the same ol' decent lazy eye

i'm not sure if i am just burned out or if i have finally reached the end of my rope with my job. i've been here for 4.5 years and up until recently it used to be a joke (kind of) how things never changed, even though we always heard 'after we just do this one thing, everything will be different'. stuff's never different. you can move people to new positions that they have wanted for years but if you don't give them training to do their jobs and don't get anyone else to take over their old jobs, you are just keeping them in the same place with a new chair and a new title. it's like filling a faultline full of plaster - it might look like you've made a difference but two days later the crack's going to be open again.

here's something weird - i found myself thinking about boy australia all the way in to work this morning. does that ever happen to you? even though you are completely and utterly happy with your relationship, you find yourself caught up in nostalgia for someone else now and again?

ach this post is all over the place and i have no focus today. i'm frustrated with my job and myself. why am i incapable of just standing up and saying NO i will NOT take on these new responsibilities until you have someone else to take on my old ones? see the problem is that my colleagues here are just doing that, so if i don't keep on with my previous duties my poor boss (who's already overworked and trapped doing six other peoples' jobs) will just take them on and be stuck doing them, too. it's as though the management and my co-workers know this - know that i won't let her get into that position - so are counting on the fact that i'll just suck it up. i can't though - i just can't make myself care right now because everything that i've been promised has always been just so much lip service. the side effect of all of this is that i know feel as though i'm not capable of doing anything - i've lost faith in my abilities and have no real sense of what my skills are. my confidence levels are lost to inertia. i need some kind of career counselling, or something. i need to be exposed to an employer who is a good team leader, who supports their staff and offers training and encouragement. senior management here gives the impression that they are sitting back and waiting for you to screw up; waiting to be handed the excuse to lay you off. when they get it they do just that and, frankly, i'm not sure that wouldn't be a blessing at this point.

maybe that's why i am thinking about boy australia today - he packed everything up and moved to australia. he took his dream job and just... left. maybe subconsciously i'm trying to find inspiration in someone i knew only for a brief time because i have no mentor in my current life.

i'm leading man

first things first: kanye west has remixed fall out boy's arms race and it's r&b funny. i can hear the emo masses wailing in protest & throwing up their arms in teen angst misery all across the darkcloud nation.

secondly: on thursday night, wolfmother rocked my world, rolled me over, slapped me on the ass and rocked me again. seriously. i would have never belived that three people could fill a 75year old hockey cavern with a sound so full and rich - never. they did, though and it was incredible. the crowd, however, was a bit weird. they were all so... big, and i kept thinking of the rolling stones concert at altamont. there was this barely restrained sense of violence that kept me, the kiddo, the architect, and the sister grooving quietly to ourselves in the bleachers along the side of the stage. spanky, the fifth member of our party (taking the place of the sister's boyfriend, forevermore to be known as asstard) headed into the crowd. he accepted a joint from some folks around him and is half convinced it was full of pcp. he ended up getting collard by vancouver's finest (cough, cough ahem) and spending the night in jail. they took his shoes and refused to give them back before turning him out into the rain at 5am at the corner of main & cordova which, if you know vancouver, is not the best place to be regardless of footwear decisions.

thirdly: (and this is the second third time that i have written this because my beloved angus has caught wind that he is about to be replaced by Angus MacIntoy II - Son of Angus and is perturbed by this fact) the folks are coming for deener tomorrow night for the architect's family birthday dinner and i am going to make a vegan chocolate raspberry cake. he does not know this, but i figure that he probably won't even notice. plus, i'm going to make him roast beef in my slowcooker (it has to be in there for 22 hours), so if i'm cooking dead cow he can deal with vegan cake. so there. actually if the beef turns out (i figure that being in a slow cooker for 22 hours has to be a good thing - like melt in the mouth good) i may go pick up a buffalo roast and try the same thing during the week. i'm doing really well with this 'new recipe per week' resolution. i guess that the trick is finding something that isn't totally life changing, rather something that is within your interests and means to fulfill and you can stick to it fairly easily. plus i get to try out all sorts of new stuff on people, which is funfun.

