Murder, Death, Kill.

I'm awake. I'm awake at 7 am. I'm awake at 7 am on a day that I've scheduled a vacation day from work. Why am I awake, you might ask? Because my oh-so-thoughtful husband, after being told TWICE yesterday that I was off today, set my alarm.

So now I'm too pissed to go back to sleep. Partially because I'm awake at all, and partly because I feel like he didn't listen to a god damned thing I told him yesterday. (I should have known, when he forgot two minutes after I told him the first time).

So he's going to die twice. Once for each.

Grrrr...

*Cry*

It's only the first night, and I'm already missing my hubby HORRIBLY!!!

I don't know how I'm going to make it until Sunday. He called earlier to say hello and I nearly cried...

I know he's off having fun. And I don't want him to miss out on something he wanted to do so badly (convention - long story). But I really wish I could be with him. If we had known he'd have so much money to take I could have. But we didn't and now he's gone and I'm here with my cat and it sucks.

I want my husband to be back home RIGHT NOW.

I can't wait until Sunday.

:(

Idiot of the Week.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. We here at RamblingDreamer, Inc. bring you...

The Idiot of the Week

But first, this commercial break.

"Hey, mom, have you ever had that...not-so-fresh feeling...?"

Kidding. (And I've never had that feeling, in case you're wanting to know. Sicko.)

Let me give you a little bit of background so this post will make sense.

I work for a newspaper. The name is unimportant. Let's just say that it's a pretty big one in my city/state. I work in the classified section. Specifically the legals. I handle the bid requests, the public auctions, etc.

Now that you know that, we can move on...

A lady from one particular department of the city (yes, the city itself) wanted to place an ad for Tuesday. This is Friday, which means the ad for Tuesday should have been in here two days ago (per our deadlines that are listed in the paper). I told her so. She whined a little bit - "Are you *sure* you can't get it in?" - and when I said no she gave up and let me off the phone.

[Note: She mentioned seeing the deadlines in the paper, so as this was going on I wondered why she was surprised that her ad was too late - especially when I confirmed that it wasn't some bizarre typo.]

30 minutes later, she calls back.

"Yes, I'm calling from [name of city/department]. Can I get an ad in for Tuesday?"

Okay. I know that I'm sleep deprived today (see earlier post). And I know that, at least in her mind, she's the most special person on earth and I should bend over backwards *while* kissing her ass (which takes a great deal of talent, believe me) to do what she wants. But why, oh why, does she think that I'm going to a) forget that we spoke earlier and b) change my answer just for her?

I don't know, either.

Anyway... Again, I say no. Again, she whines briefly. Then she sighs heavily - because of course it's all *my* fault they're getting things in too late - and lets me off the phone.

And here's where I get naive. I get naive because I think that this is over.

Nope.

A few hours later I get a fax. Guess who it's from! Yep! You guessed it! It's her *again*. This time she seems to think that if she requests it in writing that somehow the deadline will magically disappear and I'll take her stupid ad.

Heh. Guess again.

So I call her back, and inform her voice mail that no, we *still* can't get the ad in for Tuesday. Does she want me to put it in for another day? I don't know, because she has yet to return the message.

But aha! She has underestimated the cover-my-own-ass ability of who she's dealing with! I got ahold of the manager who's in charge of my small one-person department and explained what happened. That way, if this woman decides to "forget" that I left a message and calls to complain that her ad isn't in, the manager will be forewarned. She said that if I don't hear from the woman by Monday I need to let her (the manager) know.

Backup in high places is a wonderful thing.

Technically I could have gotten her ad in. It was short, and with the speed I type (over 100 wpm - the tooting you now hear is the sound of my own horn being, well, tooted) I could've had it done in five minutes flat. But she caught me on an I'm-not-being-helpful-and-you-can't-make-me-do-it day. (Plus, I'm annoyed that she thinks I'm stupid enough to forget that she's contacted me *THREE TIMES* because she thinks the deadlines shouldn't apply to her. What can I say? I'm passive-aggressive like that.).

