29 March 2008

I call it the domino effect.

One thing leads to another, and like the lobster on slow boil, you don't see it coming, really.

Ten years ago today I was busily unpacking in a new house that to me, was THE PLACE.

I'd come to terms with the thought that I was stuck with Crusty. Unable to find proof, I let myself believe I was wrong-who knew that within four months, the truth would be revealed? Piece by piece in a ten years long devastating nightmare of "OK, I got through that revelation" only to have the next, worst bit be revealed. The never-ending nightmare...

Soon, I think, although I am trying to stop it happening, I will lose cable and Internet connection until I can dig out of the financial mess-AGAIN.

This time, it is only my fault in that I got too busy to pay enough attention.

The real fault lies with banking and bill paying methods that have been utilized by banks and creditors to enslave the New Working Poor into bankruptcy so that anything they've managed to accumulate-good credit, comfort items like bed, food, health insurance-are stripped away, because, as my old dear boss at the storage facility said "Poor people can't afford dignity."

Set up auto debit to make sure you don't get shut off, and the bastards will not keep to the agreed upon date to hit your account-they will, it really seems, deliberately hit your account the two days prior. Then they can charge you exorbitant fees untill you are broke, and they shut you off, ruin your credit, and cut you off from the only real communication and access to information that you have. That way you can't rally with others in like situation, and maybe press your government to put the brakes on the movement to regain control of your lives!

Live close enough to the edge, as so many are doing lately, and the next thing you know, you are out nearly two thousand very hard earned dollars of your so-called emergency fund.

And most of it has gone to NSF fees incurred when the cable company and the student loan folks hit the account ahead of time.

Not to mention the debit card that I used almost exclusively because as a woman alone, the last thing I needed to do was have to carry and store a lot of cash. Every single time I swiped that damn card a triple the amount hold was put on my money!

Changes. Again. Swell.

I'm going to gut it out, of course, no choice. But I am pissed about the domino effect.

If this post is dated long before you are reading it, you'll know why. Hope to see you again, hate this happening, again, but while I'm gone, learn from my mistakes, OK?

25 March 2008

My son, my beautiful boy, will be 26 years old in a few hours.

For his birthday, I wish him peace, and forgiveness, and love.

I wish I could call him and say "Happy Birthday!" But he would hang up on me, I think, so I don't even try.

Maybe later I'll email his friend and ask him to pass Fox a message."I love you, call or come home-we'll work it out."

Sometimes the missing of my son is overwhelming. All I have to do is close my eyes and I am standing in the hallway at 10 Holcomb Road watching him watching the big boys at soccer in the street through the window.

The room was a cheery yellow with white trim and wood shutters with a cute yellow valance across the top. Fox's playpen was close enough to the window that he could see out but not close enough that he could tear off the opened shutters.

He was so poignant in his little blue overalls and white tee shirt, and so impatient to get out there and play with the big boys; angry that they would not look at him and somehow include him.

He was born, and the nurse let one of my arms loose so that I could hold him; he looked at me, and I looked at him, and although I do love his sister, in that moment I knew I was a goner. I love my son so much I stayed with Crusty for too many years, gobsmacked that he could be so cold toward this amazing person God in His infinite wisdom and mercy had just granted us parenthood of. I figured if Crusty would just get to know Fox...

When Fox was almost 11 Crusty got on the first of many airplanes to travel with his wonderful new defense contractor job. Fox flung himself at me, crying and distraught that his dad had gone, and I was shocked.

Because Fox's first real full sentence was "Daddy is an a$$hole!" He was about two and a half.

Losing my welcome in my son's life is the final crushing blow. Since July 2005, when I called DHS because my son's girlfriend was about to give my grandson to yet another of her junkie relatives to keep for a week (the thought of my beautiful boy's little son being in such real peril caused me to call), I've been adrift on a sea of nothingness.

NSF's-who cares?

Junkie idiot room mate-who cares?

Nut job co-workers, cut-throat bosses, who cares?

Hunger

loneliness

meaningless.

no reason to put up a tree, no reason to commemorate the holidays, any of them, no reason to try to stay connected to life, no reason to dance in the living room, no reason, no reason, who cares, who cares, who cares? No-one. No-one if my family doesn't.


It makes all of the good memories,
the times I thought he loved me and knew I loved him,
the times I was sure he would be a world beater and everything would be alright,

that he would:
find the right girl,
be a good father,
finish school and be a teacher or a scientist,

or
anything except the bitter and furious young man he is,

seem

like

self-delusions.

