What’s the Best Wine Pairing for Foot?

The second week of my new job basically involved me stuffing my foot in my mouth and seeing just how far I could shove it down my throat without vomiting all over someone’s desk, and other awkward occasions.

Don’t get me wrong – job’s still good. People are still nice. Me? I’m kind of an idiot.

My new immediate boss started Monday. It just so happens that, in the ongoing adjustment to restructuring our department, he wasn’t hired until after me. Not a big deal at all. But he has to get up to speed with how things are working so that he can then oversee how things are working. Pursuant to that, he had an informal staff meeting on Tuesday morning at which I opened my fat mouth and implied that I understood things that, being on my exact seventh day of working at the university, I, of course, did not, in fact, understand. This has long been a problem of mine. My natural air of confidence makes me seem as if I know what the hell I’m talking about, when in all actuality I’m totally making shit up half the time, and the other half I only think I know what I’m talking about, but I say it with such poise and certainty that people believe me. This is essentially how I’ve managed to convince anyone at all that I’m a grown-up.

And usually that’s harmless. But in this case, it ruffled the feathers of someone who’s been there way longer than me. Approximately 19 years, 11 months and 51 weeks longer. Because I thought she had new help with a client, and I was very wrong. She still does all the work herself. Yet I sort of came off as telling her she was wrong, instead.

On top of that, there was a covert kerfuffle over my title. Now, I can’t help what my title is. But I was hired with that title even though my associates, who do exactly the same job as mine, don’t have it. Naturally, they wondered what the difference was. They were told, before I arrived, that there was no difference. Joanne told them that. She hired me. She also told my immediate boss, Ron, that I have a leadership role over the others. Therefore, he kept coming to me for things, making me look like the new boss’s favorite. And she keeps talking me up like I’m the second coming.

Oh, please stop. It’s so nice to be valued and appreciated, but please, please lower the bar of expectation. I don’t know what I’m doing. You know that, right?

Then, last night, I went to a dinner in honor of some prominent graduates. Seated at my table were one such graduate and his family, along with two men I’ve met in the last two weeks – both clients I work with. The man to my immediate left was someone I hadn’t yet met. I asked him what he does within the university.

He’s the vice-provost.

Which is awesome, since the Office of the Provost is another one of my clients.

This was after I met the president of the university and couldn’t help but wonder if my v-neck was cut a little too low. Which I had been wondering all day. Which means the answer is probably yes.

In other news: Rick brought something up to my officle while I was in a meeting. I saw it briefly when I ran back to my desk to get something we were talking about. Then I wound up coming back to get what he’d brought, because we’d started talking about that. He’d stuck a Post-It note on it: “Sending you gifts (with a purpose). Enjoy.-Rick.”

I controlled the heart flutter, I think. Because it was just information on a construction project the university is doing. And a pen pimping said construction project. It wasn’t, like, roses. I did need the info.

But… I mean… the pen…

Anyway. I emailed him later to let him know his timing was perfect because we were discussing the very thing he’d brought to my officle while I was in the meeting. Then I asked for some quick information on the event he was attending. Except the event was the next night. “That’s tomorrow,” he replied, as I had known two hours before, but had forgotten. “Right now I’m stuck in traffic heading into the city for a dinner. If it keeps up like this, I might just bypass the dinner altogether.”

At first I thought nothing of it. Then I did some geographical calculation and realized that the city is south of the university, and the town where he’d been staying with his parents is north of the university. “Bypassing” in this case means continuing southward without stopping. And the town where he had lived with his girlfriend is south of the city.

So now I’m pretty sure he’s back with her. Which, by the way, is exactly what I have been telling myself all along, for the sake of my peace of mind. Supposedly. But I think he mentioned the “bypass” on purpose. Which I willfully ignored. Because this is a professional relationship. I will not wind up in the Friend Zone. And I will not ask questions.

After all the Foot I’ve tasted this week, I need to keep my mouth shut, anyway.

The First Week

You guys. I finished my first week of my new job.

First of all, did you know that you can work somewhere where people are all really nice and nobody is snarky? It’s true. I mean obviously it’s only been a week and everyone is probably on their best behavior and also really excited because wow, do I have a lot of responsibilities to take off their hands. I’m not complaining. I like being busy and I am going to know soooo many people. But no fewer than three officemates have told me I have entirely too many clients within the university. Like, triple what I should have, apparently? So that’s exciting. I’m looking forward to failing them all miserably.

I spent the week doing important things like having meetings with major players in university administration and also figuring out how the hell to work the phone. I couldn’t even log into a computer until Wednesday, so I was re-learning what it was like to write things out longhand and not be able to send email. I could place and receive calls, so that wasn’t a problem… I just didn’t have voicemail until Thursday.

I had to make a copy once. That was embarrassing. Here’s me, college-educated, working at a university, 16 years as a professional, and I couldn’t figure out how to make the copier go.

You need a code.

Aha.

But now? Except for not understanding why the printer that’s directly under my desk doesn’t print, and not knowing where anything I print actually goes, everything is up and running! I even figured out how to find someone else’s scheduling calendar in Outlook. In my previous career, there was nothing like this. I didn’t know computers had made it possible for me to see the scheduling calendar for literally every blessed person on staff at a university.

