seething mass of something bad

I'm just tired from work. Loving my job does not make me hate it with a passion any less, and I still have the four hours of mandatory overtime on Saturday. I put in for some seriously random time off over the next five months adn marked it in my calendar. Besides my sister's wedding, I'm taking off for my birthday and again later in the spring, just for the hell of it.

People just--annoy me. And they tend to hit my highest level of annoyance like, *right* before they say, with no sarcasm at all, "Wow, you've been so helpful and friendly. Thank you!"

Someone gave me a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup the other day, which might be technically considered a bribe to a state official or something. Kind of. And she was like, you've been so great, Jennifer, thank you for all your help!

And so I look back, smile blankly, and wonder a little if I had a blackout of some kind. Then want to crawl under my desk for being such a brat.

Anyway, clients mumbling Spanish obscenities (hell-o, idiots, I know what the hell pendeja and puta are, 'kay? Been in Texas my *whole damn life*), throwing papers at us, and generally being complete brats. I realized today, while I was trying to think back to New Year's Day, that it's only been a week.

It feels like so much longer. Like, *weeks*.

And I think--God, the cruelest things, and that's when I get hit on the head with my sheer lack of compassion. It's unacceptable.



Sixteen. Not new. Pregnant. Not new. Ran away from home. Probably not too new. Ran away after being thrown out by mother's boyfriend. I wish that was new. Ran away from a city *two hundred miles away*. That's pretty new. Came here with her last money and nowhere to go, because she didn't know anyone in the city.

All of that together is brand new. Another client I want to take home and feed soup and find housing and perhaps beat the shit out of her mother for being so weak, so utterly needy that a *boyfriend* was more important than her child.

I can do that. I'm not anti-woman. I'm pro-mother. The second you take responsibility for new life, you bet your ass I'm going to come down hard when you shirk your job. I see too much of it. Thank God I don't work for Child Protective Services. I also have a special bitterness reserved for any ass who knocks up a girl who can't even legally vote and doesn't do shit. And statistically, he never, ever will. He'll just knock up more girls just like her.

I really, really need to get less perspective. I think perspective is what's screwing me up, to be honest. Perspective makes everything numbers, and I'm way too happy dehumanizing everything.



That pretty much kept me ubersweet to the clients for the rest of the day, even the nasty, disgusting, cruel, spoiled ones.

Every day was nightmarish and thirty to forty five minutes overtime.

Tuesday, one of the kids flipped the fire alarm. OPutside in the cold wind for thirty minutes. Filled with maniacal rage.

Today, sister picked me up from work and we ran over a *nail*. We had to change the tire. Okay, watch two very cute guys change the tire. And be asked by the gas station clerk if we needed help changing the tire. My sister is a guy-magnet. She's got that competent-helpless dichotomy going on.

My hair is *pink*. Not red, not red-brown, not brick red, but with a sheen of violet pink like an alien strawberry. I stare at it and think, what the *hell*. It won't wash out, I'm stuck with this for *six weeks*, or so it swears on the cannister. Blond Child's hair rinsed in two washings. I was double washing and my hair hates me, despite triple conditioning treatments, and I can't get this *out*. A friend invited me to a housewarming party and I'm going to be surrounded with professionals and have *pink hair*. *Curly*, *pink* *hair*.

On the surface, this might look very very shallow, and you know, it's not just surface. It's like, right to the bone. I'm just fine with this. I bought a new shirt and new shoes and that didn't appease me.

If this gets any more self-pitying, I am so going to start temper tantruming about everythign else that has gone so very very wrong. The fact that I cut my arm open on teh entertainment thingie in a huge way, so I wear bandaids on my upper arm. Child somehow got crayons in the dryer with my beige dress pants and white shirts. My VCR will not tape from the satellite. I can't find my short brown boots, and even if I did, they are scuffed. I forgot to buy more tea. And also, that show The Simple Life offends my sense of entertainment, and my sister loves it and I dont' *get* it, so I'm adding that to the List of Unfair Things.

I can put everything else in Perspective, even my hair, but no one can put The Simple Life in Perspective. Just. No.

This particular whine is, of course, utterly inexcusable. I shall use my Lana icon to mourn my pancaked sensibilities.