Mea culpa

Perhaps an apology is in order.  Nah, who am I kidding?  Only me.  I guess when it comes down to it this blog merely represents what so many of you already know...the only thing I am guilty of is, well, being stupid.  Perhaps it is stupid using a public blog as a form of journal writing.  What I dislike about journals and the need this blog satisfies, is feedback.  Good or bad, I like the feedback.  I like the feedback I get in therapy, which so many of you goodhearted people agree I need.  It helps to focus and deal with some genuine issues in my life.  Like the instantaneous buyer's remorse I had the first day I took over the new house  and saw the walls torn asunder.  My God, what did Carol Channing and I get into...what was I doing buying a house?  Turns out it was all good, thanks to the blessings of St. Carol of Channing.  Losing a therapist to a horrific car accident.  Let's face it, many people in therapy worry constantly what they would do if a trusted long term therapist was lost in a moment.  That is a real anxiety.  There was real depression when 2.0 said she was retiring...another loss.  I may be all that Jack thought I was but I am sincere in my feelings.  When the SoulSucker turned her back on Sophie and me after thirty "frickin'" years, it had nothing to do with car rides.  No, the decision to break off communication lay squarely on their shoulders.  SoulSucker played both ends against the middle, saying one thing to Sophie, something else to me and when she was found to be duplicitous she cut her losses and ran.  The person that thought they might have been the Soulsucker who effectively cut themselves off from me, perhaps at the behest of the spouse.  Whatever it was, I was tired of being the one to always call and not get called in return.  Friendships are reciprocal and where there is no reciprocity there is no relationship worth having.

The fact that I don't drive (by choice...I am even a bad passenger) yes, made me vulnerable to cries that I was using people for rides and when none were forthcoming I got mad.  Not quite the truth.  Phyllis took me, no questions asked, to my Aunt Martha's funeral, even though on the day of the funeral she was suffering the effects of salmonella.  She is a true friend and still is.  I had lost the last of the Aunties, the last of the Taylor side of the family.  A true ending on many levels. .
When my dad died suddenly in 2004, effectively making me an orphan at the ripe old age of 49, The Soulsucker took charge when I was deep in grief.  Organized field trips to Detroit to close the house up.  Everyone who went was offered items to have from the house, from furniture to musical instruments, artwork, sterling silver, crystal vases and so on. If you liked something and wanted it...yours, no questions asked, no money exchanging hands. Also everyone who helped was offered a trip to a destination of their choice as thanks.  I took three people to Europe with me...I would have taken Sophie to Ireland had she wanted to get on a plane instead of waiting for the bridge to be finished. Another person was offered a trip to Thailand.  I take my friendships and obligations seriously.  Jack may not be aware of this or may have forgotten.

Okay.  By my own hand I have cut myself off from some people.  Some Jack mentioned by name (which I never did)...The person I used to love and live with who decided they believed more in serial monogamy with others than me...cut off.  The person who lied to Sophie and to me, cut off (blessedly as it turns off...this person is a racist of the worse sort and hypercritical of Sophie and me for being crude.  Her nascent Antisemitism was so ingrained that she thought it was a compliment to tell me she had "Jewed" the price down).  The crazies at the condominium complex who turned the building into a virtual dorm, cut off.  All mentioned by name by Jack.  The person who warned me of fallout from the blog, cut off years ago for inappropriate behavior insofar as they were unable to distinguish me from them. Someone who, perhaps, was so enamored of themselves that they could not understand why so many people, not just me, were cutting them out of their lives.

And so it goes another day is over and done.  Perhaps is is as Queen Gertrude once said "The lady doth protest too much, methinks".  Mayhap I does but this is the ending of a very long week with a number of idiocies on my part. Jack has been smote and I love a good smiting.  Maybe I should take this opportunity to gloat at the outcome, the redactions.  Rather I chose to lay out some truths for you to ponder.  I am not quite the cold hearted beastie, just me.  

