Angry Shel paid a visit today. I almost didn't recognize Her, it's been so long since She's made an appearance!

She arrived at about 4 a.m. this morning, just in time to hear the most dreadful squalling noises ever made by a single cat. I don't know whether Neo was hungry or thirsty or horny, but his incessant moaning and screeching at the most inappropriate hour of the day set the tone for everything else that followed.

I've recently considered that it's probably time to have Neo and Loki neutered, because they've been fighting viciously - and often - lately. Angry Shel waved a pair of scissors in the air and offered to do the deed Herself right then and there, but I convinced Her not to, as I really didn't want to clean up the mess. Not to mention having no idea what to do with those little cat testicles - hang them from my rearview mirror perhaps?

Since sleep was impossible after watching Angry Shel chase Neo from the room with the scissors, I got up and sat at the computer. Reaching for my cigarettes, I was perplexed when I found ONE lone smoke remaining in a pack I had just opened before bed only six hours prior. Was I puffing away in my sleep? GGGGGGod damn Scott!! Angry Shel pitched a fit on my behalf - apparently, the kid snuck in my room all night, pilfering cigarette after cigarette until the entire pack was gone. I guess I'll have to start sleeping with my cigarettes tucked under my pillow.

I got out a new pack, smoked a couple while I played Solitaire on the PC, then crawled back into my warm bed, hoping for another hour of sleep. With Angry Shel on the pillow beside me, whispering in my ear, I tossed and turned, my mind full of someone I did not need distracting me, and I finally fell asleep - about ten minutes before the alarm went off!

Neo tried to make amends by playing our standard morning game: he jumped up on the toilet lid, stretched his front legs over to the counter, and tried to swat the towel wrapped around my wet hair while I put in my contacts. I wasn't in the mood for it, though, and Angry Shel hissed him away.

On the way out to the car, I reached in the fridge for my morning Dr. Pepper. Out of the twelve-pack I just bought yesterday, only one was left! SCCCCOTT!!! Okay, time to padlock the refrigerator door. Angry Shel wrote it down on Her list.

Surprisingly, the drive to work was a straight sail all the way in. Angry Shel took a nap in the back seat while I drove, and I actually laughed because I heard one of my mailing list buddies calling in on Howard's show!! Way to go, Hillel! Angry Shel was not amused, and tossed an empty Dr. Pepper can at the back of my head to shut me up.

By the time I got to work, She was rested and raring to unleash hell. She stayed at my side all morning, and strangely enough, spurred me to whiz through a truckload of work. I was efficient and determined and lunchtime arrived with record speed.

The afternoon was a bit worse. I'm tired of dealing with messes created by those who came before me and didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Angry Shel stood behind my chair, chanting "stupid, stupid, stupid people" in my ear as I tried to make sense of the chaos.

For example, because some idiot didn't pay attention and checked "dollars" instead of "percent" during the initial setup, the shift differentials for one of our facilities have been dramatically overpaid since the facility opened three months ago. Instead of someone getting an extra 25 percent of their hourly rate for working a weekend shift, they got an extra 25 dollars per hour! So someone earning $20 per hour made a killing on each twelve-hour shift - an overpayment of close to $2,000 in a single month!! And those who earn the least got away with the most. (I guess that's some form of justice, huh?)

So now I have to prepare a spreadsheet for every employee, for every payroll since June, calculating what they should have been paid versus what they were paid, so the VP of Operations can decide whether to take the money back from them - or not. I just know that I am going to spend a day and a half compiling this information, and the amounts are going to be so high that there is no way they'll take anything back from the employees - these are nurses, and the market is a bitch for hiring, and they simply won't risk alienating them, overpayment or not. Angry Shel is very pissed about me having to do all that work for nothing! She told me so, over and over, ad nauseam.

Then there are those incredibly thoughtful people in the office who conduct every phone conversation not by holding the handset to their ear, but by using the goddamn speakerphone feature, turned up to the highest volume so that every other person in the office who is not participating in the call can hear each inhalation and exhalation of breath of the party on the other end of the line! Amazingly, these people have private offices with doors on them, and Angry Shel really wanted to get up and close those damn doors for them, maybe with a little slam for emphasis. I convinced Her to stay put - I need to keep this job, I whined!

Closed doors wouldn't have done me much good anyway, because I'd still have to listen to the new Senior Accountant who sits across from me talking about football, football, football all day long. Angry Shel wanted to smack him for making more money than me but not having enough freaking work to do while I hyperventilate at my desk in anxiety. But I guess we'll have to let him live, as prison would suck far worse than this job. Grrrrrrr.

Then Angry Shel waved a new e-mail in my face - it was from the Administrative Assistant at another facility claiming her shift differentials were wrong too - oooooh, some people got overpaid by a whole 16 cents on a paycheck!!! At first, I figured it was just a difference in rounding, but then I realized she just didn't know how to interpret the report on which she was basing her faulty conclusions. God only knows how long it took her to compile that list, paycheck by paycheck for the past two months. A waste of my time and hers! And Angry Shel was grumbling and muttering to Herself as we walked out the door at 5:43 p.m.

Mercifully, the drive home was as brisk as the drive to work had been.

Angry Shel is sleeping on the bed, and I'll be joining Her as soon as I finish this entry - being bitchy is exhausting; writing about it, even more so.

Thank goodness She doesn't visit often.