Caterwauling

Newman is Monday’s new name. Hello, Monday. *sneer*

It’s not a bad day. It’s just that everything in my home and personal life is up in flames, so really, any work-related stress is like a picnic in comparison right now.

I made a couple of proofreading oversights in a weekend edition. Now, nobody realized that I completely rewrote the weekend edition the week before or that I am the reason behind what I thought were some wonderful edits in this weekend’s. But I overlooked a couple of boneheaded mistakes, and that annoys the poop out of me.

But, for every fail, there is always the opportunity to rack up a win. Like when I just corrected a 30-year industry veteran’s ramblings because he insisted on using the letter C in an 18-digit mystery code when it needed to be a P. Twice.

There are days when I say I wish I were dumber so I’d automatically be more successful. But the truth is, I’d rather be brilliant. Or at least marginally observant so that I can still appreciate me even when half the rest of the world doesn’t.

Remember that job that put me on the street for no good reason?

They did it to a friend of mine today.

As I said, welcome to the club. Most of us who are hiring managers in the field think MORE highly of people who have been exiled from that dump. That generally means they have real talent.

I find the timing curious, as the new publisher is up here in conference-land with me this week … and not there to protest or question it.

I’m hoping this is their last hurrah. Because I respect the hell out of the new guy. And shit is gonna change.

In the meantime, I need help. But I have the position occupied by someone who tries hard but isn’t a perfect fit. But as I’ve seen throughout the years, many organizational leaders (and perhaps I can count the shrew who let my friend go today) have a soft spot for those who have no business being in the jobs they are in.

Then you get someone like me or any of my friends (and you know I don’t hang out with losers) and we’re the ones who get put on the street for not reading an Ayn Rand novel fast enough, or not finding time in a 70-hour workweek to do a performance review, or making a high-level decision that doesn’t pan out.

Basically, the more talented you are, the more anxiety you should have that your current rent payment may be your last.

I got the call right after I attended a really good workshop on social demographics and investing trends. Interestingly enough.

I love the speaker. I will follow him anywhere. I’m on his mailing list. I would love to hire him to be a columnist. You know. If I had salary money to spare.

In any event, the speaker was saying how Americans are working fewer hours per week. That pre-World War II, most men worked Saturdays. Now with two incomes in the house, “Fridays are the new Saturdays” and you can’t find someone to answer the phone after 2 p.m.

Who the fuck ARE these people who are averaging 22-hour workweeks?

Another attendee said really? Her kids are working 60-hour weeks on the low end A) because staffs are small and B) employers will run your ass out of town if they can get cheaper labor that will outwork you.

DING DING DING.

The good news, if there is any, is that robots will be doing our jobs eventually anyway. So there is hope that I can see a workweek below 70 hours in my lifetime!

I should probably start writing this sort of stuff as financial guidance rather than stream-of-consciousness bullshit. Because I’ve been analyzing the jobs data today and I seriously don’t know how anybody is bullish on the economy.

At least, when not one of us in my group of friends — again, the overachievers — can say with 100% certainty that performance and dedication are the top factors in continued employment.

I mean, is it possible my friend deserved to be canned? Sure. Why not. I’ll allow for it. I don’t believe it for one second. Not when I suffered the same fate and still to this day assume that the idiot minions have a better shot at being promoted and running the company than someone who actually deserves to.

I have so much boiling rage right now. This ripped open the wound I barely stitched together after it happened to me.

Granted, that company has about a 110% turnover rate, so my friend will find — like I did — that nobody gives an actual shit what the reason for the termination was when we all know BITCHES BE CRAY in that company.

But when you’re the only one putting food on the table, and your livelihood depends on people who be cray, it really sucks.

It reminds me of my experience, too, in that I worked hard. And long. And often. And to what end?

I wish my friend well. I wish I could help. And I wish I never ever find myself in that position again. Because even though you KNOW bitches be cray, that doesn’t stop you from wondering — even if just for a moment — whether those nutty fuckers might actually have been right to do what they did to you.

And then when you return to your senses, you wonder in what kind of a fair world those cray bitches don’t get burned at the stake so they can’t destroy another human being again.