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Seems my good friend and antagonist Jack has removed all of their comments they had previously posted to the blog.  They have removed the comments made by their own hand.  Where is says: This comment has been removed by the author, they are the author in question.  I would never remove a comment.  However, I would say that making it more difficult, if not impossible, to post comments anonymously, may have hastened their decision to remove the comments.  Lacking my panache, whimsy and sarcasm, they have decided that desertion is the better part of valor.  For this I give them a small trophy for making the effort to participate and a lovely parting gift of a narwhal.  Good thing I made a print out of the comments they made previous to their redaction. 

As my friend would opine  "Gotta love it!"  And, yes, indeed I do have friends that I have yet to name and antagonize.  Stay tuned.

Never assume

I have been perusing some of my pal Jack's comments and it strikes me that the wrong person has assumed they are the SoulSucker.  Ah, dear one, it ain't you and yes that new house is working out for me just fine and Carol Channing herself has blessed the undertaking.   The person who assumed they were to be the ride to Detroit wasn't.  Never assume, as Daddy said.  No. The SoulSucker is a far more sinister persona and not you.  Sounds like a little guilt rearing its ugly head.   

In any event, waiting for the other shoe to fall, I breathe a sigh of relief.  I am pretty certain of the identity of Jack and I give neither pin nor fart for their  angry words. As I approach thirty two fricking years at the same place I look back not at what I have lost but more at the positive gains.  Sticks and stones.  Remember the cautionary tale about stone soup?  You make what you can and call it good.  

No apologies, no regrets and never settle

The above, aside from being my New Years resolution, is my feeling toward "Jack", a mere flea on the arse of God, whose gender and orientation I am as unsure of as I suspect they are.  Needless to say, but I will, you can see their public comments made on this blog, some dating from last year, some redacted  by their own hand.  I have never used the actual names of the people I write about but Jack has chosen to "out" them or thinks they have outed them, so to speak, and has threatened me personally with "fallout".   As much as I'd like them to think...but no, their writing speaks of a troubled  mind, that they have upset me, have some secret knowledge of some terrible acts I have committed, I'd like them to know whatever this "fallout" is I intend to continue to write on my blog, on my personal Gmail account, on my time, whatever the hell I feel like writing.  I am entitled to my freedom of expression, as I know in their anonymity they are entitled to write whatever they want.  So I encourage you to go back and read some of their comments dating to last December.  I especially enjoyed their remark about me being a talentless dolt whose neighbors are glad she has moved.  Nothing they can do or say hasn't been done or said to me before and by better minds.  And as far as the above mentioned God and saving my soul I guess we will all see when that bell finally tolls.

Enough said.

Validation

I seem to not have written anything in a little over a week.  Well, there is a reason for that...not much has happened.  I did have a rather interesting conclusion to the clusterfux of ten days ago, re: my smart ass remark.  A rather shadowy figure approached me to shake my hand, and congratulate me on how I handled the situation and that the person in question was, indeed, a pain in the ass.  There. It is done with.

Since the incident the PITAL (Pain in the Ass Librarian) was seen waving to me in a friendly gesture.  If my medication were not so well regulated I'd might think I was working in a dysfunctional universe, albeit a universe the scale of a library. To a certain extent there is a level of dysfunction we all tolerate.  Seems us true mental cases, such as myself, just stands back and wonder who the crazies are: Us or Them.  Usually it is truly them.  Thems that doesn't acknowledge the true insane  and inane nature of life.  The Beached Whale is still out to get me and in this case it isn't my paranoia talking out loud.  The smile she bestowed on me in the ladies' room was evil incarnate.  That is the person with the agenda and the true mental case.

Yes, we were once mentor and mentee.  Now she is just the mental.  Her line to my boss that I must have some ongoing health issues that made me lash out at PITAL was so off the mark and so out of line as to make me very angry and upset.  Yes, the Beached Whale once had my medical power of attorney but she used it as a tool to make me so dependent upon her judgement that I was totally left out of the process of making my own decisions, which, by her hand, cost me six weeks of work for a procedure she thought was in my best interest.  Forget what I thought.  I was left out of my own equation.

