“Karen Kunt”
Yes, those who know me might agree, I’m sometimes a bit of a c-word. But- would you call me one AT WORK? How unprofessional would that be– if you knew me well? What if you were only someone I know from work? At a majority-male facility, where ALL of the management consists of white men?
When I came back from lunch today, I filled in for a coworker while he took his break. For the most part, I used his computer during that time. When I went back to my computer, I noticed that the search bar up at the top right of the web browser says “Karen kunt.”
From what I wrote to my bosses: “As you know, the ‘c’ word is one of the most offensive things that a woman can be called. It’s not the kind of thing that I take lightly. There have been a lot of sexist things that have happened here, but this is the most blunt thing that has happened to me, and I’m glad to finally have something concrete that I can show you. Except that I can’t seem to get a screenshot/screen capture of it… (?) Well, I will try to not close the browser when I leave tonight, and we’ll see if someone else closes it overnight.
“I’d appreciate hearing what kind of action you will take on this matter. Thank you.”
Thank goodness that’s over
Yeah, so today was Thanksgiving. My hunny went out of town, but I didn’t– I hadn’t been able to make plans in advance, and he had told me that after flying halfway across the country, there’d be an 8-hour drive (to Ohio, and I hate Ohio!). So I didn’t go.
Fortunately, friends remembered me, and Kat invited me to dinner at Cathaus. I got more and more nervous as the time of the dinner approached, esp. since there was a lot of stuff I had wanted to do today and didn’t get around to. But I went, and was only 15 minutes late, and the people who tried my dill/garbanzo bean salad liked it.
Being there was really awkward in a lot of ways. The worst, though, was that C. was there, and she stopped returning my phone calls in July. That’s 4 months of missing my friendship with her, and missing out on hanging out with her baby. I run into the dad when he’s out with the baby all the time. (they are no longer a couple, as far as i know, but he lives on a street that is on my way home from work on many days when i have work) Apparently she is moving out of my old house and into the Cathaus, or at least that was the impression that I got tonight. I mostly ignored her, because it is all just too awkward, and because, frankly, if you ignore me, I’m going to ignore you. Like gets like, as the old folks say.
I did get to meet a few people, including someone who posts to Indybay a lot. At least I think that was hir! When sie said hir name, I was like…. “?? I should know this name.” And then when I got home, it occurred to me- that was Philippe Lonestar (apparently pronounced Felipe), wasn’t it? Neat.
Danita asked me if I was still living in that little apartment she’d been to years ago. I was like, “I don’t think you’ve been to my house.” I think she was referring to the place I moved out of 4 years ago!! Z and I have been in this place for 2.5 years, now. I can’t believe it’s been so long.
Sometimes it’s fun to be Debbie Downer, especially when I think I can get away with it because I’ve been mostly positive-acting. Like, I mentioned that when I called my mother, she was like, “Yep, I’m heading out to the cemetary to see your grandparents- today’s the anniversary (4 years) of your grandmother’s death.” That’s how it is in my family.
A few minutes ago I looked at the Slingshot that I brought home from the dinner. I read Ashley’s really nice article about Honza. I also noticed that Indybay was not attributed for my photo of him that was printed in the paper. Oh, well. Let it be known that I took that photo, I think at the WTO protest in Sacramento all those years ago (2003? that’s not so many years!)
The good old days seem so far away…tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day, which is the anniversary of the very first time I ever kissed Pookie.
Possible new diagnosis for my hands
Well, I gave in this week and called the doctor about my hands. I went in today. The doctor I saw was new (to me, at least), and the records from my 2005 nerve conduction study apparently are not in my file. (the results apparently showed no carpal tunnel damage, but she wants to make sure that they tested my hands/thumbs)
She said that I probably have arthritis in my hands (tonight we have 100% relative humidity, so maybe the weather has really been setting it off). Interesting, considering that both of my parents have arthritis. Also interesting that my left hand hurts more than my right– when I was arrested at at Reclaim the Streets-type protest 2 years ago, the cops injured my hands. She said something about “fascia” running under the whole hand, and that that’s why, even if the arthritis is just in my thumbs, i feel all this awful pain in my fingers. Great! I think pot has been helping a bit tonight, but sadly it hurts my thumb to use the lighter to ignite my little Vapor Genie.
