Sick...

  Once more, I find myself sitting at this laptop sick... a cold this time. Thankfully, not flu. Just under the weather, drippy nose, sore throat, uproareous sneezing and a general malaise of fatigue and giddiness brought on by a mix of over the counter meds and constant and unrelenting anxiety.

 I've been wondering what I do or don't do that seems to constantly bring on these spates of illness. In the not too distant past, I've spent considerable amounts of cash (to me, I realise considerable is a relative term) on vitamin/mineral supplements of the gummy, one a day, women's health specific and antioxidant variety. A plethora of medicaments promising to eradicate fatigue, boost my immune system, my metabolism, and give me a shiner coat hair and skin. I admit I've been a sucker for every TV shill that promised to somehow change my life the better living through chemistry route.

If I really stopped long enough to think about it, I'd be downright angry at the fact that all these things have really given me, is colorful and expensive urine. But I am far too tired to be angry. I'm just flat tired, worn out with a slipping down kind of life.

Once, many years ago, I think I was about seven or eight or so, I got a rare and lingering cold with a cough that wouldn't go away. I say rare because I can count on the fingers of my left hand how many times I was sick in my childhood.  We just weren't. My parents expressed a broad contempt of the children in our neighbourhood who lived on Dimetapp and made constant visits to the doctor. We seemed to boast in our household how we 'never went to the doctor' as if it were some badge of honor. But that one time, I had a cough serious enough to warrant a rare trip to the doctor. It was exciting. I got a note to be picked up by my mother from school. A normally unthinkable thing..leaving school before the day was over. And it just got better from there, after the visit from the doctor, and a stop at Eckerd Drugs for a glass(!!) bottle of cough syrup that tasted like cherry and a bottle of the Pepto-Bismol pink antibotic that tasted like bubble gum, my mother made a totally out of character decision and instead of going back to school, we stopped off at a Showbiz Pizza (like Chuck E Cheese in the 80's) and I was allowed to have pizza and play some video games in the arcade.

I've always wondered in later years if it wasn't that break from the norm that really caused the cough to subside, more than the antibotics or the cough syrup (although being laced with codeine never hurts!) That maybe I just needed a break, some TLC, some one on one time with a parent having fun.

And now as my 38 year old self, I often wonder if my illnesses aren't my body forcing me to take a break. Maybe it's saying I need to eat pizza and play video games a little more instead of the flat out work that seems to be the tempo of my life.

The problem is that I am always subject to severe guilt about any appearance of 'shirking'. Even now as I sit here in my bed with a bedside table full of the over-the-counter medicaments my parents have such contempt for, I am trying to race the clock, trying to get better quickly because I am feeling such guilt at not being at my desk at Non-Company-I-Work-For-But-Am-Not-Really-One-Of-Them. Not being there for them to yell over to me, 'Schedule a Meeting for us in the Apex Conference Room', worrying about the 80-90+ emails or more that are just mounting up in my inboxes, my monthly reports that are unfinished and on and on it goes.

Non-Company itself is part of the problem. I guess it's having nothing to look forward to, except weeks and weeks of monotonous routine. The same spate of problems, following endless intractible, yet mostly meaningless procedures. The labyrinth of office politics. Never having a day of vacation, a day off, unless I am sick and that is unpaid.

I guess on a day like this, I would give anything for my Mom to show up with a get-out-of-work note and a trip to the arcade for some video games and pizza.

Everyday is a gift...

No, this title is not a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that three of my family members have died in the last 6 months or so. It's not really meant to be as touchy-feely as it sounds, but lately I've found, it is the truest thing I know.

One of my work colleagues is going through cancer, and when I say 'going through cancer', he IS. They've put him under the knife twice, subjected him to countless rounds of chemotherapy, and next week, he's undergoing radiation. The cancer has taken away body weight, his energy and made his voice as raspy as emery boards. What cancer hasn't taken away is his sense of humor, his devotion to Nascar and his unflagging optimism. Everytime I ask him tenatively, "How are you Rick?", without fail he'll say, "Well, I'm still on this side of the dirt!"

