Brain Dump

My first-day-on-the-new-job jitters created some interesting thought-soup during the drive in this morning. Previously, my morning commute thoughts were a sort of mental to-do list, a pep talk for the day, and a mad scramble to try to remember the great idea I’d had in the shower – I swear there’s some chemical in shampoo that makes me think better. This morning’s drive was entirely different and actually led to me thinking, “I gotta write this stuff down. It’s a record of my mental decline.” A passenger in my brain – or in the car, capturing my too-frequent audibles – would’ve heard this:


“It’s pretty bright at 8:45. You can’t see the deer jumping out at you at 5:30; 8:45 is pretty cool.”
Note: my start-time today was 9:30, it was 6am at my previous job.

“I wonder if there will be traffic on I-64.”

“These pants will fit great 5 pounds from now.”

“I sounded just like Thom Yorke on that line. Creep is a great song.”

“When my brother had long hair, he looked like a blonde Anthony Kiedis.”

“I’ve only got one bottle of wine left at home.”

“Push the fader, gifted animator, one for the now and eleven for the later…”

“This bra is going to annoy me by noon.”

“Push the skinny pedal, dude!”

“I hate this radio station.”

“I’m going to be late. I should’ve left earlier.”

“What if I hate the people I work with? What if they hate me?”

“Aw, Jesus…it’s a chicken truck. These birds are late! ”
Note: there’s a Tyson plant nearby. I used to encounter these towering 18-wheelers loaded with cages of chickens at least 3 times a week, at o’dark o’clock. A bit of fun that I was looking forward to doing without.

“I wonder if my boss will be able to hear my squeaky shoe over the click-clack of my heels.”

“Is there an accelerator in that piece of shit Chrysler or are you missing all the toes on your right foot?”

“Geez – looks like a pillow fight in the slow lane.”

“I wish I was still in my pajamas. No I don’t.”

"Shit."

“Pass the f***ing Chicken Truck already!”

"Is there always this much traffic on I-64?"

“Those chickens are filthy!”

“OK, what do all these people know that I don’t know? Why are they all doing the speed limit?”

“Def Leppard are all really old now.”
Note: this is when I realized that I was losing my mind.

“Get OUT of my lane!”

“State Trooper hiding in the trees in the median…so THAT’s why everyone is doing the speed limit.”

“I always miss this exit.”

“My feet are starting to hurt already.”

“I get hysterical, hysteria, oh can you feel it…”

“That guy’s listening to the same radio station. No way I look that stupid singing in the car.”

“F***! I missed the exit.”

“My stomach is going to start growling in a half hour. Everyone will hear it.”

“If I was in the Volvo, I’d jump that curby thing and get off here.”

“I’m not cooking dinner tonight.”

"Shit."

“What should I wear to work tomorrow?”

“BIG pothole.”

“When is it my turn to turn?”

“No way everyone in this lot is a visitor. Employees must be parking here illegally.”

“Where are my Altoids?”

“I’m 15 minutes early. Now what?”

So, I lit a cigarette – who’s going to tell me that I smell like smoke, I work for Marlboro for God’s sake – pulled a notebook and a pen from my tote bag and scribbled down what had been running through my head. I think I may need medication. This is an awful lot for a brain to race through during what turned out to be a 20-minute drive. And Jim thinks we should carpool; he’s in for a treat!

Gravity

Global warming, el niño, la niña, blah blah blah. I’m beyond tired of hearing about it. Our local global warming proponents shut up for a while last winter when the Richmond area had about 3 feet of snow – a good 2 feet more than our average. Now, with the hottest summer on record, these same folks are jumping up and down and making a lot of noise again. OK, I get it, but what I really want to know is, when will someone call attention to the fact that the earth’s gravitational pull has gotten much stronger over the last, say, 4 years? It has, I swear it. What’s that you say? You need proof? Ok, if the gravitational pull has remained constant for the last 4 years then why haven’t I been able to find a decent bra?

I’m serious about this. For the last 4 years or so, I’ve been complaining about my boobs. My husband thinks I’m nuts, thinks everything is hunky-dory, but he’s a guy and guys are predisposed to think that boobs are great, especially when they get a fairly regular opportunity to have a personal acquaintance with said boobs. Let me tell you, though, from my constant acquaintance with said boobs, something ain’t right and that something can only be caused by gravity.

Now, I’m not about to say that the greatest pair of boobs in the world is gone forever, destroyed by an unspoken natural catastrophe. They were never great but they were good. They looked pretty cozy under a sweater, decent in nothing but a bra, and truly sexy in the favored-by-all-women posture: lying down, arms up overhead. And then they were struck down…literally…by this whole gravity thing that nobody talks about.

