Blather, rinse, repeat

This is an old story, and some of you know it from the locked posts a few years ago.
So now, after a couple of years have gone by and I've gone back to school, graduated, and have a new (much better) job, I'm going to tell y'all how I got fired from the one I had for nine years. This post is unlocked.

( TRIGGER WARNING for assault, abusive language, misogyny etc )

That's the whole thing! Now ya know.

I keep having this one dream that I'm in Disneyworld with Dad, and the same thing happens each time. He comes walking up to me, looks around Disneyworld and says, "They changed it. I don't know if I"m gonna like it, but let's see." Then we'll go on a ride and it's all different and weird. Last night, it was supposed to be Epcot Center. Also, Mom was there, Gran, and a bunch of my cousins (pretty much all of them who have ever gone on a trip with me.) We got on this new ride that was supposed to be a space journey or something. But one of the workers insisted that I wasn't who I said I was and kept asking me for ID. All I had was my library card and eventually she took it.

I'm pretty sure that Dad in these dreams is my own subconscious going, "Someday I'll go back to Florida, but it'll be different and I don't know if I'll like it."

Then I had my other recurring dream: the "Someone else is in trouble and I'd better take care of this for them." Last night it was Benecio Del Toro (because I watched Wolfman with Mom last night.) It was similar to the movie, only this time I had to stop all these bad things from happening to him. So I "jumped in" like I always do, and start dodging bullets, running, leaping, hiding behind pillars and such. Because, I'm really cool like that.

Anyway, so last night while watching Wolfman, Mom and I were eating ice cream and more or less MSTing the entire movie. At one point I meant to say something about, "Shooting at this werewolf on the rooftops of London" and instead I said wolftops of London. About five minutes later, my Mom accidentally said "wolftops" too and then we were just LOLing all over the place. Sometimes it's the stupidest things that get me going. Well, most times.

Work today was pretty decent. My supervisor came in for a scheduled "coaching session" and to see how I was doing in my store etc. It went really well. People were really interested in what I had to say today, I sold a lot, and then Supervisor bought me lunch and said that I was doing really well and she didn't really have anything to add. We talked a while; she is very pleasant. And I got some cool t shirts, too.

Clinic is also pretty decent. Thursday I had some really good patients and a few repeat ones. I also did an extra treatment, because I had gone upstairs to be a standby (to get a treatment,) but someone had called in sick and this patient had driven all the way out there and had no one to treat her. So I said, Well, I'm already in my whites and I've got nothing else to do, so. I got credit for it too. Afterwards, I got a new patient who was iffy on the Amma treatment but said she'd give it a shot. So I did the whole treatment and afterwards she was very pleased. She actually said I was the best practitioner she'd ever met, and she booked me for the rest of the term! WHOA! My next patient was equally enthusiastic, and my final one of the night is my high-profile one. She told me that she would be willing to be my pathology patient next term. Which, I hope that works out because those can be hard to find. At the end of the day, I was writing up all my charts, when the receptionist came in and told me, "Everyone who walked out of here today said you were fantastic." I was like WOOT and the best part was that my two clinic supervisors were standing right there. Whew!

Also, that day I got 102 on one of my tests, and 97 on a pop quiz. I felt very relieved, as I'd been stressing over having gotten an 83 on the last test. 83. WTF.

Yesterday (Friday) was so mellow. I went grocery shopping, cleaned the fish tanks, went jogging, practiced some Hula, did a few critiques, and used this organic bug spray to try to kill the infestation of hibiscus sawfly that has wrecked both my dinnerplate hibiscus plants. They used to wait until August to start killing them; now the leaves are like lace before they even get a chance to open. I went nuts out there spraying the plants, pulling the dead, chewed up leaves off, and slapping down the larvae wherever I found them. It was disgusting.

This is what they do to the leaves:
( lace leaf )

And this is one of the bastard larvae:
( BASTARD. )

I came inside, washed all up, and sat down at the computer. I kept feeling this itching, prickling sensation on my wrist and I put it out of my mind, figuring that of course I was going to have that grossed out, prickling feeling for the rest of the day. Then it started to burn, and I looked down and found one of the larvae bastards on my wrist.

( THEY BITE. )

I hate them forever and ever and I want them all to die.

