Haha....well, had dinner tonite so I won't be up missing y'all

The haughty librarian hacking up a lung.

They keep the haughty ones upstairs. All the nice ones work downstairs.

My back.

The worst is sitting. And my job is sitting. It hurts so freaking much...neither PT nor meds nor time is getting rid of the base pain. It still radiates out and just doesn't feel right.

The PTist says she thinks I irritated a disc. Well you know what? I think it's something much worse than that, at this point.

Add to that (guys plug your ears if you're sensitive to women's issues) my perimenopause, which my doctor can surely no longer deny. Don't have a period for two months, then have one for a week, then a week off, then back again.

How come it all feels related? How come all I can think is my spine and innards are slowly rotting away while the whole world worries about whether I go to work or use my time off? And the good feelings I was having, the thoughts that I was going to be OK? Ha! Very funny mudderplucker. That's a good one. Say it again.

It's OK, I'll rot and die alone and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme. I have one person in my life who actually will give me an encouraging word re: all this crap...even is she is a bully. I hate to admit it, but I guess sometimes I wish I could get a dovely coo coo, or a friendly cluck cluck, or even a there there, from my fellow hens. As is usually the case, when I finally decided to speak up, everything blew up...and when the dust settled and everyone had sung their kumbayas...LOOK...over there in the distance. It's that monkey girl. She looks so, I don't know, alone. Good, serves her right.

Did I start out about my back? Well, gee. How'd that happen?

Infi, sending out positive vibes (I'm not sure how to do the coos and clucks, but I'll try ...). Low bad pain SUCKS. It stops us in our tracks and makes the day miserable. I'm sorry yours is persisting. Pain could be due to a number of things; when it doesn't behave as 'expected', i.e. low back MSK pain, it's time to look elsewhere. Sounds like it's time for a visit to your GYN in any case. Get some workup done, figure out what's happening so that you can approach the problem together. If you've done this and been blown off, try another GYN if you can. And have your PCP keep pulling the threads together so if it's not a GYN issue (the back pain, I mean) you can keep working on that. Sorry you're still in pain. :(

Thanks. I appreciate it. I don't feel as though I deserve it, but I appreciate it.

Just feeling sorry for myself, beaten, down. This too shall pass.

I'm sure very soon I'll be my usual "I don't need anyone I don't need help I can do it all myself" which hasn't been proven to work but it serves to protect.

Ouch honey, I feel your pain.

Literally as it happens. I put my back out today doing Carrot's physio exercises with him.

Hopefully it'll pass by morning, but ya just never know with backs.

sorry about your finger infinite monkey, and your back.

Fuck those old hens and fuck their clucking, too. I'm sending you a purr-purr. ;)

Thanks you guys. :o

I want to go home and take a bath and go to bed. It's that kind of day. I sure do miss my clawfoot tub though. I have a teeny tiny tub.

IM, I am not a doctor or psych-doc, and I have never played one on TV.

In fact I have only played a few things, and all on stage. In "You Can't Take It With You", I played the son and xylophonist, and in "The Crucible" I played an evil town authority.

So I am completely a lay person on this. But you have had soooo much stress in recent times. I wonder how much of your back pain AND perimenopause are actually stress-related and not an actual injury.

I know that this is not uncommon. The mind-body connection, you know, is more powerful and complicated than we think. Like when I went on psych drugs for panic, my life-long battle with irritable bowel disorder magically went away and never came back. That's some powerful mojo.

I also know that in times of stress, my body has done some damn weird-ass things to me, and back pain was a part of that, to the point where I just had to lie down flat sometimes. But it wasn't an injury. It was all muscles tightening up and eventually they caused pain.

I played the mom in "They Run In Our Family" in Jr Hi. ;)

I also play the fool in real life!

Oh, I certainly agree about the effects of stress on the body. I think my upper back spasms are most certainly related to stress. So stress affects me somatically as well as emotionally. It's just that...they tell you to listen to your body. I'm listening and it SEEMS to be saying "you need some serious doctorin'." But I know there are things they want to eliminate first, hence the physical therapy. And at some point I end up looking like a crazed hypochondriac. I have no patience because I think if it IS something serious how far will it get before we've eliminated everything else?

