Letters to the Universe

I dreamed last night that my boss gave me a new Jaguar and $100k. Must be an omen.

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My therapist, Mary, cut me loose when I refused to allow her to get CPS involved. I guess she told my beloved teacher that I was going to continue to need someone to talk with. She must have thought that would somehow keep me alive. Beloved teacher said that she'd spoken with one of the school counselors who could get together with me for half an hour every day.

I already knew Mrs. B. from working in the office at my high school. I was lucky enough to work there during the 45 minutes I was supposed to be taking P.E.. It was a big relief for me and for the people who had to put up with my complete lack of motor skills. No one wanted me on their team and I was quite willing to oblige. I'd figured out a way to avoid ever participating in any team sports in P.E. But that's another story. I liked Mrs. B. and I thought that since Beloved Teacher recommended her, she must be okay. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Over the next several months, I spent some time telling Mrs. B. everything I thought she could handle. She couldn't handle much. I clearly remember that horrified, looking at a decapitated corpse in a car wreck look she'd get while I related events that barely even affected me at that point. A look of disgust crossed her face and set up residence. I started dissociating the minute I walked into her office. Her reaction to me was an assault that I had to vacate my body in order to tolerate. Her solution to my problems? Oh, come now! Surely you know? That's right, turn to Jesus.

The minute the Jesus thing came up, I knew our relationship was broken beyond repair. Jesus had nothing to do with my life. If Jesus couldn't fix things up for me in the past 17 years, I didn't have any faith he'd see fit to help me now. Furthermore, since Jesus was MIA in my life, I had decided to return the favor. The really sad thing is that I'm certain she didn't recognize how contemptible I found that suggestion. It was an indication of just how completely incapable she was of understanding me or my life circumstances. Did she think I hadn't already tried prayer for years and years? I had, but not a single fucking thing I pleaded for had been granted. Screw Jesus. And Mrs. B. Nonetheless, I dutifully showed up and stopped talking about the stuff that made me want to get up every day, find a gun and kill myself. She got to feel like she wasn't a complete moron and I didn't have to subject my feelings to her idiocy. As I might have guessed, it went downhill from there.

One day, as I went from class to class, I kept having these weird encounters with my teachers. My accelerated English teacher met me at the door to her room, smiling with tears in her eyes, and gently patted me on the back. I was baffled. Then I went to my Chemistry class, which went fine until the end of the class when she asked me to stay a moment after everyone else left. After everyone had vacated the room, she started telling me what a beautiful person I was. It went on like that all day for several days. Finally it dawned on me. Mrs. B. had been sitting her fat ass in the teachers' lounge, telling everyone about the things I worked so hard to keep secret. I was enraged.

It was a watershed moment. There wasn't a fucking thing I could do about any of it. I didn't want everyone in my world to know the humiliating details of my life. I had worked so hard for so long to figure out how to appear like my life was like everyone else's. I was like an alien from a foreign land. Everything had to be re-learned so I could fit in to the normal world. Mrs. B. had just obliterated all of my work. I just knew I didn't want any more pitying looks or, for that matter, those looks that communicated just how icky everyone found the life I was living. Now that they knew.

To this very day, when I think of her, I still want to kill her. I'm sure she had quite a time at her church, patting herself on the back for winning another soul for Jesus. What an idiot.

Somewhere in that time frame, I started to live a double life. I was angry at adults, angry with the "normal" world and I stopped being such a nice girl. Not that I did anything terrible...I didn't even drink. But I felt free to give shit to people I thought deserved it and that included adults. There were teachers whose lives were made a little more miserable by my presence in their class. I refused to hide my contempt. With people I thought were intelligent enough to understand the complexity of my situation, I was still the polite, overachieving, quiet person I had always been.

Beneath the contempt, of course, was just one more heartbreak to add to list of enormous losses I'd already endured. I had been betrayed and humiliated, but I refused to allow anyone to see that they'd touched me in any way. I was forced once again to confront my aloneness in the cosmos. Just like when I was a little girl and I'd try to imagine the vastness of the universe. I rememberd how small and insignificant I was. I woke up every day with the knowledge that no one gave a happy fuck about me. Even after all I'd done to be acceptable.

Here's the quote of the day;
"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols." ~ Aldous Huxley

America held hostage day 1303
Bushism of the day:
"We've had a great weekend here in the land of the enchanted."
—Bush, referring to New Mexico, "The Land of Enchantment"
Source: Federal Document Clearinghouse, "George W. Bush Delivers Remarks on Jobs and Growth in Albuquerque," May 12, 2003

Website of the day; John Eccles on Mind and Brain
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat- bra.htm" title="http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat- bra.htm" target="_blank"http://www.theosophy-nw.org/t...