I may be the only one talking about the increase in global gravity but I’m not the only one who notices it. Bra manufacturers have steadily increased the amount of technology they use in their design and production. Over the years, Victoria’s Secret has gone from offering less-trashy versions of Frederick’s of Hollywood stuff to the spill-you-over-the-top Miracle Bra to their latest invention, the BioFit bra that offers cup-size-specific shelf support. Other bra manufacturers are relying on your own body heat to mold the cups into the ultimate fit for your boobs. Sounds like the Grauman’s Chinese Theater method – casting your boobs in nylon and spandex instead of concrete. Why all the innovation if there isn’t an underlying epidemic from the effects of increased gravity? Hey, technology – guess what? It still ain’t working.

Every bra I have tried, every last one, has failed me in one way or another. I’ve lifted and lugged and adjusted straps to the point that I’m gouging wedges out of each shoulder. I’ve been measured and poked and had my band snapped more often than junior high school. I’ve returned more bras than I own and I own more bras than Dolly Parton. I’m a prisoner to my underwear. I put it on in the morning and I swear I feel it strapped around me every moment of the day, poking me here or gaping open there, reminding me that I’m trapped inside of it. I’m more likely to peel my bra off in the car, in traffic, on the way home from work than I am to kick my 3-inch heels off my feet.

I am a trouper, though. I keep trying, hoping that someone has found a solution to the problem. Alternatives showed up when the world recognized that aerosol sprays contribute to the deterioration of the ozone layer so I figure that, someday, somewhere, somebody will figure out how to counteract the gravity problem and stitch up a bra that works. I ventured out again, just last week, and put my gravitationally challenged boobs in the hands of a “Fit Stylist” at Soma. It was a bit unnerving – Soma is part of Chico’s, the clothing company that doesn’t even use real sizes and there I was, shopping for something so exacting as to be ridiculous or even lethal if you fudge the numbers. The Fit Stylist was nice, though, measured the hell out of me, and spent a good bit of time talking to me about potential corrective actions; a good start for me, I’m all about root cause analysis, causal factors, and engineering errors out of a system. Then she started bringing me bras to try on and checking their fit once they were on – snap! In the end, I bought two bras that, while they’re not perfect, they’re pretty good. I’m doing as my Fit Stylist suggested – I’m wearing them and trying to get used to them. I think of it as breaking them in, kind of, like you would do with a new car. I’m driving them gently. And, as one tends to do with a new car, I’m checking myself out in the mirror frequently. I look down sometimes and wonder, “Who is that riding around in that shiny new vehicle?” My husband has decided that the new seats are “pretty firm” but he doesn’t mind because he’s a guy; I’m wondering if Soma and Tupperware have some kind of interlocking directorate.

In the end, I imagine that these bras will end up just as annoying as all the rest in my collection. It won’t be their fault, nor will it be the fault of my incorrect boobs, which, incidentally, I could have surgically altered for about $6,000, but I’d rather have a new stove and a new kitchen floor first. The real problem is caused by the annual increase in gravity and, until Al Gore responds to my urgent pleas, I’ll be spending my drive home with the top down, my seat reclined, and my arms up over my head. Unfortunately, I hear we’re in for another rough winter.

Every 7 Seconds...

In the midst of a recent conversation that included the phrase, “I was thinking about you all afternoon,” my husband handed me the topic of this blog. My first response to him was, “Yeah, yeah – I know, every 7 seconds...,” and then I stopped teasing him (for about 7 seconds) and really started to ponder this idea. Guys think about sex every 7 seconds? Really?

I have no idea what it’s like to be a guy. I can’t imagine knowing every football statistic or baseball box score or the name of every James Bond villain. I don’t know what it’s like to walk around outside, in front of other people, without a shirt on. Hell, I can’t imagine wearing underwear that just hangs off my hips and flaps around my legs; I prefer something with a little more reassurance. I listen to my son talking with his friends and I can’t understand how they can say the things that they say to each other and still remain the best of friends. There is such a huge difference in the separate worlds of women and men – the whole Mars/Venus thing – that it often feels like I’m standing in a room where everyone is speaking Arabic and expecting me to understand them. I don’t get them, well, I hardly ever get them, but, as I live with 3 of them, I think it’s the least that I can do to try to have a tiny appreciation of what makes them tick. Or, at least, what happens to their brains after every 6th tick.

