Passing of a great man

I mentioned funeral leave in my last post like people know what is going on in my life.

Saturday afternoon my grandfather passed away. Honestly, he has been ready to move on since his wife died suddenly in October 2004. He was my last grandparent and 95 years old. The last few years have been kind of rough for him, near the end it has been difficult to see.

My mom is an amazing woman who has visited him every day (or made sure one of us kids did when she absolutely couldn't) since he came to Texas two years ago and went in to the nursing home. She is taking it harder than I (or I think she) thought she would. She has dedicated a lot of her life to him these last few years and that has got to leave a hole in your heart, even knowing that he is better off.

The family is headed to farm town upstate New York to lay him to rest next to his wife at the end of the week. I have thousands of happy memories of this self made man -- farmer, Realtor, father, land lord, grandfather. Every grandchild should be so lucky. He was an amazing man.

Cheers to a life well lived.

Brilliant!

After the whole Facebook shenanigan of mine yesterday (yes I am still irritated by the whole thing) a good friend of mine mentioned that you should have two Facebooks. One to keep up with 'the people' and one solely for people who are actually friends understand and don't judge and will let you rant without ratting you out.

I, for one, think that he is brilliant.

Leave

I never take time off of work. I was raised that you have a job and you are supposed to do it. Be there come hell or high water. I sit here and state over and over that I need a vacation but I just got my attendance calendar and i have had -- surgery, jury duty, a holiday and this week I will add funeral leave to the list -- all in the last month.

Makes me feel like a slacker. Especially when I have a new boss that I really need to like me.

But I still want a vacation.

Again, makes no sense.

I was right

Like I said. I came in to work yesterday and got more done in two hours than I normally do in three days at work. No distractions except the cleaning people.

Excellent.

But sad.

Free speech?

So, late last week I posted a mini (and not untrue or unjustified) rant on my Facebook status about our payroll department being unresponsive and hanging up on me multiple times (they f-ed up and my paycheck was $304.90). This morning I get chastised and told to take it down by my VP because someone from the Team forwarded it to Payroll and the manager called him because their feelings were hurt. WTF? Really? You guys screw me up and then have bad customer service to top it off and I get in trouble for venting it on Facebook.

What a load of crap.

And I know they have no recourse, but I don't want to piss my VP off. So down it came.

Grrrrr

And I used to wonder the value of being anonymous in blogs and social media.

Oh and it took them four days to get me the rest of the money.

Surrender

I have almost given up hope of ever getting anything done at work. Mostly I go to meetings, get more work, and referee people. I manage to get little items done, but I don't know of a time when I have been in my office for more than 45 minutes without someone walking in needing something (or providing me with stuff to do).

My office often resembles a train station. We have an open door policy and rarely can I get away with closing up for a little while to get caught up. I get more done at home.

So I am guessing that my day off tomorrow will consist of getting all of the stuff done that I have given up on completing during normal business hours at my desk.

I can probably do my work in a fraction of the time without the distraction of the workplace.

Confirmed

People are stupid.

Especially boys. Boys have more drama than girls and then try to be macho about it which makes the whole thing worse.

If I didn't like sex so much I would go be a hermit on an island.

Thoughts in the dark

Why is it that everything can seem good in life during the day, but when it is 3:36 am and you are staring at the ceiling everything can seem so bleak. Stuff that you don't worry about during the day (but maybe should?) pops up and becomes huge.

I've gotten to the point some nights where I am ready to pack up and get out just thinking about all of the hurdles that there are in my relationship. All the job/family/health worries seem to compound themselves at night. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't smother him. I would leave a nicely worded note and try not to steal all of his comfy boxers, but it is just sometimes overwhelming.

When we are spending time together, hell, when he stops snoring and rolls over to cuddle in the morning, all those worries are gone.

And it isn't like I am worrying about much that he doesn't know about or we haven't talked about. There are some things he just doesn't talk about until he feels like it - if ever. But they all just seem bigger at night.

Especially the unknown stuff, questions I don't really get an answer to or when I can tell he's holding back on something. Makes my little nighttime brain worry that there is something out there that may eventually come back to bite us (me).

