Month: May 2005 (Page 1 of 4)

I did not lose my tone, I did not smirk, I did not laugh, as I said the above line during the commitment ceremony Saturday night. I am once again convinced I am missing an Oscar for my ability and stage presence: after all, as two gay men are lighting a candle, using the word “Flame” repeatedly, it carries a double entendre not lost on me (or the audience) and during the rehearsal I lost it (all three times I read it) by the time I had to say “as these two flames…” I toyed with hitting a high-pitched falsetto and throwing in some jazz hands, but in the end went with my sincere, warm (and controlled) voice. And no jazz hands.

Mike & Gordon threw a great party, they declared their love & commitment to each other, and I danced with my husband to the song we got married to: Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”, which actually got everyone out on the floor (not because of us, because it’s BARRY). Then we had to leave because it was 800 degrees in the tiny ballroom, and despite having windows open, there was not enough air circulating to combat the crowd & the heat. Good thing JWo drove us home, because I wouldn’t have passed that eye test thingy.

Today is a barbecue at Roger & David’s, and then it’s back to work – and I am again, looking forward to going to work. I swear, I’m not acting, either. But I will ALWAYS give you jazz hands, because they are such a happy thing. And because my self-portrait for work was deemed “too boring” (wha? Me? TOO BORING?) I give you some hamming for the camera, right before we left for the ceremony. I put on half the scarves I’ve knit (to show something about me) and then it was all Vogue covershoot from there, only I started singing and waving the scarves and making up new words so they were funny and about JWo, and in half the pictures I look like a total goober because I have on so much lipstick, any odd position of my mouth gets exaggerated. So here’s the “normal” one. Sorry, no jazz hands. But there’s a little Diana Ross going on. Because I am Supreme.

Drama Queen. 

Have you ever been through a sobriety checkpoint? I’ve seen those commercials on TV, where the voiceover man, presumably a warden at the Prison for Drunk Drivers, berates you in a very scary voice and promises that if you drink and drive, and we catch ya, you will be sent to prison immediately, where you’ll be forced to clean up vomit every day and raped on the hour. The visual is always some college-aged dude squinting into the bright light of the flashlight and there are GUNS EVERYWHERE.

So last night, after the commitment ceremony rehearsal, we carpooled up to the HinterNorthLands (hey Judy!) for the dinner at the groom & groom’s house. It was awesome barbecue, and I had a couple of beers with my dinner, and because we kept waiting for the cap pistol to be shot, indicating we could finally go eat, my first beer started making me feel loopy, and I announced several times that I was going to start chewing my arm off. I also kept telling Roger to keep up with me because, I guess, I’ve taken over the bossy role and demand that he drink as much as I. Plus it’s handy if he gets done at the same time because he’ll bring me another drink. I am that lazy.

So we had a plate of BBQ, and it rocked, and I had a SECOND plate. Which also rocked, but now I was slowing down, and I didn’t finish my beer, because I had transformed into the Veruca Salt girl from Willy Wonka and was waiting for the Ooompa Loompas to show up and roll me to my car. Plus, I was the driver. I joked that David could take over and drive, but I knew still, I’d have to get home from their house, and so it just seemed like a good point at which to stop. We sat and chatted with people for a while, played with Jimmy & Kelly’s beautiful baby, and then eventually left. Roger & I put Lewis & Clark to shame, because every time we drive up north, we convince each other we’re going the right way, regardless of if it’s correct or not. Amazingly, we wound our way out of the subdivision and right onto the street where Sheridan’s is. YUM. YUM. YUM. It’s frozen custard, because it’s so fatty. I had a cone (I like a cone) and it was so tall, I thought I was gonna get it all over the interior car roof. So I drive us back to Roger & David’s house, drop them off, jump back on Hwy 71, and head towards home. I even thought, “There’ve been some gang shootings on this road recently, I wonder if I should jump off and take another road.” But traffic was rolling along and I decided to keep with the straight shot home.

Then traffic slowed to a crawl, and a stop. I was in the left lane, and saw police lights. I was convinced it must be a bad wreck, or worse, another shootout. As we inched along, I realized it was more than one lane shut down, the whole damned highway was closed, with cones and everything. I’m thinking, man, this is a hell of an accident, it must be over that hill because I can’t see anything. And then I see two motorcycle cops (my FAVORITE!) in the dark, in the second lane, and I think that looks funny, like they’re waiting to catch somebody.

