Video Killed the Radio Star

Are they any other 80's-type kiddos who are grown up and horrified at the number of 80's tunes that are showing up in commercials? It's starting to make me feel like a baby-boomer.

WENDY'S is using Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes to advertise their fish sandwich! Fish sandwich? Are you kidding me? Yuck. I saw the Violent Femmes open for the Pixies last summer. If I thought they needed rent money I wish they had put out a tip-jar. I would have thrown in 5 bucks to NOT see a commercial with their song in it.

A cover of Melt with You is the background for a car commercial. Well, a cross-over GMC vehicle. I think they came up with the word "cross-over" to hopefully avoid having eggs thrown at another gas-guzzling SUV by the members of Greenpeace. I could be wrong.

There have been others which I cannot remember at the moment but dammit, I am not really ready to be target-marketed with songs of my youth.

I resolve to call her up, a thousand times a day

Oi so another great day at work talking to the happy tv consuming masses. Ack. I am so tired of hearing people complain. Without my meds and whatever role hormones are playing in my system, I fight tears several times a day. Not on the phone calls necessarily, but when I have a few moments to myself at lunch or break when I actually get to take it. I have no idea why but some agents have the impeccable timing to have a major question when I am trying to make it the bathroom. I have had one agent follow me into the bathroom to ask her question. WHAT THE HELL? Seriously. I am not a person apparently.

Every person who calls and demands free equipment or programming are all wealthy, "It's not the money, I have a million dollar home." "I am not trying to get anything free because I make more in a month than you make all year." Ok, so tell me why you're calling again? "I have owned my own business for 60,000 years and your customer service sucks, I would fire every one if they worked for me." Thanks. I appreciate it. Yes I am dying to help you now. I can't wait to go home to try to decide which bills to pay this month while you piss and moan about your 4 hd tvs. Yes indeedy.

And does Armageddon seriously have to play every single day? I can't get away from that damn movie. Geez. Beat me to death slowly with a smarmy cheese hammer ok?

I don't want to turn this blog into a piss and moan fest but I am burned out and I really would rather be concentrating about being happy about being pregnant. Instead, I am listening to this stuff every day and thinking about how I am going to even try to afford the terrible new health insurance plan. I don't think I am asking for a heck of a lot. Just not to worry every single day and not to spend 8 hours a day having my character assaulted.

A bright note -- Tom started a new job today. Woo hoo. Hopefully he will keep it and all will go well. That will bring some relief to the financial situation which will lower the stress. Maybe that will help take the sting out of the nut jobs who call to demand and scream.

I've tried to discover...a little something to make me sweeter

It's been a hell couple of weeks. Minus my meds and plus the hormones, I'm a nutball extraordinaire. I had to leave the breakroom at work because they were playing "Armageddon" (which is a cheesy piece of shite and I HATE Ben Affleck) but at the pivotal scene where Bruce Willis shoves young dude into the airlock and is going to die himself....waterworks. I have seen bits of this movie a million times. I don't even like the movie...but damn.

It's also been a tough time in the marriage. Without going into details, it's been exhausting. Tom still is not working and Dish has changed the health insurance. Now, I have a 2,500 deductible before ANY service, prescription, anything is covered. I still get to pay close to $200 a month for the privilege of the "coverage" of course. So I am looking at putting out an insane amount of money before the bean is born. I am not sure how we are going to do it if Tom doesn't get SOMETHING...ANYTHING soon. I don't want to be the harpie wife but seriously, I wish he was working at Taco Bell at this point.

I can't believe it's Monday again already. Weekends are not long enough. There is a blackout on taking time off for the next 2 weeks because of our price increase -- which means angry people. That's another thing I am having a really hard time with. Every time I get on a supervisor call and I have to have someone calling me a dumb whore or bitch it just tears at my soul. It's TV people. Gimme a break, I'm an expectant mommy without her Prozac and you are going to make me cry. It's hell on earth. Every.single.day. It's a good thing I do not have my chosen mutant power of being able to set people on fire with my mind. There would be a lot of fried folks. My self control is pretty low at the moment.

I would love at some point to be able to talk to someone who treats customer service people like trash and ask them why they feel so entitled. I understand frustration, seriously, I'm a consumer too. Never have I ever cussed at another human being on the phone. I have never called anyone a dumb bitch, or a whore or cunt or anything else. Ever. If my service was ever shut off because I didn't pay the bill, I would take responsibility for the fact I didn't pay it. I don't call my cell phone company and demand free phones. I realize I got a free phone when I started and if I want something with more bells and whistles, I have to pay for it. Why don't Dish customers get it? Why are they nasty and degrading? I would LOVE to hear someone's justification for that -- or hell...why they think calling me a dumb bitch would make me want to help them more?

I have been threatened with physical violence. Over television. Seriously. A customer told me flat out he was going to fly out to beat my ass. Me. 5'1" me who is no closer to the CEO that the guy who waxes the floor. Guess what? They hire people like US to take your phone calls because they don't have to. Get over it. You are not anymore important than the 600000 other people who call every day thinking they are going to talk to the president of the company. They pay us piss ants to talk to you piss ants. They don't care about you. At all. I wouldn't either if I didn't have to hear it day after day after day. I work in a department where the agents are SURPRISED to talk to someone polite. Get it?

Ugh OK I didn't mean to go off on quite such the Dish rant. I'm just dreading going into work tomorrow to the same old thing.

whiter than sour cream

Ok, seriously. January is our DRIEST winter month. Knock it off! I am so tired of waking up to seeing snow coming down on the patio. Really. It sucks. Enough already. I can't even imagine what March will bring if this is the start of this year.

