The Spinning Disc Of Doom

Yesterday I saw, dangling from someone's rearview mirror, a disc. A compact disc, to be exact. Yes, a CD, dangling in all its one shiny side glory, alternately blinding & then distracting a driver, who should really know better than to dangle music/data as a decorative item. What the hell were they thinking?

Perception Is Reality - Part Deux

Ahhh, the holiday season. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and during our absence this year, it was the time when the shit hit the fan. The way we work it is that each year Barney & I alternate which family we spend Christmas with, and this year we were with my family. As luck would have it, this is the year the Rubble family bullshit came to a head. In a way I'm sorry to have missed the show because now I have to form opinions on hearsay and not what I witnessed myself, however this issue is far from resolved so there will be more shit coming down.

I touched ever so briefly on this subject here, but I've barely scratched the surface.

Barney comes from a family of 4 children, 2 boys & 2 girls, and all siblings are married. Barney is the oldest child and so he has seen most of what went on in his family. Mom & Dad are both alive and well and involved to varying degrees in the lives of each of their 4 children, however one of the Sisters has been more dependant on the parents, both through her teen years and well into adulthood. This Sister wields the perceived power. The targets, those would be her parents, my in-laws (M & M).

Having married into this family, I know full well that there is history there deeper and more vast than I will ever know. I only have 10 years in with this clan, and the bullshit has been running deep since the Sister was a kid. The other siblings talk about how "L" is just that way and is just like that, and always has been and always will be. According to Barney trying to talk sense to "L" would be like banging your head against the wall. Nothing gets through to her.

The issue? Well, it's complicated, I guess. In a nutshell, M & M twist themselves into pretzels to meet the needs of, and satisfy the demands of their youngest daughter. They do this to the disgust and detriment of their other 3 children. The reason, I believe, is that they are afraid of the consequences should they fail to follow through. One possible consequence, as I understand it, was that they would not be allowed access to their Grandchild. Whether a real threat or just a perceived threat, I cannot say for sure, but an effective one nonetheless. It's to the point where M & M act like gatekeepers and not only run their own game with "L" but they also run interference on any actions the other 3 siblings would like to take. It's frustrating for them to not see the issues get addressed and I'm sure it feels to them like "L" is being rewarded for her bad behaviour. I believe it is only out of respect for their parents that the other 3 siblings have not taken a harder line with this. That goes for me too as I was going to give her a dose of medicine but got talked down.

From my perspective I do not believe that "L" could completely withdraw from her parents. She needs them too much to do her bidding. What is particularly perplexing to me is that back in the day, when this threat would have first arisen, she was completely and utterly dependant on them for everything. She was a teenage Mother, lived with her parents, was supported by her parents, needed her parents, and so how the hell could that threat actually carry any weight with M & M? I don't understand why anyone took this seriously, which brings me back again to perception = reality.

Over the holidays several things came up and decisions were made that broke the family into and "us" & "them" situation, with M & M trying to remain neutral and keep everybody happy. They basically twisted themselves into their usual pretzel shapes. Anyway, the result was that the "us" & the "them" went their separate ways, each making their own decisions and one of the results was that nobody spent Christmas together.

This past Boxing Day Barney's Brother & his Wife ( T & T) hosted an Open House. All branches of the family were present, except for us (still out of town) and "L"'s family. Apparently at some point "L"'s Husband showed up at the function, not to participate, but to say how "L" is fed up with all the gossip going around and he said "L" and M & M have to get together and deal with their problems. He states that SHE's tired of everyone talking behind her back and not communicating directly with her!

All of this bullshit was just too much for my SIL "T" to take and she let him have it with both barrels. She just laid it all out there and said what many of the rest of us have been thinking. Have I mentioned that I love my SIL? Seriously, she's a straight shooter and for this and for many other reasons, she's one of my favourite people.

Anyway, while "T" does not regret anything she said she does somewhat regret the manner & some of the colourful language used. (She & I are colourful people, the rest of the clan we married into, not so much).

And so we will now enter 2007 with nothing resolved, the air thick with all of the heretofore unsaid thoughts, and I'm interested to see where we end up.

Yer A Fucking Idiot!

Yes, those words have passed my lips more than 30 times while driving this holiday week. Oh my fucking god! I understand that not everybody is good at driving, but jesus christ! Smarten the fuck up!

