New Year, New Life

I’m back.  Is anyone there?   Allow me to re-introduce myself….I am the new and improved Living Dilbert.   It’s been a rough few years, blah, blah…I know we all experience them.   Let’s just say I went from near emotional death, to near physical death, to disability and HELL, I fought my ass back into the world of the living.   If I am anything, it is determined.

Try to stop me.

I’m back at my amazing law firm where I began my career when I was a tiny, Living Dilbert baby.   Didn’t know anything, but I faked it and learned as I went.  Although I’m snarky, I do think I was put back here (thank GOD) for a reason.  The reason has yet to be determined, but I’m honestly coming back to life.   I’m walking, talking, cursing, snarking and working hard doing the job I love.   Will I still have plenty of corporate America, law firm stories and observations?   Honey, there is NO end to them!   I work with great people, but I’ve saved a lot of material in the last few years.

I’ll eventually change my cast of characters a bit….let’s just say there’s been some changes.  We’ll get to that.  I promise.   It seemed best to stop in and say hello and get comfy in my new digs again….with myself and I’m doing that.  You know what saying helped me so much when I was curled into the fetal position seeing no way out of my huge mess?   “Fall down seven times, stand up eight (mother fucker)!”

Trust me, a troubled soul makes for some damn good writing.  God, I’ve missed this.  Please stick with me….you won’t regret it.

Next:  Top 10 Things I Learned from Daytime TV

 

 

The Scoop of Poop

Forgive me, sweet readers for being so absent, yet again. Still healing from 3rd spinal neck surgery done on 9/18. Silly little things like morphine, Percocet and Valium cloud my brilliant, snarky mind. However, my dear old friend Shout just wrote a brilliant damn doozy I had to share. As a proud cat owner, this is fucking FUNNY! I hope you enjoy as much as I did!! I shall return!!! I’ve been snarky as shit today! Think I’ll do some tweets!

Shouts from the Abyss

Source: Rones. OpenClipArt.org.

Somewhere out there, in the world, is a person I hate. I’ve never met this person, but I hate him or her just the same. I do not allow the fact that I don’t the person’s identity to slow me down.

I know what they did. That’s enough for me.

It all started and ended (literally) when my wife brought home a cat.

View original post 349 more words

Take a Vacation From Life!!!

We all deserve a vacation, even the ever stoic Living Dilbert!   All of us, people!  If you are working full-time, part-time, not working, seeking work, an incredible housewife, a mom, a dad, disabled, in college, etc. – please give yourself a fucking break!  It’s ok!  Let go of all the “I should be”, “I shouldn’t be”, “I can’t afford it” bullshit clutter in your mind and do it!  It doesn’t have to be far away or expensive.  Find your place that brings you peace.  

Living Dilbert wouldn’t be Living Dilbert without a work story, so here is one of a million.  Kick-Ass coworker texts me to say Collassul C a/k/a Twatwaffle is in rare form today, meaning as a team member in our group she’s found even more ways to be a worthless sack of shit when it comes to helping with the workload of the team.   I created an entire email scenario that I sent to Kick- Ass to cheer her…but, I kind of enjoyed it.  

I basically know Sack’s arrival time and where she parks in work garage.  I drive to work and do some recon.  I lay low, far enough away so she doesn’t see me or car.  I learn her exact car and routine.  She arrives between 9:30 and 9:45 every day.  Her car and arrival times become ingrained in my memory and I proceed home to perfect my plan, which will take a few days.

I will return a week later (big garage and busy) in a rental car wearing a very believable disguise.  Hair shape and color will be altered, I will have a prosthetic nose and will have learned techniques to look 20 years older and I will lay in wait. She’ll arrive late (as always) and I’ll give it 11 minutes while she races upstairs to log in.  I’ll work fast to be certain she didn’t forget anything in her car, first checking for her security badge.  I know she’s desperate to log in because she fears she’ll be discovered as the Sack she is.  

I’ll get out of my rental car (in which I’ve removed the plate prior to arrival) and calmly walk to her car after glancing to make sure no one around.  I’ll pull out my long knife and quietly insert it once, like butter, into each tire until all four are done.  I’ll go back to car and calmly leave the scene.  Yes, dear readers, of course I’ll wear gloves!