I find it a little creepy, to be honest.

On Tuesday, I asked the administrative assistant if we had any of those big desk calendars – you know, the ones with the big squares for each day so you can write a bunch of stuff in there? I was teased for not just doing it all in my phone, but my phone is always dinging and buzzing about something and I start ignoring it, so that’s not really the best way to go. Anyway, the AA told me she’d order me one.

Next morning. On my desk. “It’s not very pretty, but there wasn’t much of a selection,” she said apologetically. As if I need a pretty desk calendar. I’m still in shock I got something I asked for immediately and without question. I come from a place where they line-item veto $0.26 worth of staples on a supply request.

I did not make that up.

Oh! And I have an officle. That’s what I call  it. Hard C, like “cat.” It’s not quite an office because it doesn’t have a door, so it’s more like a cubicle, but bigger, and there’s a window! Remember how I used to work in a basement? Now I’m on the fourth floor with a window. Right there! Big ol’ view! Blinds I’m allowed to adjust whenever I choose!

And you know what else? I can be away from my desk for hours and nobody questions whether I’m doing my job. In fact, they assume I’m doing it, by being out, having meetings and getting familiar with campus. Which is exactly what I have been doing when I’ve been away from my desk, except for the four hours of my life that HR owes me for the timesuck that was orientation. Three people in this session, including myself, and it took four freaking hours. I’ve never seen so much PowerPoint in my life. And soooo much paperwork. Just to exist. Just to get on the payroll. At a state university, you have to fill out 427 forms and they can’t put you on payroll until they get allll  of them back. Including your retirement selection, your health insurance selection and your fingerprints. Yes, you have to be fingerprinted. Which should be reassuring since it is a place that shapes young minds.

Oh, but you can get into buildings and work and stuff before they find out whether you’re an ax murderer. You just can’t get paid until they’re sure you’re not.

On Tuesday, there was a breakfast meeting that featured actual hot food. Eggs, home fries, sausage, bacon… plus pastry, fruit salad, yogurt, coffee, water, juices… and the whole meeting was called solely so that the boss could thank everyone for working so hard. Apparently she does this every couple months.

What?

Previous career: there might be an email from the boss once every three clusterfucks saying how glad he is to work with such smart people, but that email would be lost in a shuffle of 4,281 other emails about how we suck. And on Fridays there might be a rumpled brown bag of bagels and schmears of cream cheese all over a table in the breakroom. Tops.

People kept coming by all week and asking how I was, how things were going, telling me how happy they were to have me there, and offering help all over the place while I get acclimated. One guy, the guy I share a wall with (he has an office-office) left me a donut while I was at a meeting, and then came back and confessed he thought he’d gotten me a croissant because I seem more like a croissant person and donuts are too pedestrian. (He’s right about my preference in pastry.)  I learned he had not gotten donuts and/or croissants for everyone. Just some people. He also threw a Ferraro Roche candy on my desk. Clearly he’s trying to butter me up.

Now, those of you who have been playing the home version of my particular game of life might be wondering, “But, thesinglecell… what of that man you dated, Rick?” Well, I had decided, on my first day, that I would go say hello. His office is one floor below mine and he did help a lot and encourage me a lot when I was up for the job. But he wasn’t around that day. I saw him Tuesday instead. We sat in his office and chatted for at least half an hour, mostly about university- and legislation-related stuff. The next day, he came up to my officle with a newspaper in his hand, to show me (rather triumphantly) an article about a national effort to accomplish something we had worked on together on the state level for victims’ rights. We had nothing to do with the national thing, but it did piggyback off of our thing, which was pretty cool, and he was totally excited about it.

And then on Thursday, one of his big projects landed on my desk. It falls under the purview of two of my clients. I needed to get more info, so I emailed him, told him I was now on the project and asked him for whatever pertinent facts he could provide.

“I”ll stop up in 30 minutes,” he replied.

Ten minutes later, he was in my officle. He could have just emailed me, but he came up. And now guess who’s going to the site visit and the groundbreaking for the project? Me. Also him.

We looked at each other.

“Who would have thought,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

See, I really was hoping to minimize the number of times I have to see him all dressed up in a suit looking incredibly hot and stuff. But noooo. Right from jump, we’re pushed together again, after two years of strange pushings-together that seem (to those of us who are hopeless romantics slash terribly cursed in relationships) fated to lead to more, despite inner turmoil that has already pulled us begrudgingly apart.

Oh, universe. You are just hilarious.

 

 

That’s Entertainment

The contractor came and busted down the Sheetrock above my back door because it had swelled and the door was rubbing against it. So I watched him while eating my own face because I tend to chew my lip when someone knocks part of my house down. It’s not all done yet – the new Sheetrock is up and some of the mudwork is done, but he has to come back tomorrow (allegedly) and finish the mudwork, so I can then repaint. Sigh. Add it to the To Do List.

Two trucks decided to smash into each other at the end of the block yesterday morning. They snapped a utility pole in half. I am now one of those people who lives in the city and comes out of her house to stand on the sidewalk somewhat aimlessly and gawk at things like this. But also I called 911. Partly because of the accident and partly because it knocked out power. And cable. Out entirely for eight hours. Then the internet and phone came back, but the TV is still all scrambly. I called the cable company four times about it. Now they have to come out tomorrow between 10 and noon to tell me there is nothing wrong from my end. Which will be tremendously helpful.