THEN. We’re all exiting and concentrating on not hitting each other, because there are like, 200 cars going into & through this bottle neck of the exit ramp, and there’s a little government sign on the other side of the road that says, “Sobriety Checkpoint Ahead.” And everything in my stomach turns to soup. Because now I have to decide, am I going to tell the truth? Or am I going to lie? I can hear the question from the tv commercial thundering in my head, “Have you had anything to drink tonight?” and I look at the clock, and it’s almost 10:00 p.m. and I’ve had two beers (three hours earlier) and two huge-ass plates of food, and an ice cream cone that contains more calories than Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie and Paris Hilton consume, combined, in a week. And I can assure you, I am not impaired, but I do have cramps and I need to pee, and if I have to get out of the car, I’m going to be shaking so hard I might just lose control of all my bodily functions and then I’d be blogging from prison about how some lifer named Wanda has made me her bitch.

These checkpoints are not set up for diffused lighting photography, in case you think you might try to get some portraits taken while you’re there. They have generators, they’re big lights up on scaffolding-like stands, and there are two cops waving you into two lines, and there is a whole line of cops with their flashlights, spaced out to examine the next block of cars. And they’ve all got guns. And they’re wearing gloves and hats. It’s VERY formal. I, of course, get the guy who isn’t dressed the same as everyone else, and so I assume he is the Baddest Motherfucker of the Checkpoint, and I am extremely sober and nervous. BRIGHT LIGHT in my eyes, thank god I’m not a gremlin.
“Good evening, ma’am” (FUCK I am old. MISS. MISS. Just one more time before I go to the Big House.)
“Can I see your driver’s license?”
I am now extremely friendly. I start to chirp. “Yes! This is very exciting! I’ve never been through one of these before!” And I can’t get my license out of my wallet, because it never comes out of the wallet, and I’m a little palsied as I FORCE THAT GODDAMN PIECE OF PLASTIC OUT before they think I’m a Columbian drug runner.
“Have you had anything to drink tonight?” he asks while I’m wrestling with leather and plastic and a three-inch card.

Moment of truth. Kindof.
“I had a beer at a barbecue, about four hours ago.”
Because I can’t lie outright. I just can’t. I did when I was 6, but I thought I was saving my mother from being hauled away. I hand him my license.
He inspects it. I have my old address on it still. OH GOD. I hope I don’t have to deal with that, too. “Do you still live in Kansas City?” he inquires. “Yes.”
Now we’re gettin’ down to business, wherein he will establish that I am not drunk because I have copped to drinking earlier that evening. I continue looking at him, and he bends down further.
“Keep facing me, but I want you to move your eyes and look to the right.” Thank god he moved his hand to indicate that it was to be MY right. I didn’t want to have to have that conversation. (Your right? My right? Ociffer?)
I slide my eyes over, then back.
“OK, you can go, thank you very much, drive safe.”

HUH?
I drove off, happily, of course, and all I could think was: James will know why this is a conclusive test. And he did. I guess our eyes are very fine-tuned when it comes to motor control, and they’re a good indication of how in-control you are. If my eyes had jerked, it would have indicated a lack of control. I did a little search this morning, and lo & behold that particular test even has a name: Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN). I wonder how many people didn’t pass, and that’s scary, too.

So, I’m glad to say I’m not blogging from the pokey, and I am SCARED STRAIGHT. I’m kind of glad I went through the experience, but I’m really glad I didn’t have to stand on one leg. I’m a big girl, and I don’t do one-legged stuff well. But I’ll admit, I did run through the alphabet real quick-like in my head while I was being waved “into position”. And now, when I feel really out of control, I’m going to go look in the mirror and slide my eyes from side-to-side. At the rate I’m going this holiday weekend, I’ll be in the bathroom until Tuesday.

On the drive home from KnitNight, I was chatting with my friend Beth & was reminded of a job I had NO interest in taking, based simply on the interview and the environment.

