Screwing around with some old photos at work while I have a little bit of an unusual lull. 

Chooch zombified himself with my iPhone:

Some other things:

Hockey season has begun! The Pens game starts in 30 minutes, which means I will be acting all indignant and put-off every time an analyst brings work for me. Can’t they see I’m TRYING to listen to the goddamn game?

!

Of course everything would be doubled-over-in-hysteria funny tonight at work since I have chest pains. Ow.

I posted a review of the new Chiodos album last night. It was met with a very “Bueller?”-esque reception. Some random girl on Twitter read it and said it was well-done. That was good enough for me. Really fucking love Chiodos, in case you haven’t figured that out, considering I have an entire blog category devoted to them.

Kettelbell workouts are my jam.

When I came into work today, the first thing I noticed was that the wall of my work space finally says my name!

I don’t have to be “Patricia Weiss” anymore.

It was to the point where, if someone from another department walked by and said, “Hey Patricia,” I’d just mumble “Hey” back.

I’ll tell ya. Something as trivial as having my own goddamn name slapped on that pane of frosted glass has made me feel 1,000 times more at home here.

You know it’s a slow night at The Law Firm when I’m taking pictures of my accessories. And can you believe one of the rings I bought Sunday morning at the flea market done went and BROKED on me? You’d think something that cost .

50 would hold up better!

Anyway. I’m fucking bored. Tell me things.

Something here in the office is really raping my eyes. I’ll be fine all day at home, then within an hour or so upon arrival here, my eyes get all bloodshot and start to sting. I’m sure I look really hot. Like one of those Mother Mary statues with the bleeding eyes.

Especially once it starts making my nose sniffle.

Yesterday, I brought my contact case, saline solution, and glasses. I was hoping to not have to resort to such drastic measures, but by 6:00, my eyes were waving the white flag. Out came the contacts, on went the glasses.

Now. I’ve grown rather acclimated to the big ol’ glasses. As long as I’m not walking, eating, typing, jump-roping, driving, looking left or descending stairs, I seem to be fine. However, there’s the whole vanity thing. In public, I turn into that 12-year-old girl who doesn’t want the boys to see her eating in the cafeteria.

I didn’t want anyone here to see me in my big gay glasses.

One of the analysts saw them on my desk and declared that they were cute. She caught me wearing them later and reiterated, “Yep, those are cute.”

But Chris was working last night, and I was sure that he would make fun of me. So every time I heard approaching footsteps, I flung the glasses off and all but beat them into a corner with a hot poker. Chris quickly caught on to what was happening here, and it soon turned into a game. He started making sneak attacks, approaching me quietly from behind, in hopes of catching me bespectacled.

“Green glasses!” he yelled, running by. So much hate.

(What the hell, he just came over and asked, “Where are the goggles?”)

Today, I didn’t even bother putting the contacts in at all. My eyes are fucked. I don’t know what’s going on because I have a brand new stock, I broke that bad habit of sleeping in them, and I never wear them longer than 2 weeks. Basically, I began acting like a responsible adult. But I feel like even when my contact habits were atrociously juvenile, I never had this much of an optical shitstorm blowing through my life.

I’m trying not to think the worst. It could be that I sit beneath a vent. Maybe my eyes are having a disagreement with the new saline solution I’m using. I’m trying not to let my mind succumb to all the worst case scenarious: I’m losing my eye sight.

I have an optic disease with no cure. Satan is sucking out my eye juices with a straw each night while I’m dreaming of Andy Gibb in Revolutionary War garb.

It’s obviously time to go back to the doctor and demand help.

I haven’t worn my glasses here yet today, squinting instead and pawing at the air around me like a mole. S was walking past when I got here and, seeing them splayed out on my desk, exclaimed, “Nice glasses!” Then she wanted me to put them on. I vehementally refused, face growing red.

“Big glasses are coming back!” she reasoned.

I let one of the processors see them, only because he had been privy to the whole debacle of ordering them in the first place.

“They’re not…..that bad,” he said, thoughtfully, tilting his head a little to take in all angles of the garishness.

“I suppose not,” I started, “but I would have preferred a better color. Like, invisible.”