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My senior year in high school was tough. The older I got, the harder it was to continue to live in my father's house. The harder it was to live with the ways he had already fucked up my life. There were times--quite a few, actually--when I was seriously suicidal. In retrospect, it's interesting that the closer I got to leaving, the more I wanted to die. It was like I just couldn't stand another day or that deep inside, I knew just how far the damage would reach into the future.

My teacher, who had blessed me with her care, got very concerned. She was pretty much the only person who was concerned about me, as usual. I was writing suicidal poems and submitting them to the literary magazine. They all got published. She took it upon herself to take me over to a state social worker (I'm guessing here--she may have been a psychologist) to see if she could keep me alive.

The social worker was a young woman, probably not out of school for very long. I remember she had light brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. I'm sure she was completely unprepared for what I had to say. It wasn't so much that my story was necessarily the worst (although it was very, very bad), but I doubt that most people who've been that fucked over for so long even understand that there was anything wrong with living that way. For those people, it's very difficult to find someone to care for them because pain and terror and sexual corruption don't make for a very appealing kid.

I don't recall how I started the tale. For years, I'd been telling it in one way or another to any adult who'd listen. The results up until then didn't inspire much hope. I told her everything. It took several sessions to get through it all. I'm not sure whether I had completely mastered dissociating at will under all conditions. There were some situations in which I had no control--I dissociated immediately even if I didn't want to. I also don't know which emotion was most visible--my anger or my pain.

So week after week, we trudged through some of the worst stories I had to tell. I liked the young woman; she didn't seem to be immediately repelled or incredulous. Right off the bat, that put her in the top two percent of adults I liked. Understandably, I had a generally negative view of the adult world. Aside from my beloved teacher, I ended up wanting to kill the last adult I'd trusted with my secrets.

I went to talk to my counselor when I was 14. My best friend had talked me into going and was kind enough to go with me. I started out with the old "my friend has a problem blah blah, etc." I wish I could remember the moron counselor's name. Anyway, I went through this wrenching tale and waited for her response. She leaned back in her chair and started telling me that everyone has problems. She herself had problems, the biggest of which was that she was paralyzed on one side of her face. Wow. How could I possibly compete with that? She told me that when she cried, tears only came out of one of her eyes. There's a cross to bear, alright. I had supreme contempt for her. How could she possibly think that compared to the Auschwitz of the life I was living? If I hadn't hated adults before, she definitely gave me a hearty shove in that direction. I still haven't forgiven her.

My point here is that I never found adults to be particularly reliable. Oh my god, I just realized what an understatement that was--it's actually almost funny. Her name just game to me--my social worker's name was Mary. After I'd laid out as much of my life as I could for her examination, she asked me what I wanted to do. I honestly didn't know there was going to be something I'd have to do. The deal was that I had to allow Mary to tell Child Protective Services (or whatever it was called then) or we were through with the sessions. It was like I'd been hit in the face with a brick. I was terrified of telling anyone because I knew that, if I wasn't taken away, I'd have created an even more dangerous situation for myself. I knew exactly what would be waiting for me at home and, even though I might have wanted to die, I wanted it to be as painless as possible. That would most certainly not be my dad's way.

Quote of the day:
"If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern." ~ Ursual K. Leguin

America held hostage day 1302
Bushism of the day:
"Speaking about barbaric regimes, we must deal with probably one of the most—not probably—one of the most real threats we face, and that is the idea of a barbaric regime teaming up with a terrorist network and providing weapons of mass destruction to hold the United States and our allies and our friends blackmail."
Source: FDCH Political Transcripts, "George W. Bush Participates in Alexander for Senate Luncheon," Sept. 17, 2002

Website of the Day: Dr. Andrew Weil's Self Healing
http://www.drweilselfhealing.com/default.asp" title="http://www.drweilselfhealing.com/default.asp" target="_blank"http://www.drweilselfhealing....

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I used to be the person at my office who was responsible for staff supervision, until I got sick of not getting support from anyone and stopped doing it. (Yes, I can do that.) So now, four years later, the two people who are supposed to be supervising have found that it's infinitely easier just to talk to each other (whine and complain and generally get worked up) about problems with the people they are supposed to be supervising. Or they talk to me. If there's a problem with one of the staff members, no one tells them so guess what? That's right! They keep on having the same problems over and over and over. Can you see how this could drive me crazy?

