Courage My Love, November has returned!

It is November 2012. The storms have hit the North American continent. Hurricane Sandy and the U.S. Presidential election. One did a lot of damage, and the other is a continuing beacon of hope that Americans are not all complete idiots.

Sadly my life has one less person in it. Andrea passed away on July 30.  Gently, and with dignity and most important, at home. She simply stopped breathing. One minute life, the next death. There was such a fine line that she slipped across. And she never returned.

I have been grieving in all the usual ways, crying, eating too much, eating too little, giving things away, talking about her, not talking about her, cursing her, missing her. Under the cursing section comes "Did you really have to hang on to every piece of clothing you have ever had since the 9th grade? Seriously, those padded shoulders are not coming back!"

I have also taken some time and looked at my life, and for the most part, am not pleased with what I see. I am too selfish, occasionally mean, impulsive, rude and quite often borderline obnoxious. And that's the good stuff, it gets worse from there. I won't bore you with it, but put your mind to rest, I have never killed anyone, beat a puppy or sold any of my children into slavery. Although the thought did cross my mind from time to time.

I find, that as I age, I am turning into that typical cranky old lady, who has very little patience and who can't find the right change in the check out line and takes about 20 minutes to dig out every last penny, and that's when it occurs to me. Fuck the right change! That's your freaking job. To count back my change which you probably can't do because you were born in an era where the "machine told you what change to give" but you cannot count in reverse, most likely because you cannot count. There see what I mean.

I am having even less success at work with patience and, guess what else... tact. Quel surprise. Life, mine at least, is getting too fucking short to waste time being nice to assholes so they feel "good" about themselves, they now call this "respect" by the way. Yes respect in the workplace. You cannot tell Joe what a complete fucking nimrod he is because he  a) cannot do the job you pay him $28 an hour for  and b) you don't want him to even try because he will cock it up any way. You have to ask him, "What else could we do to help you succeed in your job?"  My stock thought is "Find him another job in another company because he is nothing but dead weight here"

Why is it we allow incompetence to rule the work place? Unions have certainly helped establish that. They protect the stupid, the incompentent and the down right dumb fucks. I totally get why we have them (there are a lot of sociopathic members of management) but when reason goes out the door, it is closely followed by logic and common sense.

Courage my love, no one is asking you to run the world. With good reason.

April 3, 2012

It is spring, although it is hard to tell. The long dark tunnel of winter rain and heavy cold clouds have extended into the cruelest month. We had a tease of sun, once or twice it seems in the last six months, but no warm harbinger of green and growing things.

The garden lays untouched. A muck and weed infested patch that seems to be a metaphor for my life.

Do I sound depressed? I never thought I would have a Wet Coast Whine... " I wanna see the sun!" but alas I do.

What has happened in the last bit since I've been here, which seems just this side of forever. I had most of the summer off, then I went back to work and it sucks. I just cannot get excited about the dumb shit we do at work. It isn't airplanes or rocket science, and it isn't innovative, but it is repetitive, it is mindless soul sucking work. Seriously, it isn't that bad, but my brain is only engaging with 1/10 of 1%.

One really sad thing that happened is that Wayne died. Suddenly and shockingly dead. All of us were rocked to the core. How fragile is our lives, how short, how unknowing.

I am reading the Steve Jobs autobiography. What a complete and utter asshole, brilliant, incredible, one of a kind asshole. Loved him, hated him, would not have wanted to be him. He did bring us forward by light years with the intuitive approach to technology. It's funny, but when I first bought my Ipad, I thought how it responded to me, and intuitive was the only word that describes it. It does what I think it will do and does it in a way that I think it should. It matches my hands on a book, my fingers on a keyboard, my brain in free flight. Insanely wonderful ubertoy.

Ok so I am going to try coming back here on a somewhat regular basis. I need some renewal, some rebirth. I am taking a simpler path these days.  Life seems like a heavy burden at times and I need to lighten the load on my soul.

This beats the hell out of using an automatic weapon in a shopping mall.