This Is Confessional. Please Respond with Approbation.

Hi, Drunkards.

It's been a rough week.

As illustrated by this humorous meme.

I
'm not going to sugar-coat it. On Wednesday, I prepared for the third Presidential debate by drinking heavily. More heavily than usual. I'm not sure why. Maybe I thought it would enhance my satirical skills for live-tweeting the proceedings (which it didn't because I ended up too drunk to tweet at all). Maybe I was stressed because Drummer Boy planned to join me that evening, which is a rare midweek treat. Maybe I'm just a mess.

Me. It goes to me.

But here's the thing. Wednesday night, while I was drinking and getting ready for the debate and acting like an idiot in front of Drummer Boy, Precocious Daughter was volunteering at a nearby middle school. She volunteers because she earns community service points for National Honor Society, but also because she's just a great kid who loves to help out when she can. The middle school is about a five-minute drive from our home. But I would be making that five-minute drive to pick her up...under the influence. Drunk. Wasted.

Drummer Boy was appalled. But he didn't stop me. Because he was appalled.

You guys, I stepped into a car while well over the legal limit to pick up my only child from a school where she was doing volunteer work. 

Feel free to be outraged and disgusted. You are not alone.

PDaughter and I got home safely. I ended up throwing Drummer Boy out of my apartment because...reasons? Apparently I got very bitchy and verbally abusive. Fact is, I don't remember any of it.

But the next morning, I saw he had written me an e-mail at 3 a.m. It was the hardest, saddest thing I've ever had to read. I almost didn't read it at all, although I ended up returning to it several times over the next couple of days.

Drummer Boy showed me tough love, you guys.

He broke my heart and shamed me and made me cry.

I'm not going to spill his private business here. But he has lived through his own substance abuse issues. And the thought that he very easily might not be here but for luck and his own mighty strength...it brought me up really fucking short.

And the thought that he might give up on me, as he strongly hinted he might do after my latest shenanigans, well, that just slapped me in the face.

Drummer Boy and I are still together, you guys. He is the love of my life, my rock, my friend.

And I will never put my child in danger just to feed my blog.

And I will be the role model I need to be for PDaughter, and the person I know I can be to myself.

Do I promise to never touch demon alcohol again?

Well, no. I can't make that promise.

Just being honest.

But can I put the two most important people in my life above vodka?

Oh fuck yes.

They are everything to me. Vodka is just a crutch for my weaknesses.

It doesn't even outrank this pissant little blog. You guys - my handful of loyal friends and readers - you mean so much to me. I want to keep writing what I can to give you what pleasure I can.

I want to write that goddamn book I keep talking about.

I want to live happily ever after.

Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot for endangering my life and my relationships. I need to hear it.

I promise to respond with monkeys and politics and whatever.

Thank you, my Drunkards.

I love you all.

What Would YOU Do?

Yesterday I told you about my upcoming high school reunion.

Class of 1985, when we all totally,
no lie, looked exactly like this.

And I said that I probably will not be attending the reunion. But that there was also one circumstance under which I might consider it.

Here it is.

Last year, when Precocious Daughter got contact lenses, I wrote about it. And I told a kind-of-semi-not-really-related anecdote about a guy on whom I had a massive crush in high school: Erik L.

Erik was popular, talented, extremely cute. He barely knew I was alive, because I was none of those things. I got over my crush (OK, I moved on to other, equally unrequited crushes), and after high school Erik L. faded into a vague memory of someone I went to school with but never really knew.

And then I grew up to be Jennifer Garner. LOL.

Flash-forward to maybe six months ago. My darling Drummer Boy had posted something to his Facebook page, and several people had "liked" it. 

One of them was Erik L.

I was like:

Yeah, Drummer Boy and Erik L. were Facebook friends. Considering that Drummer Boy was several years ahead of us in school - and didn't graduate from our high school - I was rather dumbfounded by this strange coincidence.

So I asked him - you know, all casual-like - "Sooo...how do you know Erik L?"

And he said, "We're old friends. How do you know Erik L?"

Ummmmm.

Ummmmmmm.

There's a small part of me that would love it if Drummer Boy escorted me to my reunion, and Erik L. was there, and I could be all like, "Your old friend Drummer Boy is cool, right? Well, he thinks I'm cool. And hot. And we're together. Because sometimes crushes turn into something else. By the way, I loved it when you played 'Blackbird' on your guitar in the theater room in 1983. Turns out I'm more into drummers, though."

Right?

Snap.

Or maybe I should just move on.

