Somewhere a clock is ticking...

I don't know about you, but for me this is like looking at a train wreck. Horrifying.

No More Happyface

It's raining. The weather reports are all ominous, and there is talk in the office of hail - golf ball size, baseball size, as big as your head... I remain skeptical. I still parked my car beneath the relative security of overhanging trees. It's one of those damp, grey days when all you want to do is stay at home under the covers, but I bravely came into work regardless. I got an angry phone call for my dedication. Some guy, ranting in a jersey accent about trouble with one of the games we publish. I am pleased to say that I kept my cool and treated him respectfully, even when he started cursing at me. I was finally able to pass him off to tech support, who promptly hung up on him for cussing them out. I would be lying if I said I didn't smile.

It wasn't that hard...

Okay. Apparently I don't update this thing enough. (Shock! Horror!) I'll try and remedy that by posting at least once a week or something... but no promises.

Someone said something to me last night that made me think. They'd called while I was making dinner - it was an experiment, really... it didn't turn out all that badly, and with my cooking, that's about all there is to be expected. I am a terrible cook who currently aspires to become mediocre. So, I was cooking chicken in the wok, and about two weeks before Kris had made dinner and poured copious amounts of chili oil into it, enough so that for some time we were all coughig and gasping for air in the apartment. Anyway, I cook, I eat (again, mediocre, but given what I was doing I didn't expect gourmet cuisine) and shorly thereafter I start to feel a bit off. It took me about 20 minutes to realize that taste in the back of my throat was a hint of chili oil. No, I did not give myself food poisoning. The wok must have absorbed some of the oil last time... oh well. But, I digress.

So a friend calls while I am making dinner, and I say I'm doing just that and hand the phone off to Kris and retrieve it later, and they tell me that they were surprised to hear I was making dinner. (As anyone who knows me would be, right? I'm upfront about my lack of leet cooking skillz.) She was surprised because I was taking on that as well, and as she said, "You already do everything!" She said I work, I come home and help with homework, I am always there when I hear a cry, I am there every single morning putting my son on the bus, I clean, I do laundry... and now I was cooking too. She told me I was a model for what kind of a mother she wanted to be.

Now, as flattered and touched as I am, I shy away from that. When I look at myself, it's exteremely difficult for me to see anything but my failings. I do take care of things, yes, but I could do more. How is what a person does good enough to be proud of when you know you could be doing more? In this way, I am never satisfied, and I am never good enough. It' so hard, I look at myself as a person and sometimes it just crushes me, the weight of all my own failures... But someone else sees what I do and thinks it's at the very least something worth emulating. I am my own worst critic, but just maybe I am not as bad as I thought? It's nice, even if it's not precisely true.

Edit -

Oh! Also, my new apartment is super rad and I love it. I have a few pictures by way of my Mom, and I may post them if I can get past the fact that I am in them. Coerce me.