Oh, I hear a siren winding down outside. Standby.

I’m back. It’s a fire engine. Nothing’s on fire, though. They knocked on a door across the street and down a few houses. No one answered. So someone is dead, possibly.

My neighbor down the street, Miss Ella, cracks me up slash terrifies me. I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s old but I can’t tell how old, and she has absolutely no brain left in her head, God love her. Yesterday after the accident knocked out the power, she came out and started yelling “Hello?” up the street. This is basically how she asks people for help, since she doesn’t remember who anyone is.  I went to see what was up and she said, “There’s ringing! There’s ringing in my house!” I figured it was her alarm system, which it was. I pushed a few buttons while she told me her mother wasn’t home (seeing as how she’s been dead for 40 years, I’m guessing) and I finally just hit CANCEL and the beeping stopped.

“So in other words, I have to hit CANCEL,” she observed.

Sure.

Two hours later: “Hello?” from down the block. She had a mantle-style plastic alarm clock in her hands. Extra-large buttons. The alarm was going off. She was scared to push any buttons to make it stop. So I switched it off and explained to her how to do it.

“So in other words, make sure the alarm is off.”

Oh, Miss Ella. Please don’t turn on the stove.

I wound up held hostage by Mr. Z a few doors down. My gaybor had asked me to knock on the door to see if they want a tree from the city in front of the house. They don’t. Establishing that took about a minute. Getting Mr. Z to stop talking about any and all other things took another 59. Apparently, he stays up all night and goes to bed when his wife goes to work. Then he sleeps all day. So when I knocked at 1:30pm, I woke him. He was in pajama pants and a t-shirt and clearly hadn’t shaved in days. Three hours later he knocked on my door to show me that he had taken a shower, brushed his hair, shaved and gotten dressed.

He reminds me of Fred Willard.

Also he says completely inappropriate things. Such as describing his next door neighbor as (hand flop) and saying my next door neighbors “don’t want the federales coming to get them. They must know I’m the neighborhood gringo watch.”

Dude.

He’s suspicious of my next door neighbors because they’re so nice.

I’m trying to finish a book that I’m not enjoying at all. If you’re ever tempted to read “The Tiger’s Wife,” don’t. It’s this fantastical thing set somewhere in Russia or the Czech Republic (not to be confused with Chechnya… looking at you, idiots on Twitter) or somewhere like that. Something about a deathless man and a tiger/human and The Jungle Book. I don’t understand it at all and I only have like 80 pages left. I feel like I should just finish it so I have a shot at understanding it. Like I think the 270 pages of whatever-the-hell is going to suddenly make all the sense in the world in the last 80.

And the other day I realized while I was peeing that I had my underwear on sideways.

Yup. Crotch at the hip.

I don’t even know.

Working Staycation

Week off, day one. I was supposed to paint the front door today. It’s at the top of my To Do List. I’m kind of excited about it, because my front door is white and boring and I don’t do white and boring. Except for management meetings. *Rimshot!*

But Mother Nature (or, as I believe she’s called in my urban environment, “All Y’all’s Mama”) decided that, on Earth Day, she would throw down some irony and make it too cold for me to put a coat of latex-based fume-producing paint on the door.

Well-played, Mama. I see you your temperature fluctuation that prevents my ozone-damaging efforts, and I raise you whatever chemicals are in a Swiffer wet cloth.

Your move, lady.

This week is all about the To Do List, bolstered by my attempt to reprogram my body to go to bed early and get up early, so I can be ready to start the new job with grown-up hours next Monday. I got up at 7:30, my mind full of the list’s items.

As of 11:30, I had moved the car, put a load of laundry in the washer, and pouted about the door.

None of those things were on the list.

I also read the internet. Not the whole thing, but kind of a lot of it. I had set up a TweetDeck account so I can keep track of goings-on for the new job. So I read the stuff that showed up there, and do you know what happens when you’re done doing that? You have to read the stuff that’s shown up since you started reading. It’s never-ending.

And then I looked at the Bed Bath & Beyond website because my 20% OFF online coupon is WAITING, hello, are you going to buy anything, bitch? And I found Mister Steamy’s Dryer Balls by accident.

Well, obviously that is either brilliant marketing or whoever came up with it has absolutely no idea what all those words put together will do to my brain.

So then I had to post that on my friend Alicia’s Facebook page because she’s dirty like I am and we don’t work together anymore so instead of being inappropriate in person I have to do it on the internet.

And then I had to look for some art that I’d seen a while ago for my upstairs hall, to see if the price had come down at all. Which it didn’t, but it reminded me that I wanted to check out the website for a woman I bought some stuff from at a wine festival yesterday (it wasn’t wine), because it occurred to me after I walked away that her stuff would look great in my upstairs bathroom.

I was supposed to be cleaning my kitchen, by the way.

Then I went to change the laundry from the washer to the dryer and found a gray plastic hose just free as you please in the washer. Which is funny because I don’t remember putting one in there to be washed. I had a good feel-around and even dug the flashlight out to see if I could figure out where this thing came from, but there were no openings I could see. And then I consulted the internet, which sucked unusually badly at getting me the information I needed. But in the process, I began to suspect this hose was part of the drain tube. Which means doing another load of laundry would be a verrrry bad idea. So then I had to call the place I bought the machine from.

