...that cannot be solved by the occasional ice cream cone.

I know my friend Stephanie (a.k.a. SasyDragon) would agree, and it was she who came to mind for unknown reasons yesterday when I finished Curves and looked at the Baskin Robbins coupon that I had on my passenger seat. Yahoo's 10th birthday was yesterday, and they gave up coupons for free ice cream cones. I didn't think that I was going to get one, figuring that the 300 cone limit had probably already been met. At this point, I was so down that I decided to get myself a cone regardless of whether or not it was free.

Armed with my coupon, I headed in, and much to my delight and surprise they were still giving away cones. In fact, they asked me if I had a coupon. And so, I was happy, munching away on a cookies and cream ice cream cone. It certainly helped.

Yesterday was a rough day. I walked out of the office with the feeling that I'm incompetant and cannot do anything right. And never will. I feel differently this morning, but there's still a sense that I'm walking on eggshells.

Yesterday I dealt with people reading a metrics spreadsheet that didn't see changes upon executing a macro that they should have seen a data update on. I saw the changes... my boss saw the changes (and therefore decided there was no problem). No one else did, and they came down on me for it. Considering that the guy who manages all the people who read this spreadsheet is ex-military and very prone to temper outbursts, I was not a happy person with someone asking me (in a very loud pissed off voice) when I am ever going to execute this file correctly.

Then there's materials. I've taken over some material distribution to our multiple locations (as if I didn't have anything else to do). I've been doing this for 3 weeks now, and I have the process down, but for some reason I still can't get it *right*. Either I get some multiples wrong, or the breakdown isn't right, or the guy who used to do the process doesn't like the way I'm doing it now.

Then there's my former partner-in-crime. This is a guy who can't say no to anything that people ask him to do, and has always taken on more than he should - to the point of working 18 hour days with a new baby at home because he didn't want to displease the ex-boss. We had to threaten the guy that he'd lose his job so that he'd take the paternity leave. He's an eager puppy who just wants to please (he's 31). This has been his downfall too. Recently he took a month off to take care of some family issues in another country, and returned on Monday. Apparently his boss (the ex-boss' replacement) came down on him as soon as he came back, and the guy quit. He's been here 6 years and 3 weeks and he just up and quit.

He's given us some story that he's gotten himself into another business with a buddy in this other country, and no, he won't be moving. And yes, he'll be going back to school to finish his management degree (yeah, he's going to have to try and pass calculus for the 3rd time now). He's got 3 weeks seniority on me. He's done many things that has saved the company money, and helped senior managers become very wealthy individuals. Know what they did for him when he left? Nothing. My boss told him Good luck, see ya round in a very short way.

Of course, the guy burned bridges in the way he quit, but I won't get into that. The only thing that hit *me* was that he'd been there as long as I have and they're barely telling him to not let the door hit his rear as he walks out. There's a lot of us who don't feel that that was right... and it's left a lot of us feeling rather vulnerable.

So, the scorecard so far: you have forced upon feelings of incompetance, coupled with massive change (from a co-worker leaving), a heaping helping of vulnerability, and a general sense that you're invaluable because you start thinking about what will happen when you leave, and they'll probably just say "see ya, hate to be ya". Granted, I won't burn bridges, and I think I'm generally more well-liked than my now former co-worker, but that could just be my own ego talking.

Of course, I'm feeling really oversensitive about all of these things while I'm joking and trading emails with friends (as my escape) when suddenly folks start asking if anyone has DH's email address so that they can give him a few ideas for something. Something that would be rather humiliating for me, especially after last year's Valentine's Day. And no, DH, if you're reading this I'm *not* going to share what the conversation was about. I got oversensitive to that, and quickly withdrew from the conversation. I should have had a thicker skin about it all, really.

*sigh*

I figured my workout at Curves would help everything get better, and I POUNDED those aerobic pads and I worked every muscle to absolute soreness, and my shirt was wet. And still, I didn't feel better.

So I got ice cream.

And ice cream made it better. Just a single scoop of sugar and everything was all right...

...because, after all, ice cream always makes it better.