At this time of year everybody who has access to a car is out there and driving it. 16 with no experience? 84 with no sight? more people than seat belts? unrestrained infants & children? Yes, I've seen it all, and most of it I've narrowly escaped.

My favourite move, and admittedly I did not know it was my favourite move when I started this post, was the ever loving right hand turn from the left hand lane...on the highway! Yes, this beauty happened to me on the snow covered highway by the little town of Princeton this week. Gotta love the elderly. I had followed her for a good 80 k, and when the highway reached town I decided to move to the outside lane, and she stayed put in the inside lane. All was well. Until she decided to turn right. right. in. front. of. me! I was too stunned to honk, too stunned to yell and in fact all I did manage to do was stand on my brake pedal and evade her advancing red Taurus. Did I mention there was snow on the highway? Fuck I thought I was going to paste her and she was completely oblivious. Only once she had completed her turn did she look back to see me, stopped sort of sideways on the highway, holding my head. I thought it was going to explode. Lady, yer a fucking idiot!

What A Week

It’s been an interesting week.

There's a road hazzard in my neighbourhood who drives a marked company vehicle. He's a tool. He's an HOV cheater and shortly he's going to be getting a whole lot of negative attention. Where's my phone book?

On my way home from work on Friday there was a car accident. One that I should have seen coming, and yet somehow, I truly didn’t. It’s a bit of a confusing intersection, with 2 lanes in each direction. In one direction there are 2 through lanes, although you can make a left turn from the left lane. In the other direction one lane is a through lane, while the other is a mandatory right turn lane. Anyway, I was making a left turn from the left lane and while I was completing my turn the car immediately behind me was hit head on. I heard the horrific metal on metal crash and it was so loud I thought surely I’d been hit, but when I looked in my side view mirror I could see it wasn’t me. I pulled over, turned off my vehicle, put on my hazards and hurried over to see what the hell was going on. The car behind me was driven by a young woman, and on impact her airbags had deployed. When I reached her car it had filled with smoke and she was still sitting it, stunned and obviously in shock. Some man helped me wrenched her car door open and I got her out and took her over to the median to sit. I noticed her car was still pumping out smoke and realized it was still running. I went back and turned it off and grabbed her keys & her purse for her.

By this time there were a few of us trying to help and since traffic was essentially blocked one guy was trying to direct traffic. I went over to a guy driving a yellow cube van to see if he had a fire extinguisher. Again proving that it's a small world, the guy ended up being someone I used to work with. No extinguisher but he did call 911 for me.

By this time I noticed the driver of the other vehicle, a mini van, was out and wandering about. He was quick to talk about maybe being hurt but would not heed my suggestion to sit down and rest. He was much more interested in establishing blame. Shortly afterwards the emergency vehicles arrived and suffice to say that all departments were well represented. Since there was nothing else I could offer I left. I believe the guy who was directing traffic must have witnessed the accident and he stayed behind. I’m still dumbfounded about how this could have occurred within 10 feet of me, yet I never saw the oncoming vehicle. The only thing I can imagine is that the driver of the van had been in the right hand turn lane, and then cut over, illegally, to go straight, and the vehicle behind me thought the intersection was still clear. All I know for sure is that when I commenced my left turn there was nobody even close to me in the oncoming through lane. Nobody.

In other news, I found out last week that the Dad of one of my High School friends had died of cancer. My Mom is fighting cancer. The friend's Dad was my Dad’s age. It’s been 20 years since we graduated High School. Some things never change, nor some people. The guys who would hang out and drink in the parking lot in High School did that today in the parking lot of the funeral home. It was a very odd and yet familiar sight.

Today a group of 8 of us school friends gathered to attend the service for our friend’s Dad. I won’t say it was a memorial service because it felt more like a celebration of his life. I did not know the man, but by the end of the service I felt as though I had. I certainly knew more about his son, my friend. This passing of a parent is the beginning the inevitable. One day it will be my turn to talk about my parents and share the essence of who they were. I’m not ready.

Are You All Fucking Stupid?

I swear everyone else on the roads today were fucking idiots! OMG!!!!!!

