Assorted Irritants and the Like

I love you, I love you not: From FB, which is a blog-like instrument for those of us with impossibly short attention-spans not correctable with Ritalin or Adderall: A coworker commented a couple of weeks ago that she was very saddened by the fact that she had to get rid of her dog of seven years because her young granddaughter, who lives with her, was very allergic to dogs. She deposited the dog, her companion of seven years, at the local dog pound. She was severely depressed by this and cried at length on FB. Everyone of course sympathized, empathized and anything else that ends with "ized." We all left soothing and understanding comments. Switch to three days ago. She has a new profile picture holding up a cute, white, fuzzy little puppy with the comment "Meet my new puppy!" BTW, her granddaughter is still living with her but I guess she got over her allergies in the short time it took for the pound to put the older dog down and for her grandma to impulsively buy a new puppy and show it off on FB. Cute.

Kill the Suckah: One morning, while walking from the parking garage to my office, a snake ("A snake?" Yes, a snake.) crossed my path on the sidewalk. It was beautiful, gunmetal gray, shiny, smooth, obviously lost. I think it's called a graphite something-or-other and I once had one in my garage for a few days until it slithered out in the street and committed hara-kiri, which really saddened me. Anyway, I bent down to look at my present snake, marvelling at its beauty and grace. I didn't get too close because things in nature should be left the hell alone, not get tagged in order to preserve the species, not get handled in order for us humans to get a kick out of it because we are entitled to get a kick out of everything in the damn world, just left alone. A young woman happened by and looked down to see what I was looking at and screamed "What is it?" I turned to her and said "It's a beautiful snake." Her answer was "Kill it!" My answer was "Why would you kill something this beautiful? It's not poisonous and it eats mice and rats, populations that need to be controlled." The young lady raced away as fast as she could. Confirms my hypothesis that some people, probably a lot more than we suspect, would become Hitlers if given half a chance. And also that no one should be armed.

I'm 55?!?: The weekend before last, my boyfriend was picking me up to go to "Taste of the Grove" which basically can be translated as "Bring a lot of money, yo. You're going to be paying bowcoo (beaucoup, i know how to spell) bucks for two tiny glasses of white zinfandel and two tiny plates of food while you freeze your asses outside listening to several local bands perform covers of Midnight Confessions and Mony, Mony." We go every year and I have to confess I like the music and I like watching the same 50-something hippies and Vietnam vets boogieying (Sp? Help?) to the music and the food is ok and we get a little buzzed too. It helps. Digressing is my bag, yo. Anyway, my mom ,who is otherwise hard of hearing and to whom you have to repeat things to in increasing volume, sometimes almost screaming, must have heard me grab my purse from the other side of the door over the blaring TV show she was watching. She did what she usually does, she called me on the cell phone. I don't know if you all have noticed that we have become damn slaves to our stupid and inane cell phones. My son even calls me from his room which is ten feet away from mine to tell me to switch to this or that channel, or to check out what Tony Soprano is saying to his cumpas (Sp?). Anyway (again), I answered my cell and my mom asked me her eternal question, "Are you home?" And I answered my eternal answer,"Yes, but I'm leaving." To which she replied "You're leaving? Where are you going?" I just stared at the phone, my eyes wide in disbelief. I'm 55, I thought. Do I really have to give her an explanation? When I was young I remember my grandma asking MY MOM the same question and her answering "Don't ask me where I'm going, I have things to do" (in Spanish, of course). I just mumbled "I'll be back later." And she said "Ok."

After you. No, after you. No, I insist...: Yesterday morning I turned in to the parking garage at work and immediately noticed a middle-aged man trying to cross right in front of me. I am a considerate driver in South Florida. I say this because I am well-aware that there are not many like me in this area of our great nation. I let pedestrians cross, I never honk after a New York minute when the light turns green and the guy in front of me is clearly investigating the booger contents of his nose (which is his prerogative), I try to be aware of bicyclists because I do not want to clip anyone and have them get hurt, I try to be polite on the road.

Get to the point: I saw this man stop as he saw me pulling in the garage entrance. He was walking with a limp, but came to a halt when my car approached. I immediately stopped and waved for him to cross. Why did I do this? Because the place where I work is crawling with 18 year olds who zip in and out of the garage and in and out of parking spaces and turn right in front of cars that are six inches away from them, etc. I thought to myself: Let him cross so that, like the proverbial chicken in the fable, he can get to the other side.

The guy shook his head and waved ME through. I insisted because, if he was a visitor to our fine institution he may not know he was taking his life in his own hands, or worse yet in the hands of the young driving mercenaries populating our campus. I guess this gesture on my part made him angry because he yelled "Goddammit, go!" and flipped me the finger. I yelled back, "I was trying to be nice, A$%hole!" Nice start to the workday...

