old job, new job, old job

yes, yes I know. I’ve not blogged in quite some time and you’ve all probably forgotten who the hell I am. Heck even I’ve forgotten who the hell I was.

So let the obligatory prodigal blogger round up of recent notable events commence:

I have a new job. I jacked in the old job, made them poo their pants (and well they might) because while everyone knew I did something extremely important, extremely complex and in large volumes that could make or break the company’s finances (so risky to leave it up to one person, I told em so), no one was quite sure how I did it. I was nice enough to give them more notice than I needed to, because the Schadenfreude of seeing them struggle lost to my enormous sense of conscientiousness. I do have an axe to grind with them over how they treated me but I’m a pushover at heart.

The new job is a bit of a shock compared to the old. Partly because I enjoy it - the people are friendly (mostly, more of that in another blog entry), the atmosphere is lively but not excessively, my work is more varied than in my previous job and people don’t leave you to get on with a task that is patently too much for one person. Extra help gets drafted in and people roll up their sleeves and help you out when needed. I nearly had tears in my eyes when word was put round the office next door that I was struggling to finish a big job on time and three people pitched in to help. That never happened at my old place. People were so put upon that no one had the time to help you and management were generally speaking incapable of being any help because they know approximately zero about how you do what you do (I speak not just of my own experience, the three colleagues I shared an office with all were in the same boat).

Regular breaks at this new place are actively encouraged. We have a common room where comfy sofas and newspapers, magazines, biscuits etc invite you to bask in a room that lets in vast amounts of warming, bright sunshine (there are windows at each end so you get sunlight am-pm with the exception of noon) and you can sit and relax for ten minutes and no one thinks you a slacker for spending time away from your desk.

The other big shock is going from being the über-competent person, the one everyone would ring up to ask because ‘Heather will know’ (and generally I did) to being the most clueless person in the room. The jargon is one thing but some terms mean entirely different things in different contexts and I’m not yet so in the know that I can tell which we must be talking about at the moment.

I also generally answer the phone and fail to ask all the necessary bits of information when taking a message and find myself asking really stupid questions instead. But my esteemed colleagues are taking this in their stride and seem quite happy to answer my dumbest of questions.

This cluelessness, while frustrating, will pass in time and I’ll feel competent once more but for now it’s hard to have any kind of self-esteem when people talk right past you because they figure you won’t know anyway (and sometimes, I actually DO)

So that’s the new job.
My old job continues to haunt me. After I’d left, they contacted me and asked whether I’d come in and help them with the month end stuff. I agreed to give up a whole day to do it with them and travel to Worthing for a paltry sum of money. (pathetically paltry but I’ve never been very assertive)

I enjoyed the day of feeling competent again, but even a team of five people didn’t get it done in a day so how they expected me to achieve this every month I’ll never know. Maybe now they’ll appreciate how much I did. Heck now even *I* appreciate what I did.
That was to be the last of it. Or so I thought. They’ve contacted me since then and asked whether I could do this again. Two days this time. Apparently the last month end stuff they sent off came back with 80 errors and this means the recipients (who they sub-contract to) started banging the table. I remember the pressure of this myself, having been hauled across the coals for errors in my work before, but at least I got the errors down to 7. Just me, on my own and acting very much removed from where the paperwork (that needed checking and be error free) was generated. I never had errors as high as 80.

Schadenfreude? why certainly.

But this time, I was determined not to do it. I ahd an email NO in draft as I wanted to finally cut loose but then one day I picked up the phone at my new job and who was it but my old boss (how the hell did she get the number?!) and of course, I failed to say no. I tried to get out of it by saying I might not be best person to help - I’ve been away from things a while, I am not the god of this computer software and certainly am not under the impression that I did things in the best, most efficient way. I had been doing what I could under difficult circumstances and other ways might be worth exploring- but they said they were desperate. They needed me to at least trouble-shoot and any help would be appreciated.

So I said yes, beat myself up for being a pushover and then (after much cajoling from The Sous Chef, previously known as Gorgeous Landlord) emailed them to demand twice as much as the paltry sum I had received last time. Either I was going to walk away with some money or they’d find someone else. Win/Win.

