Pregnancy… Glow Schmow

This sort of thing is what makes
pregnancy tolerable. Teeny tiny socks
for teeny tiny feets.

My mother once told me that there is a biological mechanism that enables women to almost forget the time leading up to a birth because if women really and vividly remembered what they felt before their baby was born, they would have no more children.  I took what she said in stride, instead thinking it was just that she never really wanted us to begin with that motivated her to tell me that.  Instead, I listened to the women who I now wish to punch in the face; every one of them, personally… The women who said this sort of stuff to me:

“Oh, pregnancy was such a blessed time for me, it was such an amazing experience.”

“I never felt better in my life than I did when I was pregnant.”

“I didn’t even know I was pregnant until I started showing.”

Now seeing how long I’ve been trying to get pregnant, which has been more than eight years, you’d think I’d be more grateful and shut my yap… but if you know anything about me, you know that isn’t the case. I’m going to bitch incessantly about this until I’ve instilled at least one iota of humbling reality in women who are also seeking to ‘glow in the experience of pregnancy’.

For one or two women, pregnancy might indeed be a nine-month reprieve from the inconvenience of the menstrual cycle, with some mild binging on forbidden foods and a period of great hair and skin.  But for many women, pregnancy is an arduous, difficult thing, and there is NOTHING WRONG with resenting how the experience makes you feel. It is HARD. And it is something I wish men could experience, because if they did, they would respect women a LOT more… hell, we’d rule the world because they would be bowing to us in awe. 

My pregnancy has been one awful set of symptoms transitioning into another awful set of symptoms for the seven months I’ve been enjoying this state. The only thing that keeps me going and positive and laughing it all off is the knowledge that the squirmy little bugger inside me is the end result. Otherwise, I’d have probably killed at least four people by now. I’m serious. Starting with my mother, in spite of her foreshadowing wisdom I’d chalked up to her Borderline Personality Disorder.  I’ll talk more about her later—everyone probably wants a Satan update.

Anyhow, I’m sure if you’ve been reading this blog since the unexpected and downright miraculous discovery of my being pregnant after having been cut off my fertility meds in December.  When I took my pregnancy test, I just missed a couple of days’ work for being sick. At the time I thought it was something viral. I was vomiting, and I had the worst headaches. But when at work one morning after entertaining my coworkers with the sound of my violent retching, I realized there were other discomforts I hadn’t noticed. The daily morning mild migraines were constant. But I noticed my breasts were really super sore. Now my breasts, being large and annoying, are often sore even when not pregnant, it’s just the side-effect of having DDDs, I guess. But this was a special kind of sore. A ‘don’t brush my boobs on the edge of my desk’ sore. A ‘if you even look at them, hubby, I will hit you’ sore. 

Out of habit from my clomid days, I was still counting days on my calendar, tracking my cycles. Thank goodness I’d written down the last date of my cycle. It wasn’t SO late that it was alarming to me, at the time I think I was about nine days late, which wasn’t unusual when not on Clomid. I’ve always been irregular.  I resolved to watch for the next few days… usually what would happen in the past was I’d be late, I’d get my hopes up, I’d rush out and get a pregnancy test, and then the day after the negative result, my cycle would begin. I didn’t want to endure that again. I decided to wait until at least 12 days.

Meanwhile, my symptoms were increasingly telling.  I guess after years of being keenly aware of my body, looking for signs, I was really honed in on the severity of these symptoms.  I did wait three more days, got sick at work each of those days. I texted my hubby to warn him there was the possibility I would come home crestfallen and crying again, and he discouraged me from getting a pregnancy test because he didn’t want me to be disappointed.  Regardless, I was resolved. I went to Walgreens and then an errand to the bank. I couldn’t wait, so I actually took the test at the bank.

It took two of the 99% accurate tests to convince me it was POSSIBLE. It took another test at a resource center for me to text husband and to confirm that yes, I have positive pregnancy tests. It took seeing the little heartbeat of the bean for me to accept that this was indeed a real pregnancy and it was happening.  I would spend the next two months in a state of worry, knowing how high-risk this pregnancy was and how tenuous those first three months are.

The first three months were HELL.  My hormone levels were SKY HIGH. I was sick every morning. I missed so much work, I ended up having to take leave. My headaches each morning got worse and worse. And even as the nausea began to abate, the migraines got worse. Constipation, hemorrhoids, dry retching, acne, fatigue of the likes I’ve never experienced… fall asleep sitting up kind of fatigue, something I’ve never been able to do.  But this new symptom is probably the worst of all.  Now those of you who are squeamish might wish to stop reading (probably should have stopped when I talked about sore boobs).

