So, within my department at work, we kind of have this weird, forest creature,  pseudo-family dynamic. There is the Bosslady, who is sort of the Mama Bear. There's me, the Angry Squirrel. And there's Little Brother, the innocent little doe eyed deer (AKA Bambi). There used to be another Little Brother, but he moved over to a different department, one that is more in line with sales, about a year ago. And now Little Brother Bambi is moving there too.

Yesterday, he jokes around that I'm like the bird from those old cartoons, the old school Disney vulture ones, that when its parents force it out of the nest, it's like "hey, I'm coming back now" and that won't leave the nest. That I'll never leave the nest, never move on, do the "normal" thing of transferring departments that it seems the boys are doing. Like somehow that is the only option anyone is supposed to take and there is something wrong with me for not taking it.

And it really got under my skin, but not in a way I could really express. I guess I missed the memo that moving over and doing something, anything related to sales was supposed to be everyone's ultimate goal here? Oops, my bad, I'll go look for it now. It frustrates me sometimes to feel like anyone who doesn't do something sales related here really doesn't have any value, doesn't contribute, is worthless. 

Sales is not the be-all, end-all. Some people are so ill-suited that attempting to do sales would be disastrous. i.e. me. I can't deal with that. I could never deal with being forced to push credit cards on people when I worked for a bank, and sucked at managing to get people to add extra lotions or whatever at the register when I worked for the bath & body  store; hell, I could never even reliably upsell sodas when I worked at the theater!

I hate feeling like this, feeling like I have no value to my company. Like, I've been here forever, and haven't even managed to convince them that I'm valuable enough to get a new title. Like maybe a "senior" in front of my otherwise unimpressive customer service rep title. Like, I just end up feeling so bitter, that I'm the weird kid on the playground no one else wants to play with so the management can't see that I have value and deserve some recognition for it, but I'm not quite useless enough/weird enough/disruptive enough to warrant them being like "yeah, lets can her." Not that I want to not have a job, but being in that middle space is a head trip sometimes.

I wonder sometimes where I'm supposed to go from here, really. Like, within my company, there isn't anywhere else to go, I can't really be promoted in any meaningful way, even if someone did start to think one day that I might deserve it. But how marketable are my skills, really? I work in a really specific industry of customer service, and there aren't that many local companies in the same category where my experience, what little three years really is, would be marketable or wanted. I don't want to go to a call center, I'd hate it there. I already am at my wits end just handling 3-4 calls an hour here, 30-40 calls (or more!) per hour would kill me. So is the last three years of work I've done, the experience I supposedly got, just worthless after all?

Therapy is supposed to be helping with this stuff, but recently we've been dealing more with relationship stuff. Which is good, getting me and Ninja Boyfriend communicating more/better is a good goal and a good plan. But having this work stuff feeling like a festering pit of suck isn't doing much to help my overall mood and outlook on life. Gah. Maybe more coffee would help.

 That damn song from She Wants Revenge is stuck in my head. Somehow, it seems fitting.

So, I'm not going to really go into details. But I just had a friend, or someone I thought of as a friend, pull a disappearing act on me. And it's far from the first time this has happened to me, but every single time, it just makes me feel so fucking broken. And I always wonder... why am I so easy to walk away from? I'm 29 years old, and I can't make or keep friends to save my life.

I'm not going to say that there weren't reasons to end our friendship. No one is perfect, and the situation was complicated and had only gotten more so in the last few weeks. But the whole lack of courtesy, the whole "Oh, talk to you tomorrow!" and then nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero, just disappearing off the face of the earth for like a week.... What am I supposed to think, to feel? How am I not supposed to be hurt by this?

And I make excuses. Oh, how I make excuses. "Oh, maybe there's just a ton of work they have to do." "Oh, maybe there's no reliable internet or cell phone service out there." "Oh, there's a three hour time difference, maybe there's just not a time they can talk to me that I'm online." "Oh, things will be fine when they get back." I make excuses until it stares me in the face, until I just can't anymore, until all that's left is the realization that, for whatever reason, that individual just really didn't want me to be part of their life anymore.

The lack of closure, the lack of explanation, it kills me. It kills me to never know what happened, what other things must have been going on behind the scenes, under the surface, to cause this breaking point. I hate that I don't know, that no one seems willing to enlighten me, to throw me a fucking clue and be straight up and tell the truth, like "yeah, I don't want to have you in my life anymore because of x, y, and z..."

