Oh my dear lord. It's not even 11am and I'm out of work to do. How the hell am I going to fill the next 6 1/2 hours? I don't even get a lunch break, thanks to the two hour doctor appointment yesterday. Suck. Longest day ever.

Yesterday? Is now officially on the record as a Bad Day. The soul-sucking feeling arrived yesterday- the one that lets me know that I'm truly over this job and can barely stand to fake it anymore. I'm just so tired of the boredom, the weird and unfriendly people, the temp-ness of it all. I'm just tired, period. I want to feel vital and useful and be excited or at least interested in what I do for eight hours every day. I feel like I'm wasting my life here. I feel useless and defeated.

And I'm beginning to wonder, is it me? Is there something about me that's preventing real employment? I also wonder if my friends and family are starting to think it's my fault too. Really, how can they not look at me and wonder what my problem is? Who the hell needs 17+ months to find a damn job? Do they listen to me complain about it for the eight billionth time and think "Whatis she doing wrong?"

So, all this is going through my mind as I drive home from work yesterday and just as I'm moving into an overwhelming self-pity spiral, I spot our back yard. And burst into tears.

Just to back up a bit, our back yard has been a bit of a problem. We live on the edge of an alley, and the hedges that grow alongside the fence have gotten really out of control. Hell, the whole yard is out of control and really beyond our ability to maintain it. So, my landlord calls and says she's going to send her cousin and his buddies over to clear it out. They showed up at 8am with a wood chipper. Right on. They're going to make the yard all manageable and pretty!

So, when I drove through the alley on my way home, I couldn't believe what I saw. They fucking decimated the back yard. It looks like it was napalmed. The beautiful, shady, bird-loving tree next to the porch? Gone. All our privacy-giving shrubs? Gone. Our sunflowers? Trampled. The fence? Broken. It looks like a vacant lot. Apparently, their idea of yard maintenance is to cut any living thing to the ground. It looks like complete shit and all I could do was sit and bawl my eyes out on the back porch.

You used to be able to sit in the back yard and not be seen by anyone coming through the alley, but now it's completely bare and exposed. Also, because all the bushes have been cut down to nubs, the hideous chain link fence is exposed and makes everything look uglier.

I'm pretty sure the landlord's cousin is the same stupid heehaw who, last fall, "pruned" our fir tree out front. By pruned, I mean he cut all the branches off completely, except for the ones on top, which he couldn't reach. It looks like a deranged palm tree. When I complained, he said it would "fill in". It hasn't.

Can something good please happen soon? Please?

Gah, okay, enough negative crap. It's just hard to fight it off when everything conspires to suck all at once.

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Book Stuff Update.

So, if you've checked the reading link on the right there, you may have noticed that I'm woefully behind on my required reading. I'll keep plugging away! I promise! I've just been distracted with the shiny newness of the latest Joan Aiken Wolves series installment. I'll get back on track as soon as I finish that. Also, when Harry Potter #5 arrives, I'll probably have to read it immediately. Then I'm back to the list. I swear!

If any of you have read one of my recommendations- please tell me what you thought!

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Links of Fascination, Not Necessarily in a Good Way.

The lovely Smartypants linked to this utterly amazing contraption yesterday. Oh my God, right?

Behold, the scariest guy in the world. Holy crap. (via Lots of Co.)

0 chatty monkeys