Blatherskite

I have had a challenging couple of days. Actually, the past month has been pretty challenging for me, if  I were being honest with myself. But the past  couple of days especially. These are a few of the things, in chronological order, that I’ve dealt with:

1. I got shushed yesterday while I was helping a patron with the copy machine. I am not even fucking kidding you. I was helping this woman print a document (something I have to, you know, use my voice for) and a person turned around from her computer and shushed me. This caused a mob mentality in the computer room and two other people agreed, “you are being kind of loud.” One person even had the gall to say, “This IS a library  you know.” I didn’t say anything. I just left the room, fuming with rage.
2. The printer continued to act up and I swear to fucking god, I was so ready to reenact that printer scene from Office Space. You know, the one where they beat the shit out of the printer.
   
   I love  it when he starts punching it. Ha!
3. Right before I left to go home my insurance agent called. She told me that they found ME at fault for the accident last week. The one where the guy SLAMMED INTO ME WHEN I WAS ALREADY BACKED INTO THE PARKING LOT. 
4. So I went home and pretty much lost it. I ranted and raved to my husband about how completely incompetent the insurance agent is. I went off about how I fucking hate how fucking passive aggressive these people are around here (and I do. I really, really hate it. I didn’t really realize it until last night when it all came bubbling up to the surface and I exploded. I think I would rather deal with just plain aggressive. At least you know what you are dealing with). Raf calmly sat there and listened and when I got to the part about passive aggressive Oregonians he started laughing. Then I started laughing because I sounded ridiculous. And then I felt better. It felt good to get it all out.



5.  I woke up this morning still feeling angry at the insurance situation. But I had a plan to e-mail my agent with photos and a piece of my mind about the way she handled the case. I planned to snap a picture of the parking lot at the coffee shop the incident happened at so I could e-mail it to her. As I was standing in the parking lot somebody honked at me! I looked back at him with a look like, “how rude!” and moved out of his way. He actually had the nerve to drive up next to me, stop his car, roll down his window and yell at me! he said, “You have no right to just stand there in the middle of the parking lot like that!” I started to explain what I was doing but in the middle of it I thought, “fuckit” and all the rage of the past couple of days came bubbling up to the surface and was expelled. I very loudly yelled,  “Well you have no right to honk at me asshole, so knock it off!! Jerk!” It was the tone that I think scared him away. The rage that came out of me was undeniable. He rolled up his window and drove away as fast as he could.  I walked into the coffee shop shaking and the people all looked at me with a bit of fear in their eyes. But you know what? I don’t feel bad at all. Normally I would feel bad. But that guy was a douche and deserved to be called an asshole. I was a fucking pedestrian and had every fucking right to be where I was and he needed to just stop and wait for me to move.
6. I went to work, told my story and felt better. I did story-time and had a great time with the kids. I thought my troubles were over but no. A grandmother approached me to tell me that her grand-daughter has two mommies and that when I mentioned “dads” in my story-time it confused her and maybe I should keep this in mind for the future? sigh. In my story-time my letter of the day was, “D.” I like to ask the kids if they know words that start with D and to give them a hint I said, “there is a very special person in your life who starts with D.” They right away always guess Dad. So apparently this person had a problem with that. I couldn’t believe it. My response was, “Well then this is a really good opportunity for you to discuss with your grand-daughter the concept of fathers because I’m sure she will run into this a lot in the future.”  That one I think I handled very well, in my humble opinion.

Clearly my lesson is that I need to stand up for myself. I feel like I’m being given lots of opportunities to do this the past few days. Lucky me! ♥