The bitch of committing to lose weight is that the basic formula is:

Saying "No" to what you really want to eat + Saying "Yes" to the work-outs you really don't want to do x ...motherfucker. "Symbol" is the only font that has an infinity symbol, and you can't use symbol in blogger. Damn damn double damn.


^See that unfittingly extreme burst of frustration there? A pleasant side effect of the "Thinner and a Winner!" lifestyle. Now I know why models never smile.

Well, that and the fact that women are only sexy when they're being abused and oppressed by soceity at large.


Don't listen to them when they tell you that exercise will make you sleep easier and feel better. That eating right (well, right-er) gives you a feeling of satisfaction that lasts throughout the day. That the vending machine will burst out in a round of applause for you should you select "Baked Lays". The only good thing about losing weight is the actual weight loss.

And, that said, Red Green has an announcement for you: Having hovered in the vicinity of 170 (or less) for a few weeks now, I feel it is now safe to say I have officially lost ten pounds.


You may show your support by buying me a penguin.

On with it.

Okay. The moment's happened. I can feel it. There's no denying it anymore.

I officially now like Rob Thomas's "Lonely No More".

This is a song that previously tested my faith in Rob Thomas-- the poppy beat, the background chorus, the intense feeling that the video should feature a scrolling marquis of the words "Ricky Martin was here."

But a few thing have occured to me, the latter of the two occuring in quite a...unexpectedly intense way. The first is that the Latino influence of his wife, while once distasteful to me, is catchy. Infectious. During the moments where the lyrics are banal or absent, my body moves with it, my back arches, my arms climb above my head or trace the curves of my torso.

But, something that I had previously failed to see, this song has the Rob Thomas touch: the lyrics aren't always banal.

And when they are not, my body does something else.

My voice screams the words "So when you tell me that you love me, know for sure."

And as my mind comprehends what I'm screaming about, my body lifts-- no longer to the rhythym, but to the rage.

And my arms fly against the nearby walls.

The closet door takes a beating. Zack will need to repair that, later.



And the beat goes on.

And I calm down for a moment, but just then I am caught by the change Rob's voice as he goes into the bridge:

"What if I was good to you?
What if you were good to me?
What if I could hold you till I feel you move inside of me?
What if it was paradise?
What if we were symphonies?
...what if I gave all my life to find some way to stand beside you?"

And at the last line, the anger is back. My arms fly to hair, and pull.


All the what-if's.


You can waste so much time in what-if's. You can waste so much energy in feelings. You can break so many doors, in love.


After three repeat plays, I've let the CD move on. It's the only way my room will survive this post. But I need to point out that, with certain exceptions, those same lyrics could have gone just as well to accompaniment by some death-metal band. Or, if Rob Thomas happens to be reading *cough*, to the accompaniment of your patiently-waiting-for-you-to-come-back-from-your-solo-career band, maybe another interpretation of the song with a more "You & I & I" feel? Busted, perhaps?


If I am reading my site meter correctly, Derek G., former drummer of Triangle Sleep, and a very interesting, possibly unfinished chapter in my history, has been checking in from somewhere in Virginia-- either that, or someone who knows him pretty well. Either way, hello and welcome-- hope you enjoy your stay in my twisted psychological hotel. Chateau D'Caramel, where all the beds are crowded and all the closet doors are broken.


Try to enjoy your stay. I'll miss you when you go.

My name is Linda, and I don't want to know the lover at my door is just another heartache on my list. But I do.

On with it.

It's January 1st, 2006. I had planned to write a little something about the year in review-- what the year was to me, what happened, what didn't. I had planned to think back to this day, one year ago, but circumstance leads me, instead, to think about this day three years ago.


Zack and I had just taken a walk through an icy Lisbon, first to see if perhaps the people who lived in the old church were dropping a ball from the steeple again, and when we found that they were not, I thought I remembered there once being fireworks over the Androscoggin on New Year's that could be seen from the bridge, so we made our way down a slippery main street. We slid past the mill and onto the precarious bridge, where we waited around for some time to see nothing, then began our careful and catastrophic walk home. We must have fallen a dozen times, between the two of us.

