I have seven work days left!

I spent all day today working on the two projects that I can work on without help from other people. From 8am-12pm I spent it working on my latest manual (two and a half work days later, it’s pretty much completed - I went for a minimalistic approach this time in terms of photography since it’s not quite the job you can follow a book for). From 12:30pm-4:30pm, I edited my manual (yay) and organized files for Michelle’s Great File Compiling Project of 2008. Yeah, that was exciting. I got sick of sitting in the room for so many hours that I ended up going out into production and sitting in the office talking to people while editing.

D and D had this conversation about me, right in front of me. Something about how all I ever do there is lie to them. And then (the nice) D was kept on hitting me in the side of the head with an empty plastic water bottle and kept on trying to say that Clay was the one doing it (since about 5 minutes before D started, Clay had thrown a stack of clean foam cups at my head). Seriously, my head got so much abuse today. I ended up snapping at both of them since they kept on doing things to me today. I actually, I pretty much snapped at D, D, K and Clay. Why? Well, K summed it all very nicely today: Michelle’s just a raging bitch. Thanks K, really, thank you very much. Bite me.

But for the sake of sanity and not kissing-and-telling altogether too much… Things did get better at around 4:20pm, just around ten minutes before I went home. And no, I not sharing what happened unless anyone really wants to know (in which case, ask me on msn). But yeah, it was nice.

Welcome to layout number seven of ImaginarySunshine.com. I’m your host, Michelle, and this is layout seven with ‘hot air balloons over the city at sunset’. I hope you all like it, I know that I do.

Work was okay today. I have fifteen pages for my lovely second-to-last manual that I’m writing for work. Yay for being accomplished! I got a lot of work done. However, I cannot touch eight of thirteen of my projects until next week when people involved get back. Yay for pushing everything back to the last possible moment…

I’m just going to go and fall over and sleep now. Or just rest my eyes a bit.

Work was awesome… Huge exaggeration. Considering I spent the day working on my new manual. Which was oh-so-exciting. I ended off the day with 10 full pages of text and no photos yet. I attended a meeting. I spent an hour talking to assorted people about whatever. So, nine more days of work and thirteen more projects to complete. While I’m looking forward to being done work and going back to school, I’m not looking forward to attempting to pull a horseshoe wrapped in four-leaf clovers out of my ass in a wild attempt to get this stuff done. It also doesn’t help that I’m forced to play musical computers and am constantly forced to move, despite the fact that they recognize that my work is “also very important”. Yeah, sure.

I found out today that my family is all jetting off to see the world and leaving me all by my little lonesome. The problem? Not all three of them are going to be gone at the same time. There is always going to be one person staying home with little Michelley who needs to attend classes. For one week in October, my mom and sister are going to the Grand Canyon.  For a month (beginning of October to late November), my dad is going to be gone. For two weeks in November, my mom’s going to be gone (and joining up with my dad).

Yes, that’s right, my dad booked a plane ticket for himself where he will be gone on my birthday. And I mentioned this. And he had this blank look on his face. Kind of like “What do you mean I’m not here for your birthday?” and then I saw the moment it dawned to him that he really wasn’t going to be here on my birthday and he just gave a little shrug and went ‘okay then’. So I’m just learning how important I really am to my dad. And the thing is, I’m really torn about this. Am I happy that he’s going to be out of my hair for a little over a month or am I’m upset over the fact that he forgot about my birthday? Or both? Do I get pissed over the fact that he forgot his own daughter’s birthday (actually, he technically forgot two of his daughters’ birthdays since I share my birthday with J)? What am I supposed to do with this? Do I get upset? Am I happy? Do I ask for something incredibly expensive and extravagant for my birthday? Because right now the most extravagant thing I can think of is my tuition and the pile of textbooks that I need to get my hands on sometime in September.

Twelve projects in eleven more days. I’m pretty sure they expect me to get at least the first draft of everything done. Which is great, they don’t expect it to be all spic and span and absolutely wonderful. But at the same time: twelve projects in eleven days. I cannot touch 5 of those projects until the 25th because D decided to go to Florida (on business, but still). He’s the critical key component of those five projects and he left. He didn’t read any of the documents over before he left. And seriously? So not helping with any of this. Three of the manuals that have passed the first-draft stage aren’t going to be reviewed again until the 27th when M comes back from his 2.5 week vacation, so I will be spending my last five days at work scrambling to get 5 procedures done and 3 manuals completed. Great, I’m just so excited for that, you cannot even being to comprehend it - I can barely comprehend it.