Maybe it is just me.

Again, life is good - but there is something about the night.

Damn goals...

Goals came back and apparently I don't have enough. *sigh*

Back to (half of) the drawing board.

Baby talk

Ok. I guess I am one of the few people who talk to babies like humans. Not saying the conversation always makes sense (neither do some of the conversations that I have with adults), but my voice doesn't go up four octaves and I don't make stupid noises.

What brought this on you ask? Someone brought their baby up to work just now and parked outside of my office. The resident useless co-worker rushed over and began making high pitched nonsense noises for 13 minutes straight (yes I timed it).

The urge to throw my stapler was nearly uncontrollable.

Top Ten Movies

In no particular order...

Shawshank Redemption
Euro Trip
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
True Lies
Pirates of the Caribbean (all three movies count as one)
Die Hard (all except Die Hard with a Vengeance, just not my favorite)
Shrek (mostly the first two)
Tommy Boy
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
X-Men (series, including the Wolverine prequel)

and because of the manfolk Caddyshack continues to move up on the list.

And to anyone who may want to argue -- the series count as one because together they tell a complete story. So there.

My civic duty

Jury Duty

You would think with all of the advances in modern technology that they would have figured a way to streamline the whole jury duty process. I have noticed differences over the years (they scan a barcode instead of writing everything down, etc.) but it is still quite slow. And they do this all over the nation.

Required time to be there 0830. Didn't start anything until 0900, when we watched a video about the Facts and Fiction of serving on a jury. More rules and then they finally start assigning people at 0930ish. By 1015 I am the fourth to last name called and they tell me I am a reserve and I have to come back at 1330 (a 3 hour plus break after doing nothing). Luckily it is in Fort Worth and the manfolk wasn't busy so he was able to come down and meet me for lunch (UNO's Pizza - yum). At 1330 they make an announcement and tell you they don't need you yet and to sit. I played some Words With Friends until my phone died (stupid crappy iPhone battery) and then just gave up and took a nap. Around 1500 they had us switch chairs and wait some more. Then decided they didn't need us and gave me my $6 check and sent me on my way by 1600.

Colossal waste of time.

The only plus was some REALLY good people watching (and an awesome lunch date).

And not a single person checked my ID. I could have sent a bum in for me for less than I paid in parking.

Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for our legal system. I have testified in federal court and seen the best of the system at work (story for later) but seriously. There were at least 40 of us who did jack shit today and it would seem that that type of waste could be engineered out of the process.

A noble profession

We had to put my grandfather in the hospital on Monday and I have been visiting daily. I just need to say that I have a huge amount of ever-growing respect for GOOD nurses. They put up with humanity at its worst and the good ones still do it with a positive attitude and a smile. Some of them are complacent and cranky,I guess that happens in every profession and with everything they see (pain, suffering, death) how can you blame them.

But to each of those that remain good natured and positive - you are a light to not just the people in your beds, but the people who love them and are suffering emotionally with them.

Thank you.

Define harmless

“Oh don’t worry. It’s just harmless little flirting/prank/friendship.”
Watching stuff go down in the lives around me and knowing stories of what has happened in the past for people close to me, I have heard this used a lot. And apparently my definition of harmless is a lot different than others.

Per Dictionary.com:
harm•less [hahrm-lis]
–adjective
1.
without the power or desire to do harm; innocuous: He looks mean but he's harmless; a harmless Halloween prank.
2.
without injury; unhurt; unharmed.


That’s what I thought.

It seems that soon after those words are said harm comes to someone, or has already been caused and that phrase is just a (terrible) excuse or attempt at a get out of jail free card. Usually emotional harm, sometimes physical, often financial comes of it – it is all ugly.

I also tend to hear it a lot when the person is in an unhappy situation. It is their excuse to go out of the normal bounds.

Often, the person says that the incident/event/conversation/whatever is harmless and then if you asked them to flip it around (“How would you feel if your boyfriend/girlfriend/parents/cat/whatever did that to you”) it may cause them to pause, but won’t often change the behavior unless it is done back to them.