The current manifestation of this problem is with Karen. She sent an email several weeks ago to S (yes, one of the supervisors), asking her to talk with J. regarding a raise (who is S's supervisor). S. then forwarded that email to me, asking how I thought she should handle it, given the fact that when J. hears about this, his head is going to explode. I wrote her back with several options. I did that because S. is a friend I've worked with for a good decade or so. It doesn't really matter what the options were, but suffice it to say that I provided her with a couple of ways to sidestep the issue and a couple of ways to be honest. I was fairly certain that honesty would not be the chosen route, since it would involve a certain amount of confrontation and, hence, dealing with Karen when she started to cry. Karen's a big cryer and I can't think of anything more likely to cause her to cry than actual constructive criticism.

Yesterday, I was sitting in S's office when she brought up the dreaded raise problem. She had just decided to ignore the email. I don't know--maybe she thought Karen would take a hint. Well she thought wrong. Karen got tired of waiting and forwarded the original email to J and the owner of the company. As we discussed this turn of events, J. walks in and S. has to tell him what we were talking about. The first words out of his mouth were, "Well, she doesn't want to hear from me." Nothing that Karen does makes him happy. There's absolutely nothing positive he can say about her. So what's the solution? Well, he could actually think about it and find specific areas in which she should improve, but oh no, that would be too hard.

This morning when I'm talking to S., J. starts again. "She doesn't want to hear from me because she never does anything right." I suggested that since she doesn't do anything adequately, maybe now is a good time to give her oh i don't know some idea that they're unhappy with her work. Oh no. Heavens no. He tells S. to deal with it.

Doesn't he get it? S. doesn't want to deal with it. They'd much rather sit around a whine and complain about her (and several other people on staff) to me and to each other. Oh my God this drives me absolutely fucking insane!

Okay, that's it. I'm through complaining for the day (I think). We're having happy admin professional day today at lunch. Oh boy. That'll be fun.

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Just a little catching up to do. The guy that my boss was trying to impress by redoing the office and actually tidying up his own office (achieved by just cramming things willy nilly into cardboard boxes) arrived for a visit last week. Here's the real absurdity: After all of that effort, my boss decided not to hire him. God, I'm afraid to think about what will happen when they locate another candidate.

On the feral kitty front, one of our oldest kitties finally allowed me to pet him. He was born about five years ago and he's come and gone several times since then. He'll come by for a month or so and then leave for months at a time. Then he'll turn up again. He's been with us now for several months. He's absolutely beautiful--gold with a leonine head. He's a very big guy and, much like the other big guy (my dog) in my life, he's not that interested in moving around too much. For the longest time, if I didn't manage to toss his treats directly to him, he just was not going to get them. Even if my aim was only a couple of inches away from him. Today, I was handing out treats and he came within an arm's length of me. I gave him his treats and just reached over and petted him. After he finished his treats, he smelled my hand and decided he'd move a little farther away. As soon as I started handing out more treats, he came right over and let me pet him again. This is a major accomplishment and I'm very touched that he trusts me.

I've been immersed in basketball since Sunday. My old friends would never guess that I've got a major basketball jones. I used to be adamantly anti-sports of all kinds. I don't understand why I can't have a basketball playoff leave. Well, while we're at it, I think a March Madness leave would also be nice.

Hubby has had three queries regarding optioning one of his books for a movie. No one is getting too excited yet because these things may not necessarily pan out. The book has been optioned twice (I think, maybe three times) before. Obviously, they never made a movie. Hubby would like for that to hapen, but he's pretty happy with just getting option cash.

I've been getting a reprieve from eating at home this week. Man, once you have a taste of real food, it's hard to go back to jerky.

Here's the quote of the day;
"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat." ~ Mark Twain

America held hostage day 1301
Bushism of the day:
"Oftentimes, we live in a processed world—you know, people focus on the process and not results."
—Bush, speaking on the Middle East peace process
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents, "Interview With Print Journalists," June 2, 2003

Website of the day; Investigating New Imperialism
http://www.williambowles.info/" title="http://www.williambowles.info/" target="_blank"http://www.williambowles.info...

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Darkness everywhere today. Driving back from dropping four babies and a fierce mom kitty at the vet, "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys," Traffic, 1973. The last time I heard that song I was standing on a balcony in college, having been unceremoniously dumped by my boyfriend. It was after I'd been raped and the rejection was somehow more than I could bear.

It was less about him than about my personal history. I was only 19 and I couldn't see it then. The ways my early years stole from me the possibility of uncontaminated love. Virtually every thing I did was infected with the past.

