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Ah, politics!

 
Good cop, bad cop

Well, it was just another day at work, and I was feeling pretty normal, just kinda drifting through the day like I usually do, praying for 4:30 to come. As I said, a normal day. The only contact I'd had from Ms. Arrogant Bureaucrat was a terse and hostile e-mail about how she was waiting for an update, when really, the ball was in the county guy's court (I was praying he'd say no, so that I could torture her a bit...). That was more than fine.

About 2:30, I get a call from the OPD. I'm praying that it's a call that says, "We caught the guy, now we want you to ID him in a lineup." No dice. The cop just wanted a better description of the gun, and to go over the guy's description a little more for the record. Then came the sucker punch.

"You did a great job yelling, 'Fire!'" quoth he (no shit, Sherlock?), "but now I have to give you a bit of a lecture."

He goes on saying that I shouldn't have fought, I should have just handed everything in pure submission. I was just stunned, I mean, the beat cop and the dispatcher both said I did a good job, I personally couldn't have seen how I could have handled anything any better. I mean, my gut was telling me that I was ok, and that my assailant was more scared than I was. I was crushed, and once I was off the phone (I do a great calm act, which I think I pulled off pretty well), I went into the bathroom for a minute. I thought I was ok, but as I headed back to my desk, I felt my confidence just crumble like a dirt clod under a combat boot.

Tears in my eyes, I thought I would just take a momentary break, but when I saw I already had voicemail in the three minutes I was gone, I just had to leave. I found my boss and told her that I just needed to go, because I'd just been called by the OPD. She didn't know what that was at first, since she's from back East, but once I told her what happened, she could kind of begin to guess how I was feeling, despite never having had to deal with anything like this. <--- note: I hope she never does have the chance to understand completely...

I went out to my car, and just crumpled over the steering wheel, bawling. I mean, the sobs literally hurt! It was like my insides were being ripped out of me with a meat hook. I was curled up that way probably for close to 15 minutes, when I stopped, and then jetted out of the parking lot at about 40 MPH. On the way out, I came across a friend of mine coming back from a trip to the bank. She'd seen me in the bathroom, and asked if I was ok. I thought I was then, but I think I was just deluding myself. She asked me what happened, and I mentioned the lecture. She just nodded, told me to go home, get some rest, and mentioned she could tell something was completely wrong.

I came home and called my mom, who told me that I just got the standard cop speil, and it had nothing to do with me personally. "It's probably just his job, and they make him say it," she said. "You did good, kid. You couldn't have done any better!" Some of the confidence came back, but as I'm writing this, I feel a little bit of that same doubt come back. A certain amount of this is the sheer amount of bravado I think I have to put up for show, and that sense that I always have to be emotionally under control, no matter what. In some ways, I'd rather die than submit-- I'd rather fight and die with dignity and honor than live being a victim. I can't just give into anything and be submissive to anyone who wants to pull a power trip on me, and really, that's all this was. A false sense of power behind a gun, that I won out over. And I would do it exactly the same way again. No regrets, none!

But a little of the fear remains, and I think that's why I'm not so confident right now... Even a big wall of bravado has its chinks and cracks...

 
Oh why oh why was I spared the bullet?

Funny, after my wonderful feeling of confidence and highness on life yesterday, I'm now mired in anger... But then again, the horribly egocentric tend to have that effect on me, especially self-important bureaucrats.

Suffice to say, on Tuesday, the day I took off from work, to try and recoup a bit, a ton of voicemails came into my humble little cube. I came in on Wednesday, and there were 16 (actually 17-- one arrived as I was going thru the pile of them). I called back everyone, including this one bureaucrat who thinks she's God's gift to education, or at least to the kids in her district, within 40 minutes of my arrival after I'd driven about 75 miles or so from Rohnert Park. We played phone tag for the rest of yesterday, with her messages getting more and more hostile. Her secretary didn't answer her phone. She didn't answer her phone the five or so times I tried to call her directly.

