after me had noted some occasional problems, so my boss wanted to bring it to my attention so I can try to balance the numbers with the accuracy and still be awesome.

My first thought was immediately to start listing mistakes being made by other people that I've noticed. Because I get super-defensive and want to remind her that other people make more slash other mistakes than I do. Then I thought about pointing out that the mistakes she pointed out were weird, or justifiable for this or that reason, or invalid, or something. Because I don't want her to think I'm an idiot. Then I wanted to demand to see figures on other numbers of mistakes made by my coworkers, so I could see where I stand.

Of course, because my inner twelve-year-old is a sissy bitch, I nodded a lot, took notes on the feedback, asked clarifying questions, and promised to slow down a little to try to get things back into shape. Then I spent the day feeling like I had gotten a D on an important test and I was going to have to stay after for detention or something - that awful knot in my stomach and triple-checking everything I did. Ugh.

The best part is, if I were to ask my boss how bad this stuff was, with 1 being "it's totally benign," and 10 being "firing is imminent," it would probably be about a 3.

Thank GOD I'm having awesome people over for delicious dinner and then raucous board game action tonight!

Do you overreact to negative feedback too? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Lessons from working at home

My day was a little like this but with less hardwood floors and fire hazards.

I mentioned yesterday that we were supposed to get a lot of snow overnight. Well, the snowpocalypse missed us - we got about six inches. But we don't have my new car yet, so today would have been another ten-hour day for me. Luckily, I have a job that's flexible enough for me to work from home once in a while. I brought home a bunch of stuff yesterday and spent my day working from the kitchen table. Here's what I learned:

• My house is cold. We keep it at 65°, which is fine when we're snuggled under some blankets on the couch, but way too cold when you're in the kitchen trying to edit.
• My dog's life is pretty decent. He spent the whole day on the couch, sleeping. Only a slight departure from his usual weekend routine of spending all day sleeping on the floor.
• It's a lot harder to focus on reading legal stuff when you're watching Bones or The Office. 
• Don't try to run the dishwasher when you're sitting right next to it trying to read.
• If I don't go outside for at least a few minutes, I get a headache. 
• I would be terrible at being self-employed. I barely talked myself out of baking cookies midafternoon. Deciding factor: I was pretty sure the butter would be too hard, even at room temperature.

Do any of you work from home? How do you deal with impulse control? Anyone get more snow than I?

When donuts go wrong

Yo, it's hard to find a picture of the right kind of donut online. This will have to do.

Today didn't start out so awesome. I was running late (Note: I'm almost always running late or just-barely-on-time in the mornings. I hate mornings so much.) and didn't have time for breakfast at home, so I swung through Dunkin Donuts for a Manager's Special and a black coffee. For those of you not in the know, "Manager's Special" is Dunkin-speak for a cream-filled donut with chocolate stuff on top, and usually sprinkles (which I flick off, because sprinkles are weird and get stuck in my teeth).

Now, for some reason, the morning manager there hates me. She has made this quite clear, although I seriously have never given her any reason; in fact, I make sure to be extra careful about politeness in the mornings, because surliness is my default state. This woman - her name is Rose - does things like take care of the four people in line ahead of me, then decide to switch out all the coffee and make fresh as soon as I reach the counter, even if there's no one in line behind me. Or she walks away from the counter to check on cups or something when I'm the only person in the store. Things like that. The only time she's ever smiled at me (she smiles at other people all the time) was when she got to tell me they were out of the kind of donut I wanted.

So Rose and I have a history, but usually things work out okay and I get my coffee and my donut and move along. Today I went through the drive-through, ordered my shit, and went to work. When I eventually got around to eating the donut, as I went in for that first awesome bite, I realized that bitch Rose had snuck me a custard-filled instead of a cream-filled. I hate custard-filled donuts. Hate them. They are at the very bottom of my "list of donuts in order of delicousness." After breaking the donut in half to confirm my suspicions, I emailed some work friends who were already there to see if they wanted the monstrosity. Of course, because custard is gross, none of them did.

So I left it on the desk of a coworker who wasn't there yet, with this note: "You missed the story about why I won't eat this donut, but anyway, I guess it's yours now. Enjoy. From [work nickname]."

That made me feel better.