She’ll come out promptly at 6:00, after feigning work all day as she has done for 13 years and knows it and proceed to shit in her pants.  I’ll crawl into bed that night and between uncontrollable giggles, fall into the best slumber in years and have beautiful dreams.   I’ll have to tell K-A after deed is done….wait….I won’t because I want her to have no knowledge.  If she mentions it during one of our delightful lunches, I’ll simply reply, “Karma, baby!”  and smile on the inside.  Don’t think me awful readers…the above scenario is a coping mechanism.  I looked for the slightest glimmer of good in Sack for 5 years…I swallowed many an urge to knock her flat.  Never saw a hint of good.  
  
Back to the first part of this blog.  Please plan a vacation of some sort.  Remember to see the beauty in the world, wherever that is….for you.  

I appreciate you – LD

There is a Serious Crack in My Foundation

  
and I don’t like it one fucking bit.  I’m feeling something I almost can’t even talk about.  It’s so awful I literally found myself completely at a loss for what the hell to do.  I’m a fucking little, innocent baby deer in headlights.  What (I asked myself since I’m the only one here…) in the SAM HELL is going on????   What’s wrong with me?  The synapses in my brain (due to fight or flight primal reaction) are firing and it hits me like a Mack truck..a Mack truck straight out of Mad Max, people – I’m feeling..accckkk….vulnerable.  Really vulnerable.  

Living Dilbert is rarely vulnerable and sure as hell doesn’t discuss it (except with Life-Saving Therapist who helped me figure this out – again), yet here I am filled with angst.  I fight deep feelings more often than I care to admit. Good news (I guess) is that apparently I am actually human and not always the superhero I project.  First, Main Squeeze is out of town for 8 days and being home alone all day AND night is new.  We haven’t been apart that long, but God knows MS needed a break and so deserves this vacation.  Today my sandal got caught on a rug while I was watering some plants and I almost seriously busted my ass.  Based on my knowledge of geometry and physics, it would have been REALLY BAD.  I most likely would have broken several ribs and I doubt my still healing neck would have had a party either.  It was so damn close, but I managed to save my ass.  Fine, it shook me up.  There, I said it again.   Please keep reading…

Ok, the real reason for this unsettling crack in my foundation?   I got some rather unsettling news the other day that dropped my jaw to the floor because I let myself get all comfortable with life and it’s been a few months since I’ve had a bone-jarring crisis.  I need another spinal surgery…my 4th, if anyone other than me is keeping count and my 3rd in a year.  I went through the five alleged stages of grief in 24 hours.  I cried all the way home (which kind of sucked because I was by myself and driving), I bargained with God, I denied it, then I was furious and the next day came acceptance.  I even wondered if God is testing me, but then thought that was selfish of me.  In plain English, it is what it is.  It is life, which can be so messy, yet wonderful too. My surgeon apologized and said she REALLY does not want to operate on me again and told me it’ll hurt like “last time.”  At least she’s honest and she’s compassionate and I do love and trust her.  She’s a damn rock star to me, yet so humble – a rare combination in a surgeon. I’ll admit the last one (posterior cervical disc fusion) hurt like a mother fucker. I cried, I nearly puked, gritting my teeth and the morphine pump didn’t cut it.  I had to really work to get through the days without losing my shit (figuratively, not literally).  Living Dilbert does not poo in hospitals.  I’ve learned that when they dissect through really important muscles, it really hurts to relearn to do stuff like, uh, USE YOUR ARMS.  I guess they’ll take part of my right pelvis out this time since they used left last time.  My back/neck are starting to look like a 3 year old on an Etch-A-Sketch. Frankly, I’m weary.  I am just healing from the last two and I’ll have to start all over and it’s scary.  There…I’m having feelings.  I lost my career. Life is very different now (but great in some new ways, like making a special new friend in all this). Stuff I never imagined.  I know there are others out there too.  Talk to me.  Tell me your story.  I’m actually considering a group therapy thing, but for this…I think I’d need to start it myself because there isn’t a “scoliosis survivors group” – I’ll have to come up with a better name than that.  I wonder if they’d mind if I said Mother Fucker a lot?

