Social media experience is NOT A THING/My new dentist sucks

Been applying like a mug to get wife a permanent gig. This contract work at my place of biz wasn't going to last forever. In the past week, we've sent out 30 or so apps, contacted two placement firms that are talking to wife, and I did some LinkedIn networking like a mug and got another person in a local business communication group I belong to to take a look at wife for a social media position at their company.

Now, social media is like the baby of a species you have never seen before. No parents. You don't know how to deal with it. And it's only a couple years old. Some people get lucky and have successes, but when other people try to repeat that success, it's just white noise.

What works in social media is new, interesting things. No matter how many experts you wrangle, or examples you bring in, that's the bottom line. You just have to keep throwing out new things and hoping something will stick.

But, this potential employer wanted someone with a few years of professional social media experience. THAT IS NOT A THING. The damn concept was unknown a few years ago. Companies did social media, but not many, and not to the extent they do very recently, and certainly not as a full time gig. So I want to ask this person what the fuck, but can't cause there still might be a position at that company down the road that will work. We're meeting her for coffee maybe in the future, so perhaps I'll get to ask this question.

Secondly, I had three fucking cavities filled this week. We used to go to this dude in Fargo for our dental needs, and he was AWESOME. Only dentist wife has ever liked. I agree. He made dental work seem easy.

So I was somewhat relieved to find out the dentist we chose here had gone to school with him.

Wife got a cavity filled on Tuesday. She moaned and complained that it was a lot worse than before. I scoffed. "Dentistry gets better every year."

Then I went in last night, and had three fucking cavities filled. And oh my GOD it was like being waterboarded. the stupid drill was shooting water down my throat so I couldn't breathe. The dentist was like, try to breathe through your nose (with my mouth open,which I have NEVER understood as advice. Am I just weird or is it impossible to breathe through your nose with your mouth open?) Then she left after filling one and drilling the other two so she could check on another patient.

I welcomed the chance to breathe. but my tongue started to explore the drilled teeth and holy shit do they just strip mine mouths now? I felt like the entirety of my tooth was gone except a couple peaks around the edges.

Then she mentioned possible root canals in the future and I'm OLD I"M SO OLD JESUS FUCK.

Anyway, here's a better blog about dentists. Enjoy.

Walgreen's Gave Me the Wrong Drugs: Updated

Difference between last week and this one? Immense. The severe, wicked, horrible depression is gone thanks to a change in medicine and some perspective. I have an anecdote to share and we'll call this post good.

Went to Walgreen's two days ago to pick up a prescription for wife. When I got there, they had two. This happens often, and I don't keep good track of what she takes, so I just paid and left.

Got home, and the second medication was a refill for the new prescription the Dr. put wife on after the new year that made wife violently ill every time she tried to take it. Vomit sessions all night. So she stopped taking it and told her doctor (along with the info about the depression going south in a bad way).

So we got a mostly full bottle and entirely unopened bottle of medication that I paid for that we don't need. I had to pick up another prescription today. Here's the conversation I had with the Walgreen's person.

Me: Picking up for my wife, Mrs. Fargo Jones.

Her: OK.

Me: Can we double check what you are giving me? Two days ago you refilled the wrong prescription.

Her: (reads prescription)

Me: Yup. that's right. So, that incorrect prescription. She violently threw up all night when she took it, twice. And you refilled it and sold it to me. I was unaware of what it was. Is there any way to do a refund?

Her: Nope. We can't do returns for medication.

Me: OK. Guess I get to go do some experiments then.

Her: ...


Really, I joked about using her prescription drugs illegally, and this teller had no warnings or concerns whatsoever.

So Walgreen's, if you're listening, it was at the Eden Prairie Walgreens, at 12:42 p.m. Thanks!

UPDATE: So, it turns out if you write a blog about your wife, along with fill out the feedback form that the receipt asks you to fill, and in there leave a link to your blog, you should tell your wife about said blog. When the pharmacist calls to figure out what went wrong, things will go much more smoothly. Anyway, pharmacist called wife and made things right. She figured out that one of wife's three medical allergies was not on the list at Walgreens, and that the prescribed medicine included that allergen, hence why wife puked her guts out both times she tried taking it. The pharmacist said the doctor should have known that (cover your ass classes, always helpful for medical professionals, eh?). In any case, they credited wife the 15 bucks toward the next prescription. So, yeah, I guess we're cool now.

Wife said the pharmacist seemed to be really treating her with kid gloves. I said, yeah, well, I was very dickish in my letter and blog.

Love Letter/Horribly Severe Depression

I think the worst thing about severe depression is the way others react even though I don’t know how I want them to react. If the idea of reading about depression makes you wanna puke, I don't blame you and please stop and go do something else instead. this one isn't for you. Like the spoken word part of a 90s R&B song, I'm about to get serious up in here.

