I want to be crafting, not blogging. There’s a reason that I’m not and it involves the Fluffy Little Fucker, and letting my girlfriend sleep.

You see, I failed to plan accordingly, and though I have projects out here, I can’t really work on them because in all cases there is one essential part I need locked in my office with the howling fur demon from hell.

Let’s back that up a bit. Last night we tried an experiment. Usually we lock the cat in the office when we go to bed. We decided to let the cat “sleep” in the main room with us. He didn’t do a lot of sleeping. And neither did I. On the one hand, it was very sweet that all he wanted was to nuzzle my hand. On the other hand, all I really wanted to do was sleep. And because I was half asleep through all this, it never occurred to me to lock him back in the office. This makes me the dumb ass in this scenario.

After about 5 hours of this bullshit, it finally occurred to me to put the little asshole back in the office. The problem is, the process of getting up and doing this woke me up. I’ve been awake ever since. After about half an hour, the cat finally quit howling his indignation, and Aack was able to go back to sleep.

After an hour of laying in bed I finally gave up and started reading. I’m currently reading The Subversive Stitch, which is a wonderful book, but I can’t read more than 3 pages before I have a deep seated need to go make something. And therein lies the problem: every project I have out here requires something from the room with the howling beast in it. And Aack is still sleeping. And since it’s my fault we were up until 3 this morning, I really feel I should let her.

So I’m blogging. Under protest. Because it’s something I can make, even if it doesn’t involve a needle and thread.

Fucking cat.

Yesterday, on a whim, I perused the Gigs section of Craigslist.  I found two potential gigs (short-term/single project jobs) and shot off emails to them.  One responded right away, and we quickly ferreted out that I did not yet have the skills necessary to do what he needed.  (Which was fine.  He was very polite, the whole transaction was extremely professional, and I came away proud of myself for trying.)

The second gig is still up in the air, and as I learn more about it, the more murky it seems to be.  To the point that I’m thinking of just emailing the guy and telling him I can’t do it in the timeline he wants.  (There’s irony for you. This is a non-paying gig, I’d be using it to get a site design under my belt, and the guy expects overnight turn around.)

The interesting part in all this is why things are getting murky.  In his response email to me, the guy included a link to his current site, and a copy of a grant application he was preparing.  (The latter was to be used for developing site content.) Both the email and the grant had some.. odd phrasing, the kind of thing that made me wonder if English was his first language. When I tried to call him I got his voicemail, and low and behold, English is not his first language.

The grant application also included a bibliography which cited this site three times, including an article entitled “Children of Divorce: Rapists and Other Criminals”.  Not that I would inherently turn down a job because I don’t believe in/or agree with their cause, but it definitely gave me pause.

Interesting fun fact: this guy also named his kid Nixon.  Who the hell names their kid Nixon?

Anyway, after some serious thought, I think I’m turning down the job.

• It’s an unpaid gig with a super tight deadline.
• It involves writing the web content, something I’m not sure I can do with a straight face.
• There’s a language barrier.
• I can’t get the guy to return my calls and emails in a timely fashion.
• The guy named his kid Nixon.

I think it’s safe to say: I’m out.

Okay, not really.  But it sure seemed that way.  The MS Office students ask for help ten times more often than the Web Design students.

Okay, that sentence probably deserves a little explanation.  I’m in an Adult Education retraining course (most of us are unemployed) and there are two available courses of study: Web Design and MS Office.  And I will freely admit that I have a bias against the Office students from the get go: who would choose Office over the chance to learn HTML, CSS, the Adobe Creative Suite, PHP and Java? I’m sorry, Excel has its uses, but it just can’t compare.  My *very* biased theory is that they’re not smart enough to handle the web design. (Which I realize is unfair, and bullshit to boot, but I never claimed I wasn’t elitist.)