Earlier that night, I had gotten the feeling that I might want to try something we'd never tried before, so as we walked home, there was a surprise for him in my pocket.

Later, in my bedroom, we were laying down together. I remember the red glow from the lava lamp next to us, together on my futon mattress on the floor. I remember us kissing, my pulling his body to the top of me and taking off of his shirt. I remember looking at him in the red light-- he always looked so good in red. I remember steathily taking the condom out of my pocket as he kissed me, but I don't remember how I presented the idea to him-- I do remember a moment of confusion before he understood what it was I wanted to do.

If you do the math, I suppose it had been four and a half months we'd been togethe before we tried it. The feeling of readiness wasn't overcoming and urgent, just a quiet idea that grew into acceptance. Zack was the person I loved. Zack was the man I was going to marry. Zack was the one I was going to give myself to, for first time.


Of course, to spare the frustrating details that I've probably gone into too many times already, it didn't work. It hurt, on more levels than imaginable, and it continues to today. Today, the three-year anniversary of Me and Zack and Vaginismus.

Vaginismus has now remained my active and unrelenting enemy longer than people remain my friends. I have seen or consulted with more than twenty professionals about it, doctors, gynecologists, social workers, hypnotherapists, and Karen, who deserves recognition as being my physical therapist and personal hero-- if only she were able to help me deal with the psychological aspect of the problem, then I'm sure I would have been cured some time ago. I've written dozens of odes of frustration, talked one-on-one about it with most of you, even given a speech on it to a class at Andover. I've read the words of fellow sufferers, and met one. I've purchased products, videos, and books that were supposed to help and done more research on this than other topic I can think of, even started my own seperate blog about it, albeit, a very rarely updated one.

But I cannot honestly say that, in all of that, I feel as though I've made any real progress.


I want to write more. To discuss the questions and come the answer. To make this post a neat, tidy little package, give it closure, give it a point. Bring this thing to an end.

But I have no way to do that. So, on with it.

Fuck him, man. All I needed was for him to tell me...

Fuck him.

Every girl needs to hear the words to "Problem Girl", the eighth track on Rob Thomas's solo album (a christmas gift from my mother.) over and over again.

Every girl needs warmth. Every girl needs room for all sides of her personality to come out, and be equally embraced and appreciated. Fuck the kinds of people who bask in you while you're smart and funny and saying all the right things, then can't be there for you when you're falling apart (when you've fallen for them, when you care so much you can't hold it together anymore.)

Every girl needs love. Love, and not some cheap imitation.

He told me he didn't use the word anymore. Told me it was too loaded-- that he was sorry he had ever told me he loved me, but it would no longer be a part of his personal vocabulary. Vernacular updated. Sorry, this offer has expired. This coupon is no longer redeemable.

And don't waste your breath on him. It'd be a good idea for you to quit, too.

But, he said, that didn't mean he didn't have a "great, ineffable fondness" for me. And, for a moment, that actually made me feel better. At least my question was answered.



On with it.

If my original weigh-in of 180 pounds was accurate (which it may or may not have been, as I did not have, in my possession, an accurate scale until today) then I have lost six pounds since I started trying to lose weight three weeks ago.

Six pounds is not an easy thing to conceptualize. So I shall try to help you.


This dog, apparently named "Doodle Poodle", weighs approximately six pounds.

This penguin from the Mystic Aquariaum is six pounds, also. It would be unfortunate if he lost six pounds, because then he would cease to exist, and I think I may want him to be my new mascot. Perhaps he and Doodle Poodle can share responsibilities. His name is Red Green.

This strange man brought Red Green a six-pound fish to eat. What he doesn't understand is that Red Green would choke to death if he tried to eat a fish as big as he is. I'll have to cut it up for him...ewww.

So, six pounds lighter, it has been a Merry Christmas for me. How has it been for you?

On with it.

More tired than usual, I get dressed for my work out early by my standards-- about three AM. I don't want to do it tonight, but I'm hellbent on going at least three weeks straight before having a break. Nissa says she read somewhere that's how long you need to do something every day before it becomes a "habit". Just under a week to go.

