A personal annoyance

I really shouldn't be complaining about my working conditions, considering how many people are suffering as practically slaves or indentured labor in horrific conditions around the world. But what are you gonna do, everybody's got their own problems. Alle tenker på sitt, as we say in Norwegian.

I've been under the weather for quite a while now ... I had a really bad cold and although I've mostly recovered, I've got a cough that just won't quit. Well, it is fading, but extremely slowly. It was a really nasty cough for weeks and weeks, now it's not so much a cough anymore as a ... growl. It's like I've got something stuck in my throat that I just can't get rid of, and I can't stop clearing my throat, it's incredibly annoying. Although I'm sure it's not half as annoying to keep doing it as it is having to listen to it.

Apologies to everyone I'm annoying with this, but I really can't help it. In the words of the great Jane, I don't cough for my own amusement.

Anyway ... I am improving, but very slowly. I do still get coughing fits, but at least now it's not that dry coughing that is just the absolute worst. I hate that. Now at least there's something to cough up, if you'll pardon the image. And I am getting better. But.

This is what's annoying me and it's been really noticeable over the past few days. This weekend, especially on Sunday, I actually did get quite a lot better. On Sunday night I felt almost fine. I was dreading going in to work, because for some reason it is SO COLD in the store ... ! In the warehouse it's nice and warm, in the open plan office area the temperature's good too, but in two places it's really annoyingly cold: the store and the cafeteria. The two places where I spend any time worth mentioning. The latter is just cool, but the former is actually chilly. The others are bothered by it too ... when I got to work last Wednesday it was really awful, and I said to S. that sheesh, it's really cold here today. He showed me his arms, he had goosebumps all over them. Sure, other people have bigger problems, but it really isn't very pleasant to have to work all day in a space that is uncomfortably chilly.

And it's bad for me ... my throat got worse after just a few hours at work yesterday. Now I'm back to how I was last week. I also think the temperature in that place is part of why I've been having headaches the last few months, because I keep tensing the muscles in my shoulders and neck, and that's seriously not a good idea. But I can't help it. Cold is bad. :-(

Sure, our inclement climate is responsible for our wonderful culture and great society, so I shouldn't knock it. But this is indoors, and it's June ... ! Should we really have to wear woolen jackets to keep warm indoors in a working environment in June?

Good thing we have those woolen jackets in stock, at least. >:-(

Whines and complaints

Sometimes sucky things happen. It's a fact of life that can't be avoided. It doesn't necessarily help to whine about them, but it may help.

My phone died this weekend, or at least almost died ... enough for it to be rendered unusable for all practical purposes, and enough for me to be incommunicado for most of Saturday without realizing it. That's not such a big deal, except that it resulted in me missing something super cool - lunch, a guided tour of the Viking Ship House and dinner with, among others, James Randi. Yes, seriously. Instead I spent the day in a 300 year old basement. A basement full of chocolate, but still.

What's really annoying is that it was all my own fault, because first of all I should have switched over to my new phone ages ago, but didn't because of misplaced affection for an inanimate object, and if I had done so this would not have happened, and second, if I had tried to call one of my fellow podcasters instead of pootling around among the chocolate, I would have soon realized that something was amiss and that this was the reason why it had appeared that they had not called me. (My phone would not have worked, but we have a phone at Friends too, so.) In other words, I have only myself to blame, and of course that only makes it worse.

And what is totally annoying is that now I have lost I don't know how many people's phone numbers - the very thing I have always thought I would somehow guard myself against. Drat. Again, I have brought it upon myself. Some numbers survived, some I actually remember and some I have dug out from here and there ... but far from all, so if you have my number and you think I should have yours, please text me and include your name in the message. I need some help reconstructing my metaphorical phone book. Some of you may already have been contacted. :-)

Of course one misfortune doesn't come alone, so naturally we had to have a meeting with our new boss* at work this afternoon and it had to be seriously frustrating and ... well, I probably shouldn't go into too much detail. Except to say that the way this guy treats me really raises my hackles. I'm sure he thinks it's all fine and dandy. But he would never ever talk to me that way if I were a man. And it's flabbergasting that he thinks we can get a great dialogue going when he won't even let me finish my sentences. o_O He doesn't treat the guys like that. Not that he's super swell towards them either. But there is a difference - the guys picked up on it too - and it is because I am a woman. That seriously pisses me off.

A lot of men tend to think that Norway is a totally equal society - that the job is done here, so to speak. But it's not. It probably never will be, human biology being what it is. But it's much further from being done than a lot of you guys think. Because there are so many among you who will say things to a woman and act towards a woman in ways that you would NEVER act or speak to a man. It would never occur to you. But if the other person is a woman, it is second nature.

