All the Nights Are Woven

I was a good girl, then bad good girl, then a bad girl, then a good girl again, then I was a bad girl, then a very bad girl, and here we are today. Somewhere in that list, I bought baby furniture; somewhere else I married the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) and those events are unrelated. People have fine ideas about what we should do and when and how and I couldn't care less. Too many rules! Moving on -

The other day, I found messages on my voicemail at work. At first I didn't recognize the voice, then it dawned on me: that's the voice of Miss Sasha's bio-father. I tossed him out twenty-two years ago and never missed him for a minute because I'm much too selfish to care about grass stains on today's synthetics once I've thrown them out on the lawn. Miss Sasha heard little or nothing much about him from me because her relationship with Mr. Collected His T-Shirts From the Sidewalk has nothing to do with his and mine. She has to forge her own relationships with her relatives and her own ideas. He has a son, so Miss Sasha has a brother, a teenager who wants contact with her. Miss Sasha thinks that's marvelous. I think it's fantastic that Miss Sasha has a sibling I didn't have to crochet myself. They will have each other. Everybody's happy, except for one thing...

My place of employment has chosen to put all sorts of information online that might not be in the best interests of its employees. Where we work, our schedules, our meetings, our phone numbers are all up someplace. Mr. Pot-Addled found my work phone number online and called it at 2 in the morning. While he's no threat to me anymore because Miss Sasha is over 18, I felt vaguely queasy that I was so easily found. For more than ten years I had an unlisted home phone number. What a waste of money. If only I could call the phone company and say, "Listen, the job's screwed me here. Can I at least have back my pittance?" If you're a thoughtless department manager boldly publishing details about your employees, keep in mind they have lives you don't know about and sometimes those lives find their way to your workplace with pounds and pounds of ammo.

Mr. Ancient History isn't the type. I have one Ex who is the type. I didn't know if he would let me leave until he didn't kill me. So you see my desire for stabbing-free workplaces is an earnest one, and as such, I hope employers quit publishing directories and schedules before phone trees let us press 9 for our killing spree floor maps.

That's too much customer service.