Quincy's How-To: Dealing with an emotional/ranty woman

WARNING: Sweeping generalisations ahead!

It can be challenging to see your female friend go into what seems like an uncontrollable rage, and to hear things from that seemingly gentle and sweet mouth which would be more fitting to a traditional sailor or brigand that you might meet on the road while he not-so-charmingly deprives you of your luggage and horse. It can be daunting to hear things said about people you know which you either didn't want to find out or which don't match their character in any way (as far as you're aware, at the very least).

It can be quite alarming to experience. So, here is a short guide on how to deal with the Emotional Woman:

1. Agree with everything she says*. No matter how distasteful or ridiculous, or whether you actually agree with her. Women will say all sorts of things to make themselves feel better, and the things which they're saying are purely abut them, not actually entirely about the object of their rant. This is an important fact to remember, particularly if two people you're friends with have broken up and one of them happens to turn to you to rant about the other.

 

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2a. Offer understanding of how she is feeling.  One thing women respond to very well is you saiying things which are as simple as "Oh, honey..." and "That sucks!"

These key phrases get across the idea that you are listening to her plight, that you do care, and that you are sympathising. To spice things up, try adding the following to your repertoire of agreeing with Crazy Female Sentiments:


Awful, dastardly, dreadful, fucked up, hurt (that must have), joking (you're), lame, no way, preposterous, revolting, sadistic, tacky, unbelieveable, wrong, zonked (you must be)

2b. Do NOT offer any kind of advice or reason or logical explanation. There is a time and place for this. It is NOT while the woman is experiencing a torrent of emotion. It is for later, when she has calmed down. Or when she asks for it directly.

Key phrases to avoid:

You shouldn't be reacting this way.
You should be more rational.
You should think about this calmly.
You shouldn't say things like that.
I think he was right to break up with you when you told him his mother was a fat, narcissistic bitch who is after nothing but a trophy wife for her spoiled little prince of a son.

Actually, that last one might come in a few days after the wailing and crying, but we'll get to that later.

3. When you see the tide of anger receding, THEN offer some optimism. There are signs. She won't be wailing, screaming, or breaking off into fits of crying, and she might actually ask you a question rather than just firing off abuse at the cause of her suffering. Now is the time to start with positivity and reality, even if this contradicts something you agreed with earlier. In fact, it probably will contradict something you said earlier. This is fine, because she will already know that what she was saying earlier was ridiculous and exaggerated.

REMEMBER: She was saying things to make herself feel better. None of it was to be taken literally (though it is to be taken seriously, which is a bit different).

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4. Offer to spend time with her and arrange it if you are able. She may need some space, but don't leave her alone for too long if it can be avoided. She does need to regain her independence, but she also needs distraction and for her friends to rally around her. She needs to know that, just because one significant person in her life has been a jerk, this does not reflect on anyone else she has.

5. If you were uncomfortable with anything she said and want to address it, do so at a time when she is calm enough to not feel that you are treading on her feelings.

If "Dave" is your friend and what she said about him bothers you and you can't convince yourself that she didn't mean it, then wait. She will either take it back during that same conversation, or she will when you approach her about it a couple of days later. Be tactful, because she may become a raging mess again, and you'll be back to step 1.

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There's just no working with some people.

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And we all remember how unpleasant Step 1 was. Don't we.



* This, of course, only holds as long as you are sure she isn't actually going to harm herself or anyone else; if your friend has tendencies toward doing actual harm, then you should disregard this advice and go straight to some sort of professional.

Role-playing. Not the dirty kind. Not D&D, either.

As mentioned earlier, I don’t habitually role-play. I’ve played role-playing computer games (predominantly Balder’s Gate II) and have had friends who role-play on a regular basis for years. I just never did it myself. It was mostly a matter of pride; I kicked up a fuss about it once and just couldn’t let it go after that.

But, eventually, a friend of mine convinced me to play in a single-session, Cthulu Mythos (horror) game which didn’t use dice as the deciding factor in how successful an action of yours was, but a Jenga tower.

It was set in Europe, a few hundred years ago. I was the only character to survive, with one being collected by the dancers of the Danse Macabre and another running straight at a galloping horse.

I also pissed off Boudica, started the great fire of London and saved it from the plague.

I decided that it was best to retire while at the peak of my role-playing career. I may stage a come-back one day; who knows.

Wisdom teeth. Gone. Urgh.

