I woke up this morning with a migraine, but had to power through it because I had Important Things to do. As I waited for the caffeine and drugs to kick in, I found myself doing Lamaze – at least, my perception of how to do Lamaze, which is entirely based on what I’ve seen on TV. I exhaled in short bursts, made some train noises, had a panicked blundering husband in the background trying to fluff my pillows and pack a suitcase at the same time, and swore a lot. None of this really seemed to help, and I gave some serious thought about boiling a pot of water just in case (and probably would have, if I didn’t need to leave the house). Why I thought these things would ease my headache is a mystery to me, but once I made the Lamaze connection I just sort of went with it. I mean, it couldn’t HURT, and as long as I concentrated on breathing funny I didn’t have the wherewithal to focus on just how badly my head was throbbing. It was a good system, and now I feel confident that I could totally have a baby if I needed to. Success!

My head does hurt a lot less, though. The drugs finally kicked in and getting out of the house worked wonders. Also, I have Nutter Butters. As far as Wednesdays go, this is the best one I’ve had in months.

I’m ambitious, but I also know when I’m licked and should just lay low for a while. That’s why my goal for this week was “be better than last week” – sounds pretty simple, right? Last week was one of the worst weeks of my life; there’s no way this week could be anywhere near as bad!

Well, yesterday I lost my job and today I dropped one of my favourite mugs on the kitchen floor where it shattered into a thousand dangerous little pieces. At 9:36 on Tuesday morning, we’re off to an excellent start for the week. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

On account of my having eaten approximately three normal meals in the last two weeks, we – and my ass – are all going to ignore the fact that I ate a LOT of cheesecake yesterday. A lot. Like, I was up at 2am eating cheesecake. It was messy. Today I am going to try to eat something green.

Do they make green cheesecake?

Okay, onto the good stuff, in bullet point format so you can see that I am serious:

• Officially, I was laid off due to restructuring – my position was eliminated
• I am not angry at my boss about this – I have a feeling the decision was not hers, and I think it was rough on her to let me go (that could be my ego talking; everyone wants to be missed)
• If I’m going to do anything, it’s going to be backwards and convoluted – I was actually part of the initial round of layoffs on November 1st, but they kept me a while longer to see what would happen like a science experiment gone horribly wrong
• Yes, I received severance – in fact, I received far more than I had any right to expect
• There will be no talk of lawsuits – yes, I raise an eyebrow in serious need of grooming at the whole “let’s fire her while she’s having serious mental issues and two weeks before Christmas to boot” thing (which I can only assume was followed by maniacal hand rubbing and an evil laugh), but maybe I’ll just get a crutch and an ascot and call myself Tiny Kim
• My life insurance and long term disability benefits were terminated yesterday, BUT my health and dental were extended to the end of January – including my entire and not insignificant health and spending allotment for 2012, which will come in very handy when I talk to my therapist about all of this
• I should probably go to the dentist and refill my prescriptions while I’m at it
• Yes, this all sucks – but it could have been so much worse; they could have easily Dooced my ass but instead took the happy ending, for which I am grateful
• I could have been Dooced because someone who was not a Fan of Kimli was stalking my blog regularly and tattling on me for “putting the company in the public eye” – hey, those of you who don’t know me personally! Pop quiz! Where did I work? You don’t know, do you? Probably because I NEVER MENTIONED IT ON MY BLOG! Enjoy your moral superiority, mysterious tattler, because it is ILL GOTTEN!
• I’m going to use some of my severance to splurge a little and buy a new Dustbuster – yeah! I’m living the life!
• Thank you all for your tweets and DMs and emails – you guys made yesterday a lot less painful, and I appreciate you all
• Uh .. how do you do a resume?

So, the new chapter begins today. This week I plan to update my resume, put together a portfolio, and buy some damn groceries. After that .. well, it’s the holiday season, but I’m still looking. And thinking about freelancing. Anyone need any documentation done? I’m good at words and stuff.

bad news is easier to deliver in poster form

I’d like to claim that I’m really self aware and totally attuned to the emotions in the ether so I was prepared for this, but honestly, I just had a brilliantly timed tantrum.

