A Treasure Found at Home

i’m getting hit really hard with the “not good enough”s again today.

last night i had a dream that someone who didn’t like me much decided to move into the room next to mine. we were all in college living in the dorms. the room she moved into was the room i had to walk through to get out into the hall. she started crying to all our mutual friends about how horrible i was and how i kept coming into her room. they all knew the path out was through her room, but all started to lecture me on finding another way (why not go through two other people’s rooms, the long way, instead?). they were all angry that i would lock my door and not let her into my room, but she couldn’t lock me out of hers. not one of them saw that she set the situation up. that she chose to move in there, knowing that was my way out.

i woke up frustrated and angry and feeling attacked, dwelling on my continued mistrust and misunderstanding of the actions of some people irl.

then i got to work!

there is a woman here who knows nothing about her computer and she takes it out on me. when i ask her what something does, she treats me like i’m an idot. “I. Click. On. IT,” she says slowly, “Do I have to repeat myself AGAIN?” she doesn’t let me finish my questions and isn’t able to tell me what is supposed to happen when she clicks on “it”, but she wants me to fix it for her.

i know it has nothing to do with me. that she just needs someone to take it out on, but i would so much rather be out enjoying the sunshine while it lasts. and that crazy dream where everyone was angry just primed me to be really stung by her attitude.

thankfully, s reminded me that i’ve been doing a great job and the learning curve here is steep. there is so much i can do now that i didn’t know how to solve just two weeks ago.  it’s true, but i can’t help but hear that voice that always tells me i should be learning it faster! (so good for my practice!)
tonight is acupuncture and i’m going to tell her i feel really ucky and i need the magical, “i’m good enough and gosh darn it people like me!” needle.

i seem to have completely and totally lost the ability to communicate with other humans.

i’m quite sure there was a point at which i was told that asking a question such as,  “do we have guidelines regarding ___________?” would indeed illicit an answer more like one of the following:

• yes
• yes, here they are
• here they are
• no
• not yet
• sort of

instead i have been called prudish, have a bunch of people defending behaviours they thought i was offended by (without me having said if i was offended or not, or what caused me specifically to ask the question) , and told i could just leave if i didn’t like what was happening.

even after i clarified that i am just trying to find out what the guidelines are so i can adjust my expectations, people are *still* talking about how no one did anything offensive. no mention of the existence of guidelines or not.

how else does one ask about such a thing… i mean, how does one ask in order to get a rational yes or no answer?

and good lord don’t i wish this were the first time i’d asked about purpose or guidelines and people got all defensive instead of just answering the question. is it really that uncommon for people to ask discrete questions?

yes, there MAY be a follow up question, but i have asked the first question for a reason. i’m looking for it’s answer!

there’s a meme going around that’s 10 things about myself that you might not know. i did the six things back in december, but now it’s up to ten and has gotten a bit more personal. i thought for a long time about what to post, but figured i’m not getting it done that way so instead i’ll just jump right in.

1. some days i think i must be neuro-diverse, a little Different: somewhere on the autism scale. but i don’t match all the major symptoms so i don’t know…

2. because of this, i think maybe i’ll never manage to find a life partner or a long term romantic relationship that works for me…

3. and so i’m nervous that i will never have children…

4. and i’m nervous that if i do get pregnant my children will be clearly autistic.

5. i’m to scared to skydive and i regret not doing it when i had the balls. (but i still want to dive with sharks! big sharks! in that cage! with the chum!)

6. lately when i look in the mirror, i look bigger and puffier… but my clothes fit exactly the same way so i know i’m not actually getting fat.

7. i really really really really hate… HATE to be lied to.

8. i don’t do my hair or wear makeup in part because i think it makes me more approachable by the sort of person i would want to end up with.

9. when i was little “nun working with orphan” was higher on my list of desired careers than “corporate grunt”.