For two weeks, wife and I did the depression dance, which is a lot like a Coldplay song where it starts off quiet and sort of meekly sad, and builds and builds until it becomes a loud riot of darkness that you can’t get away from.

Wife had her medication changed after the new year, including a depression med. Shortly after, she got violently ill, which was attributed to flu season, but she was never quite the same. I commented, she noted my concern, but we were ok.

But then the song began to build. She had to fight people to get paid on time, and was told she had a tone, which is a huge trigger word from her past, then we found out she was not being considered for a job in a rather harsh way, and we decided it would be a good time to start drinking heavily every night.

So for a solid week, we spent all our waking hours at home after work her telling me what’s the point and me trying to give her reasons to keep going. She would fall asleep at 8 and I would stay up until Midnight applying to more jobs for her.

She called her Doctor on Monday, and was told the doctor wouldn’t be in until Thursday, and asked what was this concerning. Fuck if wife is going to discuss her issues with the phone jockey at the clinic. She had told her doctor previously about the concerns, but the doctor didn’t seem concerned. She sets an appointment for Thursday and I beg her to just go back on the pills she was on before which we still have a bunch of, but I’m no doctor. And we get through three more days of suicidal feelings, with me on duty to stay with her through it all when were not at work. Finally after a wretched Wednesday night, she calls in to the doctor on Thursday morning and leaves a message “I’ve been feeling suicidal since Monday, the new pills are not working, I would like your help.”

Two hours pass.

She leaves another message along those lines.

Fifteen minutes pass.

The doctor calls her and changes her medication “But not until noon because I’m very busy today and you should have gone to the emergency room if you were feeling that way.” So this doctor of medicine expects a suicidally depressed person to possess the rationality of a non-suicidally depressed person. And me? I still am not sure what an ER would do for us other than charge us several hundred dollars we don’t have to change her medication to something that takes days to kick in, and berate us because that’s what doctors do in our lives particularly when it comes to mental illnesses, berate us.

Then the crescendo. Wife decides to kick it up a notch and start blasting away at every self-esteem issue I’ve revealed to her over five years. I try to encoruage her, speak loving words, guilt her, berate her, make her laugh, and nothing was working. She kung-fu’ed every statement of mine into another way I hated her somehow. She was a jedi master in flipping my words. She choruses “you’d be better off without me,” and “What’s the point?” and “You don’t love me” and “You betrayed me and sided with the people who won’t hire me.” I promise that I am going to sit there and take the abuse and love her, and she takes that as a challenge and raises it to 11 until pretty soon she’s talking about leaving me “It will be better, you wont’ have to pay back Sallie Mae, you wont’ have to wash the clothes or do dishes for me. Really, you will be so much better off.” And I’m wondering if I stabbed my thigh would I hit the artery the first time and Shit I am in there too and death seems like a perfectly rational reaction to this progression of shit we call life and why aren’t more people doing this because this all feels so fucking bad.

I get up out of bed and scream that I can’t take this any more and if I’m the only thing keeping her alive then she’s doing a great job of hacking away at that final tie to earth. I’ve been running an emotional marathon for two weeks and I am exhausted and can't take any more and she yells at me that I am abandoning her just like she always said I would someday. And I put on my coat that’s on the floor and can’t make myself move any more because if I reach the kitchen and those knives I don’t know what will happen.

There is no rationality in severe depression. People say all sorts of shit to people who are in a bad way mentally, and if you haven’t listened to Maria Bamford discuss it, then do so.

And I write about this, both my and wife’s depression, because I hate hate hate that we have to go through so much of life hiding it from people. If we had cancer or something, it’d be fine and dandy to bring up, and people would shower us with ribbons and fun runs. But if the wiring in your brain chemistry is having a hiccup, man, you better just buck up and get over it because all our lives suck and who the fuck do you think you are to bitch about it? Maria Bamford says this better than I can in another interview from Slate:

Bamford: People get really irritated by mental illness. “Just fucking get it together! Suck it up, man!” I had a breakdown, and a spiritual friend came to visit me in the psych ward. And they said, “You need to get out of here. Because this is the story you’re telling yourself. You know, Patch Adams has this great work-group camp where you can learn how to really celebrate life.”

It’s something people are so powerless over, and so often they want to make it your fault. It’s nobody's fault. I started thinking of suicide when I was 10 years old—I can’t believe that that’s somebody’s fault. Like, “Oh, you’re just an attention getter.” Mental illness isn’t seen as an illness, it’s seen as a choice.

Slate: Or a weakness.

Bamford: Yeah. I have a joke about how people don’t talk about mental illness the way they do other regular illnesses. “Well, apparently Jeff has cancer. Uh, I have cancer. We all have cancer. You go to chemotherapy you get it taken care of, am I right? You get back to work.” Or: “I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses, and she’s been wearing contact lenses all this time. She needs help seeing. I was like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic. You know?”