Today they’ve emailed and said no thanks. They would get someone else in. HURRAH! because not only have I studies to get on with, I don’t need or want to help them, I owe them nothing.

SO that’s the new job situation at the moment.

and for my next blog entry: Understanding your parents are just regular people and thereby developing the freedom to dislike them.

last day

My last day at my old job was spent shredding. I was shredding like an ENRON employee during an audit (except I wasn’t shredding anything important - at least I HOPE not). Most of my excess paperwork contains national insurance numbers and birth dates so it has to be shredded and boy does it feel good to take large chunks of your accumulated paperwork and watch it being eaten up and turned into confetti. I think that was the best day at work I’ve ever had.
Much of the rest I boxed up and sent to other people. Releasing that responsibility was almost as good as the shredding.

Afterwards, despite the bad weather and it being a Tuesday, people showed up for my leaving drinkies and

new job starts Monday and I’m really not nervous (at least not yet). I’m in the mood for a change. I’m looking forward to the freshness. I can’t wait to get cracking.

More dental implant procedures

I was back with the Implant dentist yesterday. First off he asked if I wanted a local anaesthetic. I thought about it for a moment and said no. Last time he unscrewed the healing caps it smarted only a little bit and the anaesthetic would have hurt far more. I also hate the numb face that lasts for hours afterwards. I’d rather no anaesthetic if I can help it.

He told me he would be fitting in the metal frame, to make sure everything fits before making up the final bridge (I have two implants next to my canines which will hold a bridge of four teeth). The metal thing was a sort of square U shaped piece of metal, each end screwing into the implant. Unscrewing the healing caps was practically painless, then he started to screw this thing in and it stung a bit, then it felt tight and then (with further tightening) it hurt, then it REALLY hurt, then I squeezed my eyes shut because it was hurting so much and my face flushed. Then my lower back lifted off the chair I started to sweat a little. I put my hand up and said “I think I’d like the anaesthetic”.

He had the needle ready and it went in and OH MY GOODNESS that hurt so much. I’ve had more than my fair share of injections in the mouth but this was a ridiculous amount of pain for what it was. I had expected the jab to hurt less than what he was doing but it was about the same.

He added a second and proceeded to screw in the frame deeper. It wouldn’t fit and he was pushing and pushing. With so much force being applied I was worried he might break my implants. They’re made of titanium, sure, but I know my bone is mere millimetres thick. I don’t want metal things snapping out of my head. I don’t want to hear a loud crunch and have been through all this for nothing (or worse! to go through it all again). Despite the anaesthetic at the front, I could still feel the tightening and pulling at the gum behind the area but it was acceptable pain, better than another jab, anyway.

He kept going away to modify this U shaped bit of metal, pushing it in, modifying it, pushing again. The thing wouldn’t fit and when his colleague came in they spoke about the limitations of the impression they send to the lab, hence this frame not quite fitting correctly. Clearly this was not part of the plan.

He modified it a little further and asked if I mind he make tiny incision at the gum. I was quivering by now, still shaken from the earlier experiences, but said “yeah, go ahead” (I was numb, so what does it matter?) and so another injection where the gum had felt tight earlier. God that jab hurt a lot, too. I must have been too tense or something - they do smart but not usually that much.

After the incision, it fit a lot better and I was to bite onto some quick-hardening goo (to show exactly where my bottom teeth will be, to prevent them bashing the bridge, I assume).

Once that impression was taken I was done and with wobbly knees I went off the find reception to have a further £800 removed from my personal finances. I’ve got another final installment to pay and then it’s complete. I’d pay anything to have this over and done with.

Once suitably poorer and after having plashed my face with cool water, I wibbled to the train station, wibbled to the right platform and nearly got on the wrong train, so wibbly was I. Once I’d got on the right train, I phoned Landlord and welled up a bit (I’m such a pansy!) and instead of going back to work I decided to go home (my mouth was still bleeding) and so I worked from home. But hey, it’s my last day on Tuesday - what can they do? fire me? and I think I got more done than I would if I’d been at the office anyway.

