Here's The Best Thing I Heard This Month

Maybe even this year.

 

 

 

Ask the question.

If "no" is your answer, here's the good news:  By asking the question, and hearing the no, you just created movement. 

You can't go back to the same state of unconsciousness.

But Seriously, Folks

I am reading the Sunday paper.  Yes, I know it's Monday, but I had imortant movie-watching and relaxing going on yesterday.

 

 

Anyway...

 

In the Sunday paper, I am learning about how I should be worried about....EVERYTHING.  Most notably that I'm going to get arrested for something I didn't do, and I'm gonna be soooooo screwed trying to sort that out.  Also, that all of the water in the state is turning to scum and that my boss (the guy who runs the company, not my manager) makes way too much money.

 

 

And now, I'm a wreck, thank you Star Tribune.

 

 

Perhaps I wasn't in the correct emotional state to read that this morning.  Just thinking about debt collectors who can have me arrested for no reason is enough to freak me the hell out.  I would say that it's like when you were a kid and you thought there was a monster under the bed, but, this is not like that--this is, "Hey, we don't have to prove that you're a loser to call you one and have you arrested and publicly embarrassed."

 

Awesome.  Freaking awesome.  Forget being a nice or decent person--it just doesn't matter.  Do I feel better knowing this?  No, not one bit.  If it were to happen to me, I guess I'd rather that it be a surprise than to spend even one minute of my life worrying about it.

 

Having said that, I am glad someone told their story--obviously that is some messed up stuff and I sure hope the series of stories goes a long way in helping people just be decent to one another.  Crossing fingers!  What else can I do--sit around and wait to be arrested?  If ever a news story could affect change, I hope it's this one.

 

 

Moving on to the "You'll never enjoy a lake again" scary thing--see how we are?  See how we are when we say things like, "Yeah, I know it's a rule, but it's just MY thing that I need the exception for!  Can't you bend that rule just this one time?" and then we ALL do that, cuz this is AMERICA, and pretty soon, we've exception-ed ourselves right into a pile of poo.  Literally.  Nice going!  Good job!

 

I was talking to a friend last night about what we've done to ourselves, this wonderful nation--we've said "Yes" to way too many things.  Nobody wants to be the bad guy and say, "No, Mr. Extremely Rich Person, I'm sorry, but you can't drain your sewage into Lake Minnetonka." and stand firm on that.  Have a backbone for crying out loud!  At the same time, the reason why nobody wants to have a backbone is that if they do, they'll probably just get sued by someone who has a much more expensive lawyer than they do, who will find the exception within the rule, completely destroy the spirit in which a law and/or rule was enacted, and then it's off to the races. 

 

We're Spoiled Brat-ing ourselves right out of 10,000 damn fine swimming holes.

 

 

I don't know if my CEO has a lake place.  Probably, he could afford one.  Or two.  Or Six.  No matter.  Honestly, I get tired of people saying that someone is making "too much" money.  Sure there are abuses in all systems, but the bottom line is this:  Somebody OFFERED them that salary.  If somebody offered YOU that salary, what would you say?  "No"?  Really?  Bullshit.  If you were offered 3M money, you'd say "Nah, I'm good!" in your 6 year old car and 800 square foot apartment?  Not me.

 

Of course, I am most fond of our CEO (I do not work for 3M) because he created a situation in which I might obtain employment, and for that I say, You kick ass, mister!  Give that man anything he wants!

 

 

 

All three of these news blurbs are nothing more than demonstrations of our intolerance and refusal to be forgiving--as a society.  Somehow, we think we've earned every right.  We haven't.  To assume that so-and-so is a bad person and should be arrested because they may or may not have had some debt at one time in their lives?  Really?  To assume that your sewage doesn't stink?  Really?  To assume someone doesn't deserve something, having never walked a mile in their shoes?  Really? (The CEO's in question are always hustling, people--if you like your evenings and weekends off and aren't prepared for the scrutiny of being one of the people out there changing the world, you wouldn't last long in any of those jobs...) 

 

When did it become our job to shame others while insisting that we have no flaws of our own?  Disgusting.  Shoulda never read the paper...

As Movies Go, It's Rather Depressing

Eleventy million years ago, there was a song I heard that was something like "sure could use a little good news today..."