That's something for my male readers to think about. You may not think what you're about to say is necessarily patronizing and/or infantilizing - for instance - but think for a moment - would you really say the same thing to a man?

*Not a new presence at the company, but newly become our boss.

Cake Wrecks nominee?

I am not a cake decorator. I am SO not a cake decorator. In fact I'm not even much of a baker. But sometimes I do bake. Like yesterday - I baked a chocolate cake for my coworker O.'s birthday. Which was today. He works so incredibly hard, puts in such a fantastic effort at work, and is almost always cheerful and smiling and willing to help out ... and I feel that he is sadly also really underappreciated. He's the kind of employee that ... you know, you don't really notice how much they actually do until they stop doing it. If he were to suddenly disappear from work without making any preparations - like say he went skiing and had an accident and broke both his legs - then I think we'd really be in trouble. But anyway.

Today was his birthday and I wanted to do something special for him. I already had a present ready (also chocolate - we have that in common ;-) but I wanted to bake a cake as well. I knew he would never in a million years expect me to do that, so he'd be really surprised and hopefully really happy. I baked it yesterday and brought it in to work without the icing. I put the icing on this morning after sneaking away upstairs with the cake without him noticing, and I also decorated it with a fun little message *cough* ... with sprinkles supposed to look like ice crystals, appropriate since we're totally covered in snow all over the place here. I tried my best.

Fortunately O. is totally on board with the idea that it's the thought that counts. Because I am so not a cake decorator. I mean, look at it. I started far too close to the center and wasn't able to figure out how much space I would need. Which, now I come to think of it, is exactly the same thing that happened last time I tried to decorate a cake! Sheesh. But yes, it is the thought that counts!!

I'm happy to report that he was able to tell what it said as soon as he saw it - HEIA OVE, which means 'go Ove!' (that being his name) - and then that's supposed to be a little smiley face at the top there. I didn't intend to put that there but there was such a huge expanse of emptiness that I just had to fill it up somehow. I know ...

When I brought it out he was super happy and totally surprised, and the cake tasted delicious. So it all worked out alright in the end. :-)

Oh, and Cake Wrecks is here.

Yawn ...

Mandatory welding lesson tonight at work ... we got pizza and did some arc welding. It was fun, but pretty tiring. I don't know what I did wrong with that helmet, it really made my neck ache. I guess it may have been because it wasn't really sized for my head ... pretty much everything we stock, I mean everything that's wearable, is in men's sizes. Because we have hardly any women customers. Money talks. When it was my turn to weld, I made the guys laugh uproariously by just asking whether there were gloves in any other size lying around, and then just holding my hands straight down. The gloves just literally slipped off my hands. :-D Fortunately we also have another type of welding glove that is basically cheap semi-crap, and they're different sizes even though they're supposed to be all the same. :-D So we did find a pair that fit me pretty well, so I could weld.

Now tired and still slightly achey. Will sleep. But first - how can I connect this to Keanu somehow?

Umm ... by mentioning that I haven't seen The Prince of Pennsylvania, but one day I will ... and then I will discover if any welding actually happens in it?

OK, that was weak. I need to get some sleep. :-)

What are the odds

OK, so, I know all that about how the human mind looks for patterns and picks up on them, while it ignores other non-pattern events ... but still, this is weird. :-)

I worked overtime on Tuesday, in fact a whole bunch of us did ... getting a lot of little chores done that we haven't gotten around to because of a ridiculous turf war we've got going on at work right now. I was relabeling some shelves when I noticed that some of the turnbuckles were ... not broken, cause they were totally fixable, but just had some parts missing. Some nuts and bolts were gone. I got some new ones off the shelf and just fixed them then and there, but I was thinking that I might as well not bother, cause when do we ever sell these things anyway. I don't think I've sold a single one since we moved. o_O Anyway, I fixed them up.

Then on Wednesday one of the sales guys from one of the daughter companies was wandering around the store with a customer and shouting for me ... and at first I couldn't figure out what he was saying, because it seemed so unlikely, but he was asking where I keep the the turnbuckles! :-D And even weirder, we have the things in three sizes, and the ones that I fixed the day before was the size he needed. o_O He actually needed more than we had, even. I ordered some more for him. But what are the odds.

