In Which We Are Freaking Out, But Not as Badly as Some

We totally should have watched "Hairspray" instead of "Benny and Joon!" My friend, who packed up all her worldly possessions to move to Spokane for a new job, quit after a month! She said to her friend, who instigated the move, "Did you know this job was this bad?" And the friend said, "Sort of. But I thought you would really like Spokane and you could get another job."

Ruhlly?

Does anyone like Spokane that much?

The upside of my friend's freakout is that she got a much bettah job in Maryland, and is, as we speak, acclimatizing to the land of crabcakes and The Wire.

My own self, I had to interview for a new job this week. I prepared for this principally by picking out what accessories to wear. This kind of behavior causes my friend, who I'll call Mr. Corporate, to roll his eyes at me a lot. Mr. Corporate would prepare for a job interview by researching employer retirement fund contributions and planning to ask for a golf club membership as a signing bonus.

I do not work in a field where people get things like signing bonuses. I work in a field where you have to earn seniority before you are allowed to order your own office supplies.

Sometimes even then they make you choose between new rollerball pens and colored file folders.

My own freakout this Labor Day weekend consists of wondering if I could sit in a darkened room with my forehead resting on the desk for the next two weeks until I find out if the choice of accessories worked or not.

Either way, I'm sure of a couple of things: A) No way am I moving to Spokane; and B) If I leave my job I'm taking my rollerball pens with me.


--saifun

Did I mention the hot poo?

This summer my office carried the delicate scent of hot sewage. We rationalized quite a bit before the the real story broke. It's the dumpsters in the alley. It's the grease pit where all the used cooking grease sits until some schmo has to pick it up at midnight once a month. After a particularly fragrant day that left everyone green and gulping, a facilities man made the mistake of telling us the truth.
See that three-foot-in-diameter vent just outside your window? That vents the air shaft over the sewage line.
It's amazing what you can put up with until you know the truth. That mole that snags when you pull a shirt over your head? Yeah - easy to ignore until you find out it's carcinoma. It turns out we had been sucking lung-bucketfuls of hot poo.
Two people refused to work the next day. Given that it was 85 degrees in an office with no A/C, and we couldn't open the windows because of the poo, it was a shitty day at work. Heated emails flew with threats such as work stoppage, OSHA, and hot poo. Emails flew back with platitudes like reducing carbon footprints, we're working on it, and I'm Sorry For the Stench -But Hot Poo Happens, and my personal favorite "We are measuring the air for particulate levels."
??
One thing I never want to know is the actual number of sewage particulates I am inhaling.
Ever.
My co-worker was saying all along that this was not normal. When the Big Boss of Facilities stepped in, she was vindicated when they had another facilities man suit up and get into the poo pit. The poo pipe was broken. Not just broken, but a whole foot-long piece had caved in, leaving steaming poo free to particulate everywhere. The smell we had rationalized for weeks was gone within a day. We're all chipping in to canonize the guy who slew the poo monster.
-Soba

In Which We Don't Know What to Do With Ourselves

There are some bad signs out there, for dorks like me especially. The release of the Harry Potter movie has been delayed from November, 2008 to summer, 2009. Yes, I already had it on my calendar. What's your point?

Also, the Netflix shipping system is down nationwide. This means that the careful cycling of incoming and outgoing movies from my house is out of sync, is fubar, and that I will not get a new movie for the weekend.

My chums and I were talking about voodoo dolls the other night. Is there something I should be doing to placate the movie gods? Some kind of ritual involving a picture of Christopher Nolan, a lock of Sam Raimi's hair, and a box of Junior Mints?

-saifun

In Which the Crankiness Reaches Seasonally High Levels

It's a blisteringly hot 78 degrees here where I live in the tip-toppy part of the US. That's maybe the only explanation for the extremely high cranky levels we're currently experiencing.


Here are some things that are contributing to the conditions:

1) No, I did not win instantly by finding the bat signal in the bag of Reese's Dark Chocolate/Peanut Butter Dark Knight candies. Even though Iwas forced by circumstances, naturally, to consume the whole bag full just in case (I did go see Dark Knight for the third time this weekend, and yes, I still thought it was dude, like, totally awesomely cool and no, Christian Bale speaking in an abnormally low and growly voice when masked does not contribute to my crankiness level);

2) Baby blogs. Don't start on me with the hate mail - I do my bit for the new babies in my circle -- knit them gifts, take food to the new parents, listen understandingly to breastfeeding stories without rolling my eyes until after I have left, swaddle and cuddle and even change diapers. But. Right now there are approximately a zabillion new babies (okay, three) that belong to close friends...and they all have blogs. So now even the phone conversations with the parents start out, "Did you see the blog this week?" Which is just shameless fishing for 20 minutes of how cute and unlike any other previous baby the baby belonging to the phone-er is...People. That is just weak.


