The 1st

It's the first of November. Huzzah, or something.

T and I have decided to go head to head in a "Biggest Loser" competition that I am doomed to lose, but I'm doing it anyway. After our trip eastward, we came back and our pants didn't fit. We weighed ourselves. There was some swearing.

So I came up with the idea--Whoever loses the most weight between now and the first of the year (awesome timing. Holidays, etc) gets to pick what we do for our birthday. He wants to go to Vegas, I want to do...something. Idk, go to Vegas too. But whatever, whoever wins calls the shots on the trip.

T can lose weight like nobodys business. I, however, can pack it on like no tomorrow. Seriously. He changes 1 thing in his diet, and whammo--he's 2 pants sizes smaller. Meanwhile, I'm working out, eating no sugar, drinking gallons of water, watching carb intake etc, and I lose 2 pounds and am angry all the time. The only time I have had success losing weight was when I stopped eating. Like, seriously. When I was working night shift pastry, I didn't eat, really. Slept through the eating hours, would eat one small thing, and then go bust my ass at work. Weight just fell off me (like, 30 pounds) and it was easy! I wasn't hungry! Hooray!

But then I went back to being a human and the weight piled on like the Griswolds into a station wagon.

Whatever. We need to eat better anyway. I'm sure that part of the reason we got porky out east is all the freaking crap we ate while we were there--the salt, the processed food, the sweets, the SALT.

Mostly, I'm just tired of hating myself. Hating my body. I have seriously tried EVERYTHING (diets, exercise, cardio, weights, on and on and on) with reasonably small success. It's discouraging. I'm not asking to weigh 110 pounds again, but I would like to not be embarrassed for my husband to see me naked.

Whatever.

Also: Time to quit smoking. Time to quit smoking! I may as well punish myself on all fronts. The last time I quit I gained a shitload of weight, so I may as well do it while I'm on the super awesome diet/exercise regimen. And lose no weight. (But at least not gain any.)

Yeah. Done smoking, I think. (I think. I've said this before.) Please don't preach at me, kids, I know that it's disgusting and will kill me and all that. So is being a fat ass.

I guess now that I don't have a job to worry about, I have the time to dedicate to not slowly killing myself in 9 different ways. Not like I have anything better to do.

I mean, if I'm not contributing to society in any way, I may as well look ok doing it.

(I played the bass clarinet, Brian.)

Hall-er-weenie

So it's Halloween. We bought candy to hand out to the, like, 5 kids we expect to get this year. We didn't carve pumpkins like last year (did I post pics of T's Death Star pumpkin? Because we're dorks. Also--He was Freddy Mercury. Awesome, awesome, awesome.) and we're not dressing up as anything other than lazy ass newlyweds who can't be bothered to wear real pants after 7pm--So, ourselves.

I used to LOVE Halloween. It was my stepdad's favorite holiday, he loved to prank me and my mom (I thought it was far more hilarious than mom did, of course), to do weird stuff to my friends (rigging up a net filled with god-knows-what to a trip line over our heavily wooded, 1/4 mile long drive way that would expel it's foul contents onto whichever car tripped said line.....It was hilarious until my friend drove me home in his dad's '69 Camero and we got to wash a car at midnight) and generally had a great time, even though we never got any trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, he's not here to rally the troops (but if he decided to make a cameo, today would be a fitting day to do so.) and I really just don't care any more.

I hate all holidays, which is something that I've touched on here before. It's like a slowly descending scale--Halloween, eh. Thanksgiving, ugh. Christmas? UUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHeh. (That's the sound of apathetic hatred, which is my newest fave oxymoron.)

Whatever.

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My house is dirty. I just need to get off my ass and do something about it (the kitchen and bathrooms are clean!) but the idea of folding that much laundry makes me shudder.

Yesterday was my official last day at the bakery. Everyone (aside from the people that matter) accused me of having a 'bad attitude', which, in my brain, doesn't even scratch the surface when it comes to my feelings on that place. Whatever, I'm free, I'm unemployed. Unemployed. Sigh.

