Losing My Shit

Ask anything and I will be brutally honest tonight. Maybe the tornados that ripped through the airport about 10 miles from here have made me question my mortality or it could be the Vicoden, but either way I will be 100% forthcoming.

Do eet

I’m starting to care about followers and it bothers me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate people who follow me and get a chuckle out of what I do on twitter, but I am concerned that I think I’m editing myself. In the beginning, it’s hell’s bells, here’s my tweets, like it or suck it! Now it seems with every new follower there comes, I dunno, performance anxiety?

I’m not the only one, I see it in others tweets, the change of style, a softening in tone. I see others with tons of followers who tweet like they’re obligated to please the masses by putting something out there, even if it’s complete drivel. I don’t want to be that guy, ever.

I don’t care if someone unfollows me, either you get me or you don’t. If something I said made you decide to click the button, it was going to happen eventually. I tweet how I talk, how I think and generally, it’s pretty vulgar. I just don’t want to ever be boring. Do I want more followers? Absolutely, I think my nonsense should be spread like an outbreak of the Hantavirus but I don’t want to change who I am to get there.

It may sound stupid, but it bothers me, that I feel like I’m letting down my followers because I’m not tweeting something, anything, because my heads not in it. Hell, I’m probably doing better for followers by just shutting up for a while. So I’ll post this, then probably go into a rant about the old black queer that approached me needing $8 today, and this whole speech will be invalid.

I find that my tweeting really is controlled by my mood. I need to be in a certain frame of mind to tweet effectively. My only goal on twitter is to make people laugh. I didn’t live tweet my myleogram or my surgery to garner sympathy (the well wishes were very kind and appreciated), I’ve just found while people enjoy random funny/stupid comments, the “real” tweets are always best received. My natural reaction to any stressful situation is to find the humor in it and it nearly got me arrested. In college, I wrecked my roommate’s ‘65 mustang into a tree going too fast on our gravel driveway. We didn’t call the cops but they showed up anyway. Neither of us had had a drop of alcohol but I couldn’t help but crack wise about the absurdity of it all. They insisted on neck bracing and back boarding us, even though we’d walked up to the house 30 minutes ago. I must have been asked how much I’d been drinking 12 times, and then everyone else in the house was interrogated as well. Pro tip: paramedics don’t have much of a sense of humor.

My poor lonely tumblr. So empty. So void. So I wrote this. All is well now. Return to your dormancy.

If I don’t find a way to create albums here, you all are going to fucking hate me come July.  I believe the digital camera is the greatest invention of man so far, and when I vacation, I document the shit out of it.  I despise Facebook, only because there is not one person that I want to hear from if I’m not already talking to you by phone on the regular.  So I usually put all our vacation pics on the kids Facebook pages in albums.  Fair warning, my last trip was 10 days, I took over 400 pics and kept 300 of them.  My upcoming vacation is two weeks…

Twitter is such a bizarre platform for interacting with other people. It’s so concise, so limited, yet finds a way to expand on a global level. I was resistant to join twitter mainly because my initial exposure to it was from media sources in the news and sports. It seemed to only be a way to hear what other people’s opinions were about blah and blah. Frankly, I don’t care what most people think about something and if I want actual information, I’ll go seek it out. I don’t have a Facebook account because I could care less what you’ve been doing for the last 20 years or this morning at breakfast.

What I do like is humor. I love to be amused at others thoughts and/or misfortunes. Twitter has delivered that to me in spades. I’m not going to critique the varieties of humor, yet, but the people I follow make me glad I chose to join in on the nonsense.

Just left the doctor’s office with my daughter. She’s been feeling rotten since Sunday night, sore throat, lethargic, sinuses, low grade fever. She has been exposed to mono by her older sister a week ago. Now her throat looks like what is typical in strep throat, white spots, swollen, etc., and with the holiday and apparent epidemic of kids getting sick, today was the earliest appointment we could get. Her doctor is a very good doctor but I swear, I spend more money on visits just to be told what my kids do not have. I don’t know if this is more of a new age approach to medicine where they worry about kids building up immunities to anti-biotics, or maybe not building up natural immunities to colds and viruses, but more often then not, she calls what ever it is a virus, and it needs to run its course.

I “understand” where she’s coming from but, that’s not much help when your child is miserable and as a working parent, you’re trying to take care of them. I don’t expect a magic pill, but something to accelerate the process and help comfort my child would be appreciated. Maybe I’m overreacting but I keep feeling like I’m getting the delay tactics instead of proactive treatments. Hell, prescribe something for Dad so he stops worrying so much…..Valium is a helluva drug. Get better babygirl.