A few months earlier, I sat in the auditorium of a local high school attending a benefit for children afflicted by cancer and rare blood diseases. One by one, parents came and described...so matter of factly what they are up against, named diseases I'd never heard of, how many rounds of chemo their child had endured, how many procedures, how many sleepless nights in strange hospital rooms. It's a good thing the auditorium was darkened, there was barely a dry eye in the place. But again, what struck me was, not one of these parents or the children, children with shaved heads and twigs where arms and legs should be, ever lost their optimism. They enthused about the cancer society, they talked about upcoming birthdays, family vacations, detailed plans for 'after cancer' or 'for when they finally beat this cancer'. Not if...when.

A few years before that, I sat weeping on the phone as my mother told me in a bemused voice, that the diagnosis was in, 'it was cancer'. The words floored me with disbelief, 'my mother has cancer' (HAD) I could barely accept hearing it. I watched her go through the chemo, the fatigue, watched as the body weight dropped off to nothing leaving her looking more like a victim of Auschwitz than my mother. But through it all, she never accepted defeat, never gave way to pity, and only rarely did she even miss a day of work. Not if...when. When I beat this cancer.

It got me thinking. Really thinking.

If it isn't cancer, sometimes it's depression, it's fear, it's anxiety, it's living a life that is so centered around yourself that you forget, you forget to be grateful for the true gift that life is. 

I know...I did.

A few years ago, I dropped out of life. To think about where I was a few years ago is to try and remember a stranger. A person cloaked in fear. Like many 30-somethings, and I daresay many Gen X'ers, I experienced panic-attacks. And then one day I found that my entire life was one big panic attack and for some years after that, I literally hid at home and shut out life. There were years that I only went out for basic necessities. The details aren't all that important. You can pick up almost any medical journal, or Google 'agoraphobia' and you will have a portrait of my life and many other sufferers.

I gave into the defeat, into the pity, I wallowed in it until my fingers and toes were pruney. I rejected the gift that I had been given.

And then slowly but miraculously, the fear began to recede. It's a great story how that happened, but I'll leave that for another time, that isn't what this is about. I began to embrace life again, I went outside, I went out of my comfort zone, and for the first time in a long while, I realized I was okay. I embraced the gift of everyday.

Sometimes, the gift is, for me, driving in my little black Miata, with the radio up and singing with all of my might! It's me being at a Beach Boys concert in huge outdoor ampitheater as I was the other weekend packed with people and not being catatonic with fear. Sometimes I look at other people and almost feel bad for them because they have no idea how great liberty really is. You can't know what true liberation is if you've never been captive.

And while I do not equate recovering from agoraphobia with defeating cancer, what is true is both of them require an attitude shift. Researchers are now quite clear in their belief that attitude is a major contributing factor toward the recovery of disease, whether the disease be mental or physical.

Your life can change with your next breath.
I urge you, don't reject the gift.

Letting Go

I'm sitting here in Central Florida on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of February. Outside, it could not be more beautiful, it's balmy, the air is full of sunshine and breezes. The azaleas are blooming and the palm trees are as a high as an elephant's eye...It's the kind of weather Jimmy Buffet conjures up when he's 'wasting away in Margaritaville' or eating his 'cheeseburgers in paradise'. It's so damn perfect, it makes you blink.

And yet, I'm sitting inside here, and I'm trying to come to grips with the past. Trying to let go.

Something as seemingly innocuous as getting new carpets and I'm knee deep in a blue funk. Allow me to expound a bit. My current floor coverings would not look out of place in Bob and Emily's all mod-cons Chicago apartment from Season One of 'The Bob Newhart Show', we NEED new carpet. It's time, heck, it was time 20 years ago!

But new carpets mean emptying the closets.  Emptying bureaus, drawers...full of photos, books, old clothes, hmmm...a concert program that shows I saw Dwight Yoakam in 1993, 'I saw Dwight Yoakam?' In short my entire life.  And just like my life, it's overcrowded with memories.

