I'm Baaaaaaack......

Oh my friends.  It has been too long.  Once again, I've been absent from blogland for an extended period, and once again I come back to you ready to take on the virtual world!  I will refrain from making any promises about writing more regularly, since we all know that's very rarely the case, at least not for very long.  I will say, though, that this most recent absence was due solely to the fact of my unemployment for the past nine months.

Curious, you say, since you haven't written for 18 months.

Fine.  For a while I was just slacking.  And by slacking I mean gardening the shit out of it.  And painting.  So really not so much slacking as focusing my creative energies elsewhere.  While recovering from a traumatic surgery.  And then I enrolled in what has turned out to be an incredibly rigorous stenography program, while working full time and raising a teenager and still gardening and cooking my bounty and - not to be outdone by my former self - moving.  You know, it was summer after all - time for my gypsy caravan to roll out, as usual.  Actually, I loved my former house.  It had a gigantic garden, plenty of space, super rad neighbors, and a rooftop deck with a 360-degree view of the mountains and valley.  I would never have moved except that the landlord decided to sell it and I had to.  This ended up working out in my favor though, because the cherry on the sundae of my blissful life came when I lost my job a month before having to move.

Bummer, you are thinking, quite empathetically.

Thanks.  It was, for about an hour.  And then I realized that I would be fine financially on the 60% of my salary I would receive from unemployment (especially since I was moving to a house with lower rent and utilities).  To say nothing of the absolute fact that it would be better for me, for the well-being of my body and soul, to forge down this new and, admittedly, daunting path than to draw another breath of the stuffy, toxic, forced-air in that Old Boys Club ever again.  And in fact, I mean no sarcasm in the bit about the sundae.  Being unemployed was one of the best times of my adult life.  I was able to pack up and negotiate my move without much stress, I focused a ton of time and energy on school, on growing my garden and canning food, and preparing most all of the rest of our food from scratch for the next nine months.  I was for the first time able to greet my daughter when she came home from school, attend events at her school which are always, unfathomably, scheduled in the middle of a weekday.  I did my grocery shopping during the week, when there is no one at the store.  I walked my dog all over Sugarhouse and took him for hikes throughout the summer.  I went to coffee with my friend Nora once a week and chatted and laughed and cried about life.  I flew home and spent a week visiting my family and lounging with my best girlfriends at Ariel's farm this summer, spent another week with my fam at Christmas, and then spent the rest of this tragically short winter skiing my little heart out.  And if all of that weren't idyllic enough, out of the ether (ok, the internet), came the man of my dreams -- or rather, a man I couldn't have dreamt up if I tried -- with whom I have fallen completely and totally in love.

Hang on, you say.  That's awesome and all, but if you didn't have a job, and had so many cool and interesting things happening, why weren't you finally writing more?

You make a valid point.

However, shortly after losing my job and getting a realistic feel for the present job market (read: expansive vacuum where job opportunities used to be), I figured that for the sake of obtaining future employment, I might be better off hiding salty chelle (rambles on) from the prying eyes of prospective employers.  We do get a bit raunchy around here after all.

My mother was ecstatic.

Oh Michelle, she sighed.  Good!  I can't tell you how happy I am to hear you say that.  The last thing you need is for some employer to decide they want to hire you, and then do an internet search for your name -- they do that now, you know.  They really do, I read an article about it, and then they were talking all about it on the Today's Show the other day.

I know, Mom.

No -- now listen.  They do that kind of thing all the time.  You should have heard all of what they were saying on the Today's Show.  And, you know, I can just see an employer searching you and finding your disgusting blog with all of its foul language and stories about vaginas and god-knows-what.  It's just terrible.  You'll never get a job!

Ahhh, Mom.  Ever the optimist.  This is my mother though, and I'm quite used to it.  I'm sure at this point in the conversation she became inordinately exasperated with me because I was laughing, which is generally how these conversations go.  My mother is the original rambler-on; I suppose the apple didn't fall terribly far.  The difference between us though is that she rambles herself up into a fit of high-pitched tones and worry-bordering-on-anxiety until she's just beside herself, and I am not much of a worrier at all.  This also worries her.

But, as is sometimes the case, my mom was right.  Or, well, she was correct in that the possibility did exist for my blog to become a problematic factor in my search for work, especially in this weirdo religious town.  The rest is just a lot of wasted energy from my perspective.  So to my mother's great relief, I put the thing on lockdown for a while, vowing to open 'er back up just as soon as I obtained secure employment.  In other words: now.  (Hi, Mom!)

