Today really started with high hopes, as do all days when you wake up early. You tell yourself, ‘I know, I’ll wake up an hour early, jump in the shower, hop on the road and get some extra work done, not to mention an hour of overtime pay!’. You liar. So like all of you, I set the alarm an hour early and woke up. Well, awake wasn’t exactly the term, I’d say more Academy Award Winning Performance of the walking dead (un-waking dead, heh, rim shot).
But then, big surprise, I wince and realize that I’m still tired. No, impossible! See, this is all my fault. I’ve been the best friend of a cold I can’t seem to shake, so I went to bed about 11:00pm. Yeah, ol’ granny who goes to bed after the ten o’clock news. Then I wake up around 3 am and pad through the house, trailing curious cats (“Hey look, Mom’s walking somewhere!”) to get some water and am on my way back to bed when the computer dings at me. Someone has come on-line and Instant Messaged me, and it bounced against my away message.
Here’ why I’m a stupid American: I put up an away message because I was, in fact, Away. That is the purpose of the message, to tell other people that I’m Away. The person who IM’d me now knows that I’m Away. No big deal, right? So of course, I’ve got to go over to the computer and see what’s going on, nevermind the fact that I’m still technically Away. And there, my friend has left a message acknowledging me being Away, so no guilt, no hassle, let’s all go on with our lives; yeah, right.
So of course I have to IM my friend and talk for a while, regardless of the sheer percentage of the conversation that’s pure typo’s (“so../..whats’ u@8?”), and her telling me every other line to go back to bed, which I finally do, then wake up two hours later confused about why I’m so tired.
Ok, cutting to the chase, and an hour of “Just another few minutes later,” I wake up for good at the time I would have anyway. Great, this is gonna be a pig-kisser of a day.
Then, the shower. Ah, the refreshing shower! I’m gonna leap in, crank up the steam, and leap out singing and Zestfully clean! Yeah, except for one of the cats shit in the tub then all look innocently the other way when questioned. So I bleach the tub and crawl into the shower, realizing that I’ve got a crescent moon sliver of soap left and that the disposable razor I bought (left my real razor in Boston) has rusted. Damn, must be why they call them ‘disposable’, huh, who’d have thunk?
Well, now I’m clean at least! So, what to wear? Hmm, what to wear? Sigh. I have two pairs of khaki jeans, one of which I wore yesterday and the other of which is clean. I have no other clean pants. Do I wear the clean pair or the dirty pair, regardless of the fact that they look absolutely the same and my co-workers will assume I’m just wearing the same pants for a second day? I chose the clean pair; hey, at least I’ll know the difference.
A blur later I’m sitting in the car on the Blue Route, realizing that I left my cell at home, charging. But, the care-free soul I am, I just laugh it off. “Ha ha!” I say, “I don’t need my cell, no one’s going to call me today anyway! I’m a free bird without my cell!” Then I pretend to be looking for something in the glove compartment because I shouted that jubilantly out loud with the windows open and now people are looking at me strangely.
Naturally, I get to work at 8:10 am, ten minutes late for writing 8 am on my timecard and early for a five minutes I won’t get paid for. And look! Some thoughtful co-worker decided to place a chart the size of the unabridged Bible (including all those wacky gospels written before the Apostles’ Dictate) on my seat, just so I don’t miss this throbbing eye-sore of a chart that needs to be copied. Oh, and I love the ‘ASAP’ written on there in pink highlighter, great touch, really.
I want Life Extra-Credit Points. I feel that I seriously deserve some. There’s no way I want to be at work today; I’m full of snot, hacking up phlem of a size and texture that would cause Steve McQueen to take a few steps back, and my throat’s so raw I was able to conveniently use it to buff-polish some shelves I’ve been working on. Yet, people keep coming over to my desk and handing me more work, smiling and saying empty corporate niceties like ‘Cheer up, it was a four-day week, you’re a day ahead!’, ‘I thought you had a bit too much free time, heh heh.”, and ‘If this isn’t done in an hour the entire Service Center will be sacrificed to appease Xeroxor, lord god of the copy-room.’
Why is this? I love how corporate persons have this mind-blowing LUST to make everything into some big friendly, haw haw tagline. My supervisor loves to say ‘Too cool!’. Let me further enlighten you to the fact that she’s pushing fifty and dresses like a lawyer. This is our usual conversation:
Her: “Can you fax that report to Pittsburgh?” (On a side note, I hope we have a Service Center there, and I’m not pushing the button and sending all these faxes to Merv Snooger, 559 Oak Lane, Pittsburgh, PA.)
Me: “I already did that yesterday before I left.”
Her: “Too cool!” (I have to seriously stifle an automatic reply of ‘Hey dude, no prob!’)
At this point, you may think that I’m making all this crap up, and shamelessly embellishing it using hyperbole. On the contrary, what I’m writing down is like nothing I thought up on the way home from work!
So not only did I get to work 20 minutes early, eat no lunch because of how much I need to get done in that half-hour, I’m also staying an hour late. Why, you ask? To get done my work that I haven’t done because I’m also doing the work of someone else who’s been transferred to the Claims Department until the Second Coming. It also dawns on me at about 5 pm, that haven’t eaten since dinner the night before and all I’ve had to drink was a can of MoreBucks™ double espresso (Thought behind this? Mmmm, caffeine, temp like caffeine! Temp plenty smart!)
