Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: being me

  • Random Mutterings

    Still chafing over this DST crap. It has really thrown a wrench into our lives. It shifted our morning schedule because our morning starts with an alarm clock and the clock time changed. We just work an extra hour because our evening schedule is based on the way it feels, and we don’t typically look at ending our work day until it feels late and we are feeling hungry. I don’t necessarily mind putting in an extra hour of work, we are behind on everything. The problem lies in that by the time we are ready to get dinner, our restaurant options have shrunk by 90%. I could cook, but the whole not feeling late and hungry means I haven’t started prepping already, plus since I am behind on everything, managing the grocery shopping becomes an issue too. The past two nights we drove up to the restaurants of choice to find them closed and were stuck with something else. Last night we did manage to grocery shop, so I will cook tonight. I need to set an alarm so that I notice it is getting late and start cooking on time. I think somebody is coming over dinner tonight.

    I used to hardly ever eat breakfast. I didn’t feel hungry in the morning and when I did eat in the mornings, it made me feel sick. Every once in a while I would make an effort to regularly eat breakfast because the common philosophy is that breakfast is “good for you”. Even after I stuck with it, dutifully eating a bowl of cereal or having a bagel each morning for a month, it still made me feel ill. It certainly didn’t feel very “good for me” and I’d give up on it. Then a couple of years ago the husband and the kid began having a regular breakfast routine that often involved cooking bacon. Soon I found myself attracted to the smell of bacon in the morning. I’ve now been eating breakfast regularly for about 2 years and I really do feel much better. The key for me is that mornings really have to be seriously about protein. Many traditional breakfasty things are fairly high carb (cereals, pancakes, pastries) and eating those things in the morning made me feel positively ill. It was especially problematic because I typically only ate breakfast because I was going out with other people, so not only was I have the morning carb load, but I was eating large portions too, since that is what breakfast places were serving. So now I usually have a small high protein meal in the morning and it tends to make me feel better throughout the day than I used to feel with no breakfast, so that’s one improvement in my life, and I really am pleased by any improvement.

    Most mornings I have spinach and an egg, or some egg whites and some bacon if somebody else cooks it for me. The egg whites is a new thing too. A little over a year ago we went out to breakfast and I ordered an omelette based on the ingredients. It sounded good. It arrived and was all white on the outside. I actually said “What the fuck?” I looked back at the menu and it came default as an egg white omelette. I’d never had one before. It always seemed like something people did to be healthy and when it comes to food I really prefer it to be about the food, especially if I am eating out. Still, I had ordered it, so I wasn’t going to send it back. It turned out I actually preferred it. I liked the texture better. I guess I should have beens surprised because if I get eggs cooked to order I go with sunny side up or overeasy, I don’t care for scrambled. So that led to me purchasing and using egg whites at home.

    This morning I still had some spinach left, but it was no longer in an edible condition. The fridge is running too cold right now. I keep tweaking but it isn’t helping. Without my normal spinach I was poking around trying to figure out what else to eat. I ended up making an artichoke heart, cillantro, onions and bleu cheese, egg white omelette. I really liked the combination. I’ll have to toss that into my breakfast rotation more often.

    Today I need to go buy more spinach, and eggs too.

    Maybe I will get dressed and head out of the house now. As I have mentioned before mornings are not my most productive time. So far I have only managed to do random internet time wasters and answer a couple of important meetings, made my daughter mad at me, plus have a brief talk with the writer/director of the short. This is all fine as long as I don’t give in too much to the random internet time wasters later in the day once my energy is up.

  • See What’s Become of Me

    I don’t really understand the way so many people seem so hung up on time.

    I completely understand it as a tool to coordinate. It would be much more difficult to meet somebody for lunch if we had no common reference point for when.

    I also grasp it to measure the passing of it. It is good to know how long something took to accomplish.

    I just don’t understand the random value attached to certain times of the day.

    Daylight Savings Time, for instance, to me is a big dumb piece of crap. People tell me how happy they are because “It stays light later.” What does that mean? The sun isn’t staying up an extra hour all of a sudden. It isn’t like the whole world changes, heck it isn’t even as if the whole country changes. Change the times at which things open and close, don’t change the time designation.