Speaking of gross, slithery, parasitic things, here's another little story from work today.

So, I'm just packing up to leave, and I stop to pet this nervous little dog in a shopping cart. The woman says to me, "Be careful, she bites." I tell her, That's all right; I like nervous little dogs and I usually get along with them. The dog let me pet it, and the lady says, "Didn't you used to work at The Bad Place?" I tell her that I did and she says, "You used to take care of my (so and so's) (aggressive exotic pet)!" Oh, I remember (aggressive exotic pet!), and I remember so-and-so! She informs me that said exotic pet has died and I express my sympathy.

She then asks why she hasn't seen me around and I tell her, "That didn't end well, unfortunately."

And she asks, "Was it because of Dr. Dickwhistle?" Why yes, in fact it was. "I thought so," she says. "I just don't like him. He rubs me the wrong way. His personality is just...weird. And I don't think he's a good vet."

'He's not, in my opinion," I tell her.

She goes on to tell me—get this-- "He misdiagnosed my dog. He said it was arthritis and..."

"And it was bone cancer," I finish for her. She confirms. "He did the same thing to my dog," I tell her. "My dog was gone a month later, because he kept sending her home with aspirin. And," I go on, "he made another mistake with my other dog, one that cost me about $15K."

"Ridiculous," she says, "I can't stand him. He can't look you in the eye. He's just no good."

"I agree," I tell her. "They do have some good vets there—Dr. Such-And-Such is one of them—but as for him, I wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire." (And, among friends I usually add, "But I might if he wasn't.")

So! We had a little bonding session over the general ickiness and failings of Dr. Dickwhistle. I always feel terrible when people tell me their stories of him. But also a little gratified, in a weird way. Like, yeah, I'm not the only one who sees this.

Blah-de-blah, that was my exciting week, sorta. For now, please enjoy some of the usual pics of my dogs, my fish and my gardens and junk.

( PICSPAM )

And now for some fish!
( FISH! )

Hee. Fish. Awesome.

Well, now I'm gonna take the dogs out and maybe put dinner on for me and Mom. She's borrowed a copy of a certain really mad awesome film, so we'll be watching that tonight. Yeah boyeeeeeee.

GODDAMN! Every time I think I'm done with my holiday shopping, I'm still nowhere near the frigging end of it! I keep forgetting little thises and thats, and bags, too. I'm not wrapping anything this year. Eff wrapping, everything is going into a bag.

It snowed today! Not enough to stick to the ground, but enough to make everyone in the store go "WOW!" and stop to look out the window. I was in the grocery store, Wild By Nature, in the tea aisle, and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" was playing. Ridiculously, I love this song. My favorite line came on: "Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow / Hang a shining star upon the highest bough...." when all of a sudden the clouds opened and snow started falling heavily. Seriously, many people in the store stopped shopping to watch.

Completely on a different subject, I've been wondering if I should write about this one thing or not. I decided to because it demonstrates so much about the way things happen in cycles, in in retrospect, for a reason--or at least so I like to tell myself.

Last May, as most of you know, I got fired in a really scummy way by my ex boss. Long story superfly short: Some really gross and evil people came into that place, physically harassed one of the workers who was too scared to make a report. I mentioned it to some friends on what I thought was a secure site and asked for their advice. I never mentioned where I work or anything. Someone who was lurking there thought it a good idea to go to the web page of those disgusting people (which I had linked in my LJ right here, about an incident that had nothing whatsoever to do with work,) after which they called my ex-boss who told me that they were giving him "too much of a headache" over me and it was just in his best interest to fire me. You know, in order to get them off his case.

Well, a few weeks ago, the "anonymous" person came forward to admit she had done it, and tell me she was sorry. She recently lost her job of nine years, too, and she brought up the idea of karma. Ideas of witchcraft and the Threefold Law were tossed about, too, though not by me. (Although yes, I am a Witch. I realize that sometimes, even though I lapse a lot. But I never did anything to her on purpose, to retaliate.) I accepted her apology and offered her my good will and my thanks, because she was the catalyst for getting me out of a job as stagnant and toxic as a sewage dump. (Stagnant and toxic to me, because of the way I was being treated by some people there. Other people I think highly of are still there and still thriving, and that's awesome for them.) If not for her, then I might still be there, instead of getting cool notebooks and wondering if I will put stuff in a locker etc. and all this other mad, crazy stuff I never thought I'd be doing again.

