Double Beet Loaf

I literally have the easiest job on the face of this planet.  Also, it is the most boring job on the face of this planet, but I’m not complaining.  It could be worse...much much MUCH worse.  But also it could be cooler…much much MUCH cooler.  Still not complaining.

What I find interesting is that the whole format of my day revolves around trying to kill time.  Whether it be with exploring the far corners of the interwebs or simply cramming my brain full of information that I’ll never use which can be found in the various books I read, i.e. learning how to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs, preparing myself to win in a fight against pirate zombies (I haven’t forgotten about part 2 of my zombie blog…it’s coming!) or learning about isostatic rehabilitation and why I need to plan another trip up to Put-In-Bay, I can defy the physics of time.  I think it safe to say that if ever asked, I could put down on future resumes that the description of my job in this office was to fill 8 hours full of nothing.

For instance, I woke up this morning thinking to myself, “Melissa, what is going to get you to the 4 o’clock hour, avoiding the dire need to maim your body just to feel something other than the numbness of boredom and monotony?”  And I came up with a list of things that I would research, learn and extrapolate upon to my unsuspecting cousin when she showed up for dinner later this evening.  Here is today’s to-do list:  (I told you guys that I love these things)…

1.  Check my facebook page and play Mafia Wars until 9:30am. 

2.  Check on my petition and read all the names and comments of the 3,500 people that have already signed it.  Without going into further detail, here is the petition I started last week in the hopes of garnering attention for the loved ones of our troops fighting overseas (sign it if you agree!):  http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/cellphonebanban/

3.  See what the hell this squirrely weather is going to do for the next 10 days even though I just checked it 10 hours ago.

4.  Find a Pandora station that plays nothing but dark ethereal ambient trance music.  <- Don’t ask, I’m just in a mood this week.  BTW, I found it under the Delerium station.  Forgot about them.

5.  Find a meatloaf recipe since I have 4 lbs. of beef, veal and pork sitting in my fridge and I don’t know what to do with it besides making the loaf or meatballs, and I already had meatballs this past weekend, not that you can’t have enough meatballs.  That’s just crazy talk.

6.  Upload pictures of the ice encased trees that I took this morning despite the fact I was running 10 minutes late and still had to unbury my car.

7.  Read the 6^th book of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

Well, it’s 1:06pm and I’ve done almost everything on this list but find a meatloaf recipe.  I don’t know if it’s testament to my laziness but the last thing I want to do is go to Foodnetwork.com.  I have been avoiding this simple search for the past 5 hours, which has been taxing unto itself since I decided to read the entire Metro section of the online newspaper, looked up and memorized all the names to the Finger Lakes and looked up all the credits to the 1963 version of The Haunting. 

And because of my meal preparation insolence, I was just told that I would be spending the next 2 hours working on specs.  I’m pretty much kicking myself because I didn’t come here today with “do actual work” on my list and now it’s fucking everything up.  I think rather than doing the specs right away, I’m going to procrastinate and show my employer that they can’t screw with a  good list, by looking up meatloaf glaze recipes for the next hour or so.   

Brains: pt. 1

I was 5 minutes into an article about “Information For First Time Home Owners” (for a few months now my boyfriend and I have been throwing around the idea of retiring the term “renter” and I figured I should start doing my homework), when I read the words escrow, personal principal and other things I didn’t understand and started to sweat.  So my compassionate brain went into emergency shut-down and threw itself on autopilot to protect me.  I then found some lighter reading and began to pour over the article about ‘How Everything Goes to Hell During a Zombie Apocalypse – The Oatmeal’, and it got me thinking how my family has painstakingly come up with an amazing zombie contingency plan, God forbid these things ever need to be put into motion.  One can never be too prepared.