He remembered me from the three times he had to come to my house because the machine wouldn’t spin. He asked if I was going to be home today and said he’d call me when he was on his way out. So then I had to take a shower. Usually he shows up, knocks first, then calls, while I’m in the shower.

He showed up without calling at all (but at least he showed up and at least I was out of the shower), and it turned out that it was a drain hose. Just not my drain hose. Apparently it was a spare that had been stored in the rubber that encircles the opening to the washer and worked itself free somehow during the cycle. No harm, no foul.

Oh, also? When I discovered the hose in the washer? I smelled the tell-tale sign that the cat had, for some reason, chosen to pee on the basement carpet. It was dry, so who knows when this happened. Now, can someone please tell me why a spray bottle of Resolve is completely inoperable once more than half the bottle is gone? Here’s a product made to be sprayed on things like carpets and furniture. Which means it’s got to be pointed downward. Why on earth, then, do I have to hold it straight up to make it go?

FIX IT.

Eventually I did clean the kitchen, and the floors, and finish the laundry. None of these things were on the To Do List. Oh, but calling the hospital for which my shrinkapist works and figuring out exactly how much money I really do owe them now that they’ve figured out who to bill first was. And I did that. Yay me.

Writing thank you notes was not on the list, but it should have been, and I did that, too.

And I paid bills. Also not on the list. But clearly something that must be done. Paying bills is a little terrifying right now because I am allegedly getting my final paycheck in the mail from my old job, which will allegedly include payout for the vacation days I hadn’t taken yet… but then after that I will not see a paycheck until June.

June, bitches.

Because apparently it takes the state a whole entire month to get you into the system.

Which reminds me: create website whereby I will make lots more money on the side was supposed to be on the To Do list.

So as of cocktail hour on Day One, three of the 19 things on the list have been crossed off, and four things that weren’t on the list got added and crossed off.

And then I remembered I need a screen for the kitchen window, so I added that.

Math sucks.

The Virtue of Basements

I’m still getting used to having a house instead of an apartment. I suppose that’s understandable, since I lived in one apartment or another for 13 years and I’ve only lived in my house for five months. Sure, a house is more responsibility, and if something breaks I can’t just call maintenance and make them fix it for free sometime in the next six months. Instead, I have to call the builder and make him fix it for free sometime in the next seven (until the 12-month builder’s warranty is up – after that, I plan to either fix things myself or ignore them and hope they go away). He no-showed me yesterday morning after I told him the house is settling on my back door and I can’t open or close it without scraping the drywall above it, and that if the outlets in the living room work, the one that controls the jacuzzi jets upstairs does not. He no-showed me several times when I had a couple of other things that needed attention the month after I moved in. But he’s a pretty good guy, so I just bug him every day until it gets done.

And there are lots of times that I have to remind myself that I can do anything I want now. Like when I walk a little too hard across the floor. First reaction: “Oh, the neighbors downstairs are going to think I’m an elephant.” Second reaction: “The only thing downstairs is the basement. Haha! I win!” and then I stomp just because I can.

When I take a shower, I no longer have to think about communal hot water. Sure, I have to pay the bill, but only one person lives here and that means I can take up the average amount of water for four people and still not be judged by society, because society judges based on a family of four. I don’t have to worry about trying to shower before or after the guy upstairs or the old lady next door.

I don’t have to turn my television down when I get home late at night from work (for 1.5 more weeks) and want to watch The Daily Show or catch up on my DVR until 1am. I generally don’t like the volume that loud anyway, but no one can say to me, “Hey, I heard your TV at 1am.” And I can yell at the TV during sporting events without concern for others’ opinions of me as a lady.

I can flush the toilet late at night and not worry about waking up the baby downstairs. Or accidentally slam a cabinet because the handle slips out of my grip. Vacuum whenever I want. Clang pots and pans. Sing out loud a lot. Do laundry at odd hours.

Last night I woke myself up coughing my head off because I got a cold from Neph 1. Before buying my house, I would have worried that I’d wake a neighbor. Now, I have the freedom to worry only about dying alone and not being found for days.

I can paint. And I did. I painted the shit out of that house. Soon I’m going to paint the front door.

Wait. I just read a how-to thing on painting a metal exterior door. I might not do that.

But this morning I might have discovered the thing I like best about my house. As temperatures on the east coast made a bizarre climb and I refused to turn on the air conditioner out of principle, it occurred to me that it might get too warm for my wine.

And then I remembered.

I have a basement.

A gloriously cool basement.

Ah, the joys of homeownership.

Don’t Will Your Children To Me

My friend Meg recently told the rest of the Ohio 5 that, if she and her husband meet an untimely demise, she had assigned each of her children to one of us for safekeeping. She has four, so that works out, except it doesn’t work out at all because you can’t split four kids up in the event of their parents’ untimely demise.

And this past weekend confirmed that I’m not taking all four of them.

Meg and her family ventured out from Ohio to me for a Spring Break visit. And the kids, who are 5, 4, 2 and 7 months, were darling. But there are four of them. And they make noise. And one of them kept throwing up.

