I hate shoveling snow.
Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!
- Thread starter strawman
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GasBandit
Staff member
I cannot walk through my living room past 9 pm anymore with one of the rats flinging himself at the side of the cage and staring at me with wide eyes until my resolve breaks and I give him and his brother a treat. Now I have to purposely not look at the cage as I pass because they've had enough tonight and I will not be suckered into giving them any more. They're already fat as it is.
Flying is expensive.
With the new job comes a big move, and with that comes having to go out to look for housing. No big deal, but it's a long freaking trip. Canada's really big and all that.
On the way out, I have to stop on the prairies for a few days for a class, then I'm carrying on east. To total trip looks like this:
Kelowna, BC --> Calgary, AB --> Saskatoon, SK (go to school) --> Toronto, ON (over night) --> Halifax, NS --> Corner Brook, NL (look for housing...) --> Toronto, ON --> Calgary, AB --> Kelowna, BC (home! yay!)
For flight costs alone: $1400 for ONE PERSON. I can go round trip to Hawaii for half that.
Let alone the cost of hotels in three locations, plus renting a car. Blarg.
Yes, I realize that I am whining about being employed in my field in a full time position and having the oporunity to move across the country on my organization's dime. But the preparations for that are hard and time consuming. *whinge whinge whine*
With the new job comes a big move, and with that comes having to go out to look for housing. No big deal, but it's a long freaking trip. Canada's really big and all that.
On the way out, I have to stop on the prairies for a few days for a class, then I'm carrying on east. To total trip looks like this:
Kelowna, BC --> Calgary, AB --> Saskatoon, SK (go to school) --> Toronto, ON (over night) --> Halifax, NS --> Corner Brook, NL (look for housing...) --> Toronto, ON --> Calgary, AB --> Kelowna, BC (home! yay!)
For flight costs alone: $1400 for ONE PERSON. I can go round trip to Hawaii for half that.
Let alone the cost of hotels in three locations, plus renting a car. Blarg.
Yes, I realize that I am whining about being employed in my field in a full time position and having the oporunity to move across the country on my organization's dime. But the preparations for that are hard and time consuming. *whinge whinge whine*
I still have a decent queen-sized air mattress if you want to visit here instead of doing all that moving and work stuff!
For those not aware of HOW big it really is, and how big a move, see this:
I tried to get a continental USA (not from Alaska) route from anywhere to anywhere, and couldn't get above 50-ish hours. So ya... Canada's really big. And that's not even as far away as we could be.
Moving company for stuff, but we actually kind of want to "see" this great country of ours. So we're making it "The Great Canadian Road Trip" that also happens to be for moving purposes! We'll at least have driven through every province except PEI by the time we're done.
And only going through the not-as-crazy part of Quebec (aka: Montreal) so that's good too.
And you'll have the warm glow of freedom to your right the entire way!Moving company for stuff, but we actually kind of want to "see" this great country of ours. So we're making it "The Great Canadian Road Trip" that also happens to be for moving purposes! We'll at least have driven through every province except PEI by the time we're done.
And only going through the not-as-crazy part of Quebec (aka: Montreal) so that's good too.
(unless I read the route wrong and you're actually heading west, in which case you'll have moose to your right.)
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Ok, first full weekend without having to do any moving. Still have to unpack - which is going to take weeks/months - but everything we immediately need has been unpacked. Love the new place, with a few minor exceptions. For instance, the upstairs (where all of the bedrooms are) isn't getting enough power to power more than our alarm clock. Even if you plug other electronics into the same outlet that the alarm clock is plugged into, they won't turn on. Also, the two car garage doesn't git both of our cars. The stairway from the entrance to the main floor hangs down into the garage and prevents you from parking a full-size sedan on that side of the garage. Since we both drive Ford Fusions, only one of us gets to park in the garage at a time. There's no light in the master bedroom. There are lights in the other two bedrooms, but not the master. Which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for that first little issue - we bought lamps, but we can't turn them on. And finally, it's hard to dial in the right temperature in the house. We're so used to having baseboard heaters that don't work that it's difficult to gauge how many of the many, many heaters we have need to be turned on at any given time, so we keep going from slightly too cool to slightly too warm. Still - far, far superior to our last apartment.
I am trying to wrap my brain around how this could possibly be true but it just snaps off of the idea like a broken rubber band. Seriously. I cannot find a foothold on it.
The worry is that they will copy her emptiness. I don't think she realizes that they don't see her behavior from an adult point of view.
--Patrick
Cajungal
Staff member
I'm afraid that the next time one of them approaches me with a barely skinned knee or a story about who cut in line, I'm going to get in their face and tell them I don't give even the tiniest shit. And your parents are ruining you by making every inconvenience in your life an ordeal. And if you read a book for every time you tattled, you'd have gone through our school's library 3 times over.
