Happy Laga day.

Bonny Fides, feel better.

And Ginger, I remember you being pretty miserable. Hope you are doing better today.

Happy birthday, Laga!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Happy birthday, Laga!

The Dread Spirits of eBay are taunting me.

The Dread Spirits look suspiciously like Gee.

Hello, Bitches. I've spent the last two weeks either at the hospital, taking someone home to/from the hospital, working half-heartedly, or asleep with weird antibiotic-induced dreams.

Saturday I have to go with my sister and her older daughter K. to K.'s art show in DC, and then to a concert by one of K.'s friends. Since K. is heavily into death metal and most of her friends are too, at first I thought it would be a death-metal band and I was planning on taking earplugs and enduring it. Yesterday Sis told me no, it's a piano recital. Classical music. So no earplugs or enduring required, but now I have to dress nice. And I don't think I have any nice clothes that fit at my current weight. Digging up the right wardrobe is very stressful for me, and I'd really like to have more than two days' notice, but Sis doesn't get this; she's always been 115 pounds and can actually wear everything in her closets. I would be less anxious about the clothing if I weren't also anxious about spending the day with my sister and K., after the way K. melted down when my sister got sick. Seriously, screaming at someone who's possibly having a heart attack and then locking herself in her bedroom with the metal blasting so loud she couldn't hear me knocking on the door. Her behavior when I was there was atrocious, and apparently she'd been yelling at her mother for a couple hours before that, as well. And my sister claims she isn't stressed! I don't want to be around my niece right now, to be honest, but the trip is for her birthday and I don't want to leave the two of them alone in a car, so I can't back out. I'm really afraid of how the day's going to go.

smonster, if you want me to start calling you in the mornings again, let me know. Sorry I faded out on that.

Zen, my weekend is crazy (family time, and moving my office), but give me call if you need a break or some help.

Thanks, Vortex. I doubt I'll be able to get away for a break, though. I'm the therapist/coach/wrangler/mediator, even though I don't want to be.

Nobody else in my family has any ability to recognize when their emotions are overtaking them, or any knowledge or skills for what to do about it. I've learned from a couple decent therapists and, honestly, a lot from Buffistas, but I'm still not real good at it.

{{{Zenkitty}}}

Happy Birthday, Laga!!!

Happy birthday, Laga!

Zenkitty, no worries. It helps me when you do it but I get by when you don't.

Doood, I totally want that jacket.

Warning: venting ahead.

So today I broke a 6-ton jack, made Angry Girl cry, lost my temper (unrelated), didn't have the tools we needed, got lost on the way to the hardware store, they couldn't fix the jack and didn't have the chuck key we needed, came back to find that the FM had run a regular board where they were supposed to run a PT one, and the holes drilled in it will make it basically unusable. And generally presided over an epic number of fuckups, both mine and others', caught my most obedient FM talking back to me, had to text my site supvr repeatedly, making myself look like a clueless dumbass, And pretty much got very, very little done today, which is going to be hella embarrassing when said site supvr comes back tomorrow. Great googly moogly what a fucking day.

Angry Girl cried because she was starting to do something, I took it from her to show her the right way, and she stepped back so I did it and so she got pissed and cried b/c I "always take things from her" and how is she ever going to learn anything. I was like, next time just say, "I'll do it."

They have no drive, show no initiative, talk back, fuck around, and generally haven't learned shit. They don't seem to want to impress me at all. I don't know how to teach this stuff other than what I've done. I try to model the best behavior I can, but it's like they're not fucking paying attention. I have to tell them every little thing, including "put your toolbelt back on" when lunch is over. Jesus, don't stand around with your thumb up your ass, get back to what you were doing. Ideally I could get them going and work on something else, but they either fuck it up (stuff they should know how to do) or get done and stand around talking instead of asking me what's next or finding something to do.

Time for a drink, I think. Lord.