It gets even weirder though, because today another customer came in and, get this, I asked if there was anything I could help him with, and he said Yes, do you have any turnbuckles in stock? WTF?? I haven't sold any of these things for what, eighteen months, or more ... then this. If someone comes in tomorrow wanting some of them I'm going to really freak. :-) What are the odds. :-D

There's pros and cons to everything

I work with almost only men - in fact, for all practical purposes you could just as well remove the 'almost'. There are about 35 people working here at the Oslo branch right now - eight work for the mother company and the rest for the three daughter companies - and the only woman except me is the sales secretary at one of the daughter companies whom hardly anyone ever sees. She sits in her cubicle almost all the time and doesn't even eat her lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of us ... she just goes in and gets some food and then eats it at her desk in her cubicle. o_O Sometimes a whole week will pass and I'll barely even see her, or maybe not see her at all even once. So she doesn't have what you might call an intrusive presence.

Anyway ... it's me and a whole bunch of guys here. I'm on the shop floor so anyone can see me all the time. :-) Most of the customers are men too, to the extent that if we had one female customer a week for the next month we'd probably all be wondering what's with the rush of estrogen around here. ;-) This doesn't bother me at all ... in fact, I prefer it. I absolutely prefer working with all men or mostly men. What they call a female dominated workplace I think would seriously get on my nerves. I've worked a place with about half and half men and women and that's probably my tolerance limit. I know some women will freak out a bit at the thought of working as the only woman among three dozen men ... but I think it's great, I've never had any problems with it.

Except that if I worked with only women, it'd probably not be very likely that anyone would spit their snus into the sink in the ground floor toilet.

Yuck. :-)

A petty annoyance

Here's something that's really annoying me at work these days. It is a petty annoyance that is still seriously driving me up the wall. I work with, among others, a young guy, he just turned 22. IMO he's not very mature for his age. There are several reasons why I think that, but I won't go into all of that here. There's just one thing that's driving me crazy at the moment and I feel like I just have to tell someone how annoying it is or ... just grab the kid by the scruff of his neck and scream in his face ... and that sort of thing doesn't foster a positive work environment, does it.

This time of year people have all sorts of colds and sniffles, that's normal. Can't be helped. It's standard procedure in winter time. What isn't standard procedure is that someone who's above kindergarten age never blows his nose. Arrgh ... !!! OK, 'never' is taking it too far, I have heard him do it one whole time this year. But as close to never as makes no mind. He's had this sniffle for weeks now, and he seriously never blows his nose. He just ... well, you know what he does, it's disgusting, I don't want to describe it. But the sound of it, which I hear again and again time after time every hour of every working day, is SO INCREDIBLY ANNOYING that it seriously is driving me up the wall. WTF is his problem?? How can he keep doing this and how is it possible that he doesn't get how annoying it is??? ARGH!!

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Whew. I wish I could say I feel better for saying it, but my brief moment of relief is, sadly, spoiled by what I know I'll be hearing first thing tomorrow morning. Argh.

Some complaints and a joke

What a day I've had. Not the best day at work. O. had the day off, he's been doing overtime like crazy (I'm tempted to say as usual) and really needed some r&r, so he's in Trondheim for a long weekend. He used to live there when he was a student so he has a bunch of friends there still. Anyway, it would just be me and S., who I think I've mentioned once before - he's really young, only 21, and he's also our most recent hire, so he's like the junior employee. It would just be me and him in the store today, where normally there's four of us. But one's on sick leave and the other, as I said, had the day off. Now guess who called in sick today. o_O

So, that really sucked. Fortunately a couple of the sales guys were going to be in the building most of the day, so I had them to help me out when it just got too busy. At least one of them was in the store most of the day, from around 10am when people really started coming in. It was busy too, surprisingly busy for a Friday ... didn't let up till closing time. And the store is pretty big, it's 1250 square meters ... obviously no way one person can keep track of that alone. So it was busy and I didn't get anything whatsoever done in terms of normal chores - inventory, stocking shelves, paperwork. And I also had to let almost all my incoming phone calls just be picked up by the switchboard at head office. So I guess some people may have been kind of pissed off at me since I was impossible to reach almost all day. But I can't risk getting dragged into something on the phone when a customer may need me at any time and there's literally not a single other person available to help them. :-(

In fact I know that some people were pissed off, because one of the abovementioned salesmen, F., took most of their calls. :-D And a few other screwups happened too that also really annoyed him. He came by to see me before he left for the day and was just really hanging his head ... he'd had a bad day, poor guy. So I told him a joke to cheer him up. He thought it was hilarious. Now I'm going to tell it to all of you too. But I can't promise that you'll agree with him.