I'm dressed and about to get into it when the dog distracts me-- not unwelcomely. I pet him for a few minutes before he walks away to stand in front of the door and make puppy eyes at me, shifting his gaze between me and the door in an unmistakable way. I'm tempted to tell him that no, we will not go for a walk tonight, but eventually give in-- it's the 23rd of December and I've neglected his outdoor time all winter long, so I'm an easy target for dog-guilt. It's not that cold outside, either, and it's a few extra calories I could use to lose.

I get him into his harness (always a fight), grab the key to the mailbox and out we go. My trailer park is the largest in Maine and the mostly badly plowed-- the entire circuitous route to the mailbox we take could is one big ice skating rink, but I've lived in Maine all my life and know how to keep my footing in these conditions. As we walk, I am taking in the late winter night's quiet-- it's incredibly still outside, no wind, not a sound. In the silence, lights have a strange quality about them-- a string of white christmas lights looped around the railings to a porch and the warm-looking lights eminating through the curtained windows of the homes of a few scattered night owls have an unreal feeling about them-- like a painting, something out of an parallel universe of Thomas Kincade, where everyone's househould income falls below 35,000 a year. I guess it's a sight more real-feeling than anything he's ever painted, but it doesn't feel as though I'm really there.

In the quiet, I am thinking about how the walking and the atmosphere reminds me of being in Mariposa-- it was my first taste of indepence from my parents, and, if you think of it, probably the most independent I'll ever be. During lunch breaks or at night I would walk the empty streets, sit alone at The Grizzly for lunch or go up to the twenty-four hour gym I bought a month-long membership to. Sometimes I miss the people I met there, but I think I miss the alone time, and the feeling as though I could handle being alone, more than anything else.

I wanted to write about how, walking home, looking at the houses with the windows and the homey warmth, all the humble trailers with two cars in the driveway, I got to thinking about why I've been getting so upset lately, and I think I may have nailed it: I traded in my independence and my big dreams for a dime-a-dozen feeling of domesticity: working all day, then coming home to spend what precious little time I could with my Zack, eating meals we fixed together and sitting on the couch, watching TV until we both felt tired enough to go to bed. It wasn't much, but it was normal, and it felt like home: now, with me working late nights and him working overnights, and only having one full day of the week together, we take time together how we can get it. We go to sleep at different times, we wake up at different times. We eat maybe four meals a week together, and we're lucky if we had the time to make two of them. The days we do have off together, we normally sleep through, because we're on different schedules, and we're both always exhausted.

It's not about having less time together, it's about not having a routine. It's about leaving him sleeping in bed at 3 in the afternoon, piecing myself together without his help, and going to work for eight hours, knowing that when I get home, he won't be there, not until I've already gone to bed.

Money's certainly better now, and schedules work out better with school, but there's something missing: when I think back to how it used to be, both working all day and coming home to sit down to a meal together and watch whatever was on, I picture it, and in that image, there's a glow. That's the light I recognized in the lights of the houses I walked by. Maybe it was the same because those houses are homes, the way we used to be.

Or maybe it just seemed the same because it was so distant.

On with it.

Emily's latest post on her livejournal (friend's only, so I won't link) is something of a stream of consciousness set of notes from her latest therapy session-- I hope it's okay that I mention she's in therapy-- and it makes me think about what I've decided I don't really like about therapy: so much stuff, so many memories and scattered feelings, shreds of things that happened to make us who we are, but we can never really tell how the affected us, and, in therapy, you spend your time resolving them, and it's infinite. My time with Mr. Ladd was helpful at the time, I believe, but at this point in my life I don't know if I could afford to be in therapy, taking bits and pieces of my life that have been smashed to oblivion, then trying to make some sort of awkward photomosaic existence out of them.

Take that whole paragraph with a grain of salt. I'm making my own attempt to write...that way. Can't think of the word I want.

I've been feeling badly a lot lately and most of the time I haven't been able to figure out why. I think a lot of it might have to do with hormones-- very soon in life, I will go on a birth control pill that will allow me to only have one period every three months. Hopefully this will help to control these tsunami-sized waves of PMS that I feel both before and after my period. Unless that's not what it is. Maybe it's not.

