Life's little pleasures....

And now, a list of life's smallest pleasures, those little things that allow you to feel as though you are the windshield and not the bug.

1. Not getting lost on your way to work (Yay me!)
2. A really night's sleep.
3. A kickass outfit.
4. Your cat refraining from barfing all over the basement floor....especially when he tends to do this running and barfing maneuver that leaves little piles of barf in a line on the carpet.
5. The annoying ego-maniac at work getting shot down when he asks a dumb question.
6. Good chocolate, nay GREAT chocolate.
7. A hot shower.
8. The perfectly-coifed barbie-like girl with 32DD's and a 24 inch waist coming out of the bathroom with toilet paper on her shoe. (ok, so that's a little mean, but tell me you havent felt more normal when stuff like that happens...and it's not to you.)
9. Bailey's Irish Cream on St. Patty's day. (Oh yes, I plan to indulge. You bet your sweet Irish ass.)
10. Bulbs blooming.
11. Snow days. (Please dear god, may it be so tomorrow.)
12. Backrubs....not the sketchy happy ending kind, just the nice friend or boyfriend or husband kind.

Sing with me, "When the dog bites, when the bees sting....when I'm feeling SAAAAAAD, I think of some of my favorite things...and then I doonnnnttttt feeeeeeeellll sooooooooooo bbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad."

Signing off now, I have a whole suit to make out of the drapes in my living room, and only hours before morning.

And so it begins.....

Yesterday, on my way to my very first day of grownup work, I got lost. Yessirree I did. It was horrible. I was already running a touch late because I had been having hair difficulty and was trying to show up at work looking decent instead of looking like I got my hair inspiration from Yoda.

So I found myself on a) the wrong road b) going the opposite direction from the way I wanted to go and c) definitely late.

Good times. Here's the thing. I knew exactly where I was, which is kind of the worst kind of lost because you're kicking yourself screaming at the steering wheel..."You're so stupid, how could you be this stupid, dont you know its your very first day of grownup job?"....

Thankfully, I made it home alright. Got on the right road, made it home....all ok.

This morning.....

I GOT LOST AGAIN. Oh my damn. On a totally different road, going a whole new wrong way, really SUPER fabulously late for work even though I left a whole 15 minutes earlier and didnt have to be in until later in the morning.

I sure did. Being lost must be my new favorite thing. This time, I pulled out all the stops. I cursed, I prayed....I pleaded for the traffic gods to have mercy on my poor soul because really....I was late, my hair looked like a helmet, and I was stuck on a one way road going the wrong way.

Far be it from me to get home alright. Oh no....on the way home...I managed to take a wrong turn. Yeah I did. So then I had to backtrack AGAIN.

I swear I am not this stupid, but apparently I am incapable of just getting to the place I need to go....there are few things in the whole world than arriving late to work, parking in the farthest parking space in the lot, hoofing it to the office, hair all askew and sweaty.....and then having your new co-worker who YOU JUST MET YESTERDAY say to the group...."well hey, look who finally decided to show up."

Good times.

Maybe tomorrow I'll only get lost once.

Who knows.

Losing the will to blog....

Ok, so it's not really the will, but more like the ability. I've had blogger's block. That and Ive been busier than Dr. Spock at a Star Trek convention, so I just havent had the time.

What of the myriad hours wasting away at the go nowhere job you ask?

That ship has sailed my friends.

You see, last Friday was my very last day with wackadoodle boss. Hot temp has transitioned, I departed with much fanfare and an embarrassing amount of sparkling cider and this week, I've been on vacation.

Some days I think I could make a whole life out of being a stay at home wife.

Daily schedule includes:

Running errands
watching TV
napping
doing laundry
cooking
knitting

I swear, some days I think women's lib was actually an idea invented by men and whispered in the ears of women because men realized that housewives had a good thing going.

Ok, not really...but yknow what I mean.

So I now have 3.5 days until THE BIG DAY. The big day of starting my very first super real high pressure "you're a grownup now girlfriend" job.

And I have no shoes.

I have shoes, but they're not right. They lack perfection, and I lack cash...so we're at an impass. I actually called a friend on Tuesday from the mall nearly in tears at the DSW bemoaning the fact that all shoes cost 1.5 million dollars a pair and have gold lame on them somewhere. (At least this season they do....have you been to a shoestore lately? It's like Carmen Miranda threw up in there.)