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So in the magic that is social networking, a friend of mine from long, long ago has resurfaced. We were like, best friends as kids. Sat next to me in band (this now makes me still friends with all 3 guys that were in my section in band through Jr. High and HS. Says something about the power of dorkiness.) for years. We then went through puberty, stayed friends, only now we were make-out buddies, as teenagers are wont to be. (I remember he had braces and that caused a few problems. Ha!) He played football with T, we were all friends, and this was a long, long time ago. (I thought we were all friends. More on that in a moment.)

I haven't spoken with this person for very nearly 10 years until a few days ago. When I came back to watch my class graduate from my old school (I was already all grad-u-ma-cated and stuff from my new school in the state we don't mention) I ran into him there. He had just finished his Freshman year of college, blah, blah, blah, and he said to me: "I think our friendship would really benefit if you sucked my dick."

Thus ended the friendship.

I ran into him a few years later when I was in the middle of my beautiful and tragic love affair with drugs, and he didn't recognize me.

Anyway. None of that really matters.

So he appears on my friend request list on said social networking site. I agree to be his friend. He pops up in my chat screen thing. Tells me he's married, (to a child, imo, but that's neither here nor there.) he's just quit working as a sous chef, he lives in the city. He wants to get together with T and me, wants us to meet his wife, to catch up. I think this is a fine idea.

I mention it to T.

T, as we all know, is a calm, kind person. Very logical, doesn't let his emotions sully his actions. He rarely loses his temper, never gets vindictive.

Aside from now.

I tell T, and he FLIPS OUT! It was hilarious.

"Oh, we're going to meet them. Yes. And we're going to look HOT and I'm going to show him FINALLY that I WIN and he SUCKS and you and I are MARRIED and there's nothing he can do about it and we OWN our HOME and we had a REAL wedding and we have a NICE CAR and you have an AWESOME wedding ring and YES. When does he want to do this?"

I stood there in stunned silence.

"Honey? Is there something you're not telling me? I thought you were friends too....?"

"NO! The entire time I've known him! It was always 'Anything you can do I can do better'! You're the ONLY girl I ever dated that he didn't date too! And he tried to date you! Tried! Lorded your friendship over me! Rubbed it in my face after we broke up! Tried to outshine me on the football field! Got a scholarship to a big deal college and rubbed that in my face too! A GOLF SCHOLARSHIP!!!! GOLF!"

Rather than telling T that golf is a real sport and yes, you can get college scholarships for that, that no, I didn't date this person, that I'm sorry for everything he put him through, I said nothing.

After a few minutes, I said, "Honey. Do you really want to see him again, for old times sake, like I do, or do you seriously just want to lord our life over him? Because, well. Uhm, I don't know if that's the best idea."

"WE ARE GOING. AND WE WILL LOOK HOT. And yes, we are going for old times sake, with a SIDE OF I AM BETTER THAN YOU."

So we are. Sigh.

I think this is really funny. I shouldn't, but I do. I had NO idea that these two had anything but ok-ness between them, that I had factored into this in any way.

Idk. Maybe it's not a great idea. But I actually would like to see him (especially since he's no longer asking me to fellate him in order to remain friends) and catch up. And if T comes away from it with a little more confidence, an old 'score' being settled, in his mind, what's the harm? So long as he doesn't explode at dinner or something.

Weird.

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I cried at a high school football game last night. It was T's baby brother's last game of his senior year, and they were playing the rival school. They introduced the senior band members, cheerleaders, and football players, and their parents. I remembered when that was me, sitting in cold bleachers with my friends (stand partners with my maid of honor, actually), being rowdy (it was pep band. It's part of the deal) watching my future husband play football. How different I was then, how different we all were. How my parents would come to the games to hear the band, to watch us do field routines, how I had my whole life ahead of me.

