I love them... But I hate them...

For the first time in years, I've gotten to have Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle and cousins who live in my current geographical region. They didn't generally make the commute up to where I was, and I was usually either too poor, or unable to get time off from work to make the journey down to see them. And while I love getting to see the kids for the holidays, and I love getting to be with my family, I also hate them. I hate them because they invite me to take part, and when it's time for me to grab my purse and leave, they say things like, "Oh, you're taking leftovers, aren't you? We can't keep all of this! You need to take some!" And so in addition to being already overstuffed, I drive home with a back seat full of ridiculously delicious foods.

Ordinarily taking home leftovers would save me a trip to the grocery and not be a problem, but we've covered the fact that my most recent relocation saw me venture to the more politically conservative and less literate side of the Mason-Dixon line. (Fortunately my family can read though!) But this means that if anyone can't, or more importantly, won't read the cookbook version of the recipe, that they default to the Paula Deen school of thought, meaning that the conservatism shown in the political polls and overwhelming popularity of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News channel does not extend so far as to apply to the generally encouraged level of caloric intake. This is especially true on a holiday. So there are not just mashed potatoes, and giblet gravy, there are mashed potatoes made with cream cheese, a whole stick of butter, and cream and then topped with melted cheese, instead of simply being boiled potatoes which are then mashed and blended smooth using only a little pat of butter, and skim milk. Then there is even more butter dropped into the pan drippings an flour that makes up that delicious gravy. While delicious, this type of cooking, (and eating,) turns into a really unfortunate situation when it comes time to venture back to the bathroom scale.

So as if my ass-expansion wasn't bad enough, since the cousins have small children, there was discussion of the "Black Friday" ads and deals. And the more they talked about it, the more excited they got, and the more excited they got, the more that excitement was translated across the table and caught in much the same manner as a case of the swine flu... It was sneezed out all over me, and just because I happened to be sitting there, I caught the fever.

DAMN THEM.

So despite the fact that I don't have any small children of my own, and despite the fact that I didn't think there was anything that I couldn't live without, I found myself going to bed on Thanksgiving night on an overly full stomach at roughly 9 PM, only to wake up at 3 AM and go meet up with the Aunt and cousins to get some great deals with all the other crazies. And I did this in spite of the fact that I prefer to shop online, skip the crowds, skip standing in lines, and most likely end up with a better deal, even taking shipping costs into account... And usually if you're a little bit savvy about it, you can swing free shipping.

Never underestimate the power and influence of a group mentality, or how it can influence your decisions despite your better judgment. This is how riots, genocides, car-flipping, Angelina Jolie's adoptive family, and Heidi Montag's inexplicable popularity all get started... And once the ball is rolling, it would seem that we are all doomed.

So as I ventured out into the cold, dark, wee morning hours, in search of the best deal on generally inexpensive toys and other assorted goodies, I suddenly found myself thrust into an electronics department. This would not be a problem ordinarily... But when you know that there are deals to be had at this obscenely early hour, in this particular store, on this one day of the year, once again, you tend to get caught up in the moment.

This is how one ends up with an 8GB ipod that would need to be returned, when only hours later you find a 16 GB ipod for only $30.00 more... Online... Where you instinctively told yourself to start your shopping in the first place. So I went from not having ever owned an ipod, to owning two in one day. And I will hang onto the 8GB version until my real ipod arrives... Thus depriving some crazy person of their ipod ownership, because undoubtedly, when I return this one, despite the fact that I will include everything in all of its original packaging, and I will reset the memory, thus deleting all of my songs, I'm sure that the store will return my ipod to the manufacturer, to be further "refurbished" and sold as a preowned unit for a significant discount. (I know I switched from passive to active voice and back again in this little paragraph, but I really don't care enough to go back and fix it.)

In short, I should've known better. I should've just slept in, like I really wanted to, gotten the model with the larger memory, and bought it online in the first place.

Stupid family. Overfeeding me and then suckering me into ridiculous shopping with their ridiculous enthusiasm... (insert further indistinguishable grumbling here)

My brother is a married man??? WTF?

Yep, my idiot brother, whom I love, is a married man. He found himself a VERY patient girl who was willing to put up with him for SEVEN YEARS before getting the ring, and then four months later, POOF! They are officially hitched!

I couldn't be happier for the pair of them. They are one of those adorable couples that you both love and hate being around. You love it because it's great to be around people who are that happy and who make each other that happy, but you hate it because they make each other that happy, and well, you know you're not that happy... Or maybe that's just me.