I also tried to talk to her about my feet. She said that the pain and numbness there could be neuropathy. Fabulous. It’d be so great to be a fat person who can’t walk or use the exercise machines at the gym. Especially with what could be arthritis in my shoulder/s, too, which would keep me from being able to swim sometimes.
My hands hurt so much tonight that I didn’t go to the gym or get any indymedia work done. I need a typist!
See other recent blog entries at mahtin.blogspot.com
I’m still here
So I supposedly have a new job, but it should have started today, and they haven’t even scheduled the training yet. Good thing I didn’t quit my day job (my housecleaning business). I am getting all neurotic about it– that’s my job now. I’ve been rotting long enough, and I had decided to get a job (this one specifically), and well, something is getting in my way of that!
I found a new person to clean with me, and i need her tomorrow, and she’s not returning my calls today, so i am neurotic about that, too.
I’m wicked sore from the gym tonight- i’ve been fluey off and on the last two weeks, and it’s been hard.
hm, this episode of will and grace where she’s trying to enter some kind of annual design contest (i think it’s the one where will gets her a housecleaner)…. i’m noticing that will has a ring on in the first scene. i believe that that would be actor Eric McCormack’s wedding band (the actor is straight, the character is gay).
Big work day tomorrow. I need the money, but my hands hurt. Better get the dishes done and get to bed.
The worst visit yet to the farm
The weather was lovely, but relations chilled by the end of a 2-day visit
I guess it’s hard being a “have.” I went to my friends’ farm the other day, for the first time in over a month. Herman picked me up at the train station on Tuesday, and I planned on returning on Thursday (in time to get some stuff done around the house, and go to the gym). Come Thursday, Shelley had all these errands to do in Davis, which was where I had to go. She had to go with her mother to pick up her car (her parents had a $2700 air conditioning system installed in a car that’s worth $700), she had to get gas, she said she had to buy booze, and she had to come back and get Chris so they could finish turning in their paperwork for the county’s health care for the uninsured (they would be open from 1-3. She had tried to go the previous 2 days, but hadn’t called ahead, and the place had been closed both times! harsh!). So the plan was that she’d come back and get me and Chris- bringing me to the train (2:25 train), and him with her to turn in the paperwork. Ah, the burdens that the landowner whose parents throw money at her must carry.
I made sure to keep an eye on the camp when I was out in the field, cuz I knew I’d want to be ready really fast when she got home. I figured she’d get back around 12 or 12:30, right? Well, when 1:00 rolled around, Chris was all calling her and trying to find out where she was. She said, “I’m in line at the store, and then I have to get gas.” Chris interpreted this as being her getting back in a half an hour. Please note that she prioritized buying booze over buying gas, over getting the paperwork thing turned in so they’d have health care, and over bringing me to the train. Why was she buying booze now if she was supposedly going to go back into town? Good question. Somewhere in one of these calls she intimated that she might want to turn in the paperwork before bringing me to the train. It got to be like 1:30 and he called her and she said she was going to go try to turn in the paperwork without Chris (assuming he didn’t need to sign anything). Fucking bitch!
I was so infuriated at her fucking selfishness. She had committed to bringing me to the train, and Herman was busy with translation work AND irrigation work. He was doing three people’s work that day, by himself (he doesn’t know how to ask for help). I had to interrupt him and ask him for a ride. And I really had to get to this train, cuz the next one was 2.5 hours later and I was NOT going to wait around in town, lugging my dirty laundry and veggies around on the overloaded bike.