Just as am I starting to obsess about becoming next week's subject of a whole new episode of Hoarders, it hits me hard. Grief. Once again, it jumps up and well, there's no other way to put it, bitch slaps me in the face. I find a photograph of me, and my grandparents and Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob died in December. Less the 48 hours later, my Grandma K. died.  It's a lot to absorb in such a small amount of time. You see, Uncle Bob was a big part of my life, he was the tangible link to my past. A great guy, you'd of liked him. Everybody did. He never met a stranger. You know those Saturday Night Car Shows, where folks drive their old Fords and Chevys' to Steak and Shake and everybody stands around and gawks? Well, there's always that old guy who speaks fluent Mopar, that old guy was probably my Uncle Bob. You want to know about stock colors, options, hemis, or mpg, he's your man.  He would reserve space in a fleabag of a motel a year in advance for Labor Day Car Shows as his summer vacation. That was my Uncle Bob, he never met an engine he didn't like. He was Wayne Carini on a budget.

He was the guy who told me that it really was like 'Happy Days' in the old days, a born racounteur who loved to talk about the good old days. 'Life really was that good,' he was forever telling me. A walking contradiction, a guy who stayed so locked in the past that he had his whole Florida mobile home decked out in 50's era photos with a jukebox and diner style napkins and straws on his 50's art-deco table, yet he loved the Clash, was a devotee of Craigslist and Ebay, and even had a Facebook account, I'm told.

I guess we have that in common Uncle Bob and I, that love of that past. The thing that makes it so hard to let go. You're afraid of losing the memories, because you feel you might forget the person or maybe who you are.

So I wrote this today sending it out into cyberspace, so I can let it go and the world will know he was here and I won't have to hoard some more junk I don't need so that I don't forget. 

I like to think he would like that. On this glorious Florida day he would have loved, probably at some car show or antique fair somewhere, I'm memoralizing him so I can let go.

Where Have I Been....

Some of you reading this title will think it a statement, some a question. And you'd be right on both accounts.

Where...have...I...been. The simple answer is of course, right here. My writer's voice though, has not been translated through this medium for several months. It's been dormant, elusive...hiding, depressed, ill and exhausted. Many times I called up this site and sat staring at a blank page, a blinking cursor a tiny island in a sea of white.

I beg your indulgence, this may meander a bit. After so many dry months, my thoughts are bursting through my typing fingers like a deluge during an August Florida thunderstorm where raindrops strike the scorched asphalt so hard and with such fury, steam rises up like a wraith.

I can claim many excuses for my absence. In the last of weeks of August, a very dear aunt lost her battle with cancer and I've been absolutely heartsick and depressed. It came as quite a shock, until the very last, my mind refused to accept the chance of defeat and I truly believed she would recover. The greatest compliment I could pay her is the fact that she had such a sweetness and gentleness of character that she put me in mind several times of my own grandmother. As the pattern often goes, grief turned to depression and depression turned to a stony and unrelenting anger. The childhood anger of, 'it isn't fair'.

I guess, 'it isn't fair' would be the recurring theme of my thought patterns of late...

I have hesitated so many times over what to write in these blogs, how deeply I would share, fearing that my true nature or inclinations would 'turn off' my readership. And then this morning, as is my wont, I had an epiphany...'do I really even have a readership'? So why the hell am I so afraid of offending 'them', if there is even a 'them'. So here goes...

I was very invested in this election. I am a 38 year old single, childless woman and an ardent conservative. I guess those words in of themselves are a contradiction. Despite all this, I've never supported a candidate to the extent I backed Mitt Romney. In my case, it's personal. If you've ever read this blog, you know about my nearly 4 year employment odyssey. Just the other day, I agreed to another 6 month contract extension of a nearly 2 1/2 year  (if you count my former assignment there in a different department) assignment at my company. So I can honestly say that the four years Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Sotero or whatever the hell his name is, has been the leader of this country have been the four worst of my entire life.

Yes, I know that I am amongst the fortunate who have a job at all. However, I had the audacity to hope that maybe just maybe if we elected different leadership in this country, that I might have the chance of securing a more permanent situation where my salary might be closer to the +25% higher pay rate I earned just 6 years ago! I am frequently told that I 'just have to accept that things are different now' 'companies just aren't going to hire anymore when they can contract out labor and save themselves tax and insurance costs'.

What I have been the most devastated about, is the loss of my hope, my inherent belief in the American Dream.  To get even more personal and uncomfortable, because of my salary losses, and lack of insurance, I've been living with my 65 year old father. And my father, because of the fact that he cannot exist on the small amount social security pays him, is still running after business and trying to work the hours that most 20 year olds would balk at! In the years where I should be looking after him, I can barely afford to keep myself.

