Memoirs Of J

I’m sitting here watching Coming to America in hopes that it will help me relax.  There’s nothing better than hearing Eddie Murphy’s “Zamundan” accent while gawking at his acid-washed-too-tight-in-the-crotch jeans.  True to the spirit of the late 80’s, no doubt.

I’ve been feeling all frazzled and exhausted the last several days.  Why?   Well, potty training this kid is no picnic.  Last week I decided to throw all caution to the wind and allow her to wear her big girl undies freely around the house.  No diapers, no pull-ups.  Just a thin sheath of princess-printed cotton to protect my floors and furniture from her urine and feces.

I have to say, I’ve been pleasantly surprised for the most part.  She’s been pretty good about letting me know she’s got to pee and has mostly been able to stay dry, save a handful of accidents.  The problem is pooping.  She is totally averse to pooping in a toilet.  She’ll tell me she’s got to go, sit on the toilet for, oh, 20 minutes farting before she decides she doesn’t actually need to go.  I, being sick of sitting on the ledge of the bathtub watching (and smelling) her fart for 20 minutes, allow her to put her pants back on and leave the restroom.

Well what do you know – within several minutes her bowels liberate into her big-girl undies.  I mean every single time without fail.  She poops in her pants.  And it is god-awful to have to grasp a turd out of someone’s butt and keep a grip on it (through underwear of course) while trying to maneuver the panties off without spilling or dripping any contents.  It sucks enough with a diaper but actual underwear are way worse to deal with for #2’s.

The worst part is she knows that she is supposed to do it in the toilet and will tell you that it belongs in the toilet.  But when the time to poo comes, she runs off to dump a load in her pants before meekly asking me to wipe her butt.

Bribery isn’t working (cookies, stickers, etc).  Threats aren’t working (you’ll have to wear a diaper again!).  Praise isn’t working (what a big girl!).  I am only hoping that she’ll soon decide it doesn’t feel good to keep turds in her panties but who knows when that will be.  At this point she doesn’t really seem to mind as much as you’d expect.

I saw a commercial for how match.com is now offering social mingling events in select towns.  I find this totally confusing.  Aren’t the people using these sites the ones who do not like social  / group gatherings in the first place, thus necessitating that they meet someone in a non-traditional way?

I used the internet to meet my husband and the reason is that I was (am still) not extroverted or outgoing enough to go to, say, the public and meet someone randomly.  And even if as an introvert you somehow force yourself to do this then you’re only going to disappoint whomever you might meet when they find out you really are not the “social butterfly” you  portrayed yourself as.  Because let’s face it – asshole people automatically dislike and have contempt for anyone who is not outgoing and talkative when coming into their group.  Which, to me, is really confusing in itself because why would you be that big of a jerk to require a newly met person to be the one who has to work to impress you enough to be deemed worthy.  It’s always seemed so prejudiced to me how this works in many cases.  If you are so superior being an extrovert, then you should be the welcoming one.

I don’t know… I guess I’m probably in the minority but I’d honestly prefer to hang  out by myself reading  a book or something if the alternative is a group larger than 4-5 people.  I mean it’s weird but even if it was like 15 people I knew really well and liked hanging out with individually, I don’t want to be around them all at once.   It’s not “fright” or “shyness.”   It’s just emotionally draining and not enjoyable.

I heard a saying that if you can’t sleep at night, it’s because you are awake in someone else’s dream (roughly paraphrased).  So… either that’s true and I am extremely popular and thought about by …oh like tens of people or so (excuse me while I try to suppress my cynical-laden chokes), or I am having a new bout of anxiety and / or depressed worrying.  Yay!  I really thought I was over this shit and really have no reason to be either anxious or depressed, yet alas, here we are and I can’t pop zolofts like skittles or eagerly chug entire (or even any) bottles of wine at the moment.  Fabulous.   You know, I think if it weren’t for, um how to say this – people – yeah if it weren’t for other people I think  I would be pretty calm in general.  Unfortunately here we are with no realistic or effective way to deal with my troubling thoughts du jour, so I’m just trying to prevent myself from thinking at all by partaking in worthwhile activities such as watching Teen Mom or Hard Core Pawn.  I figure these programs must be paralyzing my mind at least a little bit.  I mean Amber’s storyline alone is enough to make any reasonable person self-lobotomize, right?  So what’s the matter with me… that’s the mystery.