So, there it is. A touchy feely, yet painfully honest post from me to you. I just had to get it out, but damn if I didn’t fight this realization like an animal caught in a trap – kicking and screaming, but the more you fight it, the worse the pain. LST has worked hard to teach me my feelings won’t kill me and she is right, but sometimes it feels they will. Thanks for reading this one…it’s a bit long. I don’t want to lose more readers. I want to awe and delight, but be honest too.

I do feel I’m being led in a direction I don’t quite understand yet and I don’t like not knowing.  All this is causing a shift in me…I can feel it.  I think with great loss, comes the opportunity for great growth.  So, even though I seem to get shorter with each damn surgery, I’ll grow on the inside. 

Love – LD

Living Dilbert Has a Crush

Since I’m back in the fold AND have lots of blog post ideas jotted down all over, it feels damn good to be writing again. I have this whole new life I’m living and just starting to “get.”   I’ve gone from working 12 hour days under unimaginable stress due to working for 4 attorneys at a high-end firm, then to a “team” environment that I knew would ultimately fail, but was told to zip it, in which I was working for 9 attorneys at a time.  Attorneys are not dumb (one of the things I actually love about them) and they quickly realized there were only two of us that actually genuinely gave a shit about our work and continued doing the best job we could.  For a year, it was like working in a pressure cooker and you never knew how bad it’d be.  There was many a day with lunch (if any) at my desk and I wouldn’t even pee until 5!  I literally did not have time to even think – I was a machine and a damn good one too.  Well, we know my neck finally broke down.  I’m a believer that if you are constantly under unbelievable stress, your body will find some way to let it out whether you like it or not and I wound up with four bulging discs in my neck resulting in quite a LOT of pain and nearly losing the use of my left arm.   Ok, sorry…you get it.  So, I’ve now moved to being thrilled to now be on what I like to call “a sabbatical” while I heal from not one, but two spinal neck surgeries 8 weeks apart.  We all know I’m a bad ass, but they kicked my ass!

What am I even blathering about?  Oh yes, some background of where I am now.  I’m at home these days away from that life and my ONE job is to heal. I’ve never had a job like that!  I feel a bit lost and thrilled at the same time.  I’m finally moving to the more thrilled part!   I can actually do other things like get back to my blog and read other blogs and make new friends!  I still have some great supporters and friends from my early days – Shouts from the Abyss…thank you for your support and I adore you!   Brea’s Air and Notes from a Rumbly Cottage, same to you and I promise to talk about you all!

I must say though, I’ve made an amazing new friend in this one chick – Yay! More Gray!  She’s funny and has heart!   I’m so glad we’ve met and this is my public shout out to her!   She LIKES me!  I feel the same and she’s a really cool person that I genuinely like!  I was NOT expecting to make a new friend, much less one that may be my twin that my mom never told me about.  So, as she calls it, for “Woman Crush Wednesday ” – I bow to you, Yay!   💘. Check out her blog! 

https://yaymoregray.wordpress.com

Sometimes out of some really bad shit, or if I was more Buddhist I’d say, “Even from the deepest mud, the lotus still finds the strength to bloom” or something close to that.  Just as life can turn on a dime to something really hard, it can turn on a dime to something really good too!!  Who knew?! I’m learning a lot living this special life. I’m very lucky.  I’m learning to breathe and actually take care of myself rather than pandering to the whims of several asswipes at once, who are often very unappreciative, critical people…whew.  How’d I do it all those years?  Well, again…at the end of day, I kick ass and have a strong work ethic as many of you do and you must give yourself credit!   I’ll help teach you some tricks to help.

  

I still have oodles of doozies to tell regarding corporate life crazy, don’t you worry!  There are a lot of asshat stories that i hope will make you laugh and yet will be familiar in your own life and you just have to laugh, rather than jab windpipes or kick balls (but, you can pretend!).  

Next:  “5 Signs You Know a Boss Will Get Canned (and You’re Not A Least Bit Sad About It!)”

Peace out – do something for YOU today!  Get that nice coffeemaker, have a chocolate, breathe in deeply and breathe out the bad, picture the people that love you.

