La Mondaine: no matter how short the countdown, it's still too long

Happily, La Mondaine is away with a headcold.  There's a certain pleasing irony in that, as yesterday she had a lengthy phone call to a friend who'd been exposed to a disease-bearing child.  La Mondaine gleefully AND VERY LOUDLY informed her friend how sick she was going to be in the very near future, how awful it would be, and how completely inevitable.  Because that's the kind of caring and supportive friend she is.

So arriving at work today to find she'd been stricken overnight was immensely satisfying for even more reasons than usual.

Yesterday she spent a great deal of time complaining about how she just doesn't understand kids today, and what's wrong with them, anyway?  In  her world, the youth of today are all on a non-stop bender and routinely glass one another in pursuit of an elusive "perpetual high".  It's not safe to walk down the city streets at night  because, seven nights a week, they'll be filled with drug-crazed youngsters chasing even more drugs and remorselessly smashing glasses and bottles into the faces of innocent bystanders.  In her day, naturally, when the world was young and innocent, people just weren't doing drugs - or if they did, they did them secretly and politely - and there was no alcohol-related violence, because people were just better then and she understood them.

The Stress Fiend then chimed in: kids today just had no respect for their elders (the word "whippersnappers" wasn't uttered, nor were there complaints about how those damn kids just wouldn't stay offa her lawn, but if they'd hung any more heavily in the air, you could have plucked them from the ether and used them as bludgeoning instruments).  Both blamed the parents for not bringing them up right.

Somehow this then segued into La Mondaine trying to use jailed drug smugglers like the Bali Nine as an example of how utterly lost and incapable of looking after themselves today's youth really.  At this point, despite myself, I felt obliged to point out that millions of teens and tweens manage to get through life without  smuggling illegal narcotics into death-penalty countries, but she couldn't grasp the concept that individual stupidity may not represent an entire generation or two.

(Which wasn't really that surprising - she, Ted and our previous team leader had a shared habit of fixating on isolated factoids devoid of any context.  This made team meetings in the old days into an absolutely excruciating experience that still sees me and the Stress Fiend flinch in pain nearly four years later whenever a team meeting is called).

"I just don't understand them, I really don't.  The worst thing my boys ever did was get a speeding ticket."  Pause.  "Oh, and one of them got a thirteen-year-old pregnant."

* stunned silence *

"But then she got pregnant again at 16, so she obviously really wanted it."

* more stunned silence *

Now, as a parent myself, I've know for quite a long time that La Mondaine's thoughts on parenting aren't worth the sputtering, threadbare and pickled synapses they dribble from at random intervals, but ... WHAT?  Her immature, dependent, judgement-impaired, financially-incapable, 13yo-impregnating offspring are an example of successful parenting?  But of course they must be, because they visit her a lot (for babysitting, washing, loans, help putting their underpants on the right way around, etc), so they're clearly far superior to today's kids with their lawless, nihilistic ways...

While that was hard to top (and I'm honestly hoping she doesn't manage to), she didn't feel it was any reason to stop talking. Instead, she switched gears and decided to argue against all the evidence that we'd miss Ted when he was gone.

When I asked, more than a little incredulously, "Why?" she began trying to convince me how hard it would be to get Ted's (eventual) replacement trained and up to speed. There was a plus side to this, however, as it gave me the opportunity to inadvertently offend her

"How will you and the Stress Fiend cope?  The job's soooo complicated!  It will take them months to get the hang of it all!" 

She very clearly wanted me to show some sign of distress or dismay.  Instead she got a non-committal shrug.

"Depends on the caliber of the person we get.  If it's someone competent, they'll pick up the basics fairly quickly."

A half-second later, the slightly frozen look on her face registers and a little voice in the back of my head adds "Oh, that's right - you're struggling.  Hmm - faux pas..."

But I have trouble feeling particularly guilty about it, especially because it meant she stopped talking at me for a while. Instead I'm wondering how to replicate the results on a regular basis while still making it appear spontaneous.

"It was too wet at playtime, so teacher said we could go home early."

It's 3.30pm, and the The Invertebrate bounces into our workspace. He was helping Ted fill in his resignation forms earlier today (which I can't help but envisage as "No, Ted, stop chewing on your crayons and make your mark here") and he's still having trouble suppressing his glee.

"I just wanted to check with you guys - " he suddenly notices Ted's missing.  "Wait, where's he gone? Has he gone home already?"

"It was raining at lunch." He gets my best deadpan face.

"So?"

"He didn't want to get wet if he went outside, so he decided that meant he had to work through lunch instead."

"He - what? That's just..."

Pain flickers across his face as he tries to reconcile Ted's sense of entitlement with anything resembling reason and, inevitably, fails.

"Argh!"

The Stress Fiend nearly falls off her chair laughing.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead!

Ted announced his departure date today. It didn't exactly come as a surprise, as I've overheard him talking to interstate removalists for the last couple of days and knew the decision had been reached.

But, from mid-December, he'll be several hundred miles away and it will be a Ted-free world, leaving only the Stress Fiend and La Mondaine to exalt an average working day into the realm of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

Now I just need to work out a diplomatic means of avoiding the going-away event The Invertebrate seems determined to organise. I might be helped in this by Ted himself, who also seems to be trying to avoid going to one.

Or I could just be magnanimous, forget the last few years of white-anting and backbiting and make a genuine effort to wish him well...

No method in her madness, just more madness.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later: La Mondaine caught the same bus as me into work, and wanted to chat all the way. Luckily I got onto the bus with a book already in hand, and managed to retreat into it after some basic civilities.

Avoiding her once the bus reached our destination wasn't as easy, but in the walk to the office I learnt that she isn't happy not being allowed to run loose on everything yet (partly because the Stress Fiend is a secretive control freak, but largely because none of us have any confidence in her ability not to destroy everything she touches), and that she finds the Stress Fiend incredibly stressful to work with and feels physically ill every time the Stress Fiend erupts into a tirade about a client or a colleague.

That's a lot of time to spend feeling physically ill. A lot of easily avoidable time, when she doesn't actually need the income, so she must really be desperate for a social life to keep coming into this.

Although I wouldn't rule out Mad Cow Disease, either.