Moron Coworkers

I think I've mentioned before that my office is very chilly unless a particular door is kept shut? Why the hell is everyone in the place determined to keep that door open?

It's not even fifty degrees outside, and they want a bracing draft to circulate through the office.

Eesh. No jury would convict me.

We had my parents over for dinner last night for mother's day. I think it went pretty well, things are always a little awkward between myself and my parents. My mother grew up in one of these super-repressed dysfunctional families where you Just Don't Talk about anything wrong, and it makes even ordinary conversation somewhat strained. You can tell her something's bothering you about your job, and that will inspire her to tell you a story of something completely unrelated that happened twenty years ago.

I'll admit, I'm so used to being super-repressed in these conversations that I have difficulty actually envisioning what a free exchange of ideas would be like. Frankly, the idea is terrifying.

In my mind, I associate the free and frank exchange of ideas to be something only done when something truly horrible happens, because that was the only time it was done when I was growing up. Someone dies or something equally traumatic.

Also, usually a free and frank exchange only happened when an adult in my life was having a meltdown, so I associate it with a terrifying loss of emotional control.

I know it doesn't have to be like this. I'm working on it a tiny bit at a time for myself. But meanwhile, it colors my exchanges with other people, and especially my exchanges with my mother.