Anyone?  Anyone?  This was back when I was a teenager, so, the late 1840's?**

This morning, while talking to my best friend, I realized that I am virtually starving for good news. Starving, I tell you!  I'm so starved that even other people's good news doesn't dent the armor these days (except Ghana's performance in the World Cup today--my friend from work is from Ghana, and since I don't follow the game, I am glad that her team won.  Yes, I do know that they were playing USA...).


In the last couple of weeks, I have gone from feeling really good about a couple of situations to feeling like--well, I don't feel crappy, necessarily, but definitely not fantastic.  Instead of getting a promotion at work, I believe that the new boss would be much happier if I would jump off a cliff and/or crawl in a hole and disappear--whatever it takes for me to be nowhere near him for the rest of forever.  I mean, I'm fairly certain that during our last conversation he indicated that smart people offend him--so I'm pretty much screwed.  At the (exact) same time, I finally figured out a way to talk to the cute boy I've been crushing on forever, and it turns out that he and my boss are pretty much on the same page, and apparently I'm reading a completely different book--a book which might as well be about elves and dragons, considering how full of fantasy it is.


Raises.  Cute boys.  What the hell was I thinking?  Why would a boss or any guy want someone around who is smart and interesting, takes care of herself, is hardworking, respectful and most of all, loyal?  Yeah...that's some crazy talk right there.


Of course, the cute boy thing is total back-burner stuff compared to OH-MY-EFFING-GOD!  Is Mr. Hates Smart People gonna fire my ass or what?  Cute boys are nice and all, but only a complete idiot relies on them for their next meal.  You can blow it off when a guy doesn't like your approach, but when it's your boss?  F*ck.  You're screwed.  What sucks most is that it's one of those "we're taking the department in a different direction" things, so the new boss walked into the place determined to completely change everything whether it was working or not.  Not a hell of a lot you can do in those situations--just a huge bummer to have had put in a lot of hard work and have it all be for nothing.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING sucks worse than having your livelihood in the hands of someone who doesn't give a shit about your livelihood.  That just flat-out sucks.  Last time I went through that, it was eerily similar in that I was invited to interview for a promotion and didn't get it.  Two weeks later?  Fired.  F*ck.

The only thing missing is an expensive car repair.  Or kidney failure.  Kidney failure costs a lot of money and puts one in a wildly unattractive state, right?  Then that's the next logical thing.

I'm still trying to figure out what I did to earn the vicious Karma stomp, but I guess it doesn't really matter--picking up and starting over from zero appears to have become my specialty.  Imagine the hell of it if I wasn't completely full of myself--uh, I mean, steeped in confidence.

Anyway...life continues to be interesting.  I wish it was more 'romantic comedy' interesting and less 'Schindler's List' interesting, but, oh well...all movies come equipped with heroes, right?






**Oh alright then! It was Anne Murray, A Little Good News, and it was 1983. Happy now?

Birthday-O-Rama

Three things I know to be true:

