The Bad Seed

I am the Bad Seed...

The Godfather got a review for his non-existent client, but he didn't get a complete one. I made one phone call trying to track down the missing information and then gave up and did the best I could. He should consider himself lucky.

Today has been an extremely long day. It's 5:19 and I'm thinking about going to bed.

To start things off on the wrong foot (literally), Sweet Pea would not put on her sock and shoes when it was time to leave for school this morning. She has been getting worse about listening, so I've decided that it's time for serious consequences without warnings until she can get her act together, so this morning I sent her to school with bare feet. (I did pack her shoes and socks--I'm not that mean-- and I think The Husband let her put them on in the car.) Last weekend she was one fit away from missing both a birthday party and a Halloween party. I know that something needs to be done, but I hate when this stuff happens in the morning and then I go off to work feeling like total crap.

Continuing my crap-tastic day, when I got to work, a review that had been done and bound and crossed off my giant list when I left yesterday had been un-done by Mr. X. It took over an hour to fix this morning and that was an hour that I didn't have. Because I am Super Triangle Girl, I fixed that review, cobbled something together for The Godfather, and finished another review for Mr. X. There is no end in sight... This is my life from now until Thanksgiving.

My rebellion against The Godfather was fun today*. It makes me want to do things like that more often. When I was working for The Man I used to do things to irritate him on a regular basis. I'll have to finish the missing pieces of that review at some point, but I was glad to not bend over backwards today.

Now I'm going to shred my pork that has been cooking all day in the crock pot, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. For everyone.

*It's the little things that we Bad Seeds enjoy so much.

I'll get you my pretty...and your lavender sweater too!

Before I begin, take some time to enjoy these Awkward Halloween Photos.

I am really irritated at The Godfather. He is rarely in the office, so usually I am just bothered by the burning sensation of his powerful cologne as he walks past my triangle, but now he is on my list.

It's review season in my triangle. I think I spend about 75% of my time working on reviews, which is boring, repetitive, and frequently nerve-wracking work. I provide reviews for three people, and while this quarter I have done a better job of scheduling, I'm still working within a really tight time frame. Putting reviews together takes up a very small space in my brain, so this morning while I was working I was thinking about how I miss thinking--critical thinking. I don't get to problem-solve any more and I miss that. (I was also practicing vocal runs from a Handel piece that I've been working on--there was lots of extra room in my head.) I've always had an extremely good memory, which applied to work and the rest of my life, but I feel like that's slipping away because my brain is used so rarely. I'm not sure how to tell my employer that I can do so much more. I overhear phone calls and want to say "call on me--I know the answer," and I do try and work in my answers as much as possible, but frequently people just forget I'm there. Or see me as their review-machine.

This brings us to The Godfather. He needs a review tomorrow and he's not going to be very happy, but I don't think that he is going to get it. In our system, the client that he's wanting me to review doesn't exist. I've reminded him of this several times--if I don't have the data, I can't pull the review stuff. Right now we are basically out of time for most of the pieces. This is so frustrating because I don't want it to reflect badly on me when it's not my fault. I'm not really sure how to tattle tale on one of my superiors. I've never been late with a review (frequently having to work late to put them out), but I can't do stuff without him in the office and HE'S NEVER THERE*.

ARGH!!!

Also today, The Godfather was wearing a lavender sweater that looked like it came from the ladies department at Macy's. What is up with lavender? First the Department of Labor is using it for their slides, then The Godfather is wearing it.

Watch out for tomorrow--there may be some kind of show down. I'd bet on me though--especially against men who wear lavender.

*Yes, I did mean to yell there.

Almost Famous?

(The alternative title for this post was "Ghost Whisperer.")

Today was a Monday Morning Meeting worth getting up for. The meeting started out as usual, however I was enjoying it more because Mr. X, Guy, and Mole were all out which means that I actually got a seat at the table, instead of hovering around the filing cabinet while sitting on my desk chair. Towards the end of the meeting, things got interesting--Al Gore proposed that The Big Cheese write a book. From the conversation, it sounded like this was the re-proposing of an old idea, but we had a full discussion about it. The Big Cheese already has 9 chapters outlined. The book, will of course, be ghost written, since The Big Cheese is much to busy and important to write his own book. (If anyone is wondering, you can charge $1,000 a chapter to ghost write someone's business book--I'm thinking of moonlighting in that field.)