Because she admitted what she did, and took responsibility and because she apologized, well, she has my good will and wishes. Perhaps she will find something better too, since she got fired as well.

But the gross, evil people, and my ex boss? I have no forgiveness or good will towards them. The gross, evil people, well, they are not sorry for being the scum that they are or treating the people the way they do. I don't think they even get it. And my ex boss, well, I'll bet he still thinks he did the right thing, too, or will justify it in some way. Plus, there are certain people who, after a certain amount of time and service, you expect to at least have your back.

I am not what you'd call a practicing Witch; that is to say, even though I observe all the cycles (seasonal ones and circumstantial ones like the one I just described,) I don't often do actual spells. I used to, but not so much anymore. Maybe spells are a formality, or maybe they are just practice for your willpower. When I did used to do spells, my best ones were binding, banishing and reflecting. (I always failed at money, love, luck and success ones.) With this in mind, I can't help but believe that the gross, evil people and my ex boss will deal with this sooner or later. I don't think I even have to do anything; I think it will just happen. People like that always seem to screw themselves up anyway. To quote the movie "The Mummy:" "Nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance. Always." And when they do, I will read about it, and I'll laugh my fool pagan head off.

On a completely other other subject, I made this dumb, funny Vincent Valentine thing for hyenarave: ( Clicky the cut )

The text is from this enlightening bit of Engrish. I swear if I ever get to go to Japan (WHEN, I should say,) I'll go just for the Engrish and I'll probably buy it all up. Well anyway, when Jo-chan and I were re-playng FFVII a few weeks ago and Vincent had a big scene, all of a sudden we both thought of "your sadness is very sexy, strong, fragile man" and I couldn't stop laughing.

That's my leettle update for today.

Oh, and Alba's Un-petroleum cherry lip balm is the best thing ever. Ever. It's even slightly better than hyperbole itself, which is better than god.
ETA: I decided I needed a witchy icon for posts like this, so I nabbed one of my favorite Waterhouses. By the way, I look so much like this painting that it's just plain sick.

ETA2 so as not to LJ Spam: I just got a MySpace message from my 11 year old cousin.
I made you a poem ready?




Roses are red.
Old cheese is green
You dont know how much you mean to me!

xoxoxoxoxoxo

AWWWWW!

We've had sexual harassment problems from some clients at work--remember I posted about it a few posts ago--and it hit an all time low when they actually groped one of the young girls who works there. She was freaked and didn't want to file a report. I went to my friend's web page to chat, where I assumed it was private, and asked for advice, asking if there was anything I could personally do. I said that it was a difficult position because these disgusting people ran a newspaper and I mentioned the name of it.

The site was apparently not private, and someone thought it would be funny to go to their website and tell them that I had basically ratted them out for the groping, and the other harassing things they had done.

Then they started going to my journal and leaving me threatening messages there. Finally they called my boss at the animal hospital and badgered him until, he said, he had no choice but to let me go in favor of them leaving him alone.

So, I desperately need a job.

For all of you who work with me, there's one thing I need to ask of you: when baby birds come in, please please call Laura so that I can still continue to work with wild birds. That's one thing I do not want to give up. Can you do that for me?

Any thoughts, please let me know.

ETA: Things I think I need to remember just in case I have to, well, remember them.

The reason my boss gave me over the phone for firing me was, "This has caused me such a headache and I don't need that."

This happened to another employee years before, if I remember correctly. it was the brother of a guy who works there now. If memory serves (and no one who was there back then will ever confirm this,) some client came in and accused the guy of saying some rude thing to her. This guy was the gentlest most polite person ever and he of course denied it. The client was known to be a trouble maker. That guy got fired, too.

I'll probably think of more things later.

Another thing to remember: The last time before this when they boarded, they told one of the girls there that their bird likes to masturbate, and if they found out that they didn't let it finish, they would make sure she got fired.

My friend Jenn and I had to go out on a call to pick up a dog from an old lady who'd said the dog had a stroke. Her grandsons told us that we were to examine the dog and treat it. But when we got there, she told us differently.