But hey, it’s 5 o’clock, only an hour to go! Yes sir, I’m going to sit down and process my letters and get a whole bunch done so I can do the rest tomorrow and finally be caught up. Except for the fact that one of my co-workers believes that I’ve stayed late solely to help her UPS thousands of charts that she should have that morning. Bottom line (for those of you playing Corporate Word Bingo, go ahead and mark that one off), I got three letters done.
But in no time I’m home, greeted by amazingly apathetic cats (‘Oh, it’s you.’) and zonked out in front of the Internet trying to flirt via imoticons with some chick on-line. And slowly but surely it dawns on me that it’s almost 8 pm and I need to do laundry so I can have something at least presentable to wear tomorrow, when I have the Big Interview.
Heh, no problem! I’ll just throw some clothes in the wash and that’s that. Except for that I can’t find the detergent and after fifteen minutes of searching remember using the last of it the last time I did laundry and chuckling to myself, thinking, “It’s ok, I’ll surely remember to buy more detergent before I do wash again!” Eleven dollars in my pocket. Sigh. I’ll have to go to CVS because I saw Rich walking to 7-11 and I don’t have a good enough lie for why I’ve been avoiding him for two months.
Well, at least it’s a nice night. Yeah, warm and breezy, smells good like flowers and grass, a quick trip to the CVS won’t kill me. No, but trying to make that left turn to go less than a block to the CVS will, and then I wonder why I didn’t just spend the five minutes to walk because I’d have been there and back in the time it took waiting to turn. That and somewhere between coming home from work my friendly neighborhood cold has generated a fever. Really, a bunt-cake or greeting card would have been enough, thanks.
There’s some punks hanging out in front of the CVS, and one guy is perched on top of the pay-phone. I wonder what he’d have done if I’d walked up and reached between his legs for the phone, talking into his crotch? “Hello? Aw nuts! (rim shot #2) No one home.”
The trouble with CVS is that it’s too damn convenient for its own good. I walk into CVS knowing exactly what I want to buy and always walk out with a few extra things I hadn’t even known I’d needed. The isle I end up in describes itself as ‘Laundry Needs’. I think that’s a little extreme. I kinda want clean clothes, I don’t have a yearning, burning desire to DO MY LAUNDRY! YES YES! DO IT AGAIN! MMM, HARDER, CLEANER! DON’T FORGET TO ADD THE FABRIC SOFTNER! Ahem, sorry.
While I’m there (of course) I remember that I need soap and so move to that isle, passing by the shampoo. They have a bottle of deep blue sparkly shampoo called, get ready for this one, Hair Vibe! I can’t decide if that’s cutting edge or ever-so-Eighties. I find my soap and then realize that I have very little Scent left. Scent is important because I do a lot of physical labor involving piles of files and eventually sweat, and I’m afraid that I smell. Optimally, I’d like to smell Nice, but will also except Fruity. However, if I’m Fruity for the interview, will it send the wrong message? Too bad for me, Scent costs a lot at the CVS, so I settle for my detergent and soap.
Then this lady comes down the isle and she looks like the epitome of an old sour librarian, complete with the disapproving scowl. She stumbles for a second on a stock-rack left in the isle and shoots it a withering glance. I have to laugh, I really do, but I know that if I do, this lady will whip out her ruler and chase me back to the pharmacy or something. So I snerk and swallow, which of course sets off my throat and I stagger up to the register coughing like a derelict and clutching my detergent and soap. Heh, this guy must think I’m real clean, I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts on a HazMat suit to take my money.
On the way out I spy a container of Snax called ‘Cheese Mania’. No, really. Cheese Mania. There’s a brief mental image of Sigmund Freud sitting in a room with a man lying on the couch absolutely covered in cheese, wearing it for jewelry, a cheddar teddy-bear, ect. And then the Father of Psychoanalysis says, “Vell, eet seems you ave vhat professionals call Cheese Mania.”
My eleven dollars have now become $2 and a penny. Sigh. So I pack up a pair of black jeans, a gray tee-shirt and two random black tee shirts to be washed. It’s only when I get down to the laundry room that I see that in my brilliance the laundry detergent I’ve chosen is ALL with Double Bleaching Action! It will get my colors brighter and my whites whiter! Except for I’m washing black clothes. Will it make them blacker, or will it turn them white? Will the Japanese characters on the anime shirt turn into kanji? Throwing caution to the four winds I put the wash in.
A half-hour later it’s time to go back to the laundry room. However, I’m radiating the heat output of urban New York (Dec. – Feb.), so have opted for sandals, a teeshirt, and sports shorts. And then, don’t I just walk out into the hall in time to walk by Cute Neighbor and Her Friend. In the lovely glaring lights of the apartment building hall, it’s apparent I haven’t shaved my legs since the Carter Administration (hey, my razor’s rusting, cut me some slack). This is an unpleasant thing. It is not a turn-on, and I hurry down to the laundry room before someone tries to swat me, believing me to be a tarantula.
And when the time comes to put my clothes in the dryer, I squint. Are they lighter now? I can’t tell! The jeans come out faded. Great, I’m sure the Eighties look will go over perfectly at the Big Interview. Maybe I should pick up some Hair Vibe! for the maximum effect. ‘Ah well,’ I reassure myself as I slug some fun colored cold products and slink into bed, ‘It’ll all be different tomorrow! I’m gonna wake up an hour early...’
