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

 

 

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

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?

 

Do NOT Tell Me to Do a Yeast Cleanse

Angry and Itchy!

I have hives. I think about people that piss me off…I get hives. I stumble in the mornings….I get hives. I diet…I get hives. People talk to me…I get hives. I think about having to talk to other people…I get hives. Do NOT tell me I need to do a GD cleanse. I’m not allergic to anything…except, maybe anger. I’m just plain angry…and that beats sadness most days.

I am a lucky girl in many aspects. I have a loving home with an incredible partner, I have a great job (now), I have a car, I have food, I can walk….yet I’m angry and when I’m not angry, I’m dead inside. It is starting to get old. I miss being carefree and silly. I’m sure Main Squeeze misses it too! Don’t think I’m not trying, but it’s gonna take time apparently. It was the same when my sweet Mom died a few years ago. Really bad stuff happens and you get BOILING, FIRE-SPITTING ANGRY because that helps a little and simply because you are so damn foot-stomping mad that you have no say in the matter. It just is.

Ok, I find myself getting pretty deep here. Maybe if I approach the problem at hand by challenging myself – things will get better. Today I challenge myself not to tell anyone to go fuck themselves or to NOT punch anyone in the face. Think that is doable? I sure hope so, because with my fused back, I don’t think jail would be good for me.

Just wanted to stop in and say that this is where I am – I hope I can still provide some smiles. Today, I came across a blog that made me FEEL something, so for all of you out there having any kind of emotional struggle – this is for you. Please read and look at the pictures – it’s purely genius. I’ll be here looking for my little bit of corn.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Coming Soon: Ten Reasons Living Dilbert Would Not Fair Well in Prison

The Whatever Factor

The Whatever Factor

Hi!  Are you having a good week so far?  I simply must share something that will help – I mean it – will HELP your Monday!  I’m not a giant reblogger and it is nothing personal to anyone, but damn, I could not pass this up.  Izzy is an old blogging friend and she is on a hell of a roll.  Wanted to share.  She has total Living Dilbert sass or I have The Whatever Factor sass, not sure.. .but, please read and enjoy!  I’m still chuckling and LD needed a chuckle today!

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Diets Sadden Me

Back update and I know health stuff can be tiring, but you have my word that I’ll keep it funny (I hope you think so!)   – Found the perfect surgeon – a woman, and she’s amazing.  I was in awe my last appointment as she used all the words regarding adult idiopathic scoliosis that I know so well.  I have found the ONE.   However, it isn’t all romance and kisses.  She looked at me and matter of factly stated – “Blah, blah, blah, probable surgery, 46 degrees…blah, and then looked me right in the eye and told me that I must lose 15 lbs.  Pardon?  I even looked behind me…but, she was talking to me.  “It will be good for your back and even better if we go forward with surgery…”   I heard many things my last appointment, but this one is sticking out like a fricking neon sign in the desert.   Doesn’t she realize that when my back feels like I’ve been shot by a 12-guage that I need a chili dog with cheese?   I need those crispy perfect little tater tots?  I hung my head. 

Life can be tough, but I have to suck it up.  It is ironic that the ONE thing (besides Main Squeeze) that brings me so much joy is being removed from the picture for quite some time.  You don’t understand, I love to eat badly.  I eat like a guy to the delight of most of my friends.   I try to like healthy stuff, but after 46 years…that probably ain’t gonna change.  Sigh. 

This weekend I attended a 3 year old’s birthday party.  It was so precious, but all I could think was “For the love of God, can’t some kid bring in a Happy Meal?”  I envisioned knocking them aside and stealing all the contents.  Hey, I’d give them the toy.   I push the ugliness aside and smile sweetly as I have yet another slice of cucumber and want to puke in my mouth.

Being a responsible grown up is hard sometimes, isn’t it?   I want to stamp my feet and cry til I get a tater tot!

Breathing Life into Living Dilbert

Ok, I think I’ve caught my breath.  Thank you all for waiting for me and
being so nice.

First, I’ve been reading all your blogs and have been so happy to keep
up with you.  I can keep up even better now because I am not in a
bone-numbing depression that makes me want to gauge my own eyes out and throw them at people.  

My life has taken such a turn.  I LOVE the new job and it couldn’t be
any more different from the days at You Really Should Retire, I Don’t Do Crap and Good Ole Boy LLC.  I’ve been here about 9 weeks now and I have to fight the urge to hug my new bosses every day.  We’ll get into that more
later. 