More of that interview here

So I spent 15 minutes on the floor, wife in the bed. Trying to clam the fuck down. We eventually fell asleep. Today started off horribly, with every attempt at discussing the issues while driving to work leading again to how much better off I would be without her.

By 10, we were doing better, We were joking again. Sharing things we saw. The old wife I hadn’t seen in two weeks was peeking through. She had already had therapy scheduled, so I joined her for the first time at her request. We talked it out at therapy to a degree. The therapist recommended I start seeing someone, which I agree with.

And this sickness affects so many people out there, and it isn’t something you can talk down, or rationally deal with or throw love at, like SO MANY people do. It’s a storm that you have to withstand and weather somehow, holding on to whatever you have. For wife, it’s me. And I am very glad to be that person.

Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Bipolar Life in 2012

In typical fashion I’m a day late on reflection. Seems that all the year of 2012 blogs are already out and done.

I was at a show the other night, the Vilification Tennis group doing their F**K 2012 show. They are a wildly inappropriate insult comic group and always a blast to go see. You will think “Oh, you didn’t” at least once during the show, often while laughing. Here’s a video of them at the renaissance fest.

 I cannot repeat the Red Hook jokes, but they did help me personally to find some way through that shit that has been weighing on me for the past month.

Well, during the show, one of the activities was to ask the audience who had the shittiest year. They asked people to raise their hands to share. I thought over the past year.

I started off the year 4 months into unemployment that would last another 2 then got some sort of contract-work-employed for a couple months. I would have declared bankruptcy if I’d had the $1,500 for a lawyer. I was 3 months into pre-foreclosure on the house. I told my mother I'd had thoughts of suicide in two emails, and she never responded. I broke off contact with my family. I’ve hit my heaviest weight ever in the last week. Wife is now living in the uncertain contract position life where we never know when she will be paid and how long she has a job. Wife’s years of school loans are coming due at a rate of $900 a month to begin with. We enter 2013 with no savings, no safety net, and capped off the holidays by walking out on Christmas weekend with wife’s family after her grandmother said one too many criticisms of wife (a long list 33 years deep that includes how she was too big to ever get a husband, too dumb, useless and now added too loud, so thanks for that new complex). Also had a fun fight with her family members who were complaining about homeless people begging for money, when we were literally weeks from being among them when I finally landed my job.

Yet. I didn’t raise my hand.

And not because I was scared to speak in public. I don’t have that fear.

I didn’t raise my hand out of some sort of “could be worse” thing.

For every piece of crap part of my life over the past year, I also thought about the things that went right.

We sold the house before it was foreclosed, without owing money. I got hired by an awesome company and doing what I love – writing and creating. I am doing better without my family, and now know they can’t manipulate me through money, even when times are at their worst, and no longer accept money from them. I do pretty well feeling like shit about life on my own without their help, and Wife’s work is uncertain, but it’s a fuck of a lot better than working for Lisa Larson et al. at Hennepin Technical College. She gets paid closer to what she is worth, is respected for what she can do, and has gotten to know my colleagues better than me since she’s more of a people person than me. We get to go to work together every day and eat lunch together. We got on a debt reduction program. We quit smoking in August and it has stuck. Once I got my job, we have been able to start fully participating in life in the Twin Cities by having fantastic dinner experiences at The Melting Pot, the Lexington, Mort’s Deli, and more. We spent our anniversary in the St. Paul Hotel, where we got upgraded to the poshest room where presidents, dignitaries and celebrities stay. We’ve gone to Twins games, Paul F. Tompkins, Wits, Sleepwalk with Me with both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia at the screening, the It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play, a Roast of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ballet, Art a Whirl, the Walker Art Museum, Northern Spark, the Aquatennial fireworks, Prairie Home Companion, Canterbury Downs horse races. Instead of not being able to go to things because we’re broke as shit, we can’t go cause we simply can’t find the time cause there’s too much we want to do. We’ve had trips to the North Shore, Duluth, and Red Wing. Wife’s best friend made it home safely from Afghanistan. Wife overcame fear of heights to go with me up Lutsen mountain in a gondola. For one month, we were both happily employed full time (more than we’ve ever been). We’ve been relatively healthy this year. I’m off all medications. Our cars have miraculously made it through another year.

2012 continued our bipolar life, which would have been a good alternate name for this blog. Highs, Lows, and few inbetweens.

BTW, the guy who won the shittiest year award: Got the Harley he’d saved up for years for, six months later, got hit by a drunk driver and spent three months in the hospital. Yeah, that would suck ass.

Cell Phones will KILL us all

I have this theory. Not supported by facts. Just a gut feeling

Cell phones will kill us all.

Dead.