For this, I turned to the best research subject in the world – my husband. He’s a guy through and through – an ex-high school quarterback who knows the stats of any sport that involves a ball, can quote Beavis and Butthead dialogue when appropriate – a real guy. A guy’s guy. He also has a Master’s Degree in Education and Human Development from George Washington University, loves psychology, and has a deep, sensitive streak in him. Combine his background and education with the fact that he’s my husband and is therefore required to answer my questions and I think we can agree that he speaks the truth and does so with some authority. So, for all you wives of husbands and mothers of sons who have ever wondered how it is possible for guys to think about sex every 7 seconds, here’s an answer from the other perspective.

Guys don’t think about sex every 7 seconds but they do think about us throughout the day. The thoughts just occur – zip! – as part of their stream of consciousness and – zip! – they’re gone just as quickly. It’s not something that they conjure up or deliberately shift their thoughts to, it just happens. Sometimes there is a trigger point but more often, there is not. Men experience a flash of memory, a glimpse of a moment from the past. And it’s not really sexual as much as it is sensual – the memory of our perfume or the way we sound. They generally don’t experience a split-second hallucination of a naked breast, for example, but they do think of the intimate moments between us and them – a touch on the back of their neck or a smile. What they experience roughly every 7 seconds is intellectual, not physical. From my husband’s report, they are conscious of every instance of these thoughts. And they say men can’t multitask…

Women think about sex, too, but I think we tend to dwell on it when it does cross our minds. We take a fleeting thought and build an entire scenario around it. We work it. We light the candles, we take the time to dress ourselves in what we think is our sexiest little satiny chemise, we put the music on, and we pour the wine. And then we move on to the million other things that we need to accomplish during the day. By the time we actually get around to putting our earlier thought into action, we’re kind of tired or we’ve sort of lost interest. Would it be better, then, to think more like men do? To have the thought of intimacy thrum just at the edge of our consciousness throughout the day? Sex isn’t always an afterthought for women but we sure wouldn’t win that argument in a court of law. I bet it would be a lengthy argument, though!

Now, for the creature known as a teenage boy, I’m sure the thought pattern and probably the frequency, as well, is a vastly different experience than that of an adult male in a stable, loving relationship. I have absolutely no desire to seek this truth, however, and am content with knowing that, at some point in their lives, the flashing neon “TITS” sign in the back of my sons’ brains will be replaced with the more satisfying knowledge that they are truly and deeply loved. I’m sure that, if asked, they would accept this theory with the proviso that the giver of that deep, satisfactory love has TITS.  This is no more than I could expect from them, at this time, but it’s comforting to know that their brains will mature somewhere within the same decade as their physical and emotional maturity.

So, while I’m still standing in a room of foreigners speaking a foreign language, I can glean the context of their conversation a little clearer now. I’ll give them credit for being more than the Neanderthals that the 7-seconds statistic suggests. I’ll look at them with a little more tenderness; I’ll cut them a little more slack. When my husband snickers, “Huh-huh, you said ‘Do It’,” during a conversation with the boys, I’ll overlook it, knowing that a variation of, “My darling, I love you,” has been playing in his brain all day. And when one (or more) of the boys replies, “That’s what she said,” I’ll know that the flashing neon sign will blink off soon enough. As for me, I thought about setting a stopwatch to ring every 7 seconds or so…but I’d probably throw the sucker against a wall within the first half hour. Instead, I’ll make a conscious effort to appreciate the love that I have in my life more frequently throughout the day. If I seem a little scattered, forgive me, I’m just trying to think like a guy.

Channeling Van Halen: C'mon Baby - Finish What Ya Started

I woke up yesterday morning full of energy and hearing Van Halen in my head; sadly, the bad Sammy Hagar Van Halen not the good David Lee Roth Van Halen. Sammy was imploring me to finish what I’d started and what I’d started (kind of) was the job of housecleaning my bedroom. And I don’t mean just dust and vacuum it, I mean really clean as in Spring/Fall Housecleaning. You know the kind of cleaning I mean. It’s the rip everything apart, scrub everything that can be scrubbed, Polish-Catholic kind of cleaning fetish with which my mother infected me. I understand that this kind of cleaning harkens back to the days of coal furnaces and carpet beaters and is largely unnecessary with today’s suck-the-grain-out-of-the-wood vacuum cleaners but it’s in my genes and I’m programmed to behave this way.