Because I will never know if it's something inherent in my personality, something that is just immutable and unchangeable like the sky being blue and grass being green- or if it was something I could have changed if I'd been given a warning or a sign that could have salvaged the situation. I don't know if it's my fault, some failure in me, or if it's all on them, the way things evidently turned out.

I don' t understand why I'm so easy to walk away from. And every time someone leaves, kicks me out of their life, whatever- it just reinforces all the neuroses, the thoughts that there is something wrong with me, that I am a failure, that I am a worthless person. Logically, I know I shouldn't let my self esteem take the hit from this, I shouldn't let my self worth be so determined by what other people think or feel about me. But damn, it's so hard not to feel fucking sad and hurt and broken up about it. It's hard not to take it personally. This hurts, and I hate it.

... those damn obsessive toilet paper bears. I'm supposed to be trying to up my word count for NaNoWriMo, but instead I'm having a super-productive Saturday watching House MD reruns and being annoyed by the OCD toilet paper bears.

The Charmin commercials just get creepier and creepier. Seriously? Who thought "enjoy going more" would be a good tagline for TP? Like, when I have to go to the bathroom, I'm like "oh, awesome, I've got the good toilet paper, this is going to be SWEET!" What kind of drugs were the asshats in the marketing department on to come up with that one?

Is there a support group, some kind of AA type thing, to send those bears to? Toilet Paper Anonymous, for those that have some sort of weird open relationship between them, their significant other, and the toilet paper they buy?

Like, ok, I kind of got it with the original commercials. It leaves less behind, ok, your butt isn't all gross and papery. I can get behind that (ha, pun TOTALLY intended). I mean, sure, a bear shits in the woods, even if I have a hard time quite managing the suspension of disbelief to think that they bring the toilet paper with them when they're doing it. Ok, whatever, maybe they got it from someone's leftover picnic basket, all Yogi Bear super bear ninja style. Not that people put TP in a picnic basket, but you know what I mean. And maybe it was even Charmin, and now all the bears in the forest are like "this shit RAWKS!" But how would they continue getting the Charmin? It's not like there's a grocery store or a Target or whatnot in the woods, and now it's just getting ridiculous.

Gah. My brain hurts.

I know bringing up politics isn’t always the best thing to do in mixed company, so I generally try not to do it much. But, since Ninja Boyfriend is a licensed massage therapist, this particular issue is really close to home. Within the next several days, Governor Schwarzenegger must make the decision to veto AB 1822, or allow it to become signed into law. What is AB 1822, and why does it matter?

 

Approximately two years ago, the California Massage Therapy Council (CAMTC) was created as a “one stop shop” for licensing all massage therapists in the state of California. By making the requirements for education and training uniform within the state, and requiring the same type of criminal background check for all applicants, CAMTC is able to ensure that only applicants who are fully trained and intend to actually practice massage therapy are able to secure licensing to work in the field. Membership on the board of the CAMTC consists of professionals and educators working in the field, as well as law enforcement personnel who have helped to develop the screening requirements.

 

AB 1822 is a ruling that would undermine the current process of licensing for massage therapists in the state of California, by forcing the CAMTC to add two additional law enforcement positions to its board. This is unnecessary, as law enforcement personnel are already working with and for CAMTC in its express mission of licensing only qualified candidates as massage therapists. CAMTC is a self-regulating health profession board, and forcing CAMTC to add seats specifically for law enforcement groups, many of whom are already hostile to its mission and calling, is a dangerous precedent for other health profession boards in the state.

 

In its original incarnation, AB 1822 attempted to abolish CAMTC entirely, forcing a return to the old system of licensing that forced massage therapist candidates to navigate the patchwork maze of county and city jurisdictional rules in order to practice massage therapy within each different city. Some jurisdictions even required massage therapists to register as adult entertainers and go through the vice squad for licensing. Now, the same entities that supported AB 1822 in its original incarnation want seats on the CAMTC to undermine the council from within.

 

Massage therapy is a legitimate, beneficial, and honorable field within the health care profession, and CAMTC is already doing a great job of regulating the field and making sure that only legitimate massage therapists are licensed to practice and that massage therapy isn’t just a front for criminal activities like human trafficking or prostitution. Forcing CAMTC to add more law enforcement to its board only fosters the impression that massage therapy is a vice and must be regulated by police, demeaning practitioners and belittling the work they do.  Please join me today in asking Governor Schwarzenegger to veto AB 1822!