Well why didn't you just do more writing while you were unemployed and had the time?  Even if your blog wasn't public, you could post stories and people would eventually see them once you went back online.

Ok.  You got me.  To this line of reasoning I have no good excuse except that writing on the blog isn't nearly as fun when I know I don't have an audience.  I say that in all honesty, while at the same time feeling like mostly I only do this for myself.  Writing stories, rambling on -- it's an outlet.  My brain spins and spins and it helps to get some of it out.  And frankly, I'm now on paragraph way-too-fucking-many of what was initially supposed to just be a short "hello" to you readers out there, and I can't imagine that anyone other than maybe a few very close friends, and my mom, would actually want to read so much useless drivel about my small little life.  But I suppose that's one of the fundamental questions for artists.  Do we create to share something with the world, or do we create because we need to, because it helps us to process, to think, to feel, to calm down, to get it out, to heal?  I think it's probably a bit of both.  For me, although I had the time to write more on my blog, I just didn't.  Maybe I was calm enough in my newly low-stress life of copious amounts of TIME that my brain stopped spinning and spinning for a little while.  All I know is that the drive wasn't there, so I didn't do it.

And now the drive is back, just about the time when my free time has run out.  Although making myriad promises to myself about never going back to work for a law firm, and creating a life in which I make a living doing something that truly makes me happy, and pouring myself headlong into school so that I could finish my program before running out of money, amongst others, I am once again working as a legal secretary at a law firm.  And though I certainly don't love spending 40 precious hours of my week engaged in activities that have almost nothing to do with my actual life aside from funding it, I most assuredly do love my new job.  By some mysterious alignment of the fates, I have found myself employed by a small firm that shares my values.  It is a diverse mix of people, mostly non-Utahns from what I can gather, and mostly of a decidedly left-leaning socio-political bent.  The firm won't buy any supplies from Wal-Mart or its affiliates.  They give considerable time and money to support public radio and various other community partners.  They don't have a lot of HR policies, but seem to rather favor the approach of providing everyone with a really great place to work, with ample time for their own lives and families, so that they are more productive when they are at work and choose to do the right thing.  They are flexible and friendly and everyone from the president of the firm to the receptionist intermingles in the kitchen at lunch and talks about the news and does crosswords and laughs a lot.  And they take this up another notch every Friday afternoon at the "wine and scotch party," which is basically just anyone who wants to join hanging out in the kitchen from about 5:00 p.m. onward, drinking wine and scotch.  I don't know how fun this gets or how late it goes as I haven't had the opportunity to stay yet, despite much prodding from the other partygoers.

My particular position is just busy enough to keep the days full and interesting, but not so much that I feel stressed out.  I work with a team of tight-knit, intelligent, funny and super nice people.  Today was an asskicker of a day, the kind of day where I did not use the restroom even once, despite having to pee from lunchtime until I made it home at 6:00.  My eyes were tired and my brain was full after 8 hours editing two separate 50-page memos that were both due today.  I was busy, to say the least.  But I was not harried or stressed, I was never once yelled at, and I was genuinely thanked for my assistance throughout the course of the day.  It doesn't really sound like rocket science, but you might be surprised how rare this kind of environment is in the legal world.

I'm happy there.  And yet, still, every evening without fail, while driving or biking myself home from work, I have the conversation with myself that goes pretty much like this:  What the hell am I doing?  To which I very rarely have an answer.  A bit of a one-sided conversation, really.  But it is hard trying to work and do school and raise my kid and run a household.  Usually during these "conversations" it's 6:00 and I have class in an hour and dinner to make and the dog needs a walk and I'm pretty sure I need to rewash those towels in the washer and we're out of something vital like milk or tampons and I'm still not even home.  For the first week of these homeward bound discussions with myself, I cried.  After three and a half weeks, the crying has subsided into a sigh and a resolve to just keep going.

I saw a quote the other day that read, "Don't cry because it's over.  Smile because it happened."  And I hesitate to even write it here because it is admittedly corny and kind of lame, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.   The last nine months of unemployment have been incredibly enjoyable, and now that I'm working, I miss my unemployed life.  I miss drinking my tea on the patio, doing homework in the mornings, making myself breakfast, doing whatever I wanted to do with myself each day, feeling very present with my thoughts and emotions and intentions, and, mostly, just having a break from the last 14 years of my crazy busy life of kid/work/school every single day.  It was like a giant vacation from the reality I've known all of my adult years.  The transition back to a completely full plate has been huge and hard.  Less difficult, however, than I was imagining it would be, which I attribute mostly to the fact that I don't wake up and dread going to work.  In fact, I enjoy the work and the people I work with to the point of actually looking forward to the day.  Not necessarily at 6:47 a.m. when the alarm goes off, which is by far the most trying part of this whole transition, the getting up early.  But by the time I'm out of the shower, I'm surprisingly fine with going in for another day of work.