I go back in a fortnight and go through it all again but this time but with the final bridge rather than the metal try-ins. More jabs, more cuts (he said two) and for the first time I really don’t want to go. At least I know to say YES to anaesthetics next time.

I hope this is worth it. I’m so scared I’ll be disappointed with the results.

his blog

Some people never learn. Some people are incapable of learning from their own mistakes.

I read my ex-husband’s blog reasonably regularly. We’re on goodish terms these days. I know he reads mine (not this one, though) and he prefers I read his than not read it. In fact he positively sulks if he suspects I’m not reading it. But he gets like that.

He’s had plenty of minor flings and happy dalliances since I left (or so he claims. He’s a braggart by nature) but he had found someone special. Everything he’d told me about her (in blog and emails) said that she was something more to him. He went to pieces when she went to Australia for Uni and seemed to be seeing someone else. He just about died inside and yet he always spoke of her highly, unlike the way he spoke of the others (some of his sexual conquests he held in downright contempt for no other reason than that they were attractive and female) but he and her eventually sorted it out and got back together and I was pleased for him. This young lady had set his head spinning and I’m all for getting the one you want, as you know. I suppose in a way, because I had left him, I wanted him to find someone special so I could be let off the guilt hook.

Despite how hard it was to do it, I was right to leave him. I had married him out of naivety and as an escape but mostly out of a romantic naivety. To me he preserved my innocence, to him I was a trophy wife. I didn’t realise it at the time but looking back that’s what it was. Trophy wives are fine but men get bored of those. After some time, I also suspected he was having an affair. I never ever found conclusive evidence or got a confession but there were too many things that were just not right.

Although I never knew for sure, things got so bad between us and for me personally that I decided it didn’t actually matter anymore, whether he was or wasn’t, had or hadn’t been unfaithful. He was treating me as if he were. He was behaving in such a way that he might as well be. I even said as much. His own uncle(a kind man who was always good to us) had taken him to one side and said: “no one treats their wife like this”. That’s a little nugget I only found that out about after I left so I don’t know when he said it, but obviously it went unheeded, because I could take no more and just upped and left one day. He knew I wanted to. I’d almost gone once before but he’d convinced me to stay and give it a go. Things were a fraction better but not enough and it wore off after a week, so a few months later, once I had enough money, I left for good.

Anyway, this new girl, apart from being beautiful (a model no less) and intelligent (he often spoke of his admiration of this quality), she sounded like a nice person to boot. He seemed to have something meaningful with this one, unlike how he talked of other women.

Whenever I read his blog I can’t help but reflect on what this tells me about our failed marriage. Girls (because he doesn’t date ‘women’) are the sum of their body parts. He has a penchant for legs, he sleeps with women even when he finds them dull, vacuous. The man I had married, who used to be so romantic had become shallow and I felt that I was partly to blame for this transformation. I had screwed him up but this new girl seemed to put a change to all that. He’d found love.
No longer speaking of his own flings and past indiscretion, he speaks of the relationships of people he knows. They come to him for advice and it’s the same problem over and over. Friends (of either sex) who are married, engaged or in a relationship who are having affairs. They all seem to be screwing around or have just found out their spouse/fiance/partner is doing the screwing. Reading his blog, you’d be forgiven for thinking Jakarta’s middle class must all be promiscuous and incapable of forming lasting, committed relationships. I’d had no idea loose morals were so widespread among his peers.

Anyway, recently it’s began to look like he’d broken up with this girl. He never said it directly but there were clues. Now, he’s posted a very brief (two sentence) blog entry saying that if there were one sentence he wished he could say it would be that he never cheats. This wonderful girl, this beauty who had set his heart on fire, the woman who had brought meaning to his life - he cheated on her. Surprised? no me neither but somehow it feels good to read that. Not out of Schadenfreude, I’d really rather them two didn’t have to go through something so painful, I wish that on no one but because it tells me he DID cheat on me. Looking over hiss blog it’s obvious: He’s fascinated by affairs.