I may be sensitive to that, too, because I ran into an old buddy at the funeral home. She's been fighting ovarian cancer and is back in treatment and she's so wonderful and strong but that is something that scares the hell out of me.

I'd like to actually ASK for a hysterectomy. Crazy, huh?

Right now I feel like I'm on way too many meds: the ones I've been on for depression for a long time and more recently for anxiety...and now for blood pressure and hormones and temporarily for pain.

BAsically it's making me all very tired and that doesn't help. I melted down a bit yesterday and I was so very disappointed because I actually believed for a minute that maybe, just maybe, these recent events had put things into perspective. But no, I am once again having to resign myself to the chronic nature of my, well...personality. ;)

So I revert to old crappy me and then I feel badly for being crappy me.

Hey even keel folks. Can you tell me what it feels like? I can't even imagine. It has to feel really great. I am of the envy. :)

Thanks T.

Infi, you have heaps of support around here from lots of people. You need to go back and read some of the posts where people show you their love and concern just to remind yourself. There is more than one person who cares about you here and if you're honest with yourself, you must know that.

I'm really sorry you feel so low though. I hope somehow you can pull yourself out of this hole that just seems to keep getting deeper. Honestly, I'm starting to really be concerned that you wont until you hit the bedrock, and we all know it's a long way up from there. Grab onto something before you keep slipping girl. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Whatever cliché you need to use really. Just do it. And don't forget, you are loved. You've told us many times about your wonderful family. Don't forget they will want to help you too if you let them. xxx

Oh golly gee willickers, this shouldn't drive me batty but it does.

So there's this new chick in the office. New as in she just showed up one day, in tow of our interim "get this office in shape" woman. And new as in she's like, 12.

Very sweet girl. Very sweet. Very very sweet.

I say 'like' a lot. It's actually a conscious thing: I'm either joking or using like for the weird sort of emphasis the word gives a sentence. I'm certainly aware when I'm using it. And of course being an 80s girl valley girl wantedtobe, 'like' is not a foreign word to me.

This girl is not joking, nor is she aware of it. To top it off (and this is really the kicker) she ends every sentence with an uptick in the intonation at the end...like every sentence is a question. I know that's a young person thing. But OMG (and I say that in the most valley girl way I can) it makes me bughouse. I just heard her leave a voicemail and leave her phone number. "It's 555-555-1234?" I mean, that's how it sounds. I don't know how to convey that in a post.

It's kind of funny, but her voice carries big time, and she's only two cubes down. And, really, I don't know what her job is. One time in a staff meeting she said she was *my job title with 'analyst' taken out and 'assistant' inserted.* Whaaaaaaaaaa? I didn't know I got an assistant. Good, I could use one. In other correspondence, they call her an officer (that's the preferred term for our counselors, don't know why. Counselor was fine for me at my old job.)

I just don't know what she does? I mean, like, she seems very capable? And like, she is very sweet? And I know she will, like, be very valuable to us?

(Another cow orker, another young lady...but older than this one...who is very mature and wonderful and I really like her and all that...but she says to me she says "I think it's sweet how naive she is." I said "Oh, I know, but I'm old." But what I wanted to say was "Honey, life is gonna kick both your asses up and down the street. When you've been HALFWAY around that block, you let me know." :lol:

'Cause I'm so wise and all. *snickers*

So I'm teasing about her while teasing myself. It's all good, like, you know?

Oh, and thanks Ali for your kind words, and to anyone else I may have missed. I got all discombobulated. :)

I do know. You described it so perfectly I could hear it as a ground my teeth and my way through your post, y'know? (*squeak*)

aaauuugh!

I pity you fool. earplugs? some jean claude van-damme high kick to the trachea?

good luck. please post no audio files.

Hahahahaa! I promise I won't post audio.

I will get a little radio with earphones for those times I can hide in my spreadsheets.