I am talking online to Tony, whom I talk to largely in order to exert influence over in the pertinent areas of his life, for instance how he treats my sister and how he deals with his anger issues. Here's someone who could use therapy, by the way-- I have no problem with the idea of smashing the mirror of his psyche to pieces for the purposes of closer examination, or even just for fun. More often than not, though, however convincing I can be in getting him to temporarily believe the gospel of my word, his short attention span makes all my effort for naught; therefore, it's notable that the other reason I talk to him is that it's easy enough. He types slowly, and doesn't tend to get offended if I don't respond. And it seems to make him happy-- I was as much a part as anyone in seperating him from his "family", so I may as well give a few minutes a week to chat. We are talking, today about bad eating habits, and I am commenting to him about how easy it is to absent-mindedly develop bad, if not horrible, eating habits that become a deeply ingrained part of your behavior. I am telling him that I believe myself to have a binge eating disorder, which is a fairly recent development for me. Whether it's true or not, it's an interesting idea to keep in mind, because the acknowledgement of it allows me to keep my eating habits in perspective. Maybe not do as much about them as I should, but realize when I'm doing something unhealthy. I've been trying to change that part of my weight problem, but slowly.


I'm doing it all slowly, really, so that I won't neglect to not to it at all. I want to get in shape for a variety of reasons: Lara, the sex/couples therapist Zack and I saw for a time about Vaginismus, suggested that it may be in an important step in overcoming some of the negative feelings I associate with my body (In grand Emily style, I will mention that her mentioning that losing weight may be an important step in my road to recovery from vaginismus came out, on my end, as A) comfirmation that I am now, in fact, officially fat and B) a kind of slap-in-the-face statement that not only am I as fat as I feared, but that it's my fault I have vaginismus, because I've let myself get fat. It's amazing the way a woman can have so many different conversations going on in her head while she's being spoken to: one part that's just taking in information, on a purely intellectual level, and then all the different emotional intepretations screaming out, complete with the different responses she has to each of these, and what finally comes out in reply, with the help of a self-conscious just before the lips who's terrified of sounding petty or defensive or stupid or needy.) Obviously, another set of reasons are the simple, straightforward desire to look good, be in shape, have more energy, be envied, etc., but there's a bigger one at stake: This is something I've wanted to change for years, aspired to for nearly a third of my life now, agonized over, looked for every shortcut and quick fix there is. This is something that I want, and only recently did I really listen to the annoying chirping in my head that was telling me over and over again: If you're going to get there, you have to Just do it. Try harder. Because you're worth it. Tastes so good, cats ask for it by name.

Then I turned off the TV and decided it was time to get to work.

So back to the real reason I'm doing this: There are people out there that I want to show that a person can change their life for the better, even if they've failed before, even if people don't believe you'll do it. There are people I care about that have felt badly about themselves for most of their lives, and are surrounded by circumstances they find insurmountable. There are people I care about who have allowed themselves to be conquered by the things that have happened to them, that have stopped trying to make a difference, who honeslty don't know whether to believe that a person can change for the better. I want to show these people that if you take responsbility for your own life, own up the to fact that your problems no matter who may have contributed to them, belong to you, and no one is going to come along and make them all better for you, least of all without your decision to help yourself, if you do all that and decide to make a difference, you genuinely can. And if you don't make that decision, and just keep bitching, then you're being obnoxious, at the very least, and at the most, wasting your whole life.

The number one person I want to teach that lesson to is myself. But I hope to lead by example.

Cheer me on.


On with it.

The floor in the living room is littered with paper scraps cut out of the faux snowflakes I've been carefully crafting, partly to be creative and nostalgic, and partially to busy my hands while I watch TV to avoid eating. I'm going for the big one this time in my pursuit of weight loss, and when I have in my possession an accurate scale with which to measure my progress, I shall log it online for you. This time, I will not let myself take no for an answer. I will ignore my immature excuses and just do it, mindful of but choosing not to acknowledge the neo-Nike (c) implications.

I am not the victim of advertising. I am a strong, independent achiever and it happens to be a very useful and concise phrase.

