So if you read this blog regularly, you know that my Mom comes out with some of the most ridiculous things. Well, this past weekend, she came out with what might be her finest work yet.

She and my dad had been visiting my grandmother (who is unwell) and I called to see how things were. Mom was in the middle of watching a TV show that had only a few minutes left so she asked if she could call me back in a few minutes and I said, sure, I was just calling to see how Grandma was. So mom says:

“All I’m going to say is, all is not well in Dodge.”

Then she hung up on me while I laughed hysterically. I immediately went downstairs and my husband and I mused on what she meant by this for several funny moments. Then, while at her house for dinner then next day, we discussed, in round table style college seminar discussion, what Mom may have meant.

The Dodge part was easy. My husband says, “Get out of Dodge” all the time so we know where Mom got that one. But the rest of the expression she insisted was a sports metaphor. After much prodding, the metaphor she said that she was trying to use was, “All is not well in Slugville.” (Which, frankly, is an expression I wish would catch on.)

Somehow, amazingly, my husband, suggests that Slugville was supposed to be Mudville and we realize that she is referring to “There was no joy in Mudville, Mighty Casey had struck out” from the poem Casey at the Bat. This, I am sorry to say, resulted in a bit of a fight as my mother and aunt insisted that the final line of the poem was “All was not well in Mudville” instead of “There was no joy in Mudville” but after much yelling and finally looking up on the internet, we finally confrimed that the “no joy” line was correct. Like I had been saying all along. Being right all the time is a burden, you have no idea.

So then Mom insisted we had the wrong expression and that she had really meant something from Shakespeare. So we suggested, “Alls well that ends well” or “Something is rotten in Denmark.” For the rest of the night, Mom kept restating the second phrase as, “Something is rotten in Denville.”

Then, many hours after the conversation, after we had gone home, Mom called us late at night and said only, “There’s Trouble in Rivercity!” triumphantly (referencing The Music Man song that finishes, “with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool!” At this point, Mom had totally forgotten what she originally said and thought she had said, “There is trouble in Dodge” which, frankly, would have made more sense than what she actually said.

So, after much debate, we established that “All is not well in Dodge” is a Mom-ism that includes all of the following expressions (not including made up expressions):

• Get the hell out of Dodge
• All’s well that end’s well
• Something is rotten in Denmark
• There was no joy in Mudville
• The Outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day
• There’s Trouble in Rivercity

After this long and robust discussion, I said to the assembled group that we could quite honestly have a college course where each seminar was only devoted to figuring out what Mom meant by things and Mom said with great interest, “I would like to attend that course!”

Sorry, another rant.

The last few months, I have been in this pattern of hurry up and wait. I am trying to do work (in both my jobs) where I need to depend on someone else to get me something and I make sure every part of the job that is under my control is done quickly and done well and then have to sit around and wait for the other people’s part. So projects that have my name on them are being delayed, it’s out of my control and that bothers me. I am really freakin’ frustrated.

You know how they make you do group projects in school to prepare you for the real world and working with others? Instead, all they do is that every time you have to work with others in the real world, you say to yourself, “Gosh, this sucks just as bad as doing a group project in school!” At least that is what I say. I hated group projects.

I understand that everyone is not going to place the same importance on things as I am. But what really gets me is when it takes weeks for them to do their part and then I work my butt off to make sure everything and everyone I am in control over works like mad to get our part done in a few days to make up for some of the time they caused us to lose. Not only is this incredibly hard on us but then, when the ball is back in the other person’s court, the project comes to a halt for a very long time again while we wait and wait for them to finish their part. It is really disheartening to pull a series of all-nighters to finish a project only to have the other part of the equation take weeks to do less work because they were on vacation or something and the project is still held back, no matter what we do.

I also hate the fact that, in a professional setting, I need to nag. That I need to email and call people over and over again to remind them that they are past the deadline or that we needed x a week ago is ridiculous. I should not have to say to another adult, “You know, you promised us x a week ago and we still don’ have it. Any idea of when that might be done?”

I’m trying not to be defeatist. I know I can be a control freak and take things over. I also know, though, that if I was in charge of all aspects of projects like this, they would be finished by now. Oddly enough, this is happening in two different ways in two different parts of my job which is why it’s really starting to annoy me. I’ve been trying to just be zen about it and just work on something else while I am waiting but when you have 3 hair on fire high priority projects all on hold because someone else is twirling their hair around their finger and staring into space I cannot help but get frustrated.

The most annoying is the one person who has been putting me in this situation is out of the office constantly. Every time I email her I get her auto-reply. Now, maybe she is having a family issue or something so I don’t want to judge. But it’s been like this for 6 months now. It’s real heartening to email someone to say, “Those things I gave you in January that still haven’t been processed and it’s April need to be processed right this second!” and you get an auto-response back that she’s going to be gone for a few days. Yeah, that really makes me feel like my stuff is going to get processed on time.

I know, I know. This is just what it’s like in the real world. I totally understand that. I think what sends me over the deep end is when the person who is causing the delays then has the audacity, after finally handing over their part hours before, asking why the project isn’t done yet. Like it’s perfectly acceptable for their part (which is about 3 seconds of work, mind you) to take weeks and weeks but that everything else (which is what we do) should be somehow magically instant.

Back to the group project thing. I used to hate them because my grade was riding on whatever people I was randomly assigned. So if you got stuck with a bunch of do-nothings, your only choice was to do all the work or get a bad grade. I am the kind of person that always did all the work rather than get a bad grade.

I guess based on the law of averages, if there was one like me in every group, the majority of people are the sort who sit back in a group project and hope the work gets done for them.

So, in these cases, my job or my project is on the line because of the rest of my “group.” I’ve done all the work that I can to try to make the project good and hand it in on time but most of it is out of my control. It killed me in school to get a bad grade. Imagine how much it is driving me nuts that my project, my job, my company is having to look bad because of someone else’s inability to adhere to a simple deadline.

If you want something done right (and on time) do it yourself, right? But what happens when that is not an option?

Ugh.

My husband cannot stand this song. Mind you, this is the same guy who hated I Hope You Dance and, as a general rule of thumb, cannot stand any song not sung by a man which I find to be really weird. (Hejust does not like female singers. Ever. I mean, I like songs sung by men and I’m not a man. Isn’t that kinda weird?) That said, I love teeny bopper pop and Miley Cyrus in specific and I don’t even really care for this song’s melody or Miley’s singing that much. But I do like the lyrics.

There’s always gonna to be another mountain
I’m always gonna to wanna make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes I’m gonna to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

I feel like I need to frame that and hang it on the wall over my desk. Maybe repeat it to myself every morning. Because I feel like every day I am trying to move mountains and losing uphill battles and I really need to remember, firstly, that I am always going to be like this, trying to take on too much and do the impossible so I need to remember that and put less importance on things because of that realization.

Secondly, I like the idea of reminding myself every day that it’s the climb, the life that happens while I’m chasing all these crazy schemes that really matters and not to work at the expense of life.

I also find it weird that people call this song inspirational. To me, it’s a smackdown. It’s like, look, you are always trying to move your stupid mountains, no one cares, so stop whining about it and live life. That’s what I feel like this song is saying. Until she’s all “keep the faith, keep the faith” which is all weird and I usually change the channel by then.