10.  sometimes i wonder if i’d be more successful if i were not as smart.
10a. and then i wonder if i’d be more successful if i were much smarter.

i’ve been sick, and way stressed out by work, so there hasn’t been any real writing going on. there hasn’t even been much imaginary writing going on, either. no “i should blog about that” moments.

returning towels, picking up some art i had reframed, and lunch outside with garma took up the middle of saturday. i spent the morning hours having coffee and a very good heart to heart with creampuff. yay, actually seeing people!

sunday i had breakfast with tarheelborn, and my god, i just wanted to order everything on the menu. this place she took me to rocks. there’s no question i’m going back, and i’m taking flo and anyone else i can drag along with me. shrimp and grits, crepe suzette… mmmmmmm.

anyhow, later i met up with flo and country ham for a tour around ikea. just as i was about to leave to pick them up at bart, though, my neck started to really ache, and then my back. i popped a couple pain killers, but to no avail. i was hurting for sure, and starting to get that odd disconnectedness that comes with viruses.

monday i tried to be sick, but there was a problem at work and i worked from home the whole day, stressing and getting no rest.

by tuesday, my throat was on fire and i was avoiding any acidic or potentially crunchy foods. i had my regular acupressure therapy appointment in the morning, and was given the *tiniest* pills known to man to help relieve the pain my throat a little faster. she said something about, “even if you have strep… blah blah”, but there was no way i’d let that slide. i watched like a hawk for white spots. i am not interested in potentially weakening my heart valves in the name of alternative medicines. i’m not one to overuse antibiotics, i even try not to by antibacterial products at the store, but there are times when it’s appropriate.

back home after being pressed and warmed (i love that she has a heat lamp in her office!) and logged in to find the problem still going on. i told them to call if they needed anything, like if they had a specific question they needed me to answer, then i took my fevery self to bed and slept!

yesterday was sort of spacey. i came into work and was feeling a little better toward the end of the day, but was completely worn out by the end of the day. i napped a bit, sent some important non-work emails (just so i could pretend to have a life outside my job) and then watched lost.

**spoiler below the cut** (more…)

it’s back to the second layer of maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (here all this time i thought housing was in the first level. guess it’s been a while since i looked at this.) i guess it’s sort of halfway between both. i have a place to live, but it’s really cold and the paint is peeling off the ceiling and it’s moldy and i’m afraid to use the kitchen after the sewage incident. and the owner takes so little care of the place that the backyard has become completely overgrown.

yes, i know one of the reasons it’s peeling is that they painters just painted glossy paint right on top of glossy paint. strange that the owner, who is a contractor, didn’t catch that, eh?
there’s a place here in sf that’s nice enough, except for the tandem parking bit and the part where my bed won’t really fit in the bedroom and i’d have to downgrade to a full sized bed if i wanted a little dresser… but, it has it’s pluses. an enclosed outside area for g, a fantastically large storage room in the basement area that would be mine-all-mine and includes a full sized washer and dryer. it was even warm in that room. i could see that becoming my favourite room very quickly.

but the disclosures aren’t ready and realtor e wants me to write on it and turn in an offer before they’re done. he wants me to take it on faith that there’s nothing wrong, the selling agent told him it was mostly boilerplate. (then why is it taking so long?) i’ve had a selling agent try to convince me that a garage was really a three car garage when it was clear that the cars might be able to get in, but they’d never be able to open their doors. and that the big crack down the wall was because, ‘the paint must have shrunk.’ wtf? obviously this would be easier for everyone if i were an idiot. too bad, y’all, i know paint doesn’t shrink and crack walls, i know car doors have to be opened to get in our out (unless you have a hatchback, which i don’t anymore), and i know better than to write on a place without seeing disclosures.

and now we’re expanding the search (again) to include the peninsula (for the first time). mount view? paul alto? meny park? deadwood city?

when we start talking about me living so close physically and so far emotionally and mentally from the city, i start to wonder again about portland. portland has em, b, and baby; h and fiance; c; housing i can afford… and also this. it’s starting to look like whatever i do i have to move away from the city that i love.

