Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Job whining...and an epiphany?

I'd like to start my park ranger job now, please.

Well, ok, so I don't have it yet; haven't even applied, though I'm thinking of doing so very soon with a well-written cover letter explaining my moving sitch. But right now, the 10-hour days are enough trouble without the clients being complete boneheads.

Maybe I'm missing something...

Coupon for a general contracting firm—Receive FREE heat loss with coupon offer

Maybe this one irks me because our apartment leaks energy like a sieve, so I wouldn't mind a discount on my electric at all, if that were an option.

It turns out that they're advertising a free heat loss evaluation of your home with the coupon, but the client, when asked, wanted to leave the above coupon on the home page as is. Sorry, not on my watch; sometimes you have to save these clients from themselves.

What's more frustrating though, are the blatantly incorrect items that make it through design. I completely understand that things can get lost in translation. Our sales team is in Spokane, WA, so it stands to reason, especially with the southern clients, that they're not always going to understand what the person's saying. That's where phonics comes in. However, our design team is under such pressure to crank out sites, they don't even bother trying to translate, and some of the mistakes don't take a rocket scientist. Did I mention the convenience store that sold bold peanuts last week?

Speaking of Peanuts, Charlie Brown Christmas tonight at 8!! JC may be just a man in my book, but I get the greatest warm fuzzy every year, when Linus quotes from the Book of Luke.

Anyway.....was reading one of the family websites yesterday, and I think it's wrought a bit of a change in me. One of my cousins is enjoying her 4th year of sobriety...only 30 years old, bless her heart! She mentioned it in a blog-type setting where my uncles and aunts were mentioning what they were thankful for this Thanksgiving. I'm not sure what her particular poison was, but that's not what's important...Her obvious pride got me thinking...and thinking...about the legacy of "controlled alcoholism" in our family. Yes, I know that's a statement of denial and a contradiction in terms, but it's also the best way to describe my dad. Plus if you believe the possibility of inherited alcoholism, then half my genes have that potential because both of my mom's folks were alcoholics. What's tricky is that I'm certainly not a fall-down drunk, not a party-til-you-puker, not one to wake up in an alley with no memory of the last 3 days. Money's usually so tight, that whether or not there's booze in the house isn't even an issue. But then when a little dough does sneak in for me to buy a six-pack or a bottle of wine, it gets drunk in one sitting easily. I can't have "just a beer or two" or just a glass of wine; where's the point in that? I want the buzz, and I want it to stick around for as long as possible; and unfortunately, I've got a damn fantastic constitution for the stuff. There's a line from West Wing, when Leo's confessing to his attorney about the time he slipped off the wagon on Johnny Walker Blue, and he says something like, "I don't understand how anybody can have 'just one drink'..." I understand that sentiment all too well.

I've only seen this cousin like, twice in our lives, when we were kids, because they live out in California, but I've thought of her often, because I'd heard the lightest of rumblings along the family grapevine that she was enjoying her 20s in a rather Lil Bro-esque fashion. Reading that statement yesterday really got me thinking about the kind of person I am, the kind of person I want to be for Les and our kids. How badly I want to go back to school someday, and how I want other careers, ones that don't involve a cubicle. How I don't want to be craving beer while I'm pregnant if/when...because unfortunately I'm also one of those people who plain enjoys the taste of beer. And I realized I need to find some tools to address the issue.

It's tricky, even with their editing, to adapt the ideas of the AA Big Book to a pagan mindset, so I'm also throwing myself back into the teachings of Reclaiming and Feri. Some would say that trying to start this right before the holidays is like starting a diet on Halloween, but I'm feeling a kind of strength and knowledge that this is the right time to soul search and move forward. Between my delightful chemical deficiencies, my extra-large body, my filthy house, and my treadmill-esque job, I'm usually not a big fan of me. I think that's definitely part of what attracted me to going clean, now; that element of self-pride that was evident in her writing. I want that. I want that even if I never lose a pound or never make it back to school. I need to learn to define myself. Never too late, right?

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