As she sat on her little back porch rockign chair with her walking stick by her side, she described what instead sounded like a series of seizures. The dog had collapsed three times in a day, foaming at the mouth and, inher words, "soiling all over the floor. Well, I live alone," she said, "and I cleaned it up by myself." The the dog had gotten confused and walked off her property too quick for her to catch and stop him. Her grandsons had found it lying in a ditch th enext block over and brought it back, putting it in he rbarn with some water before they had to return to work.

She showed us to the barn where we found her dog already almost half dead. I picked up the dog and started walking out, then the lady's frail little leg got stuck in some fishing line and she almost tripped.

Outside, she took some time to pet the dog and say goodbye while I held him, and she started talking. She said that she had recently lost her daughter, and now she was losing her dog too, so she knew she was going to be lonely, with her grandsons all grown and everything. She pet the dog and thanked him for his seventeen years of friendship. (Seventeen years!) She said, "You were my best friend the whole time." Then she told us that in the days leading up to the "strokes," his eyes had gotten really big and really bright. "Like yours," she said, looking at me. (She also added that "It looked like there was no one at home there," which honestly I laughed about later, because was she still comparing him to me? O_O )

Jenn and I were all right up until we got the dog in the car and started backing out of her driveway. We both looked back at her and that's when she started crying. She stood there in her little driveway, leaning with one hand on her walking stick, and then she just started sobbing and wiping her eyes with her free hand. What really got us both going though was that right before we turned, she waved goodbye. That little gesture of farewell was it for both of us.

The two of us are always very jokey and light-hearted and snarky together but we didn't even know what to say. I just wanted to go to the shelter and bring the lady a new dog, like that second.

Honestly, I've seen some gruesome, sad, nasty, gross, alarming, terrible things there, but in terms of sheer pathos, this was the worst.

After that I made some calls to some colleges re: teaching certificates. At my alma mater, no one picked up and there was no answering machine or voice mail. O_O O-kayyy. I called three more places. One might actually have the program, but no one answered and I left a message. The other, I spoke to a guy who had never heard of any alternate route transitional courses in education certificates and said, "Well you have your BA and you want to teach, so just come on down and get your master's; it's two years if you go full time." He made it sound like I would just pop down for a cup of tea, ladeeda, two years, Bob's your uncle and Fanny's your aunt, get my MA, no worries! Like I can just go back to school full time, you know, not work and all of that stuff.

I ask you!

The third place I called, I spoke to a lady who informed me that the test I'd thought I had to take in order to begin the process hasn't been valid for ten years.

Well, I put it out there. I'm just waiting for some call-backs and we'll see what comes up. No use in worrying about it until someone gives me some information

So on Tuesday, Nancy and I had another long talk. In it, she told me that Douchbomb guy was my problem to deal with and I'd better just learn to be nice to him because he's staying. She said, "Everyone's noticed how much you hate him, and you have to try to be introspective on this and figure out why you're getting so angry, and then just stop being that way."

She also said that she had done as I requested and asked everyone else about him, and they had all denied that there was such a huge problem. She downplayed everything. As she was telling me the things they'd said, I started to get the feeling that there was some spin going on here.

So today I talked to all the people who have a problem with douchebomb and to whom she spoke. When I mentioned that I'd discussed it with her, they all had the same reaction: a smile, a look of, "Yeah, we have each other's back, right?" I told them, Not according to her, and I told them what she told me they'd each said. As I was telling each of them, their jaws just dropped and they were all like, "No way. I did not say any such thing. If anything I told her how bad it really was with him." That he creeped them out, that he did nothing all day, that he was offensive and rude and useless. Yet according to her--as told to me--they're all fine with him.

They also told me that she had told them that I said I wanted this guy dead.

O_O Now WHAT THE HELL?!

It's hard because we're pretty close friends too, but she's managed to but a group of us at the center of this crazy drama thing and she's telling us all something different. She's doing this, "She said this and that about you," to each of us. As it happens, she did not talk to us all together as a group, but called us all in separately and then told us all different things. When we got together to compare notes as it were, we were sitting there with our jaws on the floor going, "I never said any such thing!"

I don't know what's turning her into this kind of manager. She has, for so many years, been so lovely to me. Management there has always been lazy at best, but this is downright manipulative, and it's totally a new thing. It's ridiculous and it's all over her defending this douchebomb guy.