i read over my old entries and realized i’ve been tired since i started this job! renting closer to work would help with that, but then what would i do with all that extra time and energy? watch tv? teach g to walk on a leash?

to sum up: i hate house hunting.

i managed a few hours sleep but just woke up totally unable to breathe! i guess there’s a lot of whatever i’m alergic to here. but my inhaler and my allergy meds are all at sp guy’s house.

not only that, but i have a super killer headache since i missed dinner. i had vauge dinner plans, but since my discussion with sp guy turned into an argument which turned into us nearly breaking things off all together and almost certainly putting everything on hold till some unknown date in the future (whenever he finishes his project for work), i ended up missing dinner all together. i just didn’t feel like much except lying down when the call was over.

so, to sum up.

tired: legs hurt

allergy crap: lungs hurt/nose stuffy

didn’t eat: head hurts/stomach empty

sp guy argument: heart hurts

i feel like i got hit by a truck full of mold. good thing i have some stale dry cereal to munch on. all my post burn food bars are also at sp guy’s house.
i’m feeling pretty well connected to that yoweling-meowing cat outside my window. maybe i’ll call in sick and work from home tomorrow. we’ll see how much sleep i actually manage.

EDIT: it occurs to my my power cord is also at sp guy’s house. guess i won’t be working from home.

i spent a huge amount of time working on one request today and now i realize i did one of the parts wrong. one of the time consuming, rsi inducing, mind numbing, repetitive, horrible parts. and now i have to do it again.

but, at least i don’t have my friend’s boss, who is super stickler for the rules that people don’t even know about man.

i’m heading to sp guy’s place and will correct my mistake from there.

i really hate the huge, ginormous requests.

Technorati Tags: mistakes, waisted time, work

a couple nights ago i dreamed i was a student in a high school and there was a school shooting. then i dreamed about things going very wrong at burning man. last night more dreams of death and distruction. i can’t remember them as clearly since i woke up briefly around 3am. by the time my alarm went off and woke me up again at 6:30, all i could remember were feelings of death and fear and destruction and ick.

yesterday was very long. i woke up about 4:45 and finally gave up trying to sleep about 5:30 when i got online and started work. it ended after almost but not quite making an offer on a condo, a full day of work, getting my first real bikini wax, being rear ended by an ambulance (a tap at a stop sign), and a long and interesting discussion about maslow and peak experience, and an argument with sp guy — i think i was lights out around 10:45. i would have been happy to wake up and find it was the weekend. instead i’m at work sneezy with puffy eyes and exahusted.

i can say the waxing was a much better experience this time around that the last time when i let a friend’s housemate practice on me since she was in beauty school. much. better.

i just can’t wait to get to the playa and sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. then wake up refreshed and not worry about the time or email or unfinished projects.

sitting at the cafe table behind me is a brit who was smoking and is now sucking his teeth.

thank goodness i’m done with my homework and can flee!

you know sometimes i have days that make me wonder how i manage as an adult woman living on my own. some days i really feel like i still need some sort of keeper to follow me around and remind me to be more observant of my surroundings.

yesterday was one of those days.

normally i wake up before 8am so it never crossed my mind to set an alarm so i’d make it from oaktown (where i was participating in a 00 slumber party) to shambhala in the city on sunday morning. the crazy dog next door started barking about 7:15ish and there was no sleeping through it. i was on the verge of walking over and seeing what i could do to calm the poor terrier, but the fact that i was pantsless kept me in bed. finally, finally, he calmed down and i shut my eyes *just for a minute*.

it was 9:25 when i next glanced at the clock.

i popped up, dressed, got some tea (to go), and said my goodbyes. i realized i’d probably miss all the sitting, but it might still be worth the effort just to get back in the habit. turned on the truck (which i borrowed from sp guy to haul around a mess of bridesmaids) and tried to flick the shifter from 1st to neutral on my way to reverse. and…

and…

pull, pull, pull. *wonder* pull. hrm. pull *pop!*

ok, i made it to neutral.

push push… this can’t be right. push, grind! OH!

