These Are My Confessions July 29, 2009

There is a good amount of pressure in returning after an unplanned 3-week blogsence.  A looming cloud of expectation.  A clasp-handed anticipation of tales.  Adventure.  Eager noses pressed to the laptop, quickly scanning the words to read about adult bed wetting, slovenly roommates, misguided minuscule Lotharios, and absent-minded naivete.  So you could understand my reservation to return with nothing but a crazy aubergine blister and a wicker basket full of excuses. 

I appreciate your patience as I spin my way, Tazmanian Devil-style, back into your computer.  What are my excuses? What have I been up to? How will I keep your attention so you don’t dump me like a white lady with 8 kids?

 My first excuse is as raw and real as good old fashioned fear. It began when I dry erased all traces of my blog from Face Place.  Then I deleted my favorite entries from Spy Mace. Posts were halted from pocket to page because I couldn’t be certain whose eyes and hearts would be invested in what I wrote.  Offending, alienating, and tearing are not my goals. I’m not here to verbally maim or bisect anyone who crosses my path with word swords.  I’m here to make sense of the moments I have to brown knuckle my way onto this spinning little ball of a planet. 

 But I found that safety and authenticity are not friends.  The live on different sides of the tracks. They eat a different lunch tables at John Hughes High.  Authenticity puts an aluminum bucket of swinecrit on the rafters at Safety’s prom. To be me, how I live here, I need to put it all out there.  Layout out there like Jon Gosselin’s belly.  Consider this my mea culpa for the life of my blog.  That 9 times of out of 10, I leave it all here and don’t think about it again until you remind me I put it here.

 The ABFF is moving to Austin next month. And a part of me is scared shitless. It’s that part that is pretty sure if I left the curling iron on or wonders how many packets of Splenda I can consume before I get a tumor. The part that harbors an almost paralyzing phobia of zombies and episiotomies.  She came to town to interview for the job and my confidence in my side of the friendship was shaken.  We’ve been maintaining a distanced friendship for half our lives. We’ve always been outskirts friends. We’ve buzzed by for the big things but have never been in the same habitual space.  We’ve made concerted efforts for exotic big city dinners, an exhausting flash through every tourist attraction in NYC, outrigger wedding in Taos.  But never a mid-week happy hour or an urbane movie night.   We talk about life and kids and culture and change; not reality shows and how to make it to work on time after a night at the strip club.  She’s my grown up friend. The model of the life I should be living if I could get my shit together. The one I tell about my (imaginary) book who, 5 minutes later, emails me a list of publishers and a publications accepting entries from amateur writers.  The one that got me blogging. The sad thing is I love her to death. She’s my sister from another mister.  So it’s one of those reality pills I will need to swallow.  I’ll sip off my 16oz glass of mama’s sweet tea, hug her with sweaty palms, and welcome her to the beginning of the rest of our lives.

 I pride myself of doing things my way. I try to make my life distinctive, to matter in new ways.  To conquer things I never imagined, in big and small ways. I am able to do it things like roller derby but not so much with my weight. Roller derby was my attempt at something new. To blaze a path not traveled by anyone I know.  But… it was kinda …boring. I know people have seen derby on TV and imagine it to be all tiny skirts hurling tattooed, sweaty bitches over padded rails.  And it very well may be, but the training…not so much.  Plus, I got this ugly purple blister on my toe and decided I am not putting the appearance of my feet (or face) in peril for the sake of conquering boredom.

 Oh, and I realized that I am the worst wife ever. 

The Hubster’s high school friend, Javier, came to town with his girlfriend, The Teacher.  When Javier and The Hubster are together, they turn into Dumb & Dumber meets Aneurysm & Brain Damaged.  They’re the duo who came up with the idea to put a ciggy in the mouth of a dead armadillo.  The ones that had simultaneously thought to rob the pimp because “What’s he gonna do? Tell the cops he got robbed by 2 white guys??”  And it’s entertaining for about 20 minutes. Then you just want to punch them in the wiener.  The Teacher and I had been in contact with trivial things like sharing flight information, coordinating pick ups, and managing the itinerary for the 4 days they were in town.  Had we left any of these up to the boys, they would still be at the airport subsisting on mini bottles of liquor, Cinnabon, and Starbucks.  If they actually made it to our place, the plan would likely be something like this:

2:00pm  Wake up

2:05pm  Watch every season of “South Park” over 24 bottles of beer

4:30pm  Jack In The Box

4:45pm  Watch the entire “Chronicles of Riddick” series

9:00pm  Shower

9:03pm  Head downtown to pub for more beer

1:00pm  Watch “Rambo” with the volume so high the walls shake

3:00pm  Poke girl in bed with spontaneous boner

3:03pm  Rub hand print off face, scratch balls, fart, go to bed

 I did the best I could to make sure they inserted events into the weekend that would be interesting to anyone that wasn’t a 12 year-old boy. Like The Teacher.  But I came off as a nagging wife instead. Mainly because The Teacher is in that phase of the relationship.  The one where her man can do no wrong. Where she’s  interested in seeing every part of his life so she can understand him better.  To feel closer to him. I imagine she went on vacation to build memories for their scrapbook, not because she had a burning desire to visit hot-ass Austin. She giggled and smiled and brought him water every morning. Massaged his feet, rubbed his back, and shared food off her fork.  After 3 years of marriage I’ve traded bringing him morning water for thumping him on the forehead; rubbing his back for incessant requests to get his hair cut ; sharing food off my fork for getting tanked during the 90 minute wait for the restaurant The Hubster chose that’s 23 minutes out of town.