I keep trying to find a teacher education program anywhere on LI, which a friend of mine was telling me about the other night, but I can't find any. It's called an "alternate route teaching certificate" I got so psyched for it. But the only programs I can find are off the island and are about three years long. I don't have that kind of money or time. Yet by and by I realized that I'd really like to teach.

I'm just frustrated, I don't even know where to begin. This post is locked because of those crazy creeps from Mayo's.

While not getting into what's going on with work stuff, I do have to share the funniest thing that happened, which I think wins for Quote Of The Meffing Day:

My friend Kelly was telling a story while eating Mini-Muffins and didn't like to talk with food in her mouth. She wanted to say, "I can't talk when I have Mini-Muffins in my mouth," but what she said instead was "I can't talk when I have mini-mouthins in my muff."

I laughed until I cried.

WIN! ^_^

Other than that, let's see. Today was the first day that really utterly felt like a spring day. It was around 65 degrees today. It's too bad that it's going back down into the 30's again next week. yep, 30's, and we might have snow Monday. WTF?

I already started planting, and I got some lovely lovely flowers out there.

The rest is looooocked!! O_O

Today was so chill, I minded the Boychild for a few hours, then went grocery shopping, then started planting my garden. (Ranunculus and primroses so far.) Skipped Kung Fu. Dyed my hair, made dinner, talked (and thought a lot) about going back to school. Read a few messages from a very kind friend. Sent an email inquiry. Watched Scary Movie 2 which was kind of retarded. Read lj comm "wtflongisland" and talked about Adam being a cupcake. Came to BlogBelieve and talked about bras and sex toys.

All in all, nice and chill.

Tomorrow and Friday? Well, suck. >_>

Wrote this part last night:


Wednesday already. That's two more days till Friday. >_<

Sifu is out for a while, and on Monday in Kung Fu Sije Raq led the class. We've got some new folks in the basics class and it's been pretty full. We just did lots of drills, all punching and blocking. Afterwards in Blackbelt it was just Lee, Tracy and I, and Raq had us do Small Wheel alone, one at a time, while she corrected little details. I just about died, dude. I hate when people watch me do forms. It makes me get all shaky. However by the end it was actually really helpful and I didn't clam up or screw up as much as I feared I would. Then we did some staff review. I disappointed myself by forgetting all the really simple stuff and amazed myself by remembering the complicated parts. O_O

Yesterday at work was all right except for some minor mishaps; and none of it, or mostly none anyway, was the fault of the animals involved. First I was holding a cat's mouth open for intubation. It was sedated but not entirely under yet. Its jaw just slipped out of my hand and its dirty, nasty little cat tooth sank right into my thumb. (Last night it seemed to be getting infected but today it's fine. Note to future cat-bitten self: Do not ever rush to antibiotics. Usually these things go away on their own.) Later, Jane scratched herself with the same sedated cat's claws. Funniest and perhaps worst of all was towards the end of the day when I was holding this nasty, biting little dog. Everyone had warned me it was a little biting bastard, but I never believe that of dogs because I usually don't have any problems with nasty little biting bastards, and I hadn't had a problem with this one. He'd let me cut his nails and everything without fussing. Well, I was putting him on the little scale and Dan was standing close by not not really too close. I just turned the little dog around on the scale and Dan went, "OW! He bit me!" It being April first I totally thought he was kidding. I was like, "Stop, he did not." But he actually had and the way it played out visually, I wish I could describe it. It was like I had bitten him with the dog. Dan later illustrated how it happened with great gestures, as if I'd been carrying around a little biting machine and aimed it at him. I felt bad but goddamn it was so funny. Poor Dan is having a bad run. He's been bitten by a brown recluse spider too, no joke. His finger swelled up like mad and he's got a huge hole in it.

Well anyway, tonight at KF we did line basics while holding those heavy rocks etc, and that was pretty cool. In blackbelt we did Small Wheel again (much needed) and then staff (also much needed.) i brought my own staff, and here's a weird and random thing: my staff has flecks of blood on it. O_o I have no idea where it came from, I haven't touched it since last summer and I certainly haven't done anything with it that would cause it to have blood on it, like for instance bashing people with it. It was kind f amusing though.