“Look on the brightside,” he offered. “You have your own miniature telescope.

”

What an asshole, am I right.

The sad part is that I actually see better with the glasses than with contacts, but still choose to wear contacts 90% of the time.

Oh vanity.

G is wearing her homemade piece of shit tank top from her Granny Strippers line, so it’s actually a good thing I can’t see tonight.

Henry likes to rub in all the awesome things he and Chooch do while I’m biting my nails listening to the hockey game, I mean, working.

He’ll send me pictures of random drunkards stumbling in front of our yard or evidence of whatever totally awesome store they’re in.

Just now, he sent over a picture from Toys R Us, where Chooch has money to burn thanks to his birthday party.

Hello! I want everything on these shelves!

Mostly the Sea Monkeys, which I know is why he had the audacity to send this to me, that fucker. I am in so much pain that I can’t be there, coaxing Chooch into purchasing everything I think he should have.

Fuck, I do really have a thing for Sea Monkeys.

Do the right thing, son!

“Oh, here’s some [Lawfirm] history for you, Erin,” Barb said yesterday out of the blue. “You remember that guy who shot all those women at the gym last summer—”

“YES!” I answered way too hungrily.

Barb looked at my crazy woman eyes for a few seconds before continuing. “Well, he used to work here.”

“I know!” I shouted, leaving out the part where I was that much more eager to get the job because of that. “In fact, when i was waiting to hear if I got the job, my friend jokingly said, ‘If they hired THAT guy, you should be a shoo-in’.”

Barb laughed. “Gee, what does THAT say about you?”

Yes, what indeed?

“Anyway, the reason I brought it up is because I just found a bunch of old emails from him. He was one of the ones who created [the program our department uses] and he was helping me last year when I had a problem,” Barb told me. “Gives me the creeps to see his name in my Outlook.” She shook her shoulders in a mock shiver.

I wanted so badly to ask her to forward one of them to me.

Prior to that, I was explaining the meaning behind my tattoo to Barb. One of the girls here overheard me say Chiodos, and not only has she heard of them, but she likes them too.

Is this what home feels like?? I mean, minus Henry’s dirty socks strewn around carelessly and Chooch’s screeching obscenities?

Earlier, one of the ladies here was talking about her dog Henry.

“Henry has some sort of worm. We’ve been giving him medicine for it; apparently it’s because he eats mice,” Cheryl said to Barb.

My back was to her, and I laughed quietly to myself, pretending she was talking about my Henry, imagining Henry with a limp Mickey clamped between his teeth and worms writhing out his asshole.

“Does Henry eat poop, too?” Barb asked, completely serious.

Now I’m sitting there, picturing Henry ferally hunched over in the backyard, shoveling his own piping hot feces in his mouth like it’s help yourself night at the Soup Kitchen, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud while Cheryl was so obviously speaking about her dog in concerned tones.

Also, in my fantasy, Henry is wearing his SERVICE CLOTHES and rocking out bitchin’ingly to Judas Priest. A framed picture of the original Swedish Pippi Longstocking is in the background, slightly out of focus, but sharp enough to scare away bystanders with her gingerosity.

Thank you for joining me for this fun jaunt back to 5th grade.

More observations from my first day at the new job:

My boss Deb took me all around and introduced me to everyone on the floor. That took nearly an hour, because most people wanted to actually chat and it was overwhelming because there was so much to take in, but at the same time, it made me feel wanted. None of the regular employees at my last job bothered to talk to the evening shift people, and the job before that one, I didn’t even have a desk. I’m definitely not treated like a temp at this place (and after 3 months, I won’t be!). Throughout the evening, random employees who I missed on my rounds with Deb actually came over on their own to introduce themselves. I’m not used to working at places at that.

My joining of the firm makes me Erin #3. There’s Boy Aaron and Girl Erin, and some of the people joked that they could call me Night Erin. “I like it,” I said, after considering it for a few seconds. “It makes me seem mysterious.” Like a madam, is what I wanted to say. “Anyway,” I added, “for four years at one of my jobs, I was referred to as The Girl, so I’ll take anything at this point.”