i turned the truck off and slid the gears easily into reverse. maybe i wasn’t pushing on this stiff clutch enough. maybe it was a fluke.

i turned the truck back on and backed into the street. the traffic was still light at this time of day and the cars were about a block away. i jammed in the clutch and push, push, push, push… crap! here come the cars. *hit the emergency flashers* push, push…

truck off. shift to first. truck on. pull back into driveway. *give thanks for driveway!*

i went back into the house and tried to call sp guy, forgetting about his sunday morning tennis tradition. i can’t say those 00 members who were present were disappointed too greatly that i wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon.

then webber popped his head in the room and got the low down on the truck situation. he offered to take a look at it for me so i handed the keys over. i watched him from the porch as he fiddled and pulled and then… put the car in reverse, backed out, shifted into first and drove a few spots down the street and parallel parked.

!!

he said he’d noticed the clutch was really close to the floor and the mat was all rolled up under it. he pulled the mat back and pulled the clutch up with his toe. voila! — and sp guy *has* told me about that. i was just so focused on trying to push the clutch in further that i didn’t notice it wasn’t that far from the floor to start with. now i’ll know what other, more obvious to me, behaviour to look for.

by then it was sure i’d missed all the sitting, and i was almost sick to my stomach hungry, so i joined the grrs for breakfast at a local cafe.

when we returned home i reached for my keys so i could grab some things from the truck and have a quick shower before i had to meet my other friend. and realized i’d left my purse 4 or 5 blocks away at the cafe! i’d been using my wallet for a paperweight so i had that and just forgot i’d taken the whole rest of the purse, too. i handed flo my wallet so i wouldn’t lose it, and walked back.

when i got there our table had a new group of people sitting at it (not surprising) and i tried to suss out the purse location without disturbing them. they saw me looking, though, and asked, ‘purse?’ and told me they’d just turned it in inside. i waited for a while for one of the two women behind the counter to acknowledge me. one had her back to the register, fine, but the other was making a smoothie and could clearly see me. now, i understand she didn’t want to take orders while making the smoothie, but a little eye contact and a ‘just a sec’ would have been all i needed to ask after my purse. finally, though, i spied it on the end of the counter and went to grab it. as i picked it up she still wasn’t acknowledging me, but i did want her to know it’d been claimed rightfully so i sort of raised it up toward her.

she’d seen me from her side vision, which i’d guessed, and said, ‘oh is that your bag?’ and i said it was and she told me the guys had just turned it in a minute ago and i said i knew, they told me when i went back to the table.

and she said…

‘you shouldn’t leave your stuff just sitting out there alone.’

and i thought i must not have heard her right so i asked her to repeat herself.

‘you shouldn’t just leave things sitting out there alone.’

so i said, ‘uh… i didn’t do it on purpose.’

and she said, ‘oh! i thought…’

‘no, i don’t generally just leave things lying about at cafes.’

‘oh, ok.’

weird weird weird.

back to creampuff’s. showered. got directions and a phone number for my friend (since most of my numbers are *still* in my other phone) and drove off — without my wallet. which, you remember, was not with the purse. and, i discovered when i got to her street, with A phone number but not HER phone number.

luckily i figured out which unmarked apartment was hers and we had a great time hanging out. including her asking me, ‘how are you with power tools?’ — one of my favourite questions!

after chatting and hanging things and lunch and a margarita, i went back to creampuffs where mobileguy’s fiancee had brought her dog over. an adorable basset hound who would *not* let me pet him while he munched on his treat but was suuuper friendly once it was gone. but, i did step on poor dragon’s ear at one point. k told me not to worry, he did it to himself a lot, but i still felt horrible and chalked it up to my ‘unable to function right’ sort of day.

finally with all the things i should have with me, i left for sp guy’s house. we picked a dinner spot which is normally just fine but this night was too crowded for their one sushi chef so things took forever. and sp guy was uber work stressed and low blood sugary. we finally asked to just have it made to go and i waited for it while he walked home to get some more work done.