LD

Short Shorts: How to buy a PC

This is a typical Bad Boss story a/k/a – they make you do a bunch of stuff for nothing and then don’t listen to you! Some how it’ll end up being my friend Shout’s fault if it causes problems….at least that’s been my experience! Dick.

Shouts from the Abyss

The boss asks for your opinion. “I need a recommendation for a new computer.”

You ask a few questions. Price range? Purpose? Anything special it needs to do?

You take the task seriously. You conduct research. You think outside of the box. You are creative and expend energy. You want to do a good job.

This isn’t your specialty but you try your best. After finding what you think is a pretty good answer, you pass it on.

The next day that boss says, “My spouse told me to buy something else. Something totally different than what you recommended. I’m going with that.”

In a few days the computer shows up. It’s neither. It turns out the boss went for a third option. The very thing you cautioned against way back at the beginning.

The boss now has a stupid piece of shit but it was worth it to put…

View original post 19 more words

Change Bugs Me

Its finally sinking in that I’ve really experienced a LOT of change in my life in the last few months.  I don’t like change – it actually usually results in me becoming a raving bitch.  The biggest change lately for anyone that has kept up is my new neck – resulting from not 1, but 2 fusions in a 9 week period.  Guess what?  My body didn’t like it either! 

So, I now have 17 discs in my spine fused and I can still kick ass (but, in new ways).  Let’s just say I’m on sabbatical from my delightful life as a big firm legal secretary.  Big change – what the fuck do I do??? Well, my job now is mainly to keep healing!  Huh?  I’ve put others before myself for..uh, since age 4!  

I’m learning to LET GO of control of everything.  It’s a daily battle.  I couldn’t drive for 5 months, so I feel I’m just getting my wings.  Listen people, don’t take shit like driving and your everyday independence for granted!   If I had to paint a picture…it’d be me as a butterfly, but I’m still just about three-fourths out of my cocoon.  I met a friend for coffee yesterday and ran 2 errands blasting my music in the car and I must say, I thought, “Holy shit, this is cool! I’m out and about and listening to music on a beautiful day at 10:30 in the morning! “. I’ve never experienced such freedom  – being free in the day ?  A BIG CHANGE.  At first, I felt lost, but I’m coming around.

Ok, other changes that throw Living Dilbert into a tizz?

• Main Squeeze doing any type of furniture moving or even bringing it up..at all;
• A show I love ends;
• A restaurant or shop I love closes;
• The trend in Atlanta currently to mow everything familiar down and build a mixed-use development (stop it!!!);
• Law firm I love being acquired and turned into a whole new something corporate;
• When friends move away; 
• Rosie Perez’s bittersweet goodbye on The View (stop it, The View!!!); and
• If Life-Saving Therapist EVER tells me she’s retiring!

So, it’s a whole new world out there – did you know that? Life has really changed from 5 years ago and in a way I never expected or planned. Remember, life CAN and WILL sometimes change on a dime.  Put on your damn seatbelt.  Care to join me on my new adventures?  I’ll still have my rants that I hope you can not only identify with, but get a good chuckle as well.  I still promise snark, yet sometimes a glimpse of heart-felt feelings like today.  I’m not totally made of ice!  

Ok, now a nap.  Who AM I??  I guess we’ll find out together.  

Please let me introduce you to my new neck – ain’t it swell?

 

Growth.

Hi, all! Please don’t worry and forgive me for reblogging the last two posts, but this one is SO good. I thought about writing on the same subject (undiagnosed chronic pain) and I’m sure I eventually will in my own Living Dilbert way. 😁. However, this one really made some incredible analogies that I could not leave unworshipped and part of our blog community is sharing other voices. Living Dilbert gives this 4 stars. I laughed, too, because I’ve started taking care of all the plants in the house and I even TALK TO THEM! Honestly, I’m looking for my own place in the sun. Karma, maybe?

Indisposed and Undiagnosed

If you are stuck at home like I am most days, and are struggling to find something productive to do that doesn’t require a lot of energy – grow a plant.

You can start from scratch or you can purchase a baby bulb that has just begun its growth cycle.

Two years ago, on my twentyfirst birthday a girl I was studying with bought me a Pony Tail Palm Tree.