Before I reveal the details of my plan let me first impart upon you a few details about my relationship with zombies:  (if you haven’t noticed a pattern here yet, I’m obsessed with lists)

1.  My first zombie movie was Return of the Living Dead at a friend’s slumber party.  This party was CLEARLY not chaperoned appropriately for such a choice was not wise in dealing with seven very young girls with active imaginations.  Why I had to start my life long zombie affair with the crappy sequel of the cult classic, I will never know.  (Later in life I would redeem myself over this minor error.) Going into this party as a blissfully ignorant 12 year old, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.  91 minutes later I was altered completely and permanently scarred for life. 

Not once had the thought of someone/thing coming at you to rip apart your skull and devour your brain, crossed my fragile mind.  Until that night, the closest thing I knew of zombies was that they were an English rock band that desperately wanted to be like the Beatles.  Now I had to worry about my very vulnerable and tasty brain on top of other daily stressors such as going to a new school come fall, a giant hole growing in our ozone that was going to burn up the earth with space gasses and green house effects and how to keep my sister out of my room.  I was enough of an over taxed spaz to begin with.  Way to add fuel to the fire, just because I insisted on going to the house of a girl my mom didn’t think was a good influence to begin with.  Now I can say with 29 years of experience under my belt, my mother was almost always right.

2.  I am a reoccurring participant in a local, Cleveland bi-annual charitable Zombie walk.  My dear friend, and fellow Zombie aficionado, Sarah, was the one who introduced me to this lovely event.  I of course called up my sisters and cousins to tag along since this was right up their alley.  They of course were game.  Being the go-to researcher and one to not half-ass things, I immediately went on-line to find zombie makeup application tips.  And boy oh boy did I find some good ones!  Some of the gruesome pictures were so gut churning that I had to read around the pictures by blocking the images with my hand. 

They say if you are going to become a zombie, that first and foremost, you need to create a theme.  You have to immerse yourself in the role by knowing what kind of zombie you are, i.e., how you were made.  Were you the innocent street clothes wearing  by-standard that was mauled and infected through the shoulder/face area?  Perhaps you were a medical worker that had no choice but to obey the Hippocratic Oath and caught the bio-hazard monkey carrying infectious strand through blood transfusions and being mauled in the shoulder/face area.  Could you possibly be the unfortunate person to be caught up in a period of post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout where mutants mauled you in the shoulder/face area?   Or were you simply a rotting ticking time-bomb of a flesh eating corpse waiting for the Thriller cue so you could emerge from the ground and maul someone in the shoulder/face area?  What zombie strand of zombieness are you working with?  Does it slow you down?  Do you just drip slowly in a black sludgy puddle of your own remnants?  Are you a blood thirsty brain eating rocket with super non-human strength tearing after your prey?  (Oh yeah.  This is involved.)  Regardless, I couldn’t live with myself after acquiring this knowledge if I were to go to the store to purchase a tube of $1 white face paint, slap it on my face and call it day.

Now, my family can be quite competitive, creating a playing field when there is no logical reason to have one.  For instance, after sharing the details of professional zombie make up magic, we decided right away that we NEEDED to have the best zombie make up ever!  We needed to annihilate all of the other zombies, fake, that would be limping around with us who were paying $5 to have their makeup down by professionals with airbrushes.  Cheaters.  We needed to win this!  Win what?  I haven’t a clue.  But we had a mission and we are a determined lot.  People were going to get beaten up with our amazing skills. 

We went with a medical theme, seeing as we were broke and my boyfriend is conveniently a firefighter/paramedic at a local ER.  After mixing our makeup, splattering our blood and donning his scrubs (which he wasn’t very pleased about), we were ready to go.

3.  I HATE zombies!  They scare the living shit out of me.  I refuse to watch zombie movies ever since that 5^th grade sleep over.     

