#also yesterday i had to spend the day dealing with some incredibly idiotic coworkers

[statusquoergo]

“Come on.”

“Uh?”

Diane looks up as Naomi stands and holds out her hand as if this isn't a ridiculously careless thing she's asking her to do, as if neither of them has the good sense to mention that neither one of them has any idea what they're getting themselves into. As if neither of them might be walking straight into a trap of their own making, or nothing much will change at all and they'll forget about each other in a month, or a few days. As if it's a risk worth taking to find out which.

As if there's anything else to do today.

“I'm not going to the hospital.”

“I know.” Naomi reaches a little closer. “I have a first aid kit at home.”

Enough to get them through, that's all. Enough for now.

“You know how to wrap it?” Diane asks as she takes Naomi's hand to pull herself up, as though the answer might change her mind somehow. Naomi smiles a little, as though she knows it just as well that it won't.

“Yeah.” She sets Diane's hand down on her shoulder. “It's not far, come on. I'll carry you down the stairs.”

“You'll drop me.”

“I will not.” Naomi urges her forward, along the concrete path out of the park. “I mean I'm just offering, I don't have to.”

It's a nice gesture, though, isn't it? It was a nice thought.

They walk slowly down the street, stepping more or less in sync past the general store with the baking supplies just past the doorway, turning at the corner to walk toward the coin laundry that's open even at three in the morning and also on holidays. A hand-drawn poster in the window of the discount shoe store across the street loudly advertises VACUUMS REFURBISHED while a Times New Roman printout on the telephone cubicle in the middle of the block offers “suitable compensation” in exchange for willing test subjects, No Questions Please; a few steps farther along stands an apartment building that somehow looks like it's missing a couple of stories, and Diane shifts her weight to her good leg as Naomi steps away to fumble with the lock on the front door.

“It's the door on the left,” Naomi says, the door sticking only slightly as she shoves it open. “When you get to the basement.”

She opens the first door on the right, a stairwell that only leads down.

“Upstairs is that door over there, but I don't know any of the neighbors, so. I'm not gonna introduce you to anyone.”

That's fine. Diane doesn't want to know any of them, either.

Naomi walks down the stairs first and doesn't try to carry her.

“Bathroom's at the end of the hall,” she says. “The taps aren't broken, the water's just cold when it's cold outside and warm when it isn't, but if you let it run for a little while, it'll...fix itself. And make sure you don't touch the water heater, it's metal and it gets really hot sometimes.”

Diane clutches the wooden banister nailed to the wall as she limps her way down and wonders how much of all this she's supposed to remember. All of it, probably. It isn't very complicated.

Naomi unlocks the door on the left and holds it open.

“You can sit on the bed.”

It's good of her to offer. It isn't much of a bed, really, more of a mattress pushed into the corner, but that isn't exactly a surprise, and it's good of her to offer all the same.

“Thanks,” Diane says, a little too late to seem quite natural. Naomi hums a disinterested acknowledgment and doesn't seem to mind.

“Take off your shoes.”

Diane promptly unties her sneakers, placing them on the floor beside the bed as Naomi kneels in front of her with a roll of ACE bandage in her hand and her eyes focused on Diane's ankle like she's the only attending physician in the entire complex who doesn't have better things to do with her time than tend to something as trivial as all this. Diane should count herself lucky the timing worked out the way that it did.

Lucky, was it? It's about time.

The single bulb in the overhead light flickers a little as if a public execution has just disrupted the power grid, or someone's turned on too many air conditioners at once and blown a fuse a few floors up.

“Don't worry about it,” Naomi says. Diane doesn't bother to assure her that she wasn't.