OK, so, a married couple are living in a house that's in need of some repairs, but the husband's pretty lazy and isn't too eager to get all those little jobs done. His wife is constantly nagging him about it, but nothing ever gets done. The roof needs fixing, if nothing's done about it then it'll be starting to leak into the attic pretty soon, when are you gonna fix the roof?? The husband says sheesh, what am I, a roofer? The kitchen sink is dripping, everyone's going crazy with that sound, a gasket needs to be changed or something, when are you gonna do something about the sink?? The husband says sheesh, what am I, a plumber? Well, the railing on the porch is falling apart, it's getting dangerous, what if the kids lean on it and it breaks and they fall and hurt themselves, how are you gonna feel then?? When are you gonna fix up the porch?? The husband says sheesh, what am I, a carpenter?

You get the picture. So, it goes back and forth like this. But then one day the husband comes home from work and he sees that the roof is all fixed. He goes in the house, goes to the kitchen, and sure enough, the sink's not leaking anymore. Of course he has to check the porch, and would you look at that, a brand new railing's been put up. Wow! How has all this happened? He goes to find his wife and he asks her how all this stuff has been fixed all of a sudden. She says well, you know John from down the street, he's a real handyman, he can do all kinds of work? He came over and fixed some things around the house today. The husband says OK, wow, that was really nice of him. But he didn't do it all for free, did he? The wife says no, he didn't, but he didn't want money. He said I could either bake him a cake or I could have sex with him. OK, says the husband, I guess that's a good deal, so what kind of cake did you make? Sheesh, says the wife, what am I, a baker?

Customers, sheesh

As everyone who's ever worked in a store knows, it'd be the perfect job if it wasn't for all the customers. ;-) But sometimes they can really brighten your day, too. Sometimes fun things happen. Well, at least you gotta take it like a fun thing. Otherwise you'd have to kick someone to get over teh stupid.

So, a couple of guys come in the store the other day. They were, I want to say 50+. I'm not going to say where they work, but let's just say that if I were to mention it, nine out of ten Norwegians - at least - reading this would know the company. I ask them what they're looking for and they tell me that they've had some hassle from the health and safety people, and apparently they have to replace some things now for some reason. They need safety shoes for when they do inspections, can I help with that? Yes indeed, I sure can. At first I thought they only needed shoes - they were real talkers, these guys :-) - they told me about this and that and the other, we had a nice conversation. The funniest part was when they said that they'd been told by this inspector guy that they should go online and buy their shoes and the other stuff. (We have an online store option and this company are registered there, of course.) Buy shoes on the internet??! What the dang hell is that about?? No sir, that ain't gonna happen. No way, no how. They were funny. :-D

And here comes the really funny part. I found them some good shoes, and then they needed some other things too. Like helmets. Apparently now they had to replace their helmets too. There's no end to what these safety people are demanding. OK, so I asked the guy who said this - the other one was looking at gloves - how old his helmet was, the one that he had now. Oh, let's see ... he got that probably in 1990.

1990.

WTF are people thinking??? If this guy had actually ended up in some accident and that helmet had needed to take a hit, it would have broken apart into a million tiny pieces and his head would have busted open instead. It was nineteen years old. Jesus H Christ on a crutch. The other guy had a much newer one, though, it was only from 1996. Yeah, color me impressed. o_O

I sold them a couple of the new Solaris helmets from Peltor, which actually tell you when they need to be replaced, if that's before their three year life span is over anyway. They seemed to think that three years wasn't much to brag about, but here's hoping that the gadget freak in them will make them keep an eye on the sensor anyway. Here's hoping. :-D

Update

Yes, a quick update on my various problems will be the topic of today's post. Fascinating, I'm sure. There isn't much to tell, so at least it will be pretty quick.

No news on the job front. I still haven't been given any date that I can expect to be back at work by. Bah, humbug. Things are going OK at the Oslo branch (although my boss says that they're feeling my absence, which makes me wonder how much money they're actually saving on my salary since I do move some merchandise when I'm there, but oh well, whaddya gonna do) but not so good at the other divisions. So, no specific date yet. I'm applying to other jobs, partly because I have to in order to get the money from the state that I'm entitled to, and partly because I really want a new job now. My situation has had the unsurprising, but I think in my boss' eyes rather unfortunate, side effect of making me lose most of my interest in my current job. Seriously. When I walked out after my so far last day back in July, I was really depressed about it. Now I could hardly care less if I never set foot in the place again. Huh.

