Month: March 2006 (Page 2 of 4)

OK. Put down whatever you’re drinking. Your keyboard will thank me.

For, I am about to confess something. When I was a young girl? All I wanted to do was wear a bonnet. A BONNET. I was reminded of this when I said aloud at work yesterday, “I feel like I’m starring in a crime drama right now” and Kristin replied with, “I feel like I’m starring in Little House on the Prairie!” To which I gleefully shouted, “Do we get to wear bonnets????”

For I wanted nothing more than to go through life as a living, breathing Holly Hobby doll. Bonnetted and aproned. Calico print was my best friend. Some strange fascination with pioneer living infused me in those 8-10 year-old years, though I think we all know I’d start screaming and kicking five minutes into the life. (Especially now. Pioneers do not have the DVR technology. Nor, I believe, the internet.) I think my Mom even caved at an art fair & bought us matching bonnets, and she wore hers all of one minute in the van (the big blue van with only one side window & the director’s chair I rode around in, digging my feet into the floor for balance…that van). I wore mine much longer, though it did piss me off with how much it impeded my ability TO SEE AROUND ME. I’m not sure when the whole Laura Ingalls Wilder phase finally passed, but my heart still patters & skips a beat for a tiny calico print….

Bitchin’ in a Bonnet. That’d be me.

At how many people watch The Ghost Whisperer. I won’t even link to it. Sorry if you love it – you have many friends if you do – but I predicted it would fall flat on its face & die in a pool of ghost vomit. It’s chugging along quite nicely & I remain amazed, every week I have to put a buy together.

Shows ya how wrong I was….. of course, I also said Beverly Hills 90210 would tank. (Yes, I am that old. I had just started in advertising when the networks presented that show to us, and I thought it DUMB.) Now, I have done a pretty good job overall of spotting stinkers & winners, but the ones where you’re wrong are always the most glaring.

The lesson here? Never underestimate the general populous, and their love of ghosts. Ever.

I just parked my car in the garage.

DO YOU KNOW what a big deal it is? DO YOU? It has been :cough: 2 years since I could say that. What with imminent danger & winter warnings flying all over the place & doom & destruction that has YET to come true (all of this was starting last night) (which it didn’t), I decided the last thing I needed on a Monday was to clean my windshield in the cold. So I shoved everything out of the way & parked LaFonda in her spot.

Now, my only other advice for you today is if you are watching Sleeper Cell on Showtime, (the first season is On Demand, so you can watch, like all 10 in a row?) You & me need to form a support group where one person gets to sleep, and the other one stays on red alert. That show is freakin’ me out.

And here’s one of my self-portraits from Friday night, you know, where I didn’t realize everyone was laughing at me, because they thought I was alone? AND I WASN’T, JWo was right there. Dammit. Laugh away!

Yes I do
Gin Gin Gin
How ’bout you?

So much Gin
In In In
Jen Jen Jen
Shout: Woo Hoo!

OK, so maybe I am destined to write cheers. However my cheers aren’t exactly youth- or sports-friendly. But if my friends at Tanqueray ever need a freelance cheer writer, I’m their gal! I don’t regularly/normally whoop it up & over-imbibe, but after the past week’s work & stress & swearing & shouting, it just really felt OK, and there was an abundance of limes. I love limes. JWo, the designated driver & corned-beef-cooker-extraordinaire was astounded I didn’t have a headache this morning; that’s because I am MAGIC. (And, it doesn’t take as much to get me dancing, singing, and whooping it up. For I am a cheap drunk, people, even with top-shelf stuff.) I have re-hydrated my body (gin + corned beef = organs turn into salt licks) & am about set to go out & do a li’l shopping, and then later on this weekend, there will be photographic evidence of all the whoopin’.

Not sure if I will be posting the series of self-portraits I took, when I was in the living room & it appeared to the people in the dining room I was by myself. Making sweet love to the camera. After one corner of my eye actually focused on them (one of the girls POINTING at me while giggling was a huge clue), I kept yelling, “I HAVE AN AUDIENCE” while gesturing wildly at JWo, who was sitting in a chair out of their line of sight, and all he did? was LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH at his gin-besotten wife. He is the lime in my gin & tonic. :)

Sometimes, how the searchers hit my blog crack me up:

On the one hand, I’m terribly disappointed that my secret book on crafting with plastic medicine bottles has been discovered, and it will probably affect my chances for a book tour. On the other hand, I’m glad to help anyone trying to make two socks for idiots. Even the stupid need footwear.

And let us not forget to Be Aggressive. Yesterday, I was a veritable pit bull, as I hung up the phone and whispered, “My motherfucking head’s going to explode Right. Off. My Body.” For you see, it’s not when I’m at my yelling and loudness that I’m the most scary, it’s when it gets all quiet and the tumbleweed blows by and the silence is interrupted only by a faint sinister whistle. That’s the moment I’ll be gettin’ medieval on yo’ mothahfuckin’ ass. There won’t be any clapping cheerleaders to warn you I’m a-comin’. Be Be Aggressive! (are you kidding? are there more words to that cheer anyway? Get away from me. I do not service the cheerleader industry.)

Oh yeah, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Top O’ the Mornin’ to ya, my pretties!

I haven’t participated in a March Madness pick-em-bracket thingy since I don’t know when. I think it was only once, in Minneapolis, where I decided to pick teams based on how their mascots would fare in a cage fight. Like, a panther could TOTALLY take a buckeye in a skirmish. A buckeye’s a flippin’ nut!