So. Here it is, years after I "dumped" her (what did she really want of me then and why has she chosen now to get "her revenge"?)  Well, The Beached Whale is the nut case.  I am not the one who has screwed up chance after chance to play a role with the library.  I am not the one delegated to a small corner of the library with virtually no role to play and just biding my time until they make me retire.  So it is no wonder she has an agenda and an axe to grind.  Hopefully next time the neck she chooses to go after won't be mine. 

Waste of time

My well meaning apology to the Librarian of yesterday basically fell on deaf ears.  I was informed this morning that lunch is a professional setting and I embarrassed her in front of her son, whose opinion she values.  She opined that I owed him an apology as well as not being able to "figure out where I offered the place for uninvited remarks like that in a professional setting from a co-worker.  Maybe you can shed some light on that when we have coffee".  I see the pot being stirred here by the Beached Whale.  It took this librarian almost twenty hours to respond to my apology with this drivel.  I have wasted more than enough time on this and will waste more as I am meeting with a union rep today as well as the library's head of HR.  I also sent a letter of apology to the son

I have yet to hear her reaction but I do hear kettle drums in the distance.   The Beached Whale is plotting her revenge against me.  Well, I am a little weary of this tension between librarians and staff.  My God, they have such an inferiority complex regards their status in the system (they are not really faculty and not really staff and don't have a true tenure process) that they belittle staff.  The Beached Whale and I have a bad history and I suspect this is her way of getting back at me for dumping her.  Oh, yes, I think she wants me, maybe not in "that way" but she wants me back in her life, or rather my life to her's, but I truly believe this is her revenge.  They are planning a response to my apology where I tried to leave no room for a response.  But oh my yes indeed it will come.  I  have my unionized ducks in a row and HR will have no choice, I hope, to support me.  I can be the offended one as well.  Why pick on me?  Maybe they are secretly jealous of me...who knows and who really cares.  I want this to stop and just get on with my work and life at work...

Fux it all...

Oh, my...

The other day, Tuesday, I was on lunch and a librarian was at lunch with her son, who is a fabulous musician, and I approached them and, putting my hand on her shoulder, said how much I enjoyed his music, how much pleasure it had given me and I laughed and said, regards his mother, that she was a pain in the ass.  Everyone laughed and I thought that was the end of it.  Seems I was mistaken.  Another librarian who was not party to this exchange, one who I was once close to but I had ended the mentoring relationship on a sour note, was able to agitate this first librarian into a near frenzy over my, what I thought was, an innocence remark.  This second librarian, whom I shall refer to as the Beached Whale, managed to get the first librarian so upset at the  thought I had disrespected her that they were going to take the matter to our human resources office.  Mind you, I am a rep for my union so they might have been in for a humiliating experience had they actually gone that route.  No, they went to my supervisor, the two of them, the Beached Whale saying she was only there for a listening ear.  Some ear.  My boss who was basically clueless to the relationship between the Beached Whale and myself,  was able to calm the first librarian down, and the Beached Whale wondered out loud if I wasn't having some health issues she didn't know about (as if she would...Good grief everyone here at the library knows I am bipolar).  Well, long story short, other than being very agitated by this turn of events, I sent a note of apology to the first librarian and offered to buy her a cup of coffee so I might apologize in person.  Now I will mention that the other day, that being Wednesday, the Beached Whale smiled at me , which I mistook for gas but was apparently her good deed rearing its ugly head in my direction which after years of non-recognition she was able to get back at me for shutting her out of my life.  This person was initially a mentor in my life, which morphed into a friendship, which morphed into a medical power of attorney, which morphed into a surgical procedure I didn't want to have, with results that were less that satisfactory, to the point I was off work for six weeks to recover.  It was shortly thereafter I told her, alright in an email, that she was no longer welcomed in my life and I had moved on.  God knows what she really wanted from me other than absolute control over my life and friends.  She even referred to our good friend Sophie Horowitz as trailer trash, which I hear is one grade below white trash.  And this was while she was having lunch with Sophie.  The Beached Whale is so desperate for friends that she stirs up any pot so as to  ingratiate herself for her own demonic purposes.  She has gone through more friends and people than Carter has little liver pills.  And then some.