Yeah, my brother and new sister in-law's happiest day was one of the most intensely depressing of my life, and I've seen some doozies in my day!

And it wasn't depressing for me because I would begrudge either of them all the happiness in the world, but it was just one of those days that really highlighted for me all the ways in which my life kinda blows at the moment... And trust me, it blows HARD.

As I'm sitting here typing this, I'm trying to remind myself that I sat down with the intention of revising my resume so that one area of my life could blow a fair amount less hard... Most days lately, I've been sitting at my desk thinking, "You know, poop houses are bad, and nobody should ever have to venture into one to earn a living, but I'll be damned if I didn't land in the office-job equivalent of a poop house... Well, at least I'm not dating Jon Gosselin, or working in a sewage treatment plant."

Not good parallels to be drawing when trying to look at the bright side of your life.

Tomorrow it will be more job hunting, more poop house writing, and more... well, more bleh.

Sorry. That's all I've got.

This is it for now...

I forgot to mention in my last post that I'm out of town for the weekend.

You see, my brother is getting married, and while certain other members of my family may or may not feel the need to attend, I'm damn sure going to be there.

I'm writing this post after the rehearsal dinner, which was six courses of delicious, coma-inducing fabulosity, and while I might very well lapse into the aforementioned coma, or have to be rolled into the blessed event using a hand dolly, a flatbed truck, or whatever other apparatus can be conceived on such short notice, I'm going to be there!

For the foodies in the readership, (Marcia, I'm looking at you here) let me just say that six full courses, and six delightful wine pairings later, I can't find a word to describe the heavenly meal, other than to say that I didn't know it was possible to be this overstuffed outside of Thanksgiving meals. It was all spectacular, and during a couple of the courses, I looked at my plate, groaned, ate two bites and said, "It's fantastic, but I just can't." And I'm still regretting having as many bites as I did. If I'm so inclined, I might have to post the entire menu later.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go lay down and contemplate forcing myself to vomit in order to feel better... and maybe to taste that fantastic Duck salad again... Though I'm betting it will have a less appealing taste coming up than it did going down in the first place.

No PHC today.

Sorry. There is no PHC post today.

I tried. I honestly made every effort I could. You would understand if you knew the exact details of last week.

Suffice it to say that the very stable version of me that goes to work on a daily basis, and does the bulk of my daily activities, and lives most of the days of my life (the version of me that is on call 99% of the time) well, that version of me got a little worn out. And starting on Thursday evening, that version of me decided to call in sick. That left the other me holding the bag.

The other me gets rattled, is emotional, raw, and well, somewhat more combustible than the stable me. And after what had already been a fairly ugly work week, sending in the unstable me to finish things out was not good.

So as the unstable me sat at my desk on Friday, a coworker (one that I really like on a personal level,) asked me a question and then put something on my desk for me to handle. The unstable me FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. And admittedly, I snapped at my friend and coworker. I instantly apologized to her, because I knew it wasn't her fault, and that I'd just essentially shot the messenger on that one. Well, I went and took a breather for a few minutes because it was clear even to the unstable me that that was the best course of action. When I got back, I was called into the boss' office. I was instantly reprimanded for what had transpired before. I told them that I had already apologized, and that it wasn't her fault. They asked unstable me what was causing this fracas. Unstable me said that I was overwhelmed, and that I was drowning in my workload, (which is why rational and stable me took the day off). At which point they essentially implied that they had no idea what it was that I did all day, because there is just no way that what they know as my job should be taking all day, let alone overwhelming me. They further implied that I didn't do much of anything at all. (Which is funny, considering that the rational me had stayed late at work the three previous nights to make sure that things were all getting done on time... So apparently, rational me was staying late to do bonus amounts of nothing.)

At hearing all of this, unstable me suffered a brain aneurysm. I stood there with my chin on the floor unable to form sentences, let alone use those sentences to explain what I do all day, or why it takes me all day to do it. There was not a coherent thought in that room, let alone one that I could've formed into the basis for my defense at that point.

I might as well have put my hand down the back of my pants, crapped in my hand, and smeared it on the walls while laughing maniacally. In point of fact, that most likely would've served me better. But instead, I just stood there with my mouth agape, desperately trying to form letters into words and words into sentences and sentences into the explanation of what I KNOW that I do all day, and finding myself coming up short. At least with the poop on the walls, I'd have had a solid basis for a mental health leave. Whereas with the idiotic blank stare, I just looked like a vacant idiot who seemed to be genuinely every bit as incompetent as they were implying when we all know that nothing could be further from the truth.