Peter: Milton? Hi. Uh... Could you turn that down just a little bit?
Milton: But I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from 9:00 to 11:00.
Peter: Yeah. I know you're allowed to. I was just thinkin' maybe like a personal favor, you know.
Milton: Well, I-I-I told Bill if Sandra's going to listen to her headphones while she's filing, then I should be able to listen to the radio while I'm collating, so I don't see...
Peter: OK.
Milton: ...why I should have to turn down the radio.
Peter:Yeah. All right. Ok.
Milton: I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume...
Peter: Thanks.
Milton: ...from 9:00 to 11:00.

There you go. I bet there's a spot for her in the storage basement. :p:

Ohhhh C'mon IM. Send her a card. Perhaps something like this...

G'day, C-man! How are things?

They were good. Turned to shit. Nother day. Try again tomorrow.

Cheer up Classic. I still love you. :)

:(

one of these days, things will work.

I'm irritated that Dazza has been travelling a lot lately doing consulting work and not a single one of those fuckers has paid up yet. It's annoying because for one thing, he's away from all of us, so it'd be nice if they'd acknowledge that. For another thing, one of the 'jobs' he had to do recently was to be an expert witness, so he doesn't get paid for that, but those arseholes haven't even reimbursed him for his expenses such as accommodation and travel yet and it was nearly a month ago. grrrr... Dazza's testimony won them their case too. You'd think they'd show some gratitude. :angry:

It seems to me that Finance Departments work in geologic periods of time rather than using normal calendars.

I'd hit the 'like' button if we had one.

Serious question, am I misogynistic for being sick and tired of working with women? It seems like we can't get through a week without some needless drama involving pecking order (sexist language but accurate) etc... They are all mostly decent to me, but the woman on woman bitchery is just tiring.

Not yet; but, don't complain to them or you'll give them a reason to unite and you will be.

There is - or was - a feminist myth that women are cooperative and mutually supportive, and all the hierarchical bully bullshit is an essentially male trait.

I have worked in a university library, with mostly female staff, some sections all female.

I no longer believe this myth. Some sections were frankly vicious. I declined a promotion (more hours, better rate) because the all-woman team I would be joining was deeply internally hostile.

Mind you, despite the massive preponderance of women at lower and middle levels, the top two positions were held by men. Still.

(Hey, guys, you reckon we can blame the glass ceiling on women's mutual sabotage? ;) )

I've come close enough to trouble by not joining in. I would be nicely f*cked if I joined team bitchery. I don't really understand the rules so I try not to play. Guys seem better at embracing their role in a hierarchy to impress the next bigger dog, the ladies I work with are actively sabotaging one another to open up spots to climb into. Maybe it's just a sick culture, but it is a female created culture.

I think the main gender difference is whether it's a smack in the face or stab in the back.

hmm... I've had this pain between my shoulder blades.

I've worked in teams/settings in which I was the only (or very nearly) female in the room and also in settings where most of us were female and there was a sole or very few men.

In general terms I didn't notice much of a difference in the way each kind of group worked. But there were different 'rules' of interaction. The same outcome (everybody settled into a place in the hierarchy so that work could commence) was achieved through a different set of interactional tools and followed a different timeline.


[eta] Girls grow up receiving a lot of messages about what is typical female behaviour. One of the truisms about girls is that they are more psychologically and conversationally vicious than the boys. Boys will batter their enemies and once the fight is done it's done, but girls will slowly wear down their target through verbal and psychological bullying. That was my experience of girls' bullying. Though, it was also my experience of how boys bully girls.

There's been a bit of a cultural shift though. And schoolgirls who are bullied nowadays are almost as likely to be beaten up by the bully as a boy would be. Boys on the other hand have seemingly taken to the role of psychological cyberbully with great gusto.

A lot of what seems quintessentially female behaviour may be learned. Taught to us from our cradle and earliest exposure to our parents' culture. reinforced by personal experience, as everybody else plays out the same lessons.

You've just described the Nursing culture.

it's sick as fuck and the sicker/meaner you are - the higher up the ladder you go. Yeah. I'd rather work with men any day of the week. And yes, I realize how ironic and misogynistic that sounds but Dana is right. Women wear you down till you're ready to jump off a cliff'; boys just punch each other and get over it.

