sending the ma~~~ your way , PixDesigns

fuck panceatitis. health~ma.

Yes! Fuck pancreatitis!

Yes! Fuck pancreatitis!

Dude. Word to the nth power. Lotsa ~ma headed your way.

And in today's moment of WTF-ery, I just found out that my 77 year-old mother is now dating our longtime jeweler who is (wait for it) 48.

Nice, nice guy-- I like him a lot, but...

Forty-eight, never been married, deeply religious, lives with his mother...

Well, it makes for yet another entertaining entry into my family annals.

Barb, I thought she had reconciled with your dad?

{{{Pix & Drew}}} I didn't remember where I read that he was back in pain so I just posted here.

No worries about mentioning it here. I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Barb, I thought she had reconciled with your dad?

She did, but he passed away last year in June. Jeweler Guy, being a sweet, respectful, religious sort of guy waited for a year of mourning to pass before approaching Mom.

and because i should not mix ~ma with ranting, i need to vent just a little. A bunch of folks at work are up in arms about a "pay cut" and complaining like crazy on FB, over group messages on the work system, and verbally all around me. Background: there's a hiring and training freeze on because of a looming computer upgrade...like switching the entire system from DOS to Windows...a massive change in how everything is done which will involve retraining everyone on the floor- like 200 people, so no new trainees on top of that melee. There are only a handful of trainees left in the final phases. All the coaches who no longer have trainees are no longer recieving extra pay for Coaching. It's not a pay cut, they are no longer getting a bonus for performing an extra service with extra responsibility and extra paperwork.

I can get past all the kvetching about a "pay cut" which is not, really, a pay cut, rather a restoration to their actual pay rate. It's less than they've been living on, so i see how that's irritating and gripe-worthy (if annoying.)

What's got me in cock-punching mode is that now one of the most vocal gripers launched a rant about how training admins aren't taking a paycut (there are still trainees on the floor, just at nights, not when this person is at work) and how "working class people" at the "bottom of the economy" need that extra money they're being deprived of. Hang on, reality check: griper makes $35/hr as a coach, so she's now being stiffed at a mere $33/hr as a senior tactical dispatcher. That is so NOT the bottom of the economy! Holy crap, that's what, like, 4x minimum wage???? We make decent wages. Hell, i make $12/hr LESS than she does and can afford my own HOUSE and CAR and eating out when i really want to, and that solely on my own income! She has a second income on top of that and still has the gall to claim to be deprived. Sure, we're not landed gentry and no one is retiring early on golden parachutes but HOLY FLYING SPAGETTI MONSTER OF REALITY she is so far from the bottom of the economy i want her and her sergeant-earning husband to just briefly imagine the reality of having ZERO income and then rethink her overly entitled rant. Sheesh. And of course i can't publicly remind her that she's being an irrational, overly entitled twit (substitute vowel of your choice) for then the pack of high-seniority harpies would descend upon me and make my life living hell and i don't want to get forced out of my (relatively) cush and (relatively) high-wage job by irrational idyits.

And so endeth MY entitled rant.

Happy belated birthday to Parkins, and happy birthday to erika!

Much ~ma to Hil, and to Drew, of course. I cannot believe you're back in the hospital already. I hope you'll be out of there soon and healthy.

WRT faith: I did fast most of this day, in the end. Something that I read yesterday sparked a glimpse in me, and I decided it was worth the effort, senseless as I may reckon it is. And it was very hard to keep that specific fast - normally I'm fine until the last hours of every fast, but this was a struggle from the very beginning. I didn't spent much time reading and thinking, but editing videos to my lecture in two weeks and watching TV on my computer, to forget the hunger and that I was only left now with a tiny hope/faith that my fast means something. I fasted because I wanted to believe, not because I believed.

I didn't believe for a very long time now in the afterlife (not because I'm denying it - I can know nothing of it - but because I don't see it as a factor in my everyday decisions). But I did believe in something more that made sense, in the end of the day, from that sometimes senseless life. I also think I'm a better person with that kind of faith. Maybe I'm rush to believe it's due to lack of faith, but I don't like how angry I got these past few months and how I'm dealing with it. Believing in something greater than myself helps me to pull through these moments, and make them less frequent.

I don't mind having a faith of my own or anything like it. I also mostly read God as metaphor. But I want a faith to begin with. Without one, I find it much harder to make sense out of life. Prayer and faith are the last things that anyone has. I'd like to have them both in my arsenal of choices. It makes things better. It makes me feel less alone.