I have been there, I have used the excuse. But I look back now and realize that it was completely unfair and I recognize it now in myself and others, and it makes me sad. Also scares the crap out of me when I hear it from the people I care about.

To be or not to be

I was reading back through some of my entries from the beginning of the year and realized that I haven't really used any names (except for Dennis, sorry Dennis). Haven't really been doing it on purpose, it is just how I decided to write.

hmmmm... guess it really doesn't matter. I'm really writing for myself. Mucho cheaper than therapy.

I have only told a few people about my online blog shenanigans (though I am pretty sure that the manfolk has spilled about it to a few). It isn't like what I write is anything inflammatory or scandalous, I just haven't been comfortable enough with it to share a lot. At the same time, I don't care who reads it (or if anyone reads it at all). That probably makes no sense at all.

Now it is spring

I love baseball. Like to watch the hometeam on TV, but there is just something about the ballpark experience. I just don't know what it is.

Last year I had partial season tickets to the Rangers and absolutely loved it, even when it was 108 degrees in the shade. Not able to do that type of ticket package this year so I am just looking forward to getting out to Arlington when I can.

Bunches of my friends are taking off tomorrow for Rangers Opening Day and I am incredibly jealous. Thought about doing the same but just couldn't after having so much time off for surgery. *sigh* Oh well, have happy hopes for my team this year.

GO RANGERS!!

Easter Memories

Easter has evolved for me. Always been a holiday that didn't get much thought but always provided happy memories (and usually a long weekend).

When we were little we used to be forced to stay upstairs until all of the kids were up. Then we would scour the house for easter eggs filled with chocolate and change. There was always an easter basket on the table for each of us.

When we moved to Texas we made some friends. Two other families that lived up the street. Beginning in 1991 we spent spring breaks and Easter with them. Easter consisted of a kids only scavenger hunt in the yard. Each of us got a list and they would release us out the door youngest to oldest (I was always last) to race to finish. Chocolate, snacks, random stuff, and as we got older beer and little bottles of wine. There is video going back to that first one (scary, hopefully that doesn't come out for the manfolk viewing for a few more years - Junior High years weren't kind to my hair). When everyone was driving age it became a cross town hunt - boys vs. girls - with a disposable camera and some very specific rules. The last one of those were at 2006 (reason for cancellation is a story for much later).

We still get together each year, last year was a trip to Denver and we spent Easter morning bowling and taking advantage of the build your own bloody mary bar. Tomorrow we are off for a washers tournament and cookout.

As I grow older I appreciate these people and memories more and more. What started as neighbors and people I used to babysit for has become family. As I was growing up if I started dating (heaven help them) and got serious, the new man had to pass muster by my whole extended family. They really are my 'go to' people. When my marriage fell apart last year these folks were there for me before anything else. I tried to tell them what it means to me, but again don't really know that they understand. Family. It is just the only way to explain it.

This year we are working in time with the manfolk's family too. Should be a fun adventure. Church and MeeMaw's home cooking (which I am already addicted to) and then off to my family festivities. Cheers to another great Easter for all.

Blogs

So as I have gotten into this blog stuff I have been checking out a random collection of stuff that is out there, some recommended some not. What I wonder is this -- would you ever let your children (when they become adults, of course) read your blog?

Of course I am talking to the folks that blog their own thoughts/feelings -- not the foodies, etc. This is your outlet to the world, would you ever want your kids to see it?

Soft food

There is only so much soft food in the world. I have another week of soft food, and not all soft food works.

Pudding = soft
Meatballs = not soft enough until just yesterday
Bread = not soft
Mashed potatoes= soft

And the list goes on and on.

Honestly I miss bacon.



Decided that alcohol was a soft food the other day so that has been a good reintroduction.

The Grindstone

Back to work this morning after being off for almost two weeks.

*sigh*

At least it is a one day work week.

April Fools

I hate April Fool's Day with a passion I can't explain.

Nearly had to disown the manfolk for the day because he loves it so.

I think it stems from some hurtful jokes (and a lie about a pregnancy) from junior high.

But still -- stupid stupid excuse for a holiday.