On Friday, I stripped my desk at work and packed up all my toys. I wasn’t told to do it; it was a knee-jerk reaction to being told I don’t fit in. You want a sterile workplace? Okay, I’ll GIVE you sterile. The rainbow arch came down, all my prints, the 37 different Hello Kitty things – all gone. I packed everything into bags and boxes, and set it aside.

On Sunday, after the Great Bieber Hunt of 2011, we went to my office to drop off everything we had bought. We also picked up all my stuff, just in case.

This morning at work, I packed up the rest of it. Better safe than sorry, right?

I was one folder of old packing slips away from removing every trace of my existence when I was called in to talk to my boss. There was another lady there; a stranger. I knew what it meant.

I lost my job today.

My toys are safe, though.

So there.

More words will come later (after the cheque has cleared). Right now, I need to cry. So I’m going to go do that, and maybe eat some of the cheesecake in my fridge.

Justin Bieber, you are an elusive creature.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not up on what six-year-old girls find cool, but I do my best to fulfill wishes when they are presented to me. The 6 year old in our adopted family asked for “Justin Bieber anything”, so I spent much of my weekend thinking more about the Biebz than I ever have or hope to again.

I had sort of hoped the task would be easy, as his Biebness is all over the damn place these days. However, since everything in my life right now is an arduous task of insurmountable odds, actually FINDING Bieber stuff was close to impossible. Is Bieber passé now? Is he no longer the cool thing for girls to sigh over? I dragged Ed to two of the most hellacious places to be on a Sunday afternoon two weeks before Christmas – SuperStore and Walmart – and was extremely hard pressed to find ANYTHING with Justin’s floppy lesbian grin staring out at me in a Canadian approximation of swagger. Seriously, the only non-CD item I could find was a pinata. While the thought of giving someone a Justin Bieber pinata is a hilarious one, it’s not something I’d want to give a little girl for Christmas – so I bought what I could: the Christmas CD, a copy of the movie, some other “All About Justin!” DVD, and some stickers. Then, to ease my suffering, I decided the girl also likes princesses. That made things a little easier.

The very request for Bieber stuff is kind of weird – are 6-year-olds really that up on pubescent teen idols? I tried to remember what I was into when I was 6, but everything before 1982 is a blur. I even looked up popular toys from the era, but I don’t remember ever owning any of them so that was no help. This is where I need you, internet – if you have girl who’s 6, what was on her wish list this year? And what about you – what did YOU want when you were six? I am no good at children.

kids like masks, right?

My therapist’s office is having a sale for the holiday season, and they have signs up in all the therapy rooms advertising the special.

The signs say:

“Happy” Holidays from Crazy People Counselling!

That? Is hilarious.

All I want for Christmas is for that to be totally intentional.

.. and a Nintendo 3DS with Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario Land 3D.

HAH!

There is no worse feeling than disappointing someone you genuinely respect. I recommend avoiding it at all costs.

I gave serious thought to only communicating via Depeche Mode songs from here on in, but I ultimately decided against it. I gave serious thought to a lot of things last night, like never leaving the bed again or crawling inside the pizza to sleep or taking up animal husbandry. I was pretty sold on the last one, until I found out animal husbandry is not about marrying sheep to cats or snakes to horses – seriously, why is it called that if it has nothing to do with confetti and tiny tuxedos? It’s misleading, and just rude.

Mostly, though, I spent yesterday crying. It’s an embarrassing tendency I have; getting overly emotional the instant a Serious Conversation happens at me – and yesterday was the End Boss of Serious Conversations.

I could wax a lot of poetry about the why and the how, but the end result was a Serious Conversation with my boss in which she delivered a year’s worth of bad news in one painful meeting.  I won’t be getting a raise or promotion because I don’t deserve one; I seriously offended her with my email expressing my frustrations; when asked for feedback some of my customers claim I’ve said “that’s not my job, but I’ll help you anyway”; I joke inappropriately in the office; I’m too flippant; there’s no future for me in this company .. and I don’t fit in.

Incidentally, if you’d like to know how to completely break me in two, tell me or make it clear to me that I don’t fit in.