The problem with me buying shoes for myself (have I mentioned this before?) is that I cannot be trusted. You see, I buy man shoes. Anything comfortable that looks like a loafer is my friend. I particularly like stitching on shoes....and I know I shouldnt, and I know it's wrong, and I know I need something sleek with a kitten heel and a small amount of tassle....but good shoe taste be damned, if it doesnt look like it belongs at an Indigo Girls concert....I dont want it.

Im trying to change, really I am. Im in a 12 step program. I have shoe sponsor. I run all shoe purchases by her before committing to them. She is my Shoeru. It's a real word we coined to define her role in my fashion life.

Oh great Shoeru lead me.

But anyway, Ive developed an inordinate amount of anxiety about my new job. Really, I just need to chill and look forward to it...but well, Ive tried that and I cant seem to master the "chill" part. I keep wondering if I'm going to show up to work the first day and all of my co-workers will point and laugh and then look at my shoes and say "sister please".

Because when you think about it, starting a new job is kind of like your first day at junior high. You've just left the comfort zone of your old job- and even if your old job sucked and your old boss was the equivalent of the kid who ate paste in your elementary school, you knew the parameters there. You were comfortable. You knew the cool kids, you knew the jerks.

Enter new job. Scary, unknown world, full of bullies and buddies and new bosses and wacky oddballs. BUT YOU DONT KNOW WHO ANY OF THEM ARE. It takes a while to figure these things out. You have to observe quietly, see who's cool, who's wacky, who's going to be your new best bud because they too have terrifically awful shoe fashion and an undeniably off beat sense of humor. So you wait.

Almost immediately, you begin to recognize personalities emerge. Most often it's that The Devil Wears Prada type girl.....the super-perfectly coifed perfect shoe girl who has perfect hair and is a perfect size two....oh and she went to Harvard. She's got piles of money too. Now- on the surface, you want to hate her because she's got perfect shoes and she's everything you're not....but you cant hate immediately...you have to wait, because sadly enough...sometimes perfect people are cool.

It happens. It's not fair, but it happens. And all the funny fat girls in the room said "Damn". I know, because I'm one of them.

And then, there are the oddballs....lunches comprised of chocolate milk and raisinets, hair pulled back in scunchies matching 80's retro work inappropriate outfits. Again, you may want to rush to judgement.....but you have to wait. They could be cool....or they could be PSYCHO. You just dont know.

Your new boss may seem awesome all fun and nice and taking you to lunch the first day, but you have to wait to see if he's cool....or if he becomes the beign of your existence, making you work late and on weekends and calling you "sweet cheeks".

A new job is like Sweet Valley High meets Revenge of the Nerds, and there you are- standing in the middle of the whole thing, forgetting everything you learned in graduate school wondering if after two weeks they'll even remember why they hired you. You'll fantasize about how you were downsized from Jr. Account Manager to Head Washer of Floors and Scrubber of Toilets because you brain farted in a meeting and forgot your own name.

So Ive decided that there's nothing to do but a) panic, and then b) be prepared. I am basically assuming the following will happen on my first day:

1. I will forget my own name and stutter when someone asks it.
2. I will spill food on myself
3. I will have the "deer in headlights" look at least once.
4. I will say something dumb. I always do.
5. I will ask inane questions in an attempt to sound smart.

Im thinking, if I can just accept the inevitable, and give myself a "First Day of Work Free Pass to be an Ass" card (hey it rhymes) then everything will probably be ok.

Enter Hot Temp.

All hail the hot temp. All hail.

Hot temp has arrived, signaling the end of Shewhohaiku's tenure as chief underbitch to the Secretary of Craziness. Only three more days!

Hot temp has no idea what he is in for, but lucky for me and all of my female co-workers, he is hot.

At least that's one thing he can do right.

The last temp wasn't hot and he couldn't use Excel either, so basically he was useless to me.

The hardest thing about my interview with hot temp was that I was trying to sell him on a job I wouldn't want my worst enemy to have. So that's sad, but hey, he needs the cash right, and well....bosslady needs a minion. He'll probably last a couple of weeks, which will be long enough for it to officially not be my problem anymore.

Who knows though, maybe he'll love it and stay here forever, singing the praises of crazy boss and be her ever-present yes-man.

"Cha, and monