So now that I'm safely and snugly at home, my entire attention is focused on
staying home. There are a lot of people who might feel useless, estranged, bored, unproductive, maybe even a little grimy if they sat at home unemployed for any extended period of time, but I'm not really one of those people. And I don't even have a kid. If I had a kid? Like, a justifiable
reason to stay home? You'd have trouble getting me to go to the fucking
mailbox. I managed to save enough money to cover my immediate bills for the next few months, and my plan is to quietly and complacently milk that shit into the fall.
Not surprisingly, R is of a whole other camp entirely, and his camp gets genuinely excited about federal tax withholdings and dry cleaned clothes and soap. His camp also seems to get a little worked up about this gross ponytail and the stereo being on all day and me dragging the laptop into the crapper. So here's my plan to brainwash
his camp into thinking that
my camp is mostly harmless, outwardly (and
inwardly) clean, and generally pretty agreeable:
1. I’m going to try really hard not to break anything. And when I say “anything”, I’m referring to actual
things, like televisions and mirrors and furniture, as well as
body parts. I don’t have money lying around to replace the dryer when it breaks because I jammed eight flip-flops in it and one got caught in the gear mechanism and almost started a fire (thanks for talking me through that one,
Cait) the same way that I don’t have health insurance to cover any more drunken “walking straight into the wall with a beer bottle in my mouth” accidents. We’re calling a hiatus on all formal breast checks, and any “does this mole look funny to you” inquiries will be stifled. If something serious
does arise, something that a shot of Jack, a well-wielded nail file, or a fistful of Tylenol 3 won’t cure, the standing instruction is to get me into my car, throw it in neutral and roll me into a telephone pole so that I officially become State Farm’s problem.
2. Keep the man full. I’m a surprisingly good cook, if a little bipolar; R could never be sure if I’d come tearing home after a thirteen-hour day to furiously sweat over homemade crabcakes and remoulade (an endeavor that always ended exhaustingly, for after the fifty bucks spent on supplies and the two hours of production, it was always unerringly clear that R would have been just as happy eating cold cuts out of a plastic bag an hour and a half ago) or whether he’d be happily left to his default Atkins bachelor meal of pistachios, sliced turkey, and scotch. We’re going to shoot for a middle-of-the-road consistency. This morning, for example, I stuffed three different kinds of meat in the crockpot and I stocked up on mixed nuts. What it lacks in effort it makes up for in protein. We’ll play this one by ear.
3. Sex. Lots of it. All the time, in fact. And not the sex of yore, the “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now” 5:30am bullshit obligatory sex, oh no. I’m talking about “Yes, I think doing it in the shower is a fabulous, not at all awkward idea, and I can’t imagine why on earth I haven’t done this since I was nineteen” sex. I'm setting alarms specifically to remind me that it's been twelve hours since the working half of this faction got emphatically laid. I’m keeping a spreadsheet. I have a quota. I think that my best shot of becoming a professional slacker rests right here in Number 3, but when I outlined this whole plan for R he scoffed at me. He said that I was welcome to try, but that he was pretty sure that I'd have another job in the next thirty days. So he came home from work last night, the house was spotless and smelled like slow-cooked meat, none of his shit was broken, and I was jumping up and down, wide-eyed clamoring to do it in the car again. I don't know, I think I've got a fighting chance.
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10:14
Making and drinking coffee at the office is significantly different than making and drinking coffee in my own kitchen. For starters, making coffee in my kitchen doesn't require a fifty-five pound urn, a filter the size of a pancake and a fire hose. In my kitchen I'm also not bound to use: a) pre-measured white foil vacuum-sealed envelopes with "COFFEE" stencil-stamped on the front, envelopes that I'm sure we're supposed to be reserving for when Jesus comes back and we can't get to the store, b) powdered creamer (I wouldn't use powdered creamer, I'd just crumble a saltine over the cup instead) or those infinitesimal plastic thimbles of room-temperature liquid creamer (I'd use six of these, five if they were flavored, but they were never flavored), or c) the smallest, thinnest styrofoam cup available for purchase in stacks of a trillion.
So far this morning I've had three pots (POTS) of coffee. I'm drinking out of a mug that my mom used to bathe me in, and there's enough refrigerated brand-name creamer in there to choke a french-vanilla horse. No one has come in and elbowed me out of the way, stolen the last packet of sugar, or tried to fucking talk to me. I've also been to the bathroom five times (working on number six), I'm twitching like a meth addict and I seem to have lost my peripheral vision.
EVERYTHING IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.
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Mister Crunchy's Reverse Survivor is starting up again. It's awesome and I always win. I don't actually
always win. But I always
should have. And anyway I'm pretty sure I can beat
you.
Prove me wrong.
|
The last day was about as awkward as I had expected. After two and a half days of mainly sitting near me, nodding emphatically, not writing anything down, glancing often at her cell phone and asking me every couple of hours exactly
how often she's expected to work overtime, my infant replacement finally started to grow a sack yesterday afternoon; perched in the "grown up" chair (a blood-red plush reclining office chair that I quickly and stealthily wheeled away from the Loss Prevention department in the quiet dead of six-thirtyish long ago), she furrowed her huffy neonatal brow at me as I tried to explain how a particular document was formatted and asked, "But wouldn't be easier to just... ?"
Easier? Shit, probably. I only do things the hardest way imaginable. All those nights I sat here with my legs numb, so full of Diet Coke and nothing else that my pee was amber? and carbonated? All those Saturdays spent staring at this oily 1992 monitor, waiting open-mouthed for the computer to reboot itself after Word crashed again, wondering where my boss was and then remembering oh yeah, at home?
Easier? Whoa. She’s all yours, Captain.
“Sure,” I replied, standing, stretching, and grabbing my cell phone. “Give that a shot.” And as I walked into the bathroom to text message everyone in my phone, I could hear “Big Red” crying softly under the weight of so much haughty ineptitude.
When I came back an hour later the document in question was missing at least thirty pages and a handful of linked spreadsheets. My protégée was locked in the boss’ office, no doubt for the inaugural “Listen To Me Describe In Vivid Detail Everything I Bought For Seventy Percent Off At Dillard’s Last Night / My Marriage Of Twenty-Two Years And Why It Isn’t Working / My Doctor Referred Me To A Nurlo... A Nurolo... A Brain Doctor Because Of My Headaches, And I Still Haven’t Gone Because I’d Much Rather Just Fucking
Talk About It All The Time” trifecta.
I got the hell out of there while her door was still closed. So in that regard it was pretty much like any other day.
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Tomorrow's my last day of work, and I'm all drained and pale and a little queasy. My replacement of two days is a twenty-three year old quivering mass of college educated corporate orgasm who apparently welcomes the chance to drive twenty miles farther than
my current three-hour commute. And that makes me want to call her mother. She carries a dingy Hello Kitty purse. She still has a tan from her honeymoon. Her lunch today was baby carrots in a Ziplock snack bag. The impending carnage smells like White Shoulders and Aussie scrunch spray. It's breaking my heart. Metaphorically, I mean.
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37%
Surprise! The whining alarm clock of death didn’t go off this morning, and surprise! My cell phone alarm didn’t ring! (My fault, really; I set the phone on SILENT because ever since I figured out how to get my email on my cell phone it buzzes and lights up and chirps to itself pretty much all night while my gmail account happily fills up with spam and I can’t fucking deal.) I finally woke up to the inevitable Wait, I Think Someone’s Having Sex With My Leg alarm, an alarm that some mornings is sort of the opposite of effective but this morning was extremely effective. And as my violated leg and I hauled our shit into the bathroom to not shower or put on any eye makeup, R lolled around in bed making stretching noises and also the kinds of pitiful noises that a person makes when you take the leg away too soon.
“I don’t know what to do today,” he yawned. I suggested that he get up, sort of brush his hair and then try on three different pairs of pants until he found one that didn’t fit like he’d been eating M&Ms for breakfast for the past two weeks, but then I remembered that oh wait, that was me. And as I was hiking on Pair Numero Three, R entered into a supine dialog with the dog in which they discussed what
I would do if
I had President's Day off:
Things That Were On The List:Not get up.
Not shower.
Have a beer in about an hour.
Fuck around on the computer.
That was the complete list until I felt compelled to join in, announcing that the
first thing that I would do, naturally, would be to fold the clothes that were in the dryer. At which point the list grew.
The New List:Not get up.
Not shower.
Have a beer in about an hour.
Fuck around on the computer.
Not fold the clothes in the dryer.
Not wash any additional clothing.
Not pick up the dry cleaning.
Talk about washing my car, but not wash my car.
Maybe, but probably not wash my face.