We saw this a couple of weekends ago on our way to Pine State Biscuits.
It was that day I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction. That was fun.
I'm sad I missed this event. Maybe I can enter when Baby-J is crowning.

The newest symptom is frickin’ AGONY. It started sometime in August and has been getting progressively worse since. I now understand why pregnant women walk the way they do. I thought it was because of the ungainly belly.  I have learned otherwise.  You see, for some women, I’m not sure how many; the pressure of having a baby’s head pressing on the pelvis creates a sharp pain that feels external… almost like the pain of a fresh burn that occurs, well, to put it delicately, in the ‘saddle’ area. In less delicate terms, I grumble about my Vajayjay a lot.  It started off as a pain that sharply appeared the moment I tried to stand from a sitting or laying down position, and would abate after a minute or two, if I didn’t lift my legs. Lifting my legs… ::shudder:::  As the weeks have worn on, the pain is pretty much constant when I’m on my feet.

Now mind you, the women who are disposed to effuse smug and unsolicited advice say things like “Walk… it’ll make you feel better.” That is 100% bull crap. Walking exacerbates the pain. Although while walking, the pain may dull down, after I sit down and get up again, the soreness is amplified by TEN. If I do a lot of walking one day, the next day is like I’m being tortured by the Spanish inquisition.  I want to slap every woman that tells me to walk.  I want to slap any woman who mentions Kegel exercises to me. Seriously? This is pain created by pressure and spreading of the PELVIS bone, it has nothing to do with your Vajayjay muscles. And honestly, the fact that the baby is sitting smack on your bladder, the kegel is getting PLENTY of straining exercise since I’m CONSTANTLY holding back the three drops of urine that feels like a deluge pressing against a dam. Shut up, you damned women! SHUT THE HELL UP! ::gargh:: 

Baby J is an active, seemingly healthy baby so far. He’s happily doing his impression of Michael Flatly and Bruce Lee inside me, and every squirm is a consolation. He’s okay. He made it through the first three months; his heartbeat is regular and steady. That is what keeps me from becoming a homicidal maniac, killing advice-giving moms.  This is what I’m going to hold onto, and I am hoping, just like that cheesy moment in ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’ when the long-suffering character, after nearly dying during a C-section, sighs out in relief when holding her baby and says that the past nine months were beautiful… I’m hoping that will happen.  The idea of two more months of this blinding pain in my crotch is almost unbearable.  I keep thinking Baby-J, Baby-J, Baby-J… The fatigue, I can handle, the occasional retch fest, I can handle, the softened migraine, I can live with… but this whole pain down there is absolutely dreadful. Sixty more days!

It’s a dangerous time, but not for me. It’s dangerous for women who come to me with happy faces, boasting about easy pregnancies, or giving annoying trite advice I already read on the web… It’s dangerous for them. I’m a ticking time-bomb. I may have to break my foot off in someone’s ass if they keep babbling their crap at me. ::grump::

So please, women who are actively trying to get pregnant… it may not be the blissful, golden-lit time of flowy hair and glowing skin. It may be nine months of abject humiliation, pain, discomfort, fatigue and increasing annoyance as other women feel it necessary to patronize you to death with their unwanted advice. It might be more than two months of walking like John Wayne in chaps because your crotch-area feels like someone just jammed a red-hot cattle brand onto it. It is months of going pee about nine times a night, having to get up and fight the crotch pain to shuffle to the bathroom in agony.  It is trying to be pleasant to people when you really just want to kick their face in for not having to endure this pain.

Oh, incidentally… I wanted to find somewhere where we could take pre-natal classes; newborn care and breastfeeding and such.  I found a number in Gresham and called it, it turned out it was a couple of Doulas who gave these classes. So I dialed up the number in the car with hubby listening. We were completely floored by the conversation, and laughed about it all the way home.

“Hi, I’m interested in finding some classes on newborn care and breastfeeding. Possibly pre-natal classes if need be…”

“Oh, then you’ve phoned the right person! We work with all kinds of women, preparing them for childbirth and teaching them to care for the child afterwards.”

“Cool. “

“It’s a nine week course. We work mainly with women who are hoping to have natural childbirth, but we have all sorts in the class, we don’t judge.”

“I am unapologetic about the fact that I will have an epidural if I can,” I laughingly reply. The woman hesitates and then says:

“Well, we don’t judge, but we do like to work with women who want to at least TRY to have natural childbirth…” ::eyeroll:: Way to go on not judging there, Sparky.  Good god. $35 an hour to pay for a sanctimonious granola to tell me what to do while sneering down on my epidural-using ass? No thanks.