The woman I’m working with is Barb. She was one of the women who interviewed me and I liked her immediately. She’s in her fifties, very laid back and casual, and just gives off a good vibe. She’ll only be working until 5:30 but is staying late this week to help train me.

I had to sit at her desk last night since I don’t have access to their data program yet. While I did my work and she leafed through an Avon catalog, she asked, “Do you know if the Pirates won?”

“No, last I heard they were winning 3-2, but that was awhile ago.” Then I added, “I’m more of a hockey fan.”

She slapped down the Avon catalog and shouted, “Oh, me too! This is great, now I’ll have someone to talk to about the Penguins! Really, it’s just me and Derek who follow hockey, no one else here really cares.”

“Oh I know” I agreed.  “It’s all football, football, football everywhere you go!” Silently, I thanked your God for placing me in that office.

“I’ll be right back, I have to get something to show you!” Barb left to retrieve Derek, who was gifted a chocolate Stanley Cup for Easter.

“I’m debating whether or not to eat it,” he said. Derek reminds me of a cross between Kat Von D’s brother Michael and Fred Savage. I like him.

“You cannot eat that!” I yelled. “At least, not until after…”

“Yeah you’re right,” he said. “I might jinx the Penguins!”

He returned to his desk, and Barb and I continued talking. I told her about how Henry and I had just gone to a Nailers game over the weekend.

“Oh, I’ve been wanting to go to one of those games! Was it any good?” Then she asked me if I like the fighting. “The fighting is my favorite part,” she enthused. “My dad was the first general manager of the Penguins, back in the sixties, and he was totally against fighting,” she said, ever so casually.

@#$&^%*^$##@$#@!$

“You’re JACK RILEY’S DAUGHTER??” I heard myself say it, and it sounded like I was using a megaphone.

I work with Jack Riley’s daughter, are you fucking kidding me, I love this goddamn job.

I’m at my new job! With a broken finger! Henry will have you believe it’s just bruised but what does he know? He thought Maunday was a misspelling for Monday ( SO DID ALISHA) until I opened my big bag of Biblical knowledge on his ass. (I’m still galloping around town on my highhorse about that.)

Anyway. My desk area is bare. Stark. Inadequate. But at least I didn’t set off any alarms today.

Already there are two girls who I can imagine being friends with, which is pretty much where friendships start and end with me oh ho ho ho.

My co-workers think I’m 12, I’m sure of it. Last week, Monica was talking about how she applies so much of what she’s learned from being a mother into the real world.

I thought about this. “I’m a mom, too, but I just barely bumble through it,” I laughed, resorting to self-deprecation as always.

“Oh honey,” our supervisor Evelyn started, spinning around in her seat.

“You’re so young! It’ll come to you eventually.”

I smiled tautly, thinking to myself, “I’m THIRTY, not some teen mom on MTV. How the fuck old does she think I am?

Then last night, another co-worker walked by and tapped my headphones. I slipped them off and she said, “I love your headphones! I can’t wear those things that go in your ears.

”

“Oh me either,” I emphatically agreed, feeling an instant bond. “They make me feel like I’m in a submarine.” I went on to tell her the selling points of my Skullcandy headphones and where she could get a pair herself.

“That’s awesome,” she said. “It’s so hard to find headphones anymore! I just want a small pair, like the ones that used to come with —” she paused. “Well, you’re too young to remember Walkmans!

”

WHAT THE FUCK? I had at least fifteen Walkmans throughout the course of my adolescence.

And before I left that night, Evelyn stopped to admire my necklace. “You always wear the cutest things. You’re just the cutest little girl.”

I’m not computing. I have gray hairs, check it! I’m clearly not seeing the same person they are, because when I look in the mirror, I see a tired lady.

**************

Tonight after work, I walked through the parking lot with my co-worker Charlene. We started talking about our supervisor and how she’s such a pleasure to work for.

“I like her because she doesn’t feel the need to sit there all night and talk to us,” Charlene said.

I nodded in agreement, although I’m too busy listening to sports radio all night to really notice. (Seriously, when did I become a middle aged man.)