I really thought Mitt Romney was the solution to this countries' woes. This is not about party, or sour grapes in anyway. It is about my inherent fears about the defecit we have incurred, the raiding of my father and mother's medicare and social security to fund Obamacare. It is the fact that as a country, we don't seem to mind when our leadership sits back and watches the assasination, and subsequent torture and sodomization of our Libyan Ambassador and the brave men of our armed forces who defied orders to try and come to his aid. When we just stay quiet and accept the status quo.

It is having to sit by and watch as these things happen while most of my fellow countrymen put more time and thought into drafting their fantasy football team and worry more about who is getting kicked off what reality show, than to think the fact that our country is drifting into economic penury, that our children are going to inherit an unsustainable crushing debt, that is if there is even an America left once the Islamic groups in this country one by one become radicalized and overcome our increasingly reduced military.

So many times, everything inside of me, is crying out, 'Why...Why don't you Care? People will say, 'I'm busy', or 'I am just one person, what can I do?' or worse, 'Oh, it's not really that bad...we've survived worse things'.  Then they marginalize you and make you feel that if you really express all of these 'gloomy' thoughts that you are some kind of a weirdo, an alarmist. Just another opininated wacko....now go away, 'the Steelers are about to meet the Patriots' and I've got $50.00 riding on this game.'

I hope that will still be a comfort when your employer pays you in rice noodles and a few paltry yuan, and you get on your bicycle and peddle to your government apartment to watch state sponsored football which by the way...is what you call soccer...

Where I've been...the buses are afraid to run.

Against the Grain

So, a couple of things. First of all, where have I been?

Well...I can't tell you the number of times I have written a truly great, possibly life-changing blog piece in my head on my drive home from work, only to have it dissolve sometime between eating dinner and zoning out in front of the television watching re-runs of 'The Big Bang Theory!

Secondly, I don't like the new Google Blogger format. I truly detest Google Chrome and I miss my big template area.  I am one of 'those' people. You know, the ones that are frantically searching the net for discontinued products because they have separation 'issues'.  I still haven't completely recovered from the loss of Clearly Canadian Loganberry flavored water sometime in the mid 1990's. In short, I intensely dislike change. You know how you develop a liking for a certain pen... You become attached to the heft of it, the way it feels against your fingers and the way the ink comes out properly and evenly. You live in fear of someone 'accidentally' picking it up and losing it.  That's the way I felt about the previous 'Blogger' template, and frankly this new format makes me uneasy.

Here is one of those blog pieces that I mentally wrote somewhere between Lake Mary, Longwood and Winter Springs Florida:

As the aunt of several nieces and nephews, I've definitely been to a few youth sporting events in my day. Full disclosure is, having no children of my own, makes it less easy to come up with excuses as to why I can't come. I mean, I've gotten better at it, but there have been times where I've been forced to load up on vitamins, pack the car with bottles of water, sunscreen and spend the better part of a Saturday morning or afternoon watching kids play sports of some kind.

There is a kind of pleasure in being only a spectator and not actually a parent anxiously watching my progeny to be sure that they behave correctly and hoping against hope they will actually be a soccer, softball, basketball, or pee-wee football prodigy. Of course being related to this kid makes me hope that they won't disgrace the family name in anyway, but other than that, to use a British expression I love, 'I could give a toss!'

You can always tell the kids that are natural athletes by simply watching the demeanor of their parents, they're the relaxed ones, leisurely seated in low slung net lawn chairs with their bottle of water neatly held by the built in cup holder. Their whole expression seems to say, 'I am the mother or father of the next LeBron, Kobe, Beckham or Ronaldo and I know it!' They barely even seem to break a sweat in humid Florida summer weather.

Then there are the other parents... They're easy to spot. They are the ones who never actually sit down. They walk, they pace, stalking the sideline of the soccer field (or football pitch depending on where you come from) they are the ones hovering around the vestiges of the fence that divides the baseball diamond from the bleachers, eyes rolled back in their head, flecks of foam at the corner of their mouths shouting out encouragement and or abuse in equal quantities because their kid is...not...a natural athlete. They are the ones that fall apart when their kid is benched, the ones you see 'coaching' their kid on the walk from the parking lot to the field and then on the walk of shame back to the car at the end of the game.