Seriously, though – I have lots of experience with and patience for kids. The kids were totally fine. They are very well-behaved and very well-mannered and they will eat anything (except “artificials,” because somehow my dear friend who I love has managed to feed her children nothing with artificial ingredients despite being on the dole because her boorish husband refuses to take up anything that provides steady pay…or any pay).

But, as parents everywhere but mostly who read this blog will understand, they wore my single, childless ass out.

Also, I inherited a nasty cold from my darling nephew on Easter Sunday that kicked into gear a few days ago and contributed to the exhaustion. Jesus is risen, but I’m down for the count.

The tribe arrived at my house Friday morning, bright and early, after spending the first part of their vacation somewhere else. They arrived from their hotel having not fed themselves. I wasn’t surprised; in fact, I had expected and prepared for this because one time they visited Joey (he gets the third kid) at his mom’s house in Ohio, having changed the plan from just Meg and one kid to the whole family descending, and the Boor sat on his duff and demanded lunch and dinner. But the Boor surprised me by making their breakfasts himself.

I had to go to work, of course, so they decided to make use of the day by being touristy. By the time they arrived back at my house, with keys and the alarm code, it was 10:45pm. I got home at 10:55. The kids were doing okay, but #3 was clearly in the early stages of Meltdown Mode despite having slept on the train, and #4 was getting very fussy. He has a terrible cold, too, and was hacking up a tiny little lung between wails. I knew how he felt.

Kids 1, 2 (that one’s mine) and 3 bedded down together in my basement, all in a row in the queen sized bed. #4 slept in a cushion on the floor in my room, which Meg and the Boor were using for the weekend. The grown-ups managed to toddle off to our respective beds around 1:30am. We were up at 7, with me in the kitchen making an egg bake full of veggies, because the kids love veggies.

Seriously.

I had used some professional capital to score a few free tickets to the children’s museum. I had never been there, but clearly I had to do something with these kids, and the museum wasn’t far away. So by 10:30am we were on our way to fun and adventure in the city’s largest Petri dish.

Honestly, all I could think, with my chest-rattling, throat-ripping cough and progressively stuffy head, was Germs. Germs germs germs. Snot. Poo. Germs.

I never used to think that way. But apparently in my stage of life, when I’m in a building full of howler-monkeys whose paws are all over everything, I can’t avoid it. Ironic, I know, considering I myself was a cesspool of infection. But I coughed into the crook of my arm, Purelled my hands every hour and tried not to touch anything. When I headed into a bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, a tired, watery red-eyed woman looked back. I washed my hands in hot water and used the paper towel to open the door.

When I wasn’t trying to track four kids at a time, I amused myself watching the other kids’ parents. Mostly the dads. They were all wandering around in running shoes or Tevas, high-end cameras around their necks, seemingly pretending to enjoy parental involvement on this early spring Saturday with their hover-mother wives. With newly-sprouted pot bellies and graying hair, they seemed to send up thought bubbles… “What has happened to my life? I used to sleep til noon. And then drink beer and watch basketball in my shorts.”

For a while, I sat in the tiny tot playroom with Meg and #s 3 and 4 while they ran or scooted about sock-footed and #4 gummed plush toys that I’m sure no other child had ever gummed before. Ick. Into our section came four hover mothers and their little ones. Their names were Phoenix, Mason, Morgan and Rain.

I tried not to bang my head against anything. No offense to any of you who may have kids with these names. It’s just that when they’re all in one place like that, it sort of makes me roll my eyes. I know trendy names have been cool since the 90s, but sometimes I think this generation’s parents compete with each other to find out who can fill a teacher’s classroom with the most pretentious set of monikers.

Soon Phoenix, Mason, Morgan, Rain and their hover mothers were joined by their camera-wielding fathers/husbands. Who looked at each other occasionally with glances that seemed to say, “Wanna go to the bar?”

After that, Meg and #3 and I went to another room meant for water play. Yep. Water play. #3 happily threw toys into a shallow table-pool full of pumps and sprinklers and the like, squealing and clapping and splashing around, and I obsessed over how many of the kids had put the toys in their mouths or grabbed them with grubby hands they’d just pulled out of their pants. I watched a baby nom on the edge of the table. Meg barely reacted when #3 suckled the top of a toy boat and soaked the front of her shirt. Another kid bent over and drank straight from the table’s 1.5″ of what I’m sure was super-clean and freshly filtered water.

Ew ew ew.

After hours of playing and picking up e. Coli and stuff, plus a walk around the touristy downtown spots and a very late lunch at which #3 whined until the Boor ordered her to lie down in the booth, at which time she promptly fell asleep, we piled back into the Volvo station wagon with the Jesus-related license plate. Upon approaching my neighborhood, the Boor parked the car at the park instead, and we all climbed out. The Boor ignored all hints, subtle and otherwise, about #1 needing a bathroom and me needing a couch, water and a chance to prep dinner. And this was six hours before I practically crawled upstairs to bed.

Up at 7. Pancakes and bacon. The Boor talking to me about democracy vs. fascism vs. oligarchy vs. something else I had no mental stamina to give a shit about at any time, let alone 7am. Lots and lots of questions from the kids. After eating, unable to breathe and completely lacking in energy, I sat on my couch while the Boor did the dishes and Meg repacked their bags. I did #1′s hair in a style like my own and answered more questions. Meg asked if I was tired of them yet.