In a few hours, less than five of them, my son, my beloved, sorely missed, beautiful boy, will be 26 years old.


I used to sing these as lullabies:

You are so beautiful/to me.
Can't you see?
You're everything I dreamed of/you're everything I need,
you are so beautiful/to me.


Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy...

23 March 2008

Happy Easter!

An update on the work situation, I am sending out my resume, and signing up with a couple of agencies locally. It's scary, and aggravating, but I've had to recognize a few painful truths, so I suppose one day I'll look back on this and feel that the need to reassess was a blessing in disguise.

Truth is, I am not too happy with what this job brought out in me-anger and bitterness, mostly.

But also pettiness, an unhealthy interest in exacting revenge and an even unhealthier desire to professionally shred a few people. I managed, barely, to control those interests; I'm having the hardest time getting past wanting to be around to see 'them' get what they so richly deserve.

Not good, and I think that although I am not exactly employable at this point-I went from writing around five mil a month in purchase orders to be basically a receiving clerk-I am going to try to find another job.

The worst part I think for me after the hard personal truths I had to recognize about myself, was that two people I had considered friends went to such lengths to trap me in a dead-end job for the worst reasons. Blondie wanted me shut-up, and the former ex boss wanted me to be his cover-me-kid (all he would have had to do was ask, I liked him, and knew Accounting was trying to take over my job).

But these are really rocky $ times, and people get a little weird when they sense their economic survival is at stake.

If you've been following this blog from the beginning, or have gone back to October 2005 and read forward, you know I hit Atlanta with $50 in my pocket which Roomie promptly relieved me of, along with most of the money I managed to make until I moved out his place in August '06. When a junkie pins you against a wall, you give the junkie the money you have, no brainer.

I made some other mistakes, too, like using my debit card at the gas station, and the hold they put on my bank account has me NSF, rejecting my cable bill I'd put on auto pay to avoid being cut-off during a "not paying attention period" 'cuz I'm so damn depressed my primary emotion is "who the hell cares so why should I?".

My latest "not paying attention period" started at Christmas, and lasted until last Tuesday at which point I bothered to check my mail, weighed down by NFS notices and a polite note from the cable company requesting payment.

No, really, it is a polite note. Hopefully they will give me a chance to pay the money I owe-two months worth that thanks to my "not paying attention period" I don't have.

Having to look for another job is not going to be made any easier by my financial record, which is why my anger at the ex has flared so badly. I call it the domino effect, many do who are in the same spot.

So, I'm in a bad spot. I've made bad decisions, not paid attention, and worst of all, have drifted from my principals.

The stupid decisions and the not paying attention can be chalked up to the rock and hard place Crusty put me and the resulting depression.

The drifting, the bitterness? All mine, I'm afraid.

Swell.

15 March 2008

I am trying to control my anger. Please see the website homepage for the man who wants to be my President.

http://www.tucc.org/about.htm

How in the hell did Obama's political advisor miss this? How in the hell will Obama explain this?

If he were a truly worthy candidate for President, he would not be associated with this filth.

He is a fraud and cheat, and liar when he explains away his "old uncle" as just the dodderings of dotage.

He never saw the website for his home church of nearly twenty years??

Steer sh*t.

Obama? Oh Hell No!

14 March 2008

Oh JEEZ!

I got to work at 0600 this morning, and had to sit in my car for twenty minutes before I could force myself into the building. It took another twenty minutes to force my self into the work space to clock in and get to work.

A little more than an hour later I had to leave the room, then the building, and I told my new supervisor that I would be back Monday with a much better attitude.I hope I can pull it off, and I hope I still have a job Monday morning to go to with an adjusted attitude.

Bear-Stern is in free-fall, and things do not look good.Oh jeez.

I'm so upset I cannot quite catch my breath, and my hands are shaking. My new supervisor seems to think that I should not be too concerned about just how screwed my job prospects are now, that it really isn't too big a deal, and my 'spin' is the wrong one, and I should just see things differently.

I feel as though my murderer just told me my death was inevitable so i should just relax and enjoy it.

Blondie did this, and I hope the truck taking her household goods south to the beach spontaneously erupts, and all her ill-gotten gains go up in smoke like my modest little future employability has just done. My former ex-boss who is now my boss again cheerily helped her, ensuring he would have the services of someone he could count on to write his spreadsheets and word.docs that he could then pass off as his own; someone he knew would be professional and take up the rather large slack left behind by his pets. Someone he could count on to pull him through the security checks and audits, and then shut the hell up until the next time the auditors appear.