Every night for 15 days I have stood in the center of my living room and Danced off the Inches with Lydia Haskell, a cute, short woman looking rather like a mix of Carrie from King of Queens and Rosie Perez, whose perkiness I regarded as cute and uplifting. Having located her personal website, however, LydiaHaskell.com, I am realizing that she's not quite the chirpy cheerleader type I had her pinned as...then again, no one seems quite the same after a google image search.

More later (I hope, but I will post this in the meantime so it doesn't get lost in cyberspace, like so many before it.) I'm off to see Zack on his fifteen-minute break.

On with it.

I IM him for the first time in weeks to tell I need for him not to visit my blog anymore. I tell him there are things I need to write, things I need to get out of my system, and I'll never do it, knowing that he might be reading them. I tell him that I can't deal anymore with the feeling that he's judging me. For being myself. For having emotions.

Seems like that's all I'll ever have.

He says "ok." Unceremoniously, the way he says everything. I fight the urge to extend the conversation any way I possibly can without losing what little credibility I might still have. It's pride, and not strength, that draws the final words out of me. "Thank you. Goodnight."

The conversation is ten messages long, but I save it anyway. I don't know if it's a wish or a fear that it will be the last.

The truth was, only part of my reasoning for IMing him was to request that he never come here again. The other part was to give him a chance to redeem himself, to say something irresistible and overcome my waning resolution to purge him from my life. He might have tried, if I hadn't been so terse-- when I first asked him not to come, his original response was "What's so important that I don't see?". And I told him, in such a way that I knew he would either have to fight for me or let go. Whatever I might have wanted to believe, I knew which it would be. And it was.

So now I'm free. To lose the euphemisms and shed the inhibitions. To say what he really is, to call him by his name.

Casey. Casey Casey Casey Casey Casey.


There's so much I've not been able to explain in the past about him, about me in relation to him, about what was once "us". There was a small part of me that hesitated because I fear that certain people who read this would not understand the line between how I feel about him and how I feel about Zack, and how very seperate they are-- this fear, I suppose, was heightened by the fact that foremost among that group was me, so I never would have been able to aptly explain it to the others who might question my intentions or integrity. I will say that while I have lacked faith in myself, Zack never has, and whether or not he understands any better than I do, he has never been more than passingly threatened by the cold, fucked facts: I love Casey. I love him so much.

I've talked with little hesitation on here about how I felt, before, about Chad, and I've referred to him as "The one that got away". I've wondered where my life would have been if he had, for a moment, felt something for me that was on the same plane as what I felt about him. But I'm starting to wonder, now that all of that is in the open with him, if that is in the past-- or if it isn't. I don't know. So it certainly seems suspect that I could claim to love both Casey and Chad to such a dangerously similar extent to the way I love Zack, but I'm sick of wondering why that is, and what it means. Perhaps there is only one person meant for everyone in the world, and perhaps there is not. Perhaps I am an anomaly and perhaps I am just like everyone else. Perhaps I love Zack more, perhaps I only love him differently, in a way that makes us compatible where others are not. All I'm sure of anymore is this: if this weren't love, it wouldn't hurt so much.

So while there's years of written history that have been subtly altered to meet his approval that now I could, given the time and inclination, now shed light on in a way that might prove fascinating or therapeutic, right now what I want to talk about is the end. Or what will serve as the end, until I meet that bear once more.


We were talking, casually, one day, having only been reconciled from our last period of not talking (the last time I tried to quit him, the addiction that he is) for a few months. The previous time had taken place over the summer months, when he was home from school in Mass, and because of that timing, I hadn't had an oppurtunity to see him in a long time, almost a year. I hadn't want to bring up the prospect of seeing him again, because I didn't want to rock the boat-- things were going well between us, and I wondered if I could deal with the rejection if, for some reason, he didn't want to see me. That night, though, I suppose I was feeling bold.