“There are these two girls who sit on the other side of me. They’ve been staying until 6:30 lately and I can’t stand listening to them talk. All they do is talk about the people there that they don’t like, and how this one girl never wears the right pants but today she did. And then they called some guy an asshole.” Charlene scoffed, shook her head.

I took this opportunity to add my own gripes, though I have very few. “Oh, and what about that guy that coughs so bad every day, it sounds like he’s going to puke?” I gave a short, disgusted laugh. Seriously, some times I expect to stand up to see his ghost circling above his head.

She stopped walking and looked at me. I was waiting for her to be all, “Oh, I know right? Like, go in the bathroom if you’re gonna cough up a lung!”

Instead, it was, “Oh, he has a disease.”

AWKWARD.

We had approached her car by this time, so I got to nervously mumble, “Have a great weekend” and shuffle over to my own car with my head down.

I like to think that saying hi to strangers is a nervous tic that I have. It’s not that I’m overly friendly, I’m just, for some reason, polite. Alisha loves this about me.

Physics play a big role though:

• If I’m walking alongside someone, I will pretend to be too distracted to notice their presence.
• If I’m sitting in a room, and another person is sitting in that same room, and there is an alarming sense of awkward silence in that room, I will not make eye contact.

These two scenarios are too tempting for a simple salutation to morph tragically into small talk. And small talk is cause for panic. (Unless it’s with the cute cashier at CVS who is always intent on asking me what  my plans are for the night. I’m certain I’m at least 10 years older than him though.)

• If I pass someone going the opposite direction, or one of us is in motion while the other is stationary, then I will gladly open my big mouth for a hello and sometimes even toss a flimsy wave.

There are many more clauses and addenda and special cases I could add, but that’s something to save for the inevitable case study that some ambitious Psych major will be writing on me before I die.

The first two days at my current job, the guard at the front desk was very chatty with me. He had to take my photo for my ID badge and joked with me because I was being so dramatic and stubborn about it.

“I hate having my picture taken!” I stated, with faux-petulance.

“Aw, come on. You look beautiful!” he exclaimed, tilting the camera so I could see my frightened eyes and stroke-victim smile, all contained within one fat, scrunched up face. He was standing so close to me when he took the photo, that it looks like I’m trying to force my head to break through the wall behind me.

In a word, I look awkward.

“No, not you, Erin!”

Yes, me.  It’s true.

As I filled out the information needed to park my car in the lot, he peered over me and deadpanned, “Erin Kelly! What are you, Polish?” He laughed, and I laughed too, but I actually am part Polish, and no Irish.

On my second day, I was greeted with a bombastic “Hello Erin!” as soon as I walked through the door. I thought, “Wow, this is nice. What a friendly man.” It made me feel like less of “the temp,” and more of someone who belonged there.

But that’s where it ended. I continued to say hello to him every time I walked in through the front door, and when I passed his desk on my way to the cafeteria or bathroom, but I noticed that his hellos were flatter now, and were only offered up if I said it first.

“Maybe he’s having a bad day,” I thought the first time this happened. But I noticed that it got progressively worse as the week went on, getting to the point where he would actually turn his head away from me as he mumbled, “Hi,”  while simultaneously looking up at the ceiling rather than have the unpleasant experience of allowing his eyes to find my face, I guess.

Say it’s my bad breath, say it’s my pickled body odor, but the fact of the matter is I’m always at least fifteen feet away from him when this goes on. I’m not exactly shuffling past him with my hobo house wrapped around me, either. I’m well-dressed every night. I wear pretty shoes. My hair is brushed.

I don’t get it. What is wrong with me?

“He probably just hates his job,” Henry said. He sits at a big reception desk, in a mother-whompin’ leather chair, watching TV all  night, for Christ’s sake. If that guy hates his job, I’ll trade him.

Meanwhile, I’d catch him having jovial discourse with other people, saying goodbye to the day shift people that happened to be leaving at the same time I was walking in.

I’m a great game player. In fact, some people might even say that I’m a little CHILDISH. So instead of just letting this whole thing go, I decided to give him the silent treatment, see how long this charade would last before he’d crack and start acknowledging me again. He might not have noticed yet, but this guard and me are embroiled in one hot and heavy imbroglio.

