This is a repost from a couple of years ago, before anyone was reading my stuff.

Dear Mr. Boss Man,

Thank you for the raise the other day. I really appreciate it. Thank you also for the glowing review. I am not used to someone saying such wonderful things about me or my work. I appreciate the positive feedback that you give to me each day and I appreciate that you are a very positive person and can admit when you are wrong. That has been rare in my working career, and frankly in life in general.

However, when you suggested that I crank it up a notch you worried me. I am cranking away and as far as I can tell you think so too. I have had every assignment in not only on time but usually long before it is due.

When you suggested that I arrive earlier and leave later you almost made me cry. You see you want the one thing I don’t have anymore to give. You want more of my time. You mentioned that you arrive at 7 am so that you can leave at 3 and golf and fish like you so like to do. And that is great. You do indeed put in a great amount of time in the office. I would love to be there at 7 am right along with you. The problem is I wake up at 5am, I shower, I get dressed, I try to have a moment with coffee and Matt Lauer before I have to wake my children and get them ready to move.

My son is nearly impossible to motivate early in the morning and needs multiple wake up calls but once he is actually out of bed he manages on his own. My daughter needs a little more help. She can dress herself but often times she puts her clothes over her bed clothes and I don’t figure this out until we are walking out the door. She needs to bring her security lovies with her to daycare and sometimes they aren’t ready to go.

I need to prepare lunches and check to make sure that all homework is in the backpack and ready to present to the teacher. I also need to make sure the dogs have been fed, even though it is not my job, and that they have water for the day. I try to throw in a load of laundry so that when I stop at home during my lunch hour to let the incontinent dog outside, I can throw the laundry into the dryer. Because it sits for several hours after drying I have some ironing to do as well.

You have been incredibly understanding when I have left to take my ailing mother to her doctors appointments and I appreciate your suggestion that I carve out a little “me time” so I can go and see my doctor for the post-op appointment I was supposed to have three months ago. The problem is there is no “me time” unless it infringes on sleep time, which there is little left to take from, or the time I am committed to you. The idea of golfing or fishing is alien to me. When I leave the office I am thinking about the full time job at home I am about to start.

I was a happy employee before you gave me my raise. I had a flexible schedule which allowed me to take care of the things that are priorities in my life. That was one of the selling points of the job you offered me. Actually, it was the only selling point since the wage and benefits are rather small. You said that the job was flexible and mobile and as long as everyone completed their assignments you weren’t interested in punching a time clock. I took the job only after telling you I was a single mom caring for my own mother. You seemed okay with that.

Now instead of being a happy employee I will be one who arrives early and leaves on time. I can only afford to have before school daycare, I am sorry. Actually I can’t even afford that but if I cut out what is left of my entertainment and clothing budget I should be able to swing it. I will be the time punching employee. I will do my time, a good portion of it killing time on the internet like everyone else in the office, not happily but I will do it.

I will leave the office and I will rush to pick up my children before the daycare and school close. I will run to the nearest fast food place spending money I don’t have so that I can put a hot meal on the table. I will feel guilty about this and worry that I am causing my children heart disease but since I will have no energy to cook a healthy meal that no one wants to eat it is what will happen.

I will go to sleep alone. No one will hold me and tell me that it will all be okay or that what I am doing is for the greater good of the family. I will constantly second guess myself about the amount of time I am spending on my kids compared to my job.

I can do all these things, maybe not as happily as I was but I can adapt to the new schedule eventually. What I have a problem with is not getting paid. A raise is a really nice thing. But if you can’t pay me when you are supposed to and blame it on the fact that you were traveling and unable to call payroll in even though you have a phone surgically attached to you ear, I have a hard time buying that.

You didn’t mention to me if you were going to cover my overdrafts. Since you said “It’s too bad but there is nothing I can do about it” I get the impression that I am left to handle them myself.