I am struggling to find any time to write new blogs lately. This kid keeps staying up later and later, or I’m busy with any number of other things (like cleaning, picking up after J, constant dishes, oh and cleaning on top of more cleaning).
To think I used to actually enjoy cleaning…
Anyway, a couple thoughts before I go to bed. I hate when people don’t keep hand soap in their kitchens. Kind of skeezes me out a little bit. I also hate going into a public bathroom stall and realizing that someone just took a dump in that very stall.

If there was an award for the person with the most sensitivity to bad odors, I think I would win it… easily.

Tonight, J shuffled over to me with a pained expression on her face to tell me that she “tooted, then pooped” in her pants.  Not really news to me since any conscious person within a 40 foot perimeter would have not only cringed at the faint grunts she was making in the corner, but would have sniffed the wafts of horror that were shooting out of her ass at that moment.

I knew she had filled her pants before she told me, of course. I was just waiting for the grunts to cease before doing anything about it.  You’d think that because we’re in the process of toilet training I would have rushed her to the pot and let her at least partially shit into it.  That would be reasonable, except last time I tried that I ended up catching a warm mushy turd in my bare hand.  I’m a little more cautious now, is all I’m saying.

After she told me she was done, I told her to meet me in the bathroom since it was time for a bath anyway.  I grabbed a pile of wipes, sighed, and tried to prepare myself by taking a couple of slow deep breaths in the hallway.  She was lying down on her towel waiting patiently for me to remove the mess.  I took her socks off, then her pants.  I looked at her and said, “You know, you really need to start telling me before you poop so you can sit on the potty.”  She just laughed and said, “No, silly!”

Sighing again, I peeled back the adhesives on both sides of her diaper.  I handled it well at first, despite that enourmous black chunky spattering weighing down the diaper and sticking all over her cheeks in smelly gobs.  I was holding my breath but couldn’t hold it for long enough.  I fumbled around with my left hand trying to pull my shirt up over my face, while holding her legs up with my other hand to keep her from spreading this atrocity all over her Minnie Mouse towel.

It’s really hard to get a v-neck shirt to stay put on your face.  By ‘really hard,’ I mean impossible.  By this time my eyes are watering and I’m audibly gagging and heaving.  She’s giggling as I hastily swipe at her shit-covered ass with a fistful of butt wipes.  She starts mocking me by fake coughing and fake gagging.  I am not amused but am too focused on keeping my dinner down to admonish her for doing this.

After a couple of swipes, I deemed it ‘clean enough,’ wrapped up the defiled diaper and stumbled out of the room.  My vision was clouded in tears and vomit was on the cusp of exploding out of my throat.  After the toxic waste was safely contained in the diaper genie, I took another really deep slow breath and sat down to gain my composure and make sure I wasn’t going to barf all over myself.  This took maybe three minutes, then I headed back to the bathroom  to finish getting her undressed and in the tub.

When I entered the room I found that she had taken it upon herself to hop into the tub, shirt and all.  “What are you doing?” I said, “We don’t wear clothes in the bath!”  She of course responded by giggling and calling me silly.

I was chatting with my friend C recently about an upcoming ‘family getaway’ she is basically being forced to attend.  Her in-laws had the brilliant idea of renting a cabin in some remote area up north (read: they will be stuck there exclusively) for an entire week!  She understandably is not looking forward to it, mainly due to the fact that she is highly introverted and has two young children who are not easy to cart all around as it is, let alone for several hours in the car to drive up north.

So of course we are commiserating for awhile, then she starts telling me about this email she received from her MIL that was addressed specifically to her and the other daughter-in-law regarding how she is giving everyone food assignments (what to bring) and that they will be allocated to prepare the meals on certain days.  Uh, what?  I of course agreed with C that this should have been addressed to the actual sons.  She then told me how nobody there likes her cooking, as evidenced by when she’s asked to bring something to a holiday or whatever and nobody touches it.  I don’t offend easily, but I agree with her here- that’s offensive.  If you ask someone specifically to bring a pie, for example, then expect her pie to be the one served.  Do not go ahead and make your own pie regardless so now there’s too much pie and nobody is touching the pie she made (in vain).  It’s retarded.