The questions. Not her family.

They left at 9;30am. I had spent a total of about 39 hours with them. And I spent the next 13 on the couch, trying to recover. I reported to our friend Angie (she gets #1) on how things went with a single sentence.

“Dude, I could never hack parenthood.”

Random Unimportant Things That Are Bothering Me

The other night I had a dream that I was half-heartedly giving someone a handjob.

I’ll pause so you can clean up whatever you just spat out. Next time you should swallow.

– That’s what he said. –

Aaaand we’re back. Okay. So there I was, you know, jobbing. Except in terms of effort it might have been more like an unpaid internship set up by someone else. I was barely trying at times. I knew the guy, but I can’t remember now who he was. Someone I’d never seen naked, I know that. Apparently the who of this dream is immaterial to the psychological reason behind it. Rather, the lasting impression was that I reeaaaally didn’t feel like doing what I was doing. I wasn’t mad or anything, just completely uninterested. Like, I was rolling my eyes.

I know. This is how a lot of women feel, a lot of the time.

Do you think “handjob” is in the dream dictionary?

Now I keep looking at every guy I know when he walks by or whatever, like, “Was it you?” Then I picture a thought bubble over my head with an image from the dream and a question mark next to it.

I would like the Byronic Man to draw this post in stick-figure representation.

*****

I am seriously concerned that something about being photographed makes me intermittently cross-eyed. My cousin got married over the weekend. The ceremony was lovely, blah blah, but the reception was totally kick-ass. Anyway, pictures. How do I wind up looking like my left eye is trying to focus on the left side of my nose? If not that, then I look psycho trying to prevent that from happening. Or to prevent my eyes from looking squinty because I’m smiling and my apple cheeks have crept up my face. You think I’m exaggerating, but even BIL 2 was like, “Dude, you looked psycho that time. Let’s try again.”

Also, my hair was annoying.

*****

I am still waiting to get the formal offer for the university job. I have taken to calling the situation an Agreement In Principle. I have taken to calling it that having no idea if that’s really what it is, but as we know, I have trust issues, so nothing is real until it’s real. A week ago, I emailed my would-be boss to ask for an update and she replied that she wasn’t sure of the protocol but that she had started the paperwork to make me a formal offer.

It’s going to be fun working for the state.

*****

Baseball has begun. People are vomiting baseball talk all over my Facebook news feed.

For my reaction, see the first story, above.

*****

Okay, personal question: what’s the longest you’ve gone without having sex? It’s been three years for me. I feel like that’s a long time. It is, right? That’s a long time. It’s so long, I’ve gone from replaying it in my head to seriously craving it to barely even remembering it. I’m almost 36, healthy, fairly attractive - this is supposed to be my prime, and I got nothin’. When Rick and I started dating I thought maybe I would finally be reminded. Then we agreed to go slow, which frankly I do think is a good idea. And then, of course, we stopped dating.

If I ever have sex again, there might be a screeching noise like what happens when one opens a door that’s rusted shut.

*****

Yahoo has a “trending” section, and lately they’ve been posting the names of a lot of dead people I’ve never heard of. But their deaths are “trending,” allegedly. I feel like it’s mean to call bullshit on the trending of a death, because it’s insulting to the decedent. But still it’s like, “I have no idea who that is. Why is that trending?” And I refuse to click on it because that’s how it trended in the first place.

I actually think about that. Willful refusal to click due to principled disagreement with the trend.

Take that, internet.

Roller Derby. So That Happened.

I’ve just had one of the more surreal experiences of my life.

Have you ever been to a roller derby? Are you familiar with this? I don’t know if men do it, but the women’s version of roller derby is apparently all the rage right now. When I got the Facebook invitation from my former neighbor, Cammie, I was pretty surprised. Cammie isn’t really the roller derby type. Whatever that means. She’s an archivist at a university library. She’s not prim or dowdy or anything – the first time I met her was when her friends left her drunk ass in my care while they went to search for her apartment keys in her car, which had been left at whatever bar had over-served her. Cammie, who is maybe 95 pounds soaking wet, sat slumped on my floor with her back against my couch, eyes closed, occasionally muttering that she hoped she wouldn’t get sick on my stuff.

But the next day, she wrote me a thank you note.

Anyway, so I went to the roller derby. You guys, this is some serious roughhousing. I don’t really know how it works except one of the girls on each team has a star on her helmet, and she’s like Head Bitch In Charge for however long she has the star, and she’s the one who has to power through the crowd and lap them. And however many times she laps them or something, she gets points for the team. The stars are removable, so the Head Bitch changes up every so often, though I have no idea what the guidelines are for that. And the rest of the team is trying to block their opponents from getting to the Head Bitch, while also trying to block for her. This sometimes resembles a really aggressive game of Red Rover. There are maybe, I dunno, eight chicks on a team at a time, but they rotate and they seem to have another eight on the bench at any given time. There are some other rules and there are at least three referees in actual referee clothing. One of them was also wearing a kilt. They skate around and two of them are responsible for holding a hand up and pointing continually at whichever HBIC is in the lead at any given time. And then there was this other guy in skinny stonewashed black jeans who kept frantically writing things on a white dry erase board and showing it to people in some sort of official capacity, but I could never see what he’d written or figure out what he might possibly be keeping track of.

