Happily, in all the years I temped, I was never asked to make coffee, because I don't know how and would have done a terrible job.
My mom has a great story about when she was in college and was the lab assistant for one of her professors over the summer. She was expected to make coffee, which she didn't drink and didn't know how to make, but that was okay because he was very exacting in how he wanted it made and probably would have told her how to do it anyway. One of his requirements was that the coffeepot never ever be washed. Like the flavor would build up or something? I don't know, chemists can be weird.
Anyway, this was all fine until he went to a conference or just on vacation, I don't remember the details but he was gone for weeks. And my mother stopped making coffee, because she didn't drink coffee. But she didn't wash the coffeepot because, never wash the coffeepot was one of the rules of the lab. Fortunately, she thought to look inside it before he actually came ack and demanded coffee because it was, of course, growing all kinds of exotic things and generally full of nastiness, so she washed the hell out of using some of the caustic chemicals they had in the lab and then made pot after pot of coffee that she poured down the drain to build up that never-been-washed flavor again. The professor did not notice a difference.
Yay, Jesse!
Next step: STAY out of credit card debt.
Ah, the hard part.
Happy birthday, Connie!
msbelle, congratulations on having not yet strangled your boss with your phone cord.
Speaking of paying off debt, in my zeal to get mine paid off quick, I paid more than I should have on a loan, and now I am overdrawn and out of cash. That hasn't happened in a long time. Kind of embarrassing, to have $30 declined, but I get paid Friday, so as long as nothing hits tomorrow, I can contain the damage. Lesson learned.
Getting out from underneath credit card debt was...I never got into even vaguely sensible credit card debt. When I moved to the US, I mis-estimated everything, and was getting paid way below what it would take for me to keep living like I lived in Montreal (which was markedly unremarkable!) except with a car.
If there had been anything necessary or useful in there (like a degree, or an appropriate car) it wouldn't have been so horrible. But it did engender some bad habits that lasted longer than the debt, which is still something I battle with.
But I am trying.
An IO9 article about a woman functioning with schizophrenia (it took her a while and a lot of trauma to accept it was a problem, and she's managing it with medication) and someone asked "Why doesn't anyone hallucinate candy and hear voices telling them they're awesome?" Obviously paranoid schizophrenia is unlikely to leave you paranoid that everyone loves you (or they'd have called it delusions of grandeur instead), but they were given this [link] as relevant to it, and so far it's interesting reading. As is the IO9 article, primarily because it's the words of the woman, not the idiot who wrote the article.
Inasmuch as it's hard to grasp pain in detail, even your own sometimes, when you're not experiencing it, the idea of something that clearly breaks all the rules we've decided to accept (houses do not give us instruction, etc) is coming through loud and clear and
true
and no feat of bravery or strength can re-assert that every restaurant you've eaten in today hasn't been in on a plot to poison you--that's incomprehensible to me, and therefore many times more scary.
I have a cousin that's deeply deeply unfunctionally mentally ill, and even though she's been this ill for twenty years now, I think it's only very recently that they've tried to diagnose her beyond manic depressive. And apparently the diagnosis was DID, but my little understanding of that does nothing to explain any of her supremely erratic behaviour (she's the one, for instance, that my mother took in after she kicked her grandmother down a flight of stairs--I told Mummy not to do it, to send N back to the US, back to her mother, that there's no way she could shepherd her through a medical degree (my mother was also one of her professors)--for all of two weeks before she gave up entirely in the face of irrationality she couldn't cope with). She doesn't seem to be different people, just the same person with extreme mood shifts and no ability to curtail her impulses at all--so if they say jump out the window, she'll fall the two stories without hesitation ("If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" "Mom, *I* am the one that jumps first.") and still agitate for custody of her children from her hospital bed (she might even have been pregnant at the time, if memory serves).
Which, uh...had a direction when I started the post. But mostly one of deep sympathy, but not enough understanding to be empathy.
Um, hey, adorable kid and dog: [link] ! Yes, that's it. Adorable cuteness.
Having IV meds delivered to your house like it's the pizza guy is not getting less weird. But I have a replacement anti-emetic, and I hope it works better than the phenergan.
My laptop seems to have died. It's at least critically ill since it WON'T TURN ON. Argh.
I had a 4-year plan to get out of credit card debt when I moved back to my hometown, and then the economy tanked and I took a big pay cut, and now my parents seem to have developed the retirement hobby of coming up with new expenses faster than I can pay for old ones. I think I'm going to settle for maintaining a consistent amount of debt to saddle some inheriting second cousin with in 30 or 40 years.
And then I dumped the ring out, he took it, got down on one creaky knee and proposed, and after the yeses and kisses, he said, "Seriously, this is called a tiara setting. You get to wear a tiara every day!"
Sniff. He knows us you so well.
Um, hey, adorable kid and dog: [link] ! Yes, that's it. Adorable cuteness.
Those two can never grow up.
How can daycare cost that much?
I'm gonna say it's because toddlers lack a sense of mortality. Not that undergrads are always any better, but we tend to presume they can manage survival on their own.
JZ, I'll be consulting you when my one year review comes around.
Not long after I paid off my student loans I had a few months during which I had no debt. That was nice.
I love that story, Steph. And that he thought about the practicalities of the setting! Related note, I need to clear my search history and browser now that I've been googling various engagement ring search terms. Don't want D getting any kind of false sense of urgency on my part.
I dream of getting out of credit card debt. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, tumble back down a flight of stairs. I'm much better about not spending money that I don't have, but I'm making way less of it and my expenses are higher. Working on both of those things, but it is slow and painful.
I just helped the kids make 60some Valentines. Oy! That was almost fun, except not. And then DH came home in time to take the kids to their tumbing class, so I get to go to my stretch class later. Yay DH! As far as I'm concerned, that's better than a Valentine's day card right there.