4.  We did two other zombie walks.  Creating different themes of zombie make upping techniques, we really out did ourselves.  I had a near meltdown when I found out that the second zombie walk we were to partake in, also took place on my most beloved holiday of TLAP (Talk Like A Pirate day: September 19^th!)  I typically try to throw a party and was torn over what was more important, walking around like a limping dead person to raise money for the local food bank or tapping into my pirate ways to serve up meat and cheese boards as we sang sea shanties, called each other scurvy so and so’s and then eventually get bored and play Rock Band?  Zombie walks are an ALL day event and I knew I wouldn’t be home in time to throw a TLAP celebration.  Makeup prep and application time is involved and can take up to 5 hours (I told you, we don’t mess around).  The event itself can last up to 4 hours.  Clean up is a bitch and you will most definitely find makeup 3 days after the fact, even though you have scrubbed your body down with wire mesh and acid.  So I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to dress up AND throw a piractically themed party.  So I did what any smart person would do and combined the events! 

On a side note, right after this particular zombie walk, we had to drive further into Lakewood to check out a new truck my cousin was looking to purchase.  Imagine seeing "us" come up your driveway when you are some 20 something male expecting some hot country bumpkin.  We meekly stood there feeling like idiots.  But we were the best zombie/pirates ever so that helped.

5.  I have extremely vivid dreams, both good and bad, mostly bad.  This is an every night occurrence.  Needless to say, when I have zombie related vivid nightmares, I do everything in my power to avoid going to bed for a week afterwards more so for my boyfriend’s sake, for he’s the one who has to listen to me recount the gory subconscious details of him being mauled in the shoulder/face area and then he can’t go back to sleep, but I’m already over it and snoring and drooling away when he has to be up in an hour.  There is nothing I can do to prevent them from popping up on a random evening.  I’ve been told by various people that I should write them down and sell them to movie makers, or however that works.  I could make a killing.  No pun intended.  But until the day I actually try that, the subject matter that frightens me so will always come to haunt me.  They always, come…

6.  18 years later, I watch my 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th zombie movies, after extensive coaxing, betrayal and taunting. 

2^nd  movie – Night of the Living Dead

I redeemed myself at our first zombie walk by making the acquaintance of S. William Hinzman, better known as Bill Hinzman, better known further as “Cemetery Zombie” from the original 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead.  After having met him and seeing he was the sweetest old man, until he started hitting on my one cousin…gross, I knew that I would eventually have to wait until mid-day sun to sit down and watch the original zombie movie. 

It wasn’t until several months later that my roommate Jason was home, bored and decided to watch Night of the Living Dead.  It was already night time and my plan to watch it at an appropriate chicken shit time was passed us.  So I finally succumbed to watching it after he ranted and raved that it was an all-time top 10 cult classic.  Thinking that I had already seen this movie, and telling him that I had not,  he looked at me with a curiosity like I was some inbred freak show even though I had participated in various zombie walks.  I ended up faring well because I was mostly excited that I had met the man who tormented Barbara at the beginning of the movie.  And instead of freaking out over the fact he was destroying a vehicle, I comically personalized the experience as if Bill Hinzman was hitting on my poor unsuspecting cousin.  I of course had nightmares but the movie was amazing and definitely worth the lack of sleep.

3^rd movie - Zombie Land

Jason again told me that I had to see this movie and I would laugh and not be scared, because it was so excellently created.  I had to of course watch it, we after all had promoted it at our Piratical Zombie themed 2^nd Zombie walk and won free tickets to go see it but I chickened out and didn’t go.  Despite being in the comfort of my own home, I was definitely a ball of nerves during the entire viewing, knowing full well that my subconscious was going to have a field day with the images the movie was feeding my head.  Woody Harrelson is the shit though, so that helped.  Plus a cameo by Bill Murray?!  SCORE.  Totally worth the night terrors.

4^th movie -  Shaun of the Dead

I was becoming a zombie movie pro at this point and had planned on eventually viewing Shaun of the Dead on my very own to see if I could actually do it without crapping my pants.  My youngest sister was in town and staying at my parents’ house and saved my ass that day!  I made the 20 minute drive out to the country, along with my cousin, to have a Friday movie night, Shaun of the Dead being on the bill. 