    I also hate “banker’s hours”. We live as part of a global economy and it is dumb that we don’t have a 24 hour society. It would make more sense to me if we worked on shifted schedules and all service industries also worked on shifted schedules so that people could find a place that was open and take care of needed errands no matter what time they worked, without taking time off. For some reason the collective mind thinks we are supposed to wake up “early” and go to bed at a “decent hour” and that no good can come of being out and about at the wrong times. Our population would not be putting as much of a drain on space an resources if we were active around the clock. Traffic would be less of a problem. Companies wouldn’t need to build or acquire buildings as much or often in order to increase their total number of employees. Everybody would be safer because there would always be activity instead of those quiet times when they claim only criminals operate.

    I pay my local and state taxes, but I cannot use the public parks most of the time I would actually want to, because they are “Closed at dusk” and don’t open again until morning. They close them because they claim it discourages crime and use of the parks for illegal activities, but making it common for law abiding citizens to use the park at all times would also do that.

    The morally superior attitude of some so-called morning people, also baffles me. So what if the early bird gets the worm? I am not a bird. I don’t eat worms, and owls are not starving to death either. Back in college we were usually up until 4 AM, and it was not at all unusual to still be up working on something at 6 or 7 AM. If we didn’t have an early class, that might lead us to still be asleep at 10 AM. However if the husband’s mother happened to call at 10 AM and find us still home and in bed, she never apologized for waking us. To her, it was like she had caught us being naughty and lazy. She had been up since 6 AM and had four productive hours of the day behind her, so she found us lacking. Of course, she had gone to bed at 10 PM. If we had called her and woken her up at 2 AM , she would have been pissed off.

    I used to consider myself a night owl, but I am no longer convinced it is that simple. Yes, I do tend to prefer the night for reasons such as, less sun, less crowds, less heat, and less distractions. The thing that made me think I was night owl, was because I typically had an extra boost of energy at night, and felt motivated and alert. I attributed this to me being a night person.

    Then I went through a stretch of time when I lived alone and had no outside obligations, and I just did whatever I wanted sleep-wise most days. What tended to happen was I would wake up, but still feel rather fuzzy and unmotivated. I’d fumble about doing mundane tasks and laze about. Eventually I’d feel semi functional and I would start to assess the things I was planning to do for the day, look through things, maybe get in touch with people I needed to be in touch with to get things done. After 2-3 hours I would eat something and then get going. I would spend 8 or 9 hours doing whatever it was I needed to do. By then I had been up for 10-12 hours. Around then I would feel very energized and alert. This was when I was most likely to get involved in a new project, get a burst of energy to finish a project. I was at my most alert and productive and also as the most receptive to social interaction as long as it didn’t interfere with something I was driven to work on. This would last for 6 hours and then it would start to fade away. I still felt amped, but no longer alert. If I was driven to finish something I would keep working, if I had no time pressure I might start reading a book or something else to help me wind down. Assuming no pressure to stay up and finish something, I would go to sleep about 20-21 hours after I woke up, and then sleep for around 5 hours.

    20 or 21 plus 5 does not equal 24, so I would not get up at the same time everyday. Instead I would chase myself around the clock. So some days I would be getting up in the morning, other days I was getting up at night. However my most alert time was typically after I had been up for about 10 hours, whether that was at night or in the morning. While I still liked running errands at night because of the things I mentioned about liking nighttime before, it became apparent that it wasn’t really that I “wasn’t a morning person” it was that I didn’t wake up alert and ready to start the day. Sleeping more did not help. Waking with an alarm versus waking on my own didn’t help. What helped was simply being awake for a while and having a chance to get moving.

    I see other people who hop out of bed and are totally ready to go. Most of them don’t get that burst of energy later in the day though. They are alert early and then have a longer slower decline cycle.