Not that I actually do my Spring/Fall Housecleaning on its prescribed schedule. I used to be religious about it but life and teenagers really get in the way. The best window-washing weather in the Spring is also the best time to spend in the garden. The perfect scrubbing weekend during the Fall is typically the same one in which my husband and I decide that we are worthy of a break and head west to the Shenandoah Valley, to poke around Monticello and visit a great apple farm. Previous years have seen schoolwork (mine) and Saturday football games (Tom’s) get between housecleaning and me. Last year’s utter joy with Thursday or Friday football games and a diploma hanging on my office wall found me with tons of time on my hands and I still didn’t do any housecleaning. I swore I’d do it after our Halloween redecoration of the living room but Christmas came and went without candles in the windows because I refuse to put candles in dirty windows. I’m very good at devising rules to supersede the bi-annual fumigation ritual.

When I was told, late in the day on Monday, that I didn’t need to go back to the office and work out my notice (a phone call that I’d accurately predicted), I devised a plan for diving into my early-Fall or belated-Spring Housecleaning. Bred to clean anything from the top down, I knew I needed to start with the master bedroom. It was a horror. The top of my dresser was obliterated by a pile of sweaters that I swear I’ll hand-wash tomorrow, a bra that needs to go back to Macy’s because I think it wants to kill me, a couple of mail-order packing lists that I need to hold onto until I’m sure that those bathing suits that I bought for the three weeks’ ago beach trip won’t have to be returned. My night table is a delicate balance of magazines and library books. Jim’s side of the room is uncluttered but you could write your name in the silt on the top of his dresser.

I woke up late on Tuesday, a treat from my usual 4:15 alarm-slapping dance. I spent 2 hours on the phone with my brother while I tidied up the kitchen and living room from the teenage lay-about of the night before. I watered the plants on my deck. I did some mental calculations and convinced myself that there wasn’t enough time to do anything of real substance towards cleaning the bedroom, as I would only need to stop in a couple hours to take Kevin to a doctor’s appointment. So I curled up on the sofa with a book.

Wednesday found me delaying the inevitable once again. I had a 10:00 appointment that was going to take at least two hours out of my day, if I was lucky. Add in a stop at Sam’s Club and it was 2:00 before I came home – not enough time left to make a dent in my cleaning. So I curled up on the sofa with a book…and took a nap.

I promised Jim I’d have lunch with him on Thursday. With shower/makeup and drive time, that’s 3 hours total, right out of the middle of my day. Cleaning was out of the question but I did manage to take the drapes down and put all the shoes that I’ve kicked off at the foot of the bed back into their shoebox homes. I even put them back into the closet. And I did drop the drapes off at the drycleaner; it was on the way to my hairdresser’s appointment.

Yesterday was the day. I had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. I did have, though, 3 sleeping teenage boys in my house - the same teenage boys who’d left Gatorade bottles and syrup-coated plates on the coffee table. Why do teenage boys think ‘waffles’ when they think ‘snack’? What could have prompted them to dig deep into the freezer when there’s a jar of cookies on the counter? Before you answer, ‘the munchies’, I’ll tell you that these are good kids and Thomas is too wary of messing up his shot at the varsity team this year. I fully intended to make Tom and his friends clean up their mess but they were still sleeping and the plates had suspicious dog-tongue tracks on them – easier to do it myself than to let the dog knock the plates to the floor. Kevin was already up and out, leaving me a note telling me that he’d gone bike riding. Unusual, but more power to him.

I started my bedroom housecleaning orgy quietly, with general junk removal. I sorted through the magazines and library books and stashed the killer bra in my closet where, I’m sure, it will remain until next Spring. I did every quiet thing I could but there’s really not much that’s quiet about housecleaning so I woke the 3 sleeping teenagers at 10:30. I woke them up by taking pictures of them. It’s the perfect creepy-Mom way of getting them to move but, once teenage boys start to move, they start to eat. When I headed out to the clothesline with my freshly laundered blanket, they were sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by cereal bowls. And Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. When I came downstairs with the wet sheets, they were gone. The kitchen was strewn with evidence of their having ingested the most important meal of the day, as though they needed to prove to me that they weren’t going about their business with empty stomachs. I really didn’t want all three of them back in the kitchen so I just dealt with the mess myself, grumbling all the while. I make a great martyr.

The boys were lazing about in my hammock – my hammock – as I pegged the sheets out onto the line. I heard NotMyKid #1 ask, in a slightly scathing teenage boy voice, “Tom, what is your mother doing?” Clearly, he’d never seen a clothesline before and, while they’re not expressly forbidden in the neighborhood, I figure I’ve gotten around the homeowner’s association rule of “No Clothesline Poles” by stringing my line between two trees. Kudos to my kid for his reply, “She’s reducing her carbon footprint.” And then a sharp smack upside his head with his laughing addition, “She’s really just trying to see how long it takes to piss off the neighborhood.” Damn that child, for knowing me too well.