• People are weird.  I don't think that's the same as "People are strange," is it?  Luckily, most of the weirdness is amusing and not scary.  I should probably elaborate on this, and I know that I'm being very guilty of "vague-booking" or whatever they call that when you make a statement and don't explain yourself.  The thing is...BECAUSE people are weird, they have a tendency to freak out and/or think you're talking about them when you're not.  Just to be clear--if I have never met you, for real, live and in person, I will not talk about you without mentioning your name.  That is to say, if I'm talking about you and I've never met you, you can assume other people are talking about you too, otherwise, why would I bother?  So, for example, if Madonna (never met her, and other people know who she is), is being weird, I'll say something like, "Madonna is being weird," not, "American Performer Living In England, You Figure It Out is being weird".  HOWEVER...if I have met you, and you're not a public person (with a linkable online presence...) you'll get a pseudonym.  Or I'll refer to you as an "asshole".  As always, if you don't like your pseudonym, you have my phone number--go ahead an suggest something else.  If you don't think you're an asshole, please feel free to explain yourself--I'm dying to hear it.
• Some musical experiences, you just know will be perfect.  Or close to perfect.  Or at least they will be exactly as expected, even if the expectation is high.  A few months ago, when I saw that Sting would be appearing with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, I thought, "Well, that sounds like a close-to-perfect musical scenario..."  And that is very much what it was.  A few truths here--first, anyone allowed to wear the name "Royal Philharmonic" is probably going to be top-notch.  This, we know.  Second, having seen Sting a few times before, I know that one of the very best things about him as a song-writer is that those songs have good bones--you can change the arrangements, add or subtract instruments, thrown in a verse from some other song he wrote or any number of other things and the song itself does not lose it's structural integrity.  I remember seeing him one time years ago where he performed one of his biggest hits in a slowed-down, completely different arrangement, and people around me we upset by this!  Hey, people?  If you wanna hear the record, buy the record.  If you want to delight in the creative process, see it live.  And if you want to really, really have a good time and not be able to take your eyes off the stage, go see someone unafraid to surround themselves with incredibly talented people.
• Today, my 872nd birthday, I got stuck at work.  Usually, I would take the day off.  The bummer about being a single parent and having a summer birthday is that when you opt to take the day off on your birthday, you can't just flop on your couch for 6 or 7 un-interrupted hours of, well, anything, because your kids are out of school for the summer, and there they are...hanging around.  The only way for them to NOT be hanging around is for you to do something or take them somewhere, and then you're not flopped on the couch, you're doing something.  Then, if you're me, you fluctuate between, "Why aren't these people waiting on me hand and foot?  It's my birthday, damn-it!" and, "No, no...you guys don't have to do anything...it's not a big deal".  Because I'm psychotic like that.  Ultimately, I would rather be alone, but I'd rather that someone spot shine the entire house before they leave, because it is my fucking birthday, after all.  And, of course...I want them to instinctively know what I want without me having to tell them, which is another facet of my psychosis, and pretty much the entire reason why I am a single mother as opposed to a not-single mother.  See how that all fits together?  At the end of the day it turns into one of those, "I can't believe I'm sleeping alone on my birthday!" feeling-sorry-for-myself things which I am only able to snap out of by reminding myself that no one has done me wrong, I'm just flat-out impossible to please.  So I might as well go to work, where that psychosis can be put to good use.

I'm Not Afraid Of Much

Probably only two things really scare the living hell out of me  

OK, three.

The first thing that has scared me forever is my house burning down.  Now, I've had no experience with this, no close calls or anything, but every year around the holidays, when people start plugging in all kinds of electric lights hanging on kindling, I get very twitchy, and any time I smell anything electrical when I shouldn't be smelling it, I freak out.

The other thing that scares me...uh, we'll talk about that some other time, and the THIRD scariest thing in the whole wide world is.....LACE.

Rather anti-climactic, isn't it?

Here is this piece I just started.  Teeny yarn, teeny needles.  Sorry the pic isn't much better but at least you can clearly see the (gasp!) openwork, which is the very cringe-worthy thing I am talking about.

To clarify, I'm not afraid of teeny yarn or teeny needles.  Maybe it's just that I feel like if I make something girly and lacy that all of my strong-willed stubborn bitchitude is going to leak out of my left ear and I'll be rendered completely helpless/useless and start trying to attract attention with my decolletage.

That's not irrational....much.

The truth is...there's just no "winging it" with lace.  You can't change your mind!  Or, it's harder to be in the middle of it and say, "I know!  I'm going to COMPLETELY ALTER this pattern!" when the pattern is lace.

Well, it's hard for me, anyway.  I mean, I can be in the middle of something and say that it needs a bit of lace, but I can't be in the middle of lace and say that it needs a bit of something else.  It just IS.  Lace is sort of my creative soul-sucker.  Being a non-pattern type person, having to look at a chart or piece of paper to see where I'm at makes me absolutely nuts.

In short, when I do a lace thing, I don't feel like I have accomplished anything more than copying someone else's idea.  Which I hate.  My "You're Not The Boss Of Me!!" kicks in, and every time I have to go back and make sure I did the exact stitches in that exact order, it irritates the hell out of me.

Anyway...here is a picture of what that exact series of repeats is eventually supposed to look like.

It's not the scariest thing I've ever done.  A normal person would probably say this is easy.  Me?  I'm frightened to put it down and lose my spot, drop a stitch, you name it...very scary business, this lace thing.