So, I missed one more call this morning about 11:55 or so, when I had to relieve myself. I returned her call, and left a message at the number she left me. She calls me two hours later, pissed as all get-out, because, "You're not reachable!" So I get to listen to her rant and rave for about 10 minutes about how dissatisfied she is with me, how peeved she is that the phone answering thingie wasn't working yesterday at 7:45 in the morning, how she's strapped and broke in her district, and how she's going to go whine to the Department of Ed about me. I was about to say, "Good!" I gave her my manager's number and told her, "Can I help you now?" I mentioned that I'd left her a message on the number she left me at 12:00 (turns out it was her home number :-P ), and that I was out of the office on Tuesday, so I couldn't call her back until yesterday. She whines more.

The 800 number isn't good enough because everyone else refers her calls to me when I'm on the phone, and no one will help her. She can't make the workshop in her county, so we have to make a custom one for her to be conducted on Monday, the same day as the worshop she's missing. She wants the materials the same day as everyone else. She won't take a video presentation of the workshop along with the manuals and materials, because she's "sharp and will pick up on the key points and big picture that everyone else will miss." She wants to schedule an appointment via me with her county dept of ed so that they can give her a run-down of the workshop. She's not willing to wait for anything. I call the poor county guy and leave a voicemail, asking, "Can you please do me a big favor???"

My manager can't do anything, because the materials are still at the printers. She suggests that I give the woman a rundown of the points once I've attended a workshop, but she's still working on the schedule, so I don't know when I'm going. I send Ms. Snotty an e-mail about all of this, and cc it to both her work and home boxes. I go to the bathroom again for a couple of minutes, and come back to a voicemail. While I'm listening to the gibberish, and then a hangup, another voicemail comes, and it's her co-worker, who doesn't bother to leave his number. I listen to the caller ID, and call that number, only to have the system boot me off the line, since it's not a valid number (do they have stealth numbers for caller ID now?). I try calling her office, and get her hostility and rudeness on the line again. I'm ready to tell her off, but I can't. Grrrr... She still hasn't read my e-mail. GROWL!

 
Excuse me, I'm robbing your ass!

I figure I should've posted this yesterday, but I was a bit of a basket case for the first half of yesterday after this happened... But now, I'm feeling quite good, and I think I handled it quite well. It's probably immodest of me to say this, but I'm very proud of how I kept my head together when facing death, and I think everything else is small potatoes from here on out by comparison.

Well, it was Monday evening, just before 11PM, and I was on my way home from a friend's house after picking up some candles, watching a little boob tube, and seeing a ball python feed. Since there's virtually no parking available on my street, I was parked about two blocks away from my apartment. I was walking with my purse, keys in hand, holding a book, and a bag of candles. About half a block away from my apartment, I heard running steps behind me... Patter patter patter. I moved aside, since people run for various reasons in the evening in my neighborhood, and not necessarily out of fear.

I hear, just behind me, and to the right, "Excuse me!" I turn about halfway to three quarters of the way around, and find myself facing a young guy in a beanie cap with a gun pointed at my chest. My first thought is, "You're kidding me, right? This is a bad joke!" He says, "Gimme that-- give me that!" and gestures to my purse with the gun. I look around a bit to see if any of my neighbors has their lights on, just in case. I said no, and then started screaming, "Fire!" There are a few lights on around me, so I'm hoping that if I am shot, then someone can rush me to the hospital really fast.

He grabs for my purse straps, and I back up, so that he just misses them. I keep screaming, "Fire! Fire!" <---a note: no one in urban areas listens to the words, "Help!" or "Call 911!" anymore... He grabs my purse straps on my shoulder and starts to yank. I grab on tighter, and pull the other direction, keeping up the screams. He pulls and pulls, and the straps break. He says, "Don't make me shoot you!" I just keep struggling to hold on to the remainder of one strap and the body of the purse. I have to keep a hold of it, because he'd have access to my address, my apartment, my checking account, my car (I have the insurance card in my wallet), my parents' address... It would have been disaster had he run off with it, and I would have been just as unsafe if I'd given it up.

I figure at this point, that if he was gonna shoot me, he would have long ago, taken his target and run away. I keep screaming, and he gets a hold of one of the corners. I yank back, and get it out of his grasp, aside from one strap that breaks off in his fist. "Fire! Fire!" I'm shoved up against a neighbor's gate, which holds back this elderly freakish and retarded Shar Pei. The dog isn't barking as I'm struggling with him. He must have seen some of the neighbors' lights go on, because he all of a sudden runs off, dropping the one strap that was in his hand.