I didn’t mind all that much – I was on a roll. The venetian blinds needed more than just a dusting so I yanked them down and hauled them outside. A bucket of hot water and Mr. Clean would do the trick, but there was no Mr. Clean to be found. Bless his heart, my husband had used the last of it when he cleaned the bathrooms the week before; curse his name, he never told me that we were out and certainly never put ‘Mr. Clean’ on the grocery list. Time to cash in an I-Trust-You-With-My-Car chit and send Kevin to the store but first I have to find him. He’s wandering around the driveway with his video camera and a package of plastic army men: Spielberg Jr. is attempting to recreate a World War II battle for YouTube.

Forced to a stop by a lack of ready supplies, I started to think about this whole housecleaning phenomenon. Was I the only one who still did it or does every sane person hire it out or ignore it altogether? For a grin, I googled it and discovered that I’m not alone. I got an even bigger grin when I learned that I could have been using the messy bedroom as an excuse for not having sex with my husband. Really. According to the ideology of feng shui, clutter can “negatively influence, or even completely block, the flow of events in specific areas of your life” (http://fengshui.about.com/od/thebasics/qt/clearclutter.htm). My husband appreciates creativity but he’d have fallen out of bed laughing at me if I ever blamed my just-don’t-feel-like-it on bad feng shui. I’ll try it some time and report back.

Mr. Clean did the trick on the blinds…and the screens…and the woodwork…and the hardwood floor. Scrubbing the floor was like working one of those slide puzzles, the kind with only one empty space for you to maneuver around. There’s just not enough floor space to work with. Slide the king-size bed over, then scrub and wait for that patch to dry. Slide the bed back, move the dresser up, then scrub. It was during one of the wet floor delays that I discovered that Scorsese had made a bunch of movie backdrops out of construction paper and left a pile of little paper snippets all over the dining room table. During another delay, I learned that the Three Amigos had found the cookie jar after all and had washed the cookies down with more Gatorade. While I was upstairs getting my feng shui on, the boys were leaving little ant trails wherever they’d been, inflicting their negative energy on my chi, or whatever I have that passes for a chi.

By 4:00, I’d scrubbed and polished every surface of our room. The bed was remade with linen that smelled like fresh air and sunshine instead of dryer sheets. I’d vacuumed my way through the rest of the house and had cleaned the kitchen twice and picked up the living room three times. I’d turned off one unattended television or another no less than 5 times. I’d put a whole chicken on the stove to poach for a chicken and dumplings dinner. I was totally wiped out and dreaded the thought of trying to thoroughly clean the remaining 9 rooms and 2.5 bathrooms while the kids were home for the summer. Then I hit upon a plan: I’ll wait until school starts again! And doesn’t make sense to clean before I paint the kitchen, the foyer, and the upstairs hallway – I’d only have to do it again afterwards. And the heat wave is supposed to break for a few days – it’s the perfect time to work in my gardens. And I’ve promised myself to spend some serious time next week registering with more employment agencies and slamming my resume out to every job that interests me. And I’ve lived with the just-cleaned-last-week look for so long now that I may as well just keep procrastinating until it’s time to wash the windows so I can decorate the house for the holidays.

I’m channeling the good Van Halen today. There’ll be none of that band-wrecking Sammy Hagar yelling “Right Now” at me. David Lee Roth has me captured, I’m under his spell…so I’ll wait…to finish my housecleaning. Who does Fall Housecleaning anyway?

Bravery versus Stupidity

A man jumps into a rain-swollen river to save a floundering dog. He struggles to drag the dog against the current and the two eventually arrive exhausted at the river’s shore. Is this an act of bravery or stupidity? How do you decide? What distinguishes bravery from stupidity?

I believe that outcome and perspective determine which adjective to use. Let’s add a few more lines to my little story:

After arriving at the shore, the dog heads up the riverbank towards the road. The man climbs the steep shoreline behind the dog, drags himself upright, and, due to the exhaustion produced by his Good Samaritan efforts, faints, and falls to the ground. A passing truck, blinded by the pounding rain, runs him over and kills him. The dog walks away, tired and wet but otherwise unharmed. The man leaves behind a wife and two small children.

So I ask again, is this an act of bravery or stupidity?