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there's a hole in my bucket

in which case my bucket is actually my nose and what is running from that bucket is not water but something else. something much less pleasant than water, let me tell you.

last night my sinuses were so congested by the time i got home from work i popped a couple of tylenol multisymptom allergy pills at 6.30, was asleep by 7.10, woke up to drag myself to bed at 9, and didn't get up till this morning, at which point i still felt high.

yes high - not stoned or drugged up these things made me feel like i'd taken some e full of heroin. seriously. not sure that i enjoyed it. in fact, if i wasn't fairly well versed in various states of altered... er... states i probably would have been freaked out like nobody's business. thank god for illegal pharmaceuticals preparing you for the legal ones.

in other worlds, tomorrow is the architects birthday. i took the day off so that (assuming i feel better) i could take him on a bit of a day-trip type adventure. we are going to go across to bowen island and take the bikes for a spin around if it's nice enough or otherwise just poke around and have a bit of lunch. i think that's a fun day and he seems up for it. tame, yes, but we are going to wolfmother tomorrow night and out with a bunch of people on saturday so it all will come together nicely, i think. i still want to get him a bit of a giftie, but may head out at lunch to see what i can come up with.

there's a bat caught in my chest hair

so how much do monday mornings suck rocks? it's cold, rainy, i took my meds before i went to bed last night so my sleep sucked, the architect is padding about the warm house sporting sleepy eyes and comfy clothes and i'm here. at work. yay.
x`
so it's the architect's birthday on thursday. we're going to see wolfmother and (i think) to see kaskade over the weekend to celebrate, but i have no idea what to get him as a gift.

you see, he has *way* more disposable income than i do, so when he buys gifts he does things like ... oh for example... orders me a new macbook for valentine's day. (insert mad extremely excited giggling here). i, however, am on a major budget, so am not sure what i'll be doing. i know i'm making him a cake, but other than that..... dog only knows. a new hoody? i know he wants a sonicare toothbrush, but isn't that kind of practical gift boring, unromantic and... well... practical?

you gonna want me

crap what happened to yesterday's post?

oh wait, that's right, i didn't write it. heh. whoops slipsy. i got fun treats for valentines - fleurs, jewelry (wooden, not sparkly), kisses... i haven't had a *real* valentine in god knows how long. it was a neat little novelty, i must say.

the sister found out last night that her ex did, indeed, screw around while he was away this last time. she's raging furious and, i must say, i don't blame her - being stuck here waiting for someone while they are off having a great time and sleeping with other people is kind of like being kicked in the teeth.

i wish i could say that i am surprised, but honestly i'm not. at first when this all began, i really hoped it wasn't the case, but there have been a couple of things that have happened in the last week that have made me convinced. it's unfortunate, though, 'cause i did really like the guy. no i'm forced to roofie him, bind him with duct tape, drag him into the swamp and leave him for the gators. i'm going to need a dolly, though, 'cause otherwise i won't be able to move him at all. maybe if there were a few of us it'd be fine - volunteers?

no more subliminal shit

i am completely obsessed with mildly distracted by hitting 'refresh' on the police fanclub website just in case they release the presale passwords early....

happy v-d ... er, i mean...

that closet door in your bedroom leads to the gates of hell

fech i wish i could find my camera (she says, knowing that it's probably in one of the three boxes in her bedroom she's decided to ignore until it's time to move again). i feel as though le bloggity has become far too text heavy and is sorely lacking in hothot photographic goodness. my sincere apologies for that.

whatch y'all doing for valentine's day? i'm going to send the sister some flowers, i believe, since i can't imagine it will be a particularly festive corporate holiday for her.

nine to five living lies

i've had a stupid flu all weekend - i say stupid 'cause i feel like crap then i start feeling better so i rush rush rush out of the house to eck-scape the cabin fever and then feel like crap again. so today i'm home in bed and the architect has brought his computer upstairs and is drafting away, propped up against the blankets beside me. all in all not a bad situation.

i did get out of bed earlier to put stuff in the slowcooker, though, so i didn't have to worry about cooking dinner later. the sister is coming over, i think. her bf of 4 years split up with her on friday evening. nasty stuff - they own a condo together and he isn't really *from* here, so they have to get all of their affairs in order before he takes off to go back to scotland or back to sea or whatever. part of me feels bad for him 'cause he's quite broken up about it, but part of me deeply suspects that there has been some infidelity and a larger part of me wants to flambe his testes for making the sister unhappy. i'll attempt to supress that impulse. mind you, he did break up with her the week before valentine's and her birthday. hm. perhaps i'll keep the welding torch at the ready.

