Dear person who shall remain nameless,
I don’t really care what your opinion is about personal calls in the workplace. It is still incredibly, remarkably and ridiculously rude to express that opinion by invading my cubicle space every three minutes for fifteen minutes about trivial matters that can clearly wait. I am not a phone fanatic, I spend very little time socializing via phone - you can bloomin’ respect my personal space, kthxbye.
Sincerely,
Employee who shall also remain nameless.
I’m back from the hen party weekend - older, wiser and with more laugh lines. I’m back, though I’m not even remotely recovered from it. Could fall asleep right here, right now, given half a chance.
A good time was had by all, and I’m not sure I’ve laughed that hard, that often, in a very long time. I’d say more, but I’m involved in a pact of silence. Telling you about it would mean I’d be visited by three spirits tonight, each intent upon removing some portion of my person. And while there are some clearly non-essential bits of fat that I could lose, I’d infinitely prefer to have it done by a surgeon and not by vengeful spirits with an agenda and pointy claws they’re not afraid to use.
But I digress.
You remember that post I wrote before the weekend, about Rosebud’s tyrannical ways? No? Scroll down to the most recent post-past and give it a scan.
I’ll wait.
Up to speed? Good then.
Here’s the thing. I think Rosebud has been reading my blog on the sly. Not only am I sincerely offended that she’s snooping around without my knowledge, I’m really pissed that she’s been holding out on me vis-à-vis her ability to read.
You may scoff if you will. I know very well that most four-year olds are not yet at the full reading stage, and many are not yet fully versed in the Google fu required to be blog fans or even successful Internet navigators.
However. I *know* she reads my blog, because she goes out of her way to confound me with her insider knowledge.
That ‘tude, that overdrive, that crazy, drive-us-up-a-walledness she’s been displaying?
Gone. Disappeared. Vanished as though it never was.
I came home from my weekend to reports AND manifestations of my sweet girl returned. This is not to say that she’s devoid of all ‘tude. Oh no. She wouldn’t be herself if that had all vanished and I was presented with Stepford child. She still has her moments. But she was calm, settled, cuddly and generally happy.
Which was good, because I was so tired that I doubt I could’ve managed Rosebud-overdrive.
Still. I’m going to have to figure out how to use her secret readings to my advantage.
P.S. Yes, Rosebud. I’m totally on to you.
D’ya know, before Rosebud started school, Buddy and I were terribly excited. We fell asleep each night, with visions of sugar plummy tantrum elimination dancing in our heads.
See, for some odd reason, we had it in our heads that school would engage our Rosebud to such a degree that she’d arrive home, already nigh-onto-comatose from all the stimulation. All we’d have to do is cajole her into wakefulness long enough for her to eat dinner and have a little mellow family time before we removed the toothpicks propping her eyeballs open and let her sleep.
So tired and so satisfied from her time at school, we imagined, Rosebud would immediately cease any and all tantrums and whims and histrionics.
Two weeks in, we’re actually reminiscing fondly about the defcon 5 moments she used to have as a pre-schooler.
She’s invented a new level, you see. School appears to have taken our darling Rosebud, energetic little master of determination that she already was, and put her into overdrive.
I’m telling you, it’s like she’s got the four-year old equivalent of ‘roid rage.
She arrives home from school, usually having already unleashed the sound and fury at least once over having to leave school for the day. She then proceeds to have drama after drama after drama, on subjects as varied as “What’s for dinner” to “Wrong episode of show” to “what do you mean it’s bedtime”.
Throughout all of it, she seems to have lost the ability to be still for more than three seconds at a time. She talks constantly, moves constantly and already (in her own words) “fell in love” with a boy in her class.
Buddy picks the girls up from school (whilst I’m power-walking home for the exercise) and he reports that she’s most often holding court in front of at least half a dozen children when he arrives.
She is turbo, she is dynamo, she is energy incarnate.
And we’re exhausted. We’re waiting for her to suddenly realize that she’s beyond exhausted and somehow, some way, return to some level of life approaching normal.
I mean, honestly, this girl still makes us laugh hysterically. The things that emerge from her mouth are beyond pithy.
But still. I want to know when she’ll be coming down a notch. I also want to know, Intarweb . . . WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME THIS WAS COMING?
I can very clearly assess my mood this week judging by the nature of the posts. Terse, cranky and perhaps straying a little too far across that fine line between quirky and homicidal.
I’m going to try to peel off the layer of angst and paste up some kind of better attitude. It’s not as though I don’t have fun things to look forward to. For one, I’m heading out of the city tomorrow evening for a hen party weekend*.
This will mean poking around stores like Target (Tarjay in local parlance) for housewares, foodstuffs and clothing deals the likes of which cannot be found in my fair city/country. INSERT PLEA FOR TARGET IN CANADA HERE. It will mean eating at what passes for Mexican food in North Dakota, which is far nicer than what passes for Mexican food in Manitoba.
It will also mean darkening the doorstep of an actual bar. As I type this, I attempt to recall the last time I set foot in one. *rummages through cranium* Ah yes - it was over two years ago and I was dressed in beat up army pants and a red fleece top - reeking of woodsmoke.
This time, I will be part of the gaggle of girls who wander around announcing to all and sundry that THIS WOMAN HERE is getting married! It means getting tarted up for the bar ambience. It may even mean dancing.
DANCING?!?! At my age?!?!? Jeebus, I could break a hip or something!