I’m happy to report that this was largely a one-sided conversation and that the dog hardly had anything negative to add. This is no doubt due in large part to the fact that The Jake puts a hell of a lot of stock in not getting a lot of shit done, and also because he knows that I feed him every single day and R has never fed him, never even one time, not even when I’m not home, and this weighs heavily on The Jake’s mind.
I would like to add for the record that regardless of what R has told our dog, there’s a fair to midland chance that I might have folded those clothes.
(This is completely unrelated, but there’s a woman on the other side of my cubicle wall who’s been playing that “I Can Only Imagine” song on
repeat since nine o’clock this morning, and Christian gospel or not, man, I’m
THIS CLOSE to cramming that portable CD player up her ass.)
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I got a fantastic valentine from
Erika and Sophie today!! Complete with glitter and a
zazzle Sophie stamp and all these great pictures... including the
one that I'm obsessively stalking on flickr. I felt compelled to promise Erika that I wouldn't ever
steal the baby, but I might accidentally sneak in and dress her up like a bunny. Erika must have found out that I've actually
done that before, only instead of a "bunny" it was a "drugged out drag queen", and instead of an adorable baby it was an ex-boyfriend. Anyway.
She beat me to the punch.
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The "No Drunk Interneting" Ban Has Henceforth Been Lifted.
I got a call last night from a gentleman I don’t know who was claiming that I answered “his ad”. (The fact that I even answered the telephone was surprising; I have the kind of deep-seated fear of “land line” phone calls that’s brought about by many years of one's early twenties spent hiding from creditors, and as such I tend to crouch and flee when the cordless rings. I’m Citibank’s Pavlovian bitch.)
I know that I have a tendency to do / buy / say things that are
out of character (sorry, that sucks) when I drink and internet, and more than once I’ve opened the mailbox to discover that somehow in a drunken typing stupor I managed to procure still
more copies of
Willow and
Chicago: Hot Streets, but I can’t recall ever having been called out for drunkenly answering someone’s “ad”. And not having the slightest idea as to which “ad” this man was referring, the worst-case scenario came flooding to mind. I’m not going to expound here because you all have your own “worst-case scenario” when it comes to drunkenly answering strange ads, and as such you can understand why right then all of the blood drained out of my body and into some sort of emergency reservoir. Where my dignity was already hiding, wrapped in a pilly sleeping bag.
With the phone crunched between my sweaty face and my sweaty shoulder I began ransacking my SENT email folder… apparently I had answered a job posting Tuesday night (Celebratory Handtruck Cabernet Night, Complete With Too Drunk To Make It To Our Dinner Reservation)… and I had not only
answered it, I had
freaked it:
“Hello,
I’m extremely interested in this position. I’ve mastered [
WRITING* skill in question] so well that I keep convincing myself that I’m the Vice President of Total Career Satisfaction. I only doubt myself when my boss does something terribly annoying.
I’ve attached my resume for your perusal; please let me know if I can provide you with additional information.”
I read it at the time, still on the phone, and I almost threw up. I turned the laptop around and showed it to R; he had to leave the room.
I got the job. Over the phone. I’m not sure what it
is, exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s awesome.
Oh, also? The guy sounded just like this professor of mine who I obsessively wanted to go to bed with back in the day, so all night last night I dreamed about having sex with him.
I can’t imagine how this scenario could possibly backfire.
* I should have included this when I initially posted... without getting too specific-- and potentially jinxing this weird stroke of inebriated luck-- the job is writing related. I don't have to take my shoes off or lick anybody's arm on film or anything.
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So I get home tonight, and guess what my unbelievably romantic man snuck into our bedroom for my Valentine's Day surprise?
A handtruck! If you're thinking that I'm being sarcastic and mean, you're ninety-nine point five percent wrong, my friend. And that's saying something pretty serious about my dedication to and admiration for The Handtruck.
I've had a deep sentimental respect for the handtruck for a lot of years now, starting when I was the dairy manager at a local grocery store during my undergrad: the distribution center would deliver the gallon milk in crates, six gallons in a crate, seven crates to a stack. There was a trick to it, to getting that sweaty, panicky milk from the 120 degree dock to the dairy: you had to get the handtruck underneath the stack, and then pull back ... when you felt the stack balance neatly between your body weight and the earth, you could safely and easily wheel it into the warehouse. It was a surprisingly zen-like approach to a brute physical task, and I had a lot of respect for it. I count it as unfortunate that, after the fourth time that I squirmed away whining, letting forty-two gallons of milk explode on the concrete, I wasn't allowed to try anymore.