*deep breath*
*deep breath*
GasBandit
Staff member
My son's after-school day care workers must've hated me in elementary school. I just refused to make the little things into a big deal. One time, I come to pick him up, and he's got a little bump on the noggin, and I have an "incident report" to sign where he fell off some playground equipment. The girl having me sign it was all flustered and atwitter about how much of a big deal it was, and how they were checking him for concussion and stuff. My son was standing there beside her looking all worried.
So I ask him: "You bleedin to death?"
"No," he says.
"Well then get your stuff and let's go. I gotta cook dinner."
She looked at me like I was some kind of monster. Geeze, kids get bumps and stuff. They have five times the energy that I do and 1/10th the coordination. It freaking happens. It's not an international crisis that needs handling.
That's 100% my parenting style and always has been. It's why my kids aren't coddled invalids. Good on you man.
GasBandit
Staff member
Then you have the other side of the coin, like a local day care here that got shut down because they had 60 violations over the last couple years, including using playground equipment the DFPS had inspected and told them not to use until it got properly repaired - which resulted in a child losing consciousness when their shirt snagged on a nail on the slide and got strangled, and the final straw, dropping an infant on its head at 10 in the morning and not telling anybody - the parents picked the kid up at 4:00 and noticed he was limp and lethargic and vomiting, took him to the ER and found he had a fractured skull and a brain bleed.
Kickstarter: HF Videochat Elementary? Hey, if college courses can be replaced by YT-videos, so can elementary
Also...
Whine, rant, win and whine incoming. Very tangentially related to topic above.
My GF started a new job in January - she's now coordinator for an institution for children with mental disabilities and/or emotional/psychological/psychiatric problems. She's driving herself up the wall from stress about everything going wrong - the administration is horrible (last coordinator is home with a burn-out but hasn't done anything apparently since September or so? Also, see the Tech forum - they've now got an electronic log, up until weeks ago it was all on paper...), there're 2 full time people out due to stress/burn-out/trauma without replacement (in a team of 6), the environment is completely unfit for the job,....Anyway.
A large part of the stress from her being unable to let go of the small stuff or the stuff she can't handle quickly. She's managing 13 kids (age 5-21...another problem), they've only got 6 or so bedrooms, so of course there are going to be clashes and fights and issues. I try to tell her that some of the problems are just regular parenting stuff (oh no! The 12 year old snuck out of school!), and other issues are variations there-of, made worse by the issues the children have (15 year old girls who look normal but are mentally only 8 or so can lead to some "interesting new problems" - I'm sure I don't have to draw too many pictures...even further complicated when compulsive liars and people who relive traumatic experiences from years before get mixed in). Some issues will take months or years to fix, if they can be fixed at all, while others are beyond her control or simply not worth fussing over.
This gets reinforced by parents overreacting like mad ("The heating's been out for 2 weeks! Scandalous! I'm taking my girl home!" ..Err, there was electrical heating the whole time, and anyway, it's fixed now, why take her away now? Oh, and by the way, your daughter's facing charges for sexually abusing another girl. Ass.), and by those around her insisting that every event be reported to all the different agencies and centers. That means school counselors, therapists, sexual disorder control centers, sexual abuse prevention centers, intra-family abuse centers, child support services, social services, handicap support services, juvenile court (and sometimes other courts when there're messy divorces involved), police, and so on, and so forth - you wouldn't believe how many different agencies, bureaus, service centers and whatnot you can get involved in even the most minor of situations!) Anyway - rant side A: I want to be there for her and help her and calm her down, but anything I say she understand, intellectually, but that doesn't help in releasing the stress, physical and mental. Rant side B: her being so stressed out means I have to be there for her and to help her, whereas usually she's more there for me during my lesser moments. This is really taking its toll on me, too. I know it's incredibly selfish, but I want someone to hold me instead of having to hold her, dammit! (I want both. I like comforting her, and being here for her, and all that - just not a month on end and when I'm swamped with 60-hour-weeks at work and so forth).
Minor win: the alumni organisation of my university asked me to write a column - 1,000 words, any topic. Considering who reads the magazine it'll be published in (members of congress, ministers, etc - honestly, it may be Belgium but it's still nice), hey, that's pretty neat. Continued rant: as you may have noticed in some of the discussion threads, the past few days I've been quite on edge, from lack of sleep, lots of work, just generally being in a funk, and the stress from trying to not show my stress and trying to help her with hers. Anything I've written down is overly aggressive, it's harsh, and not written nearly as well as I can and should. Of course, the deadline's in just a few days, and I have no clue how I'm going to get my head screwed on right long enough to write a decent text in the interval. Gah!
TL;DR: my girlfriend's new job is stressing her out, that's stressing me out, I have a deadline and have real trouble getting anything on paper. Also, I'm a selfish ass.
Whine, rant, win and whine incoming. Very tangentially related to topic above.