#anna tries to be original #i started reading something that objectively has nothing wrong with it but within about three pages had me bored out of my mind #and i started skimming it to see if it picked up or anything caught my interest later on #but i noticed that a few of the paragraphs were like thirty lines long #and i immediately noped the hell out of there #and then i was like 'you know what i should do is i should work on that story that i spend about twenty minutes on every four or five days' #i took a phys ed class in college that was literally all education #we didn't actually do any sports or anything #it was all classes and lectures and stuff #one day we went to the nurse's office or whatever you call that area on a college campus #and we learned how to wrap sprained ankles #i know i picked it up very quickly but i have absolutely no recollection of how to do it now #also yesterday i had to spend the day dealing with some incredibly idiotic coworkers #i don't even think they're necessarily stupid people but they were certainly acting like it #and first thing this morning one of the messaged me with a stupid question to follow up on all her stupid questions from yesterday #'where is this data in the file?' oh gosh i don't know have you tried spending two seconds actually LOOKING FOR IT #and someone else messaged me at the same time to ask for help with something that he's now doing completely wrong #but it's a new system and i know he's trying and i also know he is actually good at his job so i don't mind helping him #but i'm going to have to waste my afternoon in a meeting with the other idiot #and two people who DO have their shit together but i know for sure that if he has to do anything it'll add like half an hour's time #to a task that should take five minutes tops #also there's a severe weather warning for excessive heat today #i want to go out and buy some fruit before it gets too unbearable #but in order for that to happen i need these people to leave me alone for twenty minutes

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

It’s been awhile since I truly ranted about my clueless boomer father. it’s absolutely not because he’s been less awful. in fact he’s been so overly awful that I’ve not had the energy to really type out an entire vent post. 

Let’s rectify that! (Disclaimer: this shit is LONG)

So those of you who aren’t new round these parts are well versed in how clueless and selfish my “I’m not like other boomers” (def is) father. You might also know how introverted I am.

Now that word gets tossed around a lot by people who just enjoy their own company or enjoy socializing but need time to recharge, and that’s all well and good. But my personal introversion is much more... serious. Like, I can socialize but it’s draining pretty quickly, save a few people who don’t suck the life out of me because they arent work to hang out with and dont require me to entertain them. I need more recharge time than socializing time by a significant margin. Last summer my father went on vacation for a week (Bailey stayed with grandma) and during that week I didn’t verbally speak to a single fucking soul except when The Spawn (who didn’t live here at the time) came by for something. Best week of my fucking life. 

The less I’m able to recharge, the more unpleasant I become. This is important. 

So we all know that my father likes to claim a lot of things are that clearly bullshit. Among those things is the claim that he doesn’t need friends or socialization because he’s “like me” and the claim that he respects my space and need for down time. these things aren’t true. at all. Let’s look at why I saw that...

This man insists on telling me every small annoyance that happens through his day. Every single fucking day I have to hear (and read texts) repeatedly about how ignorant his coworkers are, the amount of unmasked people at stores/gas stations, & just generally self absorbed people he encounters. EVERY DAY. He clearly needs someone to socialize with. 

He will also just walk into my living room and plop down. Then he starts fucking talking or bitching at the dogs for jumping around on him. If I am watching something, he starts asking questions/commenting on whatever I’m watching. If I’m wearing headphones (which are massive and cover my ENTIRE EAR very obviously) he will stare at me and start talking until I pull my headphones off and say “What?! What is so fucking urgent?!” 

I’ve been getting progressively more short with him. I don’t answer texts that aren’t actually about something. When he interrupts me for something I KNOW will be frivolous bullshit, I exaggeratedly huff, then either rip off my headphones or pointedly pause what I’m watching and say “WHAT?! What do you need?!” If he’s bitching about the dogs playing on the couch while he tries to sit on it (which they do to me CONSTANTLY btw and I just make it work) I snap at him to just move to the fucking chair or shut up. If he goes to bitch about a coworker or people he encounters while out, I just say, “You already told me about this.” in and incredibly short tone, to which he responds “Well I wanted to make sure.�� in a huffy tone. 

His most recent two days have really taken the fucking cake. 

So The Spawn frequently goes up to see her godfather, D, in Colorado over school breaks. He usually puts her on a plane or comes to get her, but with her having a car, she’s decided to take a friend with her and have her first Big Girl road Trip. She will be gone a little overr a week and she, the friend, D, and I all meticulously planned it out. My father comes in day before yesterday and says, “Hey do you want me to take vacation time while The Spawn is gone so I can be here?” I look deeply confused, “Why the fuck would you do that?” his response: “Well, I didn’t know if you’d need someone here to help with the dogs during the day while she’s gone.” 