 

That’s just how I roll.

A Tequila A Day Keeps the Paycheck Away July 9, 2009

(ADVANCE APOLOGIES to anyone that has me on their RSS feed. For some reason, my post isn’t being saved in it’s entirety so I am posting and publishing as I go so I don’t loose to much data. Sorry! Apparently I slept with his brother and he’s getting back at me).

When I said I wanted you to pick the post for Thursday you didn’t think I meant Thursday of that week did you? Silly readers…truth and punctuality are for those bitches that get paid to blog. And I love that you prefer to hear stories about me effing up at work, evidence that you, too, believe that I have no business interacting with real people.

Ah, the tequila story.

My time at Money Grubbing Whore, Inc. was defined by a constant exposure to stuff I never knew existed. Like two girls and a cup. MGW, Inc. was a relatively new company, so everything that happened was a result of the organization’s core value: It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. MGW Inc. was like a grubby toddler that puts dirty fingerprints on your ecru walls, pulls Westminster finalists tails, feeds caviar to her dollies; then wonders why she’s been banned from your treehouse. At the head of this hot mess was The CEO. The under 35, driving a pre-midlife crisis Porsche 911S Carrera, trophy-wife having CEO. He was THAT guy. The one that has labels on everything from his watch (Rolex, natch) to his testicles (lengthened by the designer surgeon who did Nameofsomeonefamous). He sauntered around the building flashing too-white veneers with his best Buddy Christ wink-and-thumbs-up pose as he made it rain Starbuck’s gift cards. Of course, I was more than happy to wade my way through his particular brand of Velveeta because he was known for buying a round (or 12) at happy hour. Plus, he bought us all iPods when the company reached 10,000 clients and booked a trip to Vegas for a “convention”. I jumped on the cheese train with my box of crackers and a smile.

That is, until it was decided that I was not talented enough (read: unable to appropriately display boundless cleavage or distribute ‘extra’ prescription medication) to be on the Sales Team. My skills were much more valuable in the Where Ethics Go To Die Department. Bitterness Alley. Where everyone is lactose intolerant and ready to tell me that, not only was the emperor NOT wearing clothes, he was having threesomes with the wizard of oz behind that big curtain. Bitterness Alley is where I discovered everyone in HR was a chick but all the CE-whatevers were dudes. I learned the source of MGW Inc.’s relentless attention to professional development was rooted in The CEO’s ignorance. I imagine his conversations with HR were like “Well, no one TOLD me we couldn’t do that! What was that? The law? The bible?? Fine! Send out a memo then!!” And we’d get an email:

MEMORANDUM

TO: All Employees

FROM: Human Resources

RE: The 90th Training Meeting This Week

TOPIC: Why It’s A Bad Idea To Send Your Panties To Clients (but only if it doesn’t result in a sale)

NOTE: Anyone that has reached their sales goals are permitted to miss the meeting and join your manager in the parking garage for a celebratory round of coke and hookers. And we don’t mean soda. Unless we will get sued then we do, in fact, mean soda.

One such memo was the reminder that, pursuant to company policy, all employees were limited to 2 alcoholic beverages at lunch. TWO? It never occurred to me to have one! Mainly because I had no idea that spending 8 straight sober hours at work was optional. When I was invited to lunch by The Ex-Stripper With A Heart of Gold, I learned that breaking a rule didn’t feel nearly as fulfilling as shattering one to pieces. And then blasting the shards with a machine gun.
I’m not sure Heart of Gold understood just how gorgeous she is. And how that gorgeousness created a world that different from he one we mere Earthlings inhabited. We went to the dining area at a nearby golf course because she was learning to play. She explained how much she loved it because “everyone is so nice! Guys are so open to offering me tips on improving my stroke! They even bring me beer when it’s hot outside! Golf is a wonderful sport!” I think she was genuinely oblivious to the correlation between her hotness and the amount of drinks that were sent to our table. Because shit like that happens on her planet.

Now, we did adhere to the 2 drink lunch minimum. That is if you don’t count the drinks we brought back to the office in plastic children’s cups. (What? They had lids). I had to consult my liver before I accepted any future lunch invitations. The answer was “Oh, hell yes!” unless I had taken her up on a Happy Hour-Turned Home at 2am the night before. Heart of Gold could hold her own. She dissipated every dirty old man’s notion that a hot girl couldn’t hold her liquor. And her liquor of choice was tequila. She’d order a Long Island Iced Tea with a shot. And then pour the shot in the drink. I probably should have felt guilty, but I swear my afternoon angry client calls were a lot more…pleasant after lunch. I had to start mixing my drinks with cranberry juice so I could explain away my cups as serum for my “lady problems”. No one stared at my cups when they thought it held an ‘out’ from THAT conversation.

Fridays were the best. Fridays were the day the Sales Team got in a tizzy if they hadn’t met their goals for the week, so they’d be all over me to make sure I secured their clients. My boss knew this and generally steered clear of me on Fridays. Until one Friday when we wanted to ask my advice about his daughter. Who was in the hospital. With a painful, chronic disease. After I had spilled the contents of my plastic cup all over my desk because the tequila had settled to the bottom.

Awesome.