Archives – December, 2007
I am procrastinating again. I am just so damn overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning I have to do, I just want to cry.
At least I got a friend of mine to come over earlier and take a trunk load of stuff for donation. I literally mean a trunk load. I think there were 2 30 gallon trash bag, a small suitcase and a box full of vases/glass wares. I am so glad to be rid of that stuff and I am so glad that we got that crap into the trunk before my Mom saw it. I am sure she would have told me to keep a lot of it so she could use it later. Yea right.
I am just getting so frustrated with her – so very frustrated, it just makes me want to cry. I think I am going to skip the Christmas party tonight. Even though my Mom can’t be trusted to act appropriately, I just really need the time alone to do stuff. I have a really hard time doing anything when I know she’s around because I do not want her criticizing me or telling me to keep x item because she might need it later.
She, of course, refuses to help me too. As soon as it got to crunch time, she started staying over on her side, doing I don’t know what. I could really use some help with the kitchen right now, but yea, I don’t know what she’s doing. Yea sure, I could ask her, but that would also mean that she would be in my close vicinity and well, I frankly don’t want her around me right now.
I just want to lie down and take a nap, but I just don’t have the time for that. I do have the time to blog and bitch, (HA!), but not for some much needed sleep.
I just need to vent a little, no, I need to vent A LOT, but if I do, I will just end up crying and not getting anything done.
December 24, 2007
Well, this last week at work wasn’t so bad. Personally, I felt like I hardly got anything done, but oh well. I swear I have a pile of stuff in my inbox that must be at least 3 inches high. I am pretty sure I am going to be able to clear all of that stuff out on Wednesday since I think I am going to be the only person in the office.
I went to a bunch of classes this week, so that’s partly why I feel like I didn’t really do anything this week. I don’t think I was as tired as I was last week, but I did sleep for 14 hours on Friday. Doh. Maybe I was. Oh well.
My biggest stress factor right now is cleaning up my house. My cousins always throw a party on holidays and this year they asked us if we could host it. I mean, they are going to be doing all of the cooking and stuff, we are just providing the place where everyone is going to meet. So, that doesn’t sound so bad right? Right? Let’s just say that I am really not known fo my housekeeping skills and I really let a lot of things go around the house this year. Plus, it doesn’t help that my Mom comes over to my side of the house everyday to watch TV and do whatever she does. She doesn’t really clean up after herself when she’s on my side and I can’t really do anything when she’s around since the place is pretty small and I would be disturbing her TV time.
I have slowly been working on the living room where the gathering is primarily going to take place, but now I’ve realized that in order for me to organize a lot of stuff, I really needed to clean out my bedroom, so I’ve been working on that for awhile now.
It was really difficult for me to throw a lot of my Grandma’s stuff out after she passed away, but I am pretty much over that now. I did get rid of most of her clothes months ago, but didn’t tackle the linens. Sheesh. She had so many orphan bedsheets and towels it isn’t even funny. I have already filled up 3 30 gallon trash bags full of crap and I am still not done.
My Mom actually did try to pitch in a little with cleaning by cleaning our outside patio. Of course it literally took her all day to sweep and mop, but at least it is something that I won’t have to do now.
I know I shouldn’t panic since I know I will get all of this done in time, but I am still freaking out a bit. I really should try to get to bed soon so I can get up early and work on the house some more and take a bunch of stuff down to Goodwill. But then I remember that I have another Christmas party to go to tomorrow evening and I freak out. I told the host that I had reservations about going because I do have to clean, but my Mom insisted on going and well, my Mom definitely needs a chaperon in public places nowadays.
Ugh, I am just getting so frustrated living with my Mom. The house we live in has 2 distinct sections. She has the “studio” area with a very large bathroom and wet bar area and I have the living room and a small bedroom. Her studio area is pretty large and can fit a bed, a couple of desks, a full sized couch and coffee table. But, she spends a lot of time on my side because her room is so filled with crap, she basically has 2 pathways going from her bed and desk to the hallway leading to her front and back door. She moved into that space almost 2 years ago, but she still hasn’t unpacked all of her stuff that she brought over from her apartment. Of course she couldn’t possible throw any of that stuff away because she “needs” it – if not now then later on when she gets to it.
