MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER.  It finally sunk into my head this morning that there is NO job that has no sense of responsibility with it.  I’m running scared at work because I’m terrified that I left something uot of the bid and we’ll be disqualified and I will get fired.  That’s the normal catastrophizing I indulge in.

Everything I do is, in some way, a response to my mother.  I don’t want to take on things - no, that’s not true, it’s not about not taking things on, it’s that when I do take things on (or they’re required as part of my  job) I live in fear that I will be wrong.  I always second guess - and third guess and worry and wonder and live with frear in the pit of my stomach.  Sometimes it’s a huge lump of fear that fills me like a solid block of ice - no, not ice, but just filled - like a balloon about to pop; and other times it’s just a small, nagging sensation—kind of a rumble the way one’s stomach gurgles and contracts when it’s hungry - and food soothes and calmes me down.  Doesn’t stop me from gorging or soothing myself in that fashion; but I’m aware of why I’m eating.

There are so many reasons I eat - loneliness is one.  It’s not always fomantic loneliness either, it’s familial - that’s why Sundays are so hard for me. What will I do on Sundays when my parents are gone?

Responsibility.  I didlike it because it means whatever I do is going to get me in trouble.  Laura (my therapist) had an idea that perhaps subconsciously I screw up so I can provoke the rageful response and then get it out of the way - until the pressure builds up and I have to screw up again to get the rageful response.  Instaed of waiting for the dam to burst, I poke a hole in it - sort of being in control.  She said this several weeks back but only today as I write this can I articulate and understand what she said.

So I provoke the rageful response.  I guess it means I don’t trust myself or have confidence in what I am and in what I do.  Which is fully - this whole undermining myself - because when I start something, like a project at work, I have (at the outset) very little doubt as to my ability to do the job and to do it right.  I don’t get beset by my fears until it’s well under way, or like the bid last week, at completion.  Because at the end, I’ve done the work and now I’m free to worry that it’s wrong or bad or just not enough and so will get into trouble.

Ah yes, the joys and repercussions of having been scared shitless as a child.

Back in the early 60s the Rolling Stones had a hit “Mother’s Little Helper”.  It came out when I was 8 and I understood exactly what that song meant.  I couldn’t (and didn’t articulate it to myself at the time) but I understood that a mother needed a little yellow pill to get through the day.  I used to wish my mother had a little yellow pill of her own.

It would appear that the “Christian” spirit lives on at Sayville United Methodist Church. 

tiffany: I got this letter today. I’ve been voted out of church because I haven’t attended in 8 years. Merry Christmas to all!

GOOD GRAVY  I skipped Hamlet and took my parents to my uncle’s wake.  It’s tough to watch your 83-year old father cry.  Saw a bunch of relatives and family friends I haven’t seen in a while (since the last wake).  My mother was on good behavior - which I was kind of surprised.  We didn’t stay for the entire afternoon visit - Dad wanted to leave before the crowds did.  So we came back to the Island and had dinner and I got home about 7pm. 

Carlene’s husband couldn’t make the play today either so we had 2 tickets to get rid of; I gave them to a friend’s mother; Carlene said the play was great and that the 2 women who took the tickets really had a great time.  (Between you and me, I’m not really too sorry I missed it.)

Yesterday I actually made a really good gravy.  I think the secret is that this time I used fresh garlic instead of the jarred chopped garlic.  I also ran the tomatos through the blender so that they were less than smooth but not chunky.  I’m please.  I was so pleased that I took a couple of pork chops out of the freezer and defrosted them and fried them so I could throw them in the gravy to flavor the gravy and get really well soaked.  Um, no.  They were lamb chops.  Oh well oh well

singulus:

” There’s No Place Like Home. ” The Approach To New York City by Air …

Our Thanks To Marco Arment ♥

Here’s a shitty photo of an airplane wing, shot through a dirty, scratched window with a point-and-shoot digital camera. You’ve seen a million of these before.

It’s also an amateur aerial photo of New York City. Jamaica Bay, specifically, during a typical descent into JFK. I think that’s Rockaway Park in the bottom-right. You’ve definitely seen a million of these before.

Fortunately, I’m not posting it for its photographic or artistic value.

I’m posting it because this view makes me happy every time, and I always look out the window like an excited child seeing a city from an airplane for the first time. It’s my “welcome home” view, and it’s incredibly impressive regardless of how many times I’ve seen it before. (Pittsburgh residents are familiar with the sudden, amazing view of their city when entering via the Fort Pitt Tunnel. This is the New York version.)