It's just been one of those weeks when darkness has overtaken me. I'm still taking antidepressants, but sometimes they don't help at all. I'm not sure why. Well, there are so many reasons. I miss my friend who died last year. Musculoskeletal spasm, always good for a little emotional day trip to hell. I don't know. It doesn't do me much good to speculate and examine.

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In 1968 on an empty two-lane highway, I was riding in the backseat of my dad's Candy Apple Red Thunderbird. I had rolled the windows down in an attempt to pretend I was anywhere but there. As usual, I wasn't very effective at blocking out reality. As the cool, humid night air whipped my hair around my face, in between thinking up new reasons to hate my dad, i wrote a poem. I didn't need any new reasons to hate him. I had plenty already.

We were coming back from Kountze, Texas. A small, red-necked town located squarely in the anus of Texas. I even hated the way it sounded. My father had insisted I come with him, for reasons I can't figure out to this day. I could speculate, but I won't because speculation will only lead me to some conclusions I'd really rather not dwell on. Anyway, on the outskirts of this podunk town, we turned down a dirt road. We hadn't gone very far before I saw an abandoned house in a clearing up ahead. There weren't any other houses around, just trees and underbrush. The windows in the house were all gone and I don't think it even had a door left. My dad parked the car and then I got it.

He was meeting his 17-year old wife there. I was immediately enraged....that he had brought me along, that he was married to someone only three years older than I, enraged that I had probably believed she was out of my life for good. Right up until that moment. There she was, waiting for him.

They went off into the woods to fuck. Pretty romantic, right? So what was I supposed to do? There definitely wasn't any television or radio. I hadn't brought a book along for some reason, probably because he had lied to me about where we were going. He must have lied because otherwise I most assuredly wouldn't have agreed to come. I hated her. I hated him.

I explored the empty house and came upon some letters left in a closet. I can't imagine why they were still there; the house had obviously been abandoned for some time. They were love letters written by a married woman who was carrying on an affair. Okay, I could be mistaken about that. It just all seems a little too coincidental.

I hung around, thinking about how much I wanted to murder my father. That's not hyperbole. If I had known of a way to do it so that I wouldn't have gotten caught, if I'd had the means and the opportunity, I would have killed him. Have no doubt about that. Luckily, I didn't have any of those three things, so I spent a lot of time nursing my anger and hatred. To this day, when I think about these memories, I'm almost overwhelmed by the intensity of my anger. As I reach back into the heart of the nightmare I used to live every single fucking day of my life, I want to back away. The only way out of pain is to walk directly through it.

They wandered back after some time. More kissing and hugging. I hate you, hate you, hate you. I hope you die and burn in hell. I hope your dick falls off. It was time to go. I got in the back seat of the car, knowing that I could erase my present circumstances from consciousness only if he wasn't sitting there beside me, a gigantic piece of stinking shit. I think it pissed him off that I wouldn't sit in the front seat. Excellent. My father hadn't hit me for a couple of years and he'd already isolated me from my friends who knew about the situation, so I wasn't too concerned about his anger. At that point, if he'd killed me, it would have been a relief. I had nothing to lose, so I maintained my position in the back seat and proceeded to ignore him.

I composed a poem. All I remember now is the lines, "We are rushing into darkness, we are rushing into nowhere." Scant comfort at the time.

Menu recap from yesterday: Burgers and canned sweet potatoes.

Here's the quote of the day:

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations." ~ Anais Nin

America held hostage day 1,925
Bushism of the day:
"I'm going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it's the Mother in me." —Washington D.C., April 14, 2005
Important note:For more defining Bush moments, please check here: http://slate.msn.com/id/76886...

Website of the day:
CALM Research Center
http://www.calm.com.au/" title="http://www.calm.com.au/" target="_blank"http://www.calm.com.au/

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New Pope! Benedict XVI! (oops...I hope that's right--in my giddiness, I seem to have forgotten how Roman numerals work.)YAY!! Maybe I'll like him better than the last.

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As of last Thursday morning, I've been having a musculoskeletal spasm. Yes, it hurts as bad as it sounds. Luckily, it's consideraly better than the ones I used to have when I'd be lying in bed for five to seven days with a crushing headache. In the bad old days, it felt like there was absolutely no padding around any of my skeleton. Everything hurt. The current manifestation includes pain whenever I move, but it's defintely bearable. Oddly enough, people keep asking me if my back hurts. I guess I'm moving a bit more gingerly than usual. The spasm has lasted through the weekend and I'm still in a moderate amount of pain. That might actually be a lot of pain for everyone else. I have a very high tolerance for pain. I guess you could say that's one of the up sides to having been abused. It's pretty hard to hurt me now. Woo-hoo.