I like my job, I like the people I work with, I think they like me. I think I do a pretty good job and the clients all seem to like me. I don’t want to quit. But I do want to get paid.

For crying out loud terrorists, stop trying to bomb New York City!

Why do you hate us so much? When I say ‘us’ I don’t really mean us since I don’t live anywhere near NYC, but I do mean ‘us’ as in U.S.

Stop it, you’re pissing me off.

Midtown Manhattan is closed at the moment because of a suspicious cooler left on the street. This follows the failed car bomb attempt last weekend and a whole bunch of other failed attempts since 9/11.

Don’t you have a better place to blow up? Surely there is some third world country that no one knows about that you could blow up just to get your jollies?

Whoever you are, and you know who you are, setting off a cooler isn’t going to stop us. People in NYC are tough. They eat guys like you for breakfast and don’t even burp. Didn’t you see The Godfather? How about Escape From NY? Hell, there are tons of movies out there that you should order from NetFlix right now before you strap another bomb on yourself.

I’m sick and tired of you terrorists messing up my weekends. All the shows get preempted and a gal can only watch so many hours of a shot of a cooler. It’s just not that interesting.

And let me tell you one more thing Mr. Terrorist wannabe, just because we have a peace loving president doesn’t mean that he won’t take you out if he has to. Cuz he totally will, just watch.

UPDATE

Well, it would seem that some guy just left his cooler on the street on accident. The dude probably walked across the street to get a hot dog or something and someone saw an abandoned cooler and freaked out.

Shows over, nothing to see here.

This is what terrorism is. Even when those bad guys weren’t trying to blow us up today we think they are because somebody walked across the street to grab some lunch and didn’t want to haul his cooler with him, he probably had a good spot picked out and wanted to hold it with the cooler.

What do you bet someone from a terrorist group tries to claim responsibility for this? Dudes are phoning it in these days.

I have the worlds smallest kitchen. I don’t know the dimensions but it’s so small I can’t fit a kitchen table in it. I used to have a huge kitchen with a magnificent island right in the middle of it. I had beautiful bar furniture tucked underneath the island so no one had to trip over the stools because they stuck out.

I want my old kitchen back. Not only did it have a wonderful island, which really means it had tons of counter space, it also had two sinks. My little puny kitchen has just one sink. One sink that is always getting filled with dirty dishes because someone can’t find the dishwasher.

I also have the ugliest counters. This horrible green color that makes me think of the 80′s for some reason. Luckily there is so little room that the kitchen appliances take up all the counter space so you really can’t see how butt ugly it is.

I don’t know how to solve this problem short of moving. I don’t want to move. I like the rest of the house (except for the siding) and I love my neighbors. I can live with ugly ass counters and one sink and no island. If I have to.

I’ve considered busting out a wall and making it bigger but that seems like a lot of work and more importantly a lot of money. But, if I busted out my back wall I’d have to do something with the ugly siding.

Any suggestions?

Last Thursday was Earth Day. I know this because everyone was talking about offsetting their carbon footprint. I learned that my blog gives off 8lbs of CO2 each year and that my hair dryer emits 57 lbs of the stuff.  I won’t ruin your day by telling you what your car, air conditioner, lawn mower or dishwasher puts out.

I don’t worry about offsetting my carbon footprint and I certainly am not going to buy carbon offsets, though I wish I had come up with a scam like that. Selling carbon offsets is much like the church’s practice of selling indulgences for sins. At least when you buy a carbon offset, a tree gets planted.  I am in complete agreement with George Carlin regarding saving the earth. I am not going to stop driving my truck, using my hair dryer (no one wants that) or writing my blog.

Luckily for me they were giving away carbon offsets at my daughter’s school last week. She came home with three saplings in a, get this, plastic bag!

Daughter came home with three saplings. Two evergreens and an oak tree. Stapled on the bag were directions for planting the trees. Basically dig a hole big enough so the roots aren’t all balled together, cover with dirt, water and wait for 20 years or so to have a little shade.

