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A journal of the trials, tribulations, and
triumphs in the life of a woman in the 21st century.

Last Updated : Friday, February 07, 2003 10:19 PM -0600

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Monday, February 3, 2003

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Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Self-fulfilling prophesy: The tendency of an idea or belief to manifest itself once it is expressed, whether or not said idea or belief is true.

On the ride home from the bus stop last night, John and I were discussing NASA. I disagreed with one of his proposed solution, which caused him to mutter, not quite quietly enough, "It doesn't matter what I say, you're going to argue with me." He muttered that blaspheme again when we were discussing another topic at home, this time prefaced with the phrase, "I'm just gonna shut up . . . " (Which, just for the record, he didn't.)

(Ed - no, she didn't disagree with my proposed solution. What she did, my friends, was stop me less than a sentence into a five-paragraph explanation, and say "but that doesn't make sense." Mind you, this is the queen of visualization, for whom I have to draw detailed pictures, and it still doesn't make sense until I build a fully-detailed mockup -- jd).

So, what we have here, is my husband accusing me of being irrational and moody. Women don't tend to take this well. Especially since the terms "irrational and moody" only tend to get used on women. Believe me, women don't have a corner on THAT market. Men don't seem to understand the term "self fulfilling prophesy". John got a lesson in that one last night. The more he talked, the deeper he went. When I argued I was simply being logical, he returned with "You're using "woman logic". Ahem, who was prelaw in the household and who was a frickin' business major?! He took a marketing class, for God's sake. Like marketing is LOGICAL?

(ed - ahem. I never used the terms irrational OR moody. I said "you're going to disagree with everything I say, so I'll shut up." A wise course, which I maintained for some time. Not that it did any good, as you see above. As for the Marketing class I took, yes, it's called a business course. I also took courses in Human Resource Management, Management fundamentals, accounting fundamentals, micro-economics, macro-economics, and the integration of computers in business. Marketing is eminently logical. It's the practice of finding which way the herd is running, then getting a billboard up along side where they're going to go, advertising a beverage they need to feel refreshed during the stampede. Pre-law, on the other hand, is simply the process whereby one establishes that what one has seen and knows happened isn't what really happened, but rather, that their client was the victim of a trumped-up charge and due to an extraordinarily difficult childhood fraught with abuse, the accused is instead a victim who deserves pity and no jail time. Or something like that... Oh well. Consider it a mark of the love I have for my wife that I'll actually post her commentary here, rather than flush it and deprive you of the joy of reading it... -- jd).

The good news: Computers allow us to work 100% faster. The bad news: They generate 300% more work.
--Unknown

Ever have one of those days where nothing is going right and EVERYTHING is taking longer than it should. Today we had "security experts" in our office. I don't know what they were trying to do, but what they managed to do was thoroughly hose up our print server. Now, when one is working on month-end cash receipt posting, book publishing, and check printing, the printer is a key ingredient to getting anything done. (I am woman, I MULTI-TASK.) Every time I turned around one printer or another was blinking an obnoxious orange light at me to let me know it was displeased. Things got stuck in the printer queue. Or it didn't like the paper size. By the time the check printer @#$% up in mid afternoon, I was so frustrated with the thing that I would even go near it, I just called IS. Else I would have kicked the thing, which IS frowns on. With a heavy hand. I managed to get a lovely voided check with a printer test page on it, that was lovely. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! Much growling was heard from my cube. Which was the point I was told that I was scaring people. More than usual. Hopefully either my mood improves when I am removed from the office environment or John had better learn to duck.

(ed - and in the above paragraph, we learn that my calm, rational, stable, and entirely sane wife will take out on me the frustrations of her day, because I am A- Present, B - Unable to outrun thrown cooking implements without substantial warning, C - dumb enough to ask "how was your day", and D - so much in love that I ignore her when she rants at me and blames me for it - when I wasn't within twenty miles of the place... -- jd).

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

I really REALLY hate superior-acting Stay-At-Home Mothers (SAHM). If a family chooses to make sacrifices so the mom can stay home. Great. Wonderful. However, some families either can't manage that financially or the mother chooses to continue to work for whatever reason. I am driven absolutely to distraction by SAHM who think that because I work, I obviously don't care about my kids and they can go ahead and schedule meetings that a working mom can't attend.

