Caterwauling

So my candidate decided to negotiate with my voicemail all weekend.

It was kind of interesting to listen to the descent into madness. Or, more like working his steps till he finally came to the “acceptance” part.

Basically he supposes he can make it work if he gets promoted in six months and gets bonuses.

I often quote Whitney Houston in “Waiting to Exhale,” but I have to say it.

“Pretty close to resistible, Lover Man.”

First, see prior post: I Offered Someone a Job and I Regret It

So I get a voicemail on my work line, which comes to my cell phone. Now, I have told said candidate that you will not catch me at the office on a weekend. I also said, “Think about my offer over the weekend and we will speak Monday.”

So for him to leave a rambling, over-the-top voicemail on a line I am not answering — mind you, when he said he had to accept/refuse another offer by 4 p.m. Friday — cemented my nasty gut feeling that he wasn’t worth the trouble.

He said he might be able to make my numbers work (um, I gave him what he wanted) but he really needed to know the scope of the position. And he still has questions and concerns that he’d like to discuss.

I do not know how much more I can tell him. Because if paying him significantly more than the market rate for someone who actually has relevant experience isn’t enough, well I don’t have anything else to give.

You shot your wad, kid. Nice knowin’ ya.

I was supportive of Hillary Clinton’s initiative as first lady to bring healthcare to people like my family who didn’t have any.

I voted for Obama twice so maybe my mom could get some coverage.

I cheered when a friend who’s gone 40 years without healthcare finally got an affordable plan for the first time in his life.

And then I filled out Mom’s application and not only did she, with zero income, get denied for Medicaid, but the system determined that I could afford to pay $700-plus a month to get her covered.

Well, way to go, Obamacare. You turned the liberal into a Republican overnight.

My mom is so weak and fragile and frail. And I think the hope of getting some care was all she had left. Now, I could almost see her fall apart overnight. And I can’t seem to stop crying, wondering if this is what does her in. The end of hope.

At work, people worry that something’s going to happen to her and I won’t be able to grace them with my 70-ish hours a week because I’ll have to take care of her. All the while I get the “oh we wish we could help” lines. Which, they could. They just don’t. All I want are ideas, leads, avenues to pursue that I haven’t … and TIME TO PURSUE THEM.

But as long as THEIR families are taken care of, why would they?

I think they fear something really big is going to happen and I’ll either become a nursemaid or, worse, all by myself in this world. Because, what would the reason be to go back at all?

Maybe I shouldn’t type this sort of stuff out loud. But I’m crying for help here. If I could free up $700 a month (like if they let me do freelance somewhere else), that would help.

I always figured Hillary Clinton could see from a thousand miles away what was wrong with Obamacare, and that she was too busy doing her job as Secretary of State and now busy preparing to become our 2016 president. And besides, she can fix this mess and become the hero for making things right.

Only … Mom doesn’t think she’ll be able to see that day. And that’s so not fair, I cannot even put into words the absolute evil that is running through my mind.

In this America, no matter how hard you work, it’s never enough. Something always suffers. And in my case, it’s some*one*.

And let’s be clear. Nobody’s ever loved me more than my momma. And a world without her, frankly, isn’t one I can imagine being in.

Thanks, Obama.

1. A friend asks me Monday, hey, could you help me with a cover letter? I say sure. She sends me the job posting. As in, I am supposed to read it and write the cover letter for her.

2. Another friend is applying for a job with the FBI, apparently, because I get papers in the mail asking me to provide a detailed reference. In case you’ve never given a reference for someone in law enforcement, they investigate you, too. Thanks for the surprise.

3. You know what I did today? Met a potential candidate for a job I’m hiring for. Because I don’t have time during the week for this.

I say all of this to say, I don’t have time for this. I don’t mind working to keep a friendship going. I do mind working during my rare non-working hours. I mind it even more if there’s no benefit to MY career.