My personal highlight; a car that failed to observe their yield sign and just barely failed to sideswipe me. You know what? Swing your god-damned mother fucking head around and take a look over your shoulder! You leaning forward to look in your side mirror while leaning on the accelerator does not make for a smart move when I’m already occupying the lane. You just about gave me a heart attack when I saw you coming for me, and I’m sure I gave your pacemaker a good run for its money when I laid on the horn. And even then, you didn’t let up. Not really. You just looked stunned and kept going. You're gonna get killed!

Other observances of note;

• I was in heavy traffic on a main road when I heard a rig blowing its horn. Then traffic slowed to a crawl. When I got closer I could see that the outside lane was blocked by a rig, which had a brand new Honda hood ornament. The car must have pulled out in front of the rig, who obviously could not stop in time, and the car got T-boned.

• Some jackass turned onto the road in front of me and then swung over into my lane. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him, but I figured that would be the worst of it. Nope. He proceeded to straddle 2 lanes, swinging back and forth for the better part of 2 blocks. I would never have tried to pass him, just because he was so erratic. Some other guy in a super cab pick-up truck had no qualms about blasting by the lane straddler at about 80 kms per hour. Ballsy. Really ballsy.

• Lots of HOV lane cheaters this week. I guess it's your choice to take your fucking chances on getting a ticket. How the hell would we all know you were so special if you didn't stand out like a sore thumb, all by yourself in the HOV lane. Retards!
  

My Husband’s Name

I’m going to preface this by saying this is not a rant about my husband or his family. They haven’t done anything wrong.

Little girls often dream about the day they’ll get married. They practise writing their potential new names, over and over. They test them out to see how they’ll sound. They try them on. If a woman gets married in her teens or early 20’s she might still be in that stage of practising her “new” name, and statistically speaking she likely will take her husband’s last name as her own. Nothing wrong with that. It’s probably been happening since the beginning of time.

When I got married I was not in my teens, nor my 20’s. I was 32. What to do about my “married name” was not so clear. I’d had my own name for a very long time. It formed part of who I was. I am an only child. There were not nieces & nephews to carry on my family name. I was it. Also, I’d been with my employer for a significant amount of time and a name change was tantamount to career suicide. My name got things done at work and I wasn’t entirely comfortable abandoning “me”.

My future husband told me it would please him very much if I took his name. He’s a pretty traditional guy about this kind of stuff. I suggested he take my name and his answer was “I don’t think so”.

What I decided to do was keep my name for work and use my husband’s name socially. If he had expressed no preference I probably would have just kept my name. I thought this was a good compromise, keeping true to myself while also honoring and respecting my husband and his family. It was a bit of balancing act in the beginning, and adjusting to change always takes time.

I got my passport before we got married because I needed it for our honeymoon, so it’s in my old name. I had invited some HR types from my workplace to our wedding and shortly afterward my paycheques & company benefits cards started coming in my new name, although I don’t recall filling out any such request. (See above, where I was keeping my old name for work) This caused some problems because much of what goes on at work is driven by the details HR keeps about us, and now I don’t match the name the system has for me. It’s confusing. My well established name in my company is valuable, but rather than upset the applecart I decided to not change it back and I just deal with the fallout as it comes.

After the wedding I changed some credit cards to my new name and as other things came up I would switch them to the new name. Not all, but most. When I showed up to renew my driver’s license I gave them my new name and a copy of my marriage certificate, but they said they couldn’t make the change without the original marriage certificate. Um…yeah, that’s an original document, which I will not fold up and shove into my purse, plus it costs $100 to replace. That baby stays in the house…somewhere. Them refusing to change my name did not negate the fact that I still needed to renew my license so I renewed it in my old name. Which meant my car insurance stayed in my old name.

I huffed around a well-worn copy of my marriage certificate for years to ease the confusion that arose when the name on my credit card didn’t match the name on my driver’s license. For that very reason, among others, I did keep a major credit card in my old name.

We bought our house before we got married, so my old name is on the title. When we recently renewed the mortgage I asked them to change the name on title to my new name, but to do so would have cost hundreds of dollars, so I left it alone.

Now, to the heart of what’s on my mind. I feel like “the system” is trying to erase me in favour of my husband, and here is the evidence to support my theory;

• When my now husband & I got our first mortgage and opened our joint bank account, at my bank, the representative put him as the primary on the accounts. He had never been their client whereas I had been with them for 12 years. He had no credit card with them (and in fact has no credit cards at all), but I did. He was not the one who negotiated the mortgage rates and was in monthly contact locking in rates. That was me. How they sold putting him as the primary was that he was older than me and when he reached age 65 we’d have reduced service charges. Whatever lady. Pretty presumptuous of you to think that 30 years from now we’d still be banking with you, but I let it go. Whatever.