Anyway, the Office students, especially the newest batch, are ALWAYS asking for help.  (For the Twitter peeps: yes, Shitzilla is one of the Office students.)  I always assumed it was because they were idiots.  One of the more socially awkward Office students enlightened me at the break.  (I didn’t realize we were having a conversation, but he likes to randomly walked up to people and have conversations at them.) Turns out they have the world’s worst Word text book, and it occasionally skips steps, doesn’t give them keyboard shortcuts they’re apparently expected to know, etc.  (We have one of those in our course too.  The second CSS text is one of the worst books known to man to read, and I struggled through it for weeks until I found out everyone else was just doing the exercises. I kind of wish I’d learned that 11 chapters ago.)

Anyway, the Office students aren’t universally located south of the middle of the IQ curve like I originally thought.  But you can be damn sure I’ll write about the exceptions in the near future!

It was 5 minutes to break time when the little old Chinese guy in my class came up to me and told me my car had a flat tire.

I went outside, and low and behold, I had a flat tire.

Half the class followed me outside, using the excuse to go on break early.  One guy asked me if I was planning on changing it.  I didn’t figure I had a lot of choice here.

The Chinese gentleman (whose name I don’t know, I’m ashamed to say) proceeded to take control of the situation. He watched while I opened my spare tire compartment, and assessing the tools provided.  (He had an injury or stroke at some point, so he has limited use of one of his arms.) Some of the other gentlemen in the helped me with jacking up the car and changing the tire, and at one point I found myself standing to the side while the guys did all the work. I could hear No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” playing in my head as I stood there, setting women’s lib back a decade or so.

In retrospect, I can’t say I mind.  Could I have done it? Eventually, yes.  Was this a hell of a lot easier?  Oh fuck yes.  But wait, our story is not done.

So after they get the old tire off, the Chinese guy looks at it, tries to find the leak, and says “I don’t have the tools here, but if you let me take it home, I can fix it.” Turns out he lives 5 minutes away.  So I let him.  He brought it back, repaired, but told me because of the location and nature of the damage (the tire cracked) that it wasn’t going to hold or be safe to drive on.

He also brought me two slightly used tires, saying I could have them for free to replace my back tires.

Let me reiterate: a classmate whose name I don’t even know brought me a free pair of tires, solving my I-need-new-tires problem.  There are good people in the world, and I am blessed enough to run into them.

When I told her about this, Lisa commented “Rolled a 20 for our Charisma roll, did we?” But I didn’t, I just stood there.  I’m convinced that I just happened to meet a Chinese paladin.

One of the things that spirals out away from me, when I’m out of control, is my ability to handle my bills and other assorted finance related responsibilities.  Lately this has included my dealings with the EDD (Employment Development Department of the state of California).  My most recent round of fuck up may have cost me $800.  The jury, apparently, is still out.  I’m not holding my breath.  This particular bureaucracy seems to be terribly inflexible, which really sucks for a basket case like me.

Anyway, the out $800 thing is not exactly my shining moment in the sun, and I’m a bit less than thrilled about that.  But mostly I’m perplexed as to what to tell the EDD people when they call.  “You didn’t notice the check didn’t come?”  Well, yes, I did notice eventually, but my grasp of time is a bit fucked up, and it has a nasty way of slipping away from me.  But what do you say?  Last time I said nothing, just ended up crying into the phone.  How the fuck do I explain?  I’m thinking that if it happens again (and I *really* hope it doesn’t), that I’m going to tell them that my fucked perception of time is a side effect of one of my psych meds.  It’s not something I’ve seen listed on any of the side effect sheets, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be true, and god knows I’m on enough of the damn things that one of them has to have the option.

Anyway, I’ve finally quit beating myself up over this incident (it happened last week), and mostly I just find myself confused and concerned about my ability to cope with large, overworked, inflexible bureaucracies.

But mostly I wonder, what is it like to be a functional adult, and when do I start feeling like one?

I had to call my prescription coverage company Caremark today.

There’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

Their reps are HORRIBLE, they have no idea or record of what others say or do, and they don’t accept “as directed” as valid prescription directions, even on things like blood thinners which change as your blood levels change.  They’ll cancel prescriptions in a heart beat.  Based off my experience, they actually seem to go out of their way to make this process more difficult.