I come out to the farm partly to see my friends (ie, hang out), and partly to be on the farm, which includes helping out. Apparently having me as a friend and as a visitor on the farm is not worth the trouble of making sure I can get there and back. Ie, my help in the field, unloading crap from the truck, cooking, washing dishes, and being another person there to converse with (I think that Chris especially needs this, particularly when he has limited internet access) is of so little value that she can’t even give me a fucking ride to and from the train station. I noticed earlier this year that she has some weird (possibly thinking she is an alpha-female) thing where we’d go out into the field to transplant seedlings, and she’d assign me to some other task (weeding) while she took control of the fecundity. Besides that last insult, when I go to the farm, I have to endure all kinds of disgusting things, because we have different standards of cleanliness. She had some pet baby voles that she found last weekend, and she kept them in a little cardboard box, which she rotated between the stovetop and the cutting board on the counter– where food is prepared!!! She once noticed a flea or a tick on one of the mice, and on Herman’s advice, she changed the bedding. That meant taking out the glove that she had them nested in and leaving it ON THE COUNTER. (In theory, they had pooped and/or peed all over that thing, and there could have been mosquitos or god knows what else all over it) I didn’t take a shower the first night since they don’t have warm running water, but by the second night I was desperate. So I did like she did and took a sponge bath in the shower. This is because 1. the water is so fucking cold, and 2. the drain is clogged, so you’d end up standing in all kinds of nasty water from the backed-up wastewater tank. So even at the end, as a way of washing my feet, when I poured some of the leftover water over my feet, some crap washed out of the drain. How gross is that? (If it were my farm, I would have made setting up an outdoor solar-heated shower area with some kind of greywater drain and mosquito prevention a top priority, but guess what? They don’t take my suggestions very seriously, since I’m not a rich landowner like them) Oh, and earlier in the summer, I had to harass her to wash her hands after pooping. (you wonder why i seem to have a stomach bug the first 2-3 days I’m there, every time I visit)
There’s all kinds of other things, like the time she came to the Bay Area and brought veggie boxes to damn near everyone else except me. Or like, Molly went to visit once and they gave her tons of veggies without thinking to ask her to bring some to me (she lives 2-3 towns north of me, 10 minutes on the freeway or whatever). I can’t carry very much with me at a time because I don’t have a car.
Herman complains about how she doesn’t follow through on the things that she commits to doing. Today (Friday) on the phone, I tried to give him advice on how he could set up a system of consequences and rewards, to teach her a bit of responsibility and accountability (ie, don’t sign the forms for the loan money for her house until she has finished a task, such as starting seeds for the fall/winter crops. go out to dinner when they have harvested all of the onions. things like that). He didn’t want to do that. He just wants to spoil her rotten like everyone else in her life has done, since someone will always give her something, whether she has done her share of the work, or taken responsibility and apologized for not doing it. Well, she’s not going to learn that way. She won’t become a better person. (he tried to say that she acts “autonomously,” and I tried to explain to him that anarchists don’t think that autonomy precludes accountability, so his use of the word autonomous is incorrect– the word he’s looking for is probably “selfishly”)
How do I stay friends with Herman and Chris, both of whom I cherish so much as friends, when they are involved with this cunt (I don’t mean that word in a positive way)?
I’m having trouble figuring out the whole upload/link to photos thing here, but the larger version of the photo, if you can’t link to it, is at http://themahtin.com/main.php?g2_itemId=392
Seeking video of Nacho Libre saying “Whatever”
I’ve been using this expression, “Whatever,” with the trademark Nacho look to the side, in a disappointed way. None of my friends aside from Zak have seen the movie. I am wondering if anyone has/can find an online video clip of him saying it.
I have to show Bradley!
The movie’s website is NachoLibre.com, btw
Some thoughts about wordpress
Hm, so I’m clicking around here… I see that Word Press has a way to import posts from other systems, like Blogger and Livejournal. I will have to check that out. It’s interesting that you don’t have to go in and search around in all kinds of html and div tags to add links to your blogroll… Interesting.
Tomorrow is Word Camp. I am kinda sick and shouldn’t be closed up in one building with poeple all day. Plus my house is dirty and if I feel better I really need to go to the gym. It sucks, cuz I could hang out at it with Bradley. Also, I finally looked at the list of suggested workshops, and I see some interesting things, like “Word Press as a CMS for Indymedia” (which i have an opinion about, similar to my opinion about Drupal. I’m partly biased since my partner had a lot to do with developing and expanding on sf-active for Indybay). Folks who are starting up a Women’s Indymedia site are still arguing back and forth between Mir and Drupal and whatever else as a CMS. I hate Mir. Sorry.
I’d also be interested in “WordSchool: Blogs In Health — Tips for patients or health care providers in starting a blog about health topics. Introduction to the community of medbloggers. How to avoid privacy violations.” And “Information Warfront For Bloggers — Tips and update about information warfront between blogger and media” and stuff. I guess that one of the things they were talking about was podcasts and stuff from the conference. That’d be good.
Aww, I just noticed that one of the people who won’t be able to be there is Josh Wolf.” How sad. I’ve been doing a lot of coverage of his case.