All of this, topped off by the fact that dealing with people who think they're superior annoys me, contributed to a very anti-helpful stance on my end. Nevermind the fact that my manager (a different one than the one over legals - I do the jobs of about three people, so I report to more than one person) said I needed to be more strict with the deadlines (after we changed them a while back, I was letting it slide much too often, and people were taking advantage).

So that's the story. I fully expect to hear from this woman on Tuesday, and to be screamed at because her ad isn't in the paper. Oh well. I've covered my bases. It'll be a hard lesson to learn, I'm sure, when she realizes that she is not the center of my (or any other, for that matter) universe, and that sometimes she should listen to people who try to do their job - especially when she knew ahead of time how things are.

Tune in...some time later - whenever another beaut like this comes up and I feel like writing about it - for the next installment of

Dum-da-da-dum!

Idiot of the Week!

Oh, give me a break. We here at RamblingDreamer, Inc. are working on a very small budget. You want fanfare, go to Disney World.

Hm.

Looking back over my few posts and the page layout has led me to a discovery.

Me, coupled with the ability to change everything on a web page, is a bad, bad thing.

Yep.

Now I'm off to find food.

Sleep deprivation is fun.

It's 5:56 am.
It's 5:56 am, and I'm awake.
It's 5:56 am, and I'm awake because of several things. These things are:

1) Hubby's alarm went off. This is a common thing - he is supposed to be awake about 1 1/2 hours before me.
2) Hubby got up and reset the alarm so he could sleep some more, then snuggled up behind me. This, too, is common. It happens every morning.
2a) I should note, here, that Hubby can fall asleep in about 2 milliseconds. I, however, take much longer - usually 20 minutes or more (and that's if I'm lucky enough to be awake for only a minute or so).
2b) While snuggling, Hubby rests his head nearly atop mine. So as he falls asleep, he is both dropping his head to rest - painfully - against mine and snoring in my ear.
2c) Have you ever noticed that a sleeping persons' head seems to weigh about 100 pounds? Think of that squashing your own head into a pillow, and I'm sure you'll be able to feel my pain. (No pun intended).
2d) While I do thoroughly enjoy the snuggling, I spend the next 30 minutes or so (time that could be spent sleeping) getting more and more irritated at said squashing and snoring. But, being that I love the snuggling, I don't say anything because I don't want him to go away.
3) I finally give up the ghost and sit up to see the time, which is when Hubby informs me, "The clock is wrong. I hit the "time" button instead of the "alarm" button." So the clock now reads nearly 7 am, instead of 5:40 (I didn't know it was 5:40 until a bit later).
4) I flop back down into bed, only to get up a moment later when I realize I have to pee.
5) After having gone down to pee and checked the time (the clock was about 1:40 fast), I go upstairs and collapse into bed again.
6) I realize after about 5 minutes of staring at the ceiling that I am painfully awake.
6a) And on the heels of that: "If I continue to try to sleep, I'll manage to do so right about ten minutes before I have to be up, anyway."

So here I am. In a little over 30 minutes I have to start wandering around getting ready for a fun-filled day at work.


This is SO not going to be me today.

And away we go.

So after about half an hour spent trying to add my picture to my profile - successfully - I'm faced with an annoying case of writers' block. I never have any idea about how to start these things. Everything I try just comes out sounding like a TV show caught in the middle. You know the ones - the president or some other person is blah-blah-blahing along, and by the time he shuts up you get to return to a show which is "already in progress". I've been "in progress" for nearly 30 years, now, and the reader - that's you, in case you're not keeping track - gets to be tossed into the middle of my life after one long-ass presidential announcement.

So. Have you come into the exciting part of the episode? I don't really know. Is it worth sticking around for? Possibly. Maybe. That depends on your sense of humor and how much bitching about work you can stomach. (I do a lot of that last bit). I guess you'll just have to read ahead and decide for yourself.

Oh... While we're on the subject... A good friend of mine is going to be sharing this little slice of cyber space with me. Telling us apart will be easy. I'll let you figure that bit out for yourselves.

For now, I guess this will do. I might post a rant after this email. But then again, maybe it's a better idea to ease you into it. There'll be plenty of time for that later.

Now if I can just figure this HTML thing out so I can add my own style to this...