Gallery girl, stay-at-home mom & more.

Simon was idling in bed this morning.

Today was my first day of being a Housewife/soon-to-be-stay-at-home-Mommy.  I’ve been at home for a while now dealing with the symptoms of a tough pregnancy. Up until now, I’ve been doing a project from home for my job, which I finished up on Friday. We weren’t sure when I’d be back. Even though my symptoms are abating a bit, I’m only two months away from giving birth—and after that, we would be faced with the challenges of figuring out daily for our baby.  We weighed the expense of daycare, the reduced expense of only one person commuting in the hybrid; and decided that it would be a wash.  The only additional expense is the purchase of our own health insurance. My husband is making a little more money, so we are going to wing it for a while. Until Baby J (that’s his nickname now… he’s grown far beyond the bean that he was six months ago) is older, and I can start exploring options.

Flower thinks the giant U-shaped pregnancy pillow was
purchased for her use alone.

In the meantime, I will probably focus on web-based income like my online shop and artwork while I’m home, because if I don’t find some sort of occupation, I’ll go insane. I’ll probably focus on nesting and preparing for the arrival of the wiggle-worm until he’s born.  These past weeks, I've been painting and de-cluttering. His room isn’t even begun yet. There’s so much to do and time is just ticking by.

My baby belly is growing. These past few weeks it seems to be growing double-time. Baby J’s little kicks are increasing with strength every day. Sometimes it actually hurts! But for me, after all this time of trying and failing, of worrying that something can go wrong with this completely impossible pregnancy; every squirm, every kick, ever punch is a consolation to me and has been since I’ve been able to feel him moving around from about 16 weeks. Yes it’s been a tough ride, but as a friend of mine once said, the sicker you are, the better the chances are of the baby sticking around. And stuck around, he has. From the tests so far, he is within parameters weight and size-wise, his heart is healthily beating along, no cleft palate, no heart problems—and he is very low risk for any disorders common for babies born to women of ‘advanced age’. He’s got ten fingers and ten toes. So we are hopeful for a happy, healthy little squawk-box sometime close to Thanksgiving.

The view out of the back of the Timberline Lodge, Sunday morning. We
had just enjoyed breakfast at the lodge.

I also want to give a shout out to my new OB/GYN Dr. Jill Shaw.  I cannot recommend her enough. For those of you in the Portland area, who want a real human being, who doesn't talk down to her patients, who laughs and is funny, a bit nutty in a good way, is patient, kind and nurturing, I really would like to tell you to look for Dr. Jill. She is hands-down the best OB I've ever had.

Piles of accumulated work... No more.

I miss my horse very much. He is still at my sister’s house. I wish I could go riding! My friends talk about spending time with their horses and I’m so jealous. I could use some ‘grooming therapy’.  My sister has gone up to Seattle to study to become a Yoga instructor. She’ll be there for the whole month, leaving my portly horse in the care of her husband. 

My sister has been working a lot on her art as well. She’s really growing a great deal spiritually and artistically these past months, and I’m really proud of her.  I love her artwork so much! My sister has always had an exceptional artistic eye. She is what started me drawing, and next to her I’m still such an amateur.  She could do pencil drawings that could replicate anything to detail. She has always been marvelously talented. However, I have to agree with my sister when she says that her pencil drawings, homages to detail and accuracy, seemed to lack ‘soul’.  Then my sister went to an oil painting instructor, and an oil painting workshop last year, and was introduced to producing art in broad strokes. She does most of her painting with a palette knife and wide brushes—yet even removing all that detail she is so accustomed to creating, she is producing pieces with tremendous depth and soul. It’s astonishing.

Here is her art blog; and there are links to her Daily Paintworks Gallery on her page. Check it out! I love her stuff. My other sister has also been dabbling in oils and she will also have her blog and gallery up as well. I’ve been helping them by building their blogs for them.

'A Monstrous Tea' - one of the images now at the gallery.

My creative muse has been coming back. It’s so weird. I hope I’ll be drawing again soon.  There is a book store and art gallery (Wy’east Book Shoppe and Art Gallery)  up here where I live. I showed the owner some of my drawings. She asked that I frame a few ands he’d take some to sell in her gallery. So I went to IKEA and got some inexpensive frames, and framed pretty much one of each of my prints, and brought them to her. She took them all. I was very excited. She said the pieces were different than anything else she carried, and she also wants some bookplates as well. This makes me so happy. :-)

"Oh girls!" One of my future prints and an old 'Office Special' 

Anyhow, this is my update for today. Hopefully I’ll have some ‘non-office-specials’ to offer soon. Maybe they won’t be so hastily made now that I’m no longer in my office.

