Corner of Bourbon & Division

Holy hell am I in a mood today. Probably not the best time to start posting on LJ again, but oh well.

My day started off poorly with a phone call to the SAAQ, and we all know how well Phnee reacts to being told how to live her life by bureaucrats. *stabbitykill*

Anyway, I am in a mood. Probably hormone-related, but that knowledge somehow does not make me feel better in the slightest.

I'm in a weird place, head-space-wise. I am mostly okay. The job is fine, finances are okay, cats are in good health, parents are doing well. Actually, the job is being unpleasant in one respect, but I keep putting off talking about that too. It needs to go under f-lock, because it's work, and I don't feel like dwelling on it, especially since everyone is making a mountain out of a molehill.

I'm just feeling a bit stuck. The career plan isn't going as quickly as I thought it would, which is partly my fault, and partly my being unrealistic about how much needed to go into the process. Not my fault, I just didn't have all the facts to hand. I'm currently revising my expectations. Stay tuned.

The new work schedule is good in terms of how much sleep I'm able to get now, but sucks on every other level. I don't get to see people anymore, and I miss my friends. There are people I only talk to online with whom I haven't spoken in forever, as well. This is mostly my fault, although in one case the last time we spoke it was a little unpleasant and I'm kind of worried that I've been written off and I'm too chicken to email and ask if that's the case. (Phnee is an emo princess, we get it, let's move on)

And to top it all off (and this I ascribe mostly to hormones and lack of sleep in the past few days), my cousin got married this weekend (she's a few years younger than me) and there are batches of new babies all over, and while I am thrilled for everyone, all it's doing today is reminding me that I am all alone and will probably never have children and will definitely never get married in my church according to the mysteries of my religion. The kicker? All of that is no one's doing but my own. In short, fuck me.

Right. I am off to find a ladder in order to get over myself. Carry on, nothing to see here.

A bronze statuette representing Ganesh sits on one of the small shelves in my kitchen.

I've had this little Ganesh since 1993, when my father brought it back from India. My parents also have a wooden bas-relief carving of Ganesh hanging on a wall at their home, from that trip. I am very fond of him, and he has accompanied me through four moves. He invariably sits on a shelf, and watches patiently as my life unfolds. Whenever I'm home, my gaze invariably strays to him, and sometimes I'll reach out and touch him. My father told me at the time that he was a divinity of Luck, something which appealed to me greatly at the time, but which further reading has led me to doubt.

The Wikipedia article I linked to has this to say:

Ganesha is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles (Vighnesha, Vighneshvara), patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is honoured at the start of rituals and ceremonies and invoked as Patron of Letters during writing sessions.

I think my attraction/fascination is explained much better by this. In spite of this apparent affinity, I'm still kind of perplexed by it.

I have never identified as a pagan. I don't believe in the gods of any pantheon. If I believe in any God at all, it's the Christian God, or rather my own version of a Divinity present in all things. I don't understand my attachment to this god who isn't my own, who belongs to a religion that I have never studied and never belonged to, that I really know nothing about. I wouldn't know what to do with a deva if it came and smacked me upside the head.

Yet this little statuette has followed me faithfully for more than fifteen years. I can't imagine my home without Ganesh, sitting cross-legged and pot-bellied on a shelf, two arms folded down, the other two held aloft, a mouse creeping along at his feet. I can truthfully say that I have spent more time with this deity than with any other in my whole lifetime.

I'm not sure what it means, if anything.

I have a really long post to make about my new job. I was going to write it tonight, because in theory, I have plenty of time when I get home to write posts, now that I finish work at 4pm instead of 5pm.

Of course, that all got flushed rather spectacularly when both metros broke down, one after the other, in the order in which I had to take them to get home, naturally. I don't know how long it's supposed to take me to get home after work, but I estimate it should take a little over an hour. Today, I was stuck in public transit for THREE HOURS.

Let me tell you, kids, Phnee was not a happy camper. Especially as there was, to put it euphemistically, a fairly pressing biological imperative for me to get home. Bah.


I'm heading to bed early again. However, I know some of you are dying to know (*cough*) what's going on in the ever-so-fascinating life of Phnee, so here are the salient points:

1- Public transit is annoying. See rant above.

2- So far the new job looks promising. The bosses are pretty cool all told, and I think that I will get along just fine with the boss with whom I'll be most in contact. He has a temperament that seems close to mine in terms of his work ethic, although he doesn't have the same kind of sense of humour as I do. Still, he seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy with high standards, which I can definitely work with.

3- The girl who's training me is one step above Completely Useless. She can do her job well enough, for someone who herself has had very little training. However, she's nineteen years old (a total baby), and has *no* idea how to go about training someone else. I foresee that I will essentially have to train myself for the most part. Well, I've done that before and I can do it again. I just feel more comfortable when I'm stepping into a well-defined role. Oh well.

4- I am amused that I work for a renovation company which is currently situated in an office that looks like a demolition crew was by recently. Granted, they just moved in less than two months ago and summer is the busiest time of year, so they haven't had a chance to fix up the place. Still, I am amused. There's an expression for it in French: Le cordonnier mal chaussé. I think the English equivalent is "The shoemaker's children go barefoot," or something. Anyway.

5- Public transit is annoying.

6- The HDFA went back without a hitch yesterday. I already miss my car. See rant above. However, I am being good for the environment, if not my current stress levels. Go me.


In other news, I am reading The Sparrow for book club (curtana, it's been put off to next Wednesday, if you're still interested), and it is breaking my heart. I'm a little over halfway through and it's already reduced me to tears twice.

It's also, I can feel it, going to make me completely re-evaluate my relationship with God. This is going to be one of those Important Books for me, I think. Something to re-read, ( Cut just in case this is a spoiler, but I don't think so )

Okay. Gotta go to bed now. I have to be up quite early tomorrow in order to catch the relevant mode of public transport to work.

I've had a few songs on loop in my head today, in no particular order. It's like a mini playlist set on "random." ;)

One is "Julia" from the Random Colour set. Also, I no longer hear the Horrorpops version when it gets stuck in my head. It's always our cover. :)

Another is "Break on Through to the Other Side" by The Doors. I blame L, who started talking about going to "the other side" when I was about to start my filing.

The third is a Christmas carol, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," which is one of my favourites, and always makes me want to go back to church when I hear it.

( Some of the lyrics )


( Cut for the religiously squeamish. Rambling to do with music and God, but nothing I think that would be considered really offensive. Still, read at your own peril. )