let the sighing and eye-rolling begin

I’m starting to think I work with a bunch of 13 year olds. New Person J is sighing and rolling her eyes and complaining about Insane Boss, the supervisors, the system and every student she has contact with. Insane Boss is sighing and rolling her eyes about J’s attitude. K has had to take her daughter down the mountain for a doctor’s appointment since her daughter’s new vehicle has broken down for something like the 10th time this month, so she is currently not sighing and rolling her eyes, although before she left she was sighing and rolling her eyes at J, Insane Boss, the students, me, and everything else that crossed her path. Well, now J’s gone too, having left early, which is a good thing.

I never complain, though. Not at all! I’m certainly not sitting here sighing and rolling my eyes at ALL of them! Not me!

It’s the end of the semester, for sure.

New Boss is having meetings nearly every day, and she’s always very unclear about what she needs and where she wants things and what she wants and who needs to be there. Then she’s annoyed at us for not reading her mind. Right now she’s being very passive-aggressive – her meeting is over and she just came back to the office, said, "J isn’t gone, is she???" and of course when I said that J is indeed gone, she sighed and rolled her eyes. Then she said, "I have all this stuff I have to carry back down here!!" Naturally, I said, "Would you like me to help you?" and she said no. But she has to borrow my rolling cart and has to have help setting up my rolling cart and then when she comes back she says, "Oh, I still have to bring food back!!"

Well, you know, I already offered very nicely and very sincerely to help, and you said no. So, dude, I’m not offering again. I’ll sit here and do this instead. I was actually working on the Annual Report, but oddly enough I can’t concentrate since everyone who was in this meeting has been streaming in to bring J stuff, and when they see she’s not at her desk they say, "J isn’t here? Will she be back? She’s gone for the afternoon??!!?? What do I do with this??!!?? I can put it in her inbox? This inbox here? I should just put it here? In this box? This will be okay? She’ll see it if I put it here?"

You know, she may miss that eighteen inch stack of papers in her inbox. I can see how that would happen.

No, I don’t complain!

Even better, we’re having dinner at J’s house this evening. Girls-only. Which is fine, it will be fun… except Insane Boss is going to be there. J is doing this for the two students who work in our office, which is very nice of her. And I think she latches onto any chance to entertain. But…it would be a lot more fun without Insane Boss. Which, I know, sounds awful. There’s just so much tension where J and Insane Boss and K are concerned. And I get all Middle Child Trying To Please Everyone. But of course we couldn’t do something like that and NOT invite her. We were just kind of hoping she already had plans. Ack. Well, at least there will be wine. And it’s a worknight so we won’t have to spend hours and hours there.

I spent all morning emailing the sixty or so people who had never responded to my Memo From Hell. I was kind of shocked that 60 of them hadn’t responded, since it seemed like I’d gotten 250 panicky phone calls and emails last week – but I did send out around 100 memos so that means 40 responded. Next time I’m sending them all an email to begin with, though, because it was quick and easy and I had about five respond within 10 minutes of sending it. And none of them were panicky and they were polite and pleasant. Of course, in the email I apologized for the confusion generated by the first memo, and explained the situation a little more clearly. So that helped. Had I realized what I’d done a little earlier, I could have sent a clarification email long ago. Well, live and learn, I guess.

Yesterday I made a quick day trip down to visit the Parents. ("You’re just coming for the day??? You can’t spend the night????) It was that or wait two or three more weeks. So I cleaned their house and did their bills and made grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. After making a grocery run so we didn’t have to have grilled cheese on raisin bread. And emphasized to my father that he is going to have to start cleaning out the litter box, because it is not getting cleaned out and the cats are using the basket of towels that’s sitting in the floor.  Yeah, EWWWWW. I think it’s finally clicked that he may have to quit relying on my mother to clean it. She can’t remember to do it and her sense of smell is gone so she doesn’t smell it.

But it was nice seeing them, of course. Nice getting away too. We do have to both go down and spend the weekend, though. Actually the problem is that Baker B’s mom also needs help around the house and yard, AND his car – which YES, we DID just spend huge amounts of money getting fixed – is now having gear problems. As in it pops out of fourth gear if you don’t hold the stickshift as you drive. So he’s a little leery of taking it on any long drives. So it was either spend all weekend visiting parents, which neither of us wanted to do this weekend, or him go Saturday and me go Sunday.

I spent ages chatting with my brother, which was really nice. And worth a trip itself, as we had a lot to chat about. I will have to go into the Great Land Quandary later, though, as it’s just about time to get out of here and I don’t want to dally around.

What a disjointed entry. A gold star to everyone who made it to the end!