What does that mean? It means that she spends a heck of a lot of time in my area because I have a TV hookup and space to actually do stuff. Super! I used to complain about my lack of privacy when my Grandma was around, but this is even worse. At least I knew why I had no privacy before, but now, it’s like my Mom doesn’t understand that just because I am living here, doesn’t mean that I want her around me 24/7.
She’s like a little child, she doesn’t understand that people need their space. I got so pissed off her at last week too. I started working again right, and so for some reason, she felt compelled to come over to my living room every morning about 10 or 15 minutes before I had to leave for the day. Yup, right at the time when you are the busiest getting ready to leave, she just had to come over with the premise that she wanted to watch the news. Oh bullfuckingshit. She just wanted to bother me. I did tell her not to come over since all she did was get in my way, so thankfully that stopped last week, but still. I shouldn’t have to explain that kind of crap to her, but she really doesn’t get it unless I do.
It’s like she expects me to be her best friend and want to spend all of my time with her or something and frankly, I don’t want to do either. I would love – absolutely love – to move out and get my own place, but that just isn’t going to happen anytime soon. I periodically check rentals in the metro area since I would pretty much need a car anywhere else on this island and well, I can rent a room for about $800 a month – a fucking room. Yea. I can’t afford that.
I just really wish she would clean up her fucking room and hook up the TV she bought 6 months ago so she wouldn’t bother me anymore. I’ve asked her if she wanted to switch sides with me and she said no. Probably because she knows that she has too much crap to move over.
She used to say that she was too busy with work and was therefore too tired to work on unpacking her stuff. Well, she’s now been retired for over a year and she still hasn’t unpacked all of her stuff. I really should just move back to the mainland.
Oh yea, Happy Fucking Holidays.
December 24, 2007
Yea, so I guess I have been up to things, but haven’t been up to blogging. Oh well.
I started and finished my 5 , (I thought I had 6) personal training sessions at the gym this past month. It was okay. I mean, it wasn’t like we did any crazy and wacky boot camp stuff to whip me into shape. It was just kind of boring to me. We did basic exercises – some using the machines, some not – but they were all things that I had done before in the past. The only major difference was that I used a little heavier weights than I normally would do.
The sessions themselves were a bit think in content. I mean, we worked on lower body during my first workout session with the trainer. Okay, cool. Then the next time we met, we worked on upper body and “core,” (ugh, I hate that word), exercises. Fine, no problem. Next time we met, we worked on lower body again and did the exact same things that we did the first time. Um, okay. Then we worked on upper body and “core” again for my final session and we did the exact same exercises as that previous session. Wow, can you say boring? I can!
I was kind of hoping that my trainer was going to give me some kind of exercise plan when we first started and I should have asked for one, but I didn’t – and didn’t get one. She tried selling me more sessions at the end of our final meeting, but I didn’t go for it. I did have a good excuse though. I am so exhausted from my job, it isn’t funny – and the session hasn’t even started yet! Aiyeeeee!!!!
So, yea, I started my new job last week Monday and it is just nuts. I have already put in 2 10 hour days and I just can’t imagine how many of those days I am going to have to look forward to over the next 5 1/2 months.
The senator I work for is a good person – she means well, but she really over schedules herself and spreads herself out pretty thin. Of course this means that her staff have to do a ton more work than we really should be doing – in my opinion that is.
But, I think a lot of our “stress” has to do with the previous office manager who has been reassigned to another position in the office for now. The previous office manager is just sooo disorganized and forgetful – it is astounding that she hasn’t been fired yet. We had a staff meeting the second day I was there and the senator asked her to close the front door so 1) we could secure the office and 2) so we wouldn’t be disturbed. She went out front, closed the door, came back into the meeting and we continued. A few minutes later, the senator got up to get something from out front and apparently, someone had come into the office right after we went into the back room for the meeting. The senator saw the person briefly and the person left. So, when the previous office manager, (POM), went out before, she saw that person in the waiting area, I guess told them to have a seat, came back to our meeting and never said a word to anyone that someone was waiting our front.