"Pests" - Another old Office Special and one of my
personal favourites

"Town & Country"
Old Office Special

Another old Office Special I quite like. :)

Terraforming.

My Pemberley shoes from The American Duchess, painted and embellished.

I've slipped into nesting mode as I move into my third trimester. I've been painting and organizing, and fixing things that have been perfectly fine as is up until now. Now, the whole house bugs me, and everything needs to be changed.  We purged YEARS' worth of clutter and had a huge yard sale the weekend before last, made some money and got rid of 8 years of accumulated thingamabobs.  I always feel like I'm being judged by people when they paw through our stuff, but I got a lot of compliments on my good-taste, which was gratifying.  We got rid of some furniture, tons of useless china, linens and cleaned out the entire attic of its contents, all of which were put there when we moved in 2004 and haven't budged since. I figured if we lived without them for as long as we have, we don't need them.

I'm home, on leave from work, and I sit here and think about everything that needs to be fixed before baby comes.  And it's getting close already!  I'm terrified. We still have to attack the baby's room, but that is going to require some major changes, including some new wallboard, new flooring and a heating source. We have less than three months. :::GAAAHHH:::

Baby has been doing well. He's a kickedy little bugger--squirming around inside me like no tomorrow. At this point he weighs a little over two pounds, and in the pictures on babycenter, he looks a lot bigger than he feels inside me. I'm definitely showing now.  I've gone out and furnished myself with a few pairs of maternity jeans and some other clothes. I won't lie, the jeans are a joke, they have this wide elastic band that never stays up, so I spend my whole day walking around holding my pants up.  I find that my yoga pants seem to work better, I may look like I just got out of bed when I'm out in public, but at least I'm not holding the back of my pants up while trying to push a shopping carriage. It's so embarrassing.

I have now experienced the whole edema in the foot thing, and have had my feet looking like cabbage-patch kids feet. I've also gotten to enjoy the new array of soreness and cramping in places I didn't know had muscles to cramp.  Heat rash comes up quite easily and I sleep sometimes for twelve hours straight.  My migraines are tapering, but I still have 'slam' days when I just feel absolutely awful. Some other days, I am okay for most of the day.

So as the review below reveals, we are consolidating our spaces and finding ways to organize our stuff so we can dismantle the second room and empty it for Baby J.  Slowly, my perfect craft and sewing room is vanishing. It's sad, but also exciting.

We have picked a name. Alexander Stephen. Alexander is a name we both love and happens to be Dan's grandfather's name, and Stephen is in honour of my papa. My father's name was Istvan, the Hungarian version of Stephen.

I attended the ORS retreat again this year, and it was really fun.  I wasn't exactly in the most mobile of modes, and didn't do the things I'd hope to do, like try archery or take walks or swim. But I got to hang out with my favourite crowd, and just being around these women was so fortifying.  Here's a video of some photos taken during the event:

Anyway, just a quick update for now. I'll post something more comprehensive sooner or later. Sorry for the slowness... I'm just so damned... pregnant. :)

My Review of Multimedia Library File

Originally submitted at Plow & Hearth

Our retro-style media cabinets will help you get a handle on your collection of music and movies. File away approximately 228 CDs, or 96 DVDs or 48 videocassettes in the 12-Drawer, or 456 CDs, or 192 DVDs or 96 videocassettes in the 24-Drawer, in any combination.

Handcrafted of solid ...

Multimedia Library File

For DVD storage, it may need some mods

By The Hungarican Chick from Welches, Oregon on 8/30/2012

 

4out of 5

Pros: Beautiful Storage Solutio

Cons: Not Exactly As Decribed

Best Uses: Organization

Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper

Primary use: Personal

Was this a gift?: No

If you want to use this storage unit as a device to hold DVDs you will be required to do a little extra work. It works fine for CD jewel cases and the smaller, shorter Blu-Ray cases, but regular DVD cases are too tall, and after you've wrangled three or four in there, you won't be able to fit any more because the drawers don't open all the way.

For a DVD cabinet, you will have to turn it upside down and look at the bottom back of the drawers. Each drawer has a little dowel keeping it from being pulled out. Yank out the dowel on the bottom row of drawers, pull those out and keep moving upwards until you've pulled all the dowels out. Now your drawers pull all the way out and you can fit each drawer with a stack of DVD cases no problemo. It is only a quick modification and totally worth it, because it's really a gorgeous piece of furniture and it just takes away that cluttered look a shelf full of DVDs can look like.