Sometimes I wonder what actually goes on in their minds...Do they think that the kid will develop some kind of sporting prowess purely on the strength of their will for them to be athletes? I ponder what it is in our culture all of the sudden that has taken kids' activities from fun family leisure time to a breeding ground for the former NBA, NFL, or MLS stars of tomorrow. And don't even get me started on the scholarship hunters..

Some of these kids simply aren't cut out for it.

I know. I was, am one.

I guess the first stirrings that I didn't actually have any sort of hand eye coordination came when I was in the 5th grade and the kids began calling me 'weedwacker' when I came up to bat. I just never could make any sort of connection with the bat to the ball.  When I was fourteen I developed a mania for tennis, how much of it was due to my crush on Andre Agassi is still a matter of conjecture, but I tried, oh Lord how I tried! I would force myself out on the court in 90 degree temperatures and practice serves over and over again until I became dizzy with heatstroke. But the fact remains, no matter how much I practiced, I just wasn't good. By comparison, my younger sister (one of the natural athlete types) would take my racket and hit stroke after stroke without error and she never even practiced!

The truth is, I was out of high school, and a young adult before I found my true passion. Looking back, I guess I was always going against the grain. I found the love of my 'recreational' life when I was eighteen. Finally ignoring the critics, realising that I was never going to fulfill the societal norms, I did something that I had always wanted to do. I stepped out onto a polished parquet floor in a pair of high-heeled shoes and for the first time in my life, my body did what I asked it to do when I asked it to do it. I didn't have to struggle like I always had with team sports, my feet just naturally seemed to feel and understand music. While it's a fact that you will always have to learn the rules and shibboleths of any sort of 'game' or skill,  it's wonderful when you actually WANT to learn and feel that you can.

Ballroom dancing isn't exactly the easiest or most popular pursuit from a social standpoint. When I got my first 'real' office job and was allowed to decorate and put my own stamp on my work space, while the other ladies in my office decked their walls with racy photos of Brad Pitt and male Chippendale dancer calendars, I had a black and white photo of Fred Astaire in his top hat and tails on mine. I've never dated a male who actually would partner me in a dance. Many people outright laughed at me when I expressed my love for ballroom dance. I once mentioned to an office 'friend' that I was excited about the prospect of Ballroom becoming a Olympic sanctioned event, and she snorted derisively and said, "No way, won't happen!" "Believe me no one wants to sit around and watch ballroom dancing, it's as exciting as watching paint dry!" I have to admit experiencing the slightest bit of schadenfreude while watching 'Dancing with the Stars' dominate the TV ratings over the last few years. Apparently, many people enjoy watching ballroom dance just like I thought they would.

No, it's never easy going against the grain. But it's worth it. Not every kid can be an athlete, but everyone has a talent. I bet many of those kids taking the 'walk of shame' with their incensed parent back to the car after a lost game where they failed to be the athlete their parent demands they should be, are natural scientists, or future editors, fantastic chefs, artists, geniuses who can actually work with the sophisticated equipment on today's new automobiles. Some of them may even be ballroom dancers.

But none of them will know, if they aren't allowed to go against the grain.  Which brings me to the third reason you haven't been seeing my blog as frequently.

I've been out ballroom dancing...

Bob Dylan Can't Sing and Other Musings on Life

I have the flu. A really yucky life-sucking, strength-sapping kind of sick. The best analogy I can offer is when Michael J. 'Crocodile' Dundee's character explains to city-slicker Sue Charlton about the croc's attempt to take him down for a 'death roll'. I sort of feel like that, although instead of wrestling with an 8 foot reptile trying to drown me, I am dealing with invisible to the naked eye 'germs' who want to wrestle me down through fatigue, ache, a nose that runs like a sieve and a hacky cough that makes me sound like a lifetime pack-a-day smoker.

As a result of said flu, I've been forced to curtail my regular life and confined to my bed for several days. I don't do well an invalid. It's not like I don't enjoy being idle if reading a book, but for some reason sickness and book reading seem to be mutually exclusive, for one thing my eyes (okay my whole face) burn and water excessively, for another it's rather hard to hold a book while simultaneously clutching a box of Kleenex and lastly the explosive sneezing rather upsets my reading materials, not to mention my cats who tend to glare at me expressively while muttering some strange feline epithets as they scurry away from the 'blast zone'.