Awesome

What's awesome?  Summer "vacation" is here and I get to start every day by developing a chore list for my children so they don't sit around, being bored.  Aren't I a good mother for thinking of them?

 

Less awesome?  I almost emailed the chore list to the blog, which actually would have been hilarious because of the part in there where I was explaining to the 16-year-old about how she and the vacuum cleaner were going to become very, very, VERY good friends today.

 

 

 

Awesome:  That thing about how when you ride a bicycle on a city street that you don't have to follow any traffic laws or stop at any stop lights.  How cool is that?

 

What?  You mean, they're supposed to stop?  Really?  Well that certainly doesn't explain the guy on France Avenue this morning that I had to pass 5 TIMES because he kept blowing past me at every red light.  And every time the people pass him it creates another dangerous situation.  So NOT awesome.  Cops?  Hello?  Anybody?

 

 

 

Awesome:  Finished the green blob sweater and, it's awesome, but also not awesome because it's too big for me on the sides, which is actually kind of awesome.  When something is too big for you, at least you can work with it.  So I'm going to attempt some kind of very-scary steek-like maneuver in which I take in the sides.  It will either be....awesome, or not awesome.  But what in this creative life isn't a coin toss, anyway, right?  And, as someone wiser than me has said, "You don't burst into flames if you cut your fabric".

 

If I do burst into flames, however, I promise to post pictures, provided I am burned beyond recognition.

 

 

 

In other fiber-y news, that really expensive Suri Alpaca yarn I bought at Shepherd's Harvest is quite awesome, but somewhat less awesome is the fact that the really expensive Suri Alpaca yarn just happens to be Napoleon's favorite thing in the whole wide world.  I'm working with it on the sly--I have to wait until he is asleep!  Maybe the first thing I should make with it is the world's most expensive cat toy.

 

 

 

It's by Birthday!  In...a week!  And a day!  But isn't that awesome?  OK, nobody cares, but what IS awesome is that I get to bust out of town for the weekend and spend lots of quality pre-birthday On The Patio With A Beverage, Shut Yer Brain Off  time, which will be the best gift, ever.  Thanks, Mike and Mitch!  YOU are awesome!

Most Of The Best Stuff Ever Written Was Done So Under Influence of Hangover Anyway, Right?

But don't expect anything spectacular...I'm curled up under a comforter pecking away at this on my phone while wishing for nothing more than a supply of biscuits from Popeye's and maybe some coffee--all so I can feel human again.

My best friend and I always have a cool experience when we go out and do things with just the two of us.  If nothing wacky is happening, we'll make something up.  Some of you may remember the Great Porta-Potty timed event from that thing we went to in Eagan a couple of summers ago? No? I'll see if I can find the link...

Last night we went to see Justin Currie play, and the fact that my friend couldn't make it out of her house without being lectured not to accept drinks from strangers really set the tone.  We also made the mistake of telling her girlfriend that we were taking a cab to the show, which set the woman into another kind of frenzy altogether--I think she might have blathered something about taxi-cab doorhandles being soaked with Anthrax or HIV or some other nonsense, and may have indicated that cab drivers "all" want to kill/rape/rob you.  Or something like that.  Clearly I tuned most of that out, and...she probably didn't actually "say" so much as she "implied" that any trip downtown would surely result in our very gruesome deaths.  It's just hard to pay attention when you don't care what someone is saying, hence the entirely-made-up and definitely  over-stated versions of her concerns.

See, this is what happens when you lock yourself in front of alarmist television all day...the world is not out to get you, OK? Most of us are too busy to think of ways to mess with anyone else. Who the hell has that kind of time?

(We had two quite wonderful and kindly gentlemen who were operating very clean and stink-free cabs by the way--I know you were curious.  Also, nobody died.)

Anyway...on to the very scary musical venue.

Some technical issues made it a tough start, but honestly, if he had pretended none of that was happening, probably nobody in the audience would have noticed. It didn't sound bad to us, but clearly distracting, so, stop and fix. No worries.

I had never seen Justin play live before last night, but once, many years ago when Del Amitri was still playing together, someone asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said that I would like Justin Currie to sit on the edge of my bed with his guitar and play me every song he thought worth playing.