Monday night, I was so pissed about it that I sat in the cafeteria on my break, angrily texting Henry. I just can’t stand it when someone doesn’t like me and I have no idea why. I can’t stand not being liked in general, though after writing on the Internet for the last 10 years of my life, I’m pretty accustomed to it.

That doesn’t mean I like it!

“Don’t let it bother you,” Henry texted. (Imagine every word spelled wrong, though.)

“Oh don’t worry. Tonight, I showed him,” I replied with angry tap-tappings.

“What, your tits?” I’m sure he laughed out loud as he hit “send,” wrote about it in his diary. “Diary, tonight I thought of something funny for the 3rd time in my life!”

And I explained that during one of my jaunts to nowhere, one of the cleaning guys was standing near the guard. Now, I have a great rapport with this cleaning guy and we exchange pleasantries on a nightly basis. And no, I don’t mean oral sex.

With great exaggeration, a bounce in my step, and my biggest Pollyanna grin, I exclaimed, “Hello, how are you!?” to the cleaning guy.

RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GUARD, TO WHOM I SAID NOTHING.

“Oh. Yeah. You…sure showed him,” Henry said. “Wow.”

Fuck that guard. He’ll be sorry when I have Henry bake cupcakes for everyone but him.

I still have a job! And it’s going well. Jim and his collection of Cosby sweaters only lasted two nights. So now it’s just me; the supervisor, Ev; Monica with the cool hair; and four older broads. Mostly, it’s just very quiet there, aside from Ev’s frequent monologues she has with herself.

Ev might be my new favorite supervisor. I’m not sure she realizes I’m as old as I am, because she seems to baby me, calls me missy and says things like, “You know, those things that all you kids listen to.” An iPod, Ev? Because I have mommy issues, I have succumbed to my new role with little to no arm-bending.

The cleaning crew at this place are seemingly normal people who don’t wear Krueger-like acrylics and drive kidnapper wagons. The girl who cleans my area is young with long red hair and I think she might be flirting with me sometimes but I’m dumb when it comes to girls.

The other night, I was listening to the Penguin game while trying not to cheer out loud or punch my desk when the Rangers scored. It was a trying time for me because I have a big mouth. But I was pretty successful, though I hurt my wrist during one of my fist pumps.

The game went into OT, and as I did a celebratory lurch in my seat when Malkin scored and won the game, Monica with the cool hair shouted YES! Everyone turned and looked at her, and she sheepishly said, “Sorry, I was listening to the Pens/Rangers game.”

“Oh my god, me too!” I gushed, hoping she would invite me to a sleepover and do my hair up in corn rows. She just smiled and went back to work, probably whispering, “Oh-em-gee, yay, stupid white girl.”

We are SO going to be besties.

And the job itself continues to be low-stress and mindless, which is mostly a good thing until I start getting lost in my head and thinking about shit that’s better left alone, and then I’m practically rolling me and my ball of angst into the house every night, at which point I become Henry’s responsibility.

*****

In Chooch news, he was downloading zombie games on my iPhone and one of them plays sound bytes from Night of the Living Dead. He’s been walking around saying, “I’m coming to get you Barbara” in his strangled zombie voice and then in a high-pitched tone he goes, “Stop it, you’re ignorant!

” We’re in the middle of Target and he’s reciting this. He’s been watching clips from the movie on my phone, and then the 1990 remake was on over the weekend, so I DVRd it and he watches it 1683 times a day, though he gets irritated that the new Barbara says “You’re being mean” instead of “ignorant.”

*****

I hate Pizza Hut. I guess hate is a strong word, but I’m notoriously picky about my pizza.

However, they’re offering Penguins collector cups so of course that’s where I wanted to eat after the Pens/Bruins game on Sunday. Alisha came with us which meant I got to sit in a cramped booth with her and her purse, which is so prominent it might as well be capitalized.