Teeth are out. Right now it's surprisingly painless. The numbness is driving me insane. I'll put up a proper post about it when I can move my brain again.

Evil nasty shark teeth.

So, my wisdom teeth came through when I was 18. I remember the teething being uncomfortable and thinking “So this is why babies cry about it” - the Terrible Twos suddenly make  a lot more sense, because having those teeth burrowing out of the flesh inside your face is friggin’ uncomfortable and it just Does. Not. Stop. I got through it by chewing tiny little mints with the part of my gum that was being assaulted from underneath by these semi-blunt objects that were forcing their way out, kind of like when you try to push your fist through dough. Poor dough.

The last time I went to the dentist before this year was shortly after my wisdom teeth came out (nearly 7 years earlier than this year's visit) and in that time, unbeknownst to me, the wisdom teeth had actually started to eat away at the molars in front of them! Kind of like a shark, surging out of the surface of the water (or gum, in this case) and taking a great big chunk out of the poor swimmer who’s just treading water, blissfully ignorant of what’s about to happen to them. Just a lot more slowly. And without the theme music.

My handwriting makes "Molar" look like "Molor". I do know how to spell, I just can't write clearly. This is why all my posts are typed rather than hand-written. Aside from the lack of choice when it comes to input device.

I was basically told by my dentist that I had to have them removed or I'd be dealing with decay and toothache and general ickiness in the mouthal area. That sounded kind of wrong, didn't it?

So, today, I'm getting my wisdom teeth thaken out. I’m actually quite frightened by what’s about to happen. I’m not so frightened of the surgery itself - I’m going to be under anaesthetic. It’s the anaesthetic which I’m terrified of  (and this blog really didn't help). I mean, I would much rather be knocked out and wake up with it all over and done with than be awake while someone drills and scrapes and pulls things out of my mouth (seriously, is it possible to talk about anything oral without it sounding dirty?), but I’m still panicking about the fact that, for several hours, I’ll have no consciousness and no ability to do anything.


Yes, I'm a control freak. It's just one of the things which makes me so charming and irresistable.

I had the same problem when I got my eye surgery done, but that wasn’t nearly as invasive as tooth extraction so I got away with a lower dose of Ativan and can remember most of what happened (it smelled like burning hair and the laser looked kind of like HAL; a slightly worrying combination, actually).

But, I’m going to be brave and go under completely, and trust that I’ll wake up slightly groggy and with no recollection of what I just went through. Fortunately they're removing all four teeth, so there's little chance of my waking up and findint that the'd removed  the wrong four teeth.  Oh I should so not have had that thought just then - there's one more thing to panic about!

So yeah. Wish me luck. And if there's a reduction in post frequency or quality at any point, blame it on the poor health I've had lately!

I'll post again with an update this afternoon when I'm home and conscious.


P.S.
In some unrelated news: Today is a year since I was diagnosed with ADHD. Happy ADDiversary? Or something?

Momentum

I have this problem with people interrupting my train of thought. Aside from forgetting what I was thinking about or the point I was trying to make or where I was going with a story, it’s also actually quite painful.

Once my brain starts, it’s like a car on a freeway. It will be doing its thing, thinking away, like a car driving smoothly along this road and happily going along at 100km/h. And then hitting the brick wall that appears out of nowhere, a la Warner Brothers:

That’s what it’s like when someone drags my attention away from what I’ve focused on. Now, for me, focus is hard enough to come by as it is. When my brain does finally manage to hook into an idea and start running with it, it has too much momentum to be able to just stop. It’s also like being in a tunnel, in that I’m finally not distracted by everything around me. If I am drawn off to the side by something, that will also be like hitting a brick wall, only one that's just a little to the left or right, rather than put up right in my path.

This is called hyperfocus. It’s an ADHD thing which is counter-intuitive in some ways, because it’s not a deficit of attention but an overabundance of it. It can be very helpful in an exam situation, but it’s horrible when someone decides that they want your attention when you’re in the middle of it. It hurts.

And then, when you’ve snapped at the person who has been annoying you (or, worse still, the several  people who have been trying to get your attention, which used to happen at uni has very nearly happened at work more recently), you try to go back to what you were doing. Unfortunately, hyperfocus isn’t entirely voluntary and getting back to that state after an interruption can be a lot like trying to get back onto the freeway and back to 100km/h in your totalled, wreck of a car. It just doesn’t quite work. It’s now slow and clunky and bits have fallen off while other bits are held on by what paint is left and could drop at any moment. You just can’t work the idea in the same way that you would have, had you been interruption-free.

