She Says "Blugh"

September 19th

Stress reaction.  Anger.  Slow going and slow coming down.  But how long will it take?

Set off easily.  I hate that.

I need a day off.

Or ten.

I know they're coming but now definitely feeling they're much needed.


September 26th

Much calmer after my mini vacation, but still -- the edginess comes quickly and strong.  I don't know how long it will take to be able to stay calm, but I would really like it right about now.

[...]

It may take longer than four days of vacation to fully expunge work from the system, to get it out of the mind, the blood.

It may take something more like a week.

TSA-holes

May 31, 2012
En route to Long Beach

As I'm going through security, you know -- taking all my clothes off, removing my shoes, emptying my pockets,  taking a breathalyzer, trying not to lose track of my stuff, pulling out all the plastic bags and tiny bottles of liquid in a frenzy --

TSA Agent:  So I see you've got a thing for chickens... [referring to my hen tattoo]
Me:  Heh!  Yes, I do.
TSA Agent:  How many do you have?
Me:  Just one.
TSA Agent:  You know chickens get lonely...
Me:  <laugh politely>
TSA Agent:  [looking at me intensely] You know chickens get ... LONELY ...


Oh god. Did that really just happen?

It's Difficult to Hide in a Room Full of People

What if we started telling people to their faces exactly what we thought of them?  What would happen?

You are as much an insufferable douchebag as your husband, and I find it delightfully ironic!

I wonder if people would laugh.  I feel like they would laugh.  But I don’t think they’d take it seriously.

The sight of your face makes me want to break things into little pieces and then stab you in the toes with them.

Well, maybe they would.  But if someone told me to my face what they truly thought of me, I could see myself laughing.  It would be a very unexpected reaction for me, but I could see it.

Can you be more nonexistent, please?  You being here is messing up my emotional shui.

Well, maybe not.  I take everything too seriously.

I wish I knew when you were joking and when you weren’t.  Then I could laugh when you are and completely ignore you when you’re not.

Do you ever feel like your voice evaporates as soon as it comes out of your mouth?

Can you call this person because I want to make sure this is correct.  

But it is correct.

But I need to know for sure.  Can you please call them?

It looks like it’s correct to me.

But it could be incorrect.  Can you just find out for me please?  I just need to know if it’s correct for sure.

But it looks correct.

Or like you’re wandering through your life like it doesn’t belong to you?

Can you be quieter, please?

Can you leave the room so I can talk at my normal volume, please?

Do you ever have days where you not only wish everyone would disappear for a minute, but you yourself would disappear?

I’m sorry, your whisper is still much too loud.  I realize you’re trying to help, but it’s completely ineffective.

I still feel like I can’t say what I want to people.  Other people put people in their place.  Why can’t I?  Why don’t I have balls?  Why did my balls not grow in?

I had a dream that Werther’s Original candies were laced with toxic chemicals.  Maybe it’s a sign.

Maybe you should build yourself a cubicle.

Good idea.

Today Must Be Irritating Day

I’m not much for venting about stuff, but today it is essential.  An observation: It must be built in to human programming to comment on the temperature, not limited to the weather, or in a room, or of our own bodies, or how we feel in terms of temperature, but primarily so.

It’s hot.

It’s cold.

It’s too cold.

I’m cold.

It’s cold in here.

It’s warm in here.

I’m suffocating in here.

I’m a sunlight person.

My feet are cold.

My toes are ice cubes.

I’m sweating balls in here.

My face is hot.

Your mom is hot.

Your mom like sweaty balls.

It’s too hot in here to think that’s funny.

I’m freezing and you don’t even care.

So that means I’m not a “sunlight person?”

It’s dark and cold in this office.

I like working in a cave.

I hate how you’re cold all the time.

Your mom hates it too.

I happen to be of the School that thinks being slightly on the cool side is far better than slightly on the warm.  I can always put something else on, drink something warm and yummy, walk around and generate heat.  But if I’m too hot, I’m just too bloody hot.  And when I get hot I get mad, and if I’m too hot and mad and there’s lots of computing going on, then it’s sort of over at that point.  So nevermind the fact that being in a cool environment should always trump being in a hot one, I feel no pangs of sympathy if anyone in my vicinity is “too cold” (whereas in most situations, I usually feel slight pangs if not hefty pangs of sympathy.  I am even capable of empathy, too, but it depends where I am in my cycle).  I truly do not care about your fingers, your toes, your face or how sucky your space heater is.  Wear something wool, put on a scarf, and shush.  Running one’s mouth does not, in fact, generate heat like regular running does, which perhaps explains why it happens so frequently.  And that means you can STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT because it’s NOT MAKING YOU WARMER.

Other things that mystify me:

• Why the heater in the office bathroom runs at full blast for about an hour in the morning and at no other time of day.  Have you ever tried to poo with a strong hot blast of air pouring over you?  It’s strangely challenging.
• Why the person in the next parking space at my building insists on parking diagonally in their space.  Technically legal, but SO. IRRITATING.  I guess they’ll get the hint by the dings in their door.
• Why coffee = happiness (not that it matters…)

Today, to combat the arctic cold, I am wearing the best thing in the world: a cerulean blue and hunter green wool Pendleton shirt with pearly buttons.  It was gifted to Brother #2 by our Stepdad along with a few others in different colors.  They’re “vintage” because he wore them in the seventies during his cop days when his mustache grew to Tom Selleck proportions and he’d bust pervs in Church parking lots.

Okay, that’s a lie.  His mustache STILL measures at Tom Selleck proportions.

When Brother “got too fat” for the shirts (which really means nothing.  Even when he was running half marathons every other day and sustaining himself on one apple per day and that’s it, he’d say he was “too fat” for his jogging shorts) he passed them on to me and now, HOO-rah, I get to wear them on delightfully brisk days like today.  It’s a good thing I was wearing it, because I might have frozen to death in the frigid sixty-eight degrees in my office before we got the heater fixed.