For now, I'm smiling that the last nine months happened.  I had a break from my real life, I became legions healthier, I fell in love.  It was a gift, and I treasured it while I was lucky enough to live it.  Being grateful for something you no longer possess is not the easiest thing in the world, but I'm finding it's a good exercise for my emotional health.  This, combined with gratitude for my good fortune in finding such a fantastic job, helps me in those moments when I long for a day at home alone making pickles and listening to music.

Not to mention friends, a new job means (1) the blog is back online, and (2) I am now actually venturing out into the world of people much more regularly, which only serves to stoke the creative fire that lights up the pages here at salty chelle.  Oh yeah, and we're not poor anymore.

Welcome back everyone.

Line of the Day: That's what she said.

I was recently moved to a new position at my firm.  It was a lateral move, and I was kind of equally thrilled and bummed out at the change.  I was happy to get out of a situation that was not working at ALL, but sad to leave my friends on the 13th floor for my new spot on 11 (known to those on 13 as "the dungeon").

Turns out, I really like the 11th floor.  It is not nearly the dark and loathsome place I imagined it to be.  There are lots more people down there, most of whom are younger attorneys - overworked and underpaid, just about my own age, sleep-deprived from night after long night at the office spent busting their asses in the hopes of eventually making partner.  My inclination would be to assume they're miserable, but they are surprisingly fun, funny, and playful folks.  Perhaps because the office has begun to feel like home, they find opportunities in between drafting giant briefs, rushing to meet deadlines and putting out daily fires to take their shoes off, toss a ball around, pull pranks on each other, crack jokes and eat copious amounts of fun-size candy.  I have a hard time fathoming this reality, and thank my lucky stars every day that I decided against going to law school.

But anyway, here I am, on the funky 11th floor where the general sense of irreverance is a welcome change from the norm in this oft-bristly, buttoned-up town.  The line of the day comes from my cube-neighbor, a 50-something-ish woman who routinely delivers sexually ambiguous one-liners, talks louder than anyone I've ever met, and once, when my boss, Tim, asked her if his occasional foul-language offended her, replied, "Oh sweetie, I used to be the madam at a titty bar - nothing offends me!"

This afternoon, Tim comes out of his office to get something off of this woman's printer.  Whatever he printed wasn't there waiting for him though, and he started fooling with the buttons and asking what was up.  A short conversation ensued between the two of them as they tried to figure out the source of the problem.  Now, I wasn't completely tuned-in to the dialogue, but something was said about the paper trays, and apparently, the bottom tray was out of paper.  Tim was attempting to load more paper in there, but screwing it up somehow.  At which point, Karen delivers today's line of the day:

Well honey, when my bottom's empty, you just need to shove it in harder.

Line of the Day: Fatalism

A friend was discussing her one major dream for her life with me this evening.  You know, that perfect vision that you have where you're living exactly the kind of life you want to be living.  Making money doing something you love.  The whole deal.  And then she followed up a recitation of all her fears about making this dream a reality with what is today's line of the day:

So I've decided there's no way I can do it.  I'm not going to be able to.  However, I've also decided that it is the only thing that will ever really make me happy.

Well, I said, there's not a whole lot I can say to that.  Sounds like you're pretty much fucked. 

Awesome Free Stuff

I got free stuff today. Really awesome stuff.

Don't be jealous. I mean, I know I just went to Hawaii, and I just got an awesome computer. I mean, how much does one gal deserve, right? But, apparently today the universe decided I deserve a free BLT and chips, and free software for my new laptop!

I think the universe is right. I've really been getting shit on lately. It's hard to write about, as I don't like to complain, or to blog about my job. I mean, I love Dooce, but I don't want that kind of upheaval in my life right now. And, frankly, I shouldn't complain too much about having a really good job in the current state of the economy. So, I won't. But, suffice it to say its been a rough few months.

Not to mention I have a 12 year old daughter.