And the really really cranky-making part is - these blogs are a fiction of perfect happiness. The picture of "New grandparents holding the baby!" was in actuality, and I know this because I nodded sympathetically when told the story, taken during "My in-laws are possibly crazy and the next time my father-in-law comes to the house I may hit him!"


Now, in my own personal Christian Bale film-fest, I am going to watch "Equilibrium" on DVD. I understand that it's set in a dystopic future where emotions have been outlawed.


I'm going to see what they do to the cranky.


--saifun

In Which We Contemplate Being a Grownup

My friend just got a new job and will be relocating. Because I am a big fan of themed movie nights, I immediately thought about what movie we could watch that would be set in her new town. I could only come up with one -- Benny and Joon. (She almost got a job in Baltimore, which would have opened things up considerably, encompassing all of the John Waters canon, plus any movie based on an Anne Tyler book, plus Sleepless in Seattle, plus about a million hours of The Wire.)

In order to have theme snacks in stock, I had to make a pit stop at the grocery store on the way home from work, and here was my shopping list in its entirety: Cap’n Crunch, milk, Diet Coke, and ice cream.

This shopping list, in turn, reminded me of the time a couple of weeks ago when I had to pick up a cake at Costco for a work function, and took the opportunity to buy the one item on my personal grocery list that I had forgotten the week before. So there I was in the checkout line with an enormous frosted cake and a nine-pound bag of sugar.

Which brings me to this: What mechanism is it that causes a person, once they are autonomous enough to buy their own groceries, to buy things like wheat germ and broccoli? Is it fear of judgment by other shoppers that causes a person to buy fruit instead of Froot Loops? Is it just fear of early death?

Other immature behavior I will be indulging in soon: I am going to see the 12:30 a.m. show of Batman: The Dark Knight. The movie theatre is half an hour away from my house, and the running time (without previews) is something like two and a half hours. Do the math: I won’t be home until probably 4 a.m. And I have to be at work four hours later.

The only way I will be able to sustain the energy to meet the competing demands of the Immature and Mature worlds will be to eat almost all of a bag of Special Edition Reese’s Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter Bats (“Find the Bat-Signal and Win Instantly!”).

Next time: Did I Win Instantly?
--saifun

In Which We Consider Whether My Mother Could Still Be Described As "Post Partum"

Remember how in Peanuts, Charlie Brown (or maybe it was Linus) would get "Post-Christmas Letdown?" I have Post-Vacation Letdown. PVL is exacerbated by factors related to the ongoing plight of the only child.

Now that I am out of the Asian Death Glare years, time with my mother tends to be taken up in large part by her stroking my arm, squeezing my wrist, or offering to pay for things that, in normal life, I pay for myself, like gas and coffee and really anything else she sees me looking at when she's with me.

I totally get that she misses me, and try to keep the eye-rolling to a minimum, and have my wrist available to her at regular intervals for squeezing. It's important to know that, before last week, her last squeezing opportunity was a mere three weeks previous.

But. Since the January I left the 'rents to return to graduate school after winter break, my mom has cried every time she says goodbye to me before I leave for the airport (she used to cry in the airport, but now that everyone is a terrorist suspect and can't come to the departure gate without a boarding pass, she has to cry before I get in the car to leave for the airport). It's not sobbing crying. It's stoic Asian crying - where she's unable to speak clearly and her eyes are all wet.

I was watching the second dvd of “John Adams” last night and let me just say that Abigail Adams, sending her little boy off on a dangerous sea voyage across the North Atlantic during the Revolutionary War, to live in a foreign country for an unspecified number of years, during which time he might variously be: hit by a cannonball in a sea attack and/or contract and die of yellow fever and also during which time span she would be functionally out of all communication with him, was only marginally more upset than my mother as I was getting in the car at the Hilton to drive 15 minutes to the airport, after which time she could call me on the cellphone.

My friend says that she totally understands this because, having recently given birth to a daughter, she understands that the emotions are all wackadoo post partum.

My mom is 66 years old. I don't know if this reasonably still counts as post partum behavior changes.

And while I was gone? The Trouble House neighbor put her construction garbage in my collection bin. I am not having that.

--saifun

To: Highschool classmate I haven't spoken to in 15 years

To: Highschool classmate I haven’t spoken to in 15 years
Re: Remember me?