We also added some small legs to it so it isn't full on the floor and it rises above the baseboard and shoves right up against the wall. We love this piece of furniture, and it's perfect for a small home where space needs to be economized.

(legalese)

Good reading for a new parent

Yes, I've been inordinately grumpy lately, I won't lie. It's a side effect of a difficult pregnancy, being mired in my house 24/7, completely deprived of good company and friends, and being exposed for unhealthy spans to the full brunt of the internet, politics, and craziness in this world.  My structure and routine is thrown to the wind, and it's quarter past one in the morning and I'm bright eyed and bushy-tailed for the first time all-day.

I haven't been able to scan the ultrasounds as promised because I forgot to set up the printer on my new computer and it's Windows 7, which means I have to jump through some crazy hoops just to get the updated driver to work with the printer/scanner and my new OS (I saw my husband go through hell with this, so I'm not really inclined to face that battle at this point. I have very little energy and am short of patience for this sort of thing.

By Pamela Druckerman

I've been listening to the audio book version of "Bringing Up Bébé", a book recommended by my sister, who oddly, is childless.  She read it and has been touting it with fervour since she found out I was with child. She gifted it to me, she thought it was so important.  I can't say I think she was wrong.  It's interesting, however, to read this book from the perspective of a European raised kid, to hear an American describe it. And it is in many ways, a revelation.

I've spent many hours puzzling with myself about child rearing methods I've seen in my time in this country. So many aspects of it confounded me. The indulgence, the 'it's all about the kids' thing, the leaping up and fussing to their every whimper, their lack of real consequences and discipline and the hovering, helicopter parent.  All of this is completely outside of my realm of understanding and has been for twenty years. And now, I finally know why--and Pamela Druckerman has shown me the light.  It's because I've come from the world of the 'cadre', and the parenting I see in this country is completely foreign to me.

Bringing up Bébé illustrates very strongly how children of France (and Belgium from my experience) are raised differently -- and more rationally than American and English children. It's much less child-centric overseas. They raise their kids, love their kids, watch out for them, but their entire universe does not revolve around the children. The lives of parents do not come to a halt or take a back seat because a child is born.  This book talks about the 'cadre' system which introduces life lessons, discipline and caring without being overbearing or too lax. It talks about understanding a baby's sleep cycle, to learn to not jump up every time it cries, to take pause, and in part, help the child's development by leaps and bounds by assimilating the baby to your family's routine rather than mold the family's routine to the baby. The babies sleep the night as early as two months old ... and are much more balanced, calm and peaceful because they are enjoying their full sleep cycles by rote.

It's a brilliant book, and I recommend (I'm only halfway through it BTW, my hubby stole it to listen to on his commute, which is awesome) this book to all new parents or soon to be new parents. It's eye-opening. If you want a non-screaming, non-bratty, respectful 'sage', well-behaved child that sits in restaurants quietly, eats what he's given and listens to you, this book could really help you work towards that; by basically raising your kid like the French do.  Just a quick recommendation.

Mean Girl

I guess with this pregnancy…I won’t lie, this pregnancy has been extremely difficult… my tolerance for stupidity and the ridiculous has been reduced to nothing.  My creativity, also, has taken a dive, and I haven’t done much of anything artistically, costumey, or bloggey.  I’ve been missing a lot of time at work, and have been working towards going on leave because I am pretty much non-functional the better part of the day. I start to find some semblance of normalcy around 2 or 3 PM in all truth, and it seems to be getting worse. For a while, I had just migraines, but now I have migraines and I’m back to retching again. Add onto that, at 22 weeks, the heartburn has escalated to the point where I feel like I’ve imbibed some battery acid for the fun of it because I have this innate desire to spend the whole night in agony.

The good side? Baby is a boy. We found out at 19 weeks. He’s an active little nugget, and has taken to doing his best Michael Flatly impression inside my womb. What I love about this is that before I could feel him, I lived in a constant state of anxiety. After so many years of not getting pregnant, so many disappointing pregnancy tests, I guess I always expect the other shoe to drop, and would chew my nails for every ultrasound, crossing my fingers that the heartbeat would be there, and the baby would be okay.  He was. Now, I can feel him ‘being okay’. When he’s Riverdancing on my spleen, I am well assured that so far, he’s doing fine.  In fact, at this moment, he’s round-housing my ovary.

So there it is. I’m still pregnant and am more than halfway through the process of growing the baby (hubby sometimes turns to me when I’m being obstinate or bratty and says: “Just grow the baby!”.  He is very excited.

