lisah, you can totally do stats! I had to take general statistics, which did make me cry, and then quantitative analysis in social sciences, which I LOVED. I mean, I loved that shit. And then I got a job where I worked with psychometricians and editors on standardized tests. Super fun.

The math end of the stats was challenging, but the analytical end was phenomenal. LOVED.

I made 4 dozen cupcakes for a bake sale for the March of Dimes. They have lavender colored frosting and decorative sugar. And doodads that say "BABY" on it. The MOD is doing bake sales at pump stations for Prematurity Awareness Month.

I wish I were a little less aware of preemies.

also, juliebird, if you think she is otherwise awesome, is her need to control doable for you?

It's doable in the sense that I am capable of putting aside my own ego and buckling down to keep doing the job that I am doing. Yet I'll still be resentful. And I also wonder what kind of job skill I'm learning by doing so, for my own future. If I move on, will I have handicapped myself? Is mine the type of personality that survives in the workforce into retirement? Is there any growth keeping my head down? And then there's the part of me that has no self-confidence or self-worth and I'm just wrong wrong wrong . . .

Again, she'd had a bad morning, and usually she's receptive to my counter-suggestions, and sometimes she listens and shoots them down. And sometimes I keep my mouth shut and we wind up in a bind because my priorites aren't her priorities and it bites us in the ass because I've worked here for five years and she hasn't. But when she's stuck with a time-wasting task, she freaks out.

Especially today, when what she suggested I do (there was actually an and/or in her notes for today,suggesting that I had a choice to blow off one or the other until tomorrow) was something we pay a contractor to do, we're closed to the public until February, meaning that storm clean-up really can be done in January, and what I spent that 20 minutes on was something that has a soonish deadline.

I'm caught in a bind, even now, of just nodding my head and letting things go to shit when I could have prevented it, or butting heads and forcing my way on my boss, because from time to time, I DO know better.

Again, I CAN keep working under her, but SHOULD I? Or, should I broach the issue and have it, at best, do nothing, or at worst, make my job stability less stable if she takes it into her head to find someone more agreeable?

When the boss yelled at me, I used to think I was the only one so incompetent that a boss would be driven to yell at me. I'm not sure it's better to think "He's an asshole, but he still controls my income", but at least it's better for my self-esteem.

Oh god, Connie, that made me laugh, and feel a little better.

I wish my parents had yelled at me more as a kid, so I wouldn't be such a wimp as an adult.

Congratulations, Nilly! The world can only be made better by Nilly children.

This is the Nazi version of One Tree Hill, eh?

Adolescent drama among Hitler Youth?

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

I'm pathologically conflict-avoidant even after not being yelled at as a kid.

OK, I am now officially on vacation. Eleven days without having to deal with The Nemesis, yay! (I shall ignore all the other unpleasant stuff I shall have to do in the next week...)

Being yelled at as a kid has not made me terribly conflict avoidant but, if someone yelled at me now, I'd walk away from them or, I hope, have the presence of mind to go very quiet and stern with them. Probably walk out of the room though.

After 5 days of no accidents, puppy has had two accidents today. In the same place and just pee but now I'm feeling a bit, like, "ack a puppy! I don't know how to raise one!" I'm used to accidents from senile incontinent dog who is not going to learn anyway so you just clean up after and move on. This baby can learn not to pee where she shouldn't. But we have to learn how to teach her.

Being yelled at as a kid just made me pathologically conflict avoidant.

Well, I guess I don't have to resent my parents for being nice to me, then.

The couple sitting next to me at the bar just ordered two Manhattans—on the rocks. That’s just WRONG, isn’t it?