As far as I am concerned the incident is done.  If there is any fallout from this I will, you can be assured, take it to the union and nail their collective non-unionized asses.

I mention this to all my readers and their friends to beware the Beached Whale and her offer of friendship.  It comes at a price...On the other hand, to all those thousands of lost friends of The Beached Whale, you are at least in good company...

Hyphen 2.0 redux or Dreams of a Summer's Night

I seem to be a tad fixated still on the demise of my working/clinical arrangement with 2.0.  Her website is still up and she is still taking on new clients, although she said to me she planned to retire in the spring.  This doesn't seem fair to her current clients or to potential new ones.  And I just came across an author on my work list with her exact name and I find myself once again rehashing the old hurt.  I spoke a little with JB about this last night and time permitting tonight I may call her again.  I just had a real and genuine connection with 2.0 and the abrupt ending, albeit on my call, is still a source of hurt.  I don't think I have really dealt with that in therapy and maybe I need to do this.  I have alluded to the hurt but haven't directly addressed it.  Maybe I was getting a positive motherly vibe from 2.0, whereas the American Girl is more result driven and, I don't know, not quite as empathetic.  But I realize constantly that I am not over the pain of that separation. 

My first therapist, eons ago, said I was "intrinsically likable" and that has stayed with me.  I felt that sort of connection with 2.0.  I always fret when someone does not find me intrinsically likable, like the doctor I fired , and take away from that a degree of hurt and depression.  I do find that some people "don't like me" and tend to turn to a passive/aggressive manner in dealing with me.  Makes me feel better if someone says outright they don't care for me.  I do worry that I am not "intrinsically likable".  And really, whose fault is that?

So dreams of a summer's night.  Amid the mist and snow that is our winter I note the days are incrementally turning longer.  Still it snows and the ground is frozen.  Such a cold snap as we have had of late has left patches of ice on the rivers.  And I ponder all the work I must do once the ground relents and allows the snow drop flowers, the crocuses and the like to peek their floral heads above ground and herald the arrival of, well, late winter.  I am hoping my rose bushes survive the winter.  I am pondering what to do with the front yard.  And all this pondering, this attention to the needs of others, the dealing with the technological sturm und drang that is fulfilling the audacity of my techie self, all this plays into the loss of 2.0  What did she say that was so strong, that spoke to me.  Of all I had...the house, the yard, friends, the cats...all of this...The optimism she spoke to me that had really won me over.  All of this.  And it is gone.

Yes, indeed, must connect with the American Girl and deal with this and the other loss, that of the original Hyphen.  I wonder if she plans to return to practice some spring and if I am connected enough to the American Girl to continue seeing her or to return to a less than reliable Hyphen the Original. 

ENOUGH!!!

Pity Party

Well, I want to have one.  I am a little weary of taking care of myself as well as a number of other people.  I know I have set myself up for that by playing that role all my life, e.g., caring for an alcoholic mother and being the family clown and peacemaker.  But still.  And, as a by the way, did you know that Drunkenness (Philosophy) is a legitimate subject heading?  My family could have majored in it.  This heading showed on my work list this morning and I just had to laugh...Drunkenness (Philosophy)...who da' thought.  My family once lived a life of the stuff subject headings are made of...but I digress.