Y’all I nearly died laughing. “Her not being here changes literally NOTHING about how the dogs are handled during the day. When she is here, she is in her room. It’s really funny that you think I have help during the day considering how often I’ve bitched about the fact that I take care of the dogs that aren’t mine far too much.” 

Then yesterday, I had spent the day employing my general tactics to discourage him from harassing me with useless bullshit. At some point, I cut him off from talking AGAIN about “ignorant, maskless, redneck gatherings at the gas station” by saying, “YES YOU TOLD ME AT LEAST 3 FUCKING TIMES. I GET IT. PEOPLE DON’T WEAR MASKS AND IT PISSES YOU OFF. IT’S BEEN A FUCKING YEAR. DEAL WITH IT. Why in the fuck do you insist on telling me this crap?” This fucking idiot laughed and said “I need to vent to someone.” I then told him to get a fucking friend or get a fucking therapist but I am not here for him to fucking vent to. 

At the end of last night I finally lost it. I blew up on him about how I have zero privacy, nobody fucking respects my space or my need to recharge my social batteries, so I’m just constantly running on empty which means I’m getting progressively more unpleasant and frankly downright mean. Near the end I said “I’m sorry but...” and intended to tell him EXACTLY what he is doing that is causing this shit but true to fucking form, this motherfucker INTERRUPTS ME and says  “Oh I never take any of this personally. no apology needed. goodnight.” and goes up to bed. 

YOU SHOULD TAKE IT PERSONALLY YOU STUPID PIECE OF SELF ABSORBED SHIT!!!! YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM!!! MY NEARLY 17 YEAR OLD CHILD HAS MORE AWARENESS OF MY NEED TO RECHARGE AND NOT BE AROUND PEOPLE CONSTANTLY THAN YOU DO DESPITE ME TELLING YOU ABOUT MY NEEDS IN VERY PLAIN LANGUAGE THAT A FUCKING 5 YEAR OLD COULD UNDERSTAND!!! 

LEAVE.   ME.   THE.   FUCK.   ALONE.  unless the subject of what you want to talk about impacts me directly in some way or i INVITE YOU into a conversation. I don’t vent to him unless it impacts him or the household... so why the fuck can’t he show the same courtesy? Also that whole “respect your space and not invade it” thing... on the rare occasion that he doesn’t just invite himself in and plop down in my space expecting my fucking attention, he will HOVER in the ‘doorway’ to my rooms until I acknowledge his presence, at which point he takes as an invitation. I’ve done an experiment. If I ignore the hovering, he will stand there up to 30 mins, at which point he will ask me a question and when I answer he takes it as an invitation. Like, I know my living room and BEDROOM don’t have doors but that doesn’t mean you have an open invite to just come into them whenever. You want to pet your dog but she’s on my bed? Call her. She’ll come over to you. Want to watch something with me? ASK and then, if I say yes, don’t fucking talk to me. I agreed to watch something, not have a fucking conversation. 

oh but directly telling him any of this doesn’t work because he “doesn’t take any of this personally.” Ok, it’s one thing to not take it personally when I snap at you because I’m in an astronomical amount of pain that day and accidentally snapped. When that happens, I apologize and explain. but if I don’t mention my pain, apologize, or explain then YOU ARE THE REASON IM SNAPPING YOU STUPID FUCK. 

end rant. if you read this whole thing, my condolences on the wasted time. I don’t want/need advice. I’m handling the situation the best I can in my current position. Part of that handling is that while The Spawn is gone, I’m going to do a few days where I’m here for the dogs, then when dad gets off work, J scoops me for the night, then drops me back off in the morning on his way in. He is one of those lovely people that isn’t a drain and if we are sitting in the same room, considers it spending time together. Most times, I lay on his furniture at an awkward looking but comfy angle reading a book while he games. We chat a bit during breaks or when I see him ready to throw the controller at the TV (looking at you Witcher 3...) so that will be lovely. 

as always, don’t steal my shit for your blog, article, youtube, just because you’re boring and fucking lazy. Shoo! Scat!