• Several years ago we made plans to fly to my parent’s place for Christmas. I called the airline, I made the arrangements for my ticket in my old name (matches my ID) and my husband’s ticket in his usual name. I paid for both tickets on the credit card I held in my new name. The tickets were sent by mail to our home…to my husband’s attention! He didn’t make the arrangements and he didn’t make the payment, but somehow the airline saw fit to put his name on the envelope. My husband was unconcerned by this event. I was livid! I called the airline and reamed them out, firstly for not addressing the tickets to the purchaser, and secondly because if that trip had been a surprise they would have blown it right out of the water. Arrrggghhhhhhhhh!

• My husband & I share an eBay account. He’s much more active than I, but it is our account. We share the same first initial and so the account is set up with the initial and his last name. No he, no she, just a generic letter for a first name. Under our addresses in eBay we have one using the first initial/last name and another using both of our first names & our shared last name. When I do make a purchase on eBay and because I have a credit card I pay via PayPal. My PayPal account is in my new name and funded by my credit card in the same name. My PayPal account is not linked to our eBay account. My husband has a separate PayPal account. Every time I make a purchase and pay via my PayPal account the item arrives addressed to my husband. He didn’t make the payment and yet somehow the system sees fit to slap his name onto all of my purchases. Nobody at eBay or PayPal customer service was able to tell me why. Nor were they able to make it stop. Arrrggghhhhhhhh!

• The most recent incident and the reason I am so riled up about this again is that I just made a purchase via the Sear$ catalogue system. I called in the order. I provided them with my Sear$ credit card information, a card that I alone hold, in my new name. When I went to pick up the item I had ordered I found it was addressed to my husband. WTF?????? The counter person was of no assistance in explaining how this could have happened or how to correct it for future orders. Instead she directed me to call the catalogue number and speak to them. Which I did. For 15 minutes. According to "Carlos" the root of the problem seemed to stem from the fact that my husband’s name was linked to our home phone. I asked them to remove it. Carlos said their system would not allow it, and to get around it he suggested I provide an alternate number, which would be designated as the primary number with my name. Thinking this was great idea I rattled off my cell phone number. Mine. Remarkably different than my husband’s. Carlos came back and announced that his system linked the two numbers and that MY cell phone number was bringing up my husband’s name. I asked Carlos to unlink the numbers. He said their system would not allow it. I asked him to purge the entire profile and he said his system would not allow it.
  
  I don’t know if my husband has every ordered from the Sear$ catalogue, but I do know that he does not hold a Sear$ credit card. I do. I explained to Carlos that I was his client, not my husband, and that he needed to find a way to stop my orders from being shipped to my husband’s attention. He said he could not. I suggested that perhaps the only way his system would purge my profile was by becoming the worst customer ever and not paying my bills. No response. I offered to cancel my Sear$ credit card, if that would purge it from the system. But alas, if I ever opened up a new account it would link to the old and voila, there his name would be again. After a consultation with Carlos’s supervisor, Dwayne, it was determined that there is no way of getting around the fact that my orders will be sent to my husband’s attention. Thankfully the item in question was not for my husband, but again, if it was a surprise they would have blown it right out of the water. Arrrggghhhhhhhhh!

I feel like I’m living in the 1950’s for fucks sake!

I am not meek. I am not subservient. I am not a follower.

I was raised to be my own person and I am not pleased about being overlooked and disrespected. I probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if this were the 1950’s, if I were a different person or if I had gotten married as a younger woman.

As I said at the top of this post, this rant is not about my husband. It’s “the system”. He is not doing this, and from what he has said he does not believe these events carry any weight or meaning. But I do.

I Couldn't Believe My Ears!

I just called a business to see if they had a product in stock. The guy on the phone asked me to hold on for a second, and then I heard what sounded like a fountain. Then it stopped. And then it started again. Then it stopped. Followed by a flush!

The damn guy answered the phone in the middle of taking a piss! ROFL & eeewwwwwww.

Certainly won’t ask to borrow their telephone! LOL