So, today, I have to leave early to take Elise to the orthodontist, and I'm working through lunch. I didn't bring anything to eat, but I remembered I left a giant orange in the fridge last week. I snarf that at noon and by 2:00 I am ravenous. So, I go down to the cafe on the first floor of our building to get a bag of chips. And the WHOLE place smells like bacon. I opened the door and it was a bacon assault. And then, in the dishes where they always have free samples, they have slices of their bacon-stuffed breakfast croissant, which was deceptively delicious. (It doesn't look like much.) So now I want some bacon. They just put a BLT on their menu. I want it. I don't want to spend any money. But, oh, the baaacon smells so good. There was no fighting it.

I order my BLT and chips, to go. I feel slightly guilty. I shouldn't have spent $8 on this. A bag of chips would have gotten me to the end of the day, there was only 2 more hours. Whatever. My Morning Jacket is playing, LOUD, and I love it, and I'm trying not to beat up on myself too much anymore. It is amazing how many trivial issues the mind, or the ego, or whatever, will take up in order to beat down our spirit, isn't it? I've been noticing this a lot lately.

"Oh, um, do you have cash?" The bakery girl interrupts my thoughts. "Our machine is offline, we can't run cards right now."

"No. Who has cash?" I ask.

"Right!" She chuckles and then realizes she has no idea how to handle this situation. "Well, um, hang on."

"I just work upstairs," I say. "I come here all the time, you can ring it up tomorrow and I'll pay you then."

She hesitates, calls the other girl over, who is making a sandwich and more than likely is not a manager, but is definitely the only other person working there.

Bakery girl explains the problem. "What do you think?"

Sandwich girl smiles, throws up her arms, and says, "Free!"

Before I finish saying, "Really?" she says, "Yeah!" and walks back to make my BLT.

Sweet.

And there's more. I got a bunch of software that I desperately needed for my new laptop so I can write papers and my upcoming collection of short stories, finally! (Hold me to it - I've been talking about it for almost a year, and now I have everything I need to make it happen.) And I got to leave work early on a fantastically beautiful, spring-is-in-the-air kind of day, get in and out of the orthodontist in 20 minutes, and then stop by the new house of my super rad friends that I haven't really seen in a long time due to life changing and being busy and what not. They just moved in three blocks from me! And, I get to work with my little elfin fairy friend Darcie everyday, the rad wife, whose rad husband, Dan, gives me mac lessons and software and good conversation and really it's a turkey for me. A trifecta of bonuses! And their awesome new house has an awesome hot tub!

I'm definitely not bringing as much to the table here, but I'm hoping some bruschetta and home-cooked dinner this weekend will begin to show my appreciation. Luckily, Darcie really loves my bruschetta.

I suppose that's a long-enough ramble about all of the good news from my little life in the salty lake. Big stuff really, for me anyway. There's lots more going on - big, groundbreaking shifts in my emotional reality, feeling for the first time in my life like a whole person. Kind of esoteric for the blog I guess. But, things are turning around, spring is coming, and I feel real, solid, serene, filled with gratitude and anticipation for more good things to come.

Late again! As usual.

Happy belated New Year readers!

Can it really be that I haven't posted anything since November? Shameful. And I call myself an aspiring writer! And SO MUCH has happened that I should have reported here, to my 4 loyal readers, which after 2+ months of non-posting, probably don't come back anymore anyway.

Sigh.

I mean, there was the whole computer virus debacle in December, which was not terribly funny at the time, when I was crazy busy at work and didn't have a computer to use for a few days, as mine had been hijacked by the SPYWARE VIRUS FROM HELL. Looking back, though, the day that the giant, flashing photo of the pierced vagina popped up onto my screen whilst the most devout morman man in the world stood at my desk rifling through a file... well, that was pretty hilarious.

And my first ever warehouse Christmas rollerskating party! And my friends who showed up dressed in Christmas skating finery (and drag)! I haven't roller-skated since I was in junior high, and man do I suck. I used to be good! But the fun quotient hasn't changed all that much since then, and that's what really matters.

Michelle H., foreground, looking like a hot elf on wheels.
Matt, background, wearing Michelle's clothes.

And then there was Christmas! Not one post about my Christmas in St. Louis, or about how increasingly strange it becomes for me to go back "home" and visit my fam. I love them and miss them madly, and yet I go for a visit and all I want to do is get back to Salt Lake. I want to bring them all with me. I wish we all lived in the same city, as long as that city wasn't St. Louis. I just don't feel really comfortable there anymore. Although, this is most likely due to the fact that when I am there, I am living with my mother, and no matter how short a span of time, if it is more than 24 hours, living with my mother becomes a challenge. And that's an understatement


The Hitler Youth. Oh, I mean, my neices and nephews.

