oh, my aching thumbs.....

....although it's my own fault, I guess. I knew I should have done typing at school instead of biology! Being a 4-finger and 2 thumbs typist is OK most of the time, but after a humongous number of 70-odd hour work-weeks, almost all of which is spent at the keyboard, my hands have now reached 'enough' status. My wrists, biceps and knees ache from digging in the garden and/or carrying rocks around for between 30 mins and two hours almost every day. My shoulders are a combination ache, from working and gardening. My thumbs though, are entirely due to too much keyboard time. Told my boss I was going to claim for whatever kind of massage included thumbs, but then told him as well that on second thoughts I couldn't bear for anyone else to even touch them... Even carrying four kitty-dinners through from the kitchen needed extra thought so as to hold the bowls without involving the thumbs. My most erotic fantasies now involve a massage before anything else - yeah, right. Not that anything else is that likely either.

I am sore, and tired, and should have a bath before bed 'cos I'm kind of sweaty from this evenings garden workout - how is this for practical? I managed to perfect the split today so that I spent two hours carrying rocks and paving stones from the front to the back garden, placing them all, and even doing some other small jobs, all at the same time as I worked. Just a question of leaving all the biggest systems re-compiles for the same time, so that while I my keyboard was locked running them, I could leap up and out and do 15 mins outside, and be back to catch the results, cut and paste them into reports, and start the next one running. Technically, they could be done in batch - if only someone could tell me the f-ing format for the commands! Can't log a call for it, because part of the motivation for the upgrades is that the product is about 6 years out of support. And when the office moved, no-one is too sure of where my manuals went. They definitely got packed, but haven't been seen since. So until they are found, and I know the right sequence for about 30 alternating 'x's and commas, I can only run them online. Tried about 15 different combo's in batch against a small system, but couldn't find the magic one.

It amazes me that work both makes me omnipotent and has me throwing up almost every day - sometimes both the same day. Goes back to my Jon-days...1992/93, when I perfected the facade. Not that management then or now know about the puking bits. It worked a lot better then, being a 27-year old, 58-kg toned and muscled, super-fit wearer of short suits, high heels and make-up. But even now, I have enough experience, and enough history to prove me right, and to get away with it. And in some ways, the fact that I am the only person in the office who gets away with wearing nothing but denims, t-shirts and slip-slops (and no make-up at all) - oh yeah, and carrying little birds into meetings, and stopping halfway to feed them - somehow reiterates the fact that I must be good at this. Otherwise they wouldn't tolerate me. Often, I wonder why they do.

Actually, I know why. They tried really hard, twice, to find someone to support my major client on an unpopular mainframe database, for a limited number of hours most months, with a limited future, at a fairly cheap rate. There are permanent people available, there are very expensive, highly skilled short-term people available, but there's no-one as flexible and as cheap as me, there's no-one who can provide this support as well as being backup/coverage on two other m/f database products across 6 other clients, there's no-one alive who actually wants my current job. The first time, the replacement stuffed up, and the client insisted that they see if I'd come back. The second time, they managed to get a higher-paid, much more knowledgeable guy in for this project, but he has set limits on what he does, and will do - which is why they are now paying him for half the upgrade, and me as well for vastly more hours. And this for a project I really tried not to be involved in... I am such a loser. Don't want to do the other coverage either. But I can't explain to my current boss why not - shit, if he had any idea of my emotional instability, I don't think I'd even touch ground on the way out........