    Of course for most of my life there are external forces asking me to get up in the morning, at about the same time each day. This typically leaves me never getting enough sleep. I want to be up for 21 hours, but I want to sleep for (now that I’ve gotten older) around 6 hours. I either have to force myself to wind down while I still feel like I could really accomplish things allowing me to get the amount of sleep I’d like, or I can stay up until I feel like sleeping and then only get a few hours of sleep. I usually alternate between these two. If I do the not enough sleep option for too many days in a row I can induce insomnia. That is never good. I once had insomnia for a little over a year, and boy was I in a horrible mood.

    So, I try not to be too annoyed by the people who wake up all energized and then are blobs by the time I am ready rock, as long as they don’t treat me like I have a character flaw because I am not constantly trying to eat worms.

    I am ALWAYS annoyed by anything to do with DST. Spring ahead. Fall back. Fuck off.

  • The World Didn’t End

    One of my clients just called, and asked me to take on a new client. He has a buddy in the midst of major computer problems who needs lots of help, starting today and ongoing…

    I said NO.

    I did it. I turned him down. Between the hating to turn down money, and the hating to disappoint a client thing, I wasn’t certain what words would actually come out of my mouth as I took a breath and opened it to speak.

    I did give him some advice to pass on about the current problem, but today I am staying home and dealing with stuff that is already in my to do list. I am not going over to beat my head against a wall dealing with whatever fuckup has happened with this guy’s computers and network.

    I am shocked I did it. I also feel very anxious, but… I feel just a tiny bit impressed with myself.

  • In response to a friend Re: Credit Card Companies

    about this rant

    I have had more than my share of financial problems. It is horrific to be faced with a cascading series of overdraft fees or late payment fines. Totally overwhelming. Yet, it was still my responsibility. Did it suck? Yes it totally did. The credit cards spelled out the penalties and the interest maximums though. Using them if I couldn’t afford those penalties was a choice I was making, gambling on things not going wrong. In my life, gambling on things not going wrong is usually a bad bet.

    I basically hate most laws. They cost us money and don’t do what they were supposed to do and are rarely the answer to anything. If people were properly taught personal economics and then made the effort to actually put into practice what they learned, the fucked up card companies would not get enough customers to stay in business.

    What I have learned from personal experience is most important for me is, DO NOT PLAY OSTRICH. If things are going poorly it is probably not even one wrong move away from a rapid downhill slide, it is probably going to be a lack of any action, a pause, a beat to be pissed off or feel sorry for myself, that is going to start the cascade of doom. If somebody raises a rate, a quick call can often lower it right back down, same with a late fee. That is assuming that a fuck up is rare. When you have a history of doing it right, that goes a long way.

    I do my best to remember that money is not mine unless it is in my hands. I don’t care what people owe me, if I count on that money as if it is actually mine and spend ahead, then I need to be prepared to accept the consequences. (Hell, money may not be mine even after it is supposedly mine. Remember last year, when ING ate all of my money and left me, well not penniless since we have that jar of change downstairs, but damn close. Man, I hate ING.) If I owe money, and cash comes into my hands, that cash is not my money either. If I buy a cup of coffee with money I have in my hand, while I am carrying debt, then I am borrowing for that cup of coffee.

    I immediately stop with all purchases that are not absolutely necessary (and I need to be disciplined about what constitutes necessary). Either admit to my friends, “Sorry, I can’t afford that.” or make up something about being too busy. I refuse to just go along for a dinner or an event and go further into debt even though it is more fun to go, and less embarrassing. I do my best to avoid rationalizing myself into going because “I already said I would”, and quite frankly because I would love to be distracted from my financial woes. Immediately tell people that I need more work and then take the work. Cleaning toilets for money is not beneath me, and pretending that I can’t do it because then I might miss out on my search for the right work would just be an excuse for me.

    If I am going to need to do the hideous, and ask somebody to help me out, admit it sooner rather than later. Warn them ahead of time so they feel less pressure to say yes because I still have time to look for other options. Do it before I have stacks of late fees. Most importantly if I am going to do it, be honest and ask for enough that it will actually stand a decent chance of halting the avalanche, all of course with an upfront schedule and plan for how it is getting paid back.

    Anyhow, it is absolutely not a matter of not being familiar with both financial hardship AND financial irresponsibility, but credit card companies were not the root cause of my fuck ups. I was.