^Psychology Hat On^ He cannot bear to be the weaker party so I suspect he cheats so prevent him ever being the victim. He’d always rather strike first.^
It means to me that it wasn’t personal. It was not because I was unattractive/not good enough for him/boring. It’s HIS issue, HIS problem. That might sound unfair of me, to pile all the blame on him but he was my first relationship and I didn’t know any better. His betrayal has clouded my ability to trust in relationships ever since. I am always expecting the other person to turn into him . He was so wonderful and charming at first and then made me feel so worthless. I never want to feel that way again.

It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a confession from him that he cheated and it makes me feel so much better. It shouldn’t change anything, but it does.

tickle tickle

How does he put up with it? How does he put up with ME?

Last night, it was nearing half past nine and after we’d washed up and put the kitchen back in order, he suggested we go to bed early and read for a bit. We have no telly, see.
What an early night this typically involves is me sitting in bed, watching him get undressed and making appreciative comments about his legs/buttocks/dimples or just wear a naughty grin, because this show is my nightly treat. I’ve watched him take his clothes off and walk naked around the room before climbing into bed next to me almost every single night for the past two years and I never, ever get tired of it. Sometimes he gets into bed first and watches me take mine off, but mostly I am already down to my undies by the time he gets to the bedroom (and I make sure to take my time to get out of those undies if I’m wearing something particularly eye-catching that day. It’s rare that I’m not coordinating) so I get into bed first and can sit back and enjoy the show.

After he gets into bed, he think it’s time to read so he’ll grab his book. I typically have other ideas (no, not that - or at least not necessarily and certainly not all the time). I don’t feel like reading. Instead, I like to amuse myself by finding all the hidden nooks and crannies of his I don’t usually have access to. A favourite is the crease where the buttocks meet the thigh. Or the thigh itself. Or underarms. He puts up with it in silence until it gets too ticklish. Throwing his book down, he’ll ask “haven’t you got a book to read?” and it’s only then I realise that I’m actually being incredibly annoying to him. He’s been reading the same sentence for the past 5 minutes because Ive been tickling areas of his body that even HE has never seen. He’s good natured about it but every so often he does turn to me and laugh.

So last night, after having been admonished twice, I resolved to let him be. He’s not a toy and I can’t go touching him willy-nilly as it, er, were just because I find having his naked body right next to my naked body too much of a temptation. I resolved. I made a personal pact. I vowed to allow him his personal space.

I lasted about 7 minutes.

Snow!

It snowed for a bit this morning. I do likes me some snow. Shame it wouldn’t settle.

Also, I dreamt last night that I was dancing with Gorgeous Landlord. While we danced I told him I no longer wanted to be just a cycling partner who he could sleep with. I was tired of being his f-buddy.

erm. WTF?! We’ve never been f-buddies and he’s been nothing but an attentive, adoring, faithful, loving boyfriend for the past 2 years without fail. He’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me and knocks the spots off anything I’ve dated before. I’ve never had it so green this side of the fence.

But it’s only a dream. Although, if I just switch my brain from ‘quiet and calm’ to ‘over-analysing hyper’ setting *click* There we go. Now I can stop pretending I’m a-ok and oh-so-reasonable. So here goes.

Now that I’m set to over-analyse mode (used to be default. Landlord found the switch) I suspect it’s the ‘kids’ issue. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about recently and my family ask about.

First up, let me be clear that I’m not feeling clucky. I don’t wistfully gaze at kids in pushchairs and wish I had one of my own (kids, that is - I could get my own pushchair any time I like, if I really really wanted one. And it would come in handy when shopping. I could drape 17 kilos worth of shopping bags over the handles and when I let go, the whole buggy flips backwards onto the floor. I would have to do without the catapulted child that you normally see when that happens to other people). I don’t even dream of buying baby clothes or imagine bouncing one on my knee. I know I really don’t want kids right now. I’m studying, plus I’m terrified of the life-long commitment having offspring represents. I’m afraid I’d invest time, emotion and care into someone who could turns out to be a vile human being, a mass murder, a religious fundamentalist, or even a person who would walk about in ugg boots.