This and the fact that daytime TV is an abyss of spectacularly bad reality TV, prime-time missteps, and endless classic TV re-runs left me with a lot of time to do nothing other than be miserable and think. The following is sort of an extemporaneous collection of these thoughts. I offer this caveat, these are the musings of a diseased, distraught and extremely bored individual. Read at your own peril. I apologize for nothing:

1. Bob Dylan CANNOT Sing. I mean, think about it. Does anyone actually enjoy that nasally whining incoherent mumbling of lyrics? It's sort of like Stephen Hawking with a hair lip. I'll never deny that he isn't a fantastic songwriter, I just wish he would get someone else to sing.

2. Why is that when reminiscing about music, someone always has to get the upper hand in terms of age or lack thereof, for example I say, "Oh, I love Tears for Fears!' I remember Songs from the Big Chair came out I was in the 6th grade!" Whereupon my companion will invariably say, "Oh that's nothing, I was a junior in High School!"  What's the one-upmanship angle here? Am I supposed to reply by saying, 'Man, you really ARE old!' How does that benefit either of us? The secondary aspect is when I say, "Oh wow, Bryan Adam's 'Everything I do" (atrocious Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie theme song) I remember I was working at First Federal, my first 'real' job when that came out!" To which my companion says, "Really, that was my kindergarten graduation song!" The implication here being that I AM old. Either way you look at it, someone is old or too young. People do yourself a favor and just say no to music reminisces, any way you slice it, it doesn't turn out well.

3. I've been in a decline ever since NBC finally cancelled Chuck. In what kind of sick twisted world do we live in, where a show like Chuck is sacrificed to television oblivion when 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' goes into it's 800th season? I weep for the future of this country.

4. When I am creating a spreadsheet in Excel, why does the software constantly prompt me to ask, 'do I really want to do x, have I thought about y? I  already know Microsoft is probably smarter than me, but does it have to be so blatant about it? And lastly, if I want to do x, I'm doing it! Even if it does mean that all my formulas will be corrupted with circular references that end up with the dreaded ? or No Value! To hell with x, I'm doing Y! Take that Microsoft! Yeah, I know...I'm sad.

5. American Pickers...(yeah, told you I had time on my hands) why is it that when the 'Pickers' go into some Deliverance-esque town, pull into the home of a red-neck Miss Havisham with the requisite El-Camino up on blocks and paw through the garage that time forgot of someone whose family tree definitely does not fork, upon finding the treasured item(s), 'Uncle Jed' who probably forgot that he even had his brother/uncle's 1948 'Sunoco' Service Station sign begins to act like one of the Keno brothers from Antiques Roadshow when they begin to haggle over price?  For that matter, have the inhabitants of these residences no shame that they are dragging television crews through homes that could be on next week's all new episode of 'Hoarders'? Hmm...here's a thought, why don't they just combine the shows? Check out next week's all new episode where Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz stumble over Miss Jessa's prized collection of 20,000 circa 1985 Domino's plastic tumblers featuring the 'Noid, or her 800-piece collection of 1977 era Tupperware. Mike and Frank could bargain with her intervention counselor over what kind of fee per hour of therapy they could negotiate in exchange for her 10,000 never-read paperback Harlequin romance novels.

6. Duck Dynasty, are we really that hard up for entertainment in this country we find it necessary to follow the exploits of a family that looks like they were plucked out of the extras cast of Coal Miner's Daughter as they find bone-headed ways to spend the million-dollar fortune made from the sale of duck calls? Also is there some kind of oath they've taken that expressly forbids the cutting or trimming of one's hair and or scrofulous beard?

7. Dallas is coming back to TV. Really? Wasn't there enough suspension of reality in 1985 when it was suggested that apparently Pam 'just dreamt' Bobby's death?  To say nothing of resurrecting the cast of a show that went off the air in 1989 and highlights the exploits of Big Oil which thanks to the recession, the drilling moratorium courtesy of the Obama administration and the BP Gulf Oil disaster really isn't so 'Big' anymore. I don't see this becoming 'Must See' TV!