Another good thing is I continue to lose weight, in spite of the growing nugget inside me. Hopefully I won’t gain a shite-load of weight with this pregnancy. I eat badly, but only in small amounts, so that’s probably the reason why I’m still dropping pounds in spite of eating crap that hasn’t crossed my threshold for decades… like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and canned Campbell’s soup.

Other than that, my existence is mostly confined to my home. I did get out a few weeks ago to my sister’s house to go visit my horse. He looks good, and seems settled. Sister is taking very good care of him.  That’s it.

I have however, as I stated, been really short-tempered with people I usually have a lot of tolerance for.  Oh well.  I’ve been especially annoyed by people who are whiners, over sensitive, self-absorbed and know-it-alls.  I’ve gotten so much unsolicited advice from people who probably should not be giving advice. I’ve had people criticize my dietary choices, but who are completely unable to lose weight themselves yet are endowed with unending knowledge about what’s best for me; I’ve had people tell me how to raise this child, and their child is a notorious heathen.

I’ve been ignored mostly by my family with this pregnancy, only my sisters have really expressed any interest. Satan is marginally interested, mostly because 1) having a grandchild will gain her attention at the senior home, and 2) it’s a boy, which is what she wanted all along, and was quite sure to inform us girls of.  She in fact went into a litany about this when I brought her over to eat mussels a few weeks ago—she complained in none-so-many-words that I was somehow undeserving of the honour of having a male child. Yes, I wanted a girl, but this little boy is as loved and wanted as can be, and I sure as hell will never make him feel bad for being something other than a girl.  Anyway, another thing she did was to spout off to her blabbermouth friend that I had better not expect her to watch the baby all day. As if! My mother is about as nurturing as a cuckoo bird, I would rather gnaw my own arm off than leave this child in her presence for more than twenty minutes—and never alone. She was acting like this one day, and then she snapped at my sister-in-law because Jessica was excited about the new baby and apparently in my mother’s world, Jessica has no business even breathing in this baby’s general direction. God I really dislike my mother sometimes. She was so rude to Jess who was so genuinely happy.

My eldest brother and his family didn’t even say congratulations, but I suppose it’s to be expected since the only time he’s called me in the past seven years is because he accidentally pocket dialed me. The time before that, was to call to tell me that he wasn’t coming to my wedding after all, and to promise me a wedding gift that he never sent. ::shrug:: Oh well.  I got into a fight with them recently, and his wife defriended me on facebook (boohoo) and he’s been posting passive-aggressive comments on my posts. He dislikes that I’m left-leaning and really dislikes that I’m an atheist. He’s always been really condescending to me about my choices (in the four times I’ve ever had an adult conversation with him) and has always sought to ‘school’ me about my choices. He has never really been a brother to me at all, I’ve met him about as many times as I have fingers on my hands… I’m not kidding, he’s my half-brother and he is much older than I am. He’s also been pretty much absent from the family for pretty much the duration of my lifetime, and completely uninvolved with anything. He held a lot of resentment towards my father apparently for a bad childhood. I can understand him disowning my mother though. I wish I could. Yet oddly, I’m the one pretty much stuck with her.

I guess I’m just done with people who don’t really know me very well making judgment calls about me, and that includes my brother and his wife.  It also includes people who have been an annoyance to me for a long time, and who I now just don’t care if I humour them or not anymore. I was told yesterday by someone that they didn’t want to speak to me ever again; but seeing that I had to hide her Facebook feed because her posts were so irritating and sometimes gross, it really doesn’t make a difference. I apparently offended her. And if you’ve been following this blog even a short time, you know how little respect I have for easily offended people. Personally, I see people who are quickly offended as bullies. They are trying to control how other people express themselves so that they don’t have bruised feelings, and it is so wholly self-absorbed to expect everyone to walk on eggshells around them. Good god. Then they cry victim when someone lets them have it.