Now, I’ve done a lot of brave vs. stupid things in my life. I’ve had my partying days, experienced the spins while driving home after drinking way more than a body should. I didn’t hurt anyone else along the way and suffered only a hangover as my penance. Clearly, though, this was an act of stupidity.

I’ve also stayed in a failing marriage because it was easier to do so than it would have been, at that time, to leave. I had two kids who weren’t even in school yet and no job with which I could support my family. My parents made a generous and loving offer of support if I should choose to leave…but I stayed. A year after making my choice, a friend told me how brave I was. Brave? I didn’t feel brave, I felt cowardly and lazy and stupid. I was still unhappy and the rift in our marriage wasn’t healing. It was easier, and safer, then, to stay on the riverbank than to jump in and save my sinking sense of self.

Let’s give the drowning-dog story a different ending:

After arriving at the shore, the man huddles with the dog for a moment so that each can catch their breath. He reads the tag on the dog’s collar and realizes that the dog lives just across the road. He carries the dog up the shore – not without effort – crosses the road and rings the doorbell of a large home. The owners, in awe of the man’s selfless act and delighted with the return of their beloved pet, call the local newspaper. The event and a profile of the Good Samaritan appear in the paper. Within the profile is a description of an invention that the man has patented. Large companies vie for the opportunity to manufacture this invention and the world becomes hooked on the gadget. The man becomes enormously wealthy.

Brave or stupid? Should we add ‘lucky’ to the list?

After being stupid for a while, I took some tentative steps towards bravery. After 7 years as a stay-at-home mom, I got a job. I forced the ultimate demise of my not-getting-better-but-sure-getting-worse marriage and stood up to the challenges of single motherhood. I’ll never know how much harder it was for the kids to experience a divorce after they had years of life in a conventional family. I was lucky to have a boss who believed in me and pushed me to return to school to finish my education. A friend dared me to try internet dating and, after a year of men who misrepresented themselves as tall, handsome, or just plain human, I received an email from a guy who lived in Richmond. We were married in our backyard 15 months later.

Now I’m looking at another flooded river and another floundering swimmer who needs salvation. I quit my job. Yes, in this terrible economy, with few glimmers of hope to illustrate any tiny rebound in the record unemployment numbers, I walked away from a paying gig. Brave or stupid?

I was a contractor working with a very generic, non-specific job description. I don’t blame the company for that – the position and the systems were entirely new to them and they really didn’t know what they needed or what the job would grow into until everything started to roll. I took it all in and ran with it – I did what needed to be done. This, I find, is an attitude completely contrary to what typical contractor positions demand. Contractors do what they are paid to do; employees (those folks with the tasty benefits and pay) do what the company needs them to do. I did what the company needed me to do. Further, I anticipated what the company needed and structured the systems and my work to support those future needs.

During my interviews, the job was described as having the high likelihood of becoming permanent and, after 3 months on the job, they told me they wanted to hire me. Then they told me there was a hiring freeze on. Then they told me that they’d pleaded my case as high as the President of our division and still weren’t able to hire me. A voluntary reduction in force found the company with 1400 fewer employees – 400 more employees than they’d planned to reduce. The company started hiring again and my spirits picked up.

I presented the organization with a comprehensive list of the work that I was performing. For each item, I clearly identified the capacity in which I was operating: business systems analyst, training and development, process improvement, etc. I asked for more money based on the breadth, depth, and importance of my work product. An extra dollar an hour was my reward. As well, my job description was rewritten. My work was scaled back to pure, mindless data entry. All the things I loved most about the job were removed from my scope. I’m sure that someone will be taking on these challenges but that someone was not identified or communicated, either to me or to my clients. In the meantime, the status quo never changed and I assume they expected me to just keep working and keep producing whatever was needed. I am comfortable with this assumption given my supervisor’s admission, “I really don’t know what you do.” Yes, this would be the same person who re-wrote my job description.

Remember that Howie Mandel game show, ‘Deal or No Deal’? The one with the models and the suitcases with the dollar amounts in them? Jim was a loyal ‘Deal or No Deal’ watcher for a while and I would watch occasionally when my homework was finished or when his yelling at the television became more than I could ignore from my office across the hallway. I don’t know what his fascination was with the show – for him, it was akin to watching a car crash in slow motion. He’d bitch about how stupidly the people were behaving if they didn’t cash out when the odds were in their favor. There was always a clear point where the contestant’s bravery slid right into the wall of stupidity and that’s the moment when Jim would begin to rail at the TV. He’d complain so much that I’d actually beg him to find some sporting event to watch instead.