after dinner (finally) i was exhausted, took out my contacts, and laid down on the couch with the learning channel… i couldn’t even tell you what was on i was out so fast. and in the morning i couldn’t find my contact case! on the third scan of the house i found it… in pieces… on the floor.

walter was in a LOT of trouble with sp guy this morning (we also found some other things he shouldn’t have been chewing up). i figured i shouldn’t have left it where i knew he could get it and assumed some of the responsibility. walter’s eyes were fixed on sp guy for a good half hour, but he sat by me for comfort. i was trying to ignore him, but i think i was still better than angry daddy. sp guy took a great shot of us while i checked in with work. it’s on my flickr account.

and now… home and in my glasses and ready to start paying better attention!

a couple weeks back in therapy i ranted on about how much it really sucks ass sometimes to be a female! especially when i get surprised looks by coworkers when i throw around words like ‘unix’ and ‘emacs’, get emails all the time (in my tech work) addressed to eri - C instead of eri - N, — or how i’m not allowed to be a pall bearer without a fight.
argh. articles like this one, which i originally thought just to email to hamster_grrl, really get my ire up. brests and a lower center of gravity might mean we do things like basketball and archery differently, but they sure don’t get in the way of doing them *well* and the sure as sugar don’t get in the way of our friggin *neurons*!

grumble, grumble, i haven’t had lunch yet so i’m a little pissy, and too tired to make coherent arguments.

read for yourself how second class we still are in academia/schools. my favourite at first glance is the f-to-m who remarks, “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

my physician’s assistant’s office is nothing if not inconvenient. guess i’m going to blow the money on going to an urgent care facility somewhere.

grrr.

an now, my email won’t work about half the time due to my host getting added to some blacklist as a result of people forwarding their catchall addresses to the likes of gmail and hotmail and yahoo… the spam all looks like it’s coming from dreamhost, even though they’re just a stop on the way.

suck.

thankfully, it’s time for lunch. i’m going to eat outside and try to reset the path of the last 48hrs or so.

fed ex has no idea where my package is. meanwhile, i’ve had to pay for another month of my verizon service. my guess is verizon won’t prorate the month and give me a refund.

i’m supposed to “give [them] a few days”. it was sent out on the 31st of last month, today is the 7th. isn’t the point that they’re supposed to make it easy?

last night was the first relational db class. it’s a small group. so small that if one person drops, the whole class will be canceled. it’s all about learning how to set up a db. how to design a db.

‘well,’ say you who have been paying attention, ‘i thought you wanted to learn sql, and that doesn’t sound like quite the same thing.’

no, it isn’t. i was all set to take the oracle class. i was even prepared to do it on my own and take a week of vacation for it. finally eddie agreed and i was thrilled. then, suddenly, he was all ‘look again’ and i found this class but since it wasn’t what i really wanted i decided against it. after talking it over with manager it was decided i would take this one now from the night school and their sql class if/when it was offered again. i’m excited to learn something new, but after the first class last night i’m reminded how these sorts of classes go. i do learn stuff, but i don’t frequently feel especially challenged — except to stay awake through three hours of bad jokes and explanations of stuff i mostly already understand.

well, that’s a little unfair. the teacher is a really nice guy and i appreciate that he’s trying to keep things fun for us. db architecture has the potential to be very dry.

after this i might push again for the oracle class. it would certainly look better on my resume.

tonight: new contacts! new phone! working out (blech) and lost with ‘b’ and b! (during which i very well might fall asleep, but i’m going to try for it anyhow.)

i decided to check the delivery site to see where my new phone is. apparently, they’ve tried to deliver it twice and haven’t left a door tag either time. wouldn’t have mattered much, though, since there is no way humanly possible for them to leave it without putting it right in someone’s hands.

they can’t change the address to send it to my office, either.

but, they will leave it at a local copy shop/shipping store which is one of their drop off points. i can go pick it up tomorrow after 10 am.

new phone! w00t!

is the concept of alphabetization really that hard? i get lists of names to look up all the time that are no where near to alphabetized! why?