Case in point: Rhiannon's Valentine Day Party. The mom who is planning the party dutifully called our house to notify us of the planning meeting. To be held at 5:15 in the evening on a choir night. (1) Most people who work are not quite home at 5:15, as they don't get off until 4:30 or 5 pm. (2) It is a choir night, which a large number of students are a part of, so that further limits the time available on that night. But she called John later with the plans. They will primarily play trivia games about their school work (Charlotte's Web, etc.) So John says, "Oh, I bet Harry Potter trivia would go over big."

"I don't allow Harry Potter in my house. I'm sure several mothers would be upset if it came up."

Huh? Not the mothers I know well. A good number of them have read the books themselves and are anxiously awaiting the next installment in June. One of them is a very conservative Catholic mother. (She's one of my best friends, but our political and theological discussions can get rather . . . well . . . loud. We are DEFINITELY on opposite sides of the political spectrum.) Not to mention, in a press conference this week the Vatican stated that Harry Potter is okay. "I don't think that any of us grew up without the imaginary world of fairies, magicians, angels and witches," said Father Peter Fleetwood, a Vatican official who worked on the document. "They are not bad or a banner for anti-Christian ideology. They help children understand the difference between good and evil," he said in response to a reporter's question. Why do I have my suspicions that this women never even cracked open the book?

She also told John that they would be serving the kids "healthy treats" of pretzels, apples, and oranges rather than sugary candy. Good God! They are CHILDREN. Let them be children, for chrissake. She's gonna have a stroke when her little angel gets Rhiannon's Harry Potter valentine. I have such an urge to call her and ask if one of my pagan friends can come help. Maybe I'll just borrow a "Born Again Pagan" button from one of them . . .

Some of these same SAHM were the ones who stacked the Uniform Policy Committee 2 years ago. By the time I had volunteered to be on the thing ((ed - announced in the newsletter sent home on Wednesday, the committee was filled by the time the office opened the next morning. -- jd), they had already stacked it. Their solution to the problem of kids being out of uniform? Not to enforce the policy. John suggested the school investing in a Polaroid camera, so a picture of the offending garment could be taken and sent home to the parents, so they know just what the child had done that was out of uniform. No, they decided to throw money at the problem. All uniform pants were now to come from Donald's, the official uniform store in St. Paul. Savage is approximately 25 miles from St. Paul. And their pants are much more expensive than the identical Dockers I can pick up at Kohls or Kids R Us. Oh and all their meetings were during the day, so no working parents could attend. We told the principal that if someone was looking at our kids butt close enough to see that her pants didn't carry the Donald's logo, they were looking too damn hard at her butt!

Deep Breath. To be fair, I don't think they schedule these meetings to exclude working parents. I think they just don't think about it. Our school is split about 50/50 with working and nonworking mothers. I just don't appreciate the condescending attitude I get from some SAHM. I have several friends who do stay home and they don't act superior to me because I don't. So why do some of them?

(ed - because those SAHMs need to have something they can mess with and exert power and influence over besides their children... -- jd)

Thursday, February 6, 2003

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.
--Erma Bombeck American Humorist

You know you are tired when you find yourself simultaneously sipping from your coffee mug AND a super-size Diet Coke. That was me this morning on my way up to the 17th floor on the elevator. I was even taking crap from strangers on my two-fisting my caffeine. Apparently what I really needed was a caffeine IV. Except IVs hurt. (My veins have a tendency to roll and collapse. OUCH!)

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
--W. Somerset Maugham

Since I am so tired, I am entirely out of wit. So you will have to content yourselves with a couple of quotes that I found funny today.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want--an adorable pancreas?
--Jean Kerr

Friday, February 7, 2003

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.
--Judith Viorst

It's been a long week at my office. But all was made better by the entrance of the birthday girl, bearing a flourless chocolate torte topped with dark chocolate ganache. It seems her dear hubby ordered it for her as a surprise. (One of our coworkers owns a bakery. Gotta love the treats SHE brings in!) And since he was recently diagnosed with type II diabetes, it would be terribly thoughtless of us to punish him by saving some of it to torment him at home and raise his blood sugars. So we shall considerately devour the entire tort, probably before 10 am, knowing this office. It's just the kind of people we are. Willing to sacrifice our bodies for the greater good.

Oh no! A second sugar shift has arrived. Now there is a tin of cookies!!! Not chocolate. But still. The sugar will help us finish off the week nicely.

Saturday, February 8, 2003

Sunday, February 9, 2003

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