What it doesn’t say on the bag is that in order to plant the oak tree I need to call my utility company to find out where my gas and water lines are so I don’t hit one of their rusty pipes and break it, causing a problem. The directions also don’t say anything about where to plant the trees. I know how big an oak tree can get if I don’t run over it with the lawn mower but I don’t know how fast the evergreen trees are going to grow or how much space they might need. I don’t know what kind of damage the acidic needles are going to do to my grass or other plants that were there first. I don’t feel like doing a whole lot of research for these things either.

My front yard is the size of a postage stamp and I already have a maple tree in it. I also have two lindens on the boulevard in front of my house. One of them might be falling sometime soon but that still leaves very little room for a big ass oak tree. My back yard is only slightly larger than my front yard and I already have a maple tree there that creates more raking than I would like. I have lilacs and peonies and other shrubbery. The only place to put a big ass oak tree is right in the middle of the yard, at the bottom of the slide. I just don’t think it will work.

I could probably bring them up to the lake where we have more room for these carbon offsets. The problem is I have to keep them alive until I go up to the lake, I have to remember to bring them to the lake, and then I have to actually plant them.

None of these things were part of my plan for spring.

Now I have all kinds of anxiety about keeping these damn trees alive. I’ve kept them moist since Thursday by placing a wet paper towel (I know, I should have used cloth) in the bag. I think they are alive but I really can’t be sure. These trees are just like the stupid hermit crabs. I can’t tell if they are alive either and I keep forgetting to water them.

How long can they stay alive in their plastic bag? They aren’t getting much sun in their plastic bag, that can’t be good for them. I don’t know when I am going to the cabin next, it could be this week or it could be the next week. Do I have to make a special trip just so I can plant these damn trees?

I considered putting them in the compost container but that just didn’t seem right. I’m not a hater of trees, I like trees. Trees are fun to climb, they provide shade, they provide homes for all kinds of animals that I am trying to kill with my slingshot, and in about 100 years the oak tree will provide someone with some great firewood. I’m all for trees.

Yay, trees!

But I didn’t ask for these trees. I have enough people, animals, plants and crustaceans to be responsible for, I don’t need more. I don’t need anymore guilt, I have a mother who makes sure I am getting my daily requirement, the trees are just overkill.

Why didn’t they just give her a puppy?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are Carbon Offsets Really Offsetting Anything? (wired.com)
• Carbon trading no cure-all (cbc.ca)

I was all set to talk about Canadians today but I got stuck in traffic so my Canadian post will have to wait until Monday.

I love Def Leppard. There is no better band to rock out to in a car or anywhere you can play the music really loud. With arm or without these guys can rock. I went to several of their concerts back when they first started touring, before Behind the Music, the drugs and break ups. I saw them open for Queen, one of the most awesome shows I have ever seen. I can’t remember who I went to these concerts with but I know I have never stopped loving their music.

I went to visit my mother this morning.  Normally a 40 minute drive one way. It’s a 40 minute drive one way because I take the path least traveled and go all around the metro area.  I probably add 10 miles to my trip this way but I can drive 70-80 mph the whole way.

As most of you know I live in St. Paul. People from St. Paul don’t usually go to Minneapolis unless the have to. There aren’t that many good reasons I can think of that would warrant my need to go to Minneapolis except to visit my mother. My mom lives in a suburb clear on the other side of Minneapolis, which means that Minneapolis is smack dab between where I live and where my mother lives. I can’t avoid it, I have to go through it. Which is why I visit my mother after rush hour.