This has caused a few arguments between me and my fiancé, because if he suggests an idea, he needs to hear me acknowledge that I’ve heard it. Unfortunately, if it's a good idea, my brain is already working on it so when he forces an interruption by asking me to acknowledge that I heard him, I snap because he’s just put that wall right in front of my speeding car of a brain.

This leaves him wondering what the hell just happened and why I went off my rocker when all he did was ask whether I’d heard (and that’s perfectly reasonable, given I hadn’t actually given him a proper response).

We’re still working on this problem. At least it doesn’t happen particularly often.

Sprains, strains, and stress injuries.

As teachers, there are some things you really don’t want to discuss with your students, as there can be uncomfortable repercussions if they take this information home to their parents. These things (in my case) include:

• Alcohol
• My ADHD and the medication I take for it
• Why I’m an atheist
• How their parents should be bringing them up
• Their sex lives
• My sex life

That last one can be brought up by relatively innocent circumstances. Like a sprained wrist. The result I dread looks something like this:

What actually happened was that I twisted my hand while dropping my bag in a very unco-ordinated way.

Teachers have, in recent history, been fired for giving a “sex ed” class when they are not qualified to (the teacher in question simply answered her students when they wanted to know who the woman giving her a ride to school was; the teacher told them it was her partner). This is alarming, so one tends to want to avoid topics which are even remotely controversial.

Not every school is like this, but enough are. Ideally, the response would look kind of like this like this:

Can't think of anything to blog about

So here are some drawings I did on my iPhone, with one of the drawing applications, and one that I did with Paintbrush:

Random Guy

Quincy does Social Commentary

Alien Cat wants Food.

If you play sob music backwards, you hear the Devil PMSing.

If you are squeamish about anatomy, don’t read on.

The uterus is an evil, evil thing. I’m sure everyone’s heard a woman complaining about its monthly rampage at least once before, so I’m not going to bore you with the details of my immediate, physical suffering.

So, I’ll bore you with details of some previous physical suffering instead.

I’ve always had lots of monthly pain and stuff, so I started taking the pill to control this and make my life easier. In March 2010, I thought to myself “Why not skip periods altogether!” (I get brilliant ideas like that) - and switched to Implanon.

For a while, it worked really well - I was free of Monthly Madness and it was awesome and I was thrilled at the awesomeness of DEFEATING NATURE!  I was like a GODDESS among women, smugly enjoying the fact that they were probably bleeding all over the place and worrying about changing their “sanitary products”, while I had no such problems. I was superior.

Hammers also defeat nature

Three months later, on a Friday, I got a stomach ache. I didn’t think much of it, figured there was nothing to do about it so I took some ibuprofen and left it at that. Had a bit more of the same over the weekend, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. I just got on with things, as you do.

Monday night found me collapsed on the floor of my housemate’s room, crying in pain and begging her to take me to the hospital. I had no idea what was wrong with me, except that my legs and stomach hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before and the legs may have actually been preparing themselves to fall right off, dooming me to enduring “legless” jokes from well-meaning friends trying to make me feel better about my new status as an amputee. It was that painful.

I called my fiancé and he met us at the hospital where they almost immediately ruled out appendicitis and then had us wait for several hours. The really cool thing was that they had a TV in the waiting room and were showing Scrubs. I just can’t think of anything better to show in a hospital than that show.

Eventually, they took blood for testing and got me onto a bed where they did lots of poking and prodding of my abdomen and couldn’t figure out what was causing the pain. They took a urine sample and tested that, too. All the test came up normal. All the tests came up normal. No abnormalities. Zip. Zilch. ZERO.

There was, apparently, NOTHING wrong with me. Aside from the horrible amounts of PAIN. Which had gone from a whopping 10 (worst pain I’d ever felt, and I’m not kidding), down to a 3 or a 4. Also, It was playing games with me - it’d have me convinced that it was getting better, and then it would spike up again with a “Hah! Gotcha! I was just kidding! I’M STILL HEEERREEEE!!!!”

They eventually sent me home at around 4am (we had left the house at around 10pm), and my housemate and I wrote the day off. My heroic fiancé went in to work and was actually fine. I have no idea how he managed it. He is like a GOD in that he has such a flexible diurnal clock - I am in awe, because I spent the day incapable of anything more coherent than “Buh.”