I think our waiter was an escapee from a halfway house and I’m sure he drives a Pinto. We asked him questions about the cups and his answer to everything was, “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure.” Kind of like when people ask me questions about the city I live, which I know next to nothing about because I don’t care and I’m also a partial shut-in. We ended up spending ALL THIS MONEY in order to get all four cups, only to be told later that they only had two of the players, so what combination of that would we like.

Fucking foiled as usual. Now we’ll have to go back there AGAIN to get the other two and I just don’t think I can answer any more confusing questions like, “What kind of crust do you want?” and the be expected to ingest it, too.  Fuck you, Pizza Hut.

While Henry was inside paying, Alisha, Chooch and I decided to go out to the car. I was dealt the arduous task of securing Chooch into his car seat (I CANNOT WAIT TO BE DONE WITH THIS CAR SAFETY RIGMAROLE). There I am, in a dark parking lot, ass jutting out of the backseat when I feel a sharp jab between my ribs and the voice of a convicted child molester snarling, “Give me all your money.”

I blew back Chooch’s face with the loudest shriek I could muster, only to find it was Henry being an asshole.

“I can’t believe Chooch didn’t cry when I screamed in his face,” I marveled.

“That’s because you were using your horror movie scream and not your hockey scream,” Alisha rationalized. And that’s probably true.

Hey! Guess who got another job for which she is over-qualified? Oh, that would be THIS GIRL right here!

I had sincerely expected the employment agency to stamp a big red UNRELIABLE on my file after the Henry-induced debacle at the last place, but my “agent” called me Monday morning with a new assignment for part-time evening work. The location is much more convenient and the shift is 5:30pm-10:30pm, so it’s compatible with Henry’s golden job.

I started last night. The company’s office is located in a nice building with a pretty lobby, manned by a good-natured security guard who got way too close to my face while taking my picture for my ID badge . Then he escorted me into the office where I’ll be working and dropped me off with Ev, a lithe older woman with a salt and pepper bob and nervous energy. The office itself was dirty beige with empty Postal Service bins strewn across the floor. It was about 5 steps down from my evening job two years ago at MSA.

Ev gave me a quick tour of the facilities. In the lunch room, which is a full cafeteria during the day, she was showing me the coffee machine when some squat, unruly bearded man in an ecru work shirt piped up and said in a semi-retarded cadence, “And if you use the last of it, make a new pot!” Aye, aye, Ecru.

I’m not sure yet if he works at the same place as me. Time will tell, and hopefully stories will follow.

Back inside the office, Ev began training me. I’m basically going through client files they have in their system, looking for the ones who are declining modifications to their mortgages. Or something like that. It’s a series of steps, but after watching Ev do it twice and doing it twice myself, she set me loose. Unfortunately for Jim, the older Cosby-sweatered man who also started last night, he did not have a similarly charmed fate and instead spent most of the shift being taken through the process in baby steps. It made me feel sad. It must suck for (some) older people who have probably spent most of their life in some field not requiring computer knowledge, to suddenly be dumped in front of a computer. I kept hearing Ev trying to get him to remember CTL-V and CTL-C before finally giving up and slapping a Post-It note on his monitor to remind him.

The woman whose desk I’m using was just getting ready to leave when I got there, so I had to stand awkwardly to the side while she shut down all of her windows. She seemed nice enough, and her smile was sure pretty when she said to me sternly, “Just don’t leave anything on my desk that has your name and account number on it, got that?”

“Oh. I’ll….try not to do that,” I answered slowly, hoping that I wouldn’t have any of those common urges to tear out pages of my check book and staple them around her cube in the form of my SS#. That didn’t really go over too well at my last job, either.

I made myself comfortable at her desk. It was nice having an actual desk and not a small conference room to be tucked away inside, like at the last job. While waiting for Ev to get the file with my workload ready, I had a chance to take in my co-workers. Three older soccer-mom’ish type ladies and a black woman probably around my age who I already know I want to be friends with because she has cool hair. There were still some day-shift stragglers in the office, but they all seemed relatively easy-going too. It’s not a very big office.

The best part was that there was a distinct scent of fruit snacks wafting around me. It was like being swaddled by Fruit Roll-Ups, and it made me feel at once comforted and hungry. I guess kind of like how you’d feel at a bacon-flavored orgy.