My GF started a new job in January - she's now coordinator for an institution for children with mental disabilities and/or emotional/psychological/psychiatric problems. She's driving herself up the wall from stress about everything going wrong - the administration is horrible (last coordinator is home with a burn-out but hasn't done anything apparently since September or so? Also, see the Tech forum - they've now got an electronic log, up until weeks ago it was all on paper...), there're 2 full time people out due to stress/burn-out/trauma without replacement (in a team of 6), the environment is completely unfit for the job,....Anyway.
A large part of the stress from her being unable to let go of the small stuff or the stuff she can't handle quickly. She's managing 13 kids (age 5-21...another problem), they've only got 6 or so bedrooms, so of course there are going to be clashes and fights and issues. I try to tell her that some of the problems are just regular parenting stuff (oh no! The 12 year old snuck out of school!), and other issues are variations there-of, made worse by the issues the children have (15 year old girls who look normal but are mentally only 8 or so can lead to some "interesting new problems" - I'm sure I don't have to draw too many pictures...even further complicated when compulsive liars and people who relive traumatic experiences from years before get mixed in). Some issues will take months or years to fix, if they can be fixed at all, while others are beyond her control or simply not worth fussing over.
This gets reinforced by parents overreacting like mad ("The heating's been out for 2 weeks! Scandalous! I'm taking my girl home!" ..Err, there was electrical heating the whole time, and anyway, it's fixed now, why take her away now? Oh, and by the way, your daughter's facing charges for sexually abusing another girl. Ass.), and by those around her insisting that every event be reported to all the different agencies and centers. That means school counselors, therapists, sexual disorder control centers, sexual abuse prevention centers, intra-family abuse centers, child support services, social services, handicap support services, juvenile court (and sometimes other courts when there're messy divorces involved), police, and so on, and so forth - you wouldn't believe how many different agencies, bureaus, service centers and whatnot you can get involved in even the most minor of situations!) Anyway - rant side A: I want to be there for her and help her and calm her down, but anything I say she understand, intellectually, but that doesn't help in releasing the stress, physical and mental. Rant side B: her being so stressed out means I have to be there for her and to help her, whereas usually she's more there for me during my lesser moments. This is really taking its toll on me, too. I know it's incredibly selfish, but I want someone to hold me instead of having to hold her, dammit! (I want both. I like comforting her, and being here for her, and all that - just not a month on end and when I'm swamped with 60-hour-weeks at work and so forth).
Minor win: the alumni organisation of my university asked me to write a column - 1,000 words, any topic. Considering who reads the magazine it'll be published in (members of congress, ministers, etc - honestly, it may be Belgium but it's still nice
), hey, that's pretty neat. Continued rant: as you may have noticed in some of the discussion threads, the past few days I've been quite on edge, from lack of sleep, lots of work, just generally being in a funk, and the stress from trying to not show my stress and trying to help her with hers. Anything I've written down is overly aggressive, it's harsh, and not written nearly as well as I can and should. Of course, the deadline's in just a few days, and I have no clue how I'm going to get my head screwed on right long enough to write a decent text in the interval. Gah!TL;DR: my girlfriend's new job is stressing her out, that's stressing me out, I have a deadline and have real trouble getting anything on paper. Also, I'm a selfish ass.
I'm sure that something like that would have elicited a totally different reaction from me.
Oh, additional whine:
In one of my jobs, I do building management for a temp job company. Y'know, the offices call me, tell me their toilet's clogged, I send over a plumber.
One of our offices, not too far from where I live, has done some cleaning after internal moves, and have about 50 binders to throw away. They're slightly used, but there's nothing wrong with them - it's just not worth the cost of having them picked up, brought to a central location, and redistributed to other offices.
I asked if I could go and pick them up so my GF could use them at her work - they've had to resort to tying paper stacks together with string due to lack of funds for office equipment...And they're a non-profit organization.
Answer of the boss? Nope, can't do it. Might give a bad impression. Might look like we're discarding stuff on purpose to re-use them privately.
GAH WASTE OF WARGARGBL **********. They're old binders! You don't want them anymore! You can't *head explode*
In one of my jobs, I do building management for a temp job company. Y'know, the offices call me, tell me their toilet's clogged, I send over a plumber.
One of our offices, not too far from where I live, has done some cleaning after internal moves, and have about 50 binders to throw away. They're slightly used, but there's nothing wrong with them - it's just not worth the cost of having them picked up, brought to a central location, and redistributed to other offices.
I asked if I could go and pick them up so my GF could use them at her work - they've had to resort to tying paper stacks together with string due to lack of funds for office equipment...And they're a non-profit organization.
Answer of the boss? Nope, can't do it. Might give a bad impression. Might look like we're discarding stuff on purpose to re-use them privately.
GAH WASTE OF WARGARGBL **********. They're old binders! You don't want them anymore! You can't *head explode*
21" so far since last night. Another 10+ expected over the next two days.
Have I mentioned how much I hate shoveling snow?
This snow is gonna really fuck up my weekend if it doesn't stop soon.