Over the course of less than a week, I went to 4 different doctors until I got to see my regular doctor again, who suggested endometriosis. He told me to go back on the pill and see how I go. After 2 days on the pill, I had one pain attack that got up to about 5 or 6, and haven’t had one since (which strongly supports the endometriosis hypothesis).

So, in short, my uterus hates me and loves being on the pill. It's a drug addict, and this is an unhealthy, drug-infused relationships where it only likes me because it's stoned on oestrogen.

Evil. Pure, unadulterated, EVIL. And also dysfunctional.

The Devil's Uterus

Never. Again.

Tried a day without medication yesterday. It was interesting - It's been a while since I've started something, changed my mind, started something else, changed my mind, started a third thing, changed my mind gone back to the first thing, changed my mind...

Then I got handed a stack of test to staple and was glad for something I could do while my mind raced and did loop-the-loops. Seriously, my brain is a one-woman air show, except sometimes I run out of the fancy stuff that leaves trails in the sky so you can't always see the path I took to get where I ended up going.

Mental ACROBATICS! My brain is an acrobat! It stretch, it can jump, it can turn itself upside down... It can also sometimes get a cramp, but even that is impressive!


BLEEE!

Possession is 11/10 of the law.

I would like to discuss the phenomenon of territorial marking. When my cat hit puberty, he started to pee on things. I got him desexed a week later (I’d have had it done earlier, but the vet told me that it would be fine to leave it for another week or two, but I digress).

This was him, marking out what was his. It was particularly important given that he’s living with another cat, which belongs to my housemate (Other cat has a bed, I has a bed).

Humans like to think of themselves as being superior to tother animals. We have large brains and opposable thumbs. We exercise because we want to, not because it’s necessary for our immediate survival (running away from lions, hunting down gazelle for dinner, etc etc).

Deep down though, we are still just wild animals at heart, and territory is one area where this is still alive and well.

In the Modern World, territories are now called property and real estate, and we have neat pieces of paper saying This patch is mine! and we feel pretty happy with that, but you only need to see this kind of thing to realise that those base instincts for peeing on the wall are still alive and well - just visual now, rather than scent based:

In the first half of August, my housemate was housesitting for her parents, so my fiancé moved in for that time so that we could practice living together and sort out how we do chores and stuff. It went pretty well - only had one hinge come apart and one door knob fall off.

Where territorial marking comes in is that he moved back to his parents, but he left things here. He left some clothes, his newspapers, and a broken hard drive. He also left some food behind.

He is tagging my house!!! So that I don’t forget he was there! Just like the cat was!!! Only less smelly.

I had him come over the next day to pick up his things, which he did. He took the clothes from my room, he took his newspapers from the lounge, and his broken hard drive from the piano stool. He didn’t take the food from the fridge, and in my room he left behind the vest he had been wearing before he came over that very day!

HE IS MARKING MY HOUSE AS HIS TERRITORY. 

Thank goodness he didn’t bring his cologne, or we’d have ended up with this:

Though I’m surprised he didn’t use his in the same way. Actually, I should check all the clothes in my wardrobe for a distinctive Lynx smell (A LYNX IS A TYPE OF CAT!!! SEE! SEE???)

So I’ve got his stuff scattered around the the house, like markers saying “I was here! This is my space, so I can just leave it there because it’s MINE and it’s where my stuff can go if I want it to go there!” HE’S TRYING TO TAKE OVER MY HOUSE!!! WHICH ALREADY SMELLS LIKE ME!!!

Aherm.

I’m trying to get him to take all his stuff home, but after living here for a fortnight, It may be too late. He now considers this his turf, and there’s no stopping his stuff from cropping up unexpectedly any more. He’s just going to keep coming back now ;-)

Beryl's First Breakdown

My first car was a 1992 Suzuki Swift. I called her Beryl.

Beryl was awesome, but there were some hidden issues - she had some rust in the radiator which hadn’t been picked up on. Until she started behaving very strangely.

Unlike some cars, who relish the chance to have their engine turned off and will stall at the drop of a hat, and even unlike most cars, who will happily nap while you’re not driving them and the key isn't in the ignition, Beryl utterly refused to be turned off.

That little car just clung to life.  I’d take the key out and it’d spend the next several minutes shuddering and spluttering as if it were in the throes of death. It looked so sad and pathetic, I could almost hear it: Please mummy, please don’t let me die...

