The Dreaded Lurgy

I just wanted to provide an update on the would-be maker of the Frankenpanties. Apparently she had quite a heavy cold over the Christmas holidays but rather than disappoint her elderly guests, she, with her usual 'war-baby' reserve, soldiered on to make a wonderful dinner for everyone. In a less than traditional move, so as not to infect her guests, she chose to serve the entire Christmas dinner wearing a surgical mask. Classic.

Inter-Office Envelopes

At work I frequently use those inter-office envelopes. You know the kind, always orange in color with the lines to insert 'from' and 'to' etc etc. Well, every so often I pull one from my stack and it won't have been used for almost ten years. The one I have in my hand right now was last used on April 20th, the year 2000, and yet it is in pristine condition. How does this happen? Where has this envelope been for the last decade? Did it go on a really long sabbatical? Why is it back? Is is Jesus? Who found it and did they wonder where it had been for the last ten years? This stuff boggles my mind, it really does.

A Bathroom Stall Door

For the past couple of days I had been repeatedly bumping into the door of one of the bathroom stalls at work. I had started to become concerned that maybe there was something wrong with my brain. Why did I keep wanting to push through a door that I should be pulling?

I eventually learned that property management had changed the door from push to pull, but this didn't become clear until after a good handful of accomplished, intelligent young women had seriously started to worry about their own sanity and coordination. How easily we doubt ourselves.

Frankenpanties

I love my nana. She's wonderful in every way that a Grandma should be. She bakes pies, makes jams, and sews and knits clothes that don't deserve to be incinerated alongside fringed gloves and harem pants. Granted, she does insist on bringing her special brand of "Candies as Hard as Concrete" to the movies (she must be the exception that proves the rule that all Brits have bad teeth), and jabbing you in the ribs repeatedly, just in case her deafeningly whispered inappropriate comment about a possibly "fruity" character on screen didn't catch your attention, but, I do love her dearly because every so often she is a gem of comedy genius.

I want to say about seven years ago, my nana and grandpa decided that it was time they join the civilized world and get a cell phone. It was second hand, pay-as-you-go, and expressly for emergency purposes only, much like the similarly aged Kendall Mint Cake that sits in the glove-compartment of their car should they ever get stranded on a mountain. As far as I know the phone sits in the pantry switched off and is only touched, although diligently so, once every six months when my grandpa switches it on and then off again to make sure it still works. The only other time it has seen the light of day is when they first got it and my mum, delighting at the idea of not being the least tech-savvy person in the room, insisted that she show them the wonder of text messages. My nana, my mum and I squeezed onto a two-seater sofa with me in the middle. My mum positioned nana with her new phone in her palms, whipped out her own and typed in (with one fore-finger I might add, not the more experienced two-thumb technique) the word "Hello". Nana's phone chirped that a text had been received. Mum beamed while nana stared perplexed. I, slightly exasperated, opened up the text message so that the screen on nana's lap shone up at her the word "Hello". Nana put the phone to her ear and said, very politely, "Hello?"

More recently, I received a package of underwear from my nana. They were in lieu of a chocolate Easter egg which naturally couldn't be mailed. Others may think it strange that I periodically get bras and panties from my 73 year old nana but they are always very pretty and nearly always fit. Given the exorbitant prices they charge for underwear in places like Victoria's Secret, I'm happy to keep riding this silky, lace-trimmed gravy train. This time they were lovely, bright, Easter colors, but for the first time, and quite surprisingly, the package included thongs. Lacy, racy thongs. A note from my Nana contained within the package explained that she hadn't intended on buying me thongs, she had picked them up inadvertently and that while she deemed them "quite improper," my mum and aunt had insisted that she send them as I would certainly like and use them...no doubt in my second job as a streetwalker. It wasn't until I asked my mum about it that it became clear just how upset Nana was by the thongs. Apparently, in a hushed (which as you learned in the first paragraph is anything but) and very earnest discussion, supposedly out of ear shot of the men, my nana had revealed the offending garments to my mum and aunt, and explained that she was going to, very industriously, take the two pairs of thongs, cut them up and sew the two front portions together to make one whole pair of panties. As I said, my mum's protestations that I would be fine with the thongs and indeed find them preferable to an "envelope of butchered underwear," won out, but I can't help feeling I would have enjoyed the Frankenpanties more.