So, I'm applying, but so far no luck. If anyone knows of an opening, let me know. :-) I'm relatively flexible and not very picky. :-)

I did actually get a job, but it doesn't pay, so it doesn't really cut it in that respect. I'm volunteering at Friends Fair Trade, a fair trade store (duh) here in Oslo. I've been thinking about doing that for at least a year, and finally I figured that if I don't get around to doing it now, I never will. OK, there's no money in it, but it's going to look great on my resume, it'll give prospective new employers one more person to talk to about me, and I'll learn a thing or two since they use a computer system I'm entirely unfamiliar with and I get to do stuff on their website and so on. Plus I'll meet new people and do something good for the world. (I'll keep it up when I go back to work too - let me have an earful if I don't - my contract says that I have to work a minimum of four hours per month, and that really shouldn't be a problem.) Also, the guy who owns the store is going to let me put up a BookCrossing shelf there. :-)

As for my mother, she's optimistic, and actually with some reason too. She's had an MRI or whatever it's called, a brain scan, and it showed that her head and its contents are 100% A-OK. So, there's no tumor or anything like that that's causing her symptoms and nothing in her head that we need to worry about. At least nothing that showed up on the scan. >:-) She's been to see a specialist - not the neurologist yet, that's on October 20th, but some other kind of specialist doctor person - and this woman said, and get this, that she's not at all sure that my mother has Parkinson's at all. So, yay!! She did some tests and she only found two things that could indicate that it is in fact Parkinson's ... I now, one week later, don't remember exactly what they were, but there were only two indications out of all the tests she did. Plus these tremors that my mother is experiencing, but those aren't perceptible by anyone else, so I'm not sure they count for all that much. She said there were only two indicators. So she wasn't willing to accept that diagnosis yet, which of course leaves us a bit more in the dark but gives us a bit more hope too. After October 20th I guess we'll know more, but now we feel we have reason to hope for the best. Fingers crossed. :-)

In other news, and totally unimportant in comparison, yesterday I uploaded my 100th video to Youtube ... this year. Don't say it, I know. o_O It's this one about the visit to the mine. I've just been going a little video crazy lately ... but it's so much fun. :-) Stop by my channel, why don't you, and check out what I've got over there. Some of it is interesting. (Paz, I know that you've been watching! ;-) I've got a bunch more videos coming too ... from the Nordic Ark, for instance, this year's visit, and also more book reviews on video since that actually seems to work pretty well. Talking's easier than writing. ;-) I've got some in English too ready to upload. But of course lynx kits are hard to beat ... :-)

Finally, to Anne Ida and everyone else who's seen the jacket I bought in France (I'm wearing it in the last picture in this post): I am soo happy with it, I get lots of compliments on it. Just this afternoon it made a drunk on the street interrupt his incoherent ranting and shout after me the beautiful colors!! look at the beautiful colors!! Aww. I think his friends were relieved that they could stop restraining him for a little while.

Double helping of bad news

So, does anyone remember that I posted a couple of weeks ago about bad news that I'd gotten and was feeling really down about ... that I haven't mentioned since ... the reason for which I guess is because of an irrational gut feeling that if I don't talk about it it'll go away. Or, not a feeling, more of a hope, maybe. Totally irrational, I know. It doesn't work that way. But the worst bit of news I got is something that I have actually actively chosen not to look into yet because I feel like I know too few details yet to want to do that. When that changes I think - I hope - that my feelings about it and my attitude towards it will change too. Anyway ...

What happened was, first, that I got some bad news at work. Not crisis level news, but still, bad news. And pretty surprising news since only about a week earlier I'd been given the strong impression that no way would this happen. >:-( Basically my boss called me in for a meeting and told me that because of the problems the company's in, something needs to be done ... and like two of our three in-house daughter companies, the solution they're going to try is temporary layoffs. There's a word for it in Norwegian - permittering - I don't know if there is an exact word for it in English. (Please enlighten me if you do know the word. :-) Basically it means that you don't lose your job, you just don't work for however long it lasts till there's work for you to do again. The daughter companies have chosen to do this across the board, with 20% cuts in work time for every employee, but because my boss thinks, and I actually quote, that solidarity is a bad word and a ridiculous idea, we are going to cut one person 100%. And that lucky person is me. :-(

I'm sorry to say that I understand completely that he chose me, when he had to pick someone. He had very little to choose from. We're nine people who work there. He obviously couldn't cut himself. Then there are two people who do unique jobs, ie, there's no overlap with any other employee in the tasks that they do. The, what, operations manager (driftssjef) we can't do without. And the secretary/girl Friday, well, it would be pointless to cut her, because then I would have to take over her job, and then we'd be in exactly the same fix. He could have cut someone in the warehouse, except that since we moved in January we no longer have any warehouse staff on our payroll, because they were moved to a separate company to do their thing for us and all the daughter companies together. So that's out. That leaves the salesmen and the store personnel. We have four salesmen right now, so theoretically he could have cut one of them and gone down to three. Only problem is that one of them has already resigned. :-( He's really young and he's going back to school, and he's only working till the end of July. So that would be pointless. If he even could be given this temporary layoff thing during his notice period, I'm not at all sure that that's allowed. But even if it is, it'd only be for two weeks, so that'd be totally pointless. That leaves the two of us in the store, and since the whole point is to save money, of course they cut the one with the highest salary. Yours truly. :-(

