The girls are so damn smart. If you ask one of them: “Can you go bring me a bunny?” They’ll leave the room, search for a stuffed bunny and bring it to you. I guess that means not only smart but subservient. How long can we keep that up? Can you do the dishes? Can you cook French Onion soup? They seem to understand everything we talk to them about. Like the little coked up hamster in their brains, are running in the metal wheel.
m is becoming an artist. She jumps head first into any situation and has more nightmares than a, which I believe is a sign of an overactive imagination. a is a scientist. She likes to take things apart and study them. She lets m jump into the cold wading pool while she puts her hand in. They’re also challenging us even more. No longer content to just grunt and cry if they want something, they now say “Mine!” or “Ball!” and then cry. When they get sassy, instead of yanking their skeletons out, we give them liberal-Berkeley-hippie timeouts for punishments. The timeouts work for the most part put I believe they sit in the timeout spot only because they believe we can do that skeleton yank-out thing. I’m sure when they get older and spicier and start dating, they’ll see that yes indeed, I can flay a live human being.
m seems to get timeouts due to stuff like bonking her sister on the head while a gets them for pushing and smoking cigarettes in the house: “No smoking near my drums of gasoline!” Both behaviors seem to be a bit of jealously especially when big M has one of them on her lap. They never fight for my attention like that or even say Da Da anymore. It’s all Mama this and Mama that. C’mon kids, fight for my attention! Star Trek Style!
Okay, So it’s been like 2 months since I last did a Bog entry. Here’s why. The first month was the month of sickness. I got this weird flu-like thing that was basically like a constant 103 temperature. I called Kaiser and asked them what to do and they said: “Don’t take anything, just let it work its way out. A temperature is your body’s way of fighting it.” A week later, I still felt like shit, so I set up an appointment with my doctor. He gives me the works, including blood test and then shrugs his shoulders: “I don’t know what the fuck it is?” He says. “Back to school with Ye!” I yelled, yanking his diplomas off the wall and throwing them out of the window, killing a nun down below (I’m writing this from jail). He then tells me: “Tylenol, fluids and rest.” This kicks the thing out in about a week. Then M gets it. She immediately hits the Tylenol and kicks it out in 4 days. Then “a” gets it. Same thing, 2-3 days then finally it works its way over to m. She takes it out in 3 days. So apparently, I was the only jive turkey motherfucker to suffer with the bastard for two weeks. Even as I write this, I’m still hawking up phlegm (lovely image, I know).
The thing about being sick is, I’m rarely sick for more than 3 days. This thing went on for two weeks. Whenever I’m that sick the first things I think about are: Now I can watch Reading Rainbow on PBS and “Is this the thing that finally kills me?” If I could choose how I die it will either be sitting on a porch of a cabin at the beach or mountains, watching my last sun set or sunrise, or crashing the Space Shuttle into a comet that’s heading towards earth, causing it to veer off course into deep space. Except for one block-busting piece which fireballs into the site of my most hated political enemy’s, family reunion.
Awaiting me on my next month of hell was the job evaluation from hell. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming but it was the final straw that made me say: “Okay, it’s time to go.”
I actually took the trashing pretty well and I fully attribute that to becoming a parent.
As soon as Baby A’s head popped (twins are label A and B depending on exit position) my priorities shifted so fast that the ghost of Albert Einstein appeared and said: “I guess I was wrong, some things can travel faster than the speed of light.” Now, some things really don’t bother me anymore: Screaming kids on a train, being peed on, being vomited on, being shat on or picking a child’s nose. Before, if any of these events occurred I would have done the freak-out dance for at least an hour. As far as priorities go, my job is right below watching 12 hours of pro golf on a tiny black and white TV with no antennae.
To add insult to insult. They decided that this was the year they were going to give bonuses. BUT in order to get a bonus, you have to get at least a satisfactory on your evaluation. Guess who didn’t get a satisfactory on his evaluation? Not just me but everyone in my department who’s jobs use to be done by 5 people and is now done by one. “Oh I’m sorry I’m not outputting as much work as the other 5 people who use to do this job, I’m still waiting for my extra arms to grow out of my ass!” It gets better. They have to have everyone take this customer service test thing on-line. Apparently the size of THEIR bonus depends on having everyone take the test by a certain date. I found this part out because the Assistant Manager (Ass Man or Man Ass) told everyone at a morning meeting. Two people who also got hosed were helped sooo much on their test that it was borderline cheating. I can’t understand how the management can walk with balls so big. Do they really expect me to hurry up and do the test so that those ass weasels can have a happy Christmas? Again, Albert Einstein appeared at my desk and said: "Now I see that a person can move so slow that they go back in time.”
It gets even better. I know for a fact that there are three of us who got reamed but I suspect that there are more. I know because (unlike the supes and management) I listen to people's complaints. So lets just say moral shouldn’t suck this much if someone is giving you a bonus. The upper-upper guy must have noticed something because he made his underling give a training seminar called the FISH training. Are you ready for this? If you’ve ever been to Seattle and visited the Pikes Market, they have this fish market where guys happily yell hello to people, clown around with you and most importantly, they throw fish at each other. That’s right. If you order a fish, one guy throws it to the guy behind the counter who manages, with great skill I may add, to catch the slippery mercury bag in butcher paper: mad skills! This is basically the training video they made us watch and then at the end of it actually had the nerve to ask: “So, how can we have more fun at work like the guys in the video? And my favorite: “ In the video, they threw fish, what can we throw to each other?” Uhh, desk, lawn darts, ape feces? My favorite answer was when they asked: What should our theme song at work be and this one guy says Highway to Hell.
I mean, what the fuck? Are they that clueless in realizing that the people in the fish market were having a good time because some dick wipe didn’t take their kids Christmas money? Or perhaps their boss actually listens to them when they say: ‘I can’t do this job alone because earlier I sat on a fish hook and it’s hard to catch a fish with something like that lodged in your ass?’ No, at my job they would say: “I think you and you alone should throw and catch the fish. That way you know exactly where the fish will land AND I’m taking your Christmas bonus because you keep dropping fish, especially when you slip, running across the room.
Apparently, what they got out of the training is you choose your attitude, which is true. If you choose to come to work in a bad mood, holding an ax and wearing a hockey mask, you have chosen to have a bad day. But they refuse to believe that business failure is like a dirty pond. Blind, worker fish sucking the dark bottom, and smelly scum on the top, blocking the sunlight.
Time for this fish to evolve some legs.
That’s it, EM
