Massive

When I was fifteen or twenty (though those ages seemed far apart back then, they don't make much odds to me now in my old age), I had a brief period of time when I said "massive" if something seemed good to me.  Yes, Virginia, Paris Hilton did not invent the would-be-catchphrase-now-defunct phenomenon.  Today, for some reason, twenty-five or so years after its demise, the word bubbled out of my wee, paltry little brain, and popped at a good point in the day.

This week has been spent making every effort to do my job, and - on two extremely key tasks - being utterly unable to.  The real kicker is that the two things I have been unable to do (reconciling my purchasing, and creating a new hire ID) are STUPIDLY quick and easy jobs ... and it is now officially a week I've spent trying to manage each of them.

Thank technology.  Due to an UPGRADE (raise your hand if you've ever been functionally screwed by tech improvements which set you back by decades, kids!!), my computer has instituted the silent treatment against key sites and tools.  Fantastico.

And so, jobs which should be the smallest part of my day, but which are (I may have noted this ...) fundamentally important tasks, have (a) remained incomplete, in one case and - vastly more humiliating and frustrating still - (b) been done by OTHER PEOPLE.  Yes, the extremely competent woman whose responsibility it is to herd an entire resource system's worth of card-holders has personally, twice in a row (we have to reconcile daily at year-end) managed my transactions.  Now, this has been a total of five items in two days - yet it is disgusting to me to put my work on ANYONE else's desk.  And mortifying to put it on hers, of all people's.

The beat goes on, with my finally gaining access to the ID system today, which I suppose is good news.

As to the accounting side - I have called our help desk (their scripted instruction is to reach out to the very woman who's been stuck doing my job twice now - and, not for nothing, but she is also working from home and managing not only the holidays but a family hospitalization as well - so I'm EXTRA happy to be another problem for her).  I have called her, of course.  She has been extraordinarily generous, competent, forbearing, and as helpful as humanly possible in the face of inhuman technology and its inscrutable faults.  I have reached out personally and directly to one of the tech guys at my site, who has also been generous - but, being alone on deck here, he too is stretched miles too thin.


***


Five bluebirds appeared outside the office window while I was rebooting, after yet another workaround attempt (it did not work).  I watched them in wonder - bluebirds aren't typical around here in any case, but I don't know that in my life I've ever seen so many at once.  At one point, three of them aligned with almost revoltingly excellent composition in a tree by the lake.  A bloody Christmas card, that.  Or maybe Chanukah, actually!

I remembered my dad telling me not to let the bluebird of happiness poop on my windshield.  And remembered the random little rubber bluebird eraser or toy he found some time in the year or so before he died, and gave to me (long since petrified, but indeed still around).  Dad was someone who could find the bluebird of happiness, maybe attracted it - more likely, just preferred his perceptions calibrated to the good.  If I am a lucky human I'll someday be half as wise and half as sanguine as he.  If I am exceptionally lucky and blessed ...


***


The reason this blip on the dizzying readout of linguistic quirks I have adopted and abandoned through my life happened to repeat is this - frustrating as this past week has been, with roadblocks and embarrassing offloading, toward the end of the day I looked around and found that some of the most important things on my desk have been eliminated, and not by throwing them at other people either.  It's a hopeful uplift I have hopes will inform tomorrow and next week, making the new year a little easier.

Bluebirds and all ... it's the little things, sometimes.