So, I understand it, but it still sucks. Partly because I really don't like being in this situation. But partly, and mainly, because of the ironical fact that there actually is plenty of work for me to do. I seriously don't know how they're managing without me (and I'm really worried that the very young man who's now left to do my job as well as his own (which I'm not convinced that he's entirely on top of yet) will be so overworked that he'll get enough and quit before this is over). This is a company that was founded in Trondheim and has its main office there, with branches all over the country. Some of the branches are doing better than others ... specifically, the Oslo department is doing best of all. We're actually doing well. We need all hands. o_O I'm not joking, I wish I was. We're doing well, but the problem is that the company as a whole is struggling a bit and that, unfortunately, is what counts. So. I'm getting a reaaally long summer vacay this year. :-(

The crazy part is that this week we're in now, where you'll notice that I am in fact not working, was one of the weeks that I originally asked to get off as vacation time. This one and the next ... which were the same weeks that our O.M. had already been given off. So I wanted to not work during those weeks. And my boss said, and I quote, Oh, that might be difficult. Have you booked anything? You haven't booked anything, right?

Anyway ... when I was told about it, I was pretty upset, and for the next day or so really worried. Mostly on principle, I think. Because it really isn't a crisis ... nowhere near. Financially I'm absolutely not worried. And time-wise, well ... What they're saying is that this will last 'till fall', through the summer. Which is June, July, August. When I was told this, there was half a working day left of June. July, that's four weeks, I worked two of those. August, that's four weeks, but I was supposed to have three of them off anyway. So that doesn't leave much of the summer. And by then, well, we'll just have to see. My boss is so optimistic and wants me back asap and will keep me posted on absolutely everything and bla bla bla. I just hope for the best, nothing much I can do. And like I said it's not a crisis. Except that I do worry about all the time I'm sure I'm going to waste. And I just was really upset, because this is bad news and nothing like it has ever happened to me before. So for a day or so I was worried and upset. But then, like I mentioned in my first post, something much much worse happened that made all of this just fade into the background. :-(

As I said, I don't know any details yet. So I don't know how worried I should be, or what I can do, if there's even anything I can do, which I doubt. Even if there isn't, I so want to know. But there's lots of tests that have to be done, and of course they're not doing things like that in the summer. So it's been scheduled for August, late August. Until then we basically know nothing. It's a really bad feeling and I guess that's what I'd like to pretend isn't real. I wish it worked. :-(

What's happened is that my mother hasn't been feeling quite herself lately, and when wishing it away didn't work for her either, she decided that she just had to see her doctor and find out for sure. My mother's a real worrier, and her imagination is way too good ... she's the kind of person who just invents things to worry about if there isn't anything real. So she knew she had to find out for sure, or she'd drive herself crazy. And I have to say, although it's so hard to know this, I am glad she did, because now that it's been caught early, hopefully there's something they can do. But I am SO sad for my mother's sake, because for her this is really the worst thing that could possibly have happened. :-(

Again, we don't actually know this for a fact yet, because the serious testing hasn't been done. But her doctor, who has years of experience and who she totally trusts, says that he has no idea whatsoever what on earth else this could possibly be. So there's no reason to hope for anything other than that my mother really has Parkinson's disease. :-(

I can't even tell you how awful I felt hearing this. Because this is absolutely the worst thing my mother could have gotten. Cancer would have been better. I know that sounds bad, but it's true. My mother's aunt, my grandmother's younger sister, has Parkinson's, she's had it for years, a really bad case. (Now, rather mysteriously, drastically improved since she moved into sheltered accommodation a couple of months ago. o_O) My mother has seen this for many years and has felt so bad for her aunt, and has built up this nightmare image in her mind of how dreadful this disease is. It's the absolutely worst case scenario for her. She was so upset when she told me. We just talked on the phone, and I felt so bad not being able to put my arms around her and hug her. (And it was especially not a good time to tell her my job woes ... so in fact I still haven't told my parents about it, believe it or not.)