As though yesterday weren’t an emotional adventure enough, and I cried all the way home, all the way to sleep and then till I left for work this morning, I had to hear the name of someone I loathe.

As a Gemini and reasonable human being, I don’t hold grudges. I don’t wish anybody ill or anything like that. (Because, Karma.)

But at the point I’ve held the funeral for our relationship, don’t go all “Pet Sematary” on me and rise from the damn dead, OK?

My boss drags a name out of the dirt and asks me about the person. And I was restrained, as much as I could be.

She apparently reached out to him for help. And given that we were ex-BFFs, he wondered why she didn’t call me.

“Because I would have hung up on her,” was my reply.

Better than, “Tell the bitch she still owes me three grand. And give me back my black T-Shirt.”

Thank you, Ben Folds.

Anyway, I’m buried in a work-a-lanche and he’s got time to help her? If I didn’t shut my trap right then and there, there would have been a colorful assortment of comments. I assure you.

The crying jag seems to have passed. Now I’m just good and mad.

That, and what I was worried about losing, may not be totally lost. But that’s a story for another day, I hope. God, I hope.

So I spent most of today wishing I was dead. Then I went to Costco and realized, no, I wish everyone else were dead.

Here’s to normalcy again.

I actually called someone a very bad name. Out loud. And very calmly.

I think that if you (a customer) take a pallet full of things and deliberately almost run over a lady’s toes in order to shove in front of her at the self-checkout, you deserve that and so much more.

He didn’t even make eye contact when I said I would have GLADLY let him go in front of me and my two items if he was in that much of a hurry to buy 16 boxes of bottled water.

I got out of that line and into another. And thank God because ****s***** didn’t know how to use the machine. I was long gone before Mr. Personality could find his butt cheeks with both hands and professional assistance.

I wish I hadn’t used the name. But these are the people who are up your butt on the highways and who deserve a smackdown. Can’t we all just get along?

I try not to talk about work here because it bores the hell out of me to read this stuff later on. But I just had a revelation and I don’t know what else to do with it. And I’m waiting for a big mailing to deliver so I GOTS TIME.

We published a piece this week with a small political injection. I know better. I get skewered at the thought of my guys being smart enough to not vote Republican. I mean, my audience can be nuts. You can say “Obama was re-elected” and I will get 200 e-mails screaming “UNSUBSCRIBE ME FROM THIS LIBERAL GARBAGE YOU SOCIALIST SONS OF BITCHES.”

My favorite is the “I pay GOOD MONEY and you send me this trash.” And I’ll access their customer records and those fuqrs ain’t paid a dime in 20 years.

Or maybe my real favorite was today when, after publishing said piece from an Awesome Editor, I got a “(worst editor on the planet EVAR) is the most-brilliant economist on earth and your guy is a TREE-HUGGING NAZI.”

I mean, it’s hard to take this seriously. I quit reading when they said my worst nightmare (who I don’t supervise anymore THANK GOD) was the shit.

What did we say? That Sarah Palin was a moron about a specific issue that affects my constituency.

Now, I deleted the word moron. I wrote a disclaimer that this article may offend so basically it’s time to shoo the kids out of the room for the “dirty parts” or else turn off the TV because it’s adults-only time.

We also said Janet Yellen replacing Ben Bernanke was a Good Thing for our constituency. And said why.

OH DID THE LETTERS FLOOD IN. Between the “you fucked-up liberals” to “Sarah Palin is a TRUE PATRIOT” to “I want my money back” and they only paid us $49 a year for a product that benefits them by that much each week, some things occurred to me.

1. “Most Brilliant Economist EVAR” is always wrong. But states everything as fact. He is never wrong. He is always right. And he will call you stupid for listening to anyone else. This cocksure motherfucker has a following Warren Jeffs would kill for.

1.a. By basically almost-apologetically saying we might hurt people’s widdle fee-fees, they saw it as weakness. And attacked accordingly.