i'm a punkrocker yes i am

i totally have that iggy pop / teddybears song in my head. completely contagious. other music related ponderings - wtf is wendy's doing making blister in the sun the musical accompaniment to their baked potato commercial? yes i get it - baked in the sun, but come on now if people are freaking out 'cause prince went behind a screen at the superbowl and his guitar looked like a devil penis, how is it ok to use a song who's lyrics include 'and i'm so strung out... i'm high as a kite i just might stop to check you out' to sell potatoes with brocolli-cheese topping? (i'm a punkrocker yes i am...)

we are supposed to go to the juan maclean tomorrow night but i'm so veryvery tired today that the thought of it (even though it's a full 36hrs away) makes me cringe and want to put on my fuzzy jammies and read my book. le sigh.

ok off to work i go - they've locked the airconditioners so that a constant gale force of cold air blasts down on me all day. my poor little space heater is getting a workout, let me tell you...

i'm a walking disaster

update 1 - still allergic to beer (i assume, anyway. that's not an experience i'm willing to repeat anytime soon. i may attempt to have ONE on the weekend, just to see (and a different brand, for sure) but surely not four)
update 2 - architect is fine, and apologized for being moody. he's promised to try and talk about stuff before it becomes a giant THING. for my part, i'll... well i'll pretty much keep going on as i do but will keep a closer eye on the kiddo's housekeeping habits. thank you for all your words of support and advice. i'm not so good with this whole relationship thing. my last one (tnb aside - too casual for inclusion in this pondering) was a fucked up emotionally abusive trainwreck headed straight off the tracks into a burning pit of despair and demolition, and that ended over four years ago. it'll take me a while to feel my way around, i guess.

aside from this, i also make some kickass black bean chipotle turkey chile, for a white girl of irish descent. yum.

cast afloat

oh my god i've never been so happy to see the end of a weekend. like i was actually happy to leave the house this morning - not because i wanted to go to work, but because i just couldn't stand the thought of what might come next.

apparently i'm allergic to beer. i've been having some odd reactions to it, lately, and on friday night i drank 4 beer at the giants game, ended up staggering and slurring, puked the whole way home, and then every 20 min or so until 1pm the next day when i took gravol and went to sleep. good times.

sunday started out pleasantly enough, with shopping and brunch, but when we got home the kiddo had left dishes on the counter and the architect went off the hook about how the kiddo isn't expected to do anything 'round the house and how it's lazy and how he wasn't brought up that way and how he didn't understand how it was ok with me. this totally took me by surprise - the kiddo will do stuff if you ask him but he doesn't really go out of his way to help out any (he's a 17yr old. did you volunteer to clean at 17? yeah me either). i just really had no idea that it was an issue. the architect deals with stuff by suppressing it until it's too late and everything bubbles over. we argued until after midnight - it was awesome, let me tell you. i still don't know if we are good. we seemed to come to an impasse last night - i had spoken to the kiddo about it but that wasn't enough. there isn't really anything else i can do, save take over all of the cleaning on my own, but that isn't the answer either.

all of my doubts and insecurities have come flooding back. it seems to me that this sort of thing proves that i'm not cut out for happily ever after. i meet a great guy and i can't even keep that going - no matter what i do. i'm happily continuing on thinking that we have a good thing going when out of nowhere i'm blindsided by issues that i had no idea even existed. i don't know why i ever opened myself up like this. i should have stayed where i was - at least i knew where i stood.

ug.

i get by with a little help

ever have the desire to turn your friends' personal quirks into a drinking game? we used to do it with instructors all the time - i had one who discovered electronic music. every time he mentioned the crystal method or kraftwerk (or spoke german, for that matter) we all took a sip of whatever beverage we had in front of us. of course, the class was at 9am so it was usually coffee, but i will confess i did on occasion supplement the coffee with the baileys.

the architect and i want to do it with our little group of friends. for example, chlorina swears. lots. so every time she says fuck, you take a drink. her boyfriend says wow. lots. same deal. the architect has a bit of a stutter. when he stutters, you drink. me, i blush. i blush all the time, for reasons that you'd never expect. when i blush, everyone drinks.

now this game can, of course, be expanded depending on the group of people you are with. i'm excited about trying it out. it's a great way to laugh at yourself, and to break the ice when you are introducing new people to the group - you bring someone in, you let them know what their little quirk is, and everyone watches for it. fun!

anyhoo - give it a shot if you are out between now and saturday. let me know if it works.


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on the decks - in the mix by tiga & ajax