It was bizarre and a little scary. Like it was possessed or something. The Ghost of Engines Past? Who knows. Either way, whatever was inside my car and causing this bizarre behaviour, it was not a benign spirit.

Scary monster car. With teeth.

I asked my father about it (he’s an engineer), and his response was simply that I’d filled the car with the wrong type of fuel. I tried to argue (I fill up at the same pump from the same petrol station every single time) but he was adamant: I had filled it up with the wrong kind of fuel. Ok, you’re the engineer and I’m forgetful. You know best.

Then came the day (about a month later) when I brought Beryl home, took the key out, and she kept going. Just wouldn’t stop shaking. I showed dad. He said “Oh.”

In short, the car had been overheating and had blown a gasket. Miracle of miracles: The engine itself hadn’t been damaged in the slightest and, after a month of home repairs, she was fixed and running like a little dream. Of course, it was entirely my fault for not keeping an eye on the temperature gauge. Nothing at all to do with him not taking me seriously...

But I can happily say that, from that day on, my concerns about my car were taken seriously. The next time I pointed out something odd about the engine, dad actually had a drive and agreed that I was right about it needing to be adjusted.

I may not be a mechanic and may not know exactly what is happening, but I do know my own car.

It's kind of like needing glasses to find your glasses...

ADHD poses some interesting “challenges”. One of these is the forgetfulness that was mentioned earlier. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if what I’m about to write was what I intended to write in that earlier entry, though I still don’t actually remember and this could well be a new idea for an entry, while the previous one was meant to be about something else after all.

To help with the forgetfulness (caused by being distracted mid-action or -thought), I take medication. It helps me hold on to thoughts and to remember to do things.

Unfortunately, if I haven’t taken my medication, I sometimes forget to take my medication. It usually isn’t until I’m melting down and wondering why the world is so overwhelming and why I’m not able to cope with anything that I realise it’s because my tablet is still sitting happily in its blister pack, laughing manically at the extension to its useless, undissolved life.

Having the timing of taking medication as part of a routine can help with actually taking it, but if your routine changes that also stuffs things up. My routine changes almost daily, because my timetable varies. I can try to take it at the same time each day, but the change in routine still distracts me enough to have me completely forget that I was meant to take the stuff which is supposed to stop me forgetting things.

Memory problems are the worst ones to have when in charge of your own treatment. Seriously. It’s like trying to find a torch in the dark - you need light to be able to find it, and you need to find it to turn it on to get the light. Logic fails at this point and you enter an infinite loop of forgetting to take your meds because you’ve forgotten to take your meds because you’ve forgotten to take your meds.

And then the person whom you’ve asked to help you out in situations like this notices blank stare on your face as you struggle with the mysteries of the universe rather than finishing the piece of work that’s due in an hour, taps you on the shoulder and asks you if you’ve taken your meds and, realising you haven’t when you tell them you can’t remember, sends you off to do so. Hopefully, you won't be distracted by shiny reflections on your way to the tap to get a glass of water and forget again. This is why I keep a drink bottle at my desk. And why one of the people who sits near me knows that I need to take my medication.

I love people. They help out and are awesome. And helpful and nice.

Did I also mention that having unmedicated ADHD leads to “looping”, where the same thought goes on in your head over and over and over and over again, kind of like OCD? 

I think I’ll go take my meds now.

My 2nd ever trip to the Emergency Ward

As you may have guessed by my earlier posts, I was sick a fortnight ago. I had to take Tuesday and Wednesday off work because of it, that’s how horrible I felt. On Thursday, I was feeling better enough to go back to work and teach the kiddies once more. What I didn’t expect was for my SVT to be set off by the action of picking up my bag and provide me with a third, surprise sick day.

I’ve had SVT since I was at least 12 or 13. It used to occur in fairly short bursts, every 2-4 weeks, which gradually changed into one MASSIVE attack, every 13 or 14 months. By “massive”, I’m talking about a heart rate of around 200bpm for up to and sometimes, as happened last week, over an hour.

This wasn’t the first time I went to hospital for it. The first time was actually a rush trip in mum’s car and purely for the sake of getting an ECG so that it could be properly diagnosed. The first time I was sent there as an actual emergency was when I was 17 and at a fairly large sporting event. I was there in my role as a qualified first-aider, which is a nice little bit of irony, just to add some flavour. It was hot and humid (middle of summer), and I was treating a casualty who was feeling unwell.