And...this was not an "Ooo he's so dreamy" sort of thing, because I've never really felt that way about him and really only thought of my bedroom as a means for me to be comfortable while this (hopefully days long) personal concert event took place.  (By the way...it gets a little sickening being a female fan of anybody and when you say you like someone, everybody automatically assume you want to sleep with them....give me a fucking break...)

While this was not the bedroom concert of my Perfect Justin Currie Experience dream, seeing him play is every bit as satisfying as I thought it would be.  He sounds absolutely beautiful, period--and I don't really care how vehemently he denies it.

One of my favorite parts of the night was being there with someone who had never heard most of what he was playing and watching my friend in delighted discovery--she said "wow" a lot.  Meanwhile, I knew almost every word to the entire, sometimes improvised, set list.  I said "wow" a few times, too.

With almost every song, she would lean over and ask me, "do you own this one?" and I would say "yes" and she would say that she would definitely be owning it, too. I almost didn't have the heart to tell her that my collection was acquired over the course of many years, and included many albums, many incarnations on mix tapes, many attempts to get others to listen to it, too, and most certainly a level of astonishment that only seemed to be awakened by the exact noise of his singing.

In other words: It's a huge, extremely personal, investment.

But a worthy one, to be sure.

While I would never discourage anyone else any purchasing of music, I fully admit to having a superiority complex about those artists in whom I have invested a lot of time.  JC is not someone I've met or plan to, but, we're the oldest and best kind of friends, and this relationship, which consists entirely of him making music and me loving it, has never wavered, even after all this time. Not too many people have that.

I have a stories to go with those songs--like the time I bought my very first new car, and how significant a milestone it was in my vision of personal success. At the same time, what should land in my hand but a copy of Change Everything. I was working in radio at the time...lots of musical things just turned up like that, but none of them held any significance to me at all, because I was too busy driving around in my new car, listening to Be My Downfall over and over (and over and over) again.  I would drive until the tank was empty, fill it up and drive again.

Or, as I reminded my friend last night, the situation in which we both heard our very first Del Amitri song was when she and I were college room-mates and did a show together at the college radio station just at the time Sticks and Stones Girl appeared.  How far we all have come since then.

Or there was the time I was working at a Top 40 Station and my boss gave me a copy of Tell Her This, which he instructed me to play in one of those on-air competition things where you play two songs and the kids call in and vote for one.  Owing to my admittedly sketchy score-keeping (completely rigged), that delightful little tune beat every other comer for a week before I finally let it retire. I don't remember the song that finally beat it--what does that tell you?

I do remember making a cassette copy of that song at the radio station and, once again, driving around with it--hours and hours in my car.  I still do that to this day.  Since his new album, The Great War, came out this Spring, I have been taking the long way home from work, a lot.

Easily the best thing about finally seeing Justin play after 25 years of investment is that very little beyond both of us being in the same place at the same time and him agreeing to play songs, mattered all that much. For me, there were no worries. There was not a song that he could have played that would have bothered me, and no judgement to be passed over any wrong note or guitar distortion.  We've been "friends" far too long for me to give a shit about any of that.

I am glad--very glad--that Justin is not done making music, even though I know this stretches the bedroom concert fantasy to a much longer event with each new thing he writes.  Perhaps I'll have it catered.  Until then, since I'm already tucked in, time to sleep off the shorter, real-life version and look forward to the next.

Come Midnight

Sometime Saturday, I will sleep.  And I will sleep for all of Saturday, and perhaps all of Sunday as well--except for when the grocery delivery guy shows up, at which time I will amble down to the front door in my jammie pants and an old radio station t-shirt, to verify that he didn't forget the beer.  Then back to bed.

Until then...