I don’t know when I decided I was too old for these kinds of shenanigans, but I’m guessing I’m going to have to get over my bad self, and just let things bounce, jiggle, sway and flop as they must.
I’ll just have to figure out how to get blindfolds on everyone in the bar beforehand.
*Yes, I realize the proper term in North America is Stagette or Bachelorette party, but I like the UK hen party better. The former two are simply the guy version with the cutesy ette appended to them. A hen party? Well, that’s girl speak all the way, even if it’s of an avian nature.
Day 20
Is there ever going to be a time when the urge to shred human skin isn’t quite so near and bubbly to the surface?
ETA: Would you believe I’m having the “How many X does it take to change a lightbulb?” experience In Real Life? In my workplace? Where the lightbulbs used to roam free?
Sigh.
In no particular order, the reasons why this Monday has not been my favorite:
Once in a while, somebody says what’s on my mind way WAY better than I can.
I think he’s nailed this in many ways. Our generation has often struck me as one that is trying to come up with a different way of doing things. We’re not in some kind of cookie-cutter lockstep with each other. Some don’t want to be married to our careers, some don’t necessarily want children, some may not find that special someone who Jerry Maguire’s them.
But it seems as though we’re not really celebrating each other’s attempts to try something different. It’s like we’re all so busy rolling our own personal rocks up the mountains that all we can really do is grunt at each other. Sometimes those atonal noises are intended to be sympathy, but more often they’re meant competitively, or with an edge of “I wouldn’t move that particular rock of yours if it were the last one on the planet. Clearly, my rock is the only one worth moving, and the path I’ve chosen is the only sane one.”
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. Even as teens, our role models were disaffected teenaged individualists, all of whom wished to be an genuine original - a speshul snoflake. Leaving aside that this is already the case, biologically - it seems as though the only way many of us get to identify ourselves as a genuine original is to disparage, belittle and denounce the individuality of others around us.
Sigh.
I do so hate to trash my generation, since we’ve already taken the beats from every other generation, and have now suffered the consequences of several market downturns on top of being the guinea pigs for round the clock technology and news (and the yet to be determined effects of this). But when someone makes an astute and accurate observation, I’m not going to be the one to argue.
I’ll just sit and sigh. And contemplate the originality of both moves.
Eleven days and counting on the non-smoking thing.
But now, I’m finding that it’s not the cigarettes I’m missing. It’s the psychological aspects of it - specifically, the fact that having a smoke was a whole lot like a mini-reward for me. Finish a chore? Have a cigarette. Survive an argument with the boss? Out for a smoke break. And so on.
So, I’m missing that. This is somehow morphing into feeling like I have to be Adult and In Control all the time. I don’t know why - it’s not like my life is fundamentally different now than it was 11 days ago. But I feel different. I feel like I have no fun in my life. I feel like I have to keep a tight hold on myself so that I don’t lash out at anyone.
Then I start casting around for some kind of boost. Food’s a great one, except that I’ll absolutely lose my noodle if I gain twenty pounds because I quit something that’s bad for me.
Then I turn to shopping. But I can’t shop, because we have two kids and the budgets tight and that’s just how life is, suck it up and be dowdy, princess.
And then I think it wouldn’t be an issue, if only I could just stay the same fucking weight for more than three months at a stretch. I’m tired of both gaining and losing.
Basically, anything I can actually have to help me feel better is bad for me, and the things that aren’t bad for me are things I end up feeling like I’m being irresponsible for wanting.
And then I just feel bad.
It ain’t the tobacco that I miss. It’s the indulgence.
You know, I have a modest Facebook friends list. I have people on that list from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, college, online pals, current work folks, past work folks, friends of friends, random folks who decided to add me and I added back.
There are a lot of people from a lot of different places. I can only assume that’s the case with most people.
And then there are the people I went to middle school/parts of high school with.
They stump me.
Why? Because they all still hang out together.
No kidding.
All of them.
Still.
I don’t get it.
I mean, I guess I was a bit of a misfit out there. I was the only kid in my year who lived in an apartment. I wore a lot of eyeliner. I had very big hair. I was wordy and argumentative with teachers and generally an odd duck.
Truthfully, I never felt so well-adjusted as I did the day I started university. Except for the day I started college, when I got to meet some of the Freaks Like Me, and realized that I wasn’t all that starkly strange a character – just starkly strange for the conservative, ultra-socially conscious people I grew up with.
But the people I went to school with? Clearly, they liked where they grew up. Many of them are still there. And they all hang out with the same people.
I don’t get this. And since I don’t get this, I’m fascinated by it. I truly don’t understand how you can be friends with the very same people for 30 years. Not in the “oh, yeah – we see each other for our annual Remember When? Fest” way. I mean in the “these are my bestest friends and they’ve been my bestest friends since I can remember” way.
I don’t get it. Have they evolved? Have they changed? Are they more or less the same people now they were in high school? If so, how on earth did they pull that off? What the hell have they been doing these last decades?
Or maybe I’m being pessimistic. Maybe it’s entirely possible to have the same best friends for 30 years – that they’ve all grown together and learned together and formed the same opinions and views together all this time.
Me? I’ve adopted the philosophy that friends, for the most part, enter into your life and then, at some point in the future, exit it. That most people are there to contribute something meaningful to your life at the time the friendship flourishes, but that there are a very, very few who are meant to be there for the long haul. And that you won’t really know which is which until you’re at the end of the haul.