This conversation led me to bring up a bigger point, however, and that is that it should not be the girls doing all this extra shit.  It should be the MIL’s own sons being asked to do these things.  Likewise, I would expect that if they were going with her family vs his, then she would be the one expected to help with the cooking or cleaning or whatever; not the husband in this case.

It’s just weird.  I mean if I am at someone else’s house I will not be doing their dishes nor will I be cooking anything in their kitchen.  It’s not my house, I am not familiar with where things are or go and it’s just an awkward situation all around.  Meanwhile, all the guys scurry off and nobody thinks twice about that.  No, it’s rude if you possess a vagina and are not washing up dishes after everyone else like some kind of 19th century maid.  If you have a penis, you are incapable of being expected to wash a dish.  All the passive-aggressive thoughts and glares are cast towards the vaginas while the penises are sleeping on the couch.  Um, no.  Not gonna fly.

I can only assume it’s some weird generational thing.    I really don’t think I will take this position when I am old enough to have married kids.  If I were hosting some event at my house, then I would fully expect my own children to be pitching in cooking or cleaning, not their spouses.  Male or female, I don’t care.  A son can cook or clean or vacuum just as well as a daughter, and conversely a daughter should know how to mow a lawn, for example.

I guess I just think of it like this – your family, your house, you’re doing  it.  I don’t believe in the concept of a ‘woman’s place,’ especially if that place equals the kitchen.  Especially for someone like me who really doesn’t care about having huge meals or varieties.  I’d be happy with serving hot pockets on paper plates.  Formality and generational traditions just do not sit well with me.

It’s totally nuts and has bothered me since I was very young.  I remember going to my grandparents for a holiday or whatever and after the meals, my dad and uncles would all retreat to the pool table leaving their spouses to clean up after the restaurant-sized food preparation that they necessitated because they eat like famished elephants!  Well that’s some bullshit right there.

So good luck to you,  C.  I hope you give a good talking to B before you get there so he knows what’s up 😉

Last Friday evening I had to make a trip to CVS to buy a personal…eh…feminine item.  Since I am an immature tard, I felt compelled to buy other items to go along with the personal item so it wouldn’t be so obvious to the cashier (that I will never see again) that I was at CVS for a very specific reason.

Mistake.

Being cheap and not really needing to buy anything per se, I decided that I should just grab a couple of snacks and call it good.  So I’m in the snack aisle perusing the cookies when I was interrupted by a very rotund, greasy man.  I’d say 40ish and very obese sporting a dirty too-small gray shirt with grease stains, ragged jeans, and disgusting oily unkempt hair.

“Must be movie night, huh?” he inquired.

“Uh, yep.  Sure,” I replied as I awkwardly looked around.

“I do the same thing. I could eat a whole box in a night.  That kind is really good,” referring to the Chips Ahoy I was about to grab.

I laughed uncomfortably and thought to myself, ‘yeah no shit – it’s pretty clear you eat continuously.’

“My name’s Chris, by the way.”

“Oh hi, yeah nice to meet you,” I said without even looking at him.  I started playing with my wedding ring thinking it would make this creeper disappear.

Nope.  He kept on jabbering about who knows what.  I wasn’t really listening at all at this point. I grabbed a pack of cookies and and since he was still blabbing I muttered something like “well, have a good one,” and simply walked out of the aisle into the next aisle.  We were out of milk so I wanted to grab a gallon on the way out.

Well of course this creep intercepts me in front of the refrigerators and says some dorky thing like “fancy meeting you again.”  I said nothing at this point and simply got my milk and started walking away.  He then goes, “Well nice chatting with you.  Hopefully I’ll see you here again – maybe I can treat you to a movie or something.”

Holy shit, mother f*&*(#!!   I hightailed it up to the register and basically threw my debit card at the person so I could get the hell out of there, car out of the parking lot before this guy could see my car or anything.

I had the pleasure of sitting in two waiting rooms today.  As fellow misanthropes will agree, it’s one of the worst situations you have to endure.  I’d personally rather have to undergo a day of having explosive diarrhea (as long as I was near a toilet) than a day of sitting in waiting rooms.

The first was at the oh so horrendous sparrow labs in south Lansing.  My god, that place never has less than a 45 minute wait.  I was hoping that going late in the morning before lunch time would be better (avoiding the morning rush) but nope.  There were 15 people in there.  Mostly old ladies who seemed to be making a day out of it by socializing with each other.  I didn’t mind them, but what I did mind was the haggard woman sighing loudly and rolling her eyes  (as if ANYONE likes waiting – shut up or leave) in between very loud gum smacks and pops.  For fucks sake, stop smacking and popping your gum.   You look and sound like a heifer.   I put my earbuds in but could still hear it.