I challenge you:
How many pounds of roofing tiles can you casually wheel across the street with your heartshaped box of Russell Stover chocolates?
I'm guessing no more than thirteen pounds; maybe fifteen if you've still got the caramels in there for foundation support.
WHICH YOU TOTALLY
DON'T. Please. Caramels? I've got you beat by about three hundred pounds. That's what I
thought, ORANGE NOUGAT HEAD.
I've made
way too many promises in regard to the attainment of The Handtruck, and I think you know exactly the kind of desperate Valentine's Day promises to which I'm referring. So if you need me? I'll be out front, wheeling R from the driveway to the end of the street and back.
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The Bloom Is Off The Rose
For Valentine’s Day my boss left a canister of Clorox disinfectant wipes and a rejected expense sheet on my desk.
For Valentine’s Day I used the last of my boss’s coffee creamer and told her that her office smelled like dead flower water and sap.
Less passive aggressive Valentine posts
here and
here.
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I saw the eye doctor last week because I hadn't been in about four years and I was overdue. I was excited to learn that my contact prescription has come down from about $700 to $75, so I finally ordered some contacts. I had my fitting this morning. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES it took me to get those fuckers in there. And once they were in, yeah, I could
see, but I kind of wanted to throw up, too. Is that normal? I came home and had a beer and thankfully some of the weirdness went away... but I could still feel them, stuck to my eyeballs. I took them out to shower and now I can't get them in again. (I can't believe I took them out before I had the chance to pluck the surgical precision
shit out of my eyebrows. Where the hell are my priorities?) The doctor initially told me that these particular contacts are hard to wear, and I wish he hadn't said anything; how would I have known that these were better or worse than anything else? Does this get easier? Because I don't have fifty minutes every morning to put these fuckers in. And I don't have the patience to not throw the little case against the wall.
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Beep.
We have this ridiculously complicated alarm clock in our bedroom… it's got two bedside clocks, a bass under the bed (necessary), and it'll keep track of about four hundred different alarm times. If you want to get up every half-hour—and have a different song wake you up each time—you can do that.
I'm trying to think of why we originally got this thing, but I can't remember. I don't even remember if R
had an alarm clock before that. It wouldn't be that surprising if he didn't; he rarely gets to the office before ten and plus, he's old. Whatever… the bottom line is that we got
this stupid thing.
1) It plays a CD, right, and that initially seems like a cool thing for it to do, until you realize that you'll never get to wake up to your carefully selected soothing wakeup music because you're always going to be jolted awake by the loud ass whirring of the CD inside the machine. It's like having one of those little fuckers from
Batteries Not Included wake you up.
2) Guess what CD has been inside the machine for five years? That I'm too lazy to change out? The Eagles. The Eagles Greatest Hits. Every morning after I jump awake to a tiny robot flying next to my ear I get to hear goddamned "Desperado".
3) Both bedside clocks are equipped with snooze buttons. Handily enough, the snooze buttons serve a dual purpose—to "snooze" (hi) and to "turn completely the fuck OFF". So whether you buy yourself ten more minutes of dozing before the tiny robot comes back to drill at your skull or whether you pass out blissfully again until 11:15 depends upon the amount of time you apply pressure to the button. Three-quarters of a second will buy you ten minutes (I think it actually buys you SEVEN minutes. Because TEN minutes might not require you to do all kinds of complicated math to determine what fucking TIME IT IS NOW) while a
full second of applied pressure will turn the machine completely off. Every morning it's a race to the button: me, a person who understands how the machine works and who
has to get up at some point, and R, a person who has no idea why sometimes the alarm snoozes and sometimes doesn't snooze and who doesn't care, frankly, because all he plans to do today is go to the gym and then maybe test drive the new Mustang. So when
he gets there first (often, his arms are longer) I always have to ask, "Did you snooze it? Or turn it off?" And he always answers, "I think I snoozed it." Fucker. No he didn't. Ever.