It’s not as if they haven’t warned us about them for years. Notice how a cell phone has helped to make this woman completely oblivious to violent horrors. This one starts so sexy you worry about your mother walking in, but trust me, stick around and you'll see what I mean.

Not only are they distracting us. They will start to kill us.

They might rain death from the sky:

Be used as weapons to kill each other while Britney Spears sings in the background.

Or, hell, they might just start shooting though the atmosphere and kill left and right in what is not even the most ridiculously violent cell phone commercial I’ve seen. Considering the events of the last few weeks, I'm betting people at Motorola wish they'd never done this one. In fact, I have trouble believing it's a real ad or someone's spoof. It's got to be a spoof, right? Right? I'm too lazy to find out.

This observation was prompted by seeing an ad a few weeks ago where the guy’s heart was replaced by a cell phone or something. It's called Droid DNA, and if this shit doesn't scare you, I don't know what will




Now, there's a fucking reason that this shit did not fly in the Matrix universe. Yet here it is presented as some sort of "bonus" to your cell phone prowess. What the shit sort of universe do we live in now where we are meant to identify with the smug guys who share shit between their phones like video of santa falling off a stair banister and really messing his internal organs so bad his mother wouldn't recognize them (sidenote: Little known fact, we are all just little organ farms for our parents, so they are very familiar with them)





 I’ve always wondered what the hell is up with uber violent ads for cell phones, or creepy ads where computer arms interact with the phones. I don’t know what the hell these ads are trying to say that’s positive. They seem more like a warning.

I avoided cell phones until I had to get one for a job. Then I’ve kept it low tech. I have a dumb phone. I don’t use it to go online. I use it to call and text. Sometimes I take really crappy pics with it, but beyond that, nothing. I enjoy having a cell phone, but don’t care about the high tech ones.

I was at lunch with coworkers and one of the more tech saavy guys saw me pull out my phone to check the time, and made a comment about being old school. Yes. And when your phones start to kill you or the rest of humanity, I will be here, hiding. 

Got wife to watch Blink

So I'm a bit of a Dr. Who fan. first episode I remember is a vague recollection of the Tom Baker version on PBS when I was hanging out at a friend's house in 7th grade. His dad watched it. I noted it, and it stuck in whatever brain cavity things from that time period stick in that you can recall decades later, cause I don't remember shit about ANY OTHER watching habits of parents of friends, or even the friends themselves.

Then many years later, I was flipping around the channels and caught an episode of the reboot, the one where Rose meets her father on the day he died. It's pretty nuts, and I remember thinking "Wow, that guy from Shallow Grave is in this." Since that is what Christopher Eccleston was to me.  I also saw the second episode around that time, must have been a marathon or something that day on PBS.

A couple years go by, I hear things, and Dr. Who shows up on netflix or something, so I check it out. And I soon get hooked.

I've been raving about it ever since meeting the wife. I also raved about Lost and Battlestar Galactica. She watched them, enjoyed bits, and hated other bits. She really loathes having spent so much time on Lost, as the only redeeming factor was Desmond/Penny to her. But she keeps trying, and I keep trying her stuff.

I hesitated watching Big Bang Theory and The New Girl, but I am thoroughly hooked by those shows after some time (although Big Bang Theory is a season or two behind, since we don't get TV really, and their show isn't easily available for people who like to use Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon Prime, and Redbox - so yeah, it's my fault that I don't watch the ONE thing they are available on).

Wife even made a wedding vow to watch Doctor Who with me. This was not prompted by me at all. This was what she came up with.

We slogged through. She had me fast forward the nightmare enducing parts, like the WWII gas mask two parter. If it's creepy as fuck and gross to boot, she doesn't want to play.

So she's decided after a season and a half of Tennant and she wants to skip ahead to the next doctor. She just doesn't like Tennant like she did Eccelston, and she's seen some of Smith. Before we can do that, I said, there are a few key episodes you still have to see. Blink and Silence in the Library I think, since they introduce major additions to the Whoniverse. We'll miss out on the Master's intro, but seriously I think if wife saw the head spider things that come from that one and I wouldn't be able to get her to sit through another episode ever. He hasnt' been an issue in the Smith years anyway, so no worries. (I know jumping ahead is sacrilege to some people, but screw you, did you start with the first episode 50 years ago and watch every one in order? No you didn't cause that isn't possible unless you are British and old, and if that's the case why the hell are you reading my blog?)

Here's a bit about Blink for the uninitiated:


Tonight, after a day of cooking, wrapping gifts, cleaning and more chores, we sat down and watched Blink while wife did some online shopping for gifts. First 25 minutes, she wasn't into it. After hearing from me and others that it was THE BEST episode, she was not impressed.

Just Like McKayla

So after the needling, I asked her to hey, tone it down, and put down the computer, let me rub your legs, and let's close out the last 13 minutes. 

And she loved it. 

Yeah, it's that good.