The First Day of Lent

I am not Catholic anymore, nor was I ever, but I thought I was because my family was Catholic. Anyhow, today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I observe Lent because I think its a great idea to give up a bad habit for 40 days. The bad habit I gave up last year was chocolate. I actually lost about 5 lbs. in doing so. This year I decided to give up gossip. It has been weighing on me a lot lately that I gossip so much. It's become such a natural tendency for me that I just do it automatically.

Today was a real eye opener. I caught myself in the act of gossiping several times, even though I started the day out telling myself I was not going to do so. This is disturbing to me. I never thought I would become this type of person. Besides the Lent thing, today, no this whole week, has been disturbing in general. It started off with Qwest blaming Direct TV for my integrated bill being incorrect for the last two months, and Direct TV blaming Qwest. After arguing with both companies repeated times since the middle of December, I finally resorted to the BBB. Of course, they were no help when Grease Monkey damaged my husband's truck, but I figure the satisfaction of telling a company that you reported them to the BBB is good enough. <---look there I am gossiping again. But, lets explore this - is it really gossiping if I am just telling my side of the story? I suppose it is if the other party is not here to defend themself. Well, back to my crappy week. After the Qwest/Direct TV thing, I got a bladder infection and had to go to the urgent care. At the urgent care I was seen by an uber-cool physician's assistant. I mean this chick was the bomb! And, it was like fate that I was seen by her because I just fired my PCP about a week ago after finally becoming fed up with his rude office staff and his laccidaisical (sp?) attitude. So, on Monday I called the urgent care to see if the PA had her own practice, and it turns out she doesn't. : ( After a long day at work, school, and mentoring my one Avon recruit (my sister), I picked up my daughter and went home. When I opened the front door I could not believe my eyes. My 2 Laborador Retrievers had completely obliterated (ha! wasn't "obliterated" voted one of the most overused/misused words of 2007? see how it just happened to pop into my head - i am a product of my society...lol) my loveseat and recliner chair. There was white fluff covering the living room floor. It was like the roof had opened up and let down a layer or snow. I promptly posted both of them, plus the newest cat on Craigslist. On to Tuesday....

Tuesday seemed to be going well until I hit my sister's house. She was in a bad mood after getting screwed by the county office out of her food stamps for two months in a row. Her worker actually told her that she was too busy to look at her case and then walked away from her. It floors me how people can be so insensitive, but at the same time I am not innocent of insensitivity. Why is it so easy to not care about other people? We know what emotions other people feel, we experience them ourselves. This must be why when I got home on Tuesday evening and the dogs had finished the damage they had started the day before, I still took them off of Craigslist (and the cat too). I guess I finally reached a point of maturity in my life where I do not just run from my problems. What a relief to have finally reached that point. Reaching that point of maturity, however, must be completely separate from the point of maturity where you lose your ego. I took a quiz for my statistics class that nite and earned a grade of D on it. I wasn't feeling too great about myself at that point, but it was required that I post a discussion for the online class. I noticed that the teacher had told another student that her answer was wrong, but I disagreed. I stated my point and explained my theory as best I could (Lord knows that was difficult with my ADD/tangent train of thought). To hear how that ended up we must move onto Wednesday...today!

Today I woke up about an hour before my alarm went off and realized that my recovery from this bladder infection felt like it was regressing. If you have ever had one, you are aware that it is difficult to think clearly when you are in that kind of pain. I immediately took my bladder anesthetic as well as my antibiotic and returned to sleep. An hour later I woke up and thought I might die. Don't take Cipro on an empty stomach. I couldn't call in to work, as I had just done so last week. I schlepped into work and was relieved to find my team in good spirits and not attacking me implicitly nor explicitly. What a great team. I was feeling really good for the first couple of hours, proud of myself for thinking positive thoughts and not gossiping. But then the emails started coming in. The stupid people. The phone calls started coming. The questions. People were approaching me, "can I ask you a real quick question?" , "ya got a minute?" , "I just saw this and I don't know what to do with it" , "this is weird - I've never seen this before...". My serenity was irreparably shattered. And I found myself gossiping in my head. And then I found myself gossiping to the safe people. And then I found myself gossiping in front of important people at a unimportant (imagine that!) meeting. Now, here come's my favorite phrase......"Ah Geez!!!" lol....

I went to school and took my science test. I was under the impression that this was going to be an easy test as the teacher has a real nonchalant attitude towards his preparation for class. Not only that, but he told us that everything we would need to know for the test would be on the notes on Blackboard. Uhhhh....wrong. I'm either having a bad semester (which is seeming pretty likely considering the feedback I've been getting), or this Cipro is kicking my butt, OR, the teacher LIED!!! : ) I came home to a loving husband and unbelievably cute daughter, with dinner ready and the pets well-behaved. I logged onto my statistics class to eagerly read the comment telling me that I was a genius and my theory - oh my gosh - why hadn't SHE thought of that??? NO. I had a message that I took to be very condescending, telling me that if I didn't understand the class, then maybe I should get some outside help. No explanation of why she didn't agree with my theory. This doesn't really surprise me since the tests she gives are poorly prepared (the graphics are jumbled because she didn't check them in student view, the same exact word-for-word questions are repeated on the same test, there is no variation in material tested - its just the same few concepts over and over and over, etc.) Why are stupid people allowed to teach? Why should I waste my money? I can choose my other service providers (except the utility monopolies), but signing up for a class is like playing the lottery with regards to what kind of teacher you're going to get. I'm actually being very harsh. This lady is the first bad teacher I've had in the last three semesters. The other ones have been somewhere between good and great. Even the science teacher, even though he's misleading on test material, he's a damn good teacher. So, I just replied to the teacher that apparently she didn't like my theory, according to her response. I'd like to tell her what I really think, but I'm bound by the fact that this mediocre creature is going to be grading ambiguous submissions from me, such as papers. It would be so easy for her to take a dislike to me and grade with that bias in mind.

I'm feeling better now, though. I just scored 100% on the statistics unit test. I think it was out of sheer determination to send the "in your face" message. I also feel better because I was able to redact my experiences over the last few days in this blog. I was feeling pretty insecure at work today, feeling stupid and unworthy, doubting myself and wallowing in self-pity; but then I remembered that I must just stick with the problem longer. After all, stability is building my character and I believe it will be the key to ascending to the next level of my brilliance.

So, as you can see, I've got my hands full trying not to gossip for the next forty days. Talkin' trash just comes naturally to me. Stay tuned to see how I progress.

Peace out! : P