So, not surprisingly, that governing principle didn’t work really well. Instead, this time, I looked at who’s been winning more games. And what sounded familiar. Florida? Florida! I have family there. Florida will beat those Buckeyes. Having nothing vested in any team makes it a little easier, too. As in, I DON’T REALLY CARE.

Mmm-hmm! I will enjoy spending all my winnings, laugh all you like!!!!

I have worked at a couple agencies where the profanity was rampant. RAMPANT. I remember my one hilarious boss in St. Louis, screaming a blue streak as we visualized the devoutly religious accounting dude in the office next to her freaking out, quietly, in his office.
Then when I was at Crazy Agency From Hell (the 4 month stint one, not the 5.5 year one), and I was tempted to even blog about that crazy woman by name, because whatever, she’s on the run from a $1.1 million dollar lawsuit because of “financial mismanagement” and not paying her client’s bills. Hey, Jodi, how’s Texas treatin’ ya?
ANYhoo, at that place, all sorts of blue language was screamed, spoken, laughed and expelled. Having learned the Art of Cursing from my father, I consider myself quite adept, if not extremely unladylike. And so that brings me to Current (Happy) Place, where I do enjoy my job, even if it does get stressful. And a place in which we all swear like sailors, including my boss, and every so often I just feel a little bad, because, like, we all sit near the front desk/reception area. Oops! Well, what the fuck. In times of stress, strong language is to be expected. I just keep thinking that if we move our offices in the next year, which is pretty likely, especially if the non-stop fucking DRILLING POUNDING RAT A TAT TAT motherfucking NOISE from the Bob Mahal construction keeps up, that they’d be wise to put our department in the back. With a little soundproofing.

OK, I went out at lunch today because it’s supposed to be the last nice warm day before we go back in the freezer for a week, and because I was fighting off stress-crying all morning, due to all the, you know, stress. I ordered a li’l take-out pad thai, and the dude on the phone coerced me into soft spring rolls, my absolute favorite thing. If they weren’t $5 for three rolls, I could seriously eat like, 10 and call it lunch. It’s like salad, herbs & noodly goodness in a wrapper!
Anyway. Traffic was a bitch going in to Westport, and an equal ruling bitch coming out. Thinking meself all “clever” and whatnot, I took a different route. It’s the gamble route, because there’s one big bad intersection to get through, but if traffic’s light, or in your favor, it’s the straightest way back to the plaza, where my office is.

Mmmkay! Even as I was getting to the intersection, I was thinking about what a bad intersection it is. I even looked up at the signs, to see what exactly in hell this street was. 43rd Street, and then I was at The Bad Intersection, where it hits Belleview. This is where you have to watch in a lot of different directions, pay attention to everyone ELSE’S lights, and then git where you’re goin’, and fast. I had one car in front of me, and then I saw the southbound Belleview traffic got their light. Damn. Who knows how long I’ll be here – and then it all slowed down, as a woman decided to cross coming towards me and BLAM she hit a dude on a motorcycle. It felt like time moved in micoseconds as I watched him slam into her car, fall, and stay down.

The guy in front of me jumped out of his car and ran to the guy. I grabbed my phone. Dialed 911. And I was On Hold. Good lord. As I explained later, back at the office, though, I am excellent at communicating in a crisis: “We’ve got an injury accident at 43rd & belleview, we have a man down on the ground in the street.” I sounded like a fucking dispatcher on COPS. Then time screeched back to normal, people drove by with their mouths open, this other dude and I moved our cars and then stood around while the sirens and the onlookers and the other people and the fire trucks and the ambulance and there were like, 8 paramedics, put this guy on a backboard and so carefully, so fearfully, they got him on a gurney thing and wheeled him away. His helmet still on. I was so glad he had his helmet on. I saw a gash in his leg as they wheeled him by, underneath where his jeans had torn. Watched the officer take his wallet from the paramedic, flip it open. The everyday for her, this was not earth shattering, this was not a bubble inside her about to break open, as mine inside me desperately tried to push tears out while my calm-in-serious-crisis persona stomped the hell out of that desire. Instead, I calmly gave my account of what happened, gave this policewoman my information, went back to work, parked my car, finally let go of the wheel, went inside, met with a rep, ate my spring rolls, wrote a document detailing my account of the accident and then got 14 more things done before I came home.

Where, I expect, I will eventually crack and some of the tears will leak out and the stress will ebb, and I will pray, yes, will pray that the man with his helmet on and the cut on his leg will be fine, able to walk, and will be, please, just fine. No more, please. Not today.

…For a way to add-on a Taser feature to my new Palm T|X. I think it would be EXCELLENT, and I would get a lot of use out of it. For instance, I could eliminate waiting in lines right off the bat, which would make this gadget a REAL time-saver. Not to mention the fact folks would finally start to respect mah authoritah!

Here’s my new leetle friend, who is being safely secured from all liquid beverages:

Yeah, yeah, I can sweat the small stuff with the best of ’em. Right now, my mind is divided in a multitude of fractions: general irritation with a couple people, mild irritation with myself, an unending desire to be on vacation, a sense of panic with the work that has to get done, a constantly-changing post-it list in my head of everything I need to do, buy, not forget, blah blah blah, and basically, I need several stiff drinks, preferably on a beach in Mexico, fuck the umbrellas, they simply get in the way.

So, yes, on the big see-saw of life, I have a lot of crap weighting one side down. On the other side? I place this, my new coffee mug. Yes. I get joy from splashy, stylish travel mugs. Purchased at Target, and they come in red, aqua & hot pink, too. Don’t you need one?