It should have been a sign that the flight attendant came out and asked me if I planned to catch my flight (good god, can I PROVE to you people any more that it’s an illness, this lateness?)….. I can be THAT UNAWARE sometimes, I’d wandered off to get a coffee & sat back down just enjoying my Starbucks and the entire fucking plane had boarded and I HAD NO CLUE.

And really, my wonker radar had been triggered already by the personal profile on the owner of the agency; the shop was media-only, and they had a folder they sent me, and the whole thing was allllll about the owner. And one whole section in the folder discussed how she’d been overweight and how she’d overcome it and I am not kidding, they used this for new business and prospective employees, and so I already had the hairy eyeball goin’ on as I headed off to this place.

But there were two things that clinched it for me. The first: she liked to rescue cats, and so they had three stray cats that lived at the agency, and being blunt like I am, I said, so what about allergies and the litter box? And they said that allergies weren’t a problem (gee, do prospective clients get weeded out this way, too?) and that the staff rotated litter box responsibilities. Ohkaayyyy. And then they had all kinds of Bible verses and catchy God sayings (printed out on copy paper) taped up randomly, like, “This day has been brought to you by GOD.” “Let Go and Let God.” and then some Scripture quotes. (I’m not particularly religious, but I believe it should be like underwear – wear it or don’t, but you shouldn’t have to see anybody’s at work. Plus, this is ADVERTISING, people. We sell sex, booze, smokes and dreams.) Most of my one-on-one interview with the owner was spent with her championing her weight loss and me feeling like I would be put on a diet if I worked there. Awesome! It’d be just like living with my mother again, but now with cats and Jesus. Because nothing makes a job look more appealling if you think everyone’s going to count your calories, in between facing your Lord and Maker at every step around the office, while popping Claritin every two hours to combat cat dander.

And suddenly my alcoholic, weepy, free-cell playin’, dancin’-as-fast-as-she-can-but-never-working boss didn’t look too bad. I did not miss my flight home.

I was thinking it would be fun to list, in no particular order, some of the more stellar attributes I’ve been privileged to see in some of my previous supervisors and bosses. Since I have worked for a LOT of insane people over the years, including all the way back to college, this probably won’t fit into one post. But starting is always fun, to see just how far we can go! So, sit back, don’t drink anything, because you might have to spew or drop your jaw – and cleaning keyboards can be tedious.

1. Agoraphobia. Did not ever leave her home. I called her and we went through her mail, over the phone. She would talk about playing tennis. She was wonkers.
2. Alcoholism.
3. Weeping and playing free cell for the first two months instead of working.
4. Never actually working. Would come in and then leave at some point, sometimes never to return for the day. Astounding. Did this for over 10 years and collected a check. Close to 6 figures annually, by my best guess.
5. Actually, many of them didn’t work. Kept it to a minimum if they did, but one often described herself as “busier than a one-legged wallpaper man” and our favorite, “I’m dancing as fast as I can.” One girl did a great Flashdance impersonation on that one.
6. Used company resources, including employees, to do research for her new business she was starting. Told the employees it was for “new business”. Technically, not a lie….
7. Was in love with the head of the company, who was an alcoholic.
8. Abused recreational and prescription drugs. (Hmmmm, there’s a pattern here.)
9. Had me sell her old clothes on eBay for her.
10. Made selected employees dress her, including put her pantyhose on her.
11. Removed the voicebox from her dog to eliminate that bothersome barking.
12. Put his best effort in to making prospective employees cry during the interview process. I simply became enraged and left in a huff after telling him off. I was hired the next week.
13. Left fifteen-minute voicemails stating the same thing three times. STAR SIX BABY. (the fast delete)
14. Had three dresses, exactly the same style, in three different colors – and wore each of them, every week.
15. Kept money in her bra and would reach in and hand you a (warm) $20 if you asked if it was ok to get breakfast for the department.

Now, I like my tequila every so often, and I’ve even put a dollar bill in my bra if I find myself combining a trip to the restroom & the coke machine & am without pockets. And I’ve goofed off and not worked. But so far, I think I’m doing ok by patterning my life and management approach in the opposite direction as those who walked before me.

To paraphrase some old-school XTC,
“And I may be the mayor of simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that’s I’m not you…..”