All my life I have had bruxism issues.  There...it's up to you to find the definition...I am not taking care of anyone but me today.  So (maybe a hint) I was at the dentist yesterday and made the $2,500 commitment to remedy the situation before I have little more than nubs and the fragments of a recurring dream about my mouth and it's misfortunes.  Basically I would like a little empathy for my position.  Was any forthcoming yesterday...Well, was there?  I think not.  I ended up the day caring for a friend and dragging her into the world of smart phones.  She was ready for one...but she needed me to pull the trigger for her so tomorrow I will be setting up her phone after work.  I don't want to go to her cluttered house again.  So that was the one concession she was willing to make.  My God, the woman is a hoarder.  I am surprised she can find her cats in the clutter.  Maybe she can't as she has to shake the food bag to bring them running.

In mid-February I have more dental appointments and will not doubt emerge with a beautiful smile.  But, hell, some sympathy for my plight of having to sit in a dentist's chair for almost two hours while they do the prep work for the crowns.  Lots of novocaine (heck, why not just put me out.  I'll be a nervous wreck for those two hours with the sounds of the dentist office surrounding me)...

Seems like almost everyone I know is sick but still...a little empathy for my state (I have given you sufficient support).

Good thing I have therapy today.  Normally my issue is setting and keeping boundaries, but today I just want to stop caring for others and care for myself today.  That's all.

A culture of amateurs...Why, just look at me...LOOK AT ME!!!

Speaking of pretense, I am an example of one.  One of my many assumptions is that I assume that you might wish to read what is on my warped mind.

I was reflecting on what I wrote yesterday.  I fancy myself a musician, a writer, a historian... (butcher, baker and candle stick maker)...I have had music lessons, a fine multi-university education with multiple degrees in history, religious studies, literature and economics...a fine liberal arts education (Summa cum laude no less).  But currently we are a breeding ground, a virtual swamp, for amateurs.  I listed my acquaintance yesterday as one such.  Anyone, literally anyone, can pick up a guitar and, with or without lessons, play.  Rock and roll gave us some interesting music but it did more to populate a culture of amateurs.  Garage bands, weekend warriors.  And so on.  This is the lazy approach to so called music.

We have an idiot who assumes because he ran a company (four of them right into the ground) that he has sufficient expertise to run for president.  The last time be had an idiot president with an MBA as a background we were fighting a multitude of senseless wars and ruining the economy.  Justice Scalia has had the temerity to sit on the highest court in our country and say he really hasn't read the Constitution.  Just not a student of the subject.  Another amateur rising to the top.  We have so called "scholars' with no real knowledge of the subject who claim the world is but a few centuries old and that dinosaurs roamed the earth in biblical times.  There is another person at work who fancies herself a scholar of Antisemitism because she catalogs so much Antisemitic literature.  Still, she can't find a usable subject heading to suit her needs and refuses to sit down with our Jewish Studies bibliographer and the head of the Metadata Management Unit to make good and usable finding aids on this topic so as to best help out patrons.  It is the "I don't know it for a fact...but I know it is true" mentality.  It has a grip on us.  Everyone is an expert.  Everyone has the moral high ground.  It is just so pervasive in our culture.  It may even be a harbinger of the end times...(like that will happen because of the cultural morass we find ourselves) (NOT)

I digress.  This culture of amateurism might lead me to say that because I am bipolar, which I am, that I am an expert on the subject.  True, I have made a "study" of this, but not in an academic setting.   I do read a great deal.  Doesn't make me an expert.  You need a professional to prescribe medications, not some dolt like myself.  Regardless of how much I have read or had intensive therapy I am not an expert.  I don't pretend to be, but our culture might elevate me to a position of being an expert.  (I am not a doctor but I play one on television...(There for the grace of WebMD go I)).

In terms of music, again,  I know that D-G-A works in chording.  Most basic of knowledge.  I might have learned this through lessons, (which I did) or by diddling around on a guitar.  C-F-G...rock and roll, E-A-B7 in blues.  That is like the Rosetta Stone of guitar music.  You can change the tuning but these chords will repeat again and again.  Just watch this rant on popular music using Pachelbel's ubiquitous Canon to see how similar structures work.Pachelbel Rant

Amateurs.  A whole culture of amateurs, dilettantes and what-nots.  Anyone can be a self professed expert.  I can go online, fill out a form and become a minister who can perform weddings and other sacred events.  Does that truly make me one...I think not.  But I could.

