Thursday, January 28, 2010

90 minutes of work meetings suck

1-28-10

What a night.

It started fine enough. We played some video games, we had some dinner, watched some shows. Ken went to the neighborhood meeting on the clean up information. The boys were chipper and super adorable, especially when they were brushing their teeth. They have been copying me exactly on the brushing, and since you can’t really talk when you brush, we were communicating like Ewoks with little grunts and squeaks and gestures. It was very funny.

Bobby didn’t want to go into his room by himself, so I proposed that I read them both a story in Dax’s room. Bobby loved the idea, Dax was a little annoyed, but went along with it. We read some Richard Scarry, everyone seemed happy.

Then it went downhill.

Bobby went off to his room, but Dax was all kinds of random upset. He was crying, and not telling me what was wrong. Poor kid. He mentioned he was cold, which I found impossible being that he had 14 blankets on him. He then complained of hunger, which I also knew was BS since he had polished off 3 pieces of pizza and 3 glasses of milk. I went and tucked Bobby in, only to come out to hear Dax still crying. I tried to console him several times. I finally wondered if perhaps from the pizza he had some heartburn or something like that. I brought him some milk and he finally settled down.

Bobby just never settled. He wasn’t upset, he just wasn’t sleeping. Ken got home around 8:30 and I sent him in to say goodnight as promised. Bobby still was not asleep.

I was exhausted, so I was heading to bed. I asked a few questions about the meeting, and one of the questions was, “do we need to move?” Ken answered yes. He said within 5 years. Now mind you, I am ok with the idea of moving. I would like a house in a different school district, and if at all possible, maybe a second bathroom. But, that does mean having money to do it. Unfortunately, this was a stress I was not prepared to think about so close to bed time. I found myself in the midst of an anxiety attack.

I tried to settle down on my own for a while, but just couldn’t. Ken suggested that this was one of the times the doctor said would be a good time for the Xanax. I reluctantly agreed. I think some of my anxiety was also from needing to take Xanax. You hear enough warnings and horror stories from people, it makes you nervous. Ok, it makes me nervous. I got up and took the tiny pill and crawled back into bed, asking Ken to make sure to watch for any bad changes in me. I settled in, wondering what the effect would be.

I remember feeling my legs having a heavy sensation, and my body followed soon after. It wasn’t bad or particularly good. It just kind of was. It must not have taken long for it to work as I was asleep pretty quick after that.

I woke up at one point around 1ish to Ken getting up. I heard Bobby yelling for daddy, which explained in my head why he got up and I drifted back to sleep.

At around 2:30, I heard crying and Ken was in and out of Bobby’s room a couple times. I asked what was wrong. Ken explained in a very aggravated voice that Bobby had yet to go to sleep, and because of this, neither had Ken. I instantly felt bad. I offered to get up, but Ken kind of growled at me as he got up. Bobby cried for a while and then seemed to stop by about 3. Ken had also clearly had an ass full of Monarch’s antics as Monarch was locked into the bathroom, which angered my cat to no end as he tried to open the door with his little paws.

I did manage to get a bit of sleep after that. I had dreams where I went to Vegas for an interview with Joel Stein for a magazine he was starting. I got hired to write columns. It was an odd dream, with lots of random people in the dream cheering me on.

So I am now at work, feeling super tired and wishing desperately that today was actually Friday. I have a company meeting today. Oh, wait, a Town Hall Meeting. Dude, it’s a fucking staff meeting. We don’t need fancy terms.

I really wish I drank coffee. I may have to break down and get myself a soda or something.

I am les offended by the iPad than most of the critical responses I have heard about it. It is still rather pretty. It is an Apple after all. I read many reviews, and some of the interesting advantages included things for work and also first computers for kids. I don’t know that I have any real use for something that large. Then again, I carry around Bitty now with me everywhere, and I wonder if I had the iPad instead for doing the same basic stuff that I wouldn’t like that slightly better. That being said, Bitty does have things like the built in camera for video chatting and most importantly, Bitty was free! I will be curious to see how they improve it since obviously this is first generation. I want one simply because it is a new toy, but I will be good and wait for full drooling.

I have an account that is going to be a giant nightmare for me. I have to mind my manners and not get pissed at this sales rep that I have to talk to about it shortly. I really am not happy about the probably outcome. Basically, it is a guy that does service work for us. So he orders parts. He also files warranty claims on a lot of the parts. He then, in his own warped accounting system, applies them randomly to invoices. He doesn’t inform us of this. So his invoices sit open and past due. I tried to reconcile this for a full year. I fought with our warranty department, our sales rep, and ultimately, they agreed with me, the guy was basically not holding up his end of the bargain and using me as his bookkeeper, and even then, he was not communicating. I sent him an email explaining that I would be clearing the account, leaving 3 invoices open that he now owed since there were no more credits. He didn’t respond. I sent him a 10 day demand letter for payment, which he ignored. He was sent to collections (outside firm). A month and a half later, he emails me yesterday and tells me, oh, go ahead and apply these couple credits to these couple invoices. Mind you, these are credits already used. So I explain this to him, and he gets uppity. He then sends me a bill for $7500 saying that because of the stress of this accounting, we cost him labor. Yeah, no fucking joke. He was charging us because he didn’t know how to run his company. Look, I know we, meaning my company, fucked up a couple times with him in incorrect issue of credits. Even so, copies of everything done were sent to him so he could enter it into his accounting software. I have a simple spreadsheet showing every document, and the net is still, he owes me money. But I found out that the sales rep, despite this man owing us money, despite his threats, and lack of good communication, oh, and by the by, his account is with our attorneys, he is working out a business deal with him!!!! DAMMIT! What the fuck? I have to call the rep in a little bit, and I am telling you, I am not looking forward to it.

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