By the time my niece was put down to sleep, it was well past dark outside and I was losing my mind over a stupid fear on TOP of having a zombie movie at the ready.  Let me just mention here that I have this ridiculous fear of looking out the windows at my parents’ house in the event that a very ominous black eyed alien was on the other side of the very thin pane of glass staring back at me (this is obviously going to have to be explained in another blog entry so just roll with me here.)  So I was a little jazzed up since my apprehension of zombie movies still to this day hasn’t fully receded.  But both my cousin and sister assured me that this particular movie was more ridiculous than it was scary.  I still didn’t believe them and ended up sitting at the very edge of my Dad’s leather recliner, screaming and flailing my arms around at the TV that certain events were stupid and you shouldn’t just go outside like that, and when random people are standing in your back yard oozing from the mouth that maybe it’s a WONDERFUL idea to run as fast as possible AWAY from them!!!  This went on for the duration of the movie and I think it was more entertaining for my sister and cousin to watch me lose my mind over a non-reality based cinematic experience. 

By the end of the movie, the 3 of us were excitedly telling each other how events would unfold if we were to have replaced the characters.   How we would do everything so much better and would be the ultimate survivors if the zombie army ever descended upon Earth. 

Stay tuned for Brains: pt. 2 – The Passarello zombie survival guide

WHY WE NEED TO BOYCOTT NEBRASKA

I always wished I could be one of those people who could just pack up and move so many miles away.  But I’m permanently umbilical corded to the place of my birth and probably always will be.  I don’t know if it’s solely the fear of leaving everything that I know and love or if there are other factors holding me here, like fear of nuclear annihilation and the fact that I’ll never see my dog again, death by the Lake Erie Monster in retribution for leaving, or inadequate medical facilities, you know, because Cleveland is the only city that has such places of healing.  But maybe one day, just maybe, I’ll have the courage to finally move.  Until then, I have to rely on my little adventures to satiate my road-reared appetite.

I’m a driving maniac.  I whole-heartedly LOVE road trips whether it be an hour expedition out to Amish country or a quick 11 hour jaunt down to visit my sister.  Give me good music, enough money to cover gas and just plop me in a car and let me go.

Nothing beats that moment when you get on the road, an hour later then you intended because you wanted everyone to come out with you to your favorite Mexican restaurant the night before and you had one too many small waters, but that’s ok because you planned on sticking to just beer, and mixing the agave nectar doesn’t count towards being too tired or slightly hung over the next day because you had good intentions and it wasn’t your idea, and because you actually had the thought of having super human will-power even though it flew out the door 13 minutes into your “dinner party”, it’s ok and you won’t suffer.  But it’s not and you are.  And what made you think getting up at 4am was a good idea anyways?  Yeah, a 5am starting time is pretty damn impressive but it is now 5:02am and you are bent over on the toilet drying your hair because your legs and left arm REFUSE to wake up and your brain repeats over and over and over “Idiot, Idiota, Scemo, Dunnerheid, Apush, Pendeja, 傻子, Abrutti, etc.” (You did after all hit snooze 2 times and finally gave up and reset your alarm for 4:45am).   You have a time table to keep, traffic in Akron/Canton to avoid and your slovenly ways are now ruining your almost OCD behavior of being a road trip warrior!  Damn it!!!

But there you are by some miracle at 5:35am with a gas station bought coffee flavored drink in hand, water bottles and various other sport like drinks filling every cup holder in your car, sitting at the Shell gas station by 271 ready to get on the road, looking as human as possible which is a feat in itself at such an early hour. 

The car is considerately packed with:

1.  Snacks consisting of bananas, home-made trail mix, candy bars and Alesci’s All-Italian sub sandwiches, mild, not hot (because hitting every gas station due to this horrible oversight from Virgina to the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina which spanned some 300 miles last year was something you always wanted to try).