Early Sunday morning (5:00 a.m.) I heard Ruski making some noise in the living room. It sounded like he just needed to have some help getting up. I went in to check on him, lifted him up and he started going into seizure. This one was probably a grand mal seizure because his limbs were moving violently, he lost control of his bladder and peed on me, made some weird vocal sounds and was frothing a bit at the mouth. The brilliant one here was afraid he was going to bite his tongue, so I just stuck my fingers in his mouth. He bit my finger instead. It was over very quickly and I brought him some food and water, thinking that might make him feel better. He seemed to be better then and I debated spending the rest of the night on the sofa, but ultimately I decided to go to bed since I could hear him if anything else occurred. He moved around just a little after I went to bed and, each time, I called out to him so that he would know I hadn't completely abandoned him. It was one of the worst things imaginable, feeling so helpless when he needed me. He's been fine since then and has been eating regularly. His doctor is not helpful at all. She thinks he has too many symptoms. (What???) I'm considering switching to another vet I've come to know because of the feral kitties.

Okay, speaking of dogs and cats, that new program called "Showdog Moms and Dads" is just the sickest thing I've seen lately. (fyi: calling something "sick" isn't necessarily bad to me) Having seen those people, who treat their dogs like children (or better than their children in one case), I'm a lot saner than that. It's funny really--I take enough psychiatric medication to kill a proverbial horse, but even without medication I'm more mentally healthy than they.

Running a little late today, so no more time to write. Tomorrow. Here's the quote of the day:
"The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven." ~ Mark Twain

America held hostage day 1923
Bushism of the day:
"If they pre-decease or die early, there's an asset base to be able to pass on to a loved one."—On Social Security money stored in private accounts, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 30, 2005

Website of the day: Contents @ the informal education homepage
http://www.infed.org/" title="http://www.infed.org/" target="_blank"http://www.infed.org/

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My husband has taken up cooking the past couple of weeks. When I wasn't working, I used to cook a lot, including making fresh bread (without using a breadmaker) every day. Since I've been working, I have absolutely no enthusiasm for coming home and working some more. My husband is home all day every day. We generally go out every night for food--nothing special nor very pricey, though. Because of a cash flow crunch of late, we've been eating at home for the past couple of weeks. The only problem? My husband doesn't really know how to cook. What an adventure it's been.

Last night we had hamburgers. By that, I mean hamburger meat stuck between two slices of bread. Mustard and mayo don't exist in hubby's diet, so he didn't get any when he went to the grocery store. We also had ranch style beans. That was it. Monday night we had pork chops, very thinly sliced, which my husband grilled and grilled and grilled. We ended up with what could only be defined as pork chop jerky. Hubby loves chewy meat. With out jerky we had canned fruit cocktail with fresh apples and bananas added in. Sunday night we had a turkey sandwich and vegetable soup. Did I mention that I wanted to lose some weight? Well, it looks like that won't be difficult. Unfortunately, I sometimes get hungry right around 9:00 in the evening. My friends have suggested that I consume massive quantities when I go out for breakfast with my mom on the weekends. Someone here brought an entire box of fresh chocolate chip cookies. Oh yum! Normally I have a rule about not eating at work, but this week I'm breaking it.

I thought there was a lull in the downstairs hammering, sawing and generally banging stuff around, but I hear they're back at it. Can you hear me screaming and beating my head against the wall?

When I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I planted seeds for California poppies, bachelor buttons, morning glories and four o'clocks. I noticed some of them have germinated. That's a surprise because I always plant directly into the garden as opposed to starting them in little containers then transplanting. I also planted some bulbs-- Asiatic lillies and Lillium. One of those is sticking its head out of the ground already. One of the other good things about not eating out is that I have plenty of time to water the new plants every day.

That's enough for today. Here's the quote of the day:

"Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement." ~ Alfred Adler

America held hostage day 1918
Bushism of the day:
"We need to apply 21st-century information technology to the health care field. We need to have our medical records put on the I.T."—Collinsville, Ill., Jan. 5, 2005

Website of the day: Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/index.htm" title="http://www.commondreams.org/index.htm" target="_blank"http://www.commondreams.org/i...

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So the noise and nasty odors continue as the work crews tear up kitchen flooring and replace the decking, paint, refinish all of the woodwork on the stairs, paint upstairs and in the kitchen and plant new stuff in the patio area. I had to meditate for an hour last night to restore some semblance of equanimity in body and mind. I passed my boss on the stairs this morning and he told me they'll all be finished tomorrow. I just hope all of us can endure it. Actually, I just hope I can endure it. I'm feeling selfish today.

