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Friday, May. 10, 2002 / 7:18 p.m. ~Happy to Be a Slug~ They have these shopping carts at Publix now, shopping carts attached to miniature "cars", and kids can sit inside the "car" part, turn the little yellow steering wheel, honk on the little "horn", and it looks so fucking fun! I wanted to ride around in one, let someone else push me, but NO! I have to carry the handbasket, use my stupid canvas shopping bag, only buy what will fit in one, or two of those. And no one gives me a ride, I have to do it all myself. Such is my life. But the week is over, thank fucking god. Thank the God of Fucking, thank the FuckingGod. I'm so sorry if the more religious amongst you are offended by that. You know I'm agnostic, right? You know I enjoy playing with words? Are we still friends? Good. So I was out of coffee this morning, and last night I knew I'd be out of coffee this morning, but did I go out and buy more so that I WOULDN'T be out of coffee this morning? Uh, no, of course not. So I had that caffeine-withdrawl headache, all day. I still have it. Or maybe it's from something other than not having coffee this morning, but I took aspirin at lunch, knowing that if it didn't remove my headache it would at least help to thin my blood, unclog some arteries, maybe? Aspirin is supposed to be a good thing. But it doesn't do shit if you're in pain. Today we worked. Oh yeah, baby, D., the Supervisor, plunked down 89 child support documents on my desk. I counted. 89! We usually process an average of 10 documents total, the entire day. All I could think was I asked for it, oh yeah, I said, "Couldn't we get some more work to do? It's so sloooooow", like the idiot I can be. Stupid, stupid. Busy work, tedious, carpal-tunnel-inducing work, but I did it. I listened to Dolly Parton's greatest hits in my Walkman, in my head singing along to "Jolene", and that "Bargain Store" song - god, it's beautiful! Oh man, have you heard her sing??? She is amazing, she is an angel, she is.... she is.... I don't even have words for her. Her songs are so beautiful, the lyrics, the melodies, and that voice. Wow. I never did listen to "Axis: Bold as Love", nor "Surrealistic Pillow", which I also had brought with me. The phone kept ringing and it wasn't practical to be wearing headphones, taking them off, putting on earpiece, taking call, taking off earpiece, putting on headphones, no, it was not. So I worked, I answered phones, we lost temps, Kathy at noon, Delaney at 5:00, (D., the Supervisor also left at 5:00 today), Riley at 5:15. Penelope is on vacation, and Quincey leaves at 5:30. From 5:30 to 6:00 it was Lulu, Listerine and me. And my headache. Four of us. I had the most sadistic call this morning. Should I write about it?? Will it make me angry all over again? Okay, our calls that come from California seem to be really distant, like whatever service provider is providing the service from California to our toll free line is really just a couple of tin cans or something because everyone sounds so FAR away! This woman calls to update her address, and I can barely hear her, and I'm cranking up the volume, right?, and asking her to repeat herself, "I'm sorry, I can barely hear you, could you speak up please?", so she SCREAMS her address in my ear. No shit. I shit you not. I say, "Hey now, that hurt, that was not necessary" and she says since she is not at my end of the phone she doesn't know how much to raise her voice. This was suddenly a game, a sadistic game for her. I took her address, I grew so quiet, I struggled to hear her, turned her up, and when I was through she asked me to repeat it, and I'd gotten her apartment number wrong, "103" instead of "104", so I changed it, and she asked me to repeat it again. I did. Then she wanted me to repeat it again. I'm not kidding. Really. She asked me to repeat it maybe three times, and I said it really fast, really quietly, I was so fucking pissed off, but I couldn't react. You can't react in that situation, you can't say what you want to say, you're Customer Service, your calls are being montiored, at random, you just never know..... but it was clearly like I was subjugating myself, I was submissive to this dom, this Dominatrix, "Say it again! Repeat my address! Now the phone number! Say it again! Scnhel!!!"... CRACK! (that's a whip there), CRACK! "okay, I said 1736 Main Street Apt 104, Brea, California 92356...", "SAY IT AGAIN!!!". Okay, it wasn't exactly like that, you know, I'm embellishing, but it was freaky as hell, and when I hung up I was a mess, I was so mad, I was so frustrated, I turned my phone off for a bit. Lulu was late because of a flat tire, so I had no one to talk to, and as soon as she came in I told her.... and I felt much better. Hey, fuck all that. "Survivor" was so emotional last night. I couldn't help but begin to tear up when everyone else was. I can't look at people crying and not start to cry myself. And holy moly, "ER", whew, well, Mark is fucking dead! Leave it alone, why did they have to show us his death scene??? It hit awfully close to home. My father had a cancerous growth on his kidney, the kidney was removed, the cancer had metasticized to his brain, he had the brain removed, okay, a portion containing the tumor, but it might as well have been his whole brain. He deteriorated and ended up in a nursing home, even though I made the effort to care for him. Yes, I did, thank you very much. My brother refused, said he's just not a caregiver, couldn't consider changing a bedpan, whatever, fine. One night I was spending the night at my father's house (he lived alone at that time), sleeping on the sofa, shortly after he left the hospital after the neurosurgery. Middle of the night he's up, crashing to the floor, just like Mark Greene on last night's "ER". Not that it was the same, one whole side of his body was not paralyzed, but still, he didn't know his limitations yet, didn't know he'd end up confined to bed, and he woke up thinking he could just get out of bed like a normal person, go pee, or whatever he'd intended. But no. So I, a 5'5" woman, slight build, some 110 pounds, was lifting my father, 6'1", a shell of his former self, but still much larger, back into his bed from the floor to which he'd fallen. Yeah, sometimes "ER" is just too heavy, way heavier than it ought to be. Anyway.... that was then, this is now, blah, blah, blah. It's Friday! I'm going to eat, and now I actually have a few choices, since I went to the Publix, and I'm going to read diaries, and I'm going to watch TV, and I'm going to lie about, and be a slug. I'm happy about that. ***Hey, go read Aimee's entry for today!! It's hilarious!!!!!!*** Cost of the War in Iraq
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