heaven is a place on earth - rant alert

Somehow this is the only picture I took all day - that kind of day
Waste truck called Eden. That's life.

*rant alert - I have a weird crap day but it ends all okay*

It started with MOT at Doc's at 08:30am and went downhill from there. Braced myself for long windy rainy wet cycle into work with heavy cold. I arrive soaked to the skin to discover it's my day off. My diary is wrong.My boos tells me this and with the same breath informs my dripping face that she has initiated a disciplinary against me for not phoning in sick during a planned holiday date two weeks ago.

Still sodden in my cycle gear we ended up in a heated discussion but it was like arm wrestling a foggy octopus. She kept evading my questions, changing her facts or acting like I was the one bullying her. Ended up having to muster calm assertion of old and pull out a few HR facts to get her to give me anything close to a straight answer.

Putting to one side that as a new member of staff I did not telepathically grasp this ludicrous policy, in over two weeks since the absence (it's a part time position) my boss neither phoned, emailed or made any attempt to contact me to discuss it. I'm pretty dedicated at what I do, I perform extra duties, stay late, go the extra mile all the time. Having managed up to 200 people in the past, I'm staggered that I can be harassed in this way. In the end I had to explain she may have more to lose at any disciplinary hearing than me, duty of care, notification of process, representation rights etc... That scared the bejesus out of her enough to make her back down and reconsider. Truce sorted (or so I thought). But really? Do I need to pull my Joan Collins act on you to get you to act legal, fair and competent? Seems so. I agree to stay as they are short staffed and try to move on with my day, smile, make everyone cuppas etc..

An hour later she sends me out back in the rain to another venue miles away which is well known for troubling clientele to help with staff cover. I get soaked again but it is better than being in her company and I quite like the staff there anyway. My strange day was not done with me quite yet and a uni friend I hadn't seen in 16 years strides in to get support with some personal problems. Despite losing a short term memory capacity he remembers me and those times with startling accuracy. He spots me in one look where it takes me five or six mins to place him. He looks old and admits hard times but can't resist name dropping a little to redeem himself, which is fair enough, he's had a very up and down kind of life. Which is what I feared he'd have whenever I wondered what happened to him. Speaking of old times our younger selves feel so oblivious to what was going to happen, who died, who hit rehab, who was happy. We didn't notice fate being set down in those years, at least not our own. At best we speculated trajectories for other people, we had no idea they would get trapped in their own cliché. Maybe fate is always invisible in the present, is always so.

And then home.
Hailstones.
and you have to laugh. So I call my sister about my day and she cuts me short unamused and tells me I have it easy compared to her horrible day and how awful her flu is and how hard a time my nephew is having at school. Suitably cauterised I shut up. She operates on an emotional stock exchange that runs on supply, demand and exclusivity of any feeling. I know this. It was stupid to call her. She is in the agony of motherly worry, an anxiety I think I would never be strong enough to bear. She wins, but why do I never think it is a competition and she does?

Finally, an hour late, I meet good friend Ag at nice tapas place. She is gracious and understanding and makes me laugh snot bubbles and hot tears.

and now uni work to do before I sleep and it is 1am and I have another wet cycle to work ahead and .. and you have to laugh in the face of hate and fate.

3/10