On the way back I decided that I was wasting a lot of gas trying to avoid Minneapolis so instead of going around it I decided to take the crosstown, highway 62, which goes right through the city I have been trying to avoid all my life. The crosstown was built to get people from one side of town to the other quickly.  It has never been my experience to get from point A (St. Paul) to point B (Minneapolis) quickly using the crosstown because as long as I can remember the crosstown has been under construction. However, because I don’t actually drive on the crosstown I really have no way of knowing if it is under construction. It might have been years ago, the last time I drove it, but there is really no way for me to know. So I decided to take the crosstown which should have reduced my trip from 40 minutes to maybe 15.

I don’t even know why I am typing all of this out for you. Just watch the video.

I’m sure the Canadians don’t have this kind of traffic.

Apparently Kate Gosselin has another book coming out, it’s called I Just Want You To Know. Know what? What don’t we know about this woman? It seems to me she puts out a book a year. Where the hell does she find the time to write? She has eight kids for crying out loud and a deadbeat ex husband. I have two kids and two ex husbands and I can’t put a book out in three years. I know a handful of people working on books right now and none of them have been working on them for less than a year.

I suspect she doesn’t write them herself. It’s just a sneaking suspicion but unless Kate Gosselin has more than 24 hours in a day or has a coke habit, it’s not likely that she has time to churn out a new book each year. I’m not sure she can type or spell either. The clicking of freshly manicured nails on the keyboard would be too distracting to me to be able to write for very long.

I have nothing against Kate milking her 15 minutes, though they should have been over a long time ago, she has eight kids, she has to support them somehow. If I had her opportunities I would be riding that gravy train as well. My issues are not with Kate, though I have had enough of her whining. What is so special about her? So what if she has eight kids? It’s not as if she spends much time with them, she’s too busy dancing, and dancing poorly as I understand it.

No, my issues are with the publishing companies who put these kinds of books out all the time. The publishing world has changed a lot in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon have changed the rules and nobody raised an eyebrow. That isn’t entirely true, some independent booksellers did but no one listens to them.

Every time a publishing company puts out a book like I Just Want You To Know, or Kitty Kelly’s Oprah, the public snatches them up. There are only so many book dollars out there and by publishing this crud the public won’t buy more worthy books by talented authors. They won’t because they won’t know about the more talented authors. Publishing houses don’t want to take a chance on real literature. They want to make money. I can’t blame them, really, but they are complicit in the dumbing down of the population.

By stacking the best seller lists with this kind of fluff, talented writers don’t stand a chance. The publishing industry won’t take a chance on an unknown author anymore. Luckily the publishing industry is putting itself right out of business. Luckily for the talented writers that is.

Self publishing used to be the last resort for authors who wanted to get a book in print. Authors who self published their work were scorned by the main stream publishing houses and didn’t stand a chance of getting any promotion unless they generated the buzz on their own. Today you can launch a website, and promote your book for relatively little expense. If you have a large Twitter following or lots of Facebook friends you can get the word out quickly.  The Kindle, iPad and other book readers have evened out the playing field even more.

Kate and Kitty can keep churning out books, and people will buy them. So what if they are the people who watch Jerry Springer and have interior furnishings on their lawn? I’m not buying them. I want to read intelligent books. I want to read books that use words with more than two syllables. I don’t want to read about celebrities, if I need to know what stupid ass things they are doing I can watch the news.

That’s right I said the news. Not the entertainment shows but the nightly news, the place we used to go to catch up on the days happenings. They have sold out too. It’s all about ratings which translate to dollars. No on is interested in the death of the Polish first family, that got about 15 seconds of airtime right before a commercial break. Kate Gosselin got 8 minutes to talk about her “book”.

Something is wrong when we are more interested in Kate than we are in the death of president.

*If you haven’t joined Tribal Blogs yet what are you waiting for? You can meet real writers there. Talented people who can dance and writer their own material, just not at the same time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Kate Gosselin: I’m Not Choosing Fame Over My Kids (people.com)
• Kate Gosselin: My Kids Say I Look Beautiful on DWTS (tvwatch.people.com)
• Hef doesn’t want Kate Gosselin for ‘Playboy’ (pbpulse.com)