Fishing Confession

I'm pretty much a do it herself fisherwoman (except when the hook gets swallowed and I don't want to be the one who's responsible for killing the fish). But I'm scared of catfish.

Don't get me wrong, I like to catch them, but I don't like to take them off the hook. The whole being sliced up by their fins and injected with venom thing doesn't really appeal to me.

The boy and I were fishing yesterday evening and I had caught a few little fish, but nothing to write home about. As it was getting dark, the fish (and mosquitoes)started biting, and I caught a catfish. I was excited because I could tell from the weight that it was more of a respectable sized fish. I told Kevin to run and get my phone so I could take a picture, and the stupid thing flopped himself off the line and onto the ground. I started yelling "I don't want to touch you! I'm scared! I don't want to touch you!" and then I worked up my courage and picked him up. At this point, he totally mangled my hand, so I dropped him on the ground again (served him right!). And I worked up the courage to pick him up again and he did the same thing. I wanted my daddy at that point.

Kevin came back with the camera, but by that point, I wasn't even interested in being photographed with the little !*&%$&@, so he let him go. (Neither Kevin nor the fish were harmed.)

Now I'm getting ready to go back out and do it all over again (except for the touching a catfish part).

Forwarding Emails Doesn't Make Jesus Like You More

Also, pressing "like" in Facebook won't 'start a Christian revival, right here, right now.'

I just thought y'all should know that in case you were feeling guilty for not forwarding emails or pressing like.

On to other things...

Maya continues to do well. She's started coming out of her shell (and her crate) a little more and showing some personality. She gets so excited when it's dinner time or treats are being handed out. I was just outside with all three dogs and Mercy tried to play with Maya. Mercy's idea of playing is usually slapping Butter in the face, smiling at her, and waiting for Butter to go for the jugular. I told you they play rough. Anyway, Mercy decided to try to play with Maya by slapping her in the face, so she got a good stern talking to. She doesn't seem to get the size difference between her and Maya (approx. 40 lbs). Maya handles it really well, but she eventually wants to find a safe place to stay out of their way.

Work has taken a turn towards being even more illogical. We're doing another realignment (yes, we just did one in January) after I've finally gotten my stuff under control and running well.

This has taught me a couple of things:

1. It doesn't pay to work hard (literally or figuratively).

2. Apparently all the hard work I did was optional, because even though all the other teams in our organization were told to do the interaction model implementation that I did, I'm the only one who did it and nobody else was reprimanded for not doing it.

3. Nobody appreciates/understands what I've put myself through for the past 8 months to make my process actually work. When things are working, nobody pays attention to the process and they assume it just magically worked out that way by some stroke of good fortune.

4. Unpaid overtime is going to be a thing of my past. They can kiss it.

So anyway, basically they're reverting to an old structure and now I'm going to be the SME (Subject Matter Expert- Basically at the top of the processing team) for my team -- meaning, I'll be in charge of making sure process improvements get implemented, helping out with stuff on the team that nobody else knows how to do, ON TOP OF doing pretty much everything I already do, except the "team leader" is supposed to be helping out with half of what I already do. Oh yeah, and he gets the title of team leader even though he's only doing a portion of what I already do and he continually has to ask me how to do things or has me do things for him because he doesn't want to learn how to do stuff on his own. Also, I know him extremely well, and he's not going to do the stuff I do. My teammates actually laughed when they heard he was going to be "leading" them again.

Don't get me wrong. I really like the guy. He and I have worked together pretty much since I started there (10+ years ago). I don't begrudge him the title. It just doesn't sit well with me that I've worked as hard as I have and made as much progress with making good changes to the process just to have him swoop in and take on a title and get a (now) fully functioning team due to the work I've done all year. It makes me feel pretty much used.

And I'll quit griping now. Just know if you see me and my tongue looks like I've bitten it in half, it's because I'm trying not to say anything that will get me fired....ooh, but if they fire me, they have to give me all my vacation time I haven't been able to use this year and they have to pay unemployment...

Anyway, I think Maya just figured out how to knock the big girls' dog food bowl over (it's on a stand), so I better go check that out.

Little Senior Citizen

As of this past weekend, my house has become just a little more chaotic. Am I a glutton for punishment? I would say so.

Meet Maya!




I'm going to be fostering this little one for awhile. She wandered up on someone's property skinny and without a collar, and they couldn't keep her, so she's mine for now.

I took her to the vet Saturday and learned that she's spayed, doesn't have worms, and is probably over 10 years old. She also has a hellacious case of dermatitis and a yeast infection in her skin. Her legs look like elephant skin -- really thick and cracked and baggy. It's really sad. The vet said that her skin has probably been bad her whole life and nobody tried to make it better. When I first got her, she would just scratch and scratch and groan. It was pitiful. She's on steroids, yeast medicine, and she has her own medicated shampoo now. She's still itching a lot, but I think it might be some better.

She's a funny little thing. She's 10 lbs. and she doesn't have hair on about 50% of her body due to her skin condition. She looks a little like an overgrown rat. :)

She loves her crate and when she naps (which is frequently!), she buries herself completely under her covers.

Here she is after I woke her up.



The other dogs are pretty curious about her and try to get her to play with them, but she's not interested. Maybe she'll pay more attention to them after she settles in. As of now, I'm just trying to get them not to accidentally run over her or sit on her. They play pretty rough with one another and they don't watch where they're going!

Your vs. You're: They Aren't the Same

Today I went to an all day leadership meeting. It was facilitated by some kind of consultant type. Our top leadership guy introduced her and really played up the fact that she's from Harvard. I thought, "Oh neat! I've never met a Harvard person before." (Well, maybe I didn't really think that, but one might think that given the introduction.)

I started looking over the agenda and saw that she wanted us to do the following:

Discuss you're background and role within the corporation.

Really?! She might as well have gone all "text talk" on it and used "ur" for "your."

I won't lie. I corrected it on my copy of the agenda. It's an illness.

Rum-pa-pa-pum

Look at what I caught! It's a drum! It might be a trash fish, but it was MY trash fish and that's all that mattered. I get excited when I catch the more "exotic" species. If I ever succeed in my quest to catch a gar, I will pee myself.

I even serenaded it after I released it. Are you ready for this? Here goes.

Little Fi-sh pa-rum-pa-pa-pum
You made my worm your dish pa-rum-pa-pa-pum
To catch you was my wish pa-rum-pa-pa-pum
Some say you are delish pa-rum-pa-pa-pum-rum-pa-pum-pum-rum-pa-pum-pum

Kelvy says that if we're ever in a survival situation, I'm in charge of catching fish. I'll take that as a compliment.