This is from tonight:

I'm ridiculously tired because I had a crazy nightmare last night and even though I was able to wake myself up from it at around 5:30 AM, I wasn't able to really get back to sleep after that.

It started where I took a part time job in a mental institution. (This is weird because when my cousins and I were kids we used to pretend that we worked in a mental hospital. The game was called, well, "Mental Hospital.") Anyway I was working there with a training brother of mine who doesn't train anymore (and who has been having some bad problems with the health of a close family member.) He was working as security and was sitting at a desk. All of a sudden the power went out and all the doors holding the criminally insane people opened, and the people started pouring out of their cells. They pretty much dogpiled my friend. THe other workers weren't doing anything to help so as I was trying to pull the violent, crazy people off of my friend, I was screaming at the other workers that they were incompetent. One of them turned to me and said, "You're such a bitch, why don't you just do your job and not worry about what everyone else is doing or is not doing?" I kept trying to get to the bottom of the pile of crazy people but they turned into clothes, and my friend was not at the bottom of the pile.

The lights went off next and I had a flashlight. By the flashlight I could see that one really huge guy that I knew to be a rapist was walking down the hall towards me. I was trying to close a gate between us but it wouldn't close. I ran up the stairs and my Dad was there. I told him that there was a man chasing me and my Dad came down to help. The crazy guy was waiting at the bottom of the stairs and he went up to my Dad like he was going to start a fight with him. I had the brilliant idea that maybe I could reason my way out of this so I asked the crazy rapist guy if he wouldn't rather go outside and play ball for a while. He thought this was a good idea and he went outside. My Dad went back up the stairs.

I decided it was time to get the lights back on and I told one of the other workers, "You know at my other job, we know how to do things like, Oh I don't know, fix the circuit breaker!" And she said to me, "You're such a bitch, if your other job is so good, why are you still working here?" I had no answer for that.

I got the lights back on (no one else seemed bothered by the fact that the whole place was a huge mess,) and I saw that the inmates were now all circus animals locked up in flimsy cages. They were piled in and stacked on top of each other and most of them were big cats, like leopards and tigers, and one lion. They looked hungry. I thought to myself that if I could feed them, they wouldn't eat me, and I was trying to get to th fridge to get them some canned dog food (even though they were big cats.) The lion kept watching me and I noticed that his cage looked like it would break any second. I thought, "I'll never get by there without it jumping out and devouring me." It was like there was a time limit and I would not be able to feed them quickly enough. I also knew that they were waiting for me to get close enough so they could eat me, but that if I took much longer, they would stop waiting and just attack anyway. So right before they attacked, I got out of the room and shut the door. The door had a window where I could still see them, and it scared me because I knew that the lion would figure out how to open the door.

Just then a tiny little chihuahua with a broken back leg went hobbling into the room with the big cats and I was behind the door trying to yell to it to get out, but it couldn't hear me. Then the lion ripped open the bottom of its cage and lunged at the little dog. It roared at the little dog and the little dog started crying and shaking. Then the lion jumped on it and I hid my eyes, but I could still hear the little dog screaming as the lion ate it.

That's when I told myself, "Okay, this dream is way too scary and it's time to wake up."

And of course after that I couldn't get back to sleep.

Luckily work today was pretty slow. I worked with little Kelly in the afternoon and then she had to cover for one of the receptionists and a good friend of mine who also has a close family member with a very bad health problem. Scooter came in and she lent me her iPod to browse while she went outside, and I fed the animals. I listened to bands I'd heard of but hadn't listened to, like Sugarcube and Paramore. Sugarcube was pretty cool.

Speaking of music I'm kind of obsessed with the band Muse since a friend of mine on BlogBelieve showed me one of their songs, "Blackout." Then another friend of mine on BlogBelieve showed us all Muse's song "Invincible." I downloaded "Stockholm Syndrome" and fell so amazingly hard for that song on the second listen that it became one of those ones I play, and then play again, and then once again. That went on for about a week, during which I bought two of their CDs. My current song obsession is "Supermassive Black Hole." That song throws you against the wall and makes out with you.

Well, and tomorrow is Friday. We don't even have to get into that again, now do we? No, we don't. >_<