That 4-letter L Word

I just started dating the greatest man I have ever met. He dedicated the above song to me via Facebook. I am definitely smitten!

Wednesday Watch!

tired picture, here^^^

My Day at Work

So, today was a horrible day at work.  No one seems to care that this week is National Customer Service Week, and so everyone was demanding to have things done their way.  Well, guess what, your utility company isn't Burger King.  You can't have it your way!  When a utility says a situation is what it is...it doesn't mean that said situation is actually something else.  Unless your customer service agent is speaking a foreign language, it should be pretty clear what they're explaining to you.  So why is it people ask multiple times for things they cannot have - like more time, or a waiver, or just one more day...it's just one more day, can't I have one more day?  Umm, no...you haven't made a payment in two months, what makes you think you can have one more day now that the technician is on your front porch.  Get real, people!  Anyway, I had to deal with customers wanting what they cannot have and customers wanting to speak to supervisors because...well, sir, if you're a supervisor, then I'm quite sure there's a supervisor above you who can give me what I want.  That statement is only half true.  Yes, there are other supervisors above me...but no, they won't bow to your whims either.  Pay up or sit in the dark!  Anyway, I am sooo glad to be home after talking to people who either can't or won't pay their bills...and people who write checks knowing they will bounce!  God, how retarded can you be!

What makes a good shoe!

Aside from that, I had to get my brand new $130.00 Skechers Shape Ups replaced because of shoddy craftsmanship.  You know those cloth loops you slip the laces through.  They're supposed to be sewn into the shoe.  Apparently, on one shoe, an entire run of cloth loops were tacked on with glue and not sewn in.  The entire run had not seen the point of a needle.  So what happened after not even four weeks of wearing them?  The loops pull free and I'm having to try to walk to work without either losing my shoe or falling face first onto the sidewalk.  I don't think so.  So I went back to the Skechers store, showed them the missing thread and the tacky glue, and they replaced the shoes.  They better have.  I don't know how that got passed quality control, but WOW!

Anyway, Ciao for now.  Modern Family and Cougar Town later tonight!

National Customer Service Week

So, apparently this week is National Customer Service Week where Customer Service Employers show appreciation for the grunts who do the dirty job of offering up customer satisfaction every day of their life.  Anyways, I think it's cool.  You get to have fun activities, free food, prizes, and awards.  Though, I could really use a raise.  Anyway, I really don't think the average joe comprehends what Customer Service Agents have to go through and put up with to make sure every customer is satisfied...or even what satisfaction really means.

Gone are the days of the old saying, "the customer is always right."  Now, as it should alway be is, "prove your case or accept the consequences".  People just don't understand that.  This is not the 1950's, this is the 2000's.  There is a lot of white collar crime going on and thus a lot of new laws to combat white collar crime.

So when a Customer Service Agent asks for what seems to be a boat load of information before getting to the reason behind your call, don't huff under your breath and act like your time is being taken up.  Smile and be grateful that someone is taking the time to make sure they are talking to the correct person.

We are here to help you, not to make your life miserable.  You are calling us for help, not the other way around.  So when you pick up that phone and are wanting to inquire into ways your utility company can help you pay your bill, remember that the advice we give you is based on current available information and your own account history.  So don't take your frustrations out on us, we are not responsible for how you pay your bills.  In other words, don't shoot the messenger because you stuck yourself with your own pen.

Anyway, for the rest of this week, I want to ask that you all smile, bite the bullet, swallow your pride, and show us Customer Service Agents a little respect and appreciation...cuz God knows you won't do any other time of the year.

Wednesday Watch!

Watchin' my shows! Modern Family was pretty good.  Not as funny as the premiere but I'm hangin' in there.  Next up is Cougar Town!  We'll see how Miss Cox works it out!

Wow, tomorrow is October 1st.  Eighteen days until my 34th birthday.  I have lived a third of my life and I think it's finally starting to come together.  'Course I'm tired as heck this week but I guess I'm not some twenty-something anymore.  Geez, I sound like some ol' dude.  I need to go out and live it up.  I need suggestions.  Got any?

ahh, another Moday...ggrrr

Not Me!  But I did take the pic!

I am so beat.  I did something like 50+ work hours last week.  I cleaned my apartment on Saturday and I was out a good portion of the day yesterday.  I am so sleepy-tired.  Thankfully, I won't be doing overtime this week. Now if I can get my butt to the grocery store and do some shopping, I'll be great!  Here's something I came across over the weekend.  I got a kick out of it.

Mackenzie's Story Helps Me With My Own

Working Monday thru Friday 9a-6p, I miss alot of news related things.  Not that I keep up with the news on a regular basis.  So, imagine my surprise when I heard Mackenzie Phillips' story of her incestuous relationship with her father.  I'm still reading up on all the reports floating around the internet but I can tell you I'm already tired of this 'She said, He did' crap that's going on.  Do I believe it happened? Yes.  Should you believe it that it happened?  Yes.  Why?  Because it's not your place to think otherwise.  Whether she's the daughter of a celebrity, a celebrity herself, or an average Jane Doe on the street, when someone makes a claim like this, you believe them!  Yes, in the American judicial system, people are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.  But, as in most cases like these, the system sucks!

From personal experience, the 'alleged' perpetrator is guilty until proven innocent.  From personal experience, I had my mother and my first stepfather who physically abused and neglected me between the ages of 2 and 4.  It was so extreme that at the physical age of 4 years, I had the mental age of 4 months.  I couldn't walk, talk, feed myself, or use the facilities.  My father and stepmother had to rescue me and bring me up to speed.