8. What has happened in our culture that suddenly we find eating from a 'Food Truck' so chic where just about 3-4 years ago, people who ate from 'roach coaches' or 'hot dog' stands were mostly blue collar workers and held in mild contempt for being too lazy to 'pack a lunch', are now being patronized by upwardly mobile Manhattanites clutching $4,000 titanium briefcases clad in Manolo Blahniks? How did this happen? Just wondering.

9. Having recently begun a program of 'healthy eating' and exercise myself, I've a theory people that have success in 'dieting' haven't been successful due to any great amount of willpower or self-denial, it's that they have become so bored by the 3-4 things you are actually encouraged to eat, they simply quit eating period. So true dieters aren't really skinny by choice, they've just given up on finding anything good to eat.  For a true life example of this, see Victoria 'Posh Spice' Beckham.

10. Why does the cleaning crew at work insist on moving my wastepaper basket to a new location very day? Is it that they feel I'm too structured and need to break out of my rut? Or is it that they have learnt that the spot I replace it in every day is situated in just such a way that I know the exact trajectory my 80 cal granola bar wrapper has to travel in order for me to dunk it into the wastepaper basket without swiveling my chair and they are just messing with me? It's the things that make you go hmm...

Well kids, that's what I've mostly been thinking, sad but true. No lofty ideals on how to save the world or the planet or even the outcome of the next presidential election, but a sad mash-up of TV and culture musings. You can have contempt for me, you can argue with me, you can delete me, but I won't apologize or change my mind...

And now back to making sure that Kleenex and the pharmaceutical industries have a solid third quarter. Doing my part to aid the economic recovery (snicker)....

Welcome to the Jungle

Yes, it's really me. I'm back. What can I say except a full-time job, my very own box set of 'Thin Man' movies and Downton Abbey have kept me quite busy.

And well....sometimes I'm just lazy...there is that.

For any of you who actually have familiarity with my blog, you know that a lot of the impetus for my writing comes as a result of being a Gen X'er in this present world, this economy, the realities of life in post-prosperity America. On that front, I do have some good and some not so good news. The good news is that my contract has been renewed for another 6 months, and the bad news is that my company still isn't really hiring. I have a job of sorts, as long as I don't mind having no vacation, no medical coverage and that when the office closes for holidays, while a day off for them means a holiday with pay, a holiday for me means a forced day off with no compensation. The new reality is just being glad you have a job at all. And the truth is, sometimes the justice-seeking part of me burns with resentment when I am frequently reminded by others of that very fact when I dare to wish that I could actually have a real vacation, or dental work or the just the right to have a real email address, not just jane.doe@noncompanyIworkfor.us.companyIworkfor.com, which shows up on emails as JaneDoe/noncompanyIworkforbutamnotreallyoneofthem.com. I am oh-so-glibly chastened, 'just be glad you have a job at all'.

Corporate life or as I think of it, 'navigating the cubicle jungle' is still somewhat of a new experience to me. Until this assignment, I nearly always worked in a one-man office reporting directly to my 'boss' who frequently was the owner, supervisor, manager, CEO and Jedi-Master all in one. There are myriad things that surprise, perplex or just plain exasperate me.

Take meetings. In my former life meetings were terse 20-30 minute affairs where I sat at a tiny table with the boss and compared notes. Meetings at 'NoncompanyIworkforbutamnotreallyoneofthem' are lengthy 2-3 hour affairs held in chilly conference rooms with long wide tables and tall-backed chairs. It's very much like a meeting of the 'Justice League' but instead of Superman, WonderWoman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman, and the Green Hornet, you have Managerman, MiddleManagementSupervisorMan, UptightEngineerman, LaidBackEngineeringSupervisorGuy, BrilliantButComplexEngineerman, ResignedLookingCustomerServiceRep, HyperActiveMarketingMan, QualityControlManagerman and Secretarygirl (that would be yours truly). There are Powerpoint presentations instead of holographs of evil henchmen, but it's mostly the same principle, we are all supposedly fighting against evil, in our case the crime of improperly constructed electrical equipment. One of these 'conference rooms' it's shiny nameplate next to the door tells us, is 'The War Room', no really, I'm not kidding. Some of them have kitschy titles with management-lingo principles, 'Synergy', 'Apex'. When I breeze by them on my way to the break room or in pursuit of some type of errand, I tend to think of the parking lots at Disney World and the trams with unholy cheerful Disney staffers exhorting us to "Watch our step as we depart if we are parked in Goofy, or Sleepy or Doc".
"As you depart, please mind the door 'NoncompanyIworkforbutamnotreallyoneofthem' staffers as you exit 'Fusion' bound for 'Break Room', 'Factory Floor' or 'Cubicle Lane 30', okay, we're clear!"