And then, watching T's mom and brother walk out onto the field arm and arm, watching him give her flowers...Yeah.

So dumb.

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In closing, this picture makes me laugh until I cry. Have fun!

Hey, ho, Way to go......State that we were visiting

So we're back.

The trip was long. Travel-wise, anyway. We went to two extra states (Kentucky and Minnesota) for plane changes and layovers, we flew over ten hours in 4 days. Ugh.

I learned something about myself while we were gone.

I am an elitist and a snob. About food.

This place--So much white food. Everything prepackaged, processed, premade. Plastic cheese, premade frozen mashed potatoes, margarine. White bread. Ice berg lettuce. Fried everything. I cooked a lot while I was there, but it was hard because if I didn't go to the store myself, I was left with weird ingredients that I'd never heard of that only resembled what I needed in color. (I was asked to make pumpkin cheesecake. I asked for maple syrup and solid pack canned pumpkin. I received Log Cabin maple flavored syrup and pumpkin pie filling (pre sweetened).) It was interesting. (Oh, and there is a dish called 'Baked Steak' that is just that--only it's steak, covered in 6 cans of undiluted full salt golden mushroom soup and then baked. To say I was thirsty is an understatement.)

I loved T's family. Hilarious, angry people who chain smoke, do crossword puzzles and drink. How T's dad fits in I'm not really sure.

Grandma was SO happy. I made her birthday cake. (We put a 9 and a 2 on it, rather than 92 actual candles. She thanked us, as she wasn't even sure that she could 'blow out two candles and keep her teeth in'.) She was so happy to see T and J, to meet me, to see our wedding photos. She showed us this giant box of pictures of all of T's siblings from birth to now that she has kept for the last 40 years, T's parents wedding photos, pictures from when T's dad and his sisters were kids growing up. She told us about when T's oldest brother was born (the only kid born there), and T's dad had to go right back to work, leaving T's mom alone with the baby. Grandma was there, she didn't want to interfere, she said, but R (the baby) did nothing but cry, and cry, and cry. Nothing T's mom did would quiet him, and she was so exhausted. So grandma went and took the baby, telling T's mom to go to bed and get some rest, not to worry. She took the baby, wrapped him as tight as she could in a blanket and sat in a rocking chair singing to him. (A lullaby she remembers, that she sang to us right then and there) Finally the baby went to sleep and she took him to his bassinet in the bedroom where T's mom was passed out asleep, fully clothed on the bed with all the lights on. She covered her with a blanket, turned out the lights, and was happy.

Then she told us about how she rocked and sang to all the kids when they were babies. How each one of those kids were blessings.

This is stuff that J and T had never heard before, that they were blessings, that their grandma sang to them and rocked them. That someone had saved pictures of them from birth and remembered each one.

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I got to see the world's largest basket. That's something. I was rather excited about the whole thing.

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There is MORE work drama, but I'm not really feeling like going into it right now. Mostly I'm just happy to be home, in my freezing cold house watching Intervention in my bathrobe.

It's the Final Countdown

i just wrote a whole post about tomorrow being my last day and telling you where were going on our trip. Blogger ate it.

see you kids tuesday!

Parasitic Dystopia

I'm awake. J is at work, T is sleeping. I'm essentially alone in the (now clean-ish) house drinking coffee and watching a show about parasites and becoming more terrified by the moment.

The message of this show, other than fear mongering, is "Don't use dirty contact lenses! You can get a horrible parasite and your eyes will fall out!" "Don't walk barefoot in subtropical climates! There's a parasite that will burrow through the soles of your feet and kill you!" "Don't get a tick, you'll die!" "Don't eat sushi, you're bound to get intestinal worms and die of peritonitis!" and all I can do is think about all the sushi I ate while barefoot in Hawaii, my eyes enveloped in potentially hazardous contact lenses.

I'm reading "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, because, you know, dystopian societies where women are considered less than men, cattle, essentially, breeding stock, is totally uplifting and just what I need right now.