Uh-oh

I have just joined Twitter. I now have four avenues by which I can impart my "tenacious spirit and wit" (yes, air quotations are applicable). It began with Myspace, quickly followed by Facebook - remember the days when it was just these two scrapping it out in playground? Myspace was the working-class Oasis to Facebook's Blur? Ahhh, good times - then there was the assault of requests to join Bebo, Meebo, Whereuat? (or something like that) that were duly deflected, with a huge dash of guilt I might add - most of these requests were from my beloved younger cousin, it's just that seriously, how many ways do you need to be able to tell me that "u r hedin down da shops wiv Luci"?? Then I joined Blogger with the idea that at least this was an environment where I would feel compelled to write something of value, or at least more worth than a status update that informs my 120 friends that I am, oh I don't know, feeling gassy, or grouchy, or both. Anyone who knows me could make an educated guess that this would be the case. The fact that in the time it would take to grow a human being, I have failed to write a jot, surely demonstrates that I have no business joining any more of these cyber...things, but no, I now Myspace, Facebook, Blog (albeit intermittantly) and Twitter and honestly my anxieties are mounting. How do I remember all of these logins and passwords? For 26 years my verb closet consisted of walk, sleep, breath, eat, drink and occasionally a few of their more active relations, swim and jog; now I have to find room for blog, twitter and cyber-stalk? Wil I hav 2 start masacarin da english lang 2 fit da Twitter wurd cownt? How do I fulfill all my obligations to post on all of my pages? Will I have to resort to telling people about how I stepped in gum just so that I have something to say? Is it only me that has the eerie sense that maybe we're all just sharing too much? It brings to mind the maxim of Brave New World, that 'everyone belongs to everyone else'. Who doesn't now see it as completely normal to share their formally private thoughts with their few hundred friends? It disturbs me a little, although admittedly, not as much as the hideous spelling and grammar that some of my former classmates use. You went to the same high school as I did people! Our education wasn't that bad...

Harumph, I don't feel satisfactorily exorcised of my anxieties...I shall have to go and Twitter an abbreviated version of the exact.same.thing...

My Joke, ahem, I mean Job (warning: this is a rant)

Nobody expects the job of an admin assistant to be all that thrilling. The name of the game is pretty much copy, file, type etc. etc. Boring, needing of just 2 brain cells to rub together, but you know, acceptable.

Lately though my job has pretty much consisted of ordering food, every day, food, food and more food. Sandwiches (no mayo!), salads (no onion, this kind of dressing instead of this kind of dressing), cookies (why aren't there more semi-sweet??), fruit (some chocolate covered strawberries thrown in there would have been nice), chocolate covered strawberries (I think I'd have liked some chocolate covered bananas). Aarrgh!! When did it become acceptable to whine about the $80 worth of expensive fruit you didn't have to pay for???

If you could teeter on the brink of your tether, that's where you would have found me for the last couple of months, but this morning, oh! it is blog or crack my friends. My boss called me into his office because he had something to discuss with me. "Hmmm, a closed door meeting," I thought "this must be important."

Him - "Do you remember our office olympics?"
Me - "yes"
Him - "I'd like to do a part 2."
Me - "ummm, ok..."
Him - "You probably haven't seen the episode of The Office..."
(I shake head)
Him - "where they have the Dundee Awards."
Me - "No, I haven't"
Him - "Well, everyone gets an award."
Me - "ok..."
Him - "and I'd like to do our own version. Obviously ours can't be insulting or politically incorrect like on the show but I'd like everyone to get their own award."
Me - "Is there a reason we're doing this?" (the Office Olympics had at least been for someone's leaving party)
Him - "No, I just thought it was time we do something."
Me - "cool" thinking 'shoot me'
Him - "oh, and we'll" (meaning me) "have to get some little trophies to give people"
Me - "cool" thinking 'now!!'

Now forgive me if I'm wrong but I believe the only reason it works in The Office is that it is both grossly insulting and highly politically incorrect - therin lies the humo(u)r, right? Doing our own polite, lets all have tea and biscuits, version is much like fat-free cheese; weird, greasy and utterly pointless. Oh, and my favo(u)rite bit of that whole conversation - Why this gargantuan waste of my time? "I just thought it was time we DO somthing" I've got a suggestion; How about actual work???

"Weeeeeeeeee" That's the sound of me cannonballing off the end of my very short tether. *sigh*

**disclaimer - should anyone I actually work with read this, please don't use it against me, those cookies aren't gonna order themselves!

Pants

This is a thing that happened to me one morning a time I don't remember ago.

You're scanning the shelf at Wholefoods wondering which organ to sell so that you can have a sandwich. You're stood on the street corner waiting for the light to change, vying for pole position, preempting the white man so that you're first into the street. Win! You catch the eye of a stranger and before you can smile or sneer depending on whether you won afore mentioned race, their gaze drops to your shoes and travels slowly up the length of your body. They land on  your eyes, glance away, look back, and repeat an abridged version.

We've all experienced the 'body scan' from strangers. That unabashed dissecting of your outfit. The laying to waste of your confidence without even a whisper. The look that leaves you wondering whether you pooped your pants without realizing. "I would know...wouldn't I?" as you take a furtive look over your shoulder. When in twenty plus years have you ever been able to see your own backside without a mirror?

Imagine all that, and then imagine that from a hobo. That's right, a bona fide hobo. Dirty, white beard, shopping cart full of crap, everything that same gray-brown hue, the scent of unwashed folds of flesh, standing, waiting to cross the street with me...looking at me...like that.

"He knows that my pants are held up by safety pins. He knows that they're $20 Forever21 polyester crap that deliver a shock when I walk on carpet and bobble worse than a sheep in a dryer. I must go buy new pants."

So I did.