That’s what I’ve been playing – the employment version of ‘Deal or No Deal’. I’ve been picking suitcases without weighing the odds of what might be inside the next case. I’d justify my choices by spending 2 hours each night complaining about the 9 hours I’d spent at work and trying to figure out what I could do to change a situation over which I had no control. Jim and the kids are tolerant but even they couldn’t stand it anymore. Jim’s also very intuitive and knows how to reach right inside me and pluck the string that resonates the most. He didn’t ask me to change the channel, he simply told me, “I want my wife back.”

I was a contractor who had been on the job for 22 months. For 20 of those months I operated under the expressed concept of becoming a permanent employee as soon as possible. On July 1, I was told that my job would never become permanent and that the company would continue to staff the work with a contractor. What incentive was there to stay? My staffing company has been telling me that they have positions to which they’d submit my resume...but not until I quit my current job. I get this – it’s a clear conflict of interest for them and would appear that they favored one client over another. When the conflict of interest became clear for ME, I quit. The odds were no longer in my favor – hell; the odds couldn’t even see my favor from where they were standing. For me, the next suitcase would have been totally empty.

So, brave or stupid? I’m straddling both sides of the equation now. My professional contentment level and the effect that it has had on my family is a drowning dog and I’ve just jumped into the water to save it. The correct adjective won’t be determined until I land somewhere else and look back at this decision. I’ve taken a leap of faith – and that’s a really big leap for a person who loves to be, needs to be, in complete control of her own situation. (And tries to be in control of all the situations around her or, at least, have some input to them.) In the meantime, I’ll swim really hard and rely on the teeny bit of faith that I do have and borrow some of the massive amount of faith that my husband has if I need to. He thinks I’m being really brave but I think that’s because he’s tired of watching me be really stupid. I’ve noticed that he’s been watching an awful lot of sports lately.

30 Mennonites walk into a Cracker Barrel....

May 25, 2010
Abingdon, VA

Serious. I just saw it happen. They got off a small tour bus and paraded in for their dinner. It was a sea of deep blue dresses, black stockings & black hiking boots. The men all looked like clean versions of ZZ Top - without the sunglasses & guitars. It made me stop and think about all the things I do not know. Like: Mennonites go on bus trips.

I wanted to ask them about that. Where were they going? Where had they been? But they simply surrounded me during their meal, heads down and mouths shut. So I did the same. I left before I had the chance to see what drew their attention in the Cracker Barrel Country Store. The Weasel Ball? The Goo-Goo Pies? I'm sure the fellas would've been pretty hot for the John Deere baseball hats. Mesh has to be cooler than wool felt. Maybe they'd have gone for the VA Tech hats, though. And the giant Whoopie Cushion would've been fun for the bus ride back to...wherever.

Mennonitemaiden.com tells me that I can buy a deep blue dress for $55. The little cotton prayer cap is $9.99. So are the mens' suspenders. Think I'll skip this opportunity - I'd need to hem the dress up too high and forgo the stockings. I didn't inherit my dad's excellent legs just to hide them like that. I was happy to see that all online purchases are via a secure website. Again, something I've never thought about: Mennonites with credit cards.

And there is a fly in my hotel room. Seems pretty creepy to me - the window is welded shut so where did the fly come from? How long has it been here? I bet he's been in here for a while - he's flying in low, slow circles. Still, he's spry enough that I can't catch up with him and smack him with the Holiday Inn Express Guest Directory. Or maybe I just ate too much at Cracker Barrel....


(migrated from Facebook)

Man vs Machine

Grocery stores are too smart nowadays.  They track what you purchase and then spit out coupons that are somewhat relevant to what was in your cart.  It's not like I need to be reminded that I spend too much money spoiling one cat with single-servings of stinky food or have a kid with bad eyes that require gallons of contact lens solution.  It's not like I need a reason to return to the grocery store; I have teenage boys.

Let me preface my story by saying that the feeding machine that is my youngest son is leaving for 3 days of football camp tomorrow morning.  His pending absence removed the usual amount of food required to stave off his unsatisfiable appetite (and those of his buddies) from my grocery list.  Don't get me wrong.  I love this kid and I love his friends but the gross tonnage of at least 3 high school football players in and out of my pantry does not always jive well with my budget.  I usually manage to hold them back with a few packages of what they call 'ghetto cookies' - the store brand with the plain packaging, serving up about 100 cookies in each plastic slab for $1.99.