I would love to show up at my reunion with Drummer Boy on my arm, though. Because he is smokin'. Also, kind, smart, funny, friendly, and personable. And smokin'.

Not that I need validation from a bunch of random 40-somethings.

What do you think, Drunkards?

Shit My Job Says: The Homunculus

Do you love your annual performance review?

Freak.

As The Artist Formerly...I Mean, Now...Well, Sort of Nobody Ever Stopped Calling Him Prince once sang, dig if you will a picture.

At my IRL job, I'm due for my annual performance review. Or perhaps I should say overdue, as I was told it was review time almost two months ago, and my actual job anniversary was in November.

How time works in the business world.

Here's everything you need to know about me and performance reviews: I hate them.

I'm insecure, have a massive guilt complex, and don't respond well to criticism. So yeah, once a year, put me in front of the person who decides my professional future so they can list my faults for an hour while I don't get to stab them. This will be a growth experience.

See how my mind has expanded?

It's been a while since I've had to worry about a real performance review:

2009: Company was dying in the recession; no one gave a damn how anyone was performing. Did it really matter if the drinks were chilled properly on the Titanic when there was a fucking iceberg right in front of it?

2010: Got a new job - woo-hoo!

2011: I had done nothing for a year, and everyone knew it and was good with it. Did I mention the government was funding us?

2012: Got laid off, then landed a new job - woo-hoo!

2013: Review was a lovefest; my boss and I were friends as well as co-workers, and she had already decided to take another job elsewhere, so what the frig did she care?

So I haven't had a real, meaningful performance review in six years. That's a hell of a long coast, and I've enjoyed the shit out of it.

Pictured: Wheeeee!

But this year, things are different. As I said, my boss/friend is gone to a new job, and her office is occupied by the Homunculus. I can tell he works for the company because he comes in every day and sits in front of a computer and speaks with a vocabulary of approximately 6,500 tired business cliches that have literally no meaning.

Note to the Homunculus: You are using the term "begs the question" incorrectly, every damn time. Also, the phrase is "the eleventh hour," not the "the twelfth hour." And if the client hasn't responded, just say that, because "it's been crickets" may be the single most annoying idiom I've ever heard.

The Homunculus entered our office eight months ago. None of us knew what he was doing there, and he never told us. Well, he never told me. In fact, in eight months he's never once:

• Explained what his job duties are.
• Asked me what my job duties are.
• Discussed what he expects of me.
• Told me I'm doing a good/bad job.
• Given me any responsibilities.
• Provided any feedback on my work other than "That's stupid" and "Why would you do that?"

This time, dead serious.

For the last eight months, I haven't considered him my boss. He created such a huge leadership vacuum that I literally couldn't approach the place where I could consider him my supervisor. I adopted the lead administrator in the corporate office (who is an amazing woman) as my boss and mentor, and it never raised any red flags, you should pardon the tired old idiom.

So it came as a pretty large surprise when I learned that the Homunculus would be conducting my performance review. He who doesn't actually know what it is I do, and does his best to stop me from doing it whenever he glimpses a piece of my daily routine because he thinks I'm incompetent, is now in charge of evaluating my performance and recommending my salary for the next year.

This, pretty much.

Does it come as any surprise that, given this responsibility, he's blowing it off to the extent humanly possible?

I was talking to my mentor/quasi-boss today and told her that the review hadn't happened yet. My office is right next to the Cave of the Homunculus, so I couldn't say much more than that. Being very perceptive, she got it and was concerned and asked that I call her when I could discuss things more privately. But what am I supposed to say?

"Yeah, the guy who thinks I'm a moron and doesn't know what the hell I do but is pretty sure he doesn't approve of it is delaying my review so he can avoid giving me the raise he's not going to recommend because he thinks I'm a moron but won't tell me because he doesn't talk to me unless he's complaining about something I/the company/the rest of the world did that he thinks is worse than the way he would do it, which he doesn't bother to share with anyone because then he might have to stop complaining and actually provide the leadership he apparently was hired to provide but hasn't gotten around to in the last eight months."

I have mild asthma; I don't think I could get the words out, even if I bothered to try.

This might happen.

In the meantime, the fucking review is hanging over my head, and that's almost worse than just sitting down and having the damn thing.

I will say this. All the professional drama is distracting me from my personal life, which is basically a Ty-D-Bowl commercial right now.

That means "in the toilet," children. Look it up.

It does feel better to write about it, though. So thanks for letting me vent. I hope my distress was moderately entertaining. If not, I'll write about the actual review if it ever takes place. It should be hilarious.

I'll call it "The Curse of the Homunculus."