Working for myself

I got up again. I didn't mean to do it. But since no one's actually buried me, I saw no reason not to kick my feet out from under the covers.

It was after 8.

Today, I had no mind-numbing job with people joking how I ended up in their Dilbert universe. There's always one guy who looks exactly like Dilbert's boss.
Never fails.

A vacation from it would be nice.

A vacation from being dressed and out the door with self-made lunch and running for the bus with a coffee in hand just to arrive and find out you had to wait for the person who had the logistics of why you'd even been called for the assignment.

Do I call the agencies today? No, let them wait. Hell, they're probably interviewing new applicants. Women who may or may not be dressed for success.

The woman who interviewed before me yesterday for an office job –– and whose interview time ran over into my scheduled slot –– was wearing tight jeans and a shirt that barely covered her spill of fleshy torso. Dumb me wore a suit, and had good responses and good questions.

My interview was still short. But they made sure to compliment my “phone voice.”
Honesty is my worst enemy in the interview. So is bullshitting with the zeal of a missionary.

It’s not like I have a lack of work ethic. It’s refusal to blow it all for idiots who use phrases like “thinking outside the box” with a straight face.

What do you think you’re sitting in all day? Or, are you actually going to call two screwed together partitions over which anyone can poke his head to see you surfing Craigslist a wall?

We’re happy being here on top of one another, is what the cubicle world wants to impart. We know each other’s habits and embrace them. Tom, the IT coordinator, is eating his 3 pm après-lunch vending machine pastry and the rustling of plastic wrapper is music to our ears as he tears the seams with practiced finickiness. Tammy, the paid intern with the clunky heels and elephant walk, is just back from her smoke break and exhales January smoking garage nicotine into February’s waiting face. Trey, or Trae, whose job no one but maybe three people know but everyone can fairly guess is gay, is trimming his nails, keeping an intentionally faulty metronome to remind everyone – even people whose jobs don’t permit access inside his insular hemisphere, displayed in photos of himself in his graduation garb and others where he and other pretty men are in party girl mode – that he’s special.

Yes, Tom, Tammy and Trae, and everyone else busying themselves with the miniscule gears through which most modern companies prove themselves as productive: You are all special.

I am not. I knew I wasn’t at a very early age, and have been trying to atone for that lack by writing about other people, who clearly had no idea that they are so imminently observable.

I have no reason to still be in my pajamas. I’m my own boss, so I pour myself another cup of coffee, grateful for my invisibility.

Birthday in Versailles

Physically, I have a high metabolism. emotionally, then, I’m just going to charge through some impressions to get them out of my immediate mental space. I have to work on a deadline. Having missed voting in a local election due to being in southern mo all day, I’m seeing my lone vote might not have helped.

Lesson: people will allow their lives to be legislated to the nth degree in the small things, but will miss the bigger picture of where that malleability may lead them.

Mon night I stayed with my sis so we could be on the road early Tuesday to meet my mom and head to Versailles Mo. I stayed up later than I should’ve watching electric horseman which was some of Redford’s best acting; the film would make a good Americana double feature with Urban Cowboy.

Versailles Mo is pronounced with a long “a,” which is another aspect of Americana: our giving European names to small American towns where Dairy Queen is still the main hangout. Until the kids are old enough to drive, anyway.

On the way, town names passed – Pittsville, Columbus, Sedalia, Warrensburg, Oak Grove, Holden and the Whitman AFB – proved not all Missouri townships saw the allure of the court of louis xvi.

My grandmother lived in Versailles; her first daughter who died as a baby of typhoid fever is buried there.

We got to the funeral home a half-hour before the visitation. my mom spoke to the funeral home director and my sis took the girls to the restroom to freshen up. My brother-in-law, likewise, went to the restroom. I looked down the aisle of the room where the ceremony was to take place. It looked like there was a small plastic doll at the head of the open casket; I walked in to look closer.

It had been a long time since I’ve seen my grandmother’s hair done. she’d given up on anything but rudimentary brushing. It was more silver than I remembered from the harsh gray it had appeared without her usual care of it. Her thin lips had the lightest rose red, which had been her shade since I was a kid. She was dressed in the khaki beige spring suit my mom had chosen for her.

The only detail that surprised me: the perfect manicure in a shade to match her suit; she deserved to have hands that pretty.

I took it all in, holding back an urge to cry. the director appeared at my side suddenly; I went to touch up my lipstick after looking at the cards on the flowers.

Visitations last way too long but probably shouldn’t be any shorter. the muzak versions of songs by Jjohn Denver, Jim Croce and Cat Stevens only make you realize you’re sitting in a funeral parlor.

Every time a new arrival came in, I watched them look in, raise their shoulders, pull out a kleenex. cousins who I never saw anymore were there, looking like respectable adults. It would have been a treat, but i wouldn’t have had anything in common with them other than the reason for which we were all there.