Blondie screwed me over to cover her tracks, putting me in a position to be rendered voiceless; Former ex-boss/new supervisor screwed me over so that he could have his "dream team" on board without any more of those pesky worries that someone upstairs might leverage me out of the dungeon and into a real job. She told our mutual boss that I couldn't handle any more responsibilities, and he agreed with her in a meeting that sealed my fate.

The man seems to think that since my ungenerous pay was not cut, I should not be complaining.

For the past two years and five months I have been wasting my time, and I'm now sure the company that employs me feels I've been wasting theirs.

I am not a member of the team, I am not valued, I am not respected, and I am not going to be able to transfer into any other department and thereby pull this out of the hopper.

I feel sick and disappointed, the pain is beyond describing.

13 March 2008

If I'd known in October 2005 that the job I was so excited to have would turn out to be such a dead-end for me, I would have tried to hang on for a real job.

It finally hit me about 1130 this morning (ET) that because I'd been moved from a position of considerable responsibility to a menial, scut job as what amounts to a receiving clerk, I was now going to have a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally hard time getting another decent job, and I was effectively trapped in the most dead-end job I have ever had.

What intelligent HR guy is going to hire someone who was demoted?

I lost it today at work, confining my anger to a barely controlled seething that turned into a sullen pout the likes of which I've not displayed since I was maybe 12, and then finally degenerated into a deep depression and sense of the total futility of life-I thought for a split second of hurtling my little KIA at full speed into a tree or off a cliff, I swear to God I did, then I considered shooting myself (we do not fool around in my family-my little handgun is the same one my dad's third wife used to end her life when her epilepsy became uncontrollable).

Which, BTW, I'd given rather serious thought back in August of 1998. Suicide I mean.

Being from a family of people who do not fool around, I load my weapons with the max allowed by law (easier to get and keep that way), so I carried my snub-nosed .38 loaded with jacketed hollow points into the hot August night somewhere around 2200; I got into my so-called birthday present car (a '96 fully loaded factory condition Crown Vic) and drove out to a quiet spot west of Dothan.

I parked. I thought about it; I even cried out to the night "Give me one good reason to keep on living!"

I put the business end of the barrel against my forehead, all the while listening for someone to whisper into my heart the one good reason I needed to convince me I was worth the trouble.

The nice thing about a snub-nose is that you can easily point it at yourself without all that silly awkwardness, and shoot a clean shot that makes sure you don't survive to become a drooling further burden on those so-called loved ones that drove you to commit suicide in the first place. Comes in handy, that.

So I'm sitting there in the front seat of the last decent car I would drive for the next seven and a half completely miserable years, and just as I am going to pull the trigger, a thought occurs to me...

I don't hear a bloody thing. Nothing, not even my own breathing or heartbeat.

It is as if the world is holding it's breath.

I know, it sounds cliche, right-hey, could I enter that in some kind of contest for worst tripe written?

But it is true. For about twenty seconds, until I lowered the gun and started the car, and drove home to try slogging through the coming nightmare, I had the complete sense of surety that the entire world was stopped, holding it's breath.

This afternoon as I sat in the car after work waiting for the car to warm up I briefly considered coming home, cleaning the house and then blowing my useless and now unemployable brains out.

So of course, in a flash, for a flash, I remembered that moment ten years ago so clearly that I swear to God for a nano-second the sky was all of a sudden a night sky, I saw the stars even, and I was back in that August moment.

6th July 1998. Crusty gets in from his two weeks at work, and I realize he's been with a hooker. Has got on an airplane and flown back to America still wearing the stench and remains of a romp with a pro, he's not even bothered to shower before coming 'home' to spend time with his family.

"Open your eyes," says the mental whisper, "Open your eyes." And I do.


But it takes another month for the reality, some of it, to sink in, and when I realize how awful it is, and how very likely it is that there is ever some much more that is even worse, and my beautiful boy is beginning to hate me, my heart begins to break, and prescience sends me into a humid August night in a vain attempt to just bloody end it before all the truth is revealed.

Because I know in my heart of hearts that there is so very, very much more truth out there to settle around me, to drag me down to the very bottom where I will spend Eternity in a drowned but not dead state.


But instead, I hear nothing; the world holds it breath, and suddenly it is ten years later and I am in an Alpharetta car park shaking my head, starting the car...

"Open your eyes..."
GRRRR!

The TV is full of jerks like my ex who try to claim the pressures of their high pressure job made it somehow OK to hang out in brothels and call for hooker take-away.

GRRRR!

