Feb 082020
 

I have the day off from Korean studies, and as much as I love those weekly hangouts, I am secretly relieved that I don’t have to recite sentences over and over until my face feels like it’s splitting at the jaw. Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I hear myself saying, “여름에는,  너무 더와요. 그래서, 저는 여름을 싫어해요.” Which is a weird sentence to be thinking about in the dead of winter, with snow blanketing the ground, because it means, “In summer, it’s too hot. So, I hate summer.” When really I’m sitting over here doing witchy spells to bring summer to me but then I start thinking about climate change and I panic and then it’s like NEVERMIND, WINTER, YOU CAN STAY FOR THE ALLOTTED SEASONAL TIME, BUT NOT A SINGLE DAY MORE.

It was really nice on Monday though. Like, nearly 70 which is scary and I felt guilty for being so happy about it. But really, I wouldn’t mind the cold temps of winter so much if we could just get a fucking blue sky occasionally. I think I saw that in Pittsburgh last month, we had like 27 days of gray skies and rain. Fuck that shit.

The other day, my friend Lori was on the phone at work with a partner from Tokyo and it sounded, from my perspective, like a very joyous chat about music, and then when I heard Lori say, “Yes actually, I have heard of them, because one of the girls in our office is a super big kpop fan” so I shot my arms up and said, “That’s me” and while that was exciting in and of itself, the thing that I latched on to the hardest was that she referred dumb old 40-year-old me as “a girl” and not “some broad” or, you know, “lady.” Woo! Forever a girl!

I very rarely have pleasant phone calls with partners at work. Practice assistants are fine, I’ll talk to them like they’re one of the postal clerks I have moderate relationships with, but partners usually make my insides curl up and pour cement over whatever semblance of a personality I have left in this crap head of mine. In fact, I had one phone call last week that was so painful, I was actually shocked afterward to see on my phone log that the call was only 4.5 minutes long when I’m pretty sure it was actually an hour. So many painfully uncomfortable silences too. And he kept saying, “Ohhhhhkay” with subtle “you are a real stoop” undertones to them and I wanted to fucking flee the scene.

Speaking of personality and the postal clerks, I had to mail some orders the other day at work (Henry has been very diligent about mailing them for me lately so that I don’t have to lug bags stuffed with Valentines to work everyday, thanks Henry). There was a new, young woman clerk at the one post office, and I have never seen her before and judging by her extremely pleasant disposition, this must mean she’s a fresh one. Anyway, while I was at the counter, she said, “Oh, I love your necklace!” It was my oversized wooden sarcastic Conversation Hearts necklace, which I do have to agree is a very cool necklace, so I cheerfully thanked her as if the necklace was my own creation. Then she noticed my cactus phone case. “Oh, and I love your phone case too!” I laughed and said, “Yes, I do too!” because obviously I do, I bought it, after all. My people-skills, man.

Then, as I was taking my receipt from her, she squealed, “AND YOUR JACKET!” It was my cowprint jacket. “I can tell you have an AWESOME PERSONALITY!” and all I could do was giggle shyly and said, “I try.”

EXCEPT THAT I DON’T TRY. Literally, my personality, what’s left of it, hangs off my shoulders in soiled shreds these days. It’s all mangled and beaten and DON’T TALK TO ME.

Man, 20 years ago, though. My personality was FIRE 20 years ago.

I worked from home yesterday, and Chooch happened to have a snow day. I heard him call Henry at one point and ask when he was expected to come home. “Because she doesn’t want to make her own lunch. No, I’m not making lunch for her.” WOW. But yeah, that’s me. Non-cookin’ mom. Cook on, just don’t expect me to join.

Look. Drew’s friend saved her a seat. Drew has such nice friends. What a nice friend, you have, Drew.

I realized today that when I went to the library, that it was the first time I had left the house since Wednesday. I could never work from home every day. I would be ruined. My cats would start to hate me. What’s left of personality would petrify.

I really don’t have anything else earth-shattering to report. Our busy card-making season should be starting to wind down now since Valentine’s Day is less than a week away at this point. I’ll be happy to have a clean dining room table again and to not stress-fight with Henry over shipping labels and whatnot. I let him watch videos from one of the recent SuperM concerts the other night while we were packaging orders and he seemed very content. I always catch him smiling whenever Taemin is talking. It’s OK, Henry. You can admit it.

In other serial killer card news (actually though, the Golden Girls Valentines may have outsold the killer ones this year!), GG Allin’s brother came back and bought more cards off me, so I can now officially say that GG Allin’s brother is a return customer and that kind of makes me a little bit giddy.

Other than that, I have been severely depressed over this whole impeachment fail, the coronavirus, the wildfires, the world in general. Deciding to bury myself in books again was pretty much the best thing I could have done for myself. I’ll just be over here, blissfully unaware of the news from now on.

Cook on, mothercheffers. Cook the fuck on. I’m dun dun. So dun dun dun dun dun dun dun…

P.S. I just realized I haven’t eaten lunch yet and dumb Henry isn’t here,어떻게………………..:( Same boat as yesterday!! OMG I JUST RHYMED IN KOREAN AND ENGLISH, I’M A GENIUS.

  2 Responses to “Saturday Stream of Consciousness”

  1. Oh man… I feel you on being depressed at the state of things in the world; and this country in particular. I just can’t anymore and I’m scared to death about this whole election cycle.

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