My other option was to re-read "House of Leaves", which is the scariest book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Seriously. Most people I know that have read this book either couldn't finish it because it was too hard, too weird, too scary. One of my friends who read it still has nightmares about it.

I slept with the lights on, within visual range of my mom, the entire time I was reading this. I powered through it in hopes that the ending would make it end, and I was wrong.

It's a good book. Anything that successfully makes you feel something, well, it's a success.

I'm watching The Graham Norton Show, which is a show that I love more that I should.

I'm still not feeling any better about anything, really. But whatever.

I made jam last night and I don't think it's going to gel. So I made syrup. With fruit bits in. Sigh. At least I have that much more room in my freezer now.

Quitters Never Prosper

So, for the second time in my life, I quit my job only to have EVERY ONE GET LAID OFF within days/hours of my doing so, thereby removing my bid for severance pay. Sweet.

So I quit my job--and now they're closing the fucker down. Closing the cafes, closing the pastry department. Bending over and taking it in the ass. (We swore this wouldn't ever happen--our boss is too arrogant to admit he fucked up, to admit he had to quit, that he was failing, had failed, could fail. These people believe unfailingly that God Will Provide For Us Because We Are White And Rich And Christian [GWPFUBWAWARAC] and that We Can Use Those Lesser Than Us As Scapegoats To Excuse Our Idiocy [WCUTLTUASTEOI]) But they aren't really taking it in the ass, see. Sure, they lost a shitload of money, more money than T and I will make in 2 years working our asses off full time--But they are worth millions of dollars. Millions. And they incorporated the business, which means (so we're told) that if the business goes bankrupt, their personal assets are untouchable. And it makes me so. fucking. mad.

See, these people lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they aren't phased. They aren't upset, no more than you or I would be if we washed a $20 bill and it tore in the wash. Annoyed, pissed for a while, but you wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it, you wouldn't wonder where your next meal would be coming from. But if I stood to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars you can bet your life I would go down fucking fighting to keep it.

They left letters (LETTERS!) with all the cafe's employees paychecks today telling them they would be laid off as of next week. No "sorry!", no explanation, nothing. No personal meeting, just "Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out." These are people with children, husbands, families to support. Our town has NO JOBS. Seriously. We have the most economically depressed county in our state.

It's scary.

Also, they implied in the bakery meeting (yes, we 4 got an actual meeting, since we weren't being laid off) that the business being lost was.....wait for it....

My Fault.

My fault that 21 people are without jobs in this bullshit job market, shitty ass economy, just before the holidays. My fault that all these women have to go home to their families and explain why they can't afford....What? Anything, food, bills, medicine....My fault, because I quit, because I am allergic to flour. My hands blister, bleed and weep when I touch flour.

I know it's not my fault. I know that it isn't, all the girls who are being laid off say it isn't my fault. But how fucking horrible of these people to even insinuate that it was anything but their own retardation, their unwillingness to listen to their employees needs, to spend money on quality equipment or make real world business decisions.

And they're sitting pretty. Sitting fucking pretty in their goddamn mansion in the ritzy part of town, the wife of the pair with a closet that is bigger than the front half of my house (I'm serious), driving their BMW SUV and installing $50,000 worth of antique tile in their 'show' bathroom.

They don't care. Every one is better off not working for these people, every one agrees that this is the case. But it doesn't make me feel any less pissed off about the whole thing.

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One of the women I work with at the bakery--She is the kindest woman. She never has a bad thing to say about anyone--Anyone--no matter what. She's never angry, and if she is, she immediately apologises. She's super enthusiastic about learning new things at work, about being trained to do 'pretty stuff'.

This woman, she's had the hardest life. When she was 15, she was gang raped in her front yard while her parents watched game shows, oblivious. Her mother shamed her while they were at the hospital (where they only took her because she was so badly beaten, and bleeding so severely from her genitals) for how she brought this on herself, how horrible it would be if the neighbors saw. Her parents wouldn't let her press charges and made her, bandaged and shaky, hose her blood off the walk so no one would know. The doctors called a week later and said that she had stage three ovarian cancer (something that ran in her family, a fact she didn't find out until 20 years later when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and forgot she wasn't telling her daughter this) and would need a complete hysterectomy.

Which she had. They got all the cancer, but also took any hope she had of being a mom. Her own mother, rather than helping her daughter deal with not only the loss of her innocence, but the loss of her burgeoning womanhood, told her that god was punishing her for being a slut.

This woman, she grew up and married a sailor. A handsome sailor who promised her the world. They adopted three children, and appeared to be happy. The handsome sailor, he beat this woman, he raped her, he terrorized her and tried to destroy her. She finally left when he went after their daughter.

Her children, they were crack babies, abandoned, abused. These are fragile, damaged, butterfly children. The oldest turned 18 and went back to his birth mother, who put lit cigarettes out on his tiny body leaving scars he still has. He refuses to speak to his adopted mother, the woman who raised him. The middle child refuses to go to school, destroys their house if left alone, rips doors off hinges and tears holes in walls. The youngest, a daughter, she has severe emotional problems, makes chemical cocktails and bathes in them, burns and melts things, attacks other kids at school, is sexually promiscuous and hasn't even started her period yet. She's lied and called CPS on her mom for not getting her way. This woman, she does everything she can think of to help her babies, to make sure they know they are loved, to not lose them to drugs, mental illness, jail, and she is losing.

This woman, she works two jobs. She works harder than anyone I know, she smiles and laughs and thinks of every one around her first. She is so happy to see you when you arrive, so sad to see you go when you leave. She hugs you, tells you how smart and beautiful you are, how talented. She is genuine, loving, caring. She is never bitter, never sad. She is stronger than anyone I have ever met.

And our bosses, they treat her like shit. Like she is stupid, less than them, like her needs and life don't matter. They berate her for taking time off to be with her kids. And it makes me SO MAD.

They have so much, and all they want is more. They tell us that it is "By the Grace of God" that they have done well, that if we would "Come to the Flock" we would prosper as well. Bullshit.

They told one of my coworkers that she deserves to be poor and unhappy because she is gay.

They stole from JZ, A and me. And lied when we caught them.

I feel no guilt for quitting. I feel no guilt for no longer associating with these people.

But I do feel bad leaving my coworkers, my friends. Knowing that their working lives will not change in the slightest, they may get worse, if anything. They will be lied to, berated, made to feel bad about themselves every day.

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My boss looked through my cell phone today. Read my text messages. And didn't understand why I was enraged, tore my phone out of his hand, snapped at him, yelled.

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My bosses accused me of lying about my allergy. Told me they would fight me if I applied for unemployment.

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I'm tired. There's so much more. So much more that these people have done.

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I feel bad worrying about money. If we were that bad off, I wouldn't be quitting, right? I would be powering through this shit in the name of financial security. Every one who hasn't been laid off is. Maybe my boss is right--Why am I better than my coworkers are?

So many people I know are dealing with so much bad. Poverty, illness, terminally ill children, mental health issues. It makes me feel like a big fat shit for worrying that we won't pay off our windows on time, that our carpet makes T sick and we can't afford to get rid of it. I went to see my friends in the southerly metropolis, and I was jealous. Jealous of their life, their house, their cars and jobs and college educations. Jealous of their town, their fucking wall color.

It's disgusting, my feeling like this. I have more than so many--My wanting more, it makes me just like my horrible bosses, in my mind. It's disgusting.

Well....

I just quit my job.

I'm happy to be free of the fundies and their insanity, but scared because there aren't any jobs here and we're pretty damn poor. T supports my decision, but I can tell he isn't happy that we're going to be down 1/3 of our monthly income.

We will be fine. If I have to clean toilets for rich people again, so be it. We will be fine.