Even without an immediate need to stock the training table, my grocery bill was going to take a hit.  It's Father's Day weekend.  My darling husband put in an order for Jerk Steak with Fried Plantains and Collards.  Not too pricey but the plantains require a trip to the Fancy grocery store.  And, since I'm going there, I may as well pick up some nice steaks and some over-the-top ready-made dessert.  I figured I could get the rest of my shopping done at the Not So Fancy grocery store.  Yes, that would be the store that goes overboard with it's techno-friendship/mind-reading schemes.

You also need to know that it's hot today. It was hot yesterday and it's going to be hotter tomorrow.  My husband is slaving away in the back yard, repairing and repainting the shutters from the house.  I checked on him in between stores - he was sweaty and filthy and not enjoying himself.  So I figured I'd be a sweetheart and made a mental note to pick up some beer for him, something nicer than the long-neck Buds he usually inhales on a hot day. 

While I was in the Not So Fancy store, it also occurred to me that we didn't have any wine in the house.  I grabbed a bottle of Australian Shiraz.  The next aisle offered up a 12-pack of Blue Moon, a Belgian white beer that a dear friend introduced to my husband and which, I knew, he would look upon as a 'treat'.  Score one for the wife.  Fairly close to the Blue Moon was a stack of Mike's Hard Lemonade.  I pictured myself gently swaying in my hammock, ice-packed glass of Mike's sweating on the grass beside me.  I wedged a 6-pack into my cart beside the beer.

On my way through the store I remembered that the kids had gone through all the soda so I plunked a couple cases of 'ghetto' soda under my basket .  The tonic water at the end of the soda aisle caught my eye, so I picked up a six-pack of pony bottles, thinking that a gin and tonic or a vodka tonic might be refreshing before dinner, what with our current heat wave.  Looking high and low for Bitter Lemon (do they even make that anymore?), I landed upon a funky-looking bottle with an unnatural blue liquid inside - a mixer for Blue Raspberry Martinis.  Now, it my be that my current photography fetish has awoken a sleeping eye for form and color...the bottle itself is square and weaves left-right-left, from its base to its neck.  The color is, I guess, supposed to make me think of the tropics but, to my immature eye, it looks like the exact blue of the bottom of a Bomb Pop.  That has to be a great combination - a Bomb Pop Martini.  I've got vodka at home, so I added the martini mixer to my cart.

And then I remembered that I needed a rubber chicken.  I know a great kid - not a kid, a young lady - who just had her wisdom teeth removed and, for a giggle, I bought her this disgusting rubber chicken.  It's smaller than a clown's prop rubber chicken but has the added feature of laying an egg when you squeeze its stomach.  And not just any egg but a transparent, fluid-filled bulge of an egg that emerges from between these tiny rubber chicken legs.  Squeeze really hard and a firm, yellow plastic yolk will swim downward, too.  I found out on Friday that the daughter of a woman I work with just had her wisdom teeth out so I figured I'd buy her one of these stupid rubber chickens, as well.  I swung off to the toy aisle, grabbed one, gave it a squeeze as a quick quality assurance test, and headed to the check out lines.

The woman who got in line behind must have chosen my lane because of the relatively few items that I was purchasing.  The checker kid scanned everything silently and sent it down the conveyor belt where I waited to pack it back into the cart.  Here came the beer, the wine, the blue martini mix, the 5% malt-beverage lemonade, the tonic water...a parade of booze and mixers for the Schizophrenic Alcoholics Picnic.  The checker didn't say a word and neither did I.  The woman in line behind me eyed everything silently, gauging how much space each of my scanned items was freeing up from her side of the checkout stand.  Generously, she did point out that this week's People magazine was not her's - I would've been hearbroken to leave that shirtless Zac Efron cover behind, so I thanked her for that.

And then the checker picked up the rubber chicken.  He eyed it, untangled the tag from between the fowl's legs, and scanned.  He turned to his left and placed it gently amongst the booze that I hadn't yet bagged or loaded into the cart.  Our eyes met and then he burst out laughing.  My response?  "Yeah, I'm a really fun person."  Thankfully, he just kept laughing. 

I slid my debit card through the 'we are taking all your money now' machine and waited for my receipt to print.  At the same time, the checker waited for the coupon machine to spew forth whatever bargains it had calculated, based on my current purchase pattern.  Nothing happened.  Nothing came out of the printer.  That was a first - I typically get 6 or 7 different coupons.  Today, I got nothing.  I stunned that machine into silence.  Looking back on it, you'd think that a smart marketer would have programmed an aspirin coupon or a Pepto Bismol coupon into the brains that reads your food, if only for a giggle.  I would have laughed.