Just like I could tell you I know what I am talking about (which I do) but I can't quantify this.  And sometimes things need to be quantified, studied and applied, not just assumed.  As my daddy (and probably yours, too) used to say "To assume makes and ass out of u and me"

Or more to the disgusting point. When I ask you how many bowel movements you have had today and you say none, then I can really say "You don't know shit!".

The audacity of hype

I take music very seriously.  I listen almost compulsively at work.  I can multitask and analyze music in my head whilst I do my work.  Right and left brain and all that crap; it sometimes can help to be bipolar.  I am a so so musician, in part because my skill in reading music is limited.  I think the finest musicians have a great deal of talent in this area, especially jazz musicians.  It really helps to know scales (not the fishy kind) and how to read and compose.  If being a musician were as easy as picking up an instrument with no knowledge of scales, for example, and sounding out something pleasing, then everyone could and would be a musician.  It's like saying anyone who can read a number is a great mathematician...not so much.  If you are scatting in jazz you know the key you are playing in and while you have a great deal of latitude you have to know what you are doing.  I have an acquaintance who fancies himself to be a musician of great skill.  He has never taken a piano lesson, yet, with the audacity of hype, he put out a CD of himself diddling on the piano and actually talked a local store into carrying it.  I have no idea of how many he has actually sold (or given away).  But the audacity of that individual.  And he hypes his work to the masses or rather his coworkers as if he actually knew what he was doing in terms of musicianship.  I don't pretend that I am anything more than a middling musician; certainly not one capable of producing anything that would pass muster in terms of music theory.  And music theory is more than than just a guess at what sounds pleasing.  Sometimes, at a given point in time, it is exactly what is not pleasing. Take Wagner for example (yes, please take Wagner).  Or, a better example, Arnold Schoenberg...he turned music on its head, but not without knowing theory and perhaps eschewing then theory for a new theory of music.  So my acquaintance, of sorts, has no knowledge of this.  His work is very derivative and not original in any sense of the term.  In my experience you really need to know what you are doing in order to do it or parody it and he can do neither well.  What I have written is nothing great...it pleases me sometimes, sometimes not.  When I play with other music people I endeavor to keep all that theory in my head.  I need to practice more.  But, what the hell, I don't really have the time to devote to that kind of pursuit, although music makes me happy.  I recently had the great good fortune to play with a very gifted musician, a member of the Jamming Jews...he practices two hours a day, in addition to a full time job that has nothing to do with music.  It is his avocation.  He knows music and plays around town and in Grand Rapids.  My acquaintance could not even carry this fellow's guitar, much less a tune.  Yet my Jamming Jew friend doesn't put out CDs of himself diddling on a xylophone.  I have a hope that one day I can learn from him.  I hope one day that I can commit myself to more time to play music on the mandolin, which I am just learning.  My acquaintance once, when I played with him, picked up my  mandolin and tried to make it sound pleasing but that did little but aggravate me as he didn't know what he was doing and my teacher would have slapped the mandolin out of his grubby little hands.

Being a dilettante is not easy.  My acquaintance has this down cold.  He can't read music but he makes his music public.  He is a true dilettante.  I am one as well but I simply do not have the cajones to publish my music, write captions I think are clever, leaving the art up to someone else, or make crafts from kits and pretend that they are an original.   And yes, I am dumping on this individual as it infuriates me that people lacking any real talent think they are the best and the brightest.  Sometimes modestly is a virtue.  Sometimes it does take cajones to publish music contrary to prevailing music theory.  But for goodness sake leave being a dilettante to the experts...like me.  For more information please read my new book Dilettante Theory for Dummies.