I sag against the fence for a couple of seconds, just breathing heavily in relief. Just behind me, the damn dog starts barking, literally right at my back. I jump half out of my skin, and almost start screaming again. I stagger down the sidewalk, and several of my neighbors call down from their apartments, "Are you ok?" I wheeze, "Yeah, I'm fine!"

"Do you want me to call 911?" asks one. I say yes, and he dials, as I stand outside the building for a moment, just breathing, trying not to keel over in shock. "It's busy!" he yells. "I'm not surprised!" I yell back, almost laughing. Figures!

"You should get inside!" someone else calls. I do, and run up the stairs, heart slamming. I get inside my apartment, and deadbolt and security latch the door. I stand there for a minute or two, just trying to stop breathing so hard. I call 911, and five minutes later, the police are there.

One of the officers (the other one was very nice also, and left to see if he could find the guy in the neighborhood) from the OPD, the one who took my statement, was just wonderful to me, and made me feel good about fighting off the guy. I'd been going through the, "Did I handle this right? Did I put myself at unnecessary risk? Should I have given up my purse at the first demand?" routine with him, and he told me that I did everything just fine. The dispatcher, when he was putting out an alert, apparently was stunned that the robber got nothing from me, and gave me kudos also :-)

In retrospect, I'm glad I fought and struggled, and didn't give up. If he'd gotten my purse, I'd still probably be in danger, who knows? But, as it is, if they ever find the asshole, I'm going to be glad to pick him out of a lineup, and be a witness to throw his sorry ass in jail. Apparently, from the description I gave, the cops thought it was the same guy who held up a gas station 15 blocks away on Sunday night. I'll be glad to do whatever I can to keep this from happening to anyone else... It's a scary position to be in, and no one deserves to be put in it.

 
Die blogger!

I just had my nice rant for the day, but the whole freakin' thing died! **cries**

 
Jimmy Carter's Fetish, an Embryo speaks French, and other fun tales

Three writing exercises I did over the weekend...

This one's based on the phrase, "It's not supposed to be like this."

She shifted in her chair again. It was becoming a pattern-- every business meeting, this restlessness totally overwhelmed her increasingly scarce emotional control. It was as if little particles of control were dripping grain by grain into the bottom of her hourglass, lost until the next flip-flop of circumstances in ther life. Drop, drop, a small cascade of sand. Her reserves were almost empty. It was all she could do to keep from bellowing to her boss, her lover, "Shut up, you sanctimonious asshole!" But she couldn't-- the memory of his tenderness last night as he held her while she sobbed uncontrollably stopped her. It's not supposed to be like this.

A five minute piece on an embryo (pick a character):

It was dark, and wet, and warm, but it was not silent, not by a long shot. The embryo thrashed, vestigial legs and arms lashing out that the walls that confined it. The limited cells in what would become its brain strained to interpret the sound, "Jeeeeeee m'aaaaaa." It tried to shriek at the din, but it only disturbed the amnionic flud it was encased in. "Peeeeellllll..." Its limited mouth pursed in frustration, ears assaulted. It was naptime, but the constant, "Maaaaammmmmaaaaaannnn" kept it from being able to drift into oblivion.

Outside, the tape recorder spun, and his mother patted her tummy in satisfaction. "My baby's learning French!"

Who collected these mannequin hands? How did they get them? Etc. a 5 minute exercise based on a pic of tons of hands...

There was just something about the alabaster whiteness and the curvature of fingers, thought Jimmy Carter. A world-reknowned peacemaker and former American President, Jimmy had few secrets he could keep from the world, but this was one of them. He drooled over his collection, gathered from years of looking and surfing Ebay. Sometimes, there was stiff competition from fellow hand-fetishists over these mannequin hands, and Jimmy often found himself in the midst of a massive bidding war for them. He always emerged victorious, however, and had his prey shipped to a secret P.O. box in rural Haiti.

The most expensive hand n his collection had cost him nearly three frand, due to the cubic zirconia ring that was soldered to the index finger. Hands caressing hands, Jimmy sighed as his skin touched the cool ceramic. Ooooooooh!