  • More On How I Feel About the Medical Industry

    First I will start with the general.

    I do not like the medical profession laying their personal, or societal opinions on an individuals medical care unless they are specifically asked, “Well, what would you do?”

    Then I will move onto a story about somebody I knew.

    There was a woman who used to clean my house. She was nice enough, but unfortunately was entirely too chatty. As the result I know a lot more about her than is reasonable. Now you will know it too.

    When I first met her she was barely 22 years old and had just given birth to her third baby. Her first one she had when she was 16. The first two were with one guy, this third one was with a different guy, but she still considered the father of the first two “The love of her life, that she knows she is meant to be with again someday.” She swore that they were using birth control for all three pregnancies. She told me that during pregnancy number two she kept telling her doctor she wanted her tubes tied when the baby was born. Her doctor insisted she was too young to make such a decision.

    Prior to baby number three being born, one of the other girls suffered a severe head injury and became disabled. The woman was 20, no reasonable education, unmarried with two children and one of whom had extra educational and medical needs. During pregnancy number three she again repeatedly told her doctor that she wanted to have her tubes tied. Again she was told that she was too young to make such a decision. When baby number three was less than a year old she became pregnant for the fourth time, again swearing that they were using birth control (who knows if they’d ever been given decent instructions on HOW to use it).

    A doctor finally agreed to sterilize her at that point, two kids after she started requesting it.

    Finally we will get on to the personal.

    I have one kid. I am pro choice. I meant to have that kid. I was not absolutely positively certain that we would stop with one kid.

    We waited. We thought about it. We talked about it. We were pretty damn sure. We waited some more. We talked about it more. We decided. This took place over the span of years, not days.

    I went and saw a doctor and told them that I was done. She laughed and told me that I would change my mind. She did not want to refer me to anyone. Nothing. She just said I was too young (which I think “they” term as under 30 with 0 or 1 kid) to make that choice, and that (I kid you fucking not, she said this to me) “It isn’t right to have your daughter grow up so lonely.”

    I did not kill her on the spot. I hope somebody is as amazed by this as I am. As far as I know, she is still alive and practicing medicine. I never saw her again. If anything happened to her, it was not me.

    Now all I was going to do was talk and get pamphlets. We were still strongly leaning toward him having a procedure rather than me having something done, but I was not done researching. At that point we knew one person who had a vasectomy that they were not happy with. We knew several who had them who were happy and felt it had been no problem at all.

    After a bit of time (as I have mentioned before we tend to avoid doctors whenever possible) we finally got to a point where we set foot into a medical setting again. This time we let him try. We got a little bit further. They were willing to give him a referral, after he attended a class. This pissed me off to no end. I was furious. We are supposed to have medical privacy and being forced by insurance to go to a group class on any sort of medical condition or procedure as a condition to getting the care that you are requesting was completely beyond acceptable to me. I began throwing fits left and right and before we got very far with that our insurance coverage changed. Yes, I am choosing publicly to talk about this NOW, but that is my choice. They were holding the procedure hostage in order to force public discussion on it.

    By the time we got back to the subject yet again we knew two more men who had vasectomies who were very unhappy with the procedure and the outcome. (chronic pain, decreased sensation from orgasms, etc) I know that the vast majority of people have no problem, and a lot of the medical community discount the complaints out there, but these were people who I did not think were likely to be having psychosomatic complaints. I needed more time to research.

    Then I got sick. I’ve talked about that before.

    Finally I was ready to look into everything again and this time I found Essure. That looked very interesting to me. First I contacted a retired gynecologist who happens to be a friend’s father to ask him what he knew about it. It had come about after he gave up his practice, so he contacted colleagues to get opinions and got back to me. He also helped me formulate some questions that he felt any decent doctor should answer.

    I took his questions, did some additional research and added questions of my own. Pulling a list of doctors listed on the Essure website that happened to be covered by my insurance, I contacted fifteen of them. Fourteen by letters and one by email. The one who responded by email responded quickly and was great, but I was not thrilled with his answers to my questions. I liked very much that he communicated effectively by email, and I also liked that he was giving up the OB portion of his practice because that would make him a more effective doctor for me. However, he just had not performed the procedure enough times and with enough success that I was comfortable seeing him in this case.

