Dana, are you wedded to FTE?

If not, send me an email. I know the place I'm contracting through (and the project itself) has outposts in your area.

I'm so fucking annoyed with people right now. So many people. But the worst offender is my best friend's daughter. She got caught stealing. From the place where her mother works. They are so lucky the boss really likes her mom, otherwise she would have lost her job. As it is, the girl is not allowed to ever come into the store again. (Which considering she normally stays at the store after school for two hours is going to cause a bit of a problem for them. There's nowhere else she can stay except the McDonald's across the road (or sit in the car in the cold), and then she'll spend all her allowance buying fries and milkshakes.) Also, when she got caught (by a woman who dislikes her and her mom, naturally), she called the woman who caught her a bitch "for making a scene! She didn't have to make such a BIG DEAL of it!" Holy Batman, people. I couldn't believe it. She is lucky she didn't get arrested! Worse, this is not the first time she's stolen stuff, and not even the first time she's stolen from her mom's store! It's just the first time she's gotten caught in the act. She knows better, she knows exactly what could happen if she steals. She does it anyway. I thought the stealing-stuff phase was over, but I guess not. She talks like she had no control over herself, but I know that's not true; she doesn't have a compulsion to steal. She's stealing things like dry shampoo, that she just wants to "try out" and she doesn't want to ask for the money because she knows her mom will say no. That's not a compulsion, that's a choice.

This girl is seventeen! She's never had a job (she blames her mom for that, but she's had plenty of chances to apply for jobs, she just doesn't. It's her mom's fault, she says, for not bringing her an application and helping her fill it out). She's never learned to drive. She's failing all her classes because she won't do the work. She's basically 13 except she's not 13, she's 17. She seems to be trying her best to make sure that she can stay a kid and live with mom and have mom take care of her, for the rest of her life, while she spends all her time on the internet. She's already been held back one year in school, and now it looks like she won't be graduating when she's 18, either.

Her mom is about to have a nervous breakdown. Whenever she tries to punish her or discipline her, the kid breaks something or sets something on fire, "accidentally". Her mom's afraid if she grounds her from the internet, the kid will set the house on fire. There's not really anything else she can do, the kid doesn't respond to consequences at all, she just does whatever she wants at the moment.

I don't even know what to say to her. Either of them. I'm so mad at the girl, and so upset for my friend. My friend is one of the most hard-working, trustworthy, self-reliant people I've ever met. I don't know how her youngest daughter turned out this way. I hope she'll grow up and take responsibility for herself and her life, but I'm really afraid that she won't, and then what happens?

Ugh. I'm sorry, I just needed to rant, and usually the person I rant to is my friend! I'm so worried for both of them, and there's nothing at all I can do. I have zero influence over the kid, and I'm 8 hours away.

How do I explain that I'm applying (and willing to do) jobs I'm over-qualified for, because I'm sick of capitalism?

I'm especially interested in this position because I am looking to make a significant change and believe my experience doing X would be a strong benefit for this position doing Y.

If only we could get y'all's excess snow out here to the Sierra somehow.

Apparently, our snow farms are full here, so it's not such a crazy idea?

Ugh, Zen, that sounds like a mess. I am confident that nearly all teenage fuck-ups eventually figure it out, though.

Zen, that's heartbreaking. I hope that girl grows the hell up before anything truly serious happens.

Have you furminated him, Anne?

Alas, the furminator pulls too much on the hair that's still attached, so he doesn't like it much. I use a slicker brush that does a very good job. And yes, I've been saving the fur to "play" with.

Oh, Zen, your poor friend. That sounds so hard.

Oh, man, it took about five minutes to remember how much I hate internal job websites. Why do you make me upload my resume AND fill out all of your stupid little fields?

This is a place that I had an account at less than a year ago, but I assume they have switched systems since then, because I could not log in with that same account.

Nothing since yesterday. Have you sent something since then?

Aww, bummer. I emailed yesterday seeing if you wanted to grab dessert. Next time!

Sometimes I'm worried that I'm crazy and making up my issues

Nope! San Diego is awash with pollen and things of that nature. All this stuff by the convention center was blooming. I'm also an asthmatic, with a hard trigger for perfume/cologne, so I was primed by the flowers into a slow moving asthma attack that lasted all afternoon, trapped in a windowless, ventless room with wafting clouds of scent.

if you have several people a day (or more than once a day) leaving their dogs' poo where it lands, that's a bunch of poo for maintenance to clean up.

it can get horrible. and it doubly sucks for those that do pick up poop, because you're constantly getting dirty looks for having a dog.

Oh, god, there's a personality assessment questionnaire. I forgot about this part.

Toddson, that was a great suggestion about using the fiberglass goats as molds. I'd be afraid to scratch them up, though, especially since they're arriving pre-primed.

I talked over the etsy goat frame with bossman, and he said to work up a schedule and cost to present to him, and then if it didn't look to be too much of a timesuck, we could present it to the ED, and maybe the costs could be absorbed by the spring fundraiser if we can auction it off. I saw that ladywelder also had an adorable lamb for only $90, if we wanted to save money and not overdose on goats (although just today I saw ED refer to the fundraiser as our "goat-a-thon", so maybe not.

Thanks guys and gals! This is looking much more like a possibility, and I would feel better to be able to not be putting the kibosh on something the ED was so excited for me to do.

There's a garden somewhere that is so proud of their compost pile that they built viewing platforms to go up and look at it (it's fairly huge).

ION, my dad called today to proudly tell me that he'd finally transferred my inheritance money from Grams. And then said that if I could find a cheaper quote, I could use that money to get my car fixed.

Um, when I asked for financial help getting my car fixed, I already knew that this money was coming towards me, and was asking for separate monies, and you said yes.

I feel so ungrateful, but I am so stressed financially, and he is such a scrooge, and I'm a little resentful after all the home repairs and brand new kitchen and laundry appliances he has purchased as gifts for my delinquent brother, for the money he's gifted him for trips to Florida, because he's without a job or whatever. And whenever I ask for help with a root canal or something necessary and dire, it all comes back to how I need to get a better paying job, what am I spending my money on? I have no dental and one and half root canals on the horizon, I'm paying down two credit cards, my rent takes one whole bi-weekly paycheck. I asked for help with one thing, and I have been happily advised that I can now use the monies that were going to given to me anyway (that I had earmarked in my brain for getting ahead of the CCs and paying off the half root canal (I'm living without a crown right now). I joined the army so I could pay my own way to college, and when the additional scholarships started to surpass the other ten percent that my dad chipped in, he kept that for himself as what was owed him. For all I know it was more than what he had chipped in. When I fixed up my grand dad's yard out of my own pocket, they refused to reimburse me because I didn't have the receipts, and I got nothing from the sale of the house that I'd been living in and upkeeping and caring for Gramps while he'd been alive. The accountant advised dad to not give us a percentage, but to only hand out money as we asked for it, and then when I did, it came back to "why can't you afford that on your salary? What are you spending your money on? Get a better job".

Somewhere, my dad has a notebook of every time he's parted with money on his children's behalf, and I've a sneaking suspicion it includes diapers on it.

Again, I feel terribly ungrateful, and I wish I could stand on my own two feet. And I wish I had never asked for help with the car now. But, yo, I am very bitter and resentful. And also stressed about money, and I thought I'd seen a light that start getting me out of this hole and keep my mouth and my car from falling apart.