Uninspired

As if you can't tell, I've kind of lost my writing mojo these days. I look back at stuff I wrote a year ago and think, "oh, that was mildly humorous; good for me." I sit and think about what to blog about today and all I come up with is "feh." Nothing seems interesting to me, to be honest. DeLay? Whatever. Bush? Whatever. Rude annoying jackasses in front of me in line? Whatever. It was my 34th birthday last week. Whatever. Nothing is inspiring me to the level of "gotta write about THAT!"

I think perhaps I am just kind of finding my head in my new post-Dad reality. I think sometimes grief masquerades as fatigue, just to provide you with a valid reason to go to bed and sleep to dream (or not sleep and stare at the ceiling, as the case may be). It also masquerades as, dare I say it and prove my full conversion to the church of the effete: ennui. Seriously. I think I can't get giddy because my mind just can't "get it up" for anything right now. I laugh when something is funny but I don't feel real joy. I smile when someone smiles at me, but my eyes don't smile along with my mouth. I feel so lucky and happy whenever The Bambina laughs or does something new and fun, only to immediately feel the stab in my heart that my Dad won't see her do it too. I look at his photos and smile, knowing that he's not really gone. And yet he is, in all the tangible ways I'm accustomed to having him.

But I have hope that inspiration will return. Just this morning I had a brief flash of it, when I went to a doctor's office and for the second time in as many weeks had to leave before even being called back by a nurse. I'm not kidding. Last week it was a 1:45pm appointment for The Bambina (those of you in Toddler World know that 1:45pm is dangerous pre- or -oughta-be-during nap time). So we get there and we wait. And wait. And wait. All of a sudden it's 2:25pm and my child was falling asleep on the chair, and I just had to leave and get her home. I was LIVID! They cancel YOUR appointment if you arrive more than 10 minutes late, but they keep a 22 month old kid waiting for almost 45 minutes with no doctor in sight!? WTF?!! They always say, "well we got a little bit backed up. We're so sorry." yeah? Then how about booking fewer patients, you asswipes?! And then they act like I am being unreasonable in expecting them to honor--at least within 15 minutes--a child's appointment time. Have YOU ever tried to keep an almost-two year old occupied for 45 minutes in a waiting room with only the toys you can cart in with you from home--during what should be her naptime? Please. It's total freakin bollocks. And since when is it MY problem that THEY can't effectively manage the business side of their operation?

Same thing today. Just a quickie consult (or so I thought) at 9:30am, so I made a client appointment for 11am about 2 miles away from the doctor's office. At 10:30 I went back to the desk and asked whether it was realistic to expect that I would be taken back and seen by the doctor in time to leave at 10:45 in order to get to work. Obviously it was all, "Oh my goodness we are so sorry; we just got a little backed up this morning..." Helloooo?! My appointment was at 9 f***ng thirty AM! What, were you open at 6am or something? How do you go off the rails by 9:30am?!! and AGAIN--why is that MY problem?! Fix it!

It's my personal one-woman tirade. One of my primary jobs as one of those easily-maligned business process management consultants was reminding organizations that internal business concerns are NOT the problem of the customer or client. That no person working for the organization should EVER excuse bad service with some sh*t like, "We're short staffed right now; I'm the only one answering phones, our computers are down...." That is total bush league excusemaking. You can give reasons and solutions, like "our computers are down so what I'm going to do to speed you through here today is x, y and z," but you never just say, "you will be seen by the doctor a full hour and 45 minutes after your scheduled appointment time because Keisha called in sick and now I'm answering the phones and putting all the charts together and the phone will not stop ringing..." You NEVER tell someone who is giving you money that you don't know what the hell you are doing with it. So that was my brief flash of inspiration: righteous indignation at the disrespect for my time.

And, had I been in the writing mood, you would have read about it.

Oh. Well. Who knew?! I've just written an actual post! Thank goodness my Inner Andy Rooney is still in the game...