I should point out that, over past vacations or before he left altogether, whenever we'd see each other, I felt the need to live up to these enormous expectations that I created of how I could entertain him, blow him away, make him feel like I was the one who made his life exciting. That probably all started in the awkwardness that developed after the anticlimatic end of the slightly romantic portion of our relationship (which, mind you, was never anything more than an attraction, a highly discussed hypothetical relationship, and ultimately a giant sword of Damocles the thread of which, I can now safely say, gave into the weight.) This pressure, of course, only added to the awkwardness and insecurity, making for potentialy intolerable nights that were only reprieved-- when they were-- by the natural chemistry between us.

That night, the night we ended, I had come up with an idea of something for us to do together: the next time I saw him, we would rent "The Aristocrats" to watch together. A documentary-style film wherein a myriad of comics tell the dirtiest joke of all time over and over again, it wasn't exactly a flashy plan, but I'd wanted to see the movie for some time and thought that Casey, unlike Zack (who had no interest in seeing it with me) would be just the kind of person to enjoy it. Mind you, the conversation where I proposed this happened online, and I assume he was busy with other things, so there were long pauses in between things that were being said. I asked him when the next time he was coming home for a while, and I told him to keep a night open for me, I had an idea. He insisted on knowing what it was, and I told him about the movie, describing it in vague terms-- as I did, and this is the important part, my enthusiasm for the evening was growing. It'd been such a long time since I'd seen him, and I began to reminisce about other nights we'd spent together, just sitting on my bed and laughing about the world, and how it couldn't understand what a complete farce it was. It was then that my mind's eye zeroed in on an image, a sound:

Casey laughing.

I am not a particularly imaginative person, and often times I have trouble picturing even things I've just seen. But it was perfectly clear to me then, the smile, his face, the sound of him laughing, how good it always made me feel when I could make him laugh. I was picturing him, with me, laughing to this movie, and suddenly, I was so happy I couldn't contain myself. I felt more elation just imagining him, just anticipating the moment with him that I can even begin to explain: such a simple, perfect moment with someone I loved so, so much. I didn't mention it to him, because he would have thought that I was a complete idiot, but..looking forward to that moment with him, watching that movie with someone I knew would get it, I was overjoyed. I felt, for only a moment, that our relationship was right and real, and everything was how it was supposed to be. No objections. No complications. Just happiness.

Of course, he couldn't have known how I was feeling on the other end of our connection, 300 miles away. He didn't know how I would have sounded if I'd been speaking the words and he couldn't see my face. There was no way he could have known what he did to me when he said "I don't really want to see that movie."

He couldn't have known.

I tried to keep going, and did for a while. I simply said "Okay", not letting on that I was...crushed, destroyed, hurt beyond his imagination without him even realizing it or having any idea why, and we continued the conversation, for a while. But our next catty little fight, and, consequently, his next condescending, hurtful comment, was too soon in coming.

And I told him to take me off of his buddy list. And signed off.



I wonder if any of you won't think I'm crazy after reading that-- I wonder if anyone out there could understand what it's like to get so caught up in an imaginary moment, and then to have it snatched away from you, so suddenly. Like a cartoon character standing on a cloud, who doesn't realize there is no support for height they're hovering at until the cloud clears away, and look down, and there is a moment of realization before they fall.


My name is Linda, and I've fallen.

On with it.

I tend to get pretty frustrated when baby boomers and their associates complain about the "dismal state of customer service this day in age", etc. But slap an adult diaper on me and call me aunt Sally, I think McAfee might have just single-handedly cured me of that particular facet of generational loyalty.

I got a virus a few weeks ago that's been a fucking *pleasure*, and, having finally managed to delete, well, most of it in a struggle that took many a night, we decided to invest in some updated virus protection.



(A quick aside: am I the only one who's convinced that, more likely than not, the big-named virus companies have entire departments devoted to creating new viruses that, it follows, only they will know how to get rid of, giving them the edge over the competition? It's not entirely unrealistic to suppose that, on top of not being any help at all in preventing against viruses, or getting rid of the one I currently have, McAfee may actually be to blame for infecting me. Those bastards.)

I bought virus scan (in a three-pack along with personal firewall and Quickclean) at wal*mart about a week ago, and since then have not been able to install it-- I can get as far as the End User License Agreement, but after that, it shuts itself off. I quickly learned that this problem extended to all setup.exe-based McAfee processes, which means I also could not use add/remove programs to delete an antiquated version of security center that came with my computer. (Now that I've told you that once, you'll probably remember it, right? Or, at least, it will sound familiar if I bring it up again later in the post? Good! Then you're officially overqualifed to work at McAfee Tech support.)