I have reverse abandonment issues and I find it excruciatingly difficult to make friends, because I don’t fit in. Anywhere. I’ve never fit in at any of my jobs, or at school, or in social groups. There’s something wrong with me – people shy away from me; keep me at a distance. The few times in my life I’ve had best friends have all ended badly – I didn’t fit in with their lives any more, and they pushed me away. It happened 20 years ago, 8 years ago, and 11 months ago, and it broke me each time. Oh, people tolerate me okay – I have casual friendships at work, but they never go beyond that. I’m too weird, too off-putting, too smelly, too wrong to be anything other than the weirdo in the corner. Too loud, too bright, too much, too unusual. I thought I had finally found a place where I could be myself and be accepted for everything I have to offer, but once again I don’t fit in and the tolerance I thought people had for me is gone, if it ever was there at all.

In all the jobs I’ve had, I’ve always been the outsider. People put up with my quirks because my work is good, but sooner or later someone simply gets too uncomfortable with me and I get pushed out. Sometimes it’s subtle: the workplace becomes increasingly weird and hostile until I’m gasping for air. Most of the time, I’m let go for other reasons: the only person downsized, not given any work, told to go work from home and mysteriously dropped from the website. Nothing has happened here yet – I still have a job – but I’ve been flat out told that due to all the changes in the last few months, I no longer fit in and I’d really be better off somewhere else.

Why does this keep happening?

Why does it always hit me out of nowhere?

Why aren’t I used to it by now?

Why do I keep trying to connect with people, only to have it blow up in my face?

What’s wrong with me?

I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to the wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason
And the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
I used the wrong method
With the wrong technique

Wrong
Wrong

There’s something wrong with me chemically
Something wrong with me inherently
The wrong mix
In the wrong genes
I reached the wrong ends
By the wrong means
It was the wrong plan
In the wrong hands
The wrong theory for the wrong man
The wrong eyes
On the wrong prize
The wrong questions with the wrong replies

Wrong

Hey.

As I feared, the defiant good cheer that held me up through the end of last week and over the weekend didn’t stick around, and by Monday I was a puddle of sad sitting in the corner with a black cloud of gloom hanging over my head. I’m sure it would have been really quite funny if I hadn’t been so depressed, but as it was, things just got darker and darker until this morning when I just couldn’t get out of bed. I called in a Mental Health Day, and spent most of the morning hiding in bed with the covers pulled over my head and cats sitting on my bladder. It helped, a little, but obviously isn’t any kind of permanent fix. It’s too bad, really – I am big fan of the quick fix, but it’s looking more and more like I’m going to have to actually WORK to make my brain better.

Still, a little help is better than none. The last couple days have sucked a lot, which was a jarring difference from the glory that was SUNDAY NIGHT CHILI Y’ALL what with the friends and food and laughing and what not. Work has been difficult: I’m feeling more than a little underappreciated, hopeless about my position, angry at the conversations held last week, saddened that the place I enjoyed so much is changing to remove all the good .. all that stuff, and none of it very warm and fuzzy. My body is freaking out on me due to stress, and my entire left side is revolting in both meanings of the word: my face is a disastrous mine field of zits, I broke a tooth and had to have an emergency filling yesterday which left my mouth in several shades of pain all night and today, I think I gave birth to a hippopotamus in my left ovary, and I need a haircut. Not only is my brain at war, it’s found an ally in the left side of my body .. so now I look as awful as I feel, and that just sucks.

There are some shiny spots, though. I’m currently whining to the world at large on my new laptop, Beth II. She arrived yesterday, and while I definitely didn’t tax my creativity when coming up with a name, I like it (my first MacBook was named Beth as well). The laptop itself is glorious – I’ve had it for 24 hours and have already used it more than I did my iPad in the last 6 months. I love it when a plan comes together and delivers me lovely new gadgets to play with!

My tooth feels better, too. I will hang on to that, because it’s better than being sad. And I’m not sad, really, just resigned. Heaving sighs, quiet resolve, all that. I’m sure it’ll pass. Suffering in silence is just so BORING.

I got the results of my criminal record check the other day, and it’s pretty eye-opening:

better step off

It’s nice to see that SOMEONE appreciates my deviant nature.