4) Now, as some sort of coup de grace, it's dying the kind of horrifying death that super complicated home appliances die when they're manufactured by overseas companies that no longer exist. Better, it feels it has to martyr itself by refusing to die
all at once or
during the day. Part of the nightly death production involves the rapid and uncontrollable opening and closing of the CD player lid on top of the machine. And if the CD spinner alone sounds like
one robot, this lid bullshit sounds like
all of the robots are trying to shove the lamp off the table. For years the lid has put on this "fragile" act, objecting if you use anything other than fingertips to touch it, threatening to SNAP OFF every time you dare to open or close it. But now that it's seizuring we're having to think of new things to stack on top of it to try and muscle it closed—last night it bucked off my hot rollers and a small water bottle. Meaning that I woke up
again last night at two a.m. (roughly, who the fuck knows) to the slamming and whirring and blinking and other pathetic mechanical death throes of this ridiculous machine, and then had to get out of bed and stumble through the house tripping over The Jake Who Somehow Sleeps Everywhere All At Once to find my cell phone so that I could use it as an alarm. Surprisingly enough, my cell phone turned out to be in my car, in the driveway. Which was—ha ha!—locked.
5) The backlight on my cell phone screen could be used to signal ships lost at sea; I opened it outside once and NASA called and told me to quit it. I'm afraid if I have to keep squinting at this screen in the middle of the night I'm going to get cancer. Plus the snooze on the phone is every FIVE minutes, which is less like a "snooze" and more like FUCKING
NOTHING.I've been using the "Speedy Way" ring as the alarm ring, and if you have "Speedy Way" on your phone, listen to it right now. Then listen to it thirty-seven times tomorrow morning every five minutes starting at 6:00am. And then don't start crying uncontrollably.
I don't think I had a point, just that we need a new alarm clock. Either that or I'm going to start setting the microwave timer for 4,730 minutes.
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The Superbowl. I love the Superbowl, but only because I have a passion for beer, assorted dips, and sitting around in someone else's house. The only real problem I have is that I continue to not really understand football. It's not through lack of trying; it's just that I usually have my entire head a) inside a spinach dip bread bowl, b) inside an Igloo cooler, or c) inside another brand of cooler for most of the game. So here are some tips that I've devised to keep you from looking like a moron (given that you're not eating a bread bowl from the inside out while sitting in various coolers) the next time another major football play catches you unawares:
1.
Say Nothing. This is the safe bet. It's hard to fuck up by keeping your mouth closed. Maybe gasp, maybe jerk one fist up to cover your mouth. If you're quick enough, this is a great opportunity to implement the "involuntary half-stand". Don't force it, though; you've really got to be paying attention to pull off the half-stand, and you probably aren't.
EXAMPLE: Something important happens with the football.
You: [GASP!]Guy Next To You: "Holy Jesus GOD WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU
CALL THAT BULLSHIT?"
You: [cover your mouth with a clenched fist. Groan.] Guy Next To You: "Fuck."
You: [half-stand]Guy Next To You: "Hey, get me a beer while you're up, would ya?"
See? Careful.
2.
Express vague disappointment. Every guy watching the game is disappointed about
something, even if his team is up and the cheerleaders all opted out of wearing panties. The ref still made a shitty call, or the coach is still a douchebag, or his wife is still kind of a slut when she drinks. I've personally found that pretending to
lose a bet is not only the best way to express vague disappointment, but it also insinuates that you know enough about what the fuck's going on that you WAGER MONEY on it. And now you and the guy next to you have something in common: you're both total losers.
EXAMPLE: Something important happens with the football.
Guy Next To You: "Oh, JESUS FUCKING
LORD TELL ME HE DIDN'T JUST GIVE THAT ONE UP."
You: "Well, there's twenty bucks I'll never fuckin' see again."
Guy Next To You:[glances at you in admiration] "No shit. Here, let me get you a beer."
Don't go blowing your wad, though. There's a reason it's called "VAGUE" disappointment. Witness:
EXAMPLE: Something important happens with the football.
Guy Next To You: "Oh, JESUS FUCKING
LORD TELL ME HE DIDN'T JUST GIVE THAT ONE UP."
You: "Well,
that guy just cost me twenty bucks."
Guy Next To You: [glances at you incredulously] "What, you bet on [insert any name on the planet]?"
You: "…"
Damn. No good. Now you've driven yourself headfirst into Number Three:
3.
Commit. Congratulations! Couldn't leave well enough alone? Accidentally mention a name or a play or just carelessly repeat something that you heard someone else say ten minutes ago, and now you've got to back it up with NOTHING? Well, welcome to the indignant drunken world of American Football, my friend. Where it doesn't matter that you're completely full of shit, as long as you're willing to get in someone's face about it.
EXAMPLE: Something important happens with the football.
Guy Next To You: "Oh, JESUS FUCKING
LORD TELL ME HE DIDN'T JUST GIVE THAT ONE UP."