The other big drama on the work front has to do with one of our off-site employees. This person is a craftsperson who's worked for us for around a decade now. He recently worked at one of our branch sites in a different state. When he returned, his previous position had already been filled so we moved him to a different site. The employee, let's just call him J.A., used to be a foreman but there weren't any similar positions available. Normally that would mean he would have to take a pay cut, but because he's been with the company for so long, the owner of the company decided to continue to pay him foreman wages. J.A. has always done a great job for our clients and has grown considerably in leadership skills.

J.A.'s supervisor, T., told our one of our accounting people that J.A.'s wages should be at the journeyman level (less than a foreman). S. in the acounting office said okay to that, even though the owner directed her to pay the other rate. The owner doesn't like to have confrontations with employees, so it's easier for him to just make an end run around the people who are apt to put up an argument.

For some reason, T. decided to open J.A.'s pay envelope when he delivered the paychecks this week. He noticed right away that the pay level was not what he expected. T. arrived this morning on the war path. He went to S. and told her that she had no right to pay J.A at the higher rate. He insinuated that S. had made a unilateral decision about the pay rate and accused her of always defending J.A. S. pointed out that she defends lots of other employees, too. Finally, she told him to take it up with the owner of the company. The conversation ended there.

When the owner arrived, S. informed him of the situation. The owner told her to take away the extra hourly pay and just start paying J.A. a $200 car allowance for the use of his truck. That ended up being even more than he was being paid before. S. said she'd do that, but insisted that he has to talk to T. himself.

My boss does not want to talk to T. That's likely to be unpleasant and my boss really doesn't like unpleasantness. That doesn't seem to be a problem right now because T. left the office and hasn't returned.

I have never, ever worked at a company in which the boss has gone to such great lengths to avoid saying what's on his mind. This isn't an across the board kind of thing. If an employee falls from grace for one reason or another, my boss will not only be confrontational, he'll manufacture ways to annoy or otherwise torment the person. Welcome to life through the looking-glass. More later...if I have the fortitude.

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Just like virtually everyone else in America, I hate Mondays. When I woke up this morning, I considered calling in sick, something I think about every Monday. I dismissed the thought when I remembered that I might actually need that sick leave day at some point. I came to work this morning, a little dazed still from the weekend and already wishing I could schedule in some nap time later in the day.

The day started out fine. I chatted up some of my co-workers, did a little corporate bonding and settled into the day. Shortly after lunch, I noticed some tumult in the break room downstairs. My boss (and owner of the company) arrived in a manic mode today. I don't use that word lightly--he actually seems to be bipolar, though I'm not sure he's received that specific diagnosis. If he hasn't, it's just because bipolar people are often misdiagnosed. We all hate it when S. arrives all wound up; it never fails that a tidal wave follows in his wake.

Today he decided to completely redesign the patio downstairs, disrupting the (somewhat) feral kitties who live there. He called me up and ran his plan by me. He wanted to know if it was okay with me. Well, no. It's not okay. It's bound to flip out the kitties, with whom I've worked long and hard to establish a sense of trust and safety. I told him the plan sounded good to me. He's going to do as he pleases, no matter what I say. It's just a complete waste of time and energy for me to disagree with it. Nonetheless, it did ruffle my feathers a bit, which is disturbing because for a minute there I lost the "I'm more mature and reasonable than you" contest which I always win. (I'm the only one who knows I'm even playing the game, so my perception of who wins is paramount.)

I discovered the cause of the brouhaha downstairs when I went to the patio to distribute kitty treats. S. is also completely reconfiguring the kitchen and break room. They're two separate and popular rooms. Everyone makes their breakfast in the kitchen every day and the company maintains some snack-type foods (which absolutely no one here needs to be eating, including me)in the refrigerator. There's a television in the break room where people eat their lunch and watch the weather channel or CNN or something. I have a couple of cohorts who are major hoop heads and on occasion (like March Madness for instance), we set up camp down there and root for our fave teams. We're all a bit sensitive to the possibility of either of those rooms being tampered with.

I decided to check around and find out if any of my co-workers were in the know about the alterations. K. didn't know what was going on, but she was concerned that the kitchen is being repainted. Both K. and I suffer from migraines from time to time and she worried that the paint fumes might trigger one. I hadn't thought of that, but she has a point. Beginning on Friday, I had a migraine for two days.

