The latest PFH* has been successfully launched and I am feeling a great deal of relief. It’s been quite an insane schedule for me over the last couple of months. There’s been a real push to get as many of these new projects launched as possible during the first quarter.

I had a rather interesting email exchange with my boss and one of the other key players on this project:

Me: For all intents and purposes, it’s live.
Boss: Yeah!
Me: I feel like I’ve given birth over here!
Boss: Hey, I’m not cleaning that mess up.

Ha! It’s going to be one of those days! We are all punch drunk from working long hours and the nerd humor is coming out. I’m exhausted, but very content. If you listen closely, you can probably hear me purring. And I think I may just go back to normal working hours now… although, I’m not holding my breath.

* Project From Hell

“omg, it’s freezing down here today,” says I.

“Haven’t moved your computer upstairs yet?” asks he.

“Who has time?” I moan and whine.

Days go by, I work, because that’s what I do. In my spare time (stop laughing) I begin working on the upstairs “guest room” and trying to get it ready to move my stuff up there.

“Are you moving your computer?” he asks me today.

“Uh, no? I’m working,” I respond, sort of annoyed because, well, hello, it’s three in the afternoon, what else would I be doing?

But it gets me to thinking, not much left to do up there. Just take Zach’s desk apart and bleach the walls (don’t ask!) and it’ll be ready.

“I’ll do it later this evening maybe,” I finally reply.

“Need me to bring some muscle over?” he asks.

After pausing, backspacing, and clearing my head of twenty seven inappropriate comments, I assure him I can handle it, but if he’d like to help, I’m not foolish enough to say no.

A little back and forth later, I’m somehow agreeing to finish cleaning the room and stuff. He’s getting his son to come over and help, so poor little Sabre doesn’t hurt her poor little back. *indignation* I can do this dammit!

Did I mention that, hello, I’m not ready to do this? I want to go to bed, I want to be anywhere but here. *sigh*

At four, he tells me he’s leaving work and on his way over (!!!). This would be a good time for me to shower, yes? So after a few emails, and the obligatory cigarette, I wander off to, as The Goddess Dawn would say, scrub mah butt. I’m drying my hair when he arrives, too busy with trying to be pretty to ever work around to getting Zach’s old desk taken apart.

He takes it apart without a gripe. As I’m storing it away, I tell Cricket to get the vacuum upstairs so I can clean the mess. I wander back up the stairs to sound of the vacuum running. Cricket’s with me. The fuck? Someone is cleaning without me asking? Oh lordy, I may pass out on the spot.

His son arrives, they drag my desk and other shit up two flights of stairs. Yay! An evening of up and down later, and I’ll never have to go down two flights of stairs to check my email again.

If you had asked me earlier today what I wanted to do tonight, moving my stuff upstairs was so totally not on my list. I’ve been running a fever on and off, I would rather be left to my own devices.

But now? Omg, my office is so cute! Of course, it’s missing certain things, like shelves. An IKEA trip tomorrow will surely fix that. And I’ll never have to go down two flights of stairs again to work! Yay!

Thank you Jim and Drew I didn’t want to do it today, but I’m really happy we did.

Oh, and did I mention… IKEA tomorrow! *squeeeeeeee!*

On February 14, 1998, V-Day was born with a group of women performing “The Vagina Monologues” in NYC to raise awareness and money to stop the abuse of women and girls. $50 million dollars and ten years later, V-Day is celebrating V To the Tenth worldwide.

What is V-Day? From the mission page:

V-Day is an organized response against violence toward women.

V-Day is a vision: We see a world where women live safely and freely.

V-Day is a demand: Rape, incest, battery, genital mutilation and sexual slavery must end now.

V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.

V-Day is a catalyst: By raising money and consciousness, it will unify and strengthen existing anti-violence efforts. Triggering far-reaching awareness, it will lay the groundwork for new educational, protective, and legislative endeavors throughout the world.

V-Day is a process: We will work as long as it takes. We will not stop until the violence stops.

V-Day is a day. We proclaim Valentine’s Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence.

From the I Really Should Stop Reading This Shit department:

Kidding, right?

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

[...]

Oh, I know—I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s talking about women my age who don’t have kids, but even then, really? Are you fucking kidding me? A 40 year old single woman’s secret desire is to have a husband?

Fuck me with a chainsaw. That’s just stupid.