And the thing that started it all? This is really funny… Apparently a really sweet friend of mine posted a picture that had some joke about vegans or meat eaters or whatever. I wasn’t aware of the controversy that ensued about this image, but my friend was pretty much made to feel so shitty for posting a joke, that she felt compelled to take it down. She was pretty much bullied to take it down in a really passive-aggressive way. Of course, I didn’t know this … all I know is that my friend posted that she’d removed the post and felt terrible for offending someone. I told her she should not feel bad, and that she should not feel compelled to remove anything from her wall for the sake of some sensitive whiney brat. It wasn’t anything she could do to keep someone from taking offense at something that is ultimately and WHOLLY ridiculous. It was then that the woman who apparently raised the stink jumped all over me, calling me mean, and accusing me of glorifying my meanness. It was hilarious—but it also pissed me off because all this drama about restricted diet was at my nice friend’s expense, and that selfish woman who started it turned it into a circus for no better reason than to call more attention to herself and how special she is I guess.  I have no patience for shitty people who hide under the guise of victims while expecting the world to bend backwards to accommodate their overly sensitive nature.  I have a hard time feeling any empathy or sympathy towards people who* demand* and *expect* it from me rather than earn or deserve it. I don’t care how bad your situation is, if you live to be treated specially for your personal issues, you’re a selfish dolt.  I was sexually abused as a child... I don’t get all pissy when someone posts a pedobear joke on their wall and browbeat the poster until they take it down.  My brother is developmentally disabled, I don’t humiliate people for using the word retard… why? Because I’m pretty sure that post is NOT ABOUT ME. Obviously this woman has a hard time making that distinction because apparently *everything* is about her. Don’t post anything criticizing people with dietary restrictions or you’ll get relentless, lengthy missives in your comments until you can’t stand it anymore and you feel compelled to retract your post to make it stop.

She made an complete spectacle of herself and then blocked me. ::eyeroll:: My feelings are so hurt. I’m so offended. ::shakes head and chuckles:: That sort of defensive response to something is really telling though.  Extremely telling. It ultimately reveals that person for what they are. Insecure and self-absorbed.


Am I mean for saying this? Not in the least. I’m not mean at all. I’m truthful, harshly so sometimes. In general, I’m extremely nice and pretty freakin’ tolerant of a lot of drama and stupidity on the most part. I am also one of the most understanding people you’ll ever meet. But if you cross the line, are obnoxious to people who don’t deserve it, if you lead people astray because you think you know better, take a nebulous, generalized issue and focus it down onto one person, or who take your drama to my threshold, or the threshold of someone I care about who is too nice to defend themselves, I’m going to be honest with you and I’m going to call it as it is. It’s as simple as that. And if you cry offended over stupid shit, or take something personally because you feel guilty because there’s truth the generalization, that’s your god damned problem and I’m not going to humour you for it. It’s as simple as that.   Life is too short for that shit.  And I’m not going to expend any precious energy at this time humouring someone to spare their over-sensitive feelings. I am an expert at being polite and considerate and I am extremely diplomatic, but I am not stupid or easily manipulated… and I sure as hell won’t be browbeaten by some self-important whack-job.

::sigh:: I feel better now. It’s probably best I’m confined to my house right now on the most part because I just have no patience for this sort of crap these days. Petty, whiney, hypochondriac, classless, oversharing narcissists… no thanks. I’ll stick to people who are not so self-absorbed that they don’t think everything that’s controversial is about them, and who can take a prickly subject in stride like an adult, and laugh it off with a sense of humour and objectivity.  I’ll take the worthy souls who are worth my time, energy and caring—who don’t expect it, who don’t demand it, but who earn it with depth of character. In other words, my friends.

I’m going to go and find some chocolate now. Nom! I’ll post some ultrasound pics tomorrow.

Newsflash: 'Asshole' is not a management style.

*warning, my language is less-than-lovely in this post.

“Well, that’s just his/her /my management style”. This is something both my husband and I have heard a number of times throughout our working careers. This is a statement often offered in order to excuse what amounts to nothing more than unchecked douchebaggery. I’ve only really had *one* d-bag boss, and he wasn’t 100% d-bag, he just had d-bag moments—mostly when his wife emasculated him in front of her staff (they ran two businesses together in one location). He owned a private small business, and the guy went as far as to call me an idiot without really understanding what I was asking him, which I thought was pretty damned unprofessional. Luckily I was his only employee, and I was also free to snark back at him. My husband has had several of these cock-monkeys as bosses. My husband is also not a boastful ass-kisser, which makes him more disposed to being barked at by The Big B with an obviously little p.

I get really angry at the notion that being an unadulterated assmunch can be excused away with calling that a ‘management style’—because it’s not. It’s unadulterated assmunchery but nobody wants to call it that. For some reason, it’s accepted practice in various work environments, to protect and defend what is really nothing more than bullying. Too many times there are people promoted into management positions they are simply not suited for. They don’t have the personality to motivate and inspire their underlings, they don’t really understand the dynamics real management, of employee morale, and think that the only way to get people to do more than they should is to treat them like shit, belittle them, micromanage them, answer their questions with vagaries and expecting them to do it without any real guidance, except in the form of verbal and emotional abuse. What’s sad is that if there were a real manager, one that knows how to guide and motivate staff, the production would probably be much better, but since a douchebag is usually placed in that position, the rest of the company has no idea what they’re missing.