Later, from personal experience, between the ages of 8 and 13, I was back with my mother who had married again.  Her husband, my second stepfather, was a sheriff of a Texas county.  He was a quiet man, strict and disciplined, but he loved his family.  He upheld the law in both his county and his home.  My mother became the manager of the small county airport where we lived.  Seeing as how we lived in the country, I had the room to explore and roam and feel free.  I was part of Boy Scouts and 4-H and even learned to play tennis and my mom and stepdad taught me to garden, hunt, fish, and train dogs in obedience.  It seemed that, as country as we were, we were a good family.

When I was 13, while visiting my dad during summer vacation, my dad asked me if I wanted to move in with him and my stepmother and their kids.  Citing his reason as wanting to re-establish a father-son relationship again, I agreed.  I don't really know what caused me to say yes, though there were lots of chores to do living in the country, I was relatively happy.  But something made me say yes.  My mother was devastated of course.  She was so mad she wouldn't speak to me for a long while.

During a summer vacation visiting her when I was sixteen, my mother confessed to me that she was having an affair and, if he ever found out, my stepfather would kill my mom.  I was shocked and was seriously close to returning to live with her once again.  But, again, something told me to stay with my dad.  Two weeks before I graduated high school, I was staying the weekend with my grandparents when we received a phone call from my stepfather.  My mother had been murdered and it was believed to have been by the man she had been having an affair with.  Of course, we all gathered together to support one another and prepare the funeral.  The day after my mother's murder, my stepfather took his own life leaving behind a suicide note stating it was he who had killed my mother.

Needless to say, I was floored, literally.  When I first heard of her death, I couldn't stand.  I fell to my knees and cried at the top my lungs.  This news did the same.  After the service, we returned home.  I skated through the last week of my senior year.  At graduation, a time that should make you happy and proud, I was filled with sorrow and anger and barely participated in the graduation dinner held by my family.  And then, two weeks after my graduation, my father and stepmother announced their divorce.  My head still swimming from the previous month, I was again given the choice to stay with my dad or go with my stepmom.  Seeing as how she needed more help than he, I decided to move with my stepmom.  Afterward, I proceeded to go on with life and try to make sense of it all.

For the next 10 years, I lived in a number of places.  For the first three, I lived with my stepmom until it was time for me to get my own place.  I moved closer to my sister; took an attempt on my life when I felt it had become too bleak but then decided to live and took steps in the dead of night that to ensure that I did; moved closer to my grandparents and found a partner with whom I stayed for six years - which is an entire post on it's own and evidence that children seek out partners similar to their parents.  With him, I kinda fell off the map but afterwards, I fell in with my father and his family again.

It was during this time, caring for my ailing uncle for 18 months, that I found out that there was something more sinister behind my earlier idyllic country life.  Ever since I came out a short time after I graduated, my father and I had not been on the best of terms. He disowned for a few years until his new wife talked him out of his bull-headedness and put him on the road to accepting me regardless of who or what I may be.  In fact, I only came to him for help with my ex- because I had nowhere else to go.  I had been homeless with my ex and I wasn't about to be so again.  So I came back home, so to speak, and agreed to take care of my uncle although I knew it was because neither of his brother's (my dad and other uncle) would do it themselves.

Anyway, it was during this time that my father decided to have a real talk to me.  A deep talk, like on the level of the birds and the bees.  The subject, to my surprise, was my mother.  Something he never talks about.  First, he asked me if I missed my mother and how I felt that my stepfather murdered her.  It was a sudden talk, so I had no time to prepare or not be uncomfortable.  He then asked, again out of the blue, how I knew I was gay and if I believed I was born gay.  At that point, I had had enough and asked him what this was all about because, let's face it, the guy has never given me more than three sentences at a time.  He then stated that during the time we were all at my mom and stepdad's place after their deaths, he found letters written between the two about things that had happened between them, some involving my sister and I.

At first I was skeptical, thinking he was just trying to smear the memory of my mother in some ugly attempt to make himself look better in my eyes.  But he produced these letters from a coat pocket, they were messages between my mother and stepfather.  My stepfather thanking my mother for not telling anyone what he was doing with my sister and I; and my stepmother actually apologizing to him for not being able to satisfy him the way a wife should.  In short, instead of getting us a way from that man, my mother wrote us off to him.  How do I know that was written in those letters was true?  Because from that day on I have had flashbacks, starting from that day.  Those letters triggered memories I had locked away years ago.  Memories of things no parent should do with a child.

I know what it's like to be a survivor.  To be helpless, to lose trust, to be used by the very people who should protect you, I know what it's like to have it all swept under the rug and hidden.  I have nothing to do with any of my family anymore.  I have changed my name and moved without giving them any information on my whereabouts.  Why am I posting this?  Because it's my story and I hope to help others with it.  Those who do not wish to know my story or can't be bothered with it, I wouldn't want to know.  It is a way to heal and voice my defiance now since I could not then.  My family failed me.  I won't fail myself.

What to do when you first get paid

What is it about Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream that has me going back any time I have a spare three bucks?  I swear to you, the first thing I do after getting paid is by one, if not two, servings of Chunky Monkey.  It is my all-time favorite flavor from Ben & Jerry's.  My second fave is Key Lime Pie.  I can't resist it.  It just sucks me in - the alluring taste of banana ice cream with chocolate chunks and walnut pieces. Being a banana lover might have something to do with it but this ice cream is just sooo good.  Anyway, that's my payday splurge? What do you splurge for on payday?