2.  The also tired/hungover unsuspecting sibling/cousin you coerced into coming with you on your hair brained idea of an adventure. 

      3.  Various printed pages of Google maps and a 2009 Walmart road atlas, because you won’t be THAT person and succumb to those damn GPS evil Big Brother machines, even though your sister used it once on your way to North Carolina and it was amusing to watch your little 2-D blue car like shape weave around the West Virginian mountains, so in all it wasn’t THAT bad but you still regard the highly dependent use of electronics to be the downfall of society and the reason why kids can’t point out Iraq on a map in 2011.

      4.  68 electronic device charging cords that are competing with the one electrical/lighter outlet in your car (I CAN point out Iraq and Sarawak too!).  Your cousin has somehow orchestrated a plan which utilizes all 68 cords in a 10 hour period to keep/fully charge all electronic devices and after 16 road trips with her in the past 2 years, you still don’t understand the plan but that’s why you typically bring her along anyways.

      5.  Pillows and blankets for you to sleep with even though no matter what you do, no matter how far back you recline the passenger seat, no matter how much you curl your body up in the back seat, no matter how you position your body and the seat belt to make a head sling so your head doesn’t bounce off the door since you forgot to get that alignment and tire balance, you will still be uncomfortable and only sleep for six, 5 minute intervals during a 2 hour period, but that’s ok because some how this will give you enough energy to make it sanely through your last hour of driving before you start losing your shit and become paranoid that the white plumbing van that has been driving with you for the past 45 minutes in the middle of no where is really a trans-continental assassination outfit that is tracking you and will detonate their bomb packed vehicle within 10 miles of your destination because “someone” has it out for you.  You just know these things.

      6.  The best damn mix-cds you have ever made in your entire life!  No one, NO ONE is the master of making mixed cds of the ultimate worst/best songs in the world like myself.  I have a Hocking Hills 2009 master mix, OBX 2010 sand dream mix, 2010 Oregon Insanity Drive jams and other oddly named and dated cds that would just make you cream your pants.  I pretty much spend more time making these cds than I do planning the actual vacation/road trip and everyone understands that this is just the way it goes. 

Now that we are well on our way into our little trip, ideas of future destinations start flying into the conversation even though we have complained 500 times about how long it takes to drive the length of the current state we are in, how our legs are cramping and that we are sick of bananas and the fact that we can only listen to so much Blue Grass on Sirius since we have expended our mixed cds 3 hours ago and we still have another 4 hours to go… *note to self* make more cds.  But then comes the idea for the crèam de la crème of all road trips…cross country to Oregon and the plans start to unfold without effort.

My little Honda, which is only 5 years old and has well over 100,000 miles on it, has clearly been places.  It has seen most of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virgina and other states, witnessed mass road-trip hysteria, the puking of my middle sister on her 21^st birthday even though I had bags, water and a peanut butter sandwich ready for her but she was so sloppy she couldn’t even get the damn window down, asshole.  But the ultimate road trip still has yet to be driven despite the odds. 

I buckled and made my way to Oregon, even though I flew into Portland because I was running out of vacation days at work.  But this has still not deterred me to make the cross-country track to the Pacific Coast as originally intended.  Black Beard (my car) will have to sit this one out, seeing as I need a working vehicle to get me to and from work when I get back so that I can make more money to go on more trips.  It has been decided that I will rent a car.  In order to offset the cost of this automotive endeavor, I have taken into consideration that I have to budget well on the other aspects of my 2 week road trip.  This is where my cousin comes into play.

