Stuff I think about

There’s this show on PBS I’d like to watch sometime, it’s called ‘One Stroke Painting’. I think that show would help me become a really good artist - it would be perfect for someone like me, because I have only had one stroke. It was a long time ago, but I don’t think there’s a time limit on stuff like that - once you have a stroke, you are forever someone who has had a stroke. Mine was nineteen years ago; my, how time flies when one is having fun! I got the bonus plan, complete with brain surgery and the whole nine. My daughter, strangely enough, then went and had one of her own - she was much younger, and hers was completely different and unrelated. She was only five, where I was nineteen when I was afflicted. She has more residual effects, although she’s done better than the worst-case scenarios we were first presented with; she does walk, she’s largely capable. Her biggest hurdle is her own attitude - fifteen now, and convinced the world owes her a pass on everything. Made worse of course by the ex-husband who has ALWAYS been more interested in being the best buddy than being a parent… and don’t get me started on his overprotective mother, whose basement he still lives in at the ripe old age of forty. And we can’t get a date WHY?
but I digress.
My daughter has grown up thinking she should never have to push herself to overcome her challenges. As someone who has struggled with almost the very same challenges, it gets really hard for me sometimes to watch her and worry about what’s going to happen when she walks into the grown-up world and finds out the world isn’t going to cater to her because ‘junk is hard’. We (her stepdad and I) have tried for a decade now to build her up and convince her she has the strength to stare down some of the things she has let hold her back; she in turn has determined that we are the mean, evil, hard-ass Nazi parents. She puts four times the energy into avoiding her problems than it would take to start knocking them out of the park. And despises me the entire time she is doing it.
My daughter will turn sixteen next month. She is mentally equivalent to the average kid her age; she is imaginative, can be funny, likes to laugh, has a temper, does well in some classes and rotten in others. Meanwhile, she will not bathe unless instructed, has to be physically watched to make sure she takes her medications, refuses to take part in household chores, and cannot take responsibility for anything going on in her life. The very idea that she would be driving in the next six months is inconceivable.
I wonder alot… where is she going to be in life, when she is my age? Will she be living in her grandma’s basement with her dad? Will she be able to make rent? Will she be in a codependant relationship? Will she have a decent job? Will she be able to raise good kids? Will she still resent me, or will she understand how deep my love and concern for her have always been? Will she be happy, or will it be too late?
God, my head hurts… but that’s normal. I have had a headache since I was nineteen… did I tell you I had a stroke?

Being Ten in 2008

Son: “Check out my grim reaper Bionicle creature I made, and this is his apprentice.”
Me: “That apprentice looks kind of lame.”
Son: “I know, the grim reaper hates him.”
Me: “Then why does he have him for an apprentice?”
Son: “Well, you know… he’s a temp.”

It’s just too much.

I feel like I have to get it all out… blog before there is too much to handle, but part of me fears it may already be too late. Too much this week, too too much! So I will sum up: exploding washing machine, old metrology men gabbing about moustache coloring and how to handle those wild, wiry whites… crazy killer My Pretty Pony unicorns, life-size, mind you, chasing me through the night to the angry sounds of my husband’s chronic snoring, the dizzying heights of the Principals’ academic award and the lowly depths of high school parent teacher conferences. A husband married to his new job, a pirated pirate day, and drowning in teeny tiny old lady shoes… auditors from Hell and new on-time metrics plus 2 movie projects just about round out the week… it’s just too much.

Stuff I wonder

When there are so many freak accidents, bizarre afflictions, and tragic, random deaths in the world….

why don’t any of them ever happen to my co-worker?

Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

I got this from someone else and copied it.  I claim no credit for this article whatsoever.

November 5, 2007 | Issue 43•45

 DC—According to a groundbreaking new study by the Department of Labor, working—the physical act of engaging in a productive job-related activity—may greatly increase the amount of work accomplished during the workday, especially when compared with the more common practices of wasting time and not working.

An American worker can triple his work output by working.