What the hell was she thinking? Why wouldn’t she at least say something to us when she came back that someone was waiting, so she couldn’t lock the door? I mean, we had no view of the waiting area, this person could have gone through our bags and stolen stuff, or stuff out of the office and we never would have known. I wanted to say something, but it was my second day and I didn’t feel that it was my place to reprimand this person anyway.
I guess she has been doing stuff like this for a looong time and all it does is make our office look really bad. it also makes work life really difficult because she is so scatter brained that everyone else there has to pick up her workload, or it will never get done.
Ooof, and then there are the crazy homeless people, (CHP), who come in. There was this one guy who came in because he wants the senator to tell welfare and other federal agencies to reverse social service decisions against him. Um, riiiiiiigghtt. I don’t think this guy even lives in her district and he’s been banned from several offices at the capitol already. But the POM would just let him come in and sit in the office while he would go on one of his tirades about how this one agency is wrong and they need to reverse their decision because it’s “illegal.” The first day he came in, (yup, he came in another day), he just started going off and I started to feel physically threatened by him. I started going through my mental inventory of my bag to see if I could use anything in there as a weapon.
Another CHP came him while he was there and while he didn’t seem threatening, it was a little annoying. Of course after they both left, I just went up to the new office manager, (NOM), and straight out told her that I didn’t care what the old policy was and that I would be calling security to have any threatening person removed if they did not leave after a few minutes.
Of course both of those guys showed up again a few days later too, but we were able to get them out of the office pretty quickly – thank goodness.
Oh and then there was the email incident where the POM deleted a bunch of emails that she wasn’t supposed to and well, that was my first 10 hour day – trying to recover stuff. Oh Joy!
I guess I am doing a pretty good job so far though – so much so that there is talk of moving me to the position that the POM is doing now – which is just freaking me out. It would be a clerk position where I would be in charge of tracking all of the senators legislation, be in charge of keeping her task forces up to date and well, let’s just say that instead of worrying about 10 hour days, I would have to worry about 12 hour days, just about every day. Eeek!
The POM has that position right now and well, just about everybody knows that she can’t handle it and that her assistant she hired will more than likely not be able to handle it either. Which would mean more work for me and the NOM, even though we aren’t supposed to even be touching that stuff since we have our own work to do. Oy vey.
Anyways, I was really looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. I met the personal trainer Saturday and took a nap that day.
But Sunday, oh man. I went to bed really late Saturday, because, well, because I could! I was rudely awoken around noon by some really weird sounds coming from the roof. What kind of sounds? Well, it sounded like there were sheets of aluminum flying around the roof.
I went outside to take a look since it really did sound like my roof was flying off and yup, it was!
Oh man, this sucks. A couple of my neighbors heard the ruckus and came out to check it out then too. The good thing is that one of them reminded that we can probably file a home owners insurance claim for the damage. Woot! (Yay! Woot is a real word now!)
Thankfully, I was able to find someone to come out and do an emergency repair on a Sunday. I guess they are going to come back on Monday and put a tarp over the exposed area. I hope the tarp doesn’t blow off though. It’s been majorly windy here the last few days. We also had a pretty bad windstorm about a week ago too. I heard a lot of people had roof damage then so the roofing companies are pretty busy right now. I just hope that this thing can be repaired as quickly as possible since we are in the middle of our rainy season.
It’s late, I really need to get to bed so I can get at least 4 hours of sleep tonight.
December 17, 2007
Man, I have been soooo freaking tired this week. Why? I started my new job on Monday!!!!! Oh man, I am now an “administrative assistant” to one of the state senators here in the Hawaii legislature!!!
It’s pretty weird being in an office again. The hardest adjustment I’ve had to make so far has been getting up at 6 am every morning. It’s really weird how “office” work has come back to me since it’s been almost 6 years since I’ve been in an office environment. It is nice but very stressful though.
Ugh, I think I am going to have to do this write up this weekend, I am about to fall asleep and it isn’t even midnight here! Oh man.
December 14, 2007