Eventually she actually walked out, which made me rejoice.  I finally got called back and got out of there, then went back to work.  Later in the afternoon, I had an appointment to get my oil changed.  This is another task I always dread because the dealership is notoriously slow, but since I was about 4 months overdue for the oil change I finally made the appointment.

The snails-pace service isn’t really the thing I hate most about this dealership though.  It’s the popcorn in the lobby.  You may be wondering, “what the fuck is wrong with popcorn?  It’s awesome!”  True, it is.  But the problem is people turn into handicapped monkeys when eating it, awkwardly mashing entire fistfuls of kernels in the general vicinity of that ‘eating hole’ in their faces.

I heard the crunch-smacking noise before I even turned the corner to enter the waiting area where the seats are.  Aaand there sits a scraggly  hippie guy with flip flops and long curly hair, elbow contorted up in the air, wrist bent  back towards his mouth with popcorn spilling forth onto his holey blue shirt.  He looked kind of like an elephant eating, only not as cute.  Strange thing is, he was there with a girl who I felt was way out of his league and I spent the next 20 minutes wondering what she saw in that guy.  Not to mention, how could she stand the sound and the fact that there were now popcorn bits stuck in his tangly hair and greasy goatee?

They left though, much to my relief, and the popcorn machine was pretty empty so I was pleased.  Of course an employee noticed and started popping more, which – hey- popcorn smells good, and it drew many more animals forth.  For instance, the fat broad sitting next to me who ran over to the machine before the popping cycle was even complete.  She happily trotted (as much as a lardass can trot) back to the seats and plopped down two seats from me, proceeding to crunch and smack and basically shower in popcorn.  It was all over her clothes, the chair, and the floor by the time I was called to retrieve my car.

I doubt I will be taking my car back to this place.

So I realize I never made any follow-up posts on that job I was interviewing  for back in December.  I did end up getting an offer, but I declined it.  I don’t know what it was…call it a gut feeling that it wasn’t *the* job I was looking for.  I decided that I’d proactively pursue other areas that I have an interest in.  My old department (accounting) actually would like to get me; they just don’t have a headcount right now.  I also spoke with two directors in gas supply/measure and found there will likely be opportunities there within the next couple of years.  This was pretty encouraging because I think all three of those areas would snap me right up.  I also put in for a job in accounting controls / audit but withdrew my application because I hadn’t noticed it was posted at two paygrades lower than I am now.  Well the manager there calls yesterday and I said I had withdrawn due to that and another opportunity I recently took (details below) and he was like, “bummer (for me)” and said if it was only about the pay level, he’d have wiggle room.  Bummer, all right! I would have liked that role and didn’t think they would be able to pay more than it was posted at, so I messed up there…

In the meantime, a different (non-technical) opportunity was posted in my current organization (IT, the one I at some point want to leave) so I threw my name in the ring, interviewed with the director, and received an offer a couple of days later.  This one, I took.  I’ll be working with contracts administration, vendors, negotiations, that sort of thing.  It sounded like a good skill that I will be able to add to my resume.  I start on Monday.  I’m bummed about leaving my current team and supervisor because they are all great and I’m really going to miss them.  The obvious plus side is no outsourcing to India for this role, and that whole thing makes me want to vomit, so… yeah.

Another plus I’m finding is that I seem to be ‘in demand’ as an employee.  Pretty encouraging since every job posting gets anywhere from 30 to 70 (just heard that one today) people putting in for it, yet I seem to always get called.

So …things are looking up on the job front and I’ll be buying the new iPad when it comes out to celebrate 🙂

Holy fuck it all to hell. I am about to drop kick the next person who smacks and snaps their gum. My biggest pet peeve – hands down. And I am in the presence of no less than 3 cud chewing cows at this very moment. It’s disgusting, annoying, rude (very), and provoking. I would be less irritated if someone just farted in my face. Maybe I should just walk around with food and spit flying out of my mouth, sounding like a hog, so I can fit in at the farm.

Seriously!?!?! How can they NOT hear themselves!?!? ARGHGHGGHGARHGH