• Because it is the longest day, EVER, at the end of the longest week, EVER, what better way to start it off than by spending an HOUR sitting in traffic for a trip that normally takes 15 minutes?  Meanwhile, my car hovered dangerously close to running out of gas and the clock ticked closer and closer to me being late for work.  My God I miss smoking!  It's just so much better to be waving a cig when you're screaming expletives at random, ridiculously stupid people who are not helping the situation when they drive like assholes.  You really can't beat a cigarette as a prop when you're completely stressed.
• I finally got off the Crosstown, dropped off the kid and DING! The "Yer Outta Gas" light lit up, so I hit the nearest gas station, and they were charging at least 20 cents more per gallon than any station anywhere near my house.  Their "cheap" gas was literally 6 cents more per gallon than mid grade at the BP by my house.  Which means that they SUCK.  So, in an effort to say exactly what I mean, and mean what I say, what I'm saying is:  The Shell Station off Highway 100 at 77th is insultingly expensive.
• And yes, I did say "BP".  Interesting point brought up on Facebook, and maybe you've seen it floating around--where are the benefit concerts for the Gulf Coast?  Where are the fundraising efforts to help those who will be affected by the devastation there?  We can raise money for Haiti, but not for Orange Beach?  Why sit around and complain about BP not doing anything?  I mean, we already know that they're not going to do enough, so why not just do it ourselves?  Just sayin'.
• No, I didn't just pick Orange Beach out of a hat--my dog lives there. ;-)
• Random delicious thing I read today..."Don't dirty your hands with idle, trendy or high maintenance indulgences like lovers who don't give back."   Isn't that glorious?  I f*cking love that.
• P.S. about the traffic thing--my boss dinged me!  Can you believe that?  I'm a freaking half hour early every stupid day, and the one day I'm stuck in Bizarro World traffic, I'm "unexcused"?  What is this, high school?  I could have sworn I was a grown up.
• Strike that....I'm not really a grown-up.  I have some "grown-up" tendencies, but for the most part, I'm still socially unacceptable to most "adults".
• Job interview today.  It's for a promotion in the same department.  I wish I could express how very little I care about this.  I'm not gonna lie....I'm still a little pissed about the unexcused absence thing.  Then again, if I am to be saddled with unexcused absences, somebody better throw money.
• Justin Currie tonight, and I've been very nervous that with this week being so long, and so utterly dumb at every turn that I might be placing too much faith in the notion that a night out will undo all of the stupid crap that precedes it.  I'm sure he'll be lovely...I just have to remember to have no expectation other than that for the price of a ticket, he and I should be both standing in the same room at the same time.  Anything beyond that is a bonus. 
• I'll be going to this shin-dig with my best girl friend, and we'll be talking about boys pretty much the entire time that Justin isn't actively doing something for which I think I need to watch to get my money's worth.  We will come to no conclusions and we will solve none of our "boy problems", but I can assure you, we'll both feel much better come midnight.

What A Minute--What Just Happened?

My entire week thus far has been a series of "Did that just happen?" events, some of which were on the news (did you SEE that unbelievable crash on the Crosstown??  CARS ON TOP OF CARS, people!  At 4:30 in the afternoon.  How in the hell did that even happen?  Traffic was slowed not just because of the crash, but because of all the people with camera phones snapping pictures as they rolled past the crash.  This was not the one with the bees, by the way, it was on 62 right at the Penn overpass.  I am happy to report that I was not one of those people snapping pictures...at the same time, WOW, I wish I had a picture!)

 

 

Everything else that's going on, I'm going to credit to a crazy week and some specific planets lining up--really too much stuff going on to go into any detail at the moment, but I promise if anything entertaining is to be gleened from this week, and it's not going to ruin somebody's day to share (especially mine), we'll turn it into some kind of inflated and ridiculously exaggerated story for your entertainment. 

 

Cuz that's what it's all about around here: Point and laugh.

 

You know...You could be having the most boring week of your life and feel a lot like complaining, then suddenly become very inspired to give life your all, try new things, finally smile at that cute boy from the office, or eat your ice cream before dinner--all in the split second in between the moment you see the bus coming straight for you and the moment it hits you and stops you from complaining about anything, ever again.

 

Wouldn't it be better to just do all that stuff now, instead?

 

 

When something happens that makes you say, "I definitely did NOT see that coming!" and it wasn't a speeding bus, how can you not celebrate?

If You Knew All The Stuff I Got Paid To Do This Morning, You'd Be Sooooo Jealous....

Don't you love it when you have a meeting scheduled and it's the first and only thing on your schedule, an all day event, and you've been REMINDED TO DEATH about the meeting, and there has been a lot of "Make sure you bring ______ and _______ and _______ to the meeting!", and "Make sure your security badge works so you can get into the meeting!", and you're toting half your office around to some remote location a half-hour early because you have a meeting and when you get there, the meeting consists of someone rolling in 10 minutes late to tell you that the meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow?