Can I show you my lingam? A very nice gentleman, a friend of my boyfriend (to whom I have referred on this blog repeatedly as Thing 2, but who will heretofore be referred to as "My Fiance" - Just kidding!) gave me a lingam stone from India. "What is that?" you may enquire, and I would answer: Lingam stones come from India. If you google them you get like three encyclopedias of information but basically they are elongated, kind of egg-shaped but long, very smooth, have at least two colors and are beautiful. My fiance's friend gave it to me because I like rocks and so does he and so we traded some rocks and his present to me was that lingam stone. They are supposed to bring people luck and have other curative and positive powers as well which I have not yet corroborated, or maybe I have and don't know it...things could be much , much worse, after all.

Down the hall from mine is the office of a geologist who is incredibly knowledgeable and a super-nice person with whom I have had some "rock" conversations. I brought my lingam with me and told him enthusiastically: "I want to show you my lingam! Is it true that lingam stones come from meteorites?" In his dry, British manner he said to me: "Before you go any further, I need to let you know that the word "lingam" is Sanskrit for "penis." I'm still laughing about it. I thanked him for stopping me and he went on to say that they are usually just river rocks and do not come from meteorites.

Items of Interest for the New Year!

Have I really been away from my blog for so long? Why? Can it be that my life was (and is) so cluttered up with stuff and activity that I cannot tear myself away from it? Or is it that I am such an upstanding and responsible person that I must be task-oriented at each second of the damn day? Excuse me while I turn away and muffle a quick "Ha!" Who the heck have I turned into? What am I trying to prove and whatever for?

These are all questions that I will endeavor to answer in this first month of the year when traditionally procrastinators, dreamers, bloggers, overeaters, alcoholics, abusers of tobacco, and generally distracted, non-focused people believe that they can turn their lives around, or at least bring some order, control, thought, planning and organization into a train wreck of a life! I have to admit that I am Laughing Out Loud at that last sentence. How naive and bizarrely optimistic we are to think that just because one day (December 31st) turned into another (January 1st) all of a sudden we will magically be able to get a grip on all the pesky (and serious) things that we have not managed to control in the rest of the year. We will once and for all time reconcile our bank account. We will lose unwanted weight (This is how the ads put it, like if some weight is wanted). We will march over to Bally's and let them suck out $40 a month out of our as yet non-reconciled bank account every month for the privilege of standing in line waiting to sweat on their exercise machines for two weeks until we get discouraged or tired or lose interest and stop going. We will develop leadership skills that we never had (and still don't), or worse - that we think we always had - and get that promotion we have been after for years. We will also sprout balls and a backbone and ask for that promotion if it is not offered. We will paint the kitchen and fix the sink that has been leaking for the past six months. We will clean out the car and put our extensive and eclectic CD collection in alphabetical order. We will clean out all five junk drawers in assorted areas of the house and get rid of all that stuff, whatever it is because we have not looked into those junk drawers since we moved into the house eight years ago. We will manage our money wisely, making and taking our own latte to work every morning and actually put some money away in a savings account that we will not tap no matter how badly we need $20 to get a cheap bottle of wine and a pack of cigs. We will eat, smoke and drink less. We will buy two sets of ShamWow and the Shark Steamer and clean every crevice of our abode and be able to sleep at night knowing that we have done the utmost to wipe out the filthy and dreaded dust mites that invade every millimeter of space including our mattresses. We will control, we will manage, we will administer, we will organize, we will become masters of our domains. Sigh.

In my January mood, I am thinking deeply about what I did and didn't do last year. I'm 55 years old. I would like to think that my life is about things other than working overtime, studying and writing papers, washing, drying and folding loads of laundry, getting milk and bread at the store, mowing the lawn every other week (Yes, I mow my own lawn and trim it too), filling the tank with gas, paying bills, making sure the dog is fed and has water, maybe patting him on the head and wishing I could go for a walk with him, but I'm too busy... My life has to be about more than feeling guilty for not doing the things I have to do. You get my drift, no? I am seriously thinking hard about the question "What is my life?" I'm hoping it's not too late to actually develop some enjoyment skills. It seems that I have been trying to be Ms. Responsible/Workaholic/Stoic/You-Can-Always-Depend-On-Me person and I am kind of sick of it.

My first step in the direction of enjoying a little bit more of my life is that I am returning to the blogging universe. I will find 15 minutes of time (or steal it from my work schedule) to write something. I will also put my feet up on the hard drive and look up at the turkey vultures circling outside my window. I will talk about movies, books, Tiger Wood's personal life and whatever else is happening with my coworkers. I will go for a nice 40 minute jog at lunchtime because I enjoy it, not because I have to.

I have a friend who is my age who was telling me that her younger daughter had just left home. She said that her daughter would complain about everything, not help her with house chores, criticize her mother's boyfriend, etc while she was living there. My friend said that she would ask herself, "When will it be my turn to enjoy my life?" I totally get her. We are socially conditioned to be responsible and consequential and I agree that for the sake of our families, our job, our well-being, our stability, etc. that is a good thing to achieve. But we have to enjoy life now too, while we still have it to enjoy.