Blondie leaves Friday and she has delivered maximum damage-more bang for her buck, the bitch! Between her and my swell former boss, who I used to think was pretty swell, I've been done out of the job I love, and am locked into work that alternates between mind-numbing and insulting.

Gee, former ex-boss, I'm glad ya missed me, but did you HAVE to tell our unit manager that whopping lie about how I couldn't wait to work for you again in an effing scut job with NO potential for growth unless it's mold on my backsides as I sit there doing the most BORING EFFING CRAP I've done since I was in that other loser job-married to my ex, the rat s**t bastard who thought his 'high-pressure' job granted him hooker rights...

GRRRRR-EFFING-GRR! I hate my wretched useless brain draining hideous BS job! I hate my former ex-boss for manipulating the situation without consulting me, and then sanctimoniously telling me I should not vent to him when I thought it was 100% Blondie's diabolical plot to get her last dig.

Well, he be damned better stop crowing about his brilliance at assembling his effing dream team-three of the four of us think getting stuck in this dead-end effing BS boring BS job SUCKS! (I already punched that into the keyboard, huh?)OK< former ex-boss, do you get that three of four of your 'dream-team' EFFFFFFFFFING HATES BEING THERE IN THAT BORING crap turn in the effing dungeon that everyone thinks is so effing cool-YEAH RIGHT! SO EFFING AT LEAST PAY ME WAAAAAAAAAY MORE FOR THE BORING EFFING SH*T DUNGEON JOB!

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,
I've taken a majour pay cut for the effing honour of the BLOODY EFFING CRAP DUNGEON JOB!

I know that eventually, the oxen will move the wheel and will grind these sorry little peckerheads (no, it's OK to say peckerheads, Gregory Peck said it to Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, so it's OK, really) into the mealy Little worms that they are in truth. SO EFFFFING WHAT??? I am NOT vindictive, although I would EFFFING LOVE TO SEE SOME JUSTICE, so it's not like I'm sitting around waiting to see the downfall of these total jerks!

OH MY GOSH I AM SO EFFING PISSED!

Ten years ago this week I was moving house down to that little cesspool in South East Alabama called Dothan, Alabama.

The winds of absoeffinglute wrong were stirring and before the Fall fell my whole life would be turned upside down by a rat sh** bastard who swore his high pressure job entitled him to the services of several denizens of Bogota Columbia brothels. My son would be so traumatized by the strain of having to sit up with a gun because you were acting so damn crazy-CHRIST MICK, FOX WAS 16!!-that now he refuses to speak to me because I still believe life can and should be fair and beautiful, and because I unloaded my gun rather than shoot your sorry white trash as* the night you lost it totally-Fox still doesn't know that you said you would kill him if I didn't come back in the house...

If I were that governor's wife I would castrate him publicly with the biggest divorce settlement I could squeeze out of him-she doesn't have to worry, as I did, that her sorry little rat sh*t bastard loser 'husband' would walk into a Cottonwood biker bar and offer $50 to buy her dead.

All she has to worry about-FOR THE REST OF HER EFFING LIFE-as I do-that her sorry little rat shi* bastard of a 'husband' gave her a lasting memory in the form of AIDS, Herpes, HPV, and a few other STD's that my PA told me in October '98 couldn't be tested for yet.

B-EFFING-D, I 'passed' the three AIDS tests, and the HepC tests, and the HPV and those swell 'regular' STD tests-thanks be to God and all the saints and angels, I'm clear of that!

BUT...

No surprise, those other STD's, the ones the PA said there were no tests for in '98 still can't be tested for.

Do I have something that will rise up and make what's left of my life a horrific never ending reminder that you are a total effing dirtball, or is the horrific emotional nightmare of not having my son and grandson in my life , and this efffing economic nightmare you plunged me into the worst of it?

(BTW, I am being very sarcastic in the 'is this the worst' department. You know damn well I lived for my family, and you crushed that on purpose, didn't you?)

Ten years.

Gee, thanks Crusty. Rot in Hell, and I've just about got to the point where I kinda do hope I get to see you dragged off there, preferably after the pimp you stiffed (pun intended) hurts you badly-see, I know why they were chasing you and Eric that fine Guatemala afternoon; more and more often I'm just totally sorry they missed.

'Husbands' who do hookers-the gift that keeps giving in some many effing ways.

PS, Shi*head, most of the time lately I want you to drop dead after some serious torture, but first, I want you to tell my son the truth, you white-Eastern-Euro trash rat shi* bastard!

GRRRR EFFING GRRRRR!