2. It wasn’t really Palin they had a problem with. They do like her. Because she will never amount to anything. She won’t take a job from a rich white male. She gets paid to be a dipshit. And she’s got a whole lot of dipshit left in her to entertain them for life.

3. They don’t like Yellen because that lady has balls of steel and the brainpower of all the 2013 Ivy League graduates combined. She’s a threat to convention. To THEIR convention. GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN WOMAN. That’s a man’s job!

4. These are the same assholes who don’t see slavery or sexism or racism or homophobia as a problem. They fight so hard to keep the world from evolving. But they KNOW revolution is coming. Because it ALWAYS DOES. But God damn you if you aren’t as OPPOSED TO IT as they are. By saying, you know, Palin has no business talking about shit she hasn’t studied up on and that Yellen handled herself well in front of the Senate Banking Committee this week, we are by default SOCIALIST TREE-HUGGING BASTARDS WHO GET PREGNANT JUST TO KILL OUR BABIES.

5. They want someone to spoon-feed them OH LOOK AIRPLANE WHOOOOSSSHHHHHH their own thoughts back to them. I admit my niche industry a big fat detour from the straight-and-narrow journalistic path I started out on. But for fuck’s sake I saw what happened with all these moonbats kept telling us Romney was going to win the election. I read the Rasmussen Report every single day and I also read Nate Silver. Both were calling different outcomes. Rasmussen was cow-towing to the Fox News crowd. Yet nobody learned that JUST BECAUSE FOX TELLS YOU MITT WILL WIN MEANS IT’S TRUE. DUMB. ASSES. GAH.

So yes I have a responsibility to interpret facts and publish them accordingly.

But it says something that I have to put a goddamned DISCLAIMER on them lest people think we actually have a fucking brain in our heads and use it to REASON OUT what is happening.

It says more that the highest powers said no more publishing shit like that.

Which, fine. My anxiety is a force to be reckoned with anyway. I would be glad to move away from it. But the plain-vanilla bullshit I’m going to have to put in its place is actually harder to swallow when I know we can do better.

So, how was YOUR week?

I crack myself up. Just tried to log in from work and I see I’ve banned our IP address. My message to spammers brings me joy, inviting their miserable asses to curl up in a ball and die.

Of course, I wrote that to my stalker after he slipped up and left a harassing comment from an IP other than a public library. I marked his ass as spam and it felt terrific

I know there are other ways to read me than by visiting. But it reminds me that there are more people who hate me who keep up with me than there are people who genuinely have my best interests at heart when they check in on me.

Anyway, I’m having what a colleague called a “kick the cat” kind of day. I’m detoxing from manic busy-ness and now seeing all the drama I’ve been too preoccupied to care much about.

What people need to realize is that speaking favor produces better results. When you talk shit about me, I seem to do more stupid things to prove their points. Ugh.

I spoke favor over someone today. I hope he receives it and that more love will go around this world today because of it. I guess it should be a “hug the cat” day, then, yes?

Memo to: Those who can’t hold a candle to me

Subject: You suck

______________

If you have to invent things I’m doing wrong and complain about them at length, especially when you had opportunities to help or train or basically get out of my way, you are only further solidifying my case that I am awesome and you will never be me.

Wait till I get my strength and my sanity and my will to live back. You think I’m a threat now? Please. I will dance circles around you even more than I already do.

Most people flap their jaws. The rest of us get our jobs done and YOURS TOO.

Love,

Goddess

Thought for today: Those who can’t, irritate the motherfuck out of the rest of us who not only can, but who also HAVE.

What kills us more is that we can’t do anything about it other than to keep doing it. And to try not to inflict physical harm in the process, on them or on ourselves.

I haven’t been smoking but I’ve started cutting. Not with sharp objects, just with my nails. I wish I were one of those people who got frustrated and decided to, I dunno, exercise.

But at least I’m exfoliating every time someone pisses me off. That counts as self-improvement, right?