Let me say that The Big Cheese is exceptionally talented in his field and very well respected. He speaks at national events and works harder to improve his sales process than anyone I have ever known. I have been blown away with the quality of the work that comes out of BCFG, however no one is going to buy this book. In fact, I think that people will make fun of him, like I make fun of the guy who came up with this great idea...



















Ask yourself, would a guy wearing an orange vest that says "401(K) ANSWERS" strike you as a trusted advisor? What would you think if someone wore one during a sales presentation? They would certainly show the decision makers that they are unique, however in this instance, I think "unique" is a nice way of saying "crazy." I would laugh anyone wearing this out of the room, yet I am considering getting it for Mr. X for Christmas. He would appreciate the ironic humor, which is why I can work for him without scratching my eyes out.

Anyway, I like The Big Cheese. I'm even starting to admire him a little, but he can't (ghost) write a book. That's just silly.

Finally--happy birthday to my bed resting friend. This one's for you--I hope you liked it.

(Did anyone notice that I didn't use any footnotes--weird.)

I've been doing this wrong my whole life.

I was having a crap night and then I watched this...



Make sure to click the "CC" button because it's in Finnish.

On a side note, I've been reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" books which are translated from Swedish. Because I can be an ignorant American, I can pretend that Sweden and Finland are the same.

You can't steal babies.

Today Will's wife brought in baby Juliette* to the office. She is two weeks old and weighs less than Sweet Pea did at birth. I can't remember the last time I held a baby that small. I want a tiny baby, probably not to keep, but just to borrow for a little while. I had to remember that you aren't allowed to steal babies. Also, they know both where I live and work.

In other news, one of my very good friends had this posted on his Facebook page today:

I think this is fabulous!


*No, Juliette is not her name. But since I named her father after William Shakespeare, I thought Juliette was an appropriate code name.

Sticker Shock

Tomorrow is school picture day for Sweet Pea and tonight I took her to Justice to pick out a new outfit. This was our first trip to Justice and I'm hoping that such shopping trips will be limited to once a year, or we will no longer be able to pay our mortgage. I knew their clothes were expensive, but I was not prepared for the price tags--I spent more on her picture day outfit of pants and a top than I spend on most outfits for myself. What was killing me inside was that last week I went to this giant used children's clothing sale and got 4 outfits and a dress (with all but one thing brand new with the Gymboree tags still on them--what's up with that*) for less than I spent today on one outfit. I guess it's good I got all the rest of her clothes at that sale, or we would need to move to a nudest colony, and I think our climate is too cold for that. We did get two "save $25 when you spend $50" cards from Justice, so I'll use that for Christmas, since she picked out about 50 more things that she'd like. I am thankful for school uniforms again, so there's not the pressure to wear clothes like this every day for school.

In other clothing news; I wore my suit to our workshop this morning and must have past inspection, since no one told me to leave. Once again K's clothes baffled me. She was wearing gray pants (pants, not even what I would call a trouser), a top of some kind and this weird black and gray oversized short sleeved cardigan along with her standard 6+ inch crazy platform heels. She did not get the "navy blue pinstriped suit" memo. In addition to being the hall monitor, I'm the workplace clothing monitor, and I wonder why no one has ever said anything to her about her clothes. She's the first person people see when they walk in the door and her outfits are crazy at least 80% of the time. Other than that, the workshop went well and I am exhausted. I am ready for a normal day of work tomorrow.

Sweet Pea had another violin lesson today and it seems like things have started to click. She's got the notes down for about half of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and today she started to learn the rest of the Suzuki rhythmic variations which she picked up really quickly. Honestly, today was the first lesson when I didn't think "Oh God, what have I done?"


*I am extremely thankful for the new clothes with the tags still on them at used clothes prices, but I can't figure them out. Who has size 8 and 9 clothing that they forget to have their kids wear? I guess some people have that much money and that many clothes that they don't notice when stuff goes unworn, or they are too lazy to return gifts that they don't like. Either way, good for me.