Next thing I know, I bend down to pick up a pen off the floor and, on my way back up, my heart goes “PAAARTAAAY!!!!” and starts racing (Seriously, even my cardiac muscle has ADHD). It certainly picked the best place for it - I was in the main first aid room, with beds, about a dozen experienced first aiders, surrounded by first aid kits, oxygen kits, and everything you could possibly need for CPR (if it came to that, which it never does). For someone who is a terrible judge of time, I have awesome timing, though it does kind of suck being there to treat casualties and endind up a casualty yourself...  Sort of goes against the D in DRABC, D standing for “Danger”, and the first danger you look for being danger to yourself so that you don’t end up hurt and useless to the person who already is.

Anyway.

Next thing I knew, I was hooked up to a defibrillator and had 3 or 4 grown men looking on and looking extremely worried and anxious, wondering what to do with me and my heart rate of (only!) 105. They even told me that they’d have shocked me, had I not been conscious (SO GLAD I WAS CONSCIOUS)! I kept trying to reassure them I would be fine, but I think when you have a patient who has an abnormal rhythm AND a stupidly quick and faint pulse, it’s in the job description not to listen. So they called the ambulance for me. I think they were surprised (pleasantly, one would hope) when they called my parents and they were as dismissive of the episode as I was. They also notified my school, and we were all were pleasantly surprised when the head of campus called up to ask after my health. 

Naturally, my heart started beating normally again as the ambulance pulled in to the hospital. Still, I had plenty of witnesses and documentation to show that I wasn’t faking it and wasting everybody’s time, so I guess that’s something. 

Four hours and a lot of blood tests later, I was told that there was apparently nothing wrong with me and sent home. It was a bit of an adventure, and when I showed up to do first aid again on the next day at the same event (ran for a fortnight, I think), they weren’t far from wrapping me up in cotton wool and keeping me in the first aid room until it happened again. Thankfully, it didn’t and I was able to treat casualties rather than being one. 

Gotta love medical adventures.

Party Hearty!

Shaving

Watching men shaving is like a spectator sport, or like an interactive reality TV show.

Being female, I don’t shave as much of my body as a man would, nor do I shave as frequently as a man would, and I don’t shave the same way a man would. For one thing, I don’t shave my face so I don’t need to use a mirror. My fiancé does, and at one point while he was living with me I got curious and went into the bathroom to see what he was doing.

About 2 minutes later, I went and got popcorn.

So there I was: sitting on the edge of the bathtub, eating popcorn, and telling him when he’d missed a spot.

I don’t know whether he appreciated my presence and input, but I thought that it was better entertainment than television!

In fact, it should be a new Olympic sport, with points for speed, technique, smoothness, and ability to shape the beard and sideburns accurately! Instead of medals, ornamental razors can be the prizes. I would watch that on TV. But then, why would I, when I can just watch my own man do it a few times each week! I think it's time to get more pop corn!

Woohoo!

Wow. I’ve been blogging for a month now. Consistently. On a variety of themes. I’m pretty impressed with myself - I hope that I’ll manage to keep this up and that my writing will gradually improve over time.

So, happy first lunaversary to me! And thanks to you guys who are following and reading and commenting on my blog and keeping me motivated to write :-) It’s greatly appreciated!

Winter is officially over!

I was going to blog about how Spring has Sprung, how good the air smells and how good it feels at this time of year.

But then I couldn’t sleep because of this lingering cough and I had to get up at six. The git in front of me on the freeway was going at 80km/h the whole way, as was the git in the lane next to him, and by the time I realised (because I started out a fair way behind them and had to catch up), I didn’t have time to go into the third lane to overtake before I had to take the next exit.

Then I got to work and found out that the printer is broken and, because technology hates me, the other local printers don’t display with their “names” when I search for them from my computer (they display some generic serial or something), so I had no quick way of finding the upstairs printer in my building and printing to that one. Fortunately, someone was kind enough to print it for me.

I went upstairs to collect my printouts, I swore and shouted and kicked at the door for not working (who the hell thought it was a good idea to put the locking mechanism MORE than an arm span away from the actual door???), and found that the printer wasn’t on. Great. Best-case scenario, I turn it on and it’ll print. Worst-case, it won’t turn on.

Guess which one it was! Go on! Guess. I dare you.

More swearing, more kicking at doors that hate me. When I got back to the office, the kind person who printed for me heard my plight, marched upstairs, and I dare not imagine what he did to that printer but a few minutes later he came back with my printouts, mentioning something about a circuit breaker.

I have a new hero.