Besides my youngest sister and myself, my cousin Chelsea is considered the 3^rd participant of the Road Warrior Trifecta.  We would consider my cousin Stephanie who is a balls to the wall, doesn’t take shit, hardcore B.A.M.F Road Trip Warrior as well, if she weren’t always in NY skiing every winter weekend or floating around Lake Michigan every Saturday and Sunday during the summer.  Chelsea will soon be leaving us later this year to embark on her own adventure with her husband who is in the Coast Guard and currently stationed in South Carolina.  In 3 months, he is slated to be restationed.  Considering the outcome of how high he tests in an upcoming training stint, his rank and some other crap that I don’t understand, these factors will determine where he and my cousin will be living.  One would think, being in the Coast Guard, that they could be stationed in the tropical south, but because my family is so unorthodox, aka, WEIRD, my cousin is hoping to be stationed up north in either Alaska, Washington, Maine or Oregon, SCORE!  She loathes heat, so any of these places would work perfectly towards her aversion to warmth.  Bonus for me if she gets Oregon or Washington because that means a free place to stay, hence her being a big part of my perfect Road Trip plan to counterbalance my expensive vehicular rental bill.  But God hates most people who only want good things to happen so there is a big possibility that my plan could crumble in one slight breath of bad luck.

Basically Chelsea and her husband have been handed a piece of paper with 40 locations of possible destinations of which they had to choose from.  Because she is willing to be relocated to the Arctic circle, it is most likely that she will be moving to Key Largo, FL, Pittsburg, PA, Charleston SC,  Fairport Harbor, OH or Nebraska.  Wait, Nebraska?!  You must be asking yourself, as I did when she told me this.  Yes, Nebraska she said.  Of ALL the places in the continental United States of America that are surrounded by large bodies of water, there is a particular buoy in the lone Missouri River that needs to be tended.  This is most likely where Chels will end up, by no fault of her own except for the fact that she is a Passarello and we have shit luck.

This of course means that my Oregon trip will be thwarted in the living accommodations department.  So I’m asking now (and making back up plans), if you or anyone you know, may have a place for me to crash in Oregon or Washington, closer to Portland or Seattle (if you live in Spokane, I don’t care, that is too far from where I want to go) then please let me know.  Until then, many prayers and good thoughts that God overlooks all the wrong Chelsea has done in her life (which are many) that could completely destroy my Ultimate Trip and that he forgives her and lets her live some where awesome.  Amen.

The plague always wins

My boyfriend says that I have an immune system akin to that of a 96 year old woman.  And he's right.

When talk of people in the office or surrounding Cleveland metropolis start complaining about sniffles or body aches, I go into sheer fits of terror.  I feel like a medical viral war vet after having survived 2 bouts of Mono, a botched appendectomy, 2 cervical cancer scares and the worst sore throats that anyone on this earth could possibly imagine.  I hear the word sinus infection, and I hit the floor like I heard a loud crash and suffer from PTSD. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if I, like the rest of the “normal” people out there, could get the simple cold or flu.  No, my poor body, which I’m sure steps up to the proverbial plate suited up ready for action, has the best intentions of staving off evil viruses and diabolical bacteria, but sadly takes these simple symptoms and somehow turns itself into a utopian breeding house of hateful illnesses.  I end up with bronchitis ON TOP of a Super bacterial sinus infection.  As if a regular sinus infection wasn’t enough.

I have been popping pills of various shapes, sizes and colors for 2 weeks now.  I think I started off with pseudoephedrine this morning but have since, lost track of what is actually entering my body.  What does it matter?  It won’t help anyways.  I think I may have just eaten some m&m s thinking they were those candy coated Advil.  How can you tell the difference when you can’t smell therefore can’t taste anything? 

I’m pretty sure all of these ‘helpful’ drugs have annihilated my taste buds.  I can almost sort of detect flavors of things, more like a faint inkling of what I’m supposed to be consuming but it more so has the flavor like the item has been burning in a tire-lined fire pit.  It goes without saying that most food is unappetizing.  Needless to say, I can’t even stomach eating pretzels at this point.  No matter what enters my body, unless it’s in liquid Ginger Ale form, my poor ever trying body attacks it like it’s cancer. 