I'm happy now that my grandmother's dead, because knowing that her beloved daughter also has this disease that she watched for many years almost cripple her sister ... that would have just crushed her. :-(

So ... two bad things, one just regulation issue bad and the other really awful ... none of which I can do anything about. I haven't even looked into the whole Parkinson's thing yet because I want to know more facts about my mother's case specifically before I bury myself in frightening information that may not be the information that I need. If that makes sense. In the meantime there's nothing I can do but worry. My parents are at our cabin in the mountains now, and they've also been up the coast to visit my father's family ... they've seen my cousins' new babies, which I know my mother was really looking forward to ... (and by 'my cousins' new babies', I mean my cousin R.'s baby son and also her older brother H.'s baby son, two entirely different little fellows almost the same age :-). My mother seems to be doing pretty well. But like I said, she is a worrier. And now she has the whole summer to construct the worst possible nightmare scenarios in her head. :-(

Examples: She's already worried about when they will have to move out of the house. And she told me that she'd been strawberry picking, which she usually does every June, but this year she's picked much much more than she normally would, because next year she may not be able to pick any at all. :-(

So. This is not a good summer for me. I worry too much, I'm in a bad mood too much of the time, and I'm disappointed in myself for lazing about and wasting lots of time on doing nothing - as I knew I would; too much free time isn't good for me, it never has been, I never do anything sensible with it - and I just know I'm getting bad habits, staying up too late and sleeping till all hours. So that when I do go back to work, I'll have made it difficult for myself to get back to my routines. Such as they were. I know it's a bad idea, and I know there's so much I could and should get done now that I have the time, but somehow it just turns out this way anyway. >:-(

If anyone feels that this is TMI and this is too public a place for it, well, too bad. I actually think it's a pretty good place. I've told a couple of my friends about this, but ... I just can't manage to tell every single person that I should tell, separately, and repeat this again and again. It's been bad enough the times I have told it, and now that I've written it down. Quite a few of my friends read this blog, and, well, now you all know. :-(

Hopefully in a month or so I will have learned more. Until then there's nothing I can do but worry.

Bad week so far

I was going to blog about something funny and meaningless today, but I won't ... I seriously don't feel up to it. Partly the heatwave here in Oslo is just excruciating, I can hardly bear to touch the computer, it gives off too much heat. ;-) If I didn't have my balcony, I don't know what I'd do. Anyway ... the point is that it's enormously hot here and it saps my energy, I'm not getting anything done these days. So that's one reason to make today's blog post short.

But there are other reasons as well, one is some pretty shitty news I've gotten very recently that I've been kind of upset about ... or at least I thought I was upset about it, until I got some other news tonight, totally unrelated, which was just ... so much worse. I've been feeling so down all night since I got that phone call. Again, not conducive to creative blogging. I don't know what to do ... except that I know all too well that there's nothing I can do. :-(

I don't mean to get anyone down, but this is part of what a blog is for, IMO. Sharing my feelings. And I'll talk more about it later, a little less vaguely. I just don't want to get into it anymore right now. Am too sad. :-(

Keanupic and no excuse

Yawn.

OK, I've been at work for twelve hours today, it took me almost an hour to get home, and I have no energy to do anything but eat some fruit and watch a movie I've seen ten times already. So today's post will just be a pretty picture and not much more. Rose, I hope you'll like this, even though it'll probably be Tuesday for you by the time you see it. I'm sending a virtual hug your way. {{{Rose & family}}} :-)

This picture was taken on Oscar night 2006. That's Sandra Bullock in the background to the right, they went together. Their movie The Lake House was scheduled for release about three months later so they had to do some promoting ... Keanu had agreed to present one of the awards, that's the type of thing he never does voluntarily, only when he has a project to plug. ;-)

I like this picture a lot ... not sure I can tell you why. It's the look on his face, the way he looks at the photographer. I'd love to know what he was thinking just then. :-)

I hope you all have had a good Monday. More fun than mine. :-)

Rant warning: People are idiots

OK, so, expect no enjoyment from today's post. I'm going to rant about how people are idiots and how it sucks when they show up and annoy me at work. So read on at your own risk. >:-(

At around noon today one of the biggest idiots I know walked in the door at work. That in itself is enough to annoy me since this guy is such a compulsive chatterbox that whenever I see him I know I'm at serious risk of wasting 20-30-40 minutes on basically nothing when I have so many other things to do. And small talk isn't just small talk ... sometimes it's interesting and entertaining, and sometimes it's BORING and completely inane. Guess which category this guy belongs to ...