My dad giving us his annual Christmas saxophone concert.

And then there was New Year's in SLC, and my week of love-vacation with my new man while Elise was visiting her dad, and taking my new cross-country skis (and my legs) out on their maiden voyage up Emigration Canyon. Brian (said "new man") instructed me thus: If you can walk, you can cross-country ski. Well, HA! Not quite so, though I understand his intent. However, after a few more excursions with other friends, I think I've sort of figured it out. I did make it to the top of Millcreek with my dog in the same amount of time as my very badass and in-shape friend Karan, so I was feeling pretty good about that.

A fair representation of New Year's Eve:

Me on my new x-country skis:
And then there was back to work and back to life and wintry SLC. But, more on that as it transpires!

Somebody's Gonna Lose an Eye

And by "somebody," I mean me.

After nearly fifteen years wearing glasses, I've finally decided to try contact lenses. My friends have made fun of me for years. But I am slow to adopt change. I was one of those people that thought the internet was a fad. I didn't bother double-clicking that little internet explorer icon until I had a teacher who decided to be savvy and post study guides on SLU's intranet. I don't think I even had an email address until 2003. I like paper letters, I like to seal them with my little wax-embosser stamp of my initials, I like decorating the envelopes with cute designs and depositing them into the big blue USPS box on the corner. I like to make food from scratch. I balance my checkbook the way my mom and grandma did, complete with color-coded highlighting and red-ink checkmarks for checks that have cleared. I'm a dinosaur, and I like it that way.

Over the years however, I've succumbed to a few trends, like the cell phone, text messaging, picture messaging, online-bill-pay (ok, so I just did that last month, but it's SO COOL - even though it has thrown a glitch into my checkbook register system), facebook, a dyson, and even wireless internet. Though, to be honest, I had NO idea how to get that wireless crap all up and running and had to call in my sweetheart neighbor Frank for assistance. And now, I've jumped on this crazy new contact lens bandwagon. It's a brave new world...

There is only one thing that has driven me to this point: snowboarding. Last winter I spent every day on the mountain in a neverending battle with the fog that constantly accumulated on either my glasses or my ski goggles. The glasses would fog up and I'd remove the goggles, use my little fog-wipe to wipe the glasses, replace the goggles over the glasses, and within minutes I'd be in a fog again. And while I'm used to going through life in a bit of a fog, this was NOT cool given my level of snowboarding prowess (i.e., no prowess at all). I am not a good snowboarder. I don't steer well, I haven't fully mastered the S-turn, I fall a lot, and so on. Combine this with constantly blurred and foggy vision and I'm just screwed.

So, I decided to solve at least one of my snowboarding problems and remove the glasses, and thus, the fog, from the equation. Contacts it is! I said. And I went to the doctor and got fitted for them, went back to pick them up and the nice lady taught me to put them in and I did. I wore them for four hours that first day and endured the pain and mild vertigo like a champ. Second day, I'm supposed to wear them for six hours. So, I put them in before work and head out for my day. I got a new haircut the night before too, and was feeling like a whole new me, a little spring in my step and the pain of a thousand tiny daggers in my eye.

My coworkers noticed my missing glasses and asked, and I explained.

"How do you like them so far?" Brian asked.

"Mmm, not so much," I say.

"They'll get better, don't worry." He says. "You'll get to the point where you love them."

I don't believe him, but smile politely. Because that's how it goes at work.

Rose asks the same questions, and I explain that the left contact doesn't hurt so much, but the right one is KILLING me, and the prescription is all wrong. Everything is incredibly blurry.

"Your doctor will fix that for you, don't worry," she says.

Everyone is so encouraging. And I want to stab them all.

By 1:00 p.m. it had been five hours and I'd had enough. I go to the bathroom to pick the little bastards off my eyeballs so that I might at least enjoy my lunch date with Rose. I pop the right one out, stick it in its little case, squirt in some opti-whatever, and move on to the left. It doesn't want to come. I continue to poke around in my eye to try and pry the little fucker out to no avail. Why does this one hurt so bad? I wonder. The left eye had acclimated pretty well to the contacts actually, it hadn't really been hurting all day, so why is it so excruciating trying to get it out now? I give myself a pep talk and remember my "just pluck it right off your eyeball" training from the nice lady at the doctor's office, and try again. And again. And again. No dice. At this point, my eye is watering all over my face, my nose is running down over my upper lip and into my mouth, I'm sweating and really, REALLY don't want to try again. But I can't walk around with one contact in, and I can't put my glasses on over one contact, and I can't see without either wearing glasses or two contacts and ok, come on, I've gotta be able to get this thing out. I mean, is it suctioned on there forever?