One of my favorite things, why do you ask?

See, this is where that "phone" thing would have worked so nicely.  Phone, email....whatever.  If somebody wanted to stop by the house to mention that the meeting had been cancelled, I wouldn't have chased them off the lawn.

Luckily, the morning was destined for fun, so, a meeting would have just sucked the life out of it anyway.  It started off while I was waiting for the stupid non-meeting, with some Facebook hilarity, meaning, my friends and I were having grown-up humor time, which will likely cause one of my older relatives to either scold me outright or actually TELL ON ME to my mom and dad because FB is just "no place to talk about" that stuff, and isn't it weird that even when you're 43, you still don't want people to tell on you to your mom and dad?

Here's a small portion:

Me: California is putting together a referendum bill to legalize recreational pot use?  I know I don't watch the news, but I can't believe I was not aware of this!

Friend A: That's because they never report the GOOD news

Me: Yeah, but with the way the voters screwed up on Prop 8, I'm not holding my breath

And...that would be the natural place for someone to insert a joke about pot smoking and breath holding, right?  What did we get instead?

Friend B: (insert oral sex/breath holding innuendo)

Which is why I dearly love my friends.  Also why I'll probably be shunned at the next family reunion.


All on the clock, thank you.


Blip forward to meeting time, I'm dressed in my fabulous new dress and heels, and I've hauled the contents of my desk from one office to another, and Whoops! No meeting.  I haul it all back to my car, where I notice a missed call from GodBlessTexas that I had waited for all last week.  Yes.  I waited an entire week for that phone call, and, during the small window of time that I was unavailable...they called.  Recruiter.  I call back.

Me: Hi, you called?

They: Yes, I was wondering if we could schedule a phone call?

Me:  Is this not a phone call that we're on right now?

They:  Uh....yeah....I guess so.

Me: And...you wanted to talk to me about something?

They:  Yeah. 

Me:  OK...

They: Oh, you want to talk right now?

Me: Yeah...Just got a hole in the schedule...

The Recruiter proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions that anyone with access to my employment history, like, for example, a Recruiter who works for the same company, with my entire employee profile right in front of him, should know the answer to.  Stuff like, "Where do you work?"

Me: I work the same place you work.

They: Really?

Me:  Really-really

They: Wow....cool.

It's probably a bad idea to think too much about the fact that promotions at your job are largely in the hands of people with the attention span of a wren.

Still on the clock.


Co-workers and I agree to scoot back to the office rather than skip for the rest of the day, even though we know we could probably get away with it, so I take the long way and somehow find myself blasting down Highway 100 going 76 miles an hour through town in some kind of Zen driving, loud music thing for which I was also paid and miraculously not pulled over. 

If I could figure out a way to do that full-time, I would, in an instant.

I arrived safely, in time for my lunch break.



So tell me...how was your morning?

Prelude To The Busy

I don't even know how this happens.

When I first interviewed for this job, it was on a Friday.  A Friday afternoon at 4PM.  A Friday afternoon at 4PM on a beautiful late Summer day, when my friends were calling me to knock off early and join them at happy hour.

But no.....no happy hour.  Job interview.

Maybe it was just by virtue of the fact that I was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice that I got this job:  "What?  She's willing to show up at four o'clock on a beautiful Friday afternoon instead of hang out with her friends?  Hire that girl immediately!!!"

Or at least I like to think that's what happened.  That answer is so much better than the "All other candidates were eaten by mountain lions" explanation for me getting this job.

Flash forward some months--I still haven't been fired (How long can I keep this up?) and now my boss wants to interview me for some other, apparently cooler, job than the one I'm doing now, and what did he do?  Scheduled the damn interview at 4PM next Friday.

Am I missing the crucial gene that makes a person stop and say, "That doesn't really work for me--can we do this on Tuesday morning, instead?"

*grumble*

I mean...even someone as gung-ho as I am is going to be three steps into Don't Give A Shit Land by 4PM next Friday.  I'm already half-way there, and the schedule for next week is insane: OffSiteTraining!OffSiteTraining!OffSiteTraining!OffSiteTraining!OffSiteTraining!OffSiteTraining!, mixed with AttendLastWeekOfSchoolActivities!AttendLastWeekOfSchoolActivities!AttendLastWeekOfSchoolActivities!, and also MakeYourHouseSpotlessForGuests!, plus TryToFindTimeToSleepForAChange!. 