I took the advice of my well-meaning friends and family members (a number of them being in the medical profession) and gave the ol’ B.R.A.T. diet (that would be bananas, rice, applesauce and toast) my best.  Toast started off alright, almost promising until 10 minutes passed and my body started cramping up like it was the worst period I was ever going to get in my life.  Obviously not pleased, I tried the banana.  This went down smoothly, we passed the 10 minute mark, the 15 minute mark and approached the 16 minute mark where I immediately prairie dogged in my seat and scooted my chair in a very hurried manner towards the bathroom.

At this point, the thought of rice scares the living Jesus out of me.  Though I’m willing to be sadistic and give apple sauce a go this evening.  That is if I even have apple sauce at home.  I think the last time I checked, I only had 6 eggs, 2 “ends” of some marble rye bread and some wilted grapes.  I will keep in mind that my diet should continue to stay bland and that maybe, if God is looking kindly upon me, come Sunday, I’ll shoot for a grilled cheese.  Regardless, wish me luck.

-Stay tuned for next week’s post on how it is humanly possible to live off of cheese, orange juice and chocolate for 3 months straight! 

Things to bang your head on your desk to

It’s not that I consider my job unimportant.  After all it is the main source of income to help me pay the rent on my over-priced decrepit rental house.  It also takes care of the astronomical gas bill, which said over-priced rental house seems to consume like a Milky Way sized black hole, even though there is only ONE 1’ x 1’ square foot space in the not often used dining room corner that feels luke-warm at any given point during the arctic Cleveland months in the entire house. 

What I do find important about my job is that it is an escape from my very stressful “life”.  I use the term ‘life’ very loosely for I don’t feel like it’s necessarily my direct actions which make my “life” stressful.  Rather it’s the constant battle of subduing the actions of most members of the blood line from which I stem in order to keep them from unleashing their insanity onto the rest of humanity.  I’m still waiting for the populace of the world race to reward me in some way for my very arduous and painful efforts by the way.  A key to a city perhaps?   Or maybe half-off appetizers to my favorite Mexican restaurant.  Anything really, it doesn’t take much to please me.

With that said, I highly look forward coming into work to escape Them.  If I don’t answer Their phone calls or emails, (telling me how the basement at my parents’ house is flooded and They need me to somehow fix it, even though I don’t know the slightest bit about plumbing or welding, or that another 3,000 acres of Rainforest has been eliminated off the face of the earth in the last half hour which sends me into fits of hysteria because Their guilt which was planted into my fragile mind at such a young age, has been conditioned by Them in a way that it sends me into agonizing patterns of thinking that there could have been something I could have done to prevent this global catastrophe had I just ordered fish the other night instead of a hamburger) I always have the excuse of, “but I was busy filing this one sheet of paper which kept me away from my desk…for 8 hours.”  My office I consider a safe house which lends me the much needed down time to regroup the miniscule shards of sanity I have left, because when it hits 5pm and They know They can reach me, we start the vicious life sucking cycle all over again. 

Needless to say, not every moment at work is full of puppy dogs and magic cotton candy colored sedatives.  No, unfortunately even the office has it’s points of great mind blowing inane moments.  What is that you ask?  What could possibly throw someone like me who tries to keep a smile plastered onto her face between the hours of 8am – 5pm Monday thru Friday into such a rage of quiet ‘I don’t want them to fire me or commit me into a very crazy, this will be on 'A Haunting' next season, type of mental institution’ you ask?  Well, let me tell you in the form of this very thoughtfully constructed list:

Office “things” my co-workers do that make me want to punch myself in the face


1.  Talking to me in length when I’m on a business phone call and getting upset when I can’t immediately answer them.  -  Now I know that I’m endowed with a miraculous curly and unruly head of locks.  I know that in the past my hair has been capable of consuming items such as rubber bands, clips, brushes, toy cars etc. when in close proximity of it.  I know that the circumference of my hair on a good day can best be described by the following equation of an ellipse’s angular eccentricity since the particular shape of an ellipse is what gives my hair its natural curl which means it can get pretty damn big and hide certain items

  

But it still just completely baffles me as to why anger must ensue after they find that I’m not just ignoring them, but ignoring them because I’m on the phone…doing my job.