The preacher was running late, which was weird for a mid-day funeral. He got there five minutes after one, and read a beautiful eulogy my mom had written, then segued between pre-recorded hymns during which he sat. Afterwards, he’d did some soft sell to get new members.

That last was ungracious, forgive me, but it stays. jesus’ perfection while living is debatable; his proximity to a god who permits suffering on scale large and small just seems like a grifter’s detail.

Essential truths are ones that don’t change. Decency, like that of my great-aunt’s family who invited us to their home after the burial, doesn’t belong to a denomination.

On the way home, my sis put it on a talk radio station; it was dark and the noise of the chatter kept us focused, even if we didn't agree with or take seriously the words of the wannabe Limbaugh on his late-night shift. Like people allowing themselves to be called sinners, but a lot scarier, are the people who listen to conservative talk radio and think they’re getting news.

My grandmother would have voted for obama; she was wary of clinton. And she was never a republican.

The political system in this country being more concerned with super delegates than hard-working constituents, will anyone miss the ballot of a 90-year old Versailles, mo native?

They should; she could have told them a thing or two.

Thanatos and Eros sitting Around Talking

thanatos and eros sitting around talking

Pardon Our Mess

I realized, after adding a new blog link, that I wanted to reconfigure the ones I had, but the system got tricky with me. So I deleted them all. This will give me the chance to see who is blogging currently/regularly enough for me to keep linking. I know I want to add August, Dawn and Keifus, but I also need to visit Wiki some time soon, see who's around. I did cave to the gods of MySpace. Now single dads everywhere are courting me unilaterally, but I digress...

If you were by and wondered if anything was amiss, it is and I'm ON TOP OF IT. All-caps are a mighty convincer, though, aren't they? Tonight, if I get home to find my block is still out of power, I might be saying a few things in all-caps.

Or else, I'll just go to a movie...

Relationships: Qualified for the Job?

At some point, we’ve all bullshitted our way through a job interview. Not lied, but maybe spun something into a little more positive experience or described, with philosophical remove, a disappointment from which we learned a valuable lesson.By reciprocal charm, you and the HR manager wow each other. You have gotten in the door, and, almost by mutual disbelief, you get to stay. You dance through an orientation in which everyone is smiling and the bosses are chummy and the expectations are reasonable. And the lighting in the bathroom is almost flattering.

So, you’re in the dream. The ideal company, if you must work in a company.Eventually the reality reveals itself. Everyone is smiling because they’re either idiots or they secretly know your days were numbered as soon as signed up for the 401k. The bosses are chummy, all right, until you try to give them messages from irate customers or try to schedule meetings on days they have blocked out for “personal time.” Then, when you give up trying to meet them to a halfway point they won’t even honor, they suddenly find time to make meetings, return calls and double-check your work until they find the one loophole that gives them an excuse to issue a "warning."You aren’t completely taken by surprise, but you still don’t expect it when the chummy boss, the one for whom you took a birthday flowers donation and put in more of your money (telling no one, of course) than the others in order to get a more unique vase, calls you into his office. With his boss there to make sure he dots the i and crosses the t, he regales you with warnings you never received for dropped items you had tried to juggle for longer than you should have without corroborating paperwork.

The turning in of badges, the collecting of personal effects, the quiet walk with a beefy security guy are actions soon forgotten in the blur of the day.

What you will always remember, though, is washing your hands in the restroom that morning and trying to avoid your face in the mirror. It had become unbearable, even for the seconds it took to touch up your lipstick, to pretend you didn’t see the proof of your jaundiced hopes.

Descriptors: A (Try to) Get Lucky Story

She was standing in the kitchen. The heat was running. If it warmed up today, she hadn’t been outside to tell. Still wearing in the old gym shorts and T-shirt she wore to bed, she plunged a spoon into frozen vanilla yogurt, wondering what she would ever do if she had to travel fast. Last night, she left for a class, wondering if she should pack a valuable because it would suck if everyone left their holiday lights up and one of them burned out and started a fire. She did it anyway, left the lights on and, when she came home, it felt good to see them still lit and greeting her like the night would never disappoint her.He was across town, lying in his tub.

He lived in a scrubbed down old mansion with five roommates, who usually never saw one another enough to learn whether they liked one another enough to live together. Since no one cooked, there were never fights over doing dishes. The kitchen was an assortment of take-out containers. An urn with coffee that was fresh two days ago was washed by him. No one else did it. This day has to end, he thought, holding his breath under the water. This day has to end. It was almost 7 at night.

No one was around. Again. No one was ever around. Ever. The place was dead. Again. No one was ever here when you wanted anyone to be here. Ever. No one was paying attention. No one was watching what you did. Because no one was around to see. The freedom was stultifying. How many times can you check your cell to see that no one called you? Again. That no one was looking for you? Ever. It was the same. No matter what you thought had changed or what might change, it didn’t matter in the end. Because you were alone and luck wasn’t waiting for you. The bartender always had the same amused expression on his face when you finally turned around and ordered.