I just can’t get places on time. I had a very bad model in my father, who would get IN THE SHOWER when we were supposed to be leaving for my chorus concerts at school. His philosophy was, I wasn’t at the start of the event, therefore why should he sit through all the other stuff, let’s just get there in time for me to go on stage. Add to that a natural tendency to space out and get distracted, and it’s a disaster.
My apologies to Kristin, on her first day of work. My apologies to my husband, for past, present & future latenesses that will undoubtedly make him nutters. I even got up early, was dressed before 8 a.m. and still couldn’t pull it off. I’m Lucille Ball and the conveyor belt of chocolate is always piling up.

I did, however, break many speed limits recklessly this morning, and no motorcycle cops caught me and therefore I was not as late as I could have been. WHEW. But JWo forgot to take the garbage out, so I had to do it, and then I got distracted by stuff in the garage and then I was Mario Andretti-ing it up Ward Parkway, calling everyone and apologizing. I should just have cards printed up & engraved with my name.

I had my one & only employee quit last week; it was a blessing for her and an opportunity for me; fortunately, a friend of mine was already pursuing something here with my bosses, and it all fell into place at the speed of light. So now, Miss K is coming here this week, and life will be even better!

When we were discussing her future (the girl who quit), she said how she had liked working with me, and felt like she’d learned a lot, and that she would always associate “crazytown” with me.
Immediately backpedalling, as I was hooting and saying things like, “GEE! THANKS!” she said, “No, no! It’s just your phrase!” Because I use it all the time, and at the new job it’s mostly to refer to processes or systems that aren’t in place and the helter-skelter manner in which stuff around here gets done. The cool thing is, I at least get to exercise the chance to CREATE the processes and forms and whatnots. My thing is, you have to have a level of organization and some systems in place, but they shouldn’t vine up and get a stranglehold around your neck.

The last place I worked tended to get choked by the philosophy of “must adhere to The Way”. One of the things that made the last place Crazytown was how my boss would snap at me for being “too creative” and dismissive of any alternative ideas I had, but then in department meetings would say over and over, “Don’t do it the way it’s always been done! Think creatively! We need to push our vendors to really come up with creative solutions!” Uh, yeah. In a home environment being forensically examined by a psychologist, I think that’s called “Mixed Messages”. And as I look back on my time there, I see that it’s incredibly logical what happened to me in the final couple of years: I got paralyzed. Fear of doing too much, saying the wrong thing, fear of doing it differently, fear of losing my job. One of the things that saved me, albeit just a month before I quit, was the decision I made: I would quit before October 1. (Some dreaded, dreaded work happens in the fall.) The day I said, out loud, “I’m not going through (dreaded work) again,” I felt like half a ton of bricks had been taken off my body. Then, four weeks later I got to say, “YO, I’m not only leaving, I’m gonna be the director at the new gig! hah!” Karma? Luck? Divine Intervention? I dunno. I know I was due.

I left Crazytown with some baggage. I don’t plan on having this baggage in four months, but I know I have it now, I own it, it’s got my name on it, it all matches, and I know exactly where it came from & how it came to be. I still get angry when I think about particular situations and people, I want the karma bus to gas up, hit full speed and drive right over a couple people there. It’s not good to be obsessed with commeuppence, I know. I’m giving myself six months to be rid of the anger and resentments – I figure it took over two years to create, it won’t be gone in a week – and I’m gonna keep squawking periodically to get it out of my system. The good news is, I’ve already seen and felt the difference in me, as I’m way more relaxed, I don’t have headaches every day, and my jaw isn’t clenched from the moment I start my workday.

So I chalk some of my penchant for frothiness up to that crusader inside me, who wants to fix the world and make everything “right” and “fair”. Because there are a lot of good people working at the old place who are renting living space in Crazytown (as opposed to those who’ve bought property & changed their drivers’ licenses and everything – “lifers” who’ve bought the program and drink the kool-aid). The renters, they deserve better, and it honks me off that the “powers-that-be” there don’t feel compelled to really dig in and fix it. Fixing things usually requires a lot of change. Change can be good, but it usually isn’t simple or comfortable. I see it at my new job – people are craving change, but they don’t want to go THROUGH change.