After all of that?  JOB INTERVIEW.

Jeezuzmarynjoseph... 

Never mind the fact that somewhere in that timeline I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to get downtown to see Justin Currie play (also Friday, thank you), since the Twins have a home game that night and from what I can tell, the best bet for getting to the Fine Line when the Twins are in town would be to simply walk there from my house. 

It's only 5 miles.

Of course I'll be sitting in the interview, sweating the time because I'm more worried about getting a decent seat for JC than I am about getting the stupid job.  As a result, I will likely spew all kinds of insane sh*t that will bounce around the room in the most peculiar way, making everyone uncomfortable. 

If history prevails, my I Don't Really Need This Gig aura will carry me through to victory.  Or, I'll get fired.  Either/Or.

It is entirely possible that by the time I get done with the job interview I'll be so completely nuts that I'll end up hiring some ridiculous car to take us downtown, like a stretch Hummer--the more hideous, the better.  After all, we want to look thoroughly bizarre when we arrive....and when we have to get dropped off four blocks away from the venue since the streets are closed due to the f*cking baseball game. 

The good news is that when driving yourself to a concert is completely out of the question, you are free to imbibe--you can actually have a grown up beverage.  Or two.  Maybe six.  The bad news is that after the busy week I'm about to have, I'll be so exhausted that I'll probably slip into a coma if I drink anything other than coffee. 

Exactly how rude is it to fall asleep during a performance?

Anyway...I will try to check in once in a while to keep the blog up to date next week, but if you're really curious, I would recommend Twitter for more consistent updates....I'm not saying that the Twitter updates will be anything more than over-tired, sloppy drivel, but, incoherence is much more entertaining in small doses, so give it a shot...

Asbestos Boots

Today's Phrase That Pays is, "If you're always in hot water, you'll always be clean"

 

 

Go ahead and think about that for a minute.

 

 

Ready?  OK.

 

 

I've done many an ill-advised thing in my life--things that made friends and non-friends alike utter those familiar words, "I can't believe you/she did that!" 

 

To which I can only reply, "I can't believe I'm the only one who thought of it!"

 

 

 

So far, in all of the ill-advised things I've done, nobody has died.  That's because when I say "ill-advised", what I mean is, I probably opened my big fat mouth and toppled somebody's delusion/status quo, not, I did something stupid and dangerous, like, drive drunk, or get married.

 

Oh wait....never mind.

 

 

Anyway...

 

 

Like I've said before, sometimes you have to burn the thing to the ground so you can change it, start again from scratch, and make it better.  Sometimes you need to be the spark the sets the stupidity ablaze.

 

I find it much easier, when you do something forward, something which requires a certain amount of audacity, or something for which someone might say, "That chicks got balls," that you announce to anyone who might be listening that you're probably going straight to hell, anyway, so...why not?

 

No, I don't actually believe that you go to hell for having audacity.  In fact, I believe that being bold is like an express bus to the promised land.  But don't tell anyone, OK?  All the people that haven't pissed off yet think it's charming when I say that I'm probably going straight to hell.

 

 

(You know what I think is especially awesome?  When someone who got mad at you about something MONTHS ago is still stewing about it.  That's some power, baby!  Yesterday, somebody tried to give me the silent treatment, over something I basically forgot about the day if happened!  HA!  Don't people know that the "effectiveness" of the so-called silent treatment relies on whether or not I actually care?  Duh!)

 

But I digress.  Needless to say, so far this week, and, it's been a short week, I'm probably going straight to hell.  But that's OK...that's where all of the interesting people are.

In Praise Of Thinking The Big Thoughts

I've been looking for an answer to the question "Why not?" and have yet to be supplied with any information that has satisfied me.

 

 

I keep asking.

 

 

 

You'd think that by my age (I'll be 44 in 21 days) that life would have beat that question out of me.  Would I know peace if it had?  Or do you just call that unconsciousness?

 

 

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge. DANIEL J. BOORSTIN  

We think we're so smart...