 

To send a message to the Governor asking him to veto AB 1822, please go here:

http://www.massagetoday.com/bill1822/stop_ab1822.php

 

For more information on AB 1822, please check out the following:

http://www.massagetoday.com/mpacms/mt/article.php?id=14280

 

http://www.abmp.com/downloads/CA_Veto_AB1822-abmp.pdf

 

So, we gave back the keys to the old room to our old landlady. And, big shock, upon our moving out, she was unhappy with how we left things, even though we wiped down the walls with cleaner, vacuumed the floor, and cleaned the bathroom prior to giving her back the keys- normal, run of the mill cleaning that normal, average people do.

We gave her a $400 deposit on the room when we first moved in, and somehow repainting the walls and shampooing the carpet supposedly cost $380. She claimed the carpet had been shampooed three times and was still not clean; we looked in the room and it didn't look like it had been shampooed at all. Which begs the question: what kind of complete incompetents are you using to shampoo your carpet? Because honestly, shoe dirt and the detritus of normal every day living don't make a carpet that bad, even if you have an alarming lack of common sense about putting white carpet into a room that you intend to rent to people. It's not like we were having food fights in there, or bled on the floor; it was just normal wear and tear.

While we were scrubbing down the walls, Ninja Boyfriend asked me if we wanted to pay someone to come in and shampoo it, and I was like "no, we gave her a deposit, that's what it was for..." and now I'm doubly glad I decided not to have someone come in, because she would have still taken our whole deposit no matter who we called in to have the place cleaned! All the while, as she was talking about how the room wasn't clean, she kept pausing after her statements, like she expected us to jump in and offer more money to clean. Um, no, we gave you a deposit. If you can't hire people who can get the job done, that isn't our problem. If you wanted more money, you should have insisted on it before we moved in, not hinted around about it after the fact. Ugh.

I cleaned the bathroom too, scrubbed the sink and wiped the toilet down and swiffered the floor and everything, and she was still trying to claim that it was filthy. Like, no matter what we did, we were filthy nasty people who lived like pigs. Funny thing was, as Ninja Boyfriend pointed out... as we sat in her living room, we noticed that her area rug was dirty, there was dust on the floor, and dust bunnies under the furniture. So, pot and kettle much?

I have been a cell phone owner since 1999. My very first cell phone was given to me when I started college in the Fall of 1999, so that I could call my parents and tell them when I'd be coming home since I had crazy college hours.

Since then I have had probably six different phones. I've made it through trips to Idaho, Las Vegas, Colorado, the Grand Canyon, and the Comic Con. I have never lost a phone... until now.  And I am NOT HAPPY!!!!!!

Ninja Boyfriend had his D&D game canceled last night. So, after he came home from work, we decided to go see a movie. He isn't the biggest Michael Cera fan (and that's an understatement!) but Scott Pilgrim vs. The World looked funny, so he agreed to see it anyway. So, we went to the 7:50pm showing at the theater I used to work at, the Brea Edwards East 12. This is probably the last time we'll go to that theater, since they raised ticket prices again- $11.50 for a weekend night movie ticket!! Ridiculous!

After the movie, we went to Denny's... when I realized my phone was mysteriously gone. So, panicking of course, I checked the car, the walkway and foyer up to the Denny's, everything. And I called the theater, and talked to one of the managers who I knew when I worked there, but she couldn't find it either. Even though we went back over there, I couldn't go back in and look for it, since the next Scott Pilgrim showing had already started. I went back to the theater after the last movie got out, and she let me go look... and nothing.

So I retraced my steps, checking the parking space we'd been in, the staircase down out of the parking structure, and sidewalk to the theater... and nothing. Whatever happened to it, it was like it had disappeared off the face of the earth! I have called it a half a dozen times on Ninja Boyfriend's cell phone, and it goes straight to voicemail. So either someone has it, and has turned it off... or it's in pieces somewhere and the battery fell out, since it turns off whenever it gets dropped because the battery falls out the back.

I loved that phone! It was pink, and great for texting. It took good pics, and was easy to use and figure out. It was just so me. And I have had that same phone number since I was 18. Now I have to get another number, and I don't want to!!! That was my number. Sooo bitter and unhappy about my lost phone right now. And of course I didn't have it insured, since I've never lost a phone in my life, I didn't think I needed it! Regretting that decision right about now...

The final day of Comic Con- free books, the last panel, and when escalators attack!
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Part 4 of the Comic Con recap, with drinking, arguments, zombies, and a stabbing!

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Day two of the Con- panels, book signings, more accent crushing on China Mieville, and a power outage!

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Steampunk! Supernatural creatures! Author signings! Protesting! and... Klingons? All part of the second part of my Comic Con recap!


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