Who needs a staff meeting when you’ve got beer?

HOLA, readership! (Whoa, did I just briefly lapse into Spanish 101 there? Why yes I did! … I blame the beer!) In case you are particularly dense, and haven’t caught either of the references to alcohol so far, I will go ahead and point out the obvious.

The Lizzle has been drinking. (And we all know the Lizzle’s tolerance is SOOOO not what it once was.) (For the record, Beth, the Lizzle was only on her second beer when she called you, so technically you don’t fall in the drunk-dial category, in case you were wondering.)

Taking it to another level, the Lizzle has been drinking ALONE. (And she is TOTALLY fine with that fact, but still felt the need to point it out.) (It should be noted at this time that she has also lapsed into speaking, or rather typing, in the third person… Never a good sign.) (And apparently she is HUGE into parenthetical statements at the moment, but that is neither here nor there.)

Yes, its 11:30 P.M. on Memorial Day, and the Lizzle has decided to go ahead and keep on boozing it up even though she has to be at the weekly staff meeting tomorrow morning at 9 sharp. The alcohol induces a deeper sleep, so it should all work out fine.

ANYWAY.

In the interest of being awesome, the Lizzle did very little on her abbreviated Memorial Day weekend. She worked until 7 PM on Saturday… Later than she would have liked, but hey, people are demanding asshats, and part of the job requires that she be somewhat accommodating. She then spent Saturday night watching movies, all day Sunday in bed and/or lounging around the apartment, and since she slept for a large part of Sunday, she was still awake at 7 AM, so she decided to go ahead and take her paperwork over to the office, even though nobody was there to take it, and then she snoozed lightly for a few hours, and proceeded to unpack a few more of the last lingering boxes remaining in the area of the apartment which will eventually be occupied by her dining set once it arrives. She also bought a vacuum cleaner, a really cute votive holder for on top of her entertainment center, and an reed-in-oil-diffuser-potpourri thingy… but I can’t possibly imagine that you could give a crap about any of that.

And since I’ve lapsed back into first person prose, we’ll just run with it.

Since this post is an odd sort of stream-of consciousness, and just an odd little conglomeration of things that you really shouldn’t give a crap about, I suppose I will go ahead and mention that in my very buzzed, bordering on drunk (certainly beyond drivable) state, I have my i-Tunes going, and at the moment, and I can’t think of many songs that have a sexier vibe to them than Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” You probably don’t give a rat’s pink ass about it, but hey, it’s a free country, I’m not forcing you to read this malarkey.

In the interest of total disclosure, I will go ahead and tell you that I finally found the shelf clips that hold the kitchen cart shelves in place. (They were in a baggie in a box of odds and ends that I’d looked in like 6 times before… I just looked harder this time, I guess.)

Since we’re in the total disclosure category, I guess I will go ahead and tell you about that weekend I had a few weeks ago when all hell broke loose. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it for a while now, and just never got to it, and I suppose that at this point the drunkenness has called it to the front of the mind.

A few weekends ago I casually went looking for one of my clients. I went looking for her at work and found out that she had gotten fired. Instantly I thought, “WELL, CRAP.” And knowing I still had to talk to her, in addition to figuring that this setback would be something that we’d need to discuss, I went looking for her at home. And that’s exactly where I found her. She was devastated, in tears, and from casual observation it was clear that she’d been cutting on herself. She denied it, but I’m no fool.

I had another matter that needed my attention as well, so I told the woman who she was staying with to stay with her, and that I’d be back. I went back to my office, got the other matter taken care of and went back down to see what I could do with the cutter. The cutter was gone by the time I got there, and so I sat and waited for a couple of hours, and then proceeded home when it seemed apparent that she was not going to return. I told the lady she was staying with to have her call me, or to call me herself when she returned.

About 10 minutes after I got home, I got a phone call saying that she was back. So I headed back down to talk with her. When I got there it was clear that while she seemed less upset at that point, she had also been drinking. We talked for a few minutes, and she said that she felt things were hopeless. (At this point my internal monologue went, “Well, FUUUUUUUUCK.”) I told her things were not hopeless and that while we’d hit a low point, there was still a light at the end of the tunnel… But since she’d professed feelings of hopelessness I also had to go through a suicide assessment with her. And so I sat and talked to her for a considerable period about it. And my supervisor went through things with her over the phone. And the supervisor advised me to take her to a hospital to get her checked out. (Easier said than done.) Of course, she refused medical attention. So my supervisor went through the suicide assessment with her over the phone again. He determined that she was not at critical risk, and so it was ok for me to leave. After setting up a verbal agreement that she was to call me before taking any rash action, I left.

You’d think that would have been the main crisis of the week… You’d think wrong.

This whole time that I was dealing with her I was also getting repeated calls from another client saying that the foster placements had not sent adequate clothing with her children for her weekend visit. A large part of me wanted to say, “Listen, I’ve got real problems going on right now… If you need clothes for the kids, Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day.” But of course I can’t just say that, so I told her I’d see what I could do. –It should be noted that her response to this reply was somewhat less than appreciative. I called the foster placement to see what could be done, and they offered to have clothing available in the morning. I told my client that I would bring the additional clothing from the foster placement in the morning, and she pitched a fit because apparently the children didn’t have pajamas either. (Oh, did I forget to mention that this was at 9 PM on a Friday night?) So, despite the fact that I had the internal monologue of, “You know a big t-shirt works wonders in the pajama department,” I called the foster placement again and mentioned this additional issue and asked if I could come out and get ANYTHING to make this problem go away. They agreed, and I went out to get additional clothing AND pajamas, and I took them to my client. (At this point it was something like 9:40 P.M. on a Friday night.)

Despite my best efforts, apparently the clothing I took to her was insufficient.

As I was leaving her home she said to the kids, “Well, I guess we’re not going anywhere this weekend kids, because you don’t have anything to f-ing wear.” (Lovely thing to say to your kids, especially in front of your service provider.) Let’s not even get into the fact that there was no appreciation whatsoever for the fact that I was willing to deal with this bullshit at damn near 10:00 PM on a Friday night… Or that it was layered in with my suicide assessment lady’s troubles.

So now you have a little bit more clarity and insight into the world of crap me and my bachelor’s degree get to deal with on a fairly regular basis. (Yeah, I only have a bachelor’s degree, and I’m giving suicide assessments… And I skipped class A LOT. How’s that for rational?)

Crap… I still have to get up and go to the staff meeting in the morning. I guess I better wrap up this mess.

G’nite sluts!