The worst part? They have a strict no cell phone policy. I had to sign off on that shit. I even said no texting in the BATHROOM. At first I was like, “OK, five hours. That’s not so bad.” By the end of hour one, I was chomping on my hair for lack of anything better to do. My knees were knocking against the desk. My fingers were icy and experiencing phantom text-flutterings. By hour two, I covertly pulled my phone out of my purse and quickly dumped in on my lap. I scooted into the desk real far so no one would see it. Granted, my boobs were resting awkwardly on the desk at that point, but it was a faux pas I was willing to endure so long as I could keep up with  my ESPN NHL Scorecenter texts. What? There were a LOT of games on last night.

By hour three, I decided to flirt with danger and send a TWEET.

I didn’t think it would be so hard. But my god, I felt like I had gone five hours without heroin by the time I stumbled out of there at 10:30.

The woman whose desk I’m sharing is an interesting broad. On the cubicle wall directly behind her monitor, it’s a miniature Lourve of angel pictures. Looking to the left, she had  more angels lest anyone forgets that she likes them. By the time I looked to my right, they were practically screaming “I’VE WANTED TO FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF AN ANGEL SINCE I WAS A YOUNG GIRL MAKING MY FIRST HOLY COMMUNION!”

In case I get bored with the angels, she has tons of GOOD WORD from our Lord to read (she even has a study Bible under the desk which I may or may not have accidentally stepped on) and a verifiable fleet of butterflies suctioned to the pane of glass that allows me to peek into the cube on the other side of me.

But my favorite cube accoutrement was the ravishing photo of whom I presume to be her husband. Picture it please: sandy Flobee’d hair, traveling from his crown to his cheeks. He’s not an overweight man, but has some jiggle, as evidenced by the way his pasty white bare thighs sag a bit as his legs are SPLAYED open as he lounges on a couch. SPLAYED OPEN with a DOG BETWEEN THEM. I couldn’t get a good look, but I believe he might be wearing boxer briefs, and if I squinted hard enough I could just barely detect, against the blinding whiteness of his legs,  some ultra-white socks yanked up to his knees.

I am so grateful I get to look at this every night.

Last night, I was telling Henry about it and I said, “I have GOT to try and take a pic—-”

“You’re going to get fired,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

Chooch is sick, won’t let me sit with him on the couch. For a long time this morning, I was told to “go in the kitchen and stand by the oven. Leave me ALONE!” But then he softened and crumpled into a sick heap on the couch and whined, “I wanna watch sumpin’ scary!” So we watched Friday the 13th together. The one with Corey Feldman. At one time, I knew every movie in order. But now I’m an old broad and actually forgot that Corey Feldman was even in any of these until I put it on this morning. And Chooch, god bless him, every time someone gets kilt, he goes, “Who did it?” Um, Jason, maybe? Stupid.

But now it’s over and I’ve been banished from the couch again. So, with nothing else to do and no motivation to paint right now (that’s after hours, now you know), I’ve been reading through all old LiveJournal entries, trying to find something in particular. Instead, I found a series of posts written from my second-to-last job at the data processing monkey house. While I was reading these, all I could think was, “It’s a fucking wonder I was never fired from there” and “Wait – did I ever do any work?” I’m sure Collin can answer that last one.

Then I found two entries about the bathroom there and it simultaneously made me miss that place and swallow throw-up. I’m reposting it because I have nothing else to say while I await the next Freaky Feature subject to bare her soul for me. (It should be a good one, too!)

Oh, and P.S.! Thanks to Andrea, Tiff, and Dorothy for sending me magnets! More on that later this week, too. (I’m still looking for more magnets, btw!)

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Bathroom Discourse

August 2007

One of my favorite things about working here is playing a little game called “What In the World Will Make Erin Dry Heave Tonight?” Could it be the dumpster in the outside hallway, long overdue for an emptying, contents ripe and roiling in the August humidity, the putrid stench of which permeates through the tiniest nook and cranny and wafts its way in sinister coils into our work areas and kitchen where it gyrates near the fridge and dares us to retain our appetite?