I have always been fairly easy to find on the internet. I maintain two websites for work and have ready access to putting my smiling mug online. The web is the new your parent’s phone number. My father has worked in the same office, at the same job, for 29 years. More so than that, he had the same phone number, 684-4186. I memorized it as a child by the position of the buttons, not the actual numbers. I lost contact with a friend on the east coast after one of my many moves in college, so he called my dad at work. Problem solved. My dad’s number was this best way to find me.

Now if you can spell my name and can turn on a computer you can find my picture, my dog, my email, my office address in a blink.

This was proven a couple of days ago when a man I went to highschool with emailed me through a contact form on my work website. I spent the better half of an evening trying to remember who he was. When an email starts “hi, fellow grad, how are you?” I wasn’t certain the next line wasn’t going to contain something about freeing a cousin in Nigeria or enhancing sexual performance. I went to my senior yearbook and identified the guy, but seriously – the last words I spoke to him were during our commencement ceremony. So what prompts someone to look you up after 15 years of silence? I’ve yet to email him back. A co-worker warned me that he was looking to relive the best days of his life, which I’m still not sure what that has to do with me. Or it could be like the time a classmate contacted me and proceeding to give me too many details about her polyamorous relationship with a married man.

Sorry fellow grad, chalk me up as too chicken to call.

In Which I Employ The Asian Death Glare to Little Effect

When I was little, my mother disciplined me with a mixture of the silent treatment and what I have come to call The Asian Death Glare. The Asian Death Glare is also silent, but is of astonishing power. It conveys simultaneously and with ferocious intensity concepts such as: “You are dead to me right now except to say that you are dead would acknowledge that you once had existence. I do not acknowledge that, “and “The shame you should be experiencing is of such enormity that mere words cannot convey the scope of the vast wastes of shame through which your quivering spirit creeps.” Things like that.

Sometimes I try to employ the Asian Death Glare on the Trouble House in general. So far, it’s not very effective. I think that maybe my skills are only at comic book superhero sidekick levels. It would really take my mom to swoop in and level the place with her powers.

My lack of skill development in this area, I believe, explains why, during the world’s most ungracious apology for (minimally) hosting the party in which actual human blood was spattered on my car, I was unable to elicit genuine humility or chastened regret from the principle miscreant.

Although I did get a slightly damp $10.00 bill with which to pay for a car wash.

You know how in Batman Begins, a spiritually wounded Bruce Wayne has to retreat to the mountains to perfect his skills with the ninja Ra's al Ghul before he can come back to Gotham City to enforce justice? I’m pretty sure this is how it’s going to need to be with me and the Death Glare.

Only with my mom in the Ken Watanabe role.

--saifun

In Which I Learn That A Surprising Number of My Neighbors Wear Bathrobes

Early on Saturday morning, while I was standing on my back deck in peaceful contemplation of the awe-inspiring effects on the garden of rabbit poop compost (as one does), I noticed that the across the alley neighbor appeared to be taking pictures of my back fence, which at this time of year is covered in pink honeysuckle. How nice, I thought, he’s testing out a new camera and the honeysuckle looks nice enough to be his test subject.

A little later, I ventured into the alley myself, on a green recycling mission, to be met by across-the-alley neighbor #2, wearing her pajamas and Bathrobe Example #1 (grey flannel with dark red cuffs and collar). From her, I learned the unhappy truth: That she was in the alley to assess the damage to her fence and garage caused by bodies slamming around in a fight, an offshoot of a raucous party at The Trouble House.

My neighborhood is basically Beaver Cleaver land. Lots of retirees with front lawns like putting greens, and young families. And then there is The Trouble House, where there is always a pod of underemployed teenagers milling around, and the Head of the Family has an on-again, off-again relationship with a person with untreated bipolar disorder.

Good times.

Every few months, there is some kind of blow-up regarding various forms of unacceptable behavior emanating from The Trouble House.

While I’m talking to Grey Bathrobe, Bathrobe Examples Nos. 2 and 3 emerge – pale blue quilted cotton and greeny-grey chenille: The wifely half of the picture-taking neighbor, her baby (bathrobe-free) and her mom. Wifely Bathrobe points out to us that there is a *trail of blood* going out into the street, and, in fact there is blood spatter on my car, which is what her husband was photographing.

By the time the police officer arrives, we have been joined by Bathrobe Examples Nos. 4 and 5. Two ladies from down the street who have psychically divined that there is Something Interesting happening in the alley.

I really thought that getting out of bed and throwing on your bathrobe and then going outside your own house was something that only happened on TV. Like when Darren would go down the front walk on “Bewitched” to get the paper. I’m wondering how I can get more data.

Next time: “Hi, I’m sorry I got blood on your car.”

--Saifun