“Our findings are astounding: By simply sitting down and doing work, employees can dramatically increase their output of goods and services,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlotte Ponticelli, who authored the report. “In fact, ‘working’ may revolutionize the way people work.”

Perhaps even more shocking, the study reveals that not working significantly decreases worker productivity, sometimes even resulting in no work getting done at all. Similar findings were reported in the areas of avoiding work, putting off work, complaining about work instead of actually working, pretending to work, and fxcking around.

“Fxcking around is in fact detrimental to the work process,” the study reads in part.

To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking, staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks. Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.

The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to fields outside the insurance industry.

Typical workplace activities, such as shooting the shit, turn out to be less productive than not wasting time.

“Based on the study, we can safely conclude that if an employee’s job is to process expense reports, doing a crossword puzzle will result in the successful completion of that task zero times out of 100, while processing expense reports will result in the successful completion of that task 100 times out of 100,” head researcher Richard Schoemberg said.

Jon Halper, a Baltimore-area small-business owner, claims that people used to laugh whenever he told them that the key to worker productivity was not checking friends’ MySpace pages for hours at a time, but rather working.

“After this study, I feel vindicated,” said Halper, who believes working is so important that for years he has required all his employees to work throughout the day. “Hopefully, more companies will embrace the idea that employees working on things that they are supposed to do is practically essential.”

A similar study conducted at Harvard University over a period of three years attempted to determine conclusively whether working was more productive than various different subsets of not working. The results showed across the board that working is 100 percent more productive than listening to music and checking e-mails, 100 percent more productive than meandering around the office socializing with coworkers, 100 percent more productive than playing online Sudoku, 100 percent more productive than watching YouTube videos of nostalgic childhood television programming, 100 percent more productive than reading celebrity-gossip blogs while chatting with friends on Instant Messenger, 100 percent more productive than napping, and 98.2 percent more productive than not showing up to work.

Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they still do not feel comfortable working on the job.

“I love coming into work every day,” Arlington, VA sales manager Bryce Davidson said. “I get to have great conversations with [office receptionist] Sandy, challenge myself with Yahoo! TextTwist, and still have time to set my fantasy-football roster. Why would I want to ruin work by working?”

I started out looking for something romantic, but ended up settling for fart jokes…

…in the Valentine Card aisle.
And I thought to myself, ‘Wow… this is just like my life.’

I need to get out of Utah

Okay, I am seriously cranky. It’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon, and it has been PUKING down snow since just after nine this morning. I am sooo irritated; I can’t even concentrate on my job, as evidenced by my writing this blog entry instead of working…

Many of my co-workers are discussing whether or not they will be able to get home in this weather. In that, at least, I am fortunate – for while I only drive a silly little PT Cruiser (purple, with flames – my husband calls it ‘The Flaming Grape’) I live only a few blocks from work. Worse comes to worst, I could walk home if I had to. I told everyone I could host a Pirate Sleepover for those stuck here – we could play Pirates Dice, wear eyepatches and say ‘aarrgh’ a lot. We could even have a POC movie marathon.

I don’t think anybody is going to take me up on it, though.

Bugger.

The husband is home from Hawaii. He wants me to feel bad that his back got sunburned when he was snorkeling with giant sea turtles.

I don’t.

He brought me a pirate T-shirt, which was pretty cool, and some really scary purple flower grandma earrings that make me wonder what he sees when he looks at me.  I mean, purple enamel, Wal-Mart, 3 dollar specials, you know? WTF??

I hate snow.

Someone told me to try and think of it as Pirate Weather. I know she meant well. But I almost punched her.

I need to get out of Utah.

Awesome band names

So I was scrolling through my TV channel guide, and I came across a show on the Sci-Fi channel. All I could think was ‘Wow, that would be an awesome band name’.
Sounded like a really stupid show, but a band name? Totally could rock:

BLOODMONKEY.