There might be fouls, but I’m not sure. There was a lot of what I found to be errant whistling from the refs. If your job is to knock a bitch down, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed a line.

Oh, and the derby girls have names! Names like Cramp Crusher and Ima Psycho and Anita Bandage.

It was a back-to-back bout (they’re called bouts), so it was kind of long, but by halftime (they have halftime!) of the second bout, I was actually getting into it. Still, I was trying to ignore the three annoying announcers (three), one of whom was wearing a gold sequined jacket and top hat. I make it a policy to ignore anyone who wears sequins unless it’s a prom or a bride. That goes double for men. 

It took me over an hour to realize that these teams actually have coaches. How does one coach a roller derby team? I couldn’t figure it out. But sure enough, the guy in the skinny stonewashed black jeans would run over (he wasn’t on skates) and hold up the white dry erase board to the coaches. Who were wearing – are you ready for this? – lavender suits. Not deep lavender… it was pale, so that I thought it might be a dove gray color. But no. Lavender. One of Cammie’s friends did some recon to find out for sure.

After the first bout, one of the members of the team came up to the bleachers, where about 300 serious roller derby fans of all walks of life, young and old, goth and average, punk and non-punk, were seated. She personally shook hands with most of us and thanked us for coming. Up close, I realized… she was at least 45 years old.

Which made me feel like such a bum, because this is some physical stuff and I’m sitting on the bleachers all, “Oh, that would kill my back!”

The second bout was much rowdier. As a woman from the first bout sold beer in the stands with one of those carriers you see at baseball and football games, the action on the floor was intense. I was chatting with Cammie’s friend Deb when I suddenly realized the entire arena had fallen silent. I mean silent. 

I looked up.

One of the roller girls was splayed out on the floor, face-down. Possibly dead.

Everyone else had taken a knee. You know how they do in football, when someone gets hit really hard and appears unconscious, and everybody gets down on a knee and prays or whatnot? That’s what was happening. And me, talking to Deb about knishes, all insensitive-like. And now I was all, “Aw, man… somebody got killed at the roller derby and I missed it.”

There were medical personnel surrounding her, and though I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing, I kept looking for blood and/or teeth. Finding none, I waited along with the rest of the crowd.

She was alright. She came back later.

About an hour after I’d arrived, I saw a girl sit down three bleachers in front of me who looked like a former coworker. Sometime after the woman didn’t die on the floor, I saw her and her friends get up to leave. Turns out, it was the former coworker, sans about 30 pounds since the last time I saw her. And you know who she was with?

Gwyneth.

Yes, Gwyneth. The woman who stole the affections and attention of my non-boyfriend, Jack.

I had exactly these thoughts:

Oh my God. Is he here? (No.)

Seriously, she is really young.

And skinny.

When did she get glasses?

I probably stared at her the whole time she was arranging herself to leave, saying goodbye to her friends and heading up the bleachers toward the exit. I had strangely few feelings. I briefly fantasized about a whirl around the derby floor, pulling her hair and smacking at her with open fists, but it’s pretty obvious based on any reality whatsoever that I would come up the loser in that bout. She’s a marathon runner. I haven’t gone to a gym in nine months. Really, I never blamed her for anything – it was completely Jack’s fault – she probably had no idea how devastated I was. But still… what are the odds? To run into her at the roller derby?! Really? Three hundred people out of an entire metro area population, and we’re both there?

Gwyneth goes to the roller derby?

I go to the roller derby?

Sometimes I wonder if I just dreamed the whole thing. But there are pictures of the derby on my phone. So I guess not.

And I didn’t even get a beer.

Flop.

ABC has a new show called “Splash.” Perhaps you saw it. I didn’t mean to, but it was happening right next to me and it was kind of like a car wreck.

Near as I could tell, what happens is, Louie Anderson does a slow free-fall off a diving platform, watched by a live audience who are in rapt attention and, in some cases, covering their mouths in fear. When he gets out of the pool, Joey Lawrence interviews him. (What the hell happened to Joey Lawrence, by the way?) Then Louie walks over somewhere a few feet away and Charissa Thompson (from ESPN2. Not ESPN… ESPN2) interviews him. This is all very serious, as if he just competed for a gold medal in the Olympics. Then he faces a former Olympic diver and a dive team instructor, and they give him scores. Totally seriously. And then a tweet pops up on the screen from a random person saying she’s glad diving is finally getting some attention because it’s so crazy hard to do.

And I believe that. I believe that actual diving, in which you point your toes and do a bunch of flips and twists and stuff, and you try to enter the water while creating as little splash as possible, is difficult to do.

So after that, Katherine Webb comes out. I immediately have my doubts because she’s wearing a bathing suit that would definitely, definitely come off if I wore it and dove from a 10-meter platform. Who is Katherine Webb? you wonder quietly to yourself. She’s the girlfriend of a college quarterback, and also Miss Alabama, made more famous by Bret Musberger’s compliment of her looks on live TV as she sat in the stands at her boyfriend’s bowl game than by her crowning as Miss Alabama.

