Superfluous Baloney

I am in the absolute best mood today, despite being at work. I just had one of my favorite lunches (Mexican grill style burrito with tasty brewed Iced Tea) The weather is absolutely beautiful, blue skies, mid 60s and SUN SUN SUN. I never realized how much the weather impacts my mood. My mom and I discussed it some years back when she moved to Missouri from CA to live with me for a short time. She lived there from October to April, not the best weather months for the Midwest. When we were making our trek back across the US to move her to Neveda, she said to me, "You know, I just need sunshine. I'm not a happy person without it." Well it seems, ditto for me. There has not been a sunny day for me in weeks as I have traveled between TN and Pennsylvania, or Rainsylvania as the locals call it. There is just something about the way it warms you from the inside out and reeks of all things positive. The Vitamin D just soaks into you and instantly makes life seem lighter. I could lie in the sun for hours and just let it bake me like apple turnover. (Bah, skin cancer.) It's like the sun just flips a little switch in me and I suddenly feel more comfortable in my skin, more like myself under it's rays. It also makes me want to go shopping...go figure.

It's supposed to be like this all weekend, so I am stoked!

I do alright with holidays away from home until they get thrown in my face and I have to actually acknowledge they exist. As I was traveling back home this evening I was in fact forced to come to the conclusion that we are now rapidly approaching the holiday season and I will be alone for the better part of it. Bugger. This is not my first holiday season spent miles and miles away from home and I do just fine as long as I am allowed to ignore the season's existence all together. But there is always someone or something that makes it personal, bringing it all home and slapping you in the face with it. Today it was the area just beyond the security check point at the airport. I flew back in from Pennsylvania (yes, again) this evening and as I left the gate area and headed to the baggage claim locale I was met with a sea of people all waiting, not so patiently, with expectant looks on their faces. As I faced the ocean of anxious people I had to acknowledge the fact that none of them were there for me. They were all waiting for a glimpse of some loved one that have traveled far and wide to spend this holiday with them, to celebrate one of the number one best reasons to over eat: Thanksgiving. Up until this point I could explain away a lot of the other tell tale signs of a holiday. Excessive traffic: a brash of newly licensed teenagers must be clogging the highways, recenlt released in Daddy's new Caddie. Pictures of pilgrims and turkeys: New "back to our roots" decorating scheme the stores are promoting this season. Excessive amounts of canned pumpkin and yams lining the grocery store shelves: Yams and pumpkins must have been listed in a new all yam and pumpkin diet craze circling the Internet. But this, this caught me off guard. I must have been weary from the work and travel of the day and could not come up with an adequate explanation for the significant increase of expectant faces that met me at security gates, such as a new kind of Mardi Gras celebrated in airport waiting areas across the globe (yeah, now it comes to me). The reality of it was only emphasized further when I was the only one on the shuttle bus that takes you to the long term parking lot. Everyone else was being picked up by someone(s), I was trekking to my car alone, to drive myself home. Alone, except for the dog. {Insert disdainful attempt at sad puppy dog eyes here.} Don't get me wrong, several people have invited me to spend time with them and their families this holiday season. The choice to be alone is one I made, not for lack of alternatives. But there are two main reasons why I decline all invitations at the holidays and spend them alone instead: 1)Holidays now remind me of how holidays once were, before my parents split up. (They were married until I was 21.) Which puts me in a piss poor mood, as I reflect on how they once were compared to how they are now. Through all of my growing up we spent Thanksgiving together as a family in combination with the rest of the extended family, aunts and uncles and cousins and...yeah you get the picture. Now my mother is no longer present for those gatherings and in her place is my dad's wife. Ick. This also means my mom is usually home, alone with no one. I have to split my time between the two places and I hate it and it makes me damn cranky and ruins the whole thing. It is just wrong seeing her there, where my mom should be. 2)Being with other people and their families makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I feel out of place. And it serves as yet another reminder that I have none of my own family nearby to be with. Which also puts me in a piss poor mood. Not to mention a bulk of the invites a single gal like myself gets during this time of year are out of pity, not because people truly expect you to accept. I can honestly say I prefer to be alone on these days. I am usually in a rotten mood anyway and why subject perfectly hospitable people to that? And I can also assure you I seriously lack any interest in faking a good mood just so I don't have to be alone. Although I think I am mostly an optomistic person, I prefer to sulk in my own self pity on these occasions, but thank you kindly for thinking of me. But don't distress. I have a plan. My plan is to someday establish my own family and with them create our own wonderful traditions and family memories together to eclipse the old ones. But keep in mind, however, none of this was written in an attempt to gain pity or sympathy from anyone. I am fairly content actually with completely ignoring holidays until the aforementioned plan takes effect. Just need to get better at blocking out their existance in the meantime. Perhaps avoiding the airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year would help.:)

