Day 8 in Nutjob-Land:
Insurance wouldn't authorize a damn thing past today, I'm all out o' dough. So, even though nobody thinks I'm ready to leave, I'm gone. Just got home about an hour ago.

There's some good news, but it's going to take a minute to set up.

Yesterday, I went to work. I picked Sunday because people often come in on Saturday, but not usually on Sunday. I had some things on my work computer that I had to email to myself at home, and also I just wanted to see what had piled up in my absence.

Well, there was a huge stack of stuff in my inbox that I *KNOW* my boss hasn't touched -- it's all stuff for the calendar section I maintain, that she's supposed to be doing in my absence. So that was one thing.

But the other, I need help with.

Milwaukee has become home to several thousand Somali Bantu refugees. A few parishes in the area have sponsored families. This story has been on the schedule, with no firm date for publication, for MONTHS. My boss keeps pushing it back, and every time she pushes it back, she adds things to it to make it more involved and time consuming.

Well, laying on my desk was a photocopy of an article from one of the suburban papers -- on this very subject -- going into exactly the sort of detail she wanted me to go into.

Somebody please tell me: Is this just for my information, or does it strike anybody as a little passive-aggressive?

Anyway, I got a little upset, and I cut, and this morning I had to fess up to 32 therapists, a nurse, and my pdoc. Pdoc was warned first by a therapist, so I wasn't telling him the information fresh.

He proceeded to say the most beautiful words I may have ever heard:

"You're not ready to go back to work."

So, courtesy of the very well-dressed yet low-key Dr. Temme, I have a 2-week vacation, starting tomorrow.

Can I just say..... YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HA!

I haven't mentioned this to my boss yet......maybe she'll fire me and I can get unemployment for a while while I look for a better job.

I haven't decided yet quite what to DO with my time off, but I think there is indeed something to the idea of "job as trigger" and I guess one thing to do might be to start looking for a new one.

Anyway, that's the end of this round of travails in Nutjob-Land. They tried to convince me while I was there that a 9-month stint between visits was actually spectacularly good. I dunno about that, but I'm sure I'll be back at some point. Sigh.

Candy