J. and S.O. were also in an uproar. Apparently, my boss has decided to move his office. No one knows where, but they're irritated about it nonetheless. It's that habit he has of working himself up into high gear and then seeming to take other people's feelings into account while, in reality, he's just going to do as he damn well pleases. If I was playing the More Mature and Reasonable game with them, I'd be the winner hands down. I wasn't quite as worked up as they were.

If I were to do a survey of the other 3 people who work downstairs, I'm sure I'd find 3 more annoyed people. I'm fairly certain they won't know where S. is moving his office, so I'm not even going to bother with checking their emotional temperature. One of our coworkers (J.G.) has been in a branch in another state for several years and he's due to return relatively soon. I suggested to J. and S.O. that maybe our boss is moving over to that office in my side of the building and having the returning guy office on their side of the building. No one found that amusing.

J. told me that our boss had looked in J.G.'s office and noted that all of his stuff is still boxed up from the time we had our upstairs offices recarpeted. We all had to box everything to make it easier for the guys to do the installation, so K. put J.G.'s office crappola into boxes for him. No one has unpacked it. S. wanted to know why and pointed out to S.O. that our returning worker will be insulted that we left it that way. Oh my god! Did that ever get everyone's panties in a collective wad. No one here likes J.G., so any suggestion that anyone should go out of their way for him is taken as an insult to the rest of us. Ah, office politics...how I love them.

Other than that, it's just your usual crappy Monday. Our only hope is that tomorrow the proverbial worm will have turned and our boss will be too depressed to even come in.

Here's the quote of the day:
"Always be smarter than the people who hire you." ~ Lena Horne

America held hostage day 1916
Bushism of the day:
"I want to appreciate those of you who wear our nation's uniform for your sacrifice."—Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 14, 2005

Website of the day: American Constitution Society For Law and Policy
http://www.acslaw.org/" title="http://www.acslaw.org/" target="_blank"http://www.acslaw.org/

Current reading:
Original Dwelling Place, Robert Aiken

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I was born in the early 1950's in a city in the deep south. Over the years I've tried to get at least a few facts about my parents' lives in the hope that their personal issues might be more understandable. I've always believed, to some extent, that if I could just understand how my parents got so crazy, my own history might be more bearable. It's been a difficult process. The answers are few and far between and, as time passes, those facts become mythic in nature. Stories get repeated, frequently by people who have a vested interest in how they're interpreted. I'm not always certain whether they're true...or if it even matters.

My paternal grandmother apparently grew up in Mississippi. When she was a young woman, her parents were killed in a fire. She may have lost one or more siblings, too. She did have one remaining brother, whose name was Ernest. People tell me they were very close, I don't know whether that's because everyone else was dead or there was just some natural affinity between them.

After the death of her parents, she and her brother were placed in an orphanage. I can only imagine what that must have been like. It must have been profoundly damaging. She and the other orphans were required to work--presumably to earn their keep--in conditions that were probably very harsh. She met my grandfather while she was working on the farm of a local, somewhat well-to-do couple. I gather she was very young when they married. There are also vague stories about my grandfather being disinherited. If I had to guess, I'd say that's where the trouble started within my family. Though I have absolutely no proof, experience leads me to believe that my grandfather probably selected her precisely because she was so young. Later on, he sexually abused several of his children. My grandmother must have just gotten too old to be of interest to him.

I asked my grandmother many times to tell me about her life. She was the most stoic person I've ever known, bar none. My own mother is the second most stoic person I know and, according to people who know me, I may be a close third. To say she wasn't forthcoming is an understatement. Whatever stories I came to hear about her all came from her children. Since a fair number of her children were just crazy as loons, I can't always count on their veracity.

My grandmother started having babies at a breathtaking pace. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth child, my grandfather struck out for greener pastures. He disappeared. It wasn't all that unusual in the Depression for men to go off in search of work. People in the family believe that he had a job or a series of jobs, but he never sent money back to his family. My grandmother and her children were forced to do whatever they could to survive. I think they were sharecroppers, but they may have only been employees of wealthy farmers. It was a hungry life and a life of great hardship. My father and his brothers and sisters picked cotton for a living. I heard many times about how the stickers on the cotton would just rip through flesh. Even though they worked, they frequently didn't have food.

None of this did much for my grandmother's disposition. According to my father, she was very abusive. His ears were deformed his entire life because of her habit of grabbing an ear and twisting hard when she wanted to make a point. She was also known to hit kids with whatever was readily available at any given moment...a cast iron frying pan, a stick of stove wood. From my own experience with her, her vocabulary of profanity was extensive. She was also known to drink. I believe vodka was the drug of choice, but I think any alcohol would do in a pinch.