Do I dress that badly? Wait...maybe don't answer that...

I'm still going to write about being the hall monitor. I haven't forgotten, I just haven't felt like writing it lately. I feel bad too, because one of my very dear friends is on bedrest and I think I should be writing things to amuse her.

That brings us to today in my triangle, which is hopefully a little bit amusing. Tomorrow is BCFG's big fall breakfast workshop thing. We have 147 guests that have responded and the Department of Labor is one of the featured speakers. (That sounds a lot cooler than it really is, as you can ask the Department of Labor, the IRS and the Social Security Administration to speak at any number of events and they'll do so for free, as long as you give them enough notice.) This workshop is a big deal, and Mr. X and I have been working on it for a long time. I am kind of confounded by this, but when we received the Department of Labor's PowerPoint slides they were on a lavender background. Lavender? Seriously? You're the Department of Labor, one of the most feared entities in the government, and you're going to present with lavender slides? One of my jobs for the workshop was to completely rework the DOL's presentation, first changing the color scheme to BCFG's navy and gray and then editing a lot of the content down so it flowed and would fit in 45 minutes. The lady from the DOL is happy with what I did (I was a little worried that she would be really attached to both her lavender and her content--I got rid of a lot of her clip art and you never know how attached people are to their pictures of stacks of dollar bills). The reworked slides are my gift to her.

Anyway, so I've been reworking slides and then for the past few days I've been putting together all the booklets and other stuff. Yesterday I was at FedEx/Kinkos 4 times because the logo on the cover pages they were printing looked all smeary. Today, with the help of Mama X (which was so appreciated), I put together 120 booklets and I now have Kinko's Shoulder*; a repetitive injury caused by our binding machine.

You may remember that BCFG hosted another workshop this past spring, which I wrote about in this post called "Bitter Pants". To summarize, after working on the previous workshop I did not get to attend, although K did, even though the subject matter has nothing to do with her job, she did not do any work for the set up, and I asked to attend. This time around I decided that I was going, so instead of asking if I could help out, I said "what time should I be there tomorrow?" Even with that direct question Mr. X still had to think about it and then asked me if I wanted to go. I thought that was kind of a stupid question, but I answered in the affirmative.

After that was settled, Mr. X proceeded to tell me that everyone wears "the full regalia"** and the "blue pinstripe suits" to the workshop. I answered that I wasn't planning to wear jeans and a t-shirt, however he did not laugh. First, this pissed me off, as I do know how to dress myself and have been meeting clients for over 12 years. However, now that some time has gone by I've gotten really insecure and am wondering if everyone in the office thinks that I dress badly. I think that I dress regular, but maybe women are supposed to wear sequined tank tops and crazy high heels, like K does. If this is the expected dress code, then I will not be following it. I no longer own a "blue pinstripe suit," so I'm hoping that my black pantsuit with a white blouse will suffice. Right now I need to get out the sticky roller thing and make sure I'm dog-hair free for tomorrow.

I feel like I used an excessive amount of commas in the post. Thoughts?

UPDATE: The white blouse is out, because it has a zillion buttons which lay weird with my suit jacket. Instead, I will be wearing a plum colored ruffled tank, with matching necklace, so I will be all kinds of fancy. Take that!

*A new aliment coined by my bedresting friend

**I'm 99% sure that's the term he used--I should have written it down

TEN!

My tenth wedding anniversary with the Husband is coming up on Thursday. As with most couples I know, this has not always been an easy ten years, yet here we are. I read this excellent article on marriage today--a lot of these thing are things I wish people would have told me a long time ago.

In other news, we have a kitty who is living in our daisy patch out front. I have been feeding her because she is really skinny. Yesterday she finally let me touch her and you can feel all her bones. I have almost convinced the Husband to adopt her. We are worried that she'll die if she has to live outside all winter.

My Hall Monitor-like qualities are getting even worse in my triangle and tomorrow I'll write you a detailed report with K's comings and goings.

Now it's time to feed my outside cat.