We have a long back story with this person, he used to be the buyer for a big customer of ours. Well, he still has the same job, but the company he works for has been bought out and their production unit shipped out of the country so they don't buy much anymore. Good ... !! because that means we don't have to see this guy twice a week, or more, like we did before. He comes by very rarely these days. But today was one of these dreaded occasions. He wanted to speak to O., a coworker whose job title I'm really not sure of in English. I'll have to look into that. But he basically keeps the whole operation running smoothly ... or tries to, at least. It's a big job. Murphy's law and all that. Before Christmas the idiot I'm ranting about bought some stuff on the side, not for the company, and there was some mixup with the order so that he paid for something he didn't get and was supposed to get it later but still hasn't gotten it after three months or whatever. Gasp! So he came in complaining, and with a bunch of printouts in his hand, saying that O. is completely hopeless, never emails him back, blah blah ... and he said a bunch of totally unfair things like how O. has a fancy title now but that's no good when he never does anything, he never does what he's supposed to, etc. This got me totally annoyed because I know for a fact how much O. works and let me tell you, he works extremely hard. He is so dedicated to his job and he does so much - but no, he isn't perfect and he doesn't do everything in the whole world - he's only human, people make mistakes, sheesh. But saying he does nothing is a total lie and I won't let people say things like that. So I said actually, he works very hard, but he has a lot on his plate. Can I help [boot you out the door]? He started yapping about this order of his and how he had to talk to O. ... where was he, why wasn't he there, was he at lunch or something? YES, he was, just like he's ALWAYS at lunch around noon, and this fucking idiot always shows up at lunchtime!!! He never gets it through his thick skull that he needs to show up at some other time if he wants to be sure that people won't be at lunch!! Growl ... !!

So after talking this over for a little while I decide that I will just have to pull O. out of lunch to get him to take care of this now (it's a simple problem to solve and would have been solved long ago if only this guy wasn't such an idiot) so we can just get it over with. So he comes down and they talk for a while and straighten the problem out. I'm not involved in this, they walk around a bit and I'm at my not-quite-desk making some phone calls. Then they come back, having figured the problem out - and just FYI, when people leave the store they have to walk by me. And now the idiot felt like, apparently, he should include me in the conversation. Maybe he thinks that I enjoy talking to him? Can anyone really be that stupid?? Anyway. He starts to tell what he apparently thinks is a funny joke. He asks have we heard that the White House has a new name now? OK, so, I know things about this guy that mean that I know what kind of joke this is going to be. I try to ignore it. But this is a tactic that does not work with this guy. So he goes on to deliver the punchline. Which is, guess what. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. o_O

Now, O. isn't much of a reader, so he doesn't get this reference and he says so. I for my part am just about blowing a fuse. I mean, WTF?? What is wrong with people?? Now the idiot wants to explain his piece of shit joke so he says - and get this, he's ignorant too - he starts saying that years ago, this author wrote some books about Uncle Tom's cabin and Tom Sawyer and so on. WTF?? I really feel like I'm about to explode ... and say something really seriously rude ... so I just snap out, Now that's just completely wrong! Mr Idiot Man wants to know what I mean. I say that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mark Twain wrote the books about Tom Sawyer and they have nothing to do with each other. The idiot says Oh, is that so ... or something meaningless like that. At this point O. managed to steer the conversation onto something completely different and they went outside to look at something to do with the entrance area. And after that he left and I didn't see him again. Today ... >:-( Anyway.

WTF is wrong with people?? Why do ignorant shitheads like this ... I don't know, have the right to vote?? I don't want to give the wrong impression, I do know how to treat a customer, I'm good at customer service ... seriously, I really am ... but I'm not under any obligation to listen to any & every shitty line that some pathetic bigot feels like spewing at me. And - aside from the fact that Obama is the new American president who won the election by taking the high road and deserves some respect just for that - I will not sit down and listen to any black or brown or yellow or whatever person being called a Negro slave (or a monkey, which this guy has also referred to black people as, on more than one occasion) and just listen and not speak up. And especially when it's coming from someone who is an avowed racist and literally a Nazi!! I'm totally serious, this guy actively tried to start a Nazi political party here in Norway back in the 80s. I'm not joking. He couldn't drum up enough interest in the project so it never got off the ground. >:-) But that's beside the point. I am not sitting there listening to some Nazi shithead tell me racist jokes and just taking it. I was so fucking mad today ... !!! Good thing O. got him out of there when he did, because seriously ... !

And just so you won't think it's all me: I was telling our secretary about this later, we were standing by the coffee machine talking when our boss walked by on his way to the men's room. As he passed us he said, Having a meeting? :-) I replied that we weren't, that I just needed to blow off some steam about a customer. Hearing this, he said, Oh yeah? Is it [company name]? LOL! You betcha! :-)

Oh, and also: when I explained the joke to O. later he was totally shocked and said he supported me 100%. We both agree that if we never see that guy again, it'll be one billion years too soon. Oy vey.

So ... low point of my day, no question. Of my week, I hope. After work I went downtown to the BookCrossing meetup, had a lovely time there with Findabair and sota48 ... and then to the Cinematheque to see Billy Wilder's The Front Page. So overall it was a pretty good day. But I seriously don't know what's wrong with people. :-(