On The Things I Love Growing Old Part 1

I spent this past weekend with my parents in my hometown of Mineola. (Some of you may know this booming metropolis as Mineolapalooza.) As ever, the pace of life was slow and I got an amount of sleep that would shame most people. But I did think about a lot of things that, cliched though it is, I don't really think about when caught up in the speed of life in the city and of being young.

One of the things I have always loved (and hated) about Mineola is that it never changes. Sure, they widened the highway and built a Wal-Mart supercenter, but Mineola is always the same to me. The house I grew up in is always the same, tucked into the piney woods and so, so very quiet at night. My parents are always there, always need to have something or the other repaired, and my dogs are always barking at the lawnmower, or the mail man, or the plumber. But this quiet home is changing and so are the occupants. This weekend I realized that there is nothing that time forgets and saying goodbye to old favorites is inevitable.

I was helping my mom clean some old things out of my bedroom to help get it ready for sale. My parents are building a new, smaller house and my home for so many years will be sold and filled with a stranger's things. First, I found my old Looney Toon keds. They have daffy duck and flowers embroidered on one side and look like Converse low-tops. My mom got them for me when I was 13. I put them on even though the back has completely fallen apart on them. "I love these shoes!" I exclaimed. But I didn't bring them in my suitcase back to Houston.

Next was the secretary. The secretary is a beautiful bookcase and desk in my bedroom that was my dad's mother's. The drawers never contained my things though my books lined its shelves. For the first time, I started shuffling through these drawers, looking at my grandmother's things. First, a pack of playing cards. Some old photographs, including an old tin-type of my great grandmother in her wedding dress were next. I found some old correspondence cards and $.05 stamps. And then a glorious assortment of letters. I found a 1918 letter from my grandfather to his mother when he was quarantined on Ellis Island for influenza for whatever reason (he was not an immigrant; he was from Bullard, Texas). I found the letters my father wrote to his parents from California during world war 2. I didn't learn a lot from the letters themselves, but was driven to consider my father--always ancient in my eyes-- as a young man who missed his family, who saw his friends die, who had to be brave even though he just wanted to come home and finish college. Next were the sympathy cards for my dad and grandfather when my grandmother died in 1963. Other letters popped up between these time periods, discussing common place things like colds due to the weather, a leaky roof, or a desire to come for a visit. All these reflected life in a way that, despite my insistence that letter writing will live on, that I have never known it and never will. But my parents did.

Sometimes I have fears that my parents will slip away from me before I have heard all the stories that I want to hear, before they’ve said everything they need to. Pondering the mortality of your parents is not something one is generally prepared to do at age 23. If you have lost your parents before, it is usually sudden or you are too young to understand it. Having older parents changes one’s perspective on death, however. I know that with a 63 year old mother and a 77 year old father, I cannot expect to keep them forever. One day I woke up and they were old. It seems like in the movies, it is people who wake up to find that it is they who have gotten old. But I’m still young, arthritis-free, healthy, and agile.

There is no exact point to this essay, as yet, but there is a part 2, lest you all faint away before reading all my philosophical waxings about death, and what is better—life.

Conundrum Re: Plumbing

The back of Professional Strength Liquid-Plumr (trademark symbol here) Gel: Better than Drano Max (trademark symbol here) on the toughest clogs.

The back of Professional Strength Drano Max (trademark symbol here) Gel: Better than Liquid-Plumr (trademark symbol here) on the toughest clogs.

I hate to burst the superlative bubble here, but someone is getting erroneous information from an unreliable source.

And as an aside: does anyone else think it's kind of bizarre that you go out and buy something like Liquid-Plumr or Drano...and then you immediately pour it-- this thing you just traded money for--down the drain? I mean, I realize that's the point, but it's still odd. "I'm buying this so I can pour it out." WTF?

For those of you wondering, I was able to defeat the hair clog that was making my drain an unreliable one. Thanks.

Riiight, "The Candy Man"

So yesterday I tried to write myself a brief email about something I wanted to post on this here blog, as I am starting to slip in the ratings. Sorry fans, enemas, etc. I don't know what to tell you. I'll be back to full-strength eventually. (Probably)

So this is the email I wrote to myself.

Subject: I am the Candy Man
And I give stomach aches.

That's it. And really, I haven't the faintest idea what the hell I was thinking.