I don’t even like babies very much. To me, they’re just poo producing food and wind bags that have to be kept clean and held the right way up and can’t be kept in a cupboard when they becomes too cumbersome to carry around everywhere. And they have sessions of random, high volume noisiness that the parent has only a limited capacity to control. Having babies has never looked like fun to me. Kids don’t become interesting to me until they can walk and talk and utter an opinion.

In short, the thought of having children scares the bejebus out of me but a part of me wants them, or at least wants to know it’s a possibility. That same part of me also wants to have his and only his. Trouble is, I’m afraid of bringing this up with him because he’s been so clear on the matter (no kids. I’m too old). And I can’t say he never told me. In fact the very day after we first kissed he said “maybe we should stop this now, because we want different things. You say you want kids, I know I don’t”.

Well, too late, Mister. I was already completely in love with him. I’d been in love with him since we met a year before; a year during which he’d repeatedly told me he wasn’t cut out for relationships - a nugget of wisdom he has since proven was a bluff.

I can’t make him change his mind about children. He’s entitled to never want or have them. I too am, of course, entitled to have them. I heard his warning but I wasn’t prepared to call it off. I was already in love with him and did not know where I stood on the kids matter myself. Why dump this man whom I love for something I don’t even know I want? I may never want children.

But.

I don’t want to drift along and eventually find out I did want them and it’s now too late. I don’t want to come to resent him and myself for wasting my time. I don’t like that I’m too afraid to talk about this. What kind of a relationship do we have if I can’t bring it up?

first day back at work

and normally I just bumble my way through it all, since no one is doing much work, either. It takes everyone a day or so to get back up to speed.
In my case, that was a luxury I could not afford. Claim is due today and the courier is booked for 2pm to collect it, so I had my work cut-out there. But instead of being the normal woolly-headed me whenever I come back from a break, I was sharp as a tack and completely into the swing of it, like I’d never been away. It helped that I had managed to get most of it done and ready before Christmas.

The last day before the Christmas shut down, everyone else had buggered off home at midday, while I was still at my desk at 19:30 finishing it off, grumbling under my breath that I was clearing up other people’s mistakes and slapdash approach to paperwork. it did serve to remind me why I had handed in my notice in the first place, so it wasn’t all bad.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I had faithfully promised to the receiving end that the courier had been booked and that all was well and I was well on course to getting it finished and to them by this afternoon that I realised the courier had NOT been booked and I was putting together a monumental claim that would go nowhere. So the woolly-headedness from a long break away was with me, after all.

Lastly, I appear to have gained 3Kg. I am now heavier than I have ever been in my life. I’m not all that worried though, since my new job involves a 13 mile round trip on my bike every day. It won’t be long before I have thunder thighs that are solid rather than thunder thighs that are blubbery*. My main concern will be how not to get run over at the Lewes Road Gyratory, where homicidal (or plain stupid) motorists come into close proximity to cyclist who might have to actually change lanes to go right and be in someone’s way for 10 seconds (heresy, I know!)

* I’m resigned to the fact that I will always have thunder thighs but I can at least alter the muscle to fat ratio through

New Year

First blog of the year. No idea that I have anything worth saying to say, so I’m just going to put down stuff that’s not worth saying except to me, personally. Occasionally I like to go through my archives to see what I was up to, a bit like checking on an old friend. Boring for you but sentimental for me.

Last night, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker for about 6 hours straight. I managed to squeeze a small fortune out of someone who thought I was bluffing when the two eights in the community cards might have been three of a kind for me if I held an 8 in my own two. Then, at the turn, a third 8 appeared in the community cards. He, seeing three eights now on the table, chuckled to himself, having caught me out on a bluff. I used to proudly say I never bluffed, but had been caught bluffing in earlier rounds and was quite happy to let everyone know I’d bluffed. Naturally, seeing a third eight on the table made me look silly.
Well, after some generous betting and raising and me smiling demurely into my cards and explaining that there are other hands out there than 3 of a kind (with no one believing a word I was saying by now) it turned out I did actually have the last 8 so *cha-ching* for me on that one. Four of a kind is beaten only by a Royal Flush or a straight flush - all of which I knew to be impossible for anyone else to have.
You learn a lot about people from Poker. You also learn a lot about yourself. My weakness is that I can’t bear to fold if it means I don’t get to see the other person’s cards and I’ll pay silly money just to see how well they beat my embarrassingly poor hand. My curiosity often comes at a high price and will no doubt one day cost me a game.