My last tweet described my boss wearing a lovely ostrich plumed ass as a hat, and me requesting he be run over by a car. Nothing has changed in that regard except I hope he is punched in the dick and then hit by a car.

I’ve never really talked about my personal life online or in any social medium but this seems like a good time/place to start, so buckle up for a voyage into the mundane. I work for the tenth largest employer in the world, specializing in food service, catering, restaurants, vending and coffee. I specifically work for the vending/coffee division and have for 19 years. Not the most glamorous job, but we’re union, it pays well, with excellent benefits, and when you need your chocolate fix or morning coffee, I’m your best friend in the whole world.

Two years after starting with the company as a route driver, filling machines, I ruptured a disc in my lower back and had surgery to repair it. Came back from surgery and went into the install and repair department where I spent the next ten years fixing and installing machines. Well, ten years of slinging 1000lb soda machines will take its toll; broken fingers, multiple stitches, broken foot, a concussion and the ultimate destruction of my lower back. This time the disc was beyond repair and I required a spinal fusion, which is a scary proposition when raising a family. You’re warned that you may never be able to lift or carry 25lbs ever again and it will be 6 months minimum before you can resume normal activities. Even more worrisome is that my treatment was being handled by workman’s compensation doctors who are hired by the company. Despite enduring injections, needless therapy, an incompetent doctor who was removed from my case, a second surgeon who broke his arm and delayed my operation two months, after all that, four months after my fusion, I lifted 150lbs over my head and told the doctor I want to get back to work.

Knowing what I’d been through, and worried I’d over do it, he reluctantly released me back to work, with the condition that I never be made to install vending machines again. A condition that has been easily met over the past 7 years, until today. Moving machines is always a two man job and I’ve never minded being the third man in to help make it a little easier for everyone involved. Today, I had the pleasure of being half of the two man crew moving 34 machines through a building that covers four city blocks, over carpet, through doorways, stuck to floors and every other possible fucked up situation.

What’s changed you may ask? How did I find myself in this situation? As I mentioned earlier, our shop is union and I am also the chief shop steward of the union which means all union issues flow through me when relating to the company, (so don’t ever bother arguing with me, you can’t win). A few weeks ago I filed a grievance, complaint if you will, with the company about them outsourcing our work. Specifically using another company to install our equipment instead of replacing employees that had retired from our department. Any of you that have been downsized from your jobs due to outsourcing will understand, difference is I have a contract that gives me a legal right to contest that and prevent it. The company recognized the fact that I was correct and agreed to cease this practice.

This however does not prevent my supervisor from being the petty little bitch he is. Knowing full well the risk he puts me in with involving me in a job of this size today, he chooses to ignore this because his pussy hurts from me forcing him to actually honor our contract. While I don’t have the right to refuse to do the work, I sure as hell don’t have to just accept it and keep my mouth shut. Due to the magnitude of this job today, other supervisors and even my district manager were on site. Imagine my DM’s surprise when his innocuous comment of “Are we having fun yet?” was met with “I dunno, look at my face. Do I look like I’m having fun? I’m pretty sure I don’t, because I keep thinking, why is the only guy with a titanium plate in his back, the only guy with instructions from your company doctors telling you not to have him doing exactly what the fuck ended him up in surgery in the first fucking place, why is that guy here? Let me guess, this is my “punishment” for filing a grievance, right? Well, just so we’re clear. I’m not having a good time, in fact I’d call my mood fucking pissed off because this whole thing is bullshit”. At that point, I grabbed the next machine, and headed toward the elevator, leaving him and our newbie supervisor standing there slack jawed and possibly soiling themselves.

To be fair, our DM is fairly new and may not even be aware of these circumstances, but he is now, and giving the fact that my asshat boss decided to leave the job site 10 minutes after this, I’m guessing he asked about these circumstances, so my point is made and I guarantee I won’t be doing this shit tomorrow. So who really suffers in all this? My asshatted boss goes home and drinks himself to oblivion. I sit here with heating pads and ice packs munching Vicoden like tic tacs. So the only ones that really suffer are my followers. Instead of tweeting my hiLARious observations on life, love, and buttholes, I’m here bitching about my boss and his many hats of ass. I’m truly sorry to my dearest followers and I promise to do better for you all tomorrow.

Please reblog if you wish my boss to die as I do. Thanks for reading

I’ve always wanted to blog, but felt, one: no one gives a shit what I feel like randomly talking about, two: I’m lazy as hell.

Only heard about Tumblr through Twitter so here I am to give it a shot.

I’ll try not to suck it up to badly.