I keep trying.

And poking.

And pulling at my eyeball.

It's not coming.

"Fucking FUCK!" I yell at the bathroom mirror. "Motherfuckingfuckfucker!" The fucks are echoing off the entirely-tiled bathroom walls and floor, taunting me.

I remove my arm brace (battling a little tendon-lining-inflammation, boo), my jacket, and my sweater. I step out of my shoes. My shit is strewn all over the bathroom counter and floor, amidst the zillion wadded-up tissues I've been using to wipe the tears and snot from my beet-red face. I'm jumping around. Because I don't want to keep trying to get this out. But what's the alternative? Going to the doctor, the hospital? I don't have that kind of time. And for some reason jumping around and yelling motherfucker eases the pain. But only slightly.

At this point, another woman comes in the bathroom, surveys the mess I have made with my clothes and kleenex, and asks if I could use some help. I explain that I cannot for the life of me get this damn contact out.

"The other one was so easy," I say through my snot and tears.

"Come here," she says.

I do a backbend onto the bathroom counter to get my face into the light so she can look at my eye. She doesn't see it, but the bathroom is dim. She goes to get Rose, and leaves me to poke around and jump around and motherfuck my way through a few more minutes. When they both return, they pull me out into the hallway where the light is better, leaving my mess behind in the bathroom. Shirley, who sits nearby, comes and joins the party too. So now I am squatting into the position I assume when pooping in the woods (I'm not a giant, but I am taller than these three women, and have to maneuver so they can see into my swollen, scratchy, blood-red eyeball), Lyle, Rose and Shirley are investigating my eyeball, and through my one good eye I notice them all beginning to frown.

"I don't see it," Shirley says.

"Nope."

Rose delivers the final blow. "Its definitely not in there."

"What do you mean, its not in there?" I nearly scream. And Rose - sweet, goodly, devout LDS Rose - is not a woman one yells at. Not unless one wishes to burn in hell for all eternity. Yelling at Rose is akin to stealing a blind man's walking stick, kicking a 3-legged dog, poking a sleeping baby, or any other crime upon the innocent.

"There isn't a contact in your eye, poor thing," she says.

"But I never got it out. I've been poking around in my eye for a half hour and it never came out."

"Well then, it probably never went in, genius," Lyle quips. Because Lyle's a smartass.

They inform me that I need to find the contact, because it will shrivel up and die like a fish out of water. I skip my lunch date with Rose and drive home and find the little piece of shit all curled up like the world's tiniest taco on my bathroom counter. Which explains the fuzzy vision and the reason my left eye was so mysteriously comfortable all day.

That is, until I spent thirty minutes ramming my fingernails into its flesh.

Craptastic

I'm thinking my three devoted readers might be wondering why there have been no new posts lately, and so I offer this hastily-penned explanation: I'm busy. Busy as hell, actually, at the job (yes, I AM posting while at said job, in a futile, desperate grab for a few moments of sanity). Now, I had been bitching about being bored and how lame my job was just weeks ago. So, yes, being busy is a welcome change from the monotony of internet-surfing and intermittent discussions I had been having with myself in an attempt to decide whether or not I should venture into the break-room in search of the one, sad, broken-handled bread knife that I might use to chop off an unnecessary appendage just for something to fucking do.



But oh jesus and mary maybe I should have been careful what I wished for. I'm so buried these days that when I went to the restroom at work this morning I realized I hadn't been in there since last week. Too busy to pee! And while it sure is nice to be needed and appreciated and all that, I have turned into a total space cadet. My brain spins fast and furious for 7.5 hours every day, and the rest of my waking hours are spent in complete mental disarray. So unlike my anal Virgo self, I have found myself in the last 3 days spending way too much time looking for my keys, trying to remember where I've left my flip-flops, re-washing towels (3 times now, apologies to Mother Earth) that I forgot were in the washer until the smell of mildew filtered out from the laundry room, and - to my daughter's constant amusement - looking for glasses that were on my head.



Would love to report something (anything!) else, but sadly my life has taken a turn for the bleak, and its time to get back to work anyway.