2.  Refusing to put cups, plates, bowls, silverware etc. into the dishwasher which isn't even a half an inch away from the kitchen sink.  – This particular office phenomenon is up there with the mystery of Atlantis and the lost continent of Mu.  There are records of this particular act taking place (the leaving of eating utensils in the sink), but the circumstantial evidence that someone in this office was responsible for it seems to elude even...me.    Apparently no one is responsible for this event and apparently there is some anti-gravity machine in the kitchen which renders the human body incapable of bending over to open the dish washer door and place said eating instruments into its vast cleaning cavity.  Due to the frustration of one administer who couldn’t seem to figure out why anyone could be so mean, decided to take it out on me and made it my responsibility to keep the sink clear of plates and the such.  After many emails, empty threats and monetary bribes, I have yet to get through a single day where I don’t walk into the kitchen and have an immediate aneurism since someone couldn’t be bothered with putting their rudimentary eating utensil into the high end technological cleaning machine.  *dies*

3.  The inability to replace rolls of paper throughout the office: i.e. toilet paper, paper towels, paper in the copy machines etc.  – I’m going to keep this simple.  I work for people who design multi-million dollar buildings.  Why they can’t replace a roll of paper is just mind boggling.  I don’t even think it’s an act of defiance really, A.D.D. maybe, since I’ve battled the stupidly designed toilet paper rolls holders in the bathroom, but just giving it 4 seconds of attention and voilà! you have a freshly rolled tube of butt wipe suspended gloriously from its appropriately designated area.  The ol’ unwrap the toilet paper roll, stick it ON TOP OF the paper holder receptacle, wadding up the covering paper and hurling it somewhere within 5 feet of the trash can does NOT constitute as a successfully replacing.  And guess again who somehow gets blamed for this???


4.   Ticker Tape Parades in the copy room and lay-down areas.  AKA, hole punching documents.  – I cannot tell you how many times I’ve crawled around on my hands and knees using packing tape strategically rolled around my hand trying to pick up little dots of paper.  I do this in a sheer panic that if I’m not on top of it, one particular rule delegating administrator will once again make it my responsibility to pick up each and every spec of paper or I will have bamboo shoots shoved under my nails.  And it’s not like it’s a concentrated area of paper.  It literally looks like someone cracked out on coffee ran into the room and Swiss-cheesed the hell out of the thinnest card stock paper they could find while doing jumping jacks up and down the room.  All but one of our 3-hole punchers have sleeves that go on the bottom of said devices to contain the remnants of a new bound document but somehow, even though I hide it, that particular person seems to find it and insists on using the one that doesn’t have this special sanity saving sleeve.  <-great alliteration if I do say so myself.

5. Recycling banana peels.  – We have not 1, not 2 but 3 garbage bins in our kitchen.  There is a large garbage bin for every day trash, not even 5 feet away (I don’t understand this one either) there is another garbage bin, but smaller for even more trash.  In between these black garbage bins is a very large blue, square in shape, recycling bin with a sign posted over it which reads “RECYCLABLES ONLY!” in large and bolded font, typed out by your's truly.  Again, I walk into the brain blood vessel splitting kitchen to be of witness to various trash items in this clearly marked basket for recycling.  Coffee grounds, fruit peels, wads of used tissue litter this bin as if someone spitefully threw them in there to show up the designating sign.  I don’t know who has so much hate for protocol here in this office, but it makes me want to just sit down Indian style rocking in the corner sobbing uncontrollably. 

I love my fellow employees but can't help but sit here spending most of my day (trying to kill time) wondering how it is they got degrees in such a prestigious work field such as architecture and design.  It makes me worry a little for the new tenants of our lovely buildings, that they may be in peril of structurally sound design, faulty toilet paper roll dispensers or a psychotic administrative assistant.