Whenever I return to New York from a trip, I look forward to this, and it reminds me how lucky I am to live in a city that I like this much.

Bravo! neilmcloram:

I remember back at school we’d choose a few famous people that seemed to be on the verge. Mother Teresa and the Pope were always prime candidates, maybe because it was a catholic school. We’d chip in 20p each week until one of the people on someone’s list shuffled off, and they’d get the cash. I vaguely remember a website popping up later that did much the same.

Odd, our obsession with celebrity death. People that we vilify in life (MJ being a prime recent example) suddenly become heroes and role-models once more. There’s very rarely a ‘good riddance’ attitude; even Saddam’s execution was considered tasteless and harsh by many.

And so it will probably go on. People we’d forgotten about entirely, suddenly become ‘much missed’. Those we hated, turn out in retrospect to have ‘done quite a bit for charity I suppose’.

Personally, I think the cartoon sums it up. Deep down, I rarely care about the person in question, but the media manages to get me thinking about what effect they may have had on my life, on the world, their legacy. Pah!

I’d like to think we could be unified in celebration when Paul Gadd departs this life, but then again… ‘Hello, hello. I’m back again’ is quite catchy isn’t it?

Cheers to Pez for tweeting the image.

I REORGANIZED THE LINEN CLOSET  So yesterday I stayed home and it was good.  I thought I’d somehow feel at loose ends or melancholy but I didn’t; I truly enjoyed being alone.  My parents dropped by this afternoon to bring me a care package from yesterday’s dinner and a box of tissues.  They both seemed so old.  We were watching a cooking show on pbs and my father was saying the cook made pesto but no, she hadn’t; that was on a show they’d watched earlier at home.  My mother sat down on the couch and almost immediately snoozed a bit.  My father told me that his brother died last night; he got a call this morning from my cousin Rita.  He’ll be laid out on Sunday and buried on Monday.  I don’t know why I’m so sad but I am.  I think it’s because he’s my father’s only sibling and now my father is the only one left—their sister died in 1978.  My uncle turned 91 last month.  I hadn’t seem him since his wife, my aunt, died 3-1/2 years ago.  My father is going to the wake on Sunday with Rita.  My mother’s not going.  And that makes me sad too.  My mother hasn’t ever liked my father’s brother and sister-in-law and children.  60 fucking years.  Get over it.  You should go to be there for your husband whose brother died.  Bitch.  When I stop crying I’ll tell Dad I’ll go with him on Sunday.  I didn’t even tell them that I’m supposed to go see Hamlet but Carlene called and I told her and I just started to cry.  Like I am now.  I think what I miss is the idea of extended family I had as a kid.

We lived in our house and 2 blocks over were my grandparents who shared the huose with their daughter, son-in-law, and 2 granddaughters.  Behind them was my uncle (Dad’s brother) and aunt and 2 children.  When we went to visit grandman and grandpa we’d say “I”m going to the other house”.  (That’s the house where, when when my parents got married, they lived in the upstairs apartment and my aunt and uncle and 2 cousins lived downstairs.)  My mother never liked my aunt that I can remember - and my aunt never really liked my mother either - I don’t know why but my mother for almost 60 years of her marriage hasn’t like very many people.  So there’s this fracture in the family.  And it makes me feel bad because I think families should get along.  And I think it’s pretty shitty of my mother not to go with my father to his brother’s wake.  He won’t go to the funeral and that I can understand - he thinks it would be too much for him and I don’t blame him.  But for fuck’s sake your wife of 60 years is going to let you go to your brother’s wake alone.  That sucks.

When I reorganized the linen closet I found a box of tampons.  I haven’t had my period in over a year and a half.  I can’t donate them.  What the hell do I do with them?

BREATHING OUT OF ALTERNATE NOSTRILS  Responsibility.  Bravery.  Growing up.  Being rescued.  I’m starting to connect the dots in a real way in therapy.  We’ve been talking, and will continue to talk, a lot about my penchant for older men.  Not just a few years older, but significantly older - 20 years (or more).  I’d always rejected the notion that they are daddy figures and they aren’t.  What they are are rescuers.  As a child I was terrified of my mother; she’d explode and yell for no reason (or at least no reason I could discern) and I’d stand there and take it; or she’d just say what she felt—which was usually in a nasty way.  There was no one to save me.  So I’ve always wanted to be rescued; yes, it’s true—knight in shining armor riding in on a horse to pick me up and carry me away from everything I’m scared of.  So part of the attraction of older men is that there is the possibility that they will do just that.  That with them I’ll be safe.

