Crummy day

I guess you could say my crummy day sort of started last night. Yesterday, I was talking to Heather about the Haiku contest and saying how I was entering because it would be fun and easy not having to shovel out 500 words. We talked a bit and I told her I was intimidated about writing and she was very sweet and supportive and said.. no..no.. write.. just write.. doesn't matter if it's crap.. just do it.. just let yourself enjoy it.

Last night, I decided to jump in with both feet. I sauntered over to the text contests and found the current one is : Opening Paragraphs. Overdone Openings. Just my luck, it's a contest for no-talent hacks. I could literally write something out and not have to edit it. LOL!

Anyways, I took her advice. I sat down in the livingroom ... pushed my back deeply into the corner of the sofa and with a writing pad on my knees and Bic in hand I was all set to "enjoy the experience".

I started off writing some ridiculous story of someone being awakened by a noise in the middle of the night and something I had written about having one beautiful eye open and an equally beautiful one closed (ok, I wouldn't actually write that way, but I wanted it to be really cheesy for the contest) made me change my mind and I then decided to change it to someone looking in the mirror and looking at herself.

I started writing about her.. and then all of a sudden it was no longer her I was talking about; it was me. I didn't really see it coming... it sort of just happened.

I am always amazed at how Heather seems to be able to spew out words as if she is breathing them... and here I was flowing ... but it had turned into "cry me a river" flowing. I had written myself quite a "pity party". Feelings and emotions just came spilling out.. easier when you don't have to share them with anyone. I wrote 4 full pages, my emotions vascillating between feeling very self-indulgent and pitying myself to feeling angry at myself and feeling guilty for not appreciating all the good things I have. Ask someone who hasn't eaten in 2 days if they really care if they lack affection, I assure you that is the last thing on their mind. At that point, I just wanted someone's shoulder to cry on... someone to give me a huge hug and a pep talk and make it all feel right again.

There is a German word, schadefreude, which means to be happy/sad at the same time. I have always liked that word and wished there was an English equivalent. Last night I wished they also had a word for self pity/feeling guilty about it at the same time that I could use to explain how I felt.

This morning I woke up kind of cranky I guess... still trying to shake off the negative feelings from the night before.

Knowing I was going to have to deal with the tax guy again didn't improve my mood very much either. I re-emailed "Dean" but didn't get an answer so later on I went into their Live Help again and was told that my best new friend only started work at noon. I finally did get in touch with Dean (in chat at 3:39) who didn't remember who I was, what my problem was, and why was I bothering him again?

He says: " I got your email today only (while he knew perfectly well I sent it while still online with him), and it didn't specify what the problem was so I put it aside." .. Pardon me? You told me to send it and you would reply in 10 minutes.. and you just never responded at all. "Well, could you tell me what the problem is again because I don't remember."

I go through the whole thing all over again, until a light flickers on in his brain and he says.. "ah! yes.. now I remember!". Of course, he is still as clueless as he was yesterday, except this time he has my tax returns in his hands. After an hour we find that the software didn't transfer one amount.. not in the forms but in the worksheet.. grr. I thank him for his assistance, he closes the chat without even saying "You are welcome" or "Good Bye!. Oh, anyways.. the taxes are finished, filed, finito, finally!

On the weekend I installed Grablt on my computer. I couldn't get it to work for me. At first I thought I had not entered my server's new address properly or my password.. but I checked everything with my service today and I'm not doing anything wrong. Just to be, sure I even subscribed, as a test only, to some news feeds to see if I actually could receive anything here. Well, they work just fine.. but, of course, I don't want to hunt down songs through hundreds of newsgroups.. that's Grablt's job.

I visited the Grablt webpage and waded through several forum threads of people having exactly the same problem as I am having. There didn't seem to be a corrective procedure to do. The only suggestion was that it could possibly be an Earthlink problem or installing an older version of Grablt might solve the problem. Ok, I 'll take an older version.. who cares! Well.. the two sites that were offering it were both temporarily down. When they did finally get back online, I was able to download it .. but after installing it, it still wouldn't work. :-(

I swear I'm almost finished my whining... but one more thing happened.

A couple weeks ago on Artalyst, I won "Picture of the Month". People that frequent the site nominate their favorites and then everyone can vote and the winner gets a spot on the front page as well as a print by an artist that is also one of our members.

I was very excited about getting the print. I never win things.. and this was just the coolest thing to win. Today the print arrived at my door. I was very anxious to see it but the delivery man says: "that's $40.00" .. Pardon me? He repeats: "$40.00" and some amount of change that I don't really remember. I'm flabbergasted. I'm going to have to pay for this? That's quite a prize! He says, "well.. he didn't send it as a gift, he sent it with a value and you have to pay duty and taxes.. $40.00 please." Well, thank you very much but no thank you. Geez.

So.. sorry for the long rant, I just needed to get it out of my system. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.