You: "Well,
that guy just cost me twenty bucks."
Guy Next To You: [glances at you incredulously] "What, you bet on [insert any name on the planet]?"
You: "Fuck YEAH I did! He's the best goddamned player they've got out there! I keep hearing all this crap: 'oh, he's losing his edge', 'oh, he's all hype', but whatever, man, I've had my eye on him since DAY ONE and he's THE REAL FUCKING DEAL."
Guy Next To You: "Okay."
Now, I don't want to give you a false sense of security, here. I know it seems unlikely, but Number Three can, in fact, backfire. It's rare, sure. But in the event that it does, you'll need to get real cozy with Number 4, real fast:
4.
"Okay, Fuck This Shit". Not as simple as it sounds,
"Okay, Fuck This Shit" is a verbal AND a tactile maneuver. And any woman who's ever stormed resentfully out of a room to avoid confrontation can tell you that speed is everything. Keep your purse on the floor and your eye on the door.
EXAMPLE: Something important happens with the football.
Guy Next To You: "Oh, JESUS FUCKING
LORD TELL ME HE DIDN'T JUST GIVE THAT ONE UP."
You: "Well,
that guy just cost me twenty bucks."
Guy Next To You: [glances at you incredulously] "What, you bet on [insert any name on the planet]?"
You: "Fuck YEAH I did! He's the best goddamned player they've got out there! I keep hearing all this crap: 'oh, he's losing his edge', 'oh, he's all hype', but whatever, man, I've had my eye on him since DAY ONE and he's THE REAL FUCKING DEAL."
Guy Next To You: "Okay."
[indignant silence]Guy Next To You: "He lost you twenty bucks, though."
You: "Okay, fuck this shit."
[stand up and storm away] Nice. You left your beer, though, better luck next time. Pretty soon you'll be able to implement Number Four with a bread bowl on your head and towing a cooler.
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My Mom Has A Necropheliac Spirit.
If you're looking for the joke in the last post, it's the fact that I
was completely and utterly serious.
I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone I've ever
loudly and smilingly referred to as having the wit of a sexual
predator.
Including my dad.
Sorry, Dad.
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If I tell you that my dad has a "rapist wit", don't tell him later at dinner that he has a "rapist's laugh".
I can't troubleshoot that.
|
When Cindy gets a bikini wax, she wonders if she felt a gentle breeze. Then goes right back to being badass.Cindy, that's really fucking funny.
And
Amy, exactly how many pieces do you have in Esquire this month?
So talented.
Styro said it best: you're the "internet's little sister"... it's so hard for me to
not sit you down in the backyard after dinner and have a long talk about potential. YOU COULD BE THE NEXT (AND FIRST)
QUEEN PRESIDENT IF YOU SET YOU SET YOUR MIND TO IT,
AMY CHOPPA.
And
Sonya, I have to say that, in light of my work-mandated internet celibacy, I had not visited in some time. And that when I
did recently visit (celibacy be damned! as per usual!) I was even more captivated than before. Every few posts Sonya writes something that she forgot she was posting on the internet. And I have to stop. To read that again.
And
Joel is starting up the
Change of Plans blog again. It's a story that one person starts, and then other people add onto it... and then other stuff happens... it's awesome. It was actually
my idea. Back in 2003. When I was sitting at home all day, pretending to write my thesis. Joel appears to have his proverbial shit together, though, so I have confidence that non-proverbial shit won't just get abandoned this time. I'm personally trying to work my way through October's story:
"Kehaar inwardly groaned. As if he didn't have enough to worry about. This human had been nothing but trouble; the brainwashing had gone well initially, but he hadn't realized the demands that could be laid down by petulant Earth women. He should have specified 'goes along, gets along' somewhere in her hypnosis procedure. But no. And now he was stuck in a muddy bunker-- eight-five percent of his forces dead or dying on the field, no carrots, no water dish-- with a beautiful spoiled human. Who thought that Kehaar, The Grand Lepus, was her bitch."So far I'm at a loss.
Go and sign up. Immediately.
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I was ALL OVER my masters degree, too, until they sprung that whole “thesis” thing on me, completely out of nowhere.