The unstable me ended up in the bathroom crying uncontrollably.

The unstable me was saved by my best friend at the office who, despite being taken aback at seeing me so rattled at all of this that I was crying in the bathroom, was in a rational state of mind, and talked the stable me into coming in to work for a half-day, because clearly the unstable me couldn't take the pressure.


Both of me then went after work and had much needed alcohol, on an empty stomach, and had to spend the night at my friend's house. Saturday turned into a day of physical recovery from the previous night's indulgence, and Sunday was spent on retail therapy and formulating my plans for the future. And tops on the list is getting the hell out of the only office to ever reduce me to tears on the job. I mean I know it was unstable me that was reduced to tears, and not the real me, but the fact that the real me was too worn out to go in, forcing unstable me to handle things as best as I could, and that they picked that time to imply that the real me hasn't really been doing anything all along anyway... Well, clearly I'm not valued for my efforts, and it has started taking a toll on my sanity enough that I am referencing myself as two entities. Thus it might be time to move on. Which means that the previous plans have simply been accelerated.

Those mother bitches aren't going to get the best of me.

THE LIZZLE WON'T STAND FOR IT.

NOT THEN, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

This is far from over.

Suffice it to say that the PHC post didn't get written, and I'll make every effort to get to it as soon as possible, but with work drama and personal life drama, it might take a fat minute, but I am promising that I won't let it get away from me the way that things did recently to the tune of nearly three months without anything new. The comeback of the Lizzle won't let that happen either.

...And in that moment, I remembered "THE LIZZLE"

Once upon a time, I was a legend.

I could pound down drinks, laugh, dance, sing (poorly), and otherwise cavort all night... and I could get up at the crack of 10, go to class, go to my part time job where I would do my homework or reading, or play cards, and then clock out and go further elevate the legend of "THE LIZZLE."

It's been a long while since the heyday of "THE LIZZLE," and in the declining times since the pinnacle, I have admittedly let things unravel to an alarming and unacceptable degree.

This weekend, though, I found a slight glimmer of what I used to be. I was GROSSLY sleep deprived all week long... We're talking like three out of five nights with 3 hours of sleep or less. (And before you ask, no, these were not the good kinds of sleepless nights. They were way too drama-filled and in no way fun.) So by the time that Thursday rolled around, and I realized that I hadn't bothered to get a halloween costume ready, I knew that it was going to be yet another late night. So I stayed up too late again getting things on the costume just right, went to bed, and got up early to go to work on Friday. I worked late. I went from work to my place to pick up my costume, and then straight to the all-adult halloween party that my cousin was throwing. I dressed up in my AWESOME costume, I partied into the wee hours of morning, and when I got home at roughly 2 AM, I could think of nothing in the world more desirable than my bed... So I went to sleep and found when I woke up that I'd been comatose for TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT. No kidding. I then got up, packed the costume up, made a starbucks run, fielded phone calls with assorted partners in crime, and then went to my aunt's house for a little football and halloween fun with the kids before heading off to yet another party where I wore my sweet costume, danced, drank, and played games until the wee hours of morning. (Even with the whole "fall back" thing taken into consideration.) I then went home and used my Sunday to hit the snooze button in an effort to reset before another ridiculous work week.

This weekend I remembered what it was to be young and fun again. I remembered the exploits of "THE LIZZLE" legend, and shamefacedly, vowed to work on recapturing the enjoyment of my awesomely misspent youth. I'll get back there... Well, maybe not 100% back there, but at least like a 70% version. It can happen.

It doesn't help that my current job has got me spending what little time I have for flights of fantasy plotting out the logistics of an office shooting rampage... Or at least dreamily imagining pinning a medal on anyone else who went on a shooting rampage and rid me of my boss.

I'm not really homicidal. I'm not even armed. I just actively wish for the day when I can tell them where to shove it. I knew it was bad when I started comparing the relative pros and cons of this bullshit versus the poop house.

When you compare anything to the poop house, you know things are not good.

I'm thinking that the next PHC post will be up sometime this weekend. (Provided I don't party so hard that I wind up comatose and unable to leave home long enough to hit the publish button.