Chinese water torture vs. Napalm. I like a nice clean start myself so I prefer the Napalm. Get it out there, deal with it and be done. Let's not "ignore Janice" or be secretly mean to her and smile to her face until we drive her to insanity.

As a slight aside, i have to say that the one place where I'd say men are equally, if not more, vicious in those terms than women is the world of politics.

I have never met so many whiny little ballbag bitches, with their plots and gossiping in factions and fucking under the breath whispers and giggles when someone is talking in a meeting and all agreeing to blank someone when they come into a room etc etc etc.

Well, I think what we have here, is that when money, prestige, or power are at stake, a significant portion of people (regardless of gender, race, age, whatever) act like ruthless amoral sociopaths. The more power and prestige, the more ruthless pricks it attracts, and being a ruthless prick does in fact cause you to survive and prosper, at least in the short term. Politics is probably the worst for attracting such types and allowing them to prosper.

(not everyone who is in politics is like this, or for these reasons, though.)

Well said.

As I said in my earlier post, though that particularly savage psychological bullying corresponds with my childhood experience of girls, it also corresponds with my experience of being bullied by boys too. But they didn't seem to bully each other in that same way.

Actually, it seemed to me that the boys would use just enough to psychological warfare to draw the girls attention to someone then sit back and let them do the rest of the work.

Shit. She's onto us.

This phone. I have lost two thoughtful posts because the connection is fizzling in and out again and it signs me out.

Short posts

This phone is going to accidentally be under the wheel of my car today. Oops, invoking my insurance. Give me one that works.

And i cant figure out how to copy paste text. :mad:

Not really gonna run over it sigh iguess i will call again tomorrow from work

They want calls from another phone so they can trouble shoot

The thing is the phone makes me a nervous wreck and esp talking to techies. I always feel stupid. Anxiety issue for me.

:lol2:
According to that, I think I was married to a woman all those years ... :lol:

Max found a gummi pizza in the kitchen drawer. I was trying to order the groceries online so I asked Aden to open it for him. So they managed to have a yelling squealing argument over it in the kitchen.

I'm not sure which one of them irritated me the most!

That's what you get for not eating it when they weren't looking.:haha:

Yucky! I don't like gummy stuff. :(

Thank you. I thought I was the only one. Don't get the gummy thing.

Except for jellybeans and black licorice. You can keep the scandinavian fish or whatever they are. Why are they foreign fish? Don't we manufacture good Gummy in the US? Have we lost our edge in the Gummy market? Are we shipping all our Gummy jobs overseas?

I'll be here all week. Try a squishy little blue bear.

Wine gums are nice.

Dad.

Yes I get that he is 72 and has health issues and is currently trying to put up a blind in the bathroom.
A blind that fell down yesterday afternoon when I used it - but I swear I used it normally and if it hadn't been me it would have been the next person.
And anyway I offered twice to help because of all of the above.

But he has gone into sulk mode.

And then I had a sneezing fit.
I am still full of cold.
And I get excessive sneezing from his side of the family.

He yells out, "Did you call?"
"No" I shout back, "just sneezing!"

"Wait, wait, I missed that, hang on..... What did you say?"

"I was just sneezing Dad, not calling."

"Try getting yourself a hanky."

WHAT? Miserable old git. Having a hanky (or a tissue) would not stop me sneezing!
And this from a man who also sneezes all day long!

Still. Just told Mum the story and we had a secret little chuckle.
So I guess it's not irritating me any more.

you got 'excessive sneezing' from his side of the family? How can you possibly know this? is there a book somewhere in England that counts who sneezes what amount?????

Now I think you're just making things up.

No, honestly.
I have a photic sneeze response.
Ste has it too, but I have it worse than either of them.
And it is inherited.

I have a feeling it is crossed with something in my mother's family.
Well, spread the blame around, why not?

My ex has it; I don't. All four of our kids have it. They, and my ex, sneeze upon moving from indoors (or a car) into sunlight, or if it's cloudy and then the sun suddenly comes out. I'd say it's most likely an autosomal dominant trait.

Well...ya learn a new thing every day.

I think Sir Isaac Newton had that, too.

I've got it, but only in extreme situations, usually when exiting a movie theater mid-day.

I thought everyone had that. I have it too.