And it works: after 20 minutes of trying to get them to renew my god damned blood thinner prescription, I gave up and called my doctor’s office.  I actually had to tell them how to phrase the prescription so that Caremark would actually fill the fucking thing.  I should not have to work this hard to get my fucking medication.

I know me ranting about them seems to be a repeating pattern but god dammit, they’re a fucking nightmare to deal with.  I blog about it because it keeps me from putting my fist through walls.

It’s that time of year boys n girls, that time when my city loses its mind and all hell breaks loose.  Yesterday there were two separate shoot outs, as well as a knife incident that ended with the guy being shot by Oakland police.

The knife incident involved a guy they tazered twice, who charged a police officer with a knife in each hand yelling “shoot me” repeatedly.

Shoot out number one closed freeway 580 West all day.  Apparently the CHP (California Highway Patrol) pulled the guy over for weaving in and out of traffic, and as the cop started to walk up to the guy’s window, he saw him pull out a gun.  The guy was wearing a bullet proof vest, and according to his mother, went ape shit because of the leftist policies be forced through Congress.  No really.  The guy survived because of the vest.  The cops survived because the guy was a lousy shot.

Shoot out number two occurred when an Oakland police officer pulled over a car in West Oakland.  While searching the car, someone in a high rise pulled out a shot gun and tried to snipe the cop.

Yup, just another day in my city.

Caremark can go fuck its self, then die.

There are no words to describe how angry I am.

No part of their website works (including the newly advertised mobile site), no one at their customer service can give a straight answer to a single fucking question, and they’ll use any excuse possible to cancel or deny your prescriptions.

The one working part of their god damn ass reaming, shit sucking web site is the one telling me how much more I pay for my meds than they pay for my meds. Welcome to Furious Rage, population: me. My favorite is the one they refuse to fill because “it’s a vitamin”. (A prescription only vitamin, fuck you very much…) Yeah, that one costs them about $15.  When I try to order it, it costs me $68, and that’s the cheapest price I can find.

The only savings grace is the psych meds. Those are costing them a fucking fortune, and that’s not even including the brand name only meds. I can’t wait to see what those fuckers cost them.

Of course, knowing them, they’ll deny them.  Again. And that’s when I’ll really go postal.  And when I finally lose my mind completely, you’ll find me in Woonsocket, RI trying to launch their corporate offices into deep space. Y’all are welcome to come.  BYOIoD. (Bring Your Own Implements of Destruction)

My mother leaves on a trip for Washington DC at 4 AM Monday morning. It’s a Sufi thing meaning damn near every moment of the trip is planned out for her.

This would drive me completely insane. But then again, I don’t really do a lot of site seeing vacations, I like vacations where you go away and do nothing unless it appeals. For example: there is a lake near the cabin we’re going to in August, with a boat at our disposal and everything. While I like the lake, I find visiting it completely optional, and am frequently just as happy hanging out at the cabin.

But I digress. Back to Mom and her trip. We went over for the requisite just-in-case-you-die-on-your-trip dinner. My mother chattered non-stop the entire time about work, her friends, her trip, her lists for prepping for her trip, the weird old shit she found in her cosmetics bag, her cat sitter (not me), and her expectation that I come over to give the cat water out of my hand like she does so he doesn’t feel too lonely while she’s gone. 
It was a lot like our standard phone conversations.

In the car afterwards, Aack mentioned how manic my mother had seemed. Apparently it does run in the family!

Trouble is having a bad day.  His day apparently started with a lack of intestinal fortitude, as evidenced by the state of his tail, and the walls in the office.  (My morning hasn’t been too peachy either.  Scrubbing cat shit off the walls is not my idea of a good time.)

His day took a step downhill when he got  a bath to clean him up.  And it got worse still when he went to the vet and got 3 vaccinations & an antibiotics shot for his butt worms.

Oh yeah, did I mention? My fluffy little fucker got himself a tapeworm, and occasionally drops wriggling little egg sacks out of his ass. Terribly disgusting. Right up there with cleaning cat shit off the walls…

You know, between the cat and the California Employment Development Department (read: the unemployment office), I’m kind of having a shit day too.