    Thirteen doctors ignored me completely.

    One other had his nurse call me to give me the answers to my questions. I wasn’t thrilled with having the nurse call, but the answers to the questions were decent. I booked an appointment to meet him in person.

    I arrived on time to a fairly empty waiting room. I had to wait for 40 minutes before they took me to a room and another 20 minutes for him to appear. We spoke and were okay with the responses to each others questions. He remembered the letter and we talked a about his history with the procedure. He actually wanted to know if, should I go ahead and use him and do the procedure, whether I would be willing to be filmed for the local evening news. We also decided I should get a shot of Depo because that gives the best chance for the procedure to go well (condition of the cervix and endometrial lining) and we worked out when the right time for the procedure would be. Sounds good, right? Then it turns out the do not have the Depo in their office and I have to go downstairs to the pharmacy to get it. They write a prescription and send me down. This eats up more of my day as I have to wait.

    In the meantime I called my husband to discuss this television news idea. On the one hand I despised the idea of having a camera anywhere near me. On the other hand it seemed like the doctor would work extra hard not to fuck it up if a camera was there. Also I very strongly believe in getting any and all reproductive choice options out there for people to be aware of. We decided it was creepy and we were not comfortable with it, but that assuming all the details, as ironed out, worked for us, we should go ahead and do it.

    When they finally had the prescription filled for me they tell me insurance will not cover it. It is ridiculously expensive. Insurance won’t cover it because they will only pay for a 30 day supply from a local pharmacy and it lasts for 90 days. They will only cover it if the doctor has it in their office and it is used as part of the office appointment.

    *sigh*

    So I paid the exorbitant fee for the liquid and returned back upstairs because, of course, they only give me a little bottle, no syringe. I give the pets vaccinations, surely I could give myself a damn shot. Diabetics do it all the time. Instead I went back upstairs to the doctor’s office and was forced to wait again in the waiting room. Finally they stuck me back into an exam room where I waited some more. Eventually a nurse showed up and gave me a shot.

    I asked her when the procedure will be scheduled for. She told me that the scheduling person wasn’t in, but that she would call me within the next 10 days. She said that if I didn’t hear from the woman within two weeks, I should call.

    Now, here is the thing. They are running a business. They get real money to do this procedure on me. They actually have a woman who gets paid specifically to schedule procedures and book the operating rooms. That is her job. I am the customer. I already reached out to get the process rolling. I do not want to be having to chase people down to convince them to do their damn job.

    I explained to the nurse that it is very important that the scheduling person call me, because I will not call back. I point out how many years it had been since my last pap. They needed to call me. She said that she usually calls and she’d be sure to mark my folder correctly and put it in the right pile.

    I told her that I had spoken to my husband and we were willing to do the TV show, so she said the doctor would speak to the PR person from Essure and they would get back to me on that with the details and paperwork.

    I left. I had been there for four hours. 4. Not, 3 hours – 4 hours. I had to go home and load the car and drive to Seattle. Really, no problem I don’t mind it taking four damn hours to spend 20 minutes interacting with the actual medical people.

    They never called.

    I’ve now switched insurance, so I can’t go to him anyway unless I want to pay it completely out of pocket, and why would I want to when their office staff can’t fucking get it together enough to call and schedule me an appointment. They had months in which they could have. This is when I was willing to do them the favor of being their promotional poster girl on the evening news!

    But wait, the reason I am writing this is that I was reminded once again when I got a past due bill from them. They need $80 from me for giving me the injection (which I only got because I was supposed to have the procedure) which my insurance would not cover because they were injecting something that was not supplied by their office. They want 80 fucking dollars to have some fucktwit put on latex gloves, tear a package with a syringe in it, stick the syringe into the vial, draw the liquid into the syringe, and then stick a needle in my ass and depress the plunger. It took her less than a fucking minute.

    So there you have it, yet another example of why I am always so aggravated whenever I even think I might need to deal with anything remotely medical.

