Tuesdays With Abhorrent Fiends vol. 25

A strange day with a strange beginning.

I've left my ID bundle at home. Which means no driver's license--I had to pry open the office door with a butterknife instead of my trusty license. And no buscard. Good thing it's payday and I'll be needing to go out to our bank today, during which trip I can stop off at mine, deposit my paycheck and get the cash to refuel my buscard with. This'll be like a half paycheck, because my holidays are unpaid and I took time off last week. Lucky for me I worked all those hours Xmas week; I'm barely going to be able to get groceries and necessities and maybe pay an electric bill or something. Dad gave me a ride to work, or I would've noticed I left my ID bundle behind when I got to the corner and couldn't get on the bus. My bad anyway for not checking, not wearing pants with pockets in them. I even left the book I was reading at home!

Although, as I said to Dave yesterday, I have only read that book like nine or ten times, so I do kind of know what happens. It's the one-volume hardcover of Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen trilogy, some of the first (possibly the very first, I forget) books to be written in the Valdemar universe. As well to have left it behind on a day like today; I was just getting to the part in the second book where Talia's self-doubt and doubts due to mean rumors about her empathic Talent cause uncomfortable results when she's out riding her internship. Who knows why I would identify so strongly with an empath whose self-doubts cause their abilities to do as much harm as good in a situation where guilt and shame prevent them for asking for help or admitting openly that they are stretched to the breaking point.

Not that I expect that to happen today, exactly, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility. Happily, big Z did finish and submit the payroll file on Saturday; the paychecks were just put into my hands a few minutes ago. They still need to be signed, but the important thing is that they're here, and once they do get signed I can match them up with the W2s that came in last week and start giving them out.

This year I want to file my taxes. It's crazy that I've gotten away with never having filed before--then again, up until last year or so my income was never really anything to write home about. (Giggle. Me and Dave watched The Jerk yesterday. Maybe enough to write home about if you're Navin Johnson.) I'm positive the reason is that I've been entitled to a refund every year, and the government would much rather audit you to find out that there's money you owe them instead of the other way around. But I do want to do it. Myself. Mom always wants me to have her help me file my taxes, but she's stolen refund checks from both Amber and Pearl, I believe. Maybe just Pearl? I'll have to ask Amber. And there's no point asking Dad for help since he'll just give me the number of the accounting firm he never uses himself because he's got a mental block about that too. Pfft.

I did have a dream--yesterday, not last night. Lotta stuff going on, only remember the end. Dave was with me but not doing anything, just sort of a moral support presence. I was in a tub or box, you know, one of those big ones with the plastic sides like they have on reality shows where they fill them with crap and people have to do stuff. I was fully clothed and feeling generally all right. I don't remember if they were poured in with me or were already there, but in the tub with me there was this huge amont of writhing black snakes. Now, snakes don't scare me. I love snakes; I think they rule and are adorable. I started picking up the snakes by the handful and tossing them out of the tub in sort of a nonchalant way. I'd grab a handful and look, and I would've gotten them all right behind the head, where you're supposed to grab them. In my hand they were all tiny, so I could grasp more than a dozen or so at once. Every now and then I'd mis-grab and one or two would have the neck reach to turn around and nip me on the arm, but it didn't hurt much and I was vaguely annoyed rather than worried. Oh, I was grabbing them with my right hand. After I'd gotten most of the snakes out of the box I thought to check and make sure none of them had gotten under my clothes. Sure enough, there was the tail of a snake I could feel just inside my vagina. I reached in to grab it (with my left hand) and the whole thing was long and stiff. Ye gods, cliche dream image, eh? Stiff like with rigor mortis, a dead stick of a snake, was the impression I had. Its fangs were dug into me at the other end, way up in my womb somewhere. I pulled on it to try to get it out and I felt something tear. Not painfully, just like when you're having your period and you know something has ripped off of something else in there. But worrisome because that meant its fangs were dug into me and I couldn't get it out by myself. And I got pissed and yelled for Dad to come and drive me to the hospital. I had this weird series of mental "musts" then; But this is the hospital. But I don't have any health insurance. I need someone to drive me to the hospital so I can get a doctor to remove this for me. But I'd have to walk home to get someone to drive me to the hospital and I'm already here, what a waste of time.
Another odd thing I noticed when I woke up. I'd known, and it hadn't been worth thinking about while I was asleep, that the dead snake inside me died when it bit me. Like the opposite of how poison is supposed to work. I knew it was dead, I knew it had bit me, I knew the things had happened together. But I didn't feel it happen.

Wish I still had LimeWire at home, so I could download that song, "Mañana, mañana, mañana is good enough for me." I got a mirror somewhere needs to hear that song.

[time passes]

Gaah.
My horoscope was right! Today has the transit Sun opposition Pluto, in addition to the Mars in retrograde thing.
I don't even know how to begin to talk about astrology. It's one of those systems where you either know it well enough to be able to view all your days through the filter of it and give the symbols their proper place, or you don't know enough to know what means what to what self-aspects and you just make vague hunchy guesses that create more confusion than they dispel. It really would be good for me to be keeping track of where the moon and the planets are and where the Earth is in relation to the parts of the sky denoted by zodiac signs. Get more of the magical part of my mind anchored on the world outside myself and all of that.

But anyway. I found out that a payroll issue somebody's been having since December or November can only be corrected at this late date by doing an "adjustment payroll" going back to 07 that will cost us money. It would also involve re-running (and re-filing, though our payroll company would handle that part) all the W2s as well, which we haven't given out yet. On the one hand I would like to do an adjustment payroll that takes into account all the replacement checks and make-up checks and weird little issues we have sometimes. But on the other hand, the burden of actually going through our files and making a list of all the changes that need to be made for everyone who has them is something that makes me cringe to think about.

What makes me want to kick myself though, is that my first thought is "maybe I could come in and do it on a Saturday morning when nobody's here to interrupt me." Gaah! No! Stupid Viz! Don't even trip like that! Coming in on Saturday is for owners and people who get paid holidays and benefits and such! Things which you are not judged worthy to receive! So fuck them and stick up for yourself if the workload required to keep the employees satisfied is too much for you. Yes yes, you like being helpful and you want everyone to get their fair shake and what they are entitled to under the law. But if it's not possible to get that for them without going above and beyond the beyond above which you already go, then perhaps they need to work at some other place that can get that for them. Your authority only extends so far.

So ask lady boss about it when she gets in, among the zillion other things you have to ask her. Do we want to do this "adjustment payroll"? How long do we want me to spend on it? Do we want to do just this one squeaky wheel's changes, or all the changes we can find? Do we hand out the W2s today regardless, or wait until the adjusted ones come back?

Oh, and I started to write a sonnet when I was outside smoking because I'd forgot my book at home:

A winter's day I curse from door to door
The wind that pricks the neck below my hat
Would I had fur or down, and could ignore
This weather--would at least I were more fat!
Last week, soon after New Year's, it did thaw
I laughed and said, "The world is ending sure,"
Now January chatters in my jaw
And I believe the world may yet endure
The ice caps melt, and wine will grow in Springfield
The seas rise up to swamp the verdant coasts
Poor sparrows fall and crash against my windshield
And I, left shivering, reassure their ghosts:
"This winter's days are numbered; bones less hollow
Than yours, that fell today, will surely follow."