outbursts

I can tell that this is going to be one of those times when I need to practice holding my tongue and such. Because I'm irritated at humanity this week. It's no one big thing, it's just lots of little things:

-- Hillary Clinton's "I want to save you from yourselves!" commercials that are running with unpleasant regularity on the television. This is the one where she talks about, among other things, "predatory student loan corporations." And basically, it's Every Business Bad, Little People Good, Let Me Fight Big Business For You.

and you kind of know that the funds to fight big business - and whatever kind of "retribution" winds up being made, will be out of taxpayers' pockets. Or there's going to be some kind of horrific unintended consequence of her fight.

-- my campus, because they "can't give the faculty a raise" have made what was a pre-tax, tax-free fringe benefit into a "salary increase" that, instead of being put into a retirement account on our behalf, now becomes income. I'm irritated two-fold: first, it means I'll be paying tax on something I didn't have to before, and second, if I want the "salary increase that was retirement savings" to continue to be retirement savings, I'll have to do a little math and THEN truck over to HR and fill out a bunch of paperwork.

look, none of us are likely to jump ship solely because you can't increase our pay for a year. We understand. But it is irritating to have to do a little extra accounting (and 35 years down the line when I retire, try to remember what year the changeover happened).

And yeah, it also kind of irritates me that they think we'll fall for the idea of "Hey, we've got more money now!" We're not that stupid. At least, some of us aren't.

-- the youth group kids broke a small bathroom window last night. It was the classic kid accident - ball thrown badly, window hit. (They were, I hasten to add, playing OUTSIDE. Not in the bathroom.) But I fear this is going to be used as Yet Another Example That Ricki Is Incompetent And Can't Control The Kids by someone who has never ever raised a finger to help out with the program. (Why is that? Why is it that the people who complain most vociferously about people doing unpaid, largely unthanked volunteer work are ones who can never be bothered to take it on themselves?)
I've already volunteered to either pay for it myself, or suggested the money be taken out of the youth fund, but I'm bracing for some kind of blowback.

-- the fact that when you're an adult, the only way you have of knowing you're doing an OK job is that people aren't actively criticizing you at the moment. That's been the hardest thing for me to learn: no news should be equivalent to praise.

-- I have a student in one of my classes who's getting on my nerves. He's very vocal, has an answer for everything, complains a lot. It's like, dude, none of us have it easy. Just make it easier by not voicing your displeasure every 10 minutes.

-- I have another student who asked me if he could do the late-afternoon labs "early" because "My last class gets done at 10 and then I'm stuck here until 3." While I do not deny the potential suckitude of being stuck on campus for 5 hours with "nothing" to do (except we do have this big building full of books and quiet places where you can study, read, or even nap, called a LI-BRAR-Y), I didn't like it that he got really kind of whiny and upset when I told him no, that wasn't possible.

Look, I'm sorry there was a conflict with another class and my lab lost in the deadlock. I don't like a 3 to 5 pm lab either. But I'm NOT going to do two separate lab sections just because one person is put out that he's got a big block of time with nothing to do. (Dammit, I'd love to have five open hours on a single day.)

I don't know what it is with students asking the moon from us and then getting unhappy when the best we can give them is a funky-looking cratered rock. I don't have a problem with them ASKING; the problem I have is that they EXPECT. I deserve a life, too. I deserve enough time to get done the myriad things I must get done, and in order to do that, it doesn't include teaching classes-on-demand.

-- Apparently Brit-ama-ney Spea-ama-ears* is being taken in for an intervention. On one hand, I hope she gets help. I hope she finally decides that the way she's acting can only lead to an early grave. But as I yelled at the tv this morning: "She has more money than God, hundreds of sycophantic yes-men. And those of us out in flyover country, we bust our humps, we pay our taxes, and if we're lucky, someone will say something nice about us at our funerals." I know that's not very charitable to poor Brit-brit (and yes, I do think she deserves a certain sympathy, fame seems to suck pretty badly), but I do think there's some truth in the fact that the whole ordinary mass of humanity, by and large, are going "I'd love to have a $20K clothing budget and people telling me how wonderful I am."

(*Homer-fying words. Like "saxamaphone.")

-- Valentine's Day is coming up. I have rather a hatred of this day, mainly connected to the fact that I'm single, and the implication is that if you're single on Valentine's Day you are a Big Loser (and not in the ABC reality-show sense). And it's stupid. I hope no one out there uses the day as a "get out of jail free" card but I suspect people do: as in, "It's okay that I harp on you all the time for little stuff, because look, I bought you a video game." or "It doesn't matter that I never lift a finger to help out, because here are some flowers."

If it were an ideal world, we wouldn't need Valentine's Day, because people who had someone they loved, they'd show it every day. And they'd also not feel the need to smush the grapefruit-half of Valentine's Day in the faces of the singletons to "prove" that they're worthy because they have love. (And yes, it's happened to me, before you think I'm overreacting. I've had too many female co-workers and others "have" to come and show me the gifts they got, and stand around expecting me to say something about how wonderful their man is. And there's this subtle sense of "I'm better than you, look, I have the flowers to prove it.")

-- And the weather is just for crap here. It's an unpleasant combination of cold, wind, and wet, without any chance of "winter precipitation" that could actually shut campus down and give us a day off.

-- I have a toothache (well, several teeth aching, in fact). Can't tell if it's the tooth or my sinuses. Can't get a dentist appointment any time soon. I hope it's sinuses.

So anyway. I'm struggling a little today.