My father told me he'd gone into his mom's house one day when he was young and overheard her plotting with her daughter to kill my grandfather. True? Beats me. He also said that he walked in on his mother having sex with someone other than her husband. He told my mom about that and she told me. Here again, I'm not sure it even matters whether those apocryphal tales have any truth to them. The important thing was that it colored everything my father did as an adult. I guess that's how it always is with parents; you spend your entire life trying to avoid living your parents' lives. Unfortunately, that generally means you're still having a crappy life, you're just having a different crappy life than your parents.

Here's the quote of the day:
"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth." ~ E. L. Doctorow

America Held Hostage Day 1910
Bushism of the day:
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

Website of the day: Jain History
http://jainhistory.faithweb.com/" title="http://jainhistory.faithweb.com/" target="_blank"http://jainhistory.faithweb.c...

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Scientists are now taking a close look at the gender differences in coping with trauma and stress. For more information, visit the .
Society for Women's Health Research

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It was the summer of 1966 and I had a cousin visiting from out of state. It had been just a bang-up great summer vacation to Jackson, Mississippi with my mom, my dad, and my dad's 15 year old wife. Prior to the visit, my dad had bought his wife a number of new outfits. Unfortunately for her, that would be the last windfall she'd ever see while they were together. Photos were taken along the way, his wife (in her new clothes) and me standing in front of various unidentifiable landmarks. Once we arrived, we must have visited several of his relatives. I never knew what story he offered up to explain the 15 year old wife. I was mainly concerned with being left alone. I was profoundly humiliated by the whole situation, so I just tried to escape into solitude whenever possible. We visited one of my aunts who had four children, but I maintained my distance from them unless compelled to interact. Though all but one of them was younger than I, I firmly believed that they knew how fucked up my family was and laughed at me when I wasn't around. The other aunt that I remember visiting was the mother of my summer guest.

I'm not sure why I decided to hang out with my cousin Theresa. On the face of it, it seems a highly uncharacteristic congeniality on my part. Nonetheless, we must have had a good time and my dad issued the invitation for her to come for the summer. I wonder now why it was that her parents thought sending any female child home with my dad was a good idea. I was 12 and his wife was 15. I don't know...I just don't think I would have felt comfortable sending my daughter home with him.

Theresa, in addition to being my age, was about my size. She had a better complexion than I, which my father used as a cudgel to beat me with. As usual, whenever my dad was around other female kids my age, he always liked to point out the many ways those kids were more appealing than I. My dad also pointed out that Theresa seemed smarter than I. That fact was probably at the heart of my eventual change of heart towards her. I have no idea why Theresa didn't like me, but I'm sure it wasn't without cause.

Sometime that summer I discovered Sigmund Freud. I have no idea how I found out about him, but reading was my escape of choice and trips to the library were frequent. At that point in my life, I was searching for challenging intellectual books. I had abandoned any literature that seemed to be directed at people my age. I read adult books and began thinking about weighty and complex ideas. I lived in a frighteningly adult world and I knew books directed at 12 year olds wasn't going to help me one tiny bit.

I'm not sure which of Freud's books I read that summer, but I remember the case studies of his patients. One of them detailed one of his patient's hysterical amnesia. It was the most promising thing I'd heard of since I abandoned the Bible as a means of coping with my crazy life. Obviously God wasn't going to be rescuing me or he'd have done it long before then. It made supreme sense to me thatif I couldn't get God to help me escape, I might be just fine if I could simply forget everything that had happened up to that point. However just to ensure my success at forgetting, I decided to pray for it, too.

Of course, I also encountered penis envy. I gave a lot of thought to that issue. At first it just seemed absolutely preposterous. I searched my heart. Did I really want a penis? No amount of soul searching produced any envy that I could identify. Maybe I envied kids who didn't live with psychotic parents, but none of them had penises. Finally, just as many feminists concluded, I determined that he was incorrect. Grossly incorrect. Unfortunately, it seemed he was incorrect about the possibility of amnesia, too.

The real irony here is that, over the years, I have forgotten. Incidents are truncated or confusing. I guess God did answer my prayers after all. As I struggle to make sense of my life, I reach back to grab onto formative memories. Sadly, the absence of memory doesn't result in the absence of suffering connected to those memories. I'm not so sure I'd want to relive them even if I could. I guess the summer I spent with Dr. Freud was like mining fool's gold.

Quote of the day:
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute." ~ Rebecca West

America Held Hostage Day 1909
Bushism of the Day:
"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law." —Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000

Website of the day: A Krishnamurti Library of Athens
http://www.kathens.org/" title="http://www.kathens.org/" target="_blank"http://www.kathens.org/

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