Arizona has reinstituted the Emergency Teaching Certification (now prestigiously referred to as “The Alternative Secondary Path To Certification”, which translates loosely into “Yes, You. Whatever. Hurry.”) and seeing as how I’ll be out of a job in… twenty-two days (and out of cash in roughly eleven), I am ALL OVER this. Witness:
1) I sign up and pay for two required standardized tests, one that covers fundamental teaching disciplines and one that assesses my knowledge of English. After quickly submitting my payment of $280, I decide to continue down my cocky path of ahead-of-the-game organization and read through the certification website. Where I learn that the whole “fundamentals of teaching” test isn’t even required (Yes, You. Whatever. Hurry.) and that I’ve scheduled myself to take both tests on the day of a friend’s wedding.
2) The night before the test I print out (roughly half of) the study guide. I mute the TV, mix a gin and tonic in a paint can, and answer two sample questions (one correctly) before R comes home and suggests sushi. I skip to the car.
3) I wake up late the morning of the test with exactly enough time to realize that after downing an entire bottle of sake the night before (again) I’d left my wallet at the restaurant. Again. In a “two forms of ID” panic, I furiously begin scouring the house for my passport.
4) Now, I specifically remember putting our passports SOMEPLACE SAFE after scornfully discovering that R had been storing them in the kitchen cabinet where we knew where they were for the past five years. Regrettably, I have apparently lost the passports.
5) I grab my social security card (that my parents let me sign when I was six and thought my last name was “Kitty”), my PADI scuba certification card, and a Carte D’Orange Metro pass from when I was in Paris in 1997. It’s orange cardboard, printed in French, and has a black and white photobooth picture of me at age 21 glued to the front. I’m golden.
6) I arrive at the test and realize with sixth-dimensional horror that all of my last minute forms of ID are somehow inexplicably NOT WITH ME. Since I don’t have time to cry / rip the seats out of my car / contemplate the fucking space-time continuum, I grab my car insurance card (expired), my car registration, and my office security badge that has a black and white photo of my profile and my name misspelled on it.
7) Run past a table behind which women are chanting, “NO CELL PHONES! NO CELL PHONES!” I turn off my cell phone. Gotcha.
8) Run past a second table of cell phone people; apparently cell phones are not allowed. Oh! Like on airplanes and in hospitals! I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down. I smile and nod. Thumbs up.
9) Find my designated room; collapse into the first available desk. Notice that people look pretty serious about this. One girl’s even wearing a beret.
10) Spend ten minutes reading the neon “ABSOLUTELY NO CELL PHONES” signs plastered on the walls and listening to pre-recorded “YOUR TEST SCORES WILL BE VOIDED IF WE FIND OUT THAT YOU HAVE A CELL PHONE ON YOU, WITH YOU, INSIDE OF YOUR BODY, OR HIDDEN SOMEWHERE IN THE BUILDING EVEN IF IT IS OFF, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TAKEN THE BATTERIES OUT AND SMASHED THEM, EVEN IF IT’S ONLY ONE OF THOSE PLASTIC HOLLOW PHONES WITH RUNTS INSIDE” announcements. Wait… but what if it’s turned off? I mean, if it’s turned OFF it’s cool, right? Off?
Off???11) Drum my fingers, wait for the facilitator to check me in. Realize that the desks are assigned and that I am not “Ruttlidge, Robert D”. I slink across the room and into the correct desk, and ask the annoyed facilitator if I can run to the restroom. I cannot, and thus my scarlet letter cell phone remains in my purse and not stashed in a toilet tank.
12) “Oh, shit, can I borrow a pencil?”
13) Spend the entire test so paranoid that a) I hadn’t actually turned off the phone and it’s going to start ringing the Arrested Development theme song ANY SECOND NOW, and b) the Standardized Test SWAT Team is going to bust in and start ransacking my shit for electronic paraphernalia that I completely forget anything I might have known about James Fenimore Cooper. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a cell phone. But that’s not a question.
14) Finish the test and leave the room. Get halfway down the hall and realize that I’ve just idiotically and robotically pulled my phone out of my purse and that I must now RUN AS FAST AS I CAN TO THE PARKING LOT to escape that guy who’s pointing and yelling at me. The guy catches me as I get to the door, and just before I can hurl my phone against the pavement and eliminate any concrete evidence of ownership, he hands me my car registration. And my office badge. That I had left on my desk.
The insurance card is still missing.
I stopped at In & Out on the way home before I realized that I didn’t have my wallet.
Disappointed, I consoled myself by driving to Petco to get a new Frisbee and to stock up on IAMS.
I should have my certification by the fall term.
There better not be a thesis involved.
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