I had a much better post in mind for tonight but its being overran by my irritation and disdain for a situation at work right now. Some little peckerhead twice my age got written up for doing something he definitely knew was against the rules and because the management team I currently work with is a bunch of spineless wimps, I was asked to sit in when they delivered it to him. Well he responded exactly as we had anticipated feigning ignorance and was indignant to say the least. To say the most he was also being a closeminded, unprofessional asshole through the bulk of the meeting. Finally I got sick of the manager pussy footing around the issue and jumped in, with both feet. I don't usually allow hourly associates to get a rise out of me, but this guy was kind of ticking me off. (Did that sound haughty? If so, it's not how I intended it. What I mean is as a manager, you can't afford to get angry or display any kind of emotion. It is imperative that you remain completely composed and in control in order to maintain the upperhand.) At one point I let out a frustrated chuckle, one of those small quick laughs that was obvious it was either I am going to laugh or scream at you, better to choose laugh. Kind of like when you smile while saying something saying something through your teeth. This motherfucker calls up the CEO of the company and takes it completely out of context and tells him that I just blatantly laughed at him. There is something you have to understand about the new region I took over with my transfer. It is where the company began and we have forklift drivers that have been with the company for 20 years. They knew the CEO when he was just a manager and the EVP of HR the same way. So they don't hesitate to pick up the phone to complain to either one of them. What pisses me off is the Executives fucking taking the hourly associate's side. Yes, it is great that a CEO would take time out of their day to speak with a frontline associate, HOWEVER, when they blatantly take that associate's side without even consulting with the manager or hearing them out that it total unadulterated BS. Don't get me wrong here, I don't expect them to automatically assume I am right because I am a manager and the complainer an hourly. But what I do expect is to be given the opportunity to explain myself prior to an investigation being launched behind my back. That is the next piece of this that is really sticking in my craw. The EVP of HR fucking called the manager and the supervisor that were there when we gave the write up and asked them if I laughed. They did not come to me and speak to me first and then follow up with the others, they went to them and then to me. Maybe I sound prideful when I say this, but that really pissed me off because I lost face with the sup and the manager. It appears as if I acted in appropriately and unprofessionally. Maybe it was not the best choice of actions, but it was better than losing my cool. I did not even have the opportunity to explain myself. I was not asked when happened, I was just told that I would go to the associate and "smooth things over." Maybe I could stomach this all a little easier if it had not been the second time this had happened to me since the move. Yes, that's right. I have been here a whole two months and this has now happened twice. The first time I did absolutely nothing wrong. I even told the EVP of HR what I was going to do and came back later and told her how it went. But the hourly associate involved called the EVP and before I knew it the whole situation was swooped out of my hands and overturned. WTF?? I did exactly what I said I was going to do and got your blessing on it. And then the hourly associate calls you and I look like a fucking idiot again? It's total bullshit and it makes me want to sit in the background like a fucking wallflower and remain completely unengaged. Fuck trying to get this region to accept the new direction the company is going and trying to get them to embrace the new mindset of management they need in order to evolve and survive in this era. FUCK IT. I will sit back and collect a paycheck and handle the pathetic remedial administrative tasks that come along with this bullshit position and just sit back and keep my mouth shut when the next personnel issue arises, because obviously you are not paying me to have a fucking brain, let alone use it. I will just fucking take my lumps as they are dished out to me even if they are completely fucking unwarranted. At least I will sit and take it until I have three years of managerial experience to list on my resume, at which time I will tell you all to fucking bite me and walk out the door, after securing a much higher paying position with another company of course. Come on now, I'm not a total fucking moron. ;)

I hate not knowing what the other is thinking, where you stand, what you should do, what your next play should be. Should be easy, right? Just be you. Do what comes to mind. But no. Not that simple; it's a game. One must strategize and plot and ponder each of the variables, take them all into consideration and contemplate the outcome/consequences affiliated with each potential move on the checkerboard. After taking all that into account you can gingerly, delicately, hesitantly, make your way to the next square and then brace yourself for the impact and the reaction. No reaction? Shit, back to square one. Now you have to contemplate whether you should risk another move, stick your neck out one more time knowing damn well that now the odds of getting it whacked off have increased significantly and are no longer stacked in your favor, hell it's not even 50/50 anymore. After awhile of partaking in this well choreographed mamba of back and forth, side to side, swaying with the beat, you begin to wonder when the music, the game will stop all together and you will lose any opportunity to make another move or dance another jig in time with theirs. You can do all this, all the sitting by, watching, trying to predict what will happen next, analyzing every goddamn thing trying to understand what has changed, what could have been done differently. Or, you can get up shut the fucking music off and throw the whole damn game board across the room and walk away. You made it along just fine before this most recent match started and you can make it along after it is gone.

Your move, by the way.

Alright everybody stop for a moment. All eyes on me...focus....foucs...focus. Big news people, I made a friend. Yes, me, all by my little self without the assistance of school or church or work, made a real life friend. This is big stuff, earth shattering even. Okay, I'll stop geekin' it up now. :)

But I did! The nutritionist I see moved to Nashville last May and has zero friends herself. So with each one of my sessions we have talked more and more and finally decided we should go out and do something this weekend to get both of our asses out of the house. Good news for me since I am not sure I could handle yet another evening spent in front of the computer wishing I could talk to a real live and in living color person somewhere distracting and maybe even fun. Just to make it uber girlie we are going to go shopping first and then heading out in downtown Nashville.

Would you believe though that there is a little bit of nervousness mixed in with the excitement? What if I can't remember how to handle myself in public outside of work? What if I can't remember that it's okay to make sexual innuendos and cuss like a sailor because I don't work with any of these fools. I am pretty sure it will all come back fairly naturally especially with the help of a few strategically chosen alcoholic beverages. I think it is finally dawning on me what a reclusive super dork I have become in the last several months and now I'm worried people will actually notice. Eh, screw it. Who am I trying to kid? I am a big dork, but I am also quite the charmer when I want to be. Surely it's like riding a bike, you can't possibly forget how to flirt your ass off when it is innate, right? I guess we will find out tonight!