Why is this permissible behaviour in the workplace? Who the hell wants to get up every day, try their hardest; work to their best potential when all they have to look forward to is being harassed by a big asshole every day? How can anyone believe that being a gigantic jerkwad is going to be positive for production and efficiency? I know for me, that only has the opposite effect. I do my best work when I care about what I do. I know for a fact that when I am pushed around, verbally abused, mocked and humiliated by a ‘superior’, I sure as hell won’t put a lot of care into what I do for that buttcheese, that I can guarantee. People working under assmonkeys usually do barely is what is required of them. If they could feel positive about the person that has expectations of them, someone who knows their capacity, who understands their skillsets, and is willing to identify the ones that would thrive being challenged, they would do far above and beyond the scope of their duties. It’s common human psychology... Yet somehow, some big mouthed scro-sack from middle management succeeds in convincing the company they know what they’re doing, and they get put in the job instead, stalling out any real efficiency and production in the folks beneath them. Being continually frustrated by the demands of upper management, instead of looking into their own management choices for reasons of failure, they simply shift the blame of inefficiency and incompetence on the employees beneath them.

The Obvious Signs of an Asshole Manager:

When an employee goes to a Jerkwad Manager for guidance, they are often met with sarcasm, told ‘why don’t you know this already?’ or they receive some sort of Confucian reply like: ‘the answer is in the numbers...’. This is what I’ve come to decide is an unsubtle diversion. It’s the douchebag manager’s way of hiding the fact that the manager really doesn’t know how to answer the employee’s question. So they instead direct it back onto the employee in a humiliating way insuring they will think twice about coming to them again for answers. In the unlikely event that they do have an answer, they make sure they are as condescending and belittling as possible in the delivery of that answer to the employee, to insure that the employee is made to feel like an ignoramus.

Another Scro-Sack Manager tactic is the public humiliation tactic. Scuzmonkey Managers like to call meetings, select a person that particularly annoys them, and then subject that person to a public flogging for not being able to perform the impossible, for not being aware of something that has nothing to do with them at all, for not being able to foresee with their psychic abilities something that would be otherwise impossible for them to know, or not being experts about something that isn’t in their job description. This employee will be barraged in the meeting with a succession of questions and accusations they are not able to answer or not given a chance to answer, being talked over and shouted at repeatedly, until the end of the meeting, when the employee has been pushed to contemplating bringing a semi-automatic to the next meeting, and the manager feels this person has been sufficiently humiliated.

Skid-Mark Managers are also notorious for joking about certain employees in their small circle of butt-kissers, giving them derogatory nicknames, mocking them when they are present and also when not present, and finding a flaw and riding that flaw until the employee is pushed to the point of wanting to quit or commit homicide.

There are very few defenses in place for employees that are being victimized by these bullies. EthicsPoint may be something many companies provide for employees to use when they believe something isn’t being handled properly, but I’ve seen many times where these horrible managers receive repeated and various complaints by various employees through EthicsPoint, they are marginally reprimanded on occasion by utterly clueless superiors, and they just return to their old habits a few days afterwards, making sure that they come down even harder on the employees they suspect might have reported them.

Is your boss or supervisor one of these douchebags? Here are some key behaviours that might identify them as such:



Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

If you got 50% or greater on this quiz, your boss's management style is 'giant asshole' and should be pummeled with EthicsPoint submissions or continual and numerous complaints to upper management. No employee should have to put up with that kind of BS, it doesn't matter where you work.

My husband will be starting a new job in a few weeks. He is coming out of an environment that is dominated by one of these kinds of managers. His prior job also had a manager like that, and worse, that manager was my COUSIN. My cousin was eventually fired for taking kick-backs from vendors and stealing company assets—so in this case, this ‘manager’ got what was coming to him. He received flurries of complaints from many employees, but it took him stealing from the company and using company resources for personal gain for them to finally jettison him. My husband never really felt comfortable confronting him or getting him in trouble because he was related to me. But justice did occur in this case. Unfortunately, my cousin decided that my husband was to blame for his expulsion instead of his fault, and we no longer speak. But since my cousin is a colossal idiot, it’s no loss to me.

Let’s hope the dick my husband is now escaping will also someday learn a hard lesson that his ‘management style’ is not appropriate. :D My hubby’s new job doesn’t have any direct supervisor riding his ass. So there’s light on the horizon.