More than a decade ago, I started a job after being not-employed for many months. I was far from being back on my feet financially. That would take hears.

However, in those early days, there was a group lunch for somebody’s baby shower or who knows whatever it was.

I was broke and barely able to afford the cheapest thing on the menu. I drank water and didn’t eat the appetizers or grab a wine glass, just so I wouldn’t have to share in the cost.

At the end of the meal, the head boss decided to split the bill evenly among all 20 people. My $10 meal became $30.

I didn’t have dinner that night. or the next.

My boss at the time looked at me and said, “You should have eaten the appetizers.”

I think of that story often when I get invited places. Now in the age of debit and credit cards, most servers know to give people separate bills.

I thought of that as I said no to an invitation recently. Where I knew I didn’t even have to pay. I just had no appetite for pretending I was in a good mood and that everything was OK.

The thing is, even when someone else is paying, I still eat cheap. I shoot poison arrows at someone like the kid who will order not only the most expensive thing on the menu, but two of them.

I think he follows the idea to just eat the damn appetizers already. You pay for it one way or another.

So I really am just depriving myself, I guess, when I say no to the appetizers … or to a meal I want instead of just a cheap one … or to the meal itself.

I don’t know. I like to think I’m doing the right thing all the time. By by whom am I doing right? Because if it isn’t me, then who?

It’s been a bad weekend at Casa Caterwauling. Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it. Nor does “very bad.”

I was talking to my friend today and I said, you know, I thought that if I just stayed single and didn’t have kids, my life would turn out fine.

After all, I wouldn’t be poor if I had a good career, and I wouldn’t be relying on anyone for my happiness or security. And I wouldn’t be responsible for anyone else’s.

Negative on all accounts.

My friend offered some interesting perspective, though, having gone the opposite route. That they thought THAT route would provide the guarantee for happiness.

And … not so much.

Right now, I’m thinking of the closing scene in “Say Anything,” where Diane is afraid to fly and Lloyd tells her that once they hear the “ding” of the seatbelt sign, everything will be OK.

I’m waiting for my sign to feel OK. It’s happening in 100 hours. I can hang in there till then. I know it.

I just don’t know how to come back. But I’ll deal with that in seven days.

I had the most frustrating and awful visit with my famous neighbor yesterday.

We hadn’t seen each other in years and when I saw he was back in town, I left a note on his door to say I was thrilled that he was back (he’d had some pretty awful tenants since 2010) and I wanted to wish him a happy Thanksgiving in his Florida home.

He suggested I come over for a drink last night. Which I did. And I am still feeling violated on just about every level.

One thing he kept harping on was, “Don’t be dense.” I mean, we were having a highly intellectual conversation and I was keeping up very well, I think. I don’t go into battle unarmed, you know.

I was nice and complimenting him and being a good little neighbor. And he kept finding weak spots and jamming his finger into them. And while I don’t think I would have said anything or behaved any differently, I wish I would have known going in what a little bitch he really is.

I’ve been in a mood all weekend, feeling like Humpty Dumpty with wet glue. I didn’t need this shit. I’m not going to let this asshole break me.

But I’d really like to know why people like him think people like me exist for target practice when all I wanted was a little company and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of fellowship in a shitty, shitty world.

Fuck me.

Notwithstanding my earlier entry and the men who made it possible, but I’ve spent the last two hours exploiting the Buddha of Boca, the Oracle of Wisconsin and the Sage of San Diego’s contempt for each other and turning it into comedy gold.

I really should found an adoption agency for demon children.

1. Was up at 5 a.m. finishing today’s e-zine.

2. Moved on to the regular morning projects at 7 a.m.

3. Conference call / commute at 8:30 a.m.

4. 9 a.m. dentist.

5. 10 a.m. conference call.

Note that I am missing for less than an hour, between items 4 and 5.

IN THAT TIME …

A.) Editor who knows better sends wrong and half-assed copy.

B.) The kid knows enough to know that the copy is wrong and half-assed and seeks clarification from editor. (GOOD)

C.) Editor says go with it. Editor does not realize copy was wrong and half-assed.

D.) Kid asks me in front of 10 other people on the call if he should proceed with half-assed alert. I say yes and we can always publish a clarification.