How have I managed some of my PTSD?  I actually have it…I’m not
kidding.  I’ve had many nightmares, found myself filled with anxiety and
the desire for revenge, and so on.  Classic symptoms!  

I may have done something a bit naughty.  You know how Bad Boss hates
recycling and anything good in the world?  He also hates people that drink green tea.  Don’t ask me why
the man is the way he is, but he hates people for the stupidest reasons I’ve ever heard!   I went to a
website where you can order all types of free catalogs and let me tell
you – he has a ==load of them coming his way!   To the old workplace, his home, etc.  He’ll never have another question about the following topics again – recycling, recycling at work, Big Boy suits, teas of every kind, erectile dysfunction and so on.  Oh, the look of hate on his face when he gets junk mail fills me with pure delight!

You know I have to find my delight in subtle ways.  I wish I could say I’m a big enough person to let bygones be bygones, but to hell with that! 

I won’t make this one too long, but I’M BACK and thank you again for the breather!   You inspire me.

Next Time – I Can’t Poo at this Job….

A special thank you to Heart of Gold for riding my ass…..I still had 1 hour and 55 minutes!

Main Squeeze reporting in

Hi LD fans — I felt that you all needed an update…

Living Dilbert is getting used to Living Life again!  YAY – with Bad Bosses out of the picture, we are able to enjoy life with a cup half full feeling.  Actually, what you all may not know is that Living Dilbert is a “cup half full” kind of gal.  But not with Bad Boss #1, #2, and #3 sucking the life out of her good disposition.

Let me fill you in on her recent full of life activities: she started her new job and is working her ass off –AND loving it!  We have just finished an awesome vacation — we ate at yummy restaurants, spent time with friends, saw a show, shopped, read and just chilled.  All this because Bad Boss #1 was not around to give her excuses as to why this wouldn’t be a good week for him for LD to take her vacation!

And as I sit here – knowing that I don’t have her gift of gab — LD wants you to know how much she appreciates you and still enjoys reading your blogs.

Day of Joy

I almost called it Day of Euphoria, Ode to Joy….endless.  I cannot even put into words how happy I am feeling today.  It is my LAST day at I Do Crosswords, Little A-Hole & I’m Just a Good Ole Country Boy LLP.   Having to stifle my massive screams of delight. 

How did the resignation go?   Certainly better than expected and since I have vowed never to lie to you or to embellish…it was downright anti-climactic.  I did have to tell Bad Boss that I needed to chat and that is corporate lingo for “I’m quitting your ass.”  He figured it out prior to our talk and was quite decent and wished me the best of luck.  He DID say, “well, I understand since things around here haven’t really gone as planned.”   REALLY?  “Haven’t gone as planned?”  How about it has been a 2.5 year living nightmare??   I can tell you that unless things change, which they won’t, this pooh hole will not be open in two years.

Ok, you will get more on this later because I suspect I will be feeling PTSS for many, many days.  

Some highlights from Thursday?  (I was off Friday and went to see Big Brother for the weekend):

I told Rough n Tough I was leaving and I was kind, gracious and decent.  Her response?  “I really don’t care where you are going.”  Uh…ok, and I walked off .   How about this?  I know you drink during the day and in your car on the way home and I’m going to tell!!!!  

Useless Coworker started crying the second Bad Boss told her, which he insisted on doing before I could get to her.  She cried every time she looked at me and had to go home at 3:50 because she was so upset.  Oh…she has many, many reasons to cry.  One big one is that she should have listened to me the 1,000 times I tried to teach her things that would help her.  Hindsight is a bitch.

Bad Boss #2 has not spoken to me or looked at me since.   Bad Boss has run around like a chicken all day so far asking me questions and I think reality is sinking in for his sorry ass.  I’m trying to stick with the good karma thing and already typed detailed instructions on the things I did that he needs to know.   Oh yes, he’s already lost the email and asked me to resend and to print it out for him.

Oh, the troubles they are going to have….and here I go again, stifling my SCREAMS OF DELIGHT!   More to come….

THANK YOU for your amazing emails, thoughts, and general shared hatred for these yahoos.  You’ve kept me alive.  I am NOT going anywhere, ok?   I will keep posting!   I still have LOTS to say.

To Bad Bosses:

SEE YA, you ungrateful, “my shit doesn’t stink”, stupid, thoughtless, little, judgmental, mean-spirited, selfish little elitist assholes.  I hope you make many realizations in the next coming weeks, but I suspect you won’t due to all of the above.   May they all give you a small pang of regret.  Furthermore, kiss my effing ass.