Like, thrashmetal satan rock or something. Ever hear a word or phrase and think hey, that would be a great band name? Here are a couple others I have come up with in the past:

Cloudy Sample
Fred Mellow and the Cloudtones
Shriek of the Platypus
The Unusuals
Burnin’ Fergus
The Skinpickers

These are just a few I can think of at the moment. Of course, there is always my ultimate all-time favorite; I envision an all-girl thrash band:

Penis Envy and the Snap-On Tools.

I, of course, would be P.E. herself. Call it my need to, eh, stand out in front?
What about you? Have any great band names?

It’s a small graveyard after all….

Okay, so in my teens, I was a bit… rebellious. Adventurous. Spunky.
Alright, let’s face it - easy.
I lived in the avenues in Salt Lake City, just a block below the City Cemetery, and that was where my friends and I always went to run wild and party. Back in 1985, I was dating a certain young man, and we used to like to go there for ‘alone time’.
Well, one night we got carried away, and in a wild and crazy moment, we ended up ‘doing the deed’ between a large shrubbery and a headstone. The whole time we could hear other voices in the distance, other teens goofing around after dark.

At a critical moment, suddenly a teenage boy came hurling over the headstone, landed right in front of us, and just kept running. We often mused later if he had even seen us there, in the dark, in the rush he was obviously in… but ultimately we dismissed it. In time, I forgot all about the incident.

Years and years later, as a divorced single mom, I was out on a date with someone I had met in my apartment complex. In conversation, we discovered that we had attended the same High School. When he asked where I had lived, and I told him, he was amused at the fact that I had grown up near the cemetery where he and his friends used to love to play tag after dark.

Can you guess what’s coming?

Yes, that’s right; he told me this hilarious anecdote about one night when he was running around in the cemetery, jumped over a headstone and landed right in front of two people right in the middle of ‘the act’. The dates and locations all matched up. Apparently, we had met before.

I almost choked on my lasagna… what does one do in a situation like this? Do you pretend you’re suddenly just having a hot flash at the age of 24, or do you come clean?
Well, I’ve never been one for putting on airs… I laughed my ass off and told him the whole story from my perspective. What are the odds, honestly??

He never called me again… shoot. His loss. He should have known it would have been a sure thing.

They Walk Among Us

Some great anecdotes my mom shared:

I was at the checkout of a K-Mart. The clerk rang up $46.64 charge. I gave her a fifty dollar bill. She gave me back $46.64. I gave it back to her and told her that she had made a mistake in MY favor and gave her the money back. She became indignant and informed me she was educated and knew what she was doing, and returned the money again. I gave her the money back again…same scenario! I departed the store with the $46.64.  They Walk Among Us and Many Work Retail.  
I walked into a Mickey D’s with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a sandwich. I handed it to the girl and she looked over at a little chalkboard that said “buy one-get one free.” “They’re already buy-one-get-one-free”, she said, “so I guess they’re both free” She handed me my free sandwiches and I walked out the door.  They Walk Among Us and Many Work Retail.  
One day I was walking down the beach with some friends when one of them shouted, “Look at that dead bird!” Someone looked up at the sky and said, “Where?”  ……………They Walk Among Us!  
While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn’t want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, “Does the sun rise in the north?” When my brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she shook her head and said, “Oh I don’t keep up with that stuff.”  ……………They Walk Among Us!!  
I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, “The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” He responded, “Is that Eastern or Pacific time?” Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, “Uh, Pacific.”  ……………They Walk Among Us!  
My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car designe d to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped. She keeps it in the trunk.  ……………They Walk Among Us!  
My friends and I were on a beer run and noticed that the cases were discounted 10%. Since it was a big party, we bought 2 cases. The cashier multiplied 2 times 10% and gave us a 20% discount.  ……………They Walk Among Us!  
I couldn’t find my luggage at the airport baggage area, so I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. “Now,” she asked me, has your plane arrived yet?”  ……………They Walk Among Us!  
While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before responding. “Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don’t think I’m hungry enough to eat 6 pieces.” ……………Yep, They Walk Among Us!  
They Walk Among Us, AND they reproduce