When I first got him, he was very small and only had three leaves poking from his root.
I neglected him.
I kept him in my bedroom, away from sunlight and rarely watered him. He began to shrivel, and two years later he was merely a tiny squishy root barely emerged from the dirt.

During my bedridden state of illness, I noticed the lack-of plant on my desk, and asked my Dad if he would help me move the…

View original post 223 more words

Future Me Is an Idiot, and I’m an Asshole

This chick has skillz….a true gift of words with animation. The part about Future Me running a marathon is SO Living Dilbert, of course my aspirations are more like, “I really need to clean off my dresser.” Anyway, please enjoy. She doesn’t cuss as much and you probably needed a break!

Love, LD

Living Dilbert Owns Herself

The new me.  Damn right, I’m going to use it with pride too.  I’m tired of being “so nice” or “too nice” (no eye rolls from you, Main Squeeze).  I was most guilty of this at work when I wasn’t sending Kick-Ass Coworker private texts about how effed up our new system of management (born 1/1/14) was NOT working.  I called it the New Regime and basically the New Regime sucked ass as a successful business model.  However, any big firm has to copy what the biggest firm in town does.  Fricking lemmings that they are. They all do it eventually, but guess what…you can’t cram square pegs into round holes no matter how hard you insist.  The New Regime in most big law firms is the “team” approach (regarding secretaries), which basically all big firms going back to the good ole secretarial pool.  It won’t last.  These “brilliant ideas” are cyclical.  They try, they fail, they do something else, 10 years later, they come up with the same idea.  Rinse and repeat.   Firms say they are doing it for “improved client service,” which is simply business-speak for saving money at the expense of client service which makes it all a hypocritical clusterfuck.

Here’s what happened in our case (and in all of them, I suspect), the hard workers get all the work on the team and the parasitic beings, such as Twatwaffle (see new members in Cast of Characters (thank you, Brea)), simply ride the wave and say every fucking time they are too busy to help, but yet they are the first to ask.  This theory was proven again and again on a daily basis.

I was once asked by HR how things were going and to please give them honest, without repercussion feedback.  I thought, “What the fuck do I have to lose?  I’m already planning Twatwaffle’s doom.”  I was painfully and professionally honest.  I’m damn good at what I do and I have something rare in a team environment.  It’s called a fucking conscience, people.  Heard of it?  Apparently, in our team of 4, only 2 of us had ever considered the concept. I’ve only met about 8 in my entire legal career that really have it to their core. One of the many things I love about Kick-Ass.  Attorneys at big firms are not stupid about getting their work done because work = money, so they brought us all their shit to do (with their OWN secretaries at their desks clipping their nails) sitting on their asses.  We waited for months in vain for HR to kick some ass.  That day never came and that’s when I began to lose hope.  Why are law firms SO afraid to cut loose of dead-ass weight?  Being sued?  Last time I checked, they have…uh, lawyers there!   WTF??? Have some BALLS, people.  It will do nothing but increase morale and productivity!  I would have proudly worked harder had it been the two of us rather than Twatwaffle and I Don’t Give a Shit Anymore and Need to Retire sitting on their asses and complaining they are simply too busy.

Ugh, I’ve had 3 spinal surgeries (I know, broken reacord.) and I’m currently on sabbatical, but I still do a fair bit of “advising” at the firm, so to speak.  The damage this one short, sweaty little piglet partner (name TBD – ideas?  I thought of Piglet, but it would be an insult to Winnie the Pooh’s friend, so I’ll use Pygmy for now) and his secretary, Twatwaffle, continue to do is astounding.  If only someone called them on their shit.  Will it ever happen?  How do you work there and live with that on a daily basis?  Some old LD ideas are bubbling up and I’m about to put them into play to assist with my therapy – junk mail catalogs.  Pygmy and Twatwaffle are about to get some catalogs at work – sex toys, penis extenders, etc.  Any good ideas from my brilliant friends out there?  I need good ole embarrassing stuff that gets their blood boiling.  Twatwaffle used to be very hefty (no offense meant to good people that have had this done and I do respect you, but she’s and asshole, so just looking for openings) until she went to Mexico to get a stomach staple and Pygmy is 5’1″ on a good day, sweaty and bald.  Discuss.