GAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

It's been one of those days, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

Before I describe the GAH! in question, I'll just fill you in -- I've had a week of different batches of visiting relatives -- from both sides of the family. None of them have stayed in the house, thank fuck, but it's involved a lot of cooking and cleaning.

Low points were going on antibiotics for infected lungs so that I couldn't drink myself jolly and having an extra guest who ended up being a CRASHING bore, dominating every speck of conversation (and I couldn't drink so I had to stay polite).

High points were seeing the relatives, and whipping up a smashing bread & butter pudding for the second dinner from the stale French baguette left over from the first dinner. I used Seville orange marmalade on the crusty slices, and the bitterness worked beautifully.

The picture above is another Bumblebee photo, but it so sums up my day today. I think I've been so tired from family-wrangling that today I just blew a fuse. I just couldn't get my head around anything, and consequently everything went wrong.

Please indulge me for a minute (!) while I have a bit of a bitch about my working life. My boss is driving me CRAZY. I call her Scarlett to her face, so I'm happy to use it here, because she is just like Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind. She is a very good business woman, but she sees everything as a Big Picture. The small details are something she'll 'think about tomorrow'. I happen to have a talent for fleshing out grand plans, for achieving the little details, so for a while we've made a good team. GAH

But today all her tomorrows arrived -- and me caught out with half a brain! Suddenly we have less than two weeks to iron out the little wrinkles of a large travelling exhibition. Stuff I've been querying but getting no answers about is suddenly pressing (gosh, lots of iron imagery here), and she's getting stressed. People I've been fending off on the phone like a cranky door-bitch are finally catching up with her. If I wasn't so tired and cranky, I'd be quite enjoying the sight of her getting stressed. But her stress is, ipso facto, my stress. There's only the two of us.

GAH! I keep telling BB that the only way I'll ever extract myself from her psychic vampire clutches is by moving cities. He used to tell me not to overreact. He doesn't anymore.

Then again, maybe this is just a big PMT rant and when I think about it tomorrow I'll be able to cope. GAH!