It's a weird world, of people wedged into cubicle offices tensely staring at spreadsheets on screens, there's a whole cosmology of office workers I never dreamed existed until now. The aftermarket parts unit are such a tighly woven group, they all go to get coffee at one time, reminding me of 'lining up to go to P.E. class circa 1983'.  It's stunningly like school in that there are cliques even though these are adult workers, some middle aged. You have project engineers which I tend to classify as PPO's, or 'perpetually pissed off'. Phrases frequently uttered by these creatures are generally something along the lines of, and I quote, "I don't give a @#$% how it gets there as long as it gets there BY THE END OF THE WEEK!" They are always fond of using the phrase 'bottom line' and get some sort of sadistic pleasure in berating underlings by asking them over and over and over again, "NOW do you understand". This guy tends to walk with incredibly tight hunched over shoulders, a frown and a furrowed brow. This is not the guy you want to try and make small talk with while waiting your turn at the coffee machine.  This next group I want to preface by saying it is not in the least intended as racial,  'The Incredibly Pretty Hispanic Woman's Group', you can't hang with them if you don't own a pair of 8" stillettos, gold hoop earrings and speak fluent Spanglish. They tend to eat lots of salad, I haven't quite worked out why, but I think the principle is something along the lines of if you have to balance all of your body weight on a 8 inch spike, you don't want to be top-heavy.

Guy on the other side of my cubicle could have his own lonely hearts column, his cube is a haven for people who are having relational or childcare problems. Until now, I never knew what gossips' men are or that they nearly equal women in the drama-queen race. Many times while being forced to endure (that's the thing about cubes, the acoustics are incredible which is why there are no real secrets in offices unless someone's jaw is wired shut) 30 record-breaking minutes of whinging and whining about 'his girlfriend who doesn't understand _________fill in the blank'; I feel like vaulting over the cube wall, slapping his face (a'la Cher in 'Moonstruck') and shouting, "Man up, Nancy!"

I guess that's the thing about office life, it's the quirky stuff that helps us endure a life where cubicles are so plentiful, you nearly need street signs. I personally live on the 'Island of Lost Toys Boulevard' a block away from 'Tech Avenue' and two blocks up from "PPO Lane'. A place where you need a compass to navigate your way to the printer at which your prints invariably are jammed or are not waiting at all as the machine impatiently beeps at you as if to say, 'Hey man, I am sooo out of paper!'. Maybe it explains why two ladies a block over on Tech Avenue feel the need to rehash 'The Bachelor', 'Jersey Shore' and 'Dancing with the Stars' in such loud excruiating detail. Or why some days when guy in the cube directly across from mine types so softly, it seems as if he is just 'tickling' the keys that I become so annoyed I 'retaliate' by banging the keys on mine as as loudly as I can possibly manage.

At any rate, it's never boring. On one of my very first Justice League meetings, guy in the chair across from me, actually dropped off and began snoring, softly yes, but definitely snoring. I was speechless with worry and kept wishing I could nudge him or something. I was stupified at the fact that everyone in the meeting was engrossed in his or her Crackberry/I-Phone/Droid device or tapping away on a laptop.  Even more perplexing was the intricate game of musical chairs that seemed to be constantly running as 1 or 2 persons would just simply walk out of the meeting to 'take a call'. It reminded me very much of the Mad Teaparty in Alice in Wonderland. I kept waiting for someone to shout out, "Off with his/her head". Fast forward six months and if the Plant Manager himself walked in dressed as the White Queen, I probably wouldn't even look up from my laptop.

Yep, life in the cubicle jungle...what a strange, strange trip it has been.
Welcome to the Jungle Indeed.