Free Fall from the Caffeine high

In the past 18 hours I’ve had 6 cups of coffee and two diet cokes and I can feel that caffeine level starting to slide as my eyeballs are getting that spiral effect seen in hypnotised cartoon characters. Fortunately I’m not caffeine sensitive so none of the shakes or anything.

I did go to bed in the end. leaving the essay unfinished. I decided to give up when I was spending more time with my head in my hands curled up in a ball on the chair than looking at the screen contemplating what to write next. That was 6.45am when Alan got up. I crawled, fully clothed into the warm bit on his side of the bed and fell alseep instantly.

I woke up refreshed and rested and realised I must have overslept. The street-sounds were not early morning sounds and I was fresh as a daisy but I don’t wear a watch and there is no clock in the bedroom so I went find my phone to assess the damage of my oversleeping. Hmmm. I was shivering with cold and needed to shake the rocks out of my head but otherwise was wide awake. My phone said 8.15. Hmm I’d been asleep 90 minutes. That was a powernap then.

So I ran a hot shower (to stop me shivering) and got myself to work only to find the object of my disdain wasn’t in. He and bullied colleague had been in the office until 2am sorting out stats, since bullied is away on annual leave now, and so he had decided to take the morning off to recover. Fair enough I say, but he’s making himself look an idiot when he tells everyone how tired he is and did he mention he’d been up since 2am? Everyone in the room knows (but isn’t saying) that I was in fact up far later than that and I still made it into work early (although of course his late night was work related and lie-in entirely justified, whereas my all-nighter is my own affair)

trews news

Trouser shopping. Hands up who enjoys trouser shopping. Hmm thought as much. Well when you’re the freako pearshape that I am, you hate it even more because no one makes trousers that don’t make you look like you have chicken drumsticks for legs. (They are rather chicken drumsticky but I don’t want trousers that advertise this fact)
But I am in need of zip-off trousers for taking with me when I cycle the length of Germany later this month.

Field and Trek and Millets were my first attempts. After trying on at least 12 pairs of women’s trousers, I had worked out that I am in fact a size 12 and three quarters. Twelves were a bit snug for cycling in but the 14s seemed to be made multi-purpose with built-in parachute in the area where the fly is and the crotches hung low while the hems swung at ankle height. Who, exactly, are these trousers made for?! I have this mental image of short-legged big-bellied women in garment factories, adapting the patterns to what they think a normal shape is.

Having gone through the women’s selection I started on the men’s trousers. I seem to be a 32″ on a man’s trousers and these did seem to fit better (at least in leg length) but still I found my mirror image to be too awful to look at for too long. At the first few you blame the cut but after trousers number 20 you start to blame your figure and think yourself the freak. Why, it’s almost enough to make me want to eat less and exercise more!*
After an hour I gave up and went back to the office. Back home, I fell into the arms of Gorgeous Landlord and lamented to him how hard a day I had had, trying on trousers after trousers (I even tried on some shorts and a skort that had me laughing until I cried - or was it the other way around?)

He commiserated as much as he could, but he’d just bought three pairs off the internet, all of which fit nicely. He had spent about 2 minutes of some simple mouse-clicking and got what he needed. I went upstairs and tried on his nicest pair.

THEY FIT!

and look better than any other I had tried that day. You spend an hour trying on men and women’s trousers and begin to lose the will to live. Then you try on the first pair that are sitting around at home and they are good enough you’d buy them.

so today I am heading shopwards to get meself a pair - men’s zip off trews in dark grey with a bazillion pockets and zips in all manner of places.

*what, and give up cake? Don’t be daft. And anyway - I’ve been stick-thin before and I end up just being a thinner version of the same shape and I still couldn’t find trousers to fit