It’s also why I resist responsibility.  I don’t want to be the one at fault.  I don’t want to be yelled at.  I don’t want to be in charge.  It was very nice yesterday to be talking about things that didn’t have me in floods of tears :-)

I’ve had this cold coming on all week and now it’s here.  I think I’d better bring the box of tissues with me to my brother’s house.  I’m grateful for Puffs Plus with Aloe.

ROYAL PAIN  Friday was an awful day.  As I was leaving the house for work I checked my bberry and there were 2 messages from my boss timestampted 7:50 the previous evening—the stats for the meeting (at 8:30 that night) were wrong.  My heart sank.  I spent the entire ride into work sick with fear that all 40 charts (yes 40 fucking charts!) were wrong.  Jesus but it was awful.  I can’t explain to you the absolute terror that this news caused in me.  I began to think and fear that this is going to be a replay of my last job from which I got fired after almost 9 years because I kept fucking up the reports.  (It seems all I do is reporting via excel and it gets to me after a while.)  And I don’t go back and double check and triple check my work and it’s all a mess and a muddle.  When I got to work I looked and found that only 6 of the 40 charts were wrong.  Small, very small, consolation.  I knew exactly what went wrong - I added data and for some reason the pivots re-set themselves so instead of each pivot being for 1 month, each pivot was for the quarter—and so the summary charts were quarterly not monthly representations of the numbers.  It’s 2 days later and I can’t really convey how awful I felt without sharing what I wrote in my notebook on the way to work:

I hate this!  I hate this!  I hate this!

Looked at my bberry this am and there were 2 messages that the call report stats were wrong!

Fuck! This is just like what was happening at the last job.

I hate fucking excel - no I don’t hate excel.  I just hate being wrong - I hate making mistakes.  I hate myself when I do stupid shit like this - I hate being less than good.  I hate not living up to expectations - I hate working at stuff I don’t really care about.  (There’s not a lot of love in this, is there?)

And mostly I’m afraid I’ll wind up getting fired for mistakes.

Physically, this mistake - being caught in it - makes me feel cold and number and will a dull ache in the pit of my stomach - the way your body turns cold with fear.  It makes me question everything - it makes me question my ability, my competence, my validity as a work -

Yeah I know my response is overblown but knowing that & knowing why doesn’t make the response any less severe.

As soon as I got off the bus I called Carlene and just vented ranted and raved for 10 minutes.  Which left me feeling angry on top of scared.

I got in and looked at the excel workbook and realized the first 6 charts were wrong and I knew why so I fixed them an reprinted them.  Just at 8:30 my boss walked in and I said “Good morning.  I’m sorry about the mistake” (or something like that.)

Her reply was “That does me no good.” (a few seconds of silence) “But thanks.”

Jesus talk about a slap in the face.

I felt like shit the entire day.  Finally somewhere about 3 or 4pm it started to get a bit better.  I was working on MORE reporting for a meeting on Monday and sent her the numbers along with how I sourced them.  And it got a bit easier.  Then about 5pm I was trying to drop a file (yes, another fucking excel workbook!) into the personnel folder in the shared drive and couldn’t.  I called IT and was told that she’d requested the folder be restricted to her access only.  Okay.  Sure.  Yeah.  Fine.  But then please move a few of MY folders out so I can access them—I had to put in a work ticket for that.

My first thought was that she dropped a note in my personnel file so she blocked access to the whole folder.  Talk about lack of trust!

But I woke up this morning and my first thought was that she’s in the middle of performance and salary reviews so she locked access to the folder for that reason. Which makes me feel marginally better because it means that I’m blocked for general reasons not specific personal reasons.  (I hope.)

So, Friday sucked.  Big time.

Yesterday friends and I saw The Emperor Jones at Irish Rep.  Great.  John Douglas Thompson who played Jones was mesmerizing.  With a run-time of 70 minutes, it’s a grueling 60 minutes of monologue for Jones.  And he pours his heart and soul into it.  It’s a descent into madness after his subjects rebel.  The staging was inspired with the ensemble taking the role of forest trees through which Jones flees  - which made me think of Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane Castle.  Watching Jones go mad - an intelligent, arrogant man brought down by his own self.  He knew he’d have to get out eventually but his arrogance made him blind to the fact that it was already too late.  http://irishrep.org/