You ruined my life, and made me so effing 'financially-challenged' these past ten years that I've gone hungry and I live in a tin shack that EFFING LISTS to the starboard side so badly I feel drunk, my son won't talk to me, I don't date, I don't go anywhere, do anything, have anything that made life worth living (you know, like my family), Gator died in agony and right now I am so completely pissed about how you trashed all of our lives and how people who really should have known better bought into your LIES that I've actually got to the point where I maybe would stand there watching some Afghani chieftain saw your miserable head off with a dull steak knife and SMILE for a few seconds.

EXCEPT. You. Will. Answer. To. God. You don't really have to believe, although you should, because you more than most need Him.

But when He's finally got it through His head that you spit on His love and mercy,

You.

Will.

Answer.

For.

ALL Eternity.

Damn. I hate when I feel sorry for you. But I do.

You're not a man, you don't even want to be one. Real men don't do the evil things you did, and still do.

'Cuz you are a dirtball.

I watch Jericho, along with countless other millions.

TICK TOCK, Crusty, the world is wising up to you dirtball contractors.

My life totally and completely sucks because of what you did to me. My son's life totally sucks because of what you did. But I know that after I vent, I will feel sorta sorry for you 'cuz you are the loser, you filth, not me.

My life sucks because you are a dirtball.

Your life sucks because you are a dirtball. You may not know it now, but you will.

Yeah, I do feel sorry for you.

One last thought tonight...

A 'man' who will betray his wife and child will betray his country that much quicker and easier.

That is a no-brainer.

Tick-Tock.

01 March 2008

OK, remind me-this IS America, right? Right??

We are in the grip of a deepening recession that now even Bush has to recognize ("...kind of a slump..."), one that economists are finally admitting could well become, in the words of Glenn Beck, "The Greater Depression."

So it is now the law in California that pets must be sterilized by age four months.

WOT??????

When the great state of Massachusetts enacted the health insurance law, I thought "HUH???" Next thought-"You buyin'?"

According to the mayor of LA, the procedure will be subsidized, right, so I guess WE'RE paying.

Georgie Bush is sending us all a bail-out check hoping we'll splurge on some thing wild and crazy and thereby stimulate the economy.

Polls available all over the 'Net give the average Yank a chance to confess what they'll spend it on, and most of the respondents are going to use the money for groceries, gasoline, medicine, or another month of keeping bill collectors at bay.

No-one is thinking "Oh cool, I'll go get a flat panel plasma TV!!! NO, NO, I'll buy some bling, NO WAIT, a new Blackberry! No, ooh, ooh, I'll get a boat, yeah, a boat..."

Gimme a break!

I've been more careful, and I'm trying to figure out how to become more so. Oh nuts, I've already cut so much out of my life that frankly I have no life to speak of!

I already do Clearance-Rack Chic, and a thousand other economies, what and where do I cut now?

Knowing I'm not alone does not help; nor does knowing I saw this coming back in '03 and tried to get organized to meet the challenge. It all just really bends my frames that I and so many others who were living sensibly for years are now crunched by idiots like my ex who think nothing of expecting YOU to bail them out!

We're buying, alright-taxpayers like you and me who would dearly love to have a savings nest egg are wiped out by the continued bailouts of all these pinheads who live in stupid places and then reach out for the freebies, and the no interest loans TO REBUILD THEIR FRIGGIN BEACH HOUSE RIGHT WHERE THE LAST ONE WAS!

Blondie gave her notice yesterday, she's moving to the bloody damn beach on 14th March. She says she been planning it for months, so please explain to me why she worked her Blondie wiles to get my primary function transferred to her so that she would have a job during the last restructuring scramble.

Please explain to me why she got the training on the new system (that half way through the training they realized won't work for our specialized little corner of the kingdom) if she knew she was going to be leaving?!

Like Crusty, she doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself. She'll have her hand out too, when the next Katrina hits the Gulf.

I can see why some folks become tax evaders!

I know good people (hell, me for example!) that have had to go into savings till it's GONE, or have been brutally robbed by so-called loved ones, and now are sitting here wondering how to go on.

It's no damn wonder so many middle-agers commit suicide. Life can really suck for a middle aged adult with the constant insult of some punk trying to elbow them aside in an effort to snow the boss five more minutes; it's horrid to look at contemporaries who are engaged in jejune savageries to stay ahead of the punks-what's the damn point of trying to get through another day, let's just end all days. In goes the gun/pills/gas, and boom, the punks get to stand around wondering what to wear when black is all they wear anyway, and oh s**t, who is gonna clean up the mess?

There's angst for ya, ya wankers!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH