it’s no wonder that I buy my lunch,
when I pack things like sardines in tomato sauce for myself.
life
I've mentioned before,
but it’s worth mentioning again:
I have a new job.
It’s my old job, but with more responsibility, and more work and a little more money.
I’m a supervisor.
When I got this (temporary) promotion, Sue went to the Berkeley Public Library and took out books on effective management. From the eighties. It’s actually quite amazing how the same ideas are relevant today, even though they didn’t have computers back then.
Can you imagine?? Maybe you can. I used to have a job where I had to process hundreds of thousands of records and it took so long I read Atlas Shrugged while I waited.
So, new job. For the first few days I’d leave and I wouldn’t make it to MLK & Alcatraz without bursting into tears. I’d remember nostalgically what it was, oh that week before, when I knew what I was doing, and when I was doing it. And how long it would take.
I now supervise two departments of which I know almost nothing about the operations of, and which are both at important stages in their lives. Our 75th anniversary!! A fundraising golden year the likes of which we will not see for 25 years! And don’t even get me started on IT. If those resources were used effectively…
So, anyway. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t cry anymore, but most days are really just painful. Sure, the challenge is good. And I’m learning so much. It’s amazing to be part of such an important phase of an organization that I care so much about.
Blah blah blah.
I wonder sometimes, and it might be so, if these reactions are what I’ve heard of as growing pains, and comprise yet another indispensable reality of these ever still formative years.
new computer, new bf, same few weeks
new computer:
talks back
disturbing alerts
dvd player skips
makes me laugh
fingerprints
so fast!!!
high resolution
new boyfriend:
talks back
forgets to shut the toilet
makes me laugh
makes good breakfasts
perfectly fast
fantastic company
internet shopping
Internet shopping requires that you do your research.
Rather, it pays that you do your research.
For instance, it was because of my obsessive reading of the reviews of the Vostro 1500 that made me know to choose the Intel wireless card because the default (which costs the same) has trouble connecting to the Internet.
And the obsessive reading of the reviews for the laptop desk thing that I finally decided to get, is, like the reviews suggested, wobbly. But useful. I’m down.
Anyway, the thing that makes the trio, is…
Seriously…
the cancer pink balance ball I got to use as a chair.
Life is perfect!
oh whiskey,
better than coffee,
as reliable as rechargeable batteries,
you,
alone,
are the vacation I can afford,
and so rarely regret.
so,
I had a strange request the other day.
You ever get those strange requests? It’s like 9 a.m., and you’re checking your email with your head weight on. You know, the head weight that sets your spine for the day, and has changed your whole outlook on life. The one that your chiropractor requires you to wear for twenty minutes at the beginning and end of every day. That one.
So, you’re checking your email, and a little flustered already thinking about the day ahead. You got this promotion you didn’t really want, though you wanted it anyway, and now it’s stressing you out. Go figure.
And there it is. A long email from someone you haven’t heard from in awhile. Someone who was once very dear to you and whose absence was very much a subject for this blog. Someone who has given you years of entertaining stories, and……
You knew he was engaged. He told you over Christmas, and you weren’t surprised. It was years ago, and you’re so over it.
But then, here he is, asking you to be his maid of honor in leiu of a best man. In lieu of a best man!
What are you going to talk about?
Recount the first dinner you had together where you thought you were going to go out, and instead he said, “Well. Do you want to have what I’m having for dinner, or do you want to have something else?”
To which you responded, “Um. What are you having for dinner?”
1 can of salmon, wild.
2 apples
1 orange
16 tablespoons of peanuts
32 ounces of water
No, no that story is not appropriate. Neither is the one where you told him that you thought he’d sold your relationship short after he’d broken up with you with the line, “If you were on my maintenance crew, I’d have fired you by now.”
Cause you were always fashionably late.
Still are. It’s one of those endearing qualities that makes you so reliably unreliable.
The upshot: Come August 18th, I’ll have fashioned a speech out of none of my favorite stories, and maybe some mutual friends share.
At least I have some time. I might join Toastmasters so that I might present my speech with the greatest of ease. Not that I really have trouble with public speaking as long as I have a drink in me.
Cheers to BOOZE!! Oh, I mean, my ex-bf and his new love.
ode to my stress relief tea
stress relief tea,
you stress me out.
I’m always worried
that I might run out.
really&truly,
I believed,
that it had been a number of years since my heart had fluttered. Since I’d caught myself happy in a moment; found myself rather completely serene.
It wasn’t a week ago that I was driving to work listening to Kfog or whatever, and I was thinking about how unfortunate it was that I had fallen so far in love so long ago, and never since.
Like so many things, perhaps a matter of interpretation?
A matter of evolution?
Delusion???
Only time will tell.
I know I’m crazy*
10:00 p.m.
The Ruby Room.
Waiting for: E, 31.
In all my excitement over the BTSSB, I think I’d forgotten what dates were like; how they make you nervous and uncertain. And you wonder what it will be like and what you will talk about.
I’d also forgotten to follow my standard pre-date procedure:
1. Go to the gym. It makes you feel good.
2. Make a list of three relevant questions.
3. Make a list of top ten do-not-by-god-bring-up topics.
So there I was, unprepared, at the right side of the bar trying to down my v&t so that I might order another before he walks in–whoever he is–and right then he walks in.
I knew him immediately. He knew me too. Right off the internet, into the Ruby Room.
(For the next few weeks, I propose that we measure awkwardness by the total number of minutes that I stare into my v&t plus the seconds I distractedly chew on my straw divided by the total number of seconds the date lasts.
Tonight: I stuck it out till about 10:45….about 5 minutes were spent staring into my v&t, and about 4 were spent distractedly chewing my straw. Let’s add in the five seconds when I recovered from learning of his obvious familiarity with my Super Sponge Selling History and multiply that by 9/5 cause it was really bad and that makes the math easier, and we get:
2/5 of the date was awkward.
See? Handy system.)
After about fifteen minutes I was trying to figure out–mostly while chewing my straw–how I was going to possibly extract myself from this duo, and seat myself back at my party of ten who were merrily enjoying the second hand smoke and drinks which make the Ruby Room my favorite bar in Downtown and who were a mere three feet away. We were pretending not to know each other.
I had intended to say to him, whoever he was, “Okay, well, it’s 10:30, and I have a group of friends over there, so either let’s join them, or goodnight.”
Instead I turns out I have an eight o’clock meeting tomorrow, but then…well, it was actually going to start about 8:20… I’ll have time for my coffee…
God that silence was deafening. I’m not that good with silence, I learned tonight, once again.
I finished my vodka tonic, and it was time to go. “I’m sorry…,” I said when he asked to hang out again, but we agreed to give each other favorable reviews. I managed to leave the bar, and was standing outside talking to some dudes** when he also exited. I walked around the block… Wondered if I should walk all the way around the block, but I’d gone about seventy feet and I’d already been asked for change twice and it’s not really the best neighborhood to be walking around in in the middle of the night…
…so I was chilling. Kinda dancing around in my post-date haze where the anxiety just kinda oozes out your pores like microwaves.
And around the block he comes.
Luckily, by that time, I’d started walking back to the bar, convinced that he couldn’t have been standing out front that whole time.
Cheerily I called, “I forgot where I parked my car!”
*Julia says that that’s what makes me interesting. I’m paraphrasing.
**I’m good with strangers. But so much depends on context. Obvs.