See what I mean about immediacy being completely key to my whole blogging experience? "I give stomach aches?!" WTF?

Post-It Lady Has a Posse

So the Post-It lady got her promotion/demotion to accounting and now she has an underling or two. And not only are these underlings unlikely to understand the basic principle behind the self-adhesive note (though honestly, how is self-adhesive not self-explanatory?! Perhaps that is begging the question.), but the underlings are also what one might refer to as "decorative."

Yes, decorative. Lately, they have taken to sending emails to the whole company for anything and everything. (e.g. Bathroom recently re-stocked with toilet paper!!! [You know how I loathe the unnecessary exclamation mark, so I'm sure you can appreciate my chagrin at this egregious punctuation infraction.]) Not only are the contents of these emails a real irritant, but they generally feature large, hot pink fonts on the kinds of backgrounds that most of us thought were moderately annoying when Hotmail first introduced them in the mid 90s. You know, the ones that look like a notebook or a stone tablet or some gimmicky thing.

Our sign-out sheet is now in color (why?) and reminds us--in some grammatically incorrect variation--to have a safe and exciting "journey." (FYI, the sign-out sheet is for going to lunch or on an errand. It's not like people sign out to go to Egypt or Vegas or the Peace Corps or something.)

A bulletin board above the reception desk now features a multitude of the sort of bookmarks with tassels that were popular at elementary school book fairs. Some even have gold embossing. The best part of this is that they are not haphazardly collected. They all feature Garfield and Odie. A poster on this board also stars Garfield proclaiming "My way or the highway!" (Oh the hijinx of that perennial favorite fat cat!)

Vomit basin, if you please.

Oh, but there's more. So much more.

I got our new phone extensions list yesterday and believe me when I tell you it has unicorns on it. All the men's names are in blue; the women in pink. No, honestly. I can barely begin to describe this font, but it involves a lot of swirling and curling.

And vomiting. It also includes vomiting. By me.

Look, I am all about making the office a cheery place to work, but these chicks are channeling my first grade teacher here. That is, if my first grade teacher were ON CRACK.

And Ms.Post-It herself is bouncing all over the office barking commands out at her subordinates, luxuriating in her new position as commander-in-chi...commander. The problem, of course, is that aside from her obvious problem with the post-it disaster, she also has still not really mastered subject-verb agreement, though she is more than familiar with the concept of the double negative. (I don't think we've got no more of that kind of copy paper.) hmm.

Note to the administrative staff: Cease and desist before I am forced to get all Arial size 10 up in your piece! Don't think that I won't find a way to limit your access to simple pleasures like serif fonts. I can do it. Don't make me do it. It will hurt me more than it will hurt you. (Maybe.)

Breaking Up is Hard to DooDoo

Q: What is worse than breaking up on a Friday night before a weekend that might otherwise have been quite excellent?

A: Breaking up on a Friday night before a weekend that might otherwise have been quite excellent after eating at a most awful Chinese buffet and spending the hour post-break-up in your recent ex's bathroom vomiting, hoping you'll die if the evil Chinese monster in your stomach doesn't soon go away.

Yes, that's the real answer.

My Memo, My Problem

Before I begin, let me apologize to my readers. Though it was not my intent, one of my best posts in awhile was actually sacrificed on the altar of Craigslist. Though you are all perhaps aware that I am a bit of a compulsive poster there, I hope you know that when possible, I try to post only mindless drivel, sarcastic retorts, and rants of a nature that would reveal me to be a bit of an animal, were I to post them under my assumed 'net ID of MaryT (assumed because it is in fact, my name). The best stuff, I save for you (which is why there has been precious little posting lately). On Friday, in a fit of fury, I lamented on Craigslist about Post-Its. On Sunday when I had come to my senses and realized that I should have offered it to you (and at the request of my readers, have done so below), I was alerted that it had been immortalized in Best of Craigslist. So here it is, souped up a bit for you, but basically the same old post. And now, a memo basically about post-its.

I was recently informed by P. after yukking it up about the old joke (from Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion--comic gold) of "I invented post-its!" that a nickname for Post-Its is F.L.Y.P.O.P. (Fucking Little Yellow Piece Of Paper). What does this have to do with my rant? Nothing, save the theme of Post-Its. I just thought you might like to know some trivia. (If you haven't seen Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion and enjoy fierce irony, all things 80s, and a damn fine comedy, run, don't walk to put it on your Netflix queue.)