In the end, you can only control so much & you just have to decide – do you wanna live in Crazytown? Or in Hopeville? I was grateful to find a bus out of Crazytown before I had to start hitchhiking.

Smart dude observation for the day:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” ~Benjamin Franklin

My mantra:
Be the change you want to see in the world.

Before we moved to Iowa, we lived in a tiny town in Wisconsin. My mom was working in the school system & my dad was on the land we’d bought, building our geodesic dome home in the woods.

One of the rituals we established was that anytime we went to the little corner store/gas station, I got a fudgesicle. I loooooved me the fudgesicles. I would eat it while my mom would pump gas into her white Ford Falcoln, with a red vinyl interior. After gassing up one bright sunny afternoon, she backed up and straight into another car. I barely remember all of this, I was 6, and had my priorities straight: eat the fudgesicle before it melts. Anyway, I guess they exchanged info and all that, but it was going to take too long for the police so they were to come to our house to take a report.

Nobody told me.

I answered the door, as I happened to be strolling by into the kitchen and noticed there was a very nice lady, in her blue police officer uniform, standing on the front step. A police cruiser sat beyond her, parked directly in front of the sidewalk. I walked up to the screen, and she looked down at me. She had curly brown hair and she smiled as she asked me, “Is your mommy home?”

My legs began to shake. I absolutely knew in that moment that she had come to take my mother away, and I would be left alone to fend for myself. I looked to the left, towards the living room where my mother was (she hadn’t yet realized there was someone at the door.) This was also perhaps a tip-off to the police officer that I was lying when I stuck my chin out and answered, “Nope.”
She patiently said again, “Is your mommy home? I need to talk to her. It’s OK.” My mom had heard her by now and she was starting to come towards the door. I commenced to have a full-blown FREAK OUT. Crying, hysterics, establishment of anarchy and public unrest. The police were here to take my mother away for hitting another car, and there would be no more fudgesicles, I didn’t even know how to call my father and I certainly wasn’t going to go down the street to my babysitter’s house, she played a 45 of Neil Diamond singing about Reverend Blue Jeans over and over and had large wall art made of wire and nails. I tried to push my mother out of the doorway, out of the line of sight of the police officer, screaming NO NO NO. Assurances that everything was going to be ok fell on deaf ears.

Of course, they didn’t haul my mother off to the pokey and it was simply paperwork that the officer had to go over. In our living room, she tried to be nice to me again, and tried to reassure me she wasn’t going to take my mother away. I stayed glued to my mother’s side and glowered at the police officer, as if to say, “Bitch, don’t take me on.” I didn’t believe her, either, until she had driven off, and I watched her taillights disappear down the street.

Thirty years later, I know now that one shouldn’t lie to the police, and that the song is actually called “Forever in Blue Jeans”. But I still don’t like Neil Diamond, and I hate the threatened feeling of an authority that has the power to take away MY power. I respect the police, but I dislike it if their only job is to write speeding tickets. Last, but not least, I’m still not a fan of wire/nail art. These things get rooted in our systems early on and they never let go.

I love COPS. Not motorcycle cops with radar guns, I think I’ve established my deep dislike for them, but the Fox show, COPS. LIVE on LOCATION. With the men and women of LAW ENFORCEMENT. I admit it, I own it, it’s all mine, it’s my guilty, guilty pleasure.

Saturdays are awesome because you can catch COPS on Court TV before the regular hour starts on Fox. Tonight, we watched one that took place in Portland, Oregon (hey, Shannon!) (Shannon wasn’t featured, thankfully) and we watched in amazement as one wacked out dude refused to stand up for the po-lice. They twisted his hand so far around, and finally had one knee on his back while another ociffer rushed up and they found the gun they were looking for on him, and the WHOLE TIME the dude kept saying, “Wha? Wha’d I do?”

I turned to JWo and said, “If some big cop like that tells me to stand up, I will not only stand up, I will pee my pants, take off my clothes, do whatever’s necessary, all the while keeping my jazz hands visible.”

Because, bad boys, bad boys, Whatcha gonna do?

Friday Flowers! A view of the pink peonies from my desk (last week – this week’s are white & red). My most favorite flower. And yes, those are my Charlie’s Angels trading cards.