  • Dear Buddha, please send me a pony, and a plastic rocket, and please, oh please, make me popular…

    As if elementary school, junior high school and high school wasn’t enough – I grew up and needed to worry about cyberpopularity as well. Lucky for me, there are services to help turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets because appearing more popular actually creates popularity.

    Of course, not liking people all that much makes popularity a burden. Luckily there is Paxil.

  • I have an idea.

    When I order something from you online, do not sign me up to receive your dumbass paper catalog. I do not want your catalog. I will not shop from your catalog. It is going to clutter up my mailbox, my house, and my recycling bin. It will aggravate me.

    I shop online. I proved to you that I shop online by placing an order online. That is where you got it into your fool head that I was interested in your products. I found you online. I found the product online. I purchased from you online. I gave you my address so you could send me what I wanted, not so that you could harass me forever with pounds of paper. Yes the catalog has instructions on how to stop the mailings. That takes up my time and effort. I need that for other things. I do not want to jump through hoops to cancel your catalog, only to have you sign me up again if I am stupid enough to ever buy something from you again online.

    Guess what? I know how to request your catalog should I want a catalog for some reason.

    Stop the waste. It wastes your money, paying for the catalog, paying to ship the catalog… Who pays for all that bullshit in the end? That would be your customers, assuming you know anything about business, which is somewhat questionable to me since you are making the mistake of targeting me as a catalog customer. I do not want to pay extra for your crappy items because you don’t know how to spend your advertising dollars correctly. If you piss your advertising dollars away, next thing you know you need to throw more money into that budget and you raise your prices. Also a good way to keep me from buying. Plus, paper is a resource. It does not appear by magic. It does not simply vanish the second I do not want it.

    You want to drive me really crazy? Send me things that look like catalogs, when you don’t even do mail and phone orders. (What is with Amazon sending me multipage advertisements of the crap they only sell online? Do they think I might forget how to type a m a z o n . c o m if they don’t send it to me? They would be wrong.)

    I have too much to do already, I do not want to be dealing with a mountain of your catalogs that will do me no good ever. They are printed on glossy paper, so they aren’t even good for absorbing pet piss and shit.

  • so it’s sort of social… demented and sad, but social

    I really hate MySpace. Even before I factor in the ways in which it is used, and many of the people using it, I just hate how incredibly ugly and broken it is. It is one thing to give the masses a way to quickly customize a page and another thing to give them options which create audio and visual assault on any person who is unfortunate enough to click a link. I find it foul and hideous and I am saddened by just how popular it is. I even signed up for an account to try to check it out from the inside and see if it was possible to create something more functional with their tools, because, if I could it might be a good level of promotion for the short films I produce. From the inside I found it a total mess as well.

    Even if I ignore the ugly, I am very turned off by the way in which it is used. It doesn’t just give me a bad feeling about the site, the popularity gives me a bad feeling about society – as if I needed extra fodder.

    Because of that, I found this article about Mixi, a Japanese online networking site, and MySpace trying to break into the Japanese market to be very interesting.

    I wonder if I would like Mixi better, if I could score an invite and… you know… read Japanese. Would social networking sites hold more interest for me for actual social networking, if they reflected a different cultural tone? It would be amusing if it turned out that I wasn’t actually anti-social, so much as just living in the wrong society.

  • Happy Chinese New Year

    Ha!

    Forecast from chinese.astrology.com – the bold portion emphasized by me:

    “Pig’s Yearly Horoscope

    Pig Overview

    The Pig is the last of the 12 signs, so maybe it should not come as a surprise that the Pig just can’t catch a break. True it’s your year, but unfortunately there are many unlucky stars in your palace. That 49% rating is an average that masks the fact you are likely to have some very good and bad luck this year.

    You only have two extremely good months this year, although you have many good to very good ones. You may not have a lot of great opportunities, but there should be plenty of decent ones. Water — your fixed element — and Fire spell disaster, so don’t take any unnecessary risks.

    Pig Rating

    49% (6 favorable and 6 unfavorable months)

    Pig Career

    Steady progress is your most likely outcome. Those Pigs in academia, however, could really shine.