I'd have enough of trying to fix the problem myself, and was more than willing to go out and by something from a competitor, except that I can't return opened software to Wal*

McAfeehelp.com. The first thing they do is screen you with a basic troubleshooter, which is practical, if totally useless. No, the problem is not that I put the CD in upside down, can we move on? The hoop they make you jump through is a forced screening from their "virtual agent", which is a glorified way of saying that they make you download some software which scans your computer third party virus software, unrelated problems, and probably any sensitive information they can blackmail you with should you decide to take action once you've gotten totally pissed off with their tech supporters, which will, not may, happen. After this, you get to the live support-- using the term "live" loosely. If you want the benefit of inflection, you can pay 2.95 a minute to have them confuse you on the phone (one hopes this comes with a happy ending, at that price) or you can continue on to Free Live Chat, which I did. Four times.


Now, working with the public every day, as I do, I like to think of myself as the kind of person who is patient with others while they're forced to deal with me. Congenial. Polite. And when I chatted with the first person, Stef W., I was fairly convinced that I was, in fact, very nice. Ditto through Andy K., even though he kept instructing me to re-download the program, even though the program was on a CD. Ditto through Cindy law, who sent me a novella-length list of instructions for removing any trace of McAfee from my registry, and instructed me, over and over again, to use add/remove programs, which I had already explained to her (and to andy, before her) was not working. (You remember though, don't you? Good. You get a raise.) It wasn't till the first two and a half hours worth of instructions and different instructions, and then the same instructions again didn't work, and I kept having to re-log on to the service (each and every time having to go through the troubleshooting and the virtual agent), give them my reference number from the last chat session, and wait "on hold" as they updated themselves with my rapidly growing case history, it wasn't until after all this did I begin to feel just a twinge of impatience. I got Andy a second time, who, after spending ten minutes reading my case history a second time, promptly transferred me to his supervisor, Anil. "Finally," I thought. "Someone with experience and authority. Now we're getting somewhere."

Oh, naive girl.

I won't drag this post on much longer-- I didn't enjoy doing it, you probably won't enjoy reading about it. I'd just like to finish this off with the end of my conversation with Anil, a piece I called "Linda's out of Motherfucking Patience, Motherfucking Anil."

Anil R.: Use the FreeScan utility.
Anil R.: Then uninstall SecurityCenter from the Add/Remove programs.
Anil R.: I am going to send you instructions to run free scan that will open in a new window on your screen.
Linda: I'm already in the free scan
Linda: but *I can't uninstall security center* through add/remove programs
Linda: it won't work
Anil R.: Delete the files I mentioned first and then uninstall it.
Linda: I did that.
Linda: and I still can't use the add/remove program thing to uninstall security center
Anil R.: Linda, stay online while you get an e-mail message.
Linda: okay.
Linda: pretty ironic that freescan is trying to get me to buy virus scan.
Anil R.: Check your e-mail account inbox and let me know if you have received any e-mail message?
Linda: I got it. The first thing it tells me to do is use add/remove programs, though. And we've already established that that's not gonna work.
Anil R.: Linda, follow the other steps listed in the e-mail message.
Anil R.: Then you can install VirusScan protection.
Linda: well, color me convinced.
Anil R.: The e-mail message contains steps to remove all the McAfee entries. However, you should not follow the steps mentioned for Add/Remove programs.
Anil R.: Do you have any additional questions or concerns I may assist you with today?
Linda: do I get another rootin', tootin' reference number? I'd hate to not have anything to remember the past three hours of my life by.
Anil R.: Your reference number for this chat session is 16206333.
Anil R.: I would like to ensure you’re satisfied with the support I offered. Is there anything else I may assist you with today?
Linda: not even if *you* paid *me*, Anil.


On second thought, it's entirely possible that it wasn't worth writing an entire post just to showcase an instance where I was rude to a tech support worker. Eh, c'est la vie.

On with it.