not monday

Why does my wednesday feel like a monday? It started with bad dreams about my parents in the wee hours of the AM, and realizing that if I have any of these waking myself up screaming nights in the next two weeks, it'll just be me and my cat (my fella's going to Italy for two weeks on Friday). Got up an hour late and found three emails in my inbox. The first was from my up to now recently "MIA" brother describing how he is extremely depressed after having tried and failed to get into rehab and to get housing assistance so he can move out of my parents' house. I want to help him but feel there isn't much I can do.

The next was from a person asking me to fax her some research paperwork stuff for work related shenanigans, work which I had been paid to do last year but which I am not being paid to do this year. And rounding out the set was a message from a woman I completely despise who is now apparently being paid to do the work I was doing - which in my eyes includes dealing with this paperwork.

Foolishly, I explained this to my advisor (boss of me and the woman I so dislike), that I feel if this other person is going to be paid to do this job, she should be the one handling today's last minute and apparently rather urgent paperwork shuffling. I had thought this was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Bird one is doing someone else's job for her. Bird two is the much more immediate doing something which I didn't really have time to do today anyhow.

My day is chock full of crap involving standing in several long lines to get the rewards of my ever increasing student loan debt and meeting with an overly procedurally minded grad student who is in charge of coordinating for the class I am TAing for this semester. I missed our meeting this week because I had a much needed appointment with my psychologist, and this young lady (the procedural one) is insisting that I meet with her to go over what I missed. What I missed is her telling people how to organize and run the class. I've got a hell of a lot more teaching experience and training than her, even in this particular class. While I don't think this means I get a by on going to the meetings for the TAs, I do think it means it's not a federal case if I happen to miss one now and then. However, we do disagree on this. And so we have wedged a meeting into what was already a busy day for me even without the last minute paperwork I am being hounded to take care of asap.

It was foolish of me to be up front with my advisor though. As much as I tend to think that she is ok with direct communication, there apparently is an effect of academic culture which tinges any interactions. The preferred mode of discourse about such matters is through subtle and what I'd consider passive aggressive behavior. This really doesn't suit me, but my style sometimes doesn't suit her. So what I thought was going to be a simple matter of clearing up some of my schedule has turned into an argument with my advisor. Thus, I need to cancel some of the stuff I was planning to do today to go in and conduct some damage control with her.

If I were a different sort of person, I'd probably be mentally smacking myself on the forehead and saying "me and my big mouth" at this point. But I an arrogant and haughty virgo cusp person. Thus I deeply feel that I am right, that this is unnecessary bullshit which affirms my belief that these people and this career path sucks in the suckiest of ways.

I'm going to have to work to find reasons to not hate people today. I don't revel in despising. It is energy consuming and I have learned to be very stingy about my energy.

Oh, I have one. Finding comments from Bubblewench and D on my blog. That was nice. And D's contribution of supercallafragalisticexpialladouchebag was indeed pretty damned awesome.