So here I am at my job. What is it that I do at my job? You might have been wondering for awhile now (I have been neglecting my blog faithfully since I became employed months ago). But here's the kicker: I don't have any idea. It involves a lot of post-its, stacks and stacks of paper (who knew people still used paper?!), avoiding the zealotry of my co-worker across the cube alley from me, a healthy dose of Excel, a lot of mind-numbing data, and sometimes if I'm lucky, this crazy woman who works remotely from Idaho riding me like a $2 circus pony sending me photocopy orders and general personal bitch requests via email (which, with some satisfaction I reply to, copying my boss, with a bullshit response about how I'm swamped, but basically amounting to: "I'm not *your* bitch, so step the off." I'm only the *local* office whipping boy/girl.) In general though, I am *not* the one to call on for all your photocopying needs. I do have a college degree and in theory, I am using it, pounding stats into my keyboard, writing manuals for software I don't understand, and making technical, scaled drawings of things I'll never see.

So that's my job--as if you care. Even I don't care. I'm a professional clockwatcher. When I add up minutes of the day spent thinking: When can I go home? and compare them to minutes spent critically thinking about my work tasks, the ratio is an astounding 479:1 (give or take).

But sometimes, like all wage slaves, I have to work. And when I do, I need post-its; and the people who work with me need post-its. Contrary to the inventor of the FLYPOP nomenclature, I find these post-its to be extremely helpful and that they can nicely dress-up a rather drab document with the multi-colored flags and scrawled handwriting. The problem of course comes when my co-workers do not effectively use post-its. And by effectively, I mean they don't know how to stick a freaking post-it note on a piece of paper without making me pause to ask God why he has shat on me yet again.

Just this morning I found a rather large stack of documents in my chair, each smartly labeled with a post-it stamped COPY or ORIGINAL and the date and the initials of our receptionist, who recently noted to me--beaming with pride--that she might be transferred to accounting if they can get someone to train her on payroll (wheee!).

Before I go on--can I just give a shout out to receptionists and office managers? Those crappy, thankless jobs got me through college. Yes, it is possible to be a smartypants (a la me, now spreading my talent via another dead-end, thankless, but much higher paying job) and work as a receptionist. It's true that it doesn't take an advanced thinker to operate the photocopier (though next time I go to the copy room, I am sure the copier will revolt on me in defiance), but just because you *don't* have to think hard to make a copy doesn't mean you're incapable of bloom's taxonomy, as it were. That said, some people will be receptionist type people forever. Maybe they *could* ponder life's imponderables, find a loophole in the laws of thermodynamics, or be working on their doctorate in ReallyComplexSubjectMatterology, but it is clear that they elect not to and take the path of least resistance, which occasionally coincides with the path of greatest irritance.

So back to this stack of documents in my chair, with the post-it labels. No, no good. We cannot attend to the documents yet.

I'd like to be a bit more...hmm, metaphysical for a moment and pose a question to you, o' Internet/universe:
How does one append a post-it to a document?
A: Simple: pull note, using upward almost jerking motion from pad. Move note to desired location on document, adhesive side down, and press.

Please note (note!) that at no time did I say that one should GLUE (with actual glue) the unattached end/side to the document. There's no glue involved. None at all. Post-its--thanks to the genius of the built in mild-adhesive, do not require accessories. The closest thing to a post-it kit involves many sizes, shapes, and colors of this wonder note. There's no glue. No glue.

And now to the realm of the physical:

Can someone please explain to me then WHY I have spent the better part of my morning removing post-its which will not be removed, only to find that the culprit is this inexplicably used additional adhesive????????? It is NOT necessary to kill an ant using a sledgehammer, folks. A tap with a shoe will do. Do not glue the post-it. There's no glue involved in post-its. And there should not be traces and bits of hot pink post-its on these documents which will be used as exhibits in a legal deposition next week.

Receptionist person: I understand that you're a human being that makes mistakes. I understand that you have a job that, when I had it, left me weeping almost daily and questioning the significance of my existance (my how times haven't changed!). But I just want you to know: You will NEVER make it to accounting if we cannot get past this little post-it note issue. You can look away, but I think we both know this has happened before.

I now return to my regularly scheduled clockwatching.