Also, I came home and ate dinner. I got yelled at by my father because I am “incapable” of taking my video tape out of the vcr (I tape General Hospital so I can watch it when I get home) by myself. I also got yelled at for putting my feet on the couch (please note, we don’t wear shoes around the house like some households do). Oh, and to top it all off, I go downstairs to turn on my laptop and I notice that the chair has been lowered and the keyboard cover that I put to keep the oils from my fingers on the keys from getting onto my laptop screen is off to the side, and lying flat. Whenever I open my computer, I roll it up and set it to the side, it was on top of my printer instead. So I just checked the history in Firefox, there was nothing for today. I checked the history for Internet Explorer and, guess what, there’s stuff there! And I checked out the websites and it’s the sites that I know my father has been looking at lately (vacation stuff - please, someone take him away from me for a month or two!). And it’s also sites that I know that my father is perfectly capable of looking at on his own fucking computer. I questioned why he was on my computer and his answer was that he wanted to use a cd burning program that my computer has, which was bullshit because his computer has the exact same one (his answer was ‘No it doesn’t'). I ended up turning on the computer just to point out to him that he has the exact same program right on the desktop. I don’t know if I can handle 3-4 more years of this. 3-4 more years of having to live under the same roof as the man who’s so fucking bored that he has to go through the stuff in my room and use my laptop and go through my files and just question every single fucking thing that I ever do. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. People say that blood is thicker than water and I just laugh at that right now. Who the fuck cares if it’s thicker than water? Blood is blood is blood. It doesn’t give him the right to go through my things because he’s going on a ‘hunch’ that I have something to hide. I’m not twelve. I’m eighteen. I’m not having sex, I don’t drink in the house, I don’t drink excessively, I don’t party, I don’t have a fake id, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I don’t do anything illegal beyond jaywalking so I really don’t see how there’s a ‘hunch’ that I’m doing something wrong. My father needs a hobby. One beyond ‘going through Michelle’s things’.

My official summer biology course grade is (and a drumroll please….) 81%! My professor sent out a spreadsheet that just has student numbers, original grades and changed grades. My student number was listed with 80% as the original grade and 81% as the changed one. I’m quite pleased, since it’s an A-. The class average was 75% with no scaling, whatsoever. The highest grade was 93% (stupid smart people…) and the lowest was 39%. Yes, I am that competitive that I look at what the highest grade was, what the lowest was, and where I fall in the group (#17!).

Work was stressful again today. I have twelve projects to complete in twelve days. Twelve. Freaking. Days. Do they expect me to pull a bunny rabbit out of my hoodie? Do they think I have golden horseshoes falling out of my ass? I can’t do all of this. I have 3 manuals that are on second or third drafts. I have five sales procedures that I need to get done but I can’t because I’m relying on input from others. I have ninety-three documents and spreadsheets to go over and to determine how relevant/useful it all us to compile into a manual for inventory data entry. I have a new manual to write. I have assorted other files to complete. The one completed thing I have? A one page procedural sheet that was done in thirty minutes and signed by the plant manager the next date. Ughhh. I feel like such a failure. I mean, it’s great that I got a job for the summer, but at the same time, if I look back at the work that I’ve done this summer, it just doesn’t seem like much, even though it is.

So, as it has become a normal thing for me at work, I had some cuddle time today. Of course, as luck would have it, at one point his arm was near my ear since he was standing up to hug me and I was sitting down. And then I went ‘FUCK!’ very loudly and pushed him away because his arm pressed against my ear and it just hurt so damn bad. He was very apologetic about it afterwards because he forgot about it (I certainly didn’t, especially not with that pain). He gave nicer hugs after that, taking care not to brush against my ears after that. And I got Skittles later after he went out just to buy them for me.

The first memorable conversation of the day, featuring myself, C and R:
M: You know, that’s really not an attractive look for you [C has a corndog in his mouth, and he's using his teeth to keep it in his mouth while he's opening a packet of ketchup]
R: But he’s just so used to it.
[C pulls it out of his mouth, looking insulted.]
M: And how would you know that?
R: He hasn’t told you about what happens around here when you go home, has he?
[laughter]

The second memorable conversation of the day, featuring yours truly and the Boy:
M: You’re like incapable of spending time with me.
C: What do you mean?
M: I’m running out of fingers on a hand to count the number of times that you’ve canceled or haven’t even been able to plan anything with me. Remember that time where you promised over and over again that we’d spend that Saturday together? Remember that?
C: Well I’m a busy idiot.
M: Then get unbusy, moron.
C: Did you just call me a moron?
M: Have you gone deaf too?
C: No…
M: Good. And if you poke me again with that finger, I will feed it to you and make you like it.
C: …. Okay.
M: I should get back to work. I’ll talk to you later, hun.
C: Come by later to chat, sweetheart.