29 July 2008

LOL, or maybe not...

I've been amusing myself in varied ways trying to stimulate the aging brain I drag around. Until recently one of my amusements was going to the website www.passiveaggresivenotes.com and reading through the posted notes. (I would then segue into the truly hilarious website www.overheardintheoffice.com. I'm going to keep that one up so it is a current amusement. But I digress.)

I enjoyed the posted notes from people who are wittily hostile while maintaining a thin veneer of civility against the total bores with whom the note writers are wroth.

Alas, I will have a difficult time enjoying now that I find out the web site owners are members of a youthful set who find the note writers displayers so-called passive-aggressive behaviours that are simply (like totally, OK?) contemptible. I discovered this dismaying news after I paid more attention to the side bars, after overhearing the little wretches I work with going on about people who use passive-aggressive behaviours.

OK, I'm going to completely pass on sharing my view that these little "Git outta my way ya old f**t!" wankers are total losers who can't stand elegant facetious humour (Crashing bores, the lack witted!) because they are incapable of creating any on their worthless, selfish, useless own...

I'm usually the oldest person in the room at work, although mercifully that is changing at the end of the week. Yes kids, I am moving back out to my old desk, although it won't be my old desk in that our new boss of bosses is trying to humiliate the rest of the new 'team' she is assembling by cramming all six of us into mini-cubes I've taken to calling cubies.

It has to be that, can't figure out why the hell she would do it otherwise! Six of us, two pushing forty, one over forty, one of us over fifty, and two of us over 60, every one of us with several years in for this company and all of having held various positions of considerable trust and authority-now will be hunched into mini-cubes like parents at the kindergartner's 'Meet Teacher' night. What else can this new team seating assignment be but an exercize in deliberate slighting and humiliation aimed at the stubborn old fools we? Oh, it's gonna be swell, all of us crammed into our little cubies in our little room.

I'm trying not to complain (all the blogging while I have another window up and am busily sending out my resume in hopes of a "REAL JOB"), it could be worse, I could still be trapped in Hell (the workspace I will be vacating hopefully Thursday morning. Please God).

Scary to be a mere 51 years old and the oldest worker in the room. All those thirty something eyes vibing silently and oh so eloquently that you are a PITA in their way-the way they can't find with out parental assistance, BTW, but NEVER point it out...I liken my workspace to a den of uneasy and hungry little hyenas pissed that Mummsey is still claiming the larger share of the scavenges. Have I mentioned that for the most part I am completely sick of the young people I have been working with??


I try to tune the little beggars out. They don't like me and I've given up trying to like them beyond Christian duty. But last week they were louder than usual, and they were being rather disdainful of the passive-aggressive people who use excessive politeness to express their displeasure instead of being an adult and knocking the shi* out of the person they are mad at. (Huh?!)

I swear I thought p-a was the condition of being such a little craven sniveler that the only possible expression of the unhappiness is sullen work slowdown and an increase in "Oops, I didn't mean to destroy that business machine by feeding so much paper into it a massive paper jam resulted and we will have to wait for the hideously expense tech to fix it because the shredded paper bits the machine ate are everywhere, including sucked into the motor-oh wow, will we have to get a new one? Bummer. We won't be able to work for days. Management should buy better machines."

GRRRRRRRR. Really, this all reminds of when those little anal retentive brats decided to change Halley's (pronounced since the good astronomer's day as 'Hail-ee's') to Halley's (pronounced incorrectly but oh so pompously by these literal minded scuts as 'Hal-ee's').

If one more idiot result of the lunacy of the '80's child training model of "You can't respect anyone else until you respect yourself" condescends to me I am going to give them something legitimate to cry about.

Hmmph!

05 July 2008

Happy 232 USA!!

I got up this morning and read the Decalration of Independence online at the National Archives, hung out my new flag, then dragged myself down to the grocery, then came home and cleaned house, napped, and woke to help a friend finish my new garden path.

I came home from work Monday to find this friend mowing my lawn (wow, who knew you could use a mower like a bush hog??)

I came home Tuesday to find this friend hacking away at the area in front of the tin shack with a pickax and laying construction bricks in the trough.

I came home Wednesday to find this friend spreading landscaping plastic, then pavers, then marble chips between the two rows of up-ended construction bricks he'd laid Tuesday.

I came home Thursday to find him installing solar path lights on my beautiful new path.

Today he told me why he'd done this (while I am trying to figure out how to pay him back).

He's a great guy. He's been through some tough times and is trying to get back together with his ex-wife, a woman with whom he has raised a beautiful young woman, and is now helping to raise their grand-daughter.

She is a great person who has put up with some pretty tough times caused by his drinking.


He wanted to say thank-you for talklng with him while he was sober, and refusing to do so when he wasn't, and for telling him to his face while sober why I won't talk to him sometimes. For telling him a few other truths he wasn't ready to hear until I'd said those truths calmly and repeatedly over the past year and a half.

He celebrated another sober day today. Tonight he took his ex, their daughter and grand-daughter to the town firework show. He drove, for the first time in years his family will get in the car with him behind the wheel.

This morning when I checked the news online I saw a bit asking for Joe and Jean Average American to upload their photos of the most beautiful place in the country, and all day I have been racking my brain trying to decide which sight I've seen in this country that is the absolute best.

I set off my little sack of fountains in my driveway around 9:30pm, and as I used BBQ tongs to dump the burned up fireworks into a deep bucket of water I turned around and looked at the front of my house with it's beautiful new path, flowering lilies, and solar path lights; I looked at the spot-lit American flag hanging from my front porch, and it hit me that I was looking at the most beautiful place in America.

Home.

Think about it, and I think you will agree that your home is the most beautiful place in America, too.

So, thank-you Mr Jefferson, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Adams (both of you), Mr. Witherspoon, Mr. Gwinnet, and certainly, Mr. Hancock.

Thank-you to all 56 signers of The Declaration of Independence, to the lads (and a few lass') of the Continental Army; thank-you General Washington, and Mrs. Washington, too for being so good as to share her husband with our people. Thank-you Mr. Revere and friends; thank-you all, our brave first Americans who decided that Home is worth standing up for.

Thank-you to all those who have served this nation with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour so that I could call a tin shack on a North Georgia mountainside home, so that I could live free.

I've been to other countries and trust me, with all her faults, America is still free thanks to them.

Then, now, always, Home is worth fighting for.