    Pig Relationships

    It’s a wonderful time for family, including a new addition. Your love life should show some improvement. Certainly your passions are going to be aroused. The single Pig is likely to find a new love interest.

    Pig Health

    Alas, Fire and Water (your fixed element) spell disaster. Actually we’re not talking disaster here, but we are talking problems. Either an existing condition is likely to worsen, or you could find yourself with a new issue. Stress and high blood pressure are two possible candidates.

    Pig Wealth

    It’s ironic that the Pig brings luck to many other signs but not to itself. You’re not really in danger of a big loss, but don’t buy any lottery tickets, either.”

  • Will the Real Fuck Up Please Stand Up

    To elaborate:

    The Dogs – The dogs have recently crossed that line from little bad behaviors on occasion to being willfully defiant of long standing rules. This is my fault. I know how to raise dogs and live with them. You have to be consistent, and you have to nip the little things in the bud and not let them grow into big things. You have to make time to deal with it. It is your responsibility to help them be the companions that you want them to be. By “you”, I mean ME. These are my dogs. They are my responsibility. The husband is a cat person. That is not to say that he does not love the dogs, however they would not live in this house if not for me. I am the one who wanted to get dogs. Also, I am the one who works from home and spends the most time with them. I am not unaware. I knew that they were developing little bad behaviors. I knew. I had it on my list to put in the time to work on it. I just never got around to it. Every single time they would do something wrong, take too long to come when called, every time, a million times a day, when things were not quite as they should be… I knew that they needed some time and attention to just nudge things back into place. However I never managed to make the time. Now, they are NOT completely unruly terrors, but they have crossed over the line where I can really tolerate it, and who is to blame? Yeah, that would be me.

    The Printer – A couple of years back HP decided change their practices. It used to be that their ink cartridges and print heads were one piece. Every time you replaced an ink cartridge, you replaced the print heads. They decided to make them separate parts. The ink cartridges stayed the exact same price (which is already too damned expensive) but the print heads are atrociously expensive, and now that they are not regularly replaced they are a weak point and quite prone to clogging.

    The last time I bought a printer, I did not know this. I had always had good luck with HP, so I bought HP again. However I found out soon enough about the problem. When my ink gets low, I tend to just keep running things until the pages are totally unacceptable. What is unacceptable of course varies depending on what it is I need to be printing out. Also once it becomes unacceptable, I don’t usually replace the cartridge until the next time I need to print. I let the cartridge stay there. Now with the new print head situation, that is very bad. You let it dry out and it clogs up. Actually just not using all the colors on the printer regularly enough will cause clogs.

    I found all this out the hard way last year. I had to do research to find a way to fix the print head problem because if I was going to spend the money to replace the damn things, I was just buying a new printer. I researched, found the various codes I needed to clear things out. Got instructions on how to physically clean things. Had to go through many steps for more in depth cleanings in order to finally get it working again.

    A few weeks back the printer was very low on color ink and I made a mental note to change the cartridges, and then failed to do so. There is a definite downside to making mental notes if you are losing your mind. I did not change the cartridges until I needed to print something and couldn’t. Once I changed them, I could not print because the print heads were bad. Yes, I had let it go on too long and had fucked things up. Also, I apparently lost the piece of my mind where I noted where I had saved off the information I researched last year so now I need to do the research again in order to get the printer working. Of course there was no way I could get that done prior to printing out the thing I needed right that minute.

    It is still blinking angrily at me because I still have not dealt with it.

    My To Do List – With each passing day it gets longer. I never make any progress. If I finish something on it, ten new things have appeared in the meantime. I am so damn tired. How can anyone be this tired? It is totally fucking ridiculous. I can work my ass off and accomplish nothing because I can’t think straight, or sideways or at all. Also, I am easily distracted by the internet, but of course I work on my damn computer. The number of things on MTDL that I don’t even gain anything from doing is mind boggling. I should take a class in how to say “No, I really don’t have the time.” I’ll put that on the list.

    Me – See above and add a few hundred thousand other reasons.