I may have made it clear before how much I hate my boss, the so-called director of the place where I work. maybe I've mentioned that she's crazy. maybe I've noted that she is impressively lazy and very passive-aggressive. I'd like to mention now that she is also the worst of many worlds: (shoddy) academia, the self-described "liberal" contingent of the way-upper-middle class, seventies-era feminism, this town and this university. she's fame-hungry and money-grubbing, with a career built on a single work of psycho-biography published in the height of a hideous trend in history scholarship during the late nineteen-seventies. I don't want to go on for too long, because it's clear and you get the picture: she is bad and I do not like her.
and since everyone else is ill, she has made it her business to be here in the office unrelentingly, floating around like poison gas. it is just me and her, and the ancient, vaguely racist volunteers who come here once a week. it is akin to a nightmare.
at the moment I'm processing donations sent in over the new year, which is hideous to do while she is here. she insists on standing next to me as I type to look at all the names of the people who've donated. in order to say things like "oh! that's the father of one of our soccer dads! what a sweetie!" we're really short on money so it's important that the donations are high. they really haven't been. measly twenty-dollar checks and so forth. a couple hours ago I opened an envelope I'd overlooked, containing a check for twelve-thousand dollars. which is a pretty big deal and very helpful, but I just can't bear to share this information with her because I know exactly how she will react. she'll snatch up the check and clomp madly around the office, waving it around at everyone, squealing "fabulous! fabulous!!" not because the check will pay all of our salaries for a month or so, or keep us from shutting down, but because it is a lot of money that came from a rich lawyer whose name she wants on the donors list. which I find a little sickening, and I've grown really bad at masking my reactions, so I just have to let this information hide.
on a similar note: yesterday I took all of my dishes out of the kitchen cabinets. mostly the very cool old china (pastel snowflake patterned, with gold edges) that my gramma gave me, which I could no longer stand the thought of my hated roommate using. I think he'd been putting it in the microwave for one thing, which is so clearly the wrong thing to do. I am afraid that I'll be going back there (the ten-day campout at c's is ending) tonight, and I'm afraid it will be horrible.