Anyway, so she dives, which is kind of impressive because she does a backflip. And keeps the bathing suit on. But her score for that is somehow lower than Louie Anderson’s freefall.

They interview her. Somehow her makeup has not run down her face. Her conversation with Charissa Thompson is like Hot Brunette With Wet Hair Talks To Hot Blonde With Dry Hair. Ratings gold in the male 14-Dead demographic.

Then some guy who’s a trick skier or something comes out in trunks and he’s all cut and muscley, and he does a dive with a couple flips and a couple twists and somehow his score is only a little higher than Louie Anderson’s.

Then out comes – are you ready for this? – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He’s wearing a purple robe and he looks, I swear, like some kind of wizard. For some reason he is not wearing his goggles, which is weird because he wore them to play ball but apparently does not think he needs them to swim. He dives off the kind of diving board we’re all familiar with – the bouncy kind that’s not high off the water. And he totally belly-flops.

Admittedly, I crack up laughing.

But I cannot believe this is where we’ve gone as a society. This is entertainment now? Watching Louie Anderson plummet off a slab into a pool in (thank God) a full body bathing suit?

Look, we’re writers. We all know “reality” television sucks ass. It started more than 20 years ago (gah) with the first Real World on MTV and it’s been a long, steady progression into hell since. But now we are seriously entertaining ourselves watching a fat guy and a midget (a midget, people) do dives?

And yes, I totally resorted to assholery in my description in the previous sentence, but do you know why? Because that’s what ABC did in casting them. You put Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Louie Anderson and Chuy Bravo in a diving “competition” with Katherine Webb and Rory Bushfield (the extreme skier), you’re totally going for the Some Of These Folks Are Not Like the Others vibe. Unabashedly.

So if you watch the show and enjoy the spectacle of the comparative figures… you’re an asshole, too.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there’s no charity fundraising involved or anything. It’s really just like watching the folks at your community pool try to dive, but with cameras and lights.

Who came up with this idea? Who sat in a board room and said, “Okay, here it is. Ready? So great. Okay. So. We take these D-list celebrities, right? I mean people you haven’t seen in decades. Sometimes people you’ve never even heard of, right? And we have them dive into a pool.”

And the exec said, “…And?”

And the idea guy said, “…Isn’t it awesome?”

And then they made the show.

In other news, ABC has announced that its next show will feature camera crews watching me get out of bed every morning, just in case I fall down.

Go ‘Merica.

 

Your Life Is Important To Us. Please Continue To Hold.

As Josh Lyman once said in an episode of The West Wing called “The War At Home:” I’m on hold. I’m on hold. I’m in some kind of hellish hold world of holding.

Super episode, by the way.

So. I’m still waiting to hear from the university about the job. I’m not going to hear about it until at least next Monday, when Joanne gets back from vacation. She did email me yesterday, the first day of her vacation, to ask me for three references. I had already provided a list of three, two of whom are either recently retired from her department or currently working one floor below her in the president’s office. So I guess she wanted three more.

I could go for days, boss. Refer away. Or whatever.

But seriously? Make the call. You’ve told me you want to hire me, you’ve told me you don’t know why I didn’t get the last job I interviewed for there, you asked me for free advice, some of which you actually took, you sang my praises to Rick twice the next day… HIRE ME ALREADY. Or I’m totally billing you for that shit.

Meanwhile, I had to schedule the interview I don’t want, for the job I don’t really want. That’s because I had put my old and potentially new again boss on hold, because I was on hold with the university. And then when I learned I wasn’t going to hear from the university until at least the 25th, I couldn’t keep David on hold anymore. So that interview is Friday.

Which is Rick’s birthday. I had foolishly taken it as a vacation day, thinking maybe I’d make him a nice dinner. That was more than a month ago, when we were swimming along nicely. Cut to now, at which point I haven’t seen him in almost a month and didn’t hear from him between Friday afternoon and this morning. And all he can say to me anymore is, “Did you hear anything about the job yet?” Even though I have told him I won’t hear until next week. It’s like that’s the only way he can think of to continue some sort of contact.

I almost gave the vacation day back, but then I realized it would be the best way to go to the interview I don’t want for the job I don’t really want.

Since I turned my blog into an interactive forum on dating, I’ve been doing what it seemed most of you recommended: responding when contacted, but not reaching out. Which is really no different from what I’d been doing all along. So no behavior modification was necessary. Psyche modification – different story.

Therefore, I am grumpy as hell. Which, I’m told, hath no fury like a woman wondering what the eff is the deal with the seemingly endless procession of men in her life who can’t get their shit together with super glue, compounded by the nearly four-year search for a way out of a basement that didn’t include a spoon and a Raquel Welch poster, which is presently taunting her because it’s like she can smell the fresh air but she can’t get to it.

Or something like that.

Even Sam isn’t getting back to me. Days have gone by and nothing. I think he might be dead. I emailed him yesterday to ask. No reply. So it’s possible I’m right.

I’ve heard it said that God has three answers: Yes, No and Wait. I suppose it’s possible that I’m getting a bunch of Waits lately. But still, I would think God would have a better way to communicate. Burn a bush or something.

But tell me what the burning bush means first, so I’m not all, “It’s a sign! Wait… what?”