E.) You just KNOW I cursed myself into having to write/publish a clarification, right?

F.) I see wrong and half-assed copy that has now gone LIVE and I say to editor, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

G.) Editor sends revised copy three times, which I do not receive because of profanity and spam filter.

H.) I rewrite copy and test it out.

I.) I find big FUCKING mistake in original copy too. On top of its incoherence.

J.) I make MAGIC, people.

K.) Editor says hey, my e-mails are bouncing back.

L.) Tech sends me the trapped e-mails. Which weren’t as good as the copy I wrote anyway.

M.) I instill terror in all parties involved.

N.) I also inflict terror on others.

O.) And I now have a formal policy in place for MAKING SURE THIS SHIT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

First one to ask me where something is that I haven’t finished in the past eight months can feel free to wander off an open drawbridge right about now.

Actually I am happy. People only learn in crisis. Here it is, bitches.

If I could have done anything different, I wish I would have told the kid to contact my friendly not-sidekick. They would have figured it out together.

Alas, I got the chance to save the day. And THAT, my friends, is about the only thing I am good at. Well, beyond occasionally messing it up in the first place!

One of my boys called me late last week, to continue a prank he’s pulling on me. We got a good laugh and I asked what was new in his world.

He told me about his ex-wife’s latest shenanigans and we bemoaned the fact he will never truly be rid of her. I said she must have been really damn pretty, since I have yet to hear a single redeeming quality about her.

He said, “Goddess, I got married because I was lonely.”

And it put so many — SO MANY — people into perspective for me.

I often say I’m married since I work hard and provide and do all the errands and the driving and am basically not allowed to go out and there is hell to pay when I do.

One of my D.C. boys said to me, tangled up on his couch in front of his fireplace late one March night and drinking wine from countries I’ll never visit, that it’s “codependance.” With the “a.”

It’s a dance. You HAVE to provide and you HAVE to take care of them to some extent (and there are boundaries) but you can’t completely lose yourself in the process.

And it got me to thinking, once we get Ebola and the enterovirus cured (oh God we need to stop these epidemics), we ought to cure the most-universal malady of them all …

Loneliness.

We all do crazy things in the name of it. Some get married. Some of us decide not to go to a vintage pinball party on a Saturday night that we have been looking forward to for six weeks because we can’t take another argument about the Life Choices we make to stave off the loneliness. And some of us occasionally — and just occasionally — lay themselves down to sleep and say “You know, it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t wake up.”

Alas, we do rouse from our slumber. But I don’t think we ever truly awaken.

And in that, we we are not ever alone. And that’s what really makes it sad — that we can’t reach out and just be together in that.

The optimist in me will focus on the fact that the first half of the day was great.

All I will say is this.

It FIGURES that the second I have social plans that I actually accept and don’t ignore or avoid like the plague, I get to hear for three hours ALL ABOUT my Life Choices.

It’s the usual — working too many hours … doing my volunteer work, studying what happened in the markets for an hour-ish every night because I’m too busy during the day … being consumed by reality TV in the one hour of the day that I feel like I have to myself … picking the wrong men … being hurtful/disrespectful/just plain mean when I don’t give somebody any time or care about every precious word because I am overloaded.

Guilty on all counts.

I understand people are getting sicker by the minute and they are lonely and imprisoned in the house. They are not aware that I beg God every day to make their lives better and to bring the miracle of their healing. That all birthday wishes and most discretionary purchases are for them.

They have no idea all the times I thank God for the phenomenal cooking and the clean house and the emotional support that they can offer. That I know I am loved and that I am so lucky and I’d like to have that as long as I can.

I know it’s not enough but it’s all I can give right now.

And I will try very hard not to point out the obvious that their Life Choices have contributed to the here and now that crashes right into MY Life Choices.

I will *try* not to.

When it gets to this point, there is no “try” and I know it’s going to come out. With brute force.

I was just starting to enjoy my life a little more, too. Silly girl. Silly silly Goddess.

I heard today that managers at a certain local grocery store start at $75,000 a year.

I also know two more stores are opening in the next few weeks.

I am thinking it is time to evaluate my career options.