Just in case there are people who don't know how crazy I would get when I actually got pregnant, let me recount the last couple trips to various stores with my mother. :) Kohl's was/is having a huge clear out the old-season sale. For myself -- 4 pairs of paints for 10 bucks. Amazing no? And of course the baby clothes were also very very cheap. My little bean now has a Halloween outfit, 2 first Christmas outfits, camo pants, some thermals. Yeah, we went nuts.

Yesterday -- Good Will had all their clothes for 99 cents and all baby clothes for 49 cents. Yes indeed. Another pile of cute outfits were acquired. And miracle and miracles -- Merf was able to leave without picking up any strange looking handmade-pottery bowls (an obsession of mine).

We are trying very hard not to use any sort of gender when talking about the bean. Hard to do. However, we did decide yesterday that should there be a question or if my bean ends up transgendered -- they could not luck into a better mommy. At least I hope so. I am educated en0ugh to let them tell me who they are and not try to cram them into something they are not. Hopefully bean will not need to experience such pain.

So now it's time to come up with something to do whilst cursing the snow and hoping it clears quickly.

she's having a baby

Yes indeed! It's a bean! Due September 11th of all days. Not the best timing I would picked, although we have been trying (I am 36 after all) but Tom is not working so I am nervous. Mostly excited however since I wasn't sure I would get the chance. :) So I am trying to concentrate on that part of it. Had this done today, could see the little heart beating like crazy and everything looks good so far.

So here we come world, ready or not. A little Merf to help kick some ass.

You and me have seen all there is to see

Christmas is over for another year. Back to work, back to the reality of customer service and the fact that people are mean. My dad paid to fly Kate in which was awesome. Seeing her 2 times in one year is basically unheard of and that was cool. It was a short visit. She also had to go back to work today so she flew in on Saturday and left this morning. The holiday was a little bizarre because the blizzard screwed up the end of last week. That and we are completely broke which I think hurts the worst.

I now have to create some sort of miracle to make rent next week. Tom's job is part time and a holiday temp thing to start with and he has called out more days than not. His paycheck when he picks it up will possibly be 100 dollars. I am frustrated by this. I know he is depressed, I do. I struggle with it myself. There in lies the difference -- I struggle, not succumb. Would I like it if someone paid all my bills so I could wallow at home and do nothing? Hell yes I would. That isn't the way life works however. So I will be putting off electricity and all the other bills and probably getting a payday loan in order to not bounce the rent check. Ugh.

I am not sure where else to go with this. If I try to express myself, he folds up. He gets upset and I feel like a beast trying to ask a man with a broken leg run a marathon. I feel like I am running a marathon. It's effecting my job because I am exhausted and when I get home, the house is there in all its mess and piles of laundry and dishes to do. I feel like a failure and it's embarrassing when I cannot give Christmas presents or meet friends for dinner or drinks because I am right now alone in my marriage. My second marriage, 4 months in. I feel like an ass. Do I threaten? Do I continue to beg? Do I get angry? How many more tears can I cry that do nothing? I have no idea. I don't want this to be a mistake. I don't want to feel alone and I don't want to continue to eat myself up with stress everyday because I am the soul bread-winner. So instead I am whining and hogging bandwidth.

Maybe I will look for a second job. I work 6-2:30 so I am free in the afternoons. I need to be able to at least take care of myself. I am dreading the new year and this one is still crawling to its death.

Yeah, this isn't going to get any more uplifting or probably all that helpful. Plus it's time to check the dryer. Sorry for my selfish vomit.

I'll follow you into the dark

So it's really over. The funeral was Wednesday. ( I didn't go, it was out east and I did not have the time to leave work). Even after all the stress and weirdness of the last year, it's bizarre to have it be finished. We are dog sitting for my folks and every time we walk into the house and I see the room door closed, it takes me a minute to realize she is not there behind it. It's strange not to think she might come shuffling down the hall, or call out like she did once she stopped being mobile. There's nothing back there but an empty bed and the closed door.

It nice being able to take my mom out the house, to be able to look at things with her without an ear open. If we want to sit in the kitchen and talk, there is no anticipation of hearing footsteps, "yoo hoo," or "help."

I talked to my cousin on the phone on Tuesday night. I have never met her in person. Ever. I cannot describe what she looks like. I think I may have seen a picture of her when she was younger. I called her for my mom because their cell phone was freaking out. It was a surreal conversation. She is my dad's older brother's daughter. I never met him either. He passed away when I was 14. Before that, he had been wandering the earth -- having come back from VietNam a mess and not able to deal with the world. He saw my younger brother at birth, but never laid eyes on my sister or myself. So it's similar to reading the dust jacket of a book or making up a story to the snap shots you find on the street.

She told me my grandmother was the only person who ever showed her warmth or nurturing. It was the strangest sentence to hear. Really? Warmth? Nurturing? This woman who I have heard say some darn vile things. Vile things about her to be honest. Not that I would bring that up ever. It's not my business to taint her memory or cause her pain. I did have to suppress the thoughts running through my head. Because my uncle was a mess and her mother had issues and walked out -- she had lived in foster homes. Apparently it was bad. She told me my grandmother had been kind to her.

What crossed my mind was "if she cared so much why didn't she take you out of foster care?" Not a fair question and none of my business but I could help it. This made sense knowing the woman that I did. Maybe it's true and she was warm to her. Maybe there was something about my cousin that made her behave differently than any other interaction I had ever had -- even before she came to live with us.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. I took her email address and we will be in contact. Perhaps I will gain something about my family that I didn't know. Something other than the made up stories based on snap shots.