Maybe Jonnie May the Security Guard will want to shoot the shit with me and I’ll be forced to fixate on her dirty snaggle tooth while being held against my will in the bubble of rot we around here call “the kitchen.”

Mostly, it’s as simple as taking a stroll through the restroom.

If it’s a particularly good day, I’ll arrive right on the heels of some nasty ass broad pinching a loaf after devouring a petting farm, and then forgoing the courtesy flush and Glade spritz. Because nothing complements a fresh cascade of diarrhea than the crisp notes of apple cinnamon.

Maybe a tampon, bloated with toilet water and menstruation, will be fanned out like pretty cotton origami bouncing off the sides of the toilet bowl.

Last week was a memorable delight that I took great pleasure penning in my diary with flourishing strokes of calligraphy: Along the side of one of the sinks was a bright, thick streak of  Red.

Oh look, it’s 1976 and a blind extra just walked in here from the set of Carrie and mistook the sink for a towel. I tried to shrug it off as an average day at MSA.

Or maybe someone performed an auto-kidney extraction next to the commode because they don’t have the Internet at home and needed to list it on eBay immediately. I hope they made it back to their desk to do that.

Maybe someone was eating a heavily ketchup’d burger next to the sink because they have some weird disorder where they need to watch the reflection of their teeth gnashing. This is a true condition. Janna has it.

Maybe some bathroom birthing enthusiast shot one out and left the remains of the placenta on the porcelain in lieu of a victory flag.

No matter the scenario, I wasn’t going anywhere near that sink and subsequently failed to eradicate the memory of it from my mind for two days. Look, I’m a girl and I too put on my menstrual party hat every month, but I don’t swipe a veritable advertisement of it on the sink as an invitation. Though really, I’m hoping the blood flowed from an orifice not betwixt legs. (Sometimes it feels like I’m in the bathroom of CBGBs and I half-expect to step over someone in the throes of over-dosing.)

Then on Friday, the industrial-sized roll of toilet paper in one of the stalls had fallen out and was strewn dejectedly near the base of the toilet, where countless strands of bacteria were inevitably colonizing. I continued on to the handicap stall. While I was basket weaving (what, you don’t think I perform regular bodily waste removal like the rest of you, do you?), I noticed a rather large box, with a built-in handle, off the right of the stall, half-concealed in aged Christmas wrapping paper. A post-it note adhered to the top informed me that it belonged to our new employee, Babi, and to “Pls not remove, Thank U.”

Of course, my gossip-greedy fingers spun it around to the non-gift-wrapped side. It was a toilet seat raiser. I’m excited to have a new mystery to involve myself in: Why does the new lady need raised upon the toilet, and why doesn’t she stow it away discretely in the utility closet so assholes like me don’t make fun of her on the Internet?

Oh wait, she is concealing it. With wrapping paper.

Operation: Photograph Toilet Seat Raiser

I was on a mission when I got to work last night: to acquire evidence of the Christmas-papered toilet seat raiser. Every twenty minutes or so, I’d stuff my cell phone into my pants and duck into the restroom, hoping that Babi had finally stowed it away in the handicapped stall. Three hours into the shift, I began to have doubts and started to wonder if Babi had quit. I think I voiced my concern a little too emphatically to Eleanore, whose answer of, “I don’t know, babe,” seemed coated with suspicion, because who the fuck cares about New Employee’s status? Well, I do. My hands were actually trembling, I’m embarrassed to admit. I finally found out that she had merely called off, and I was relieved. I mean, she can quit, but not until I get my picture.

It took Babi several hours to hit up the bathroom tonight, but she eventually did. I mean, she’s old. How long can the elders really hold their bladder?

Raised eyebrows were probably flashed every time I walked in and walked back out. What? I’m checking for my period. It’s usually over there, in that corner, with a purple Post-It note on it. Your period doesn’t have a name tag on it, too?

I forgot to turn the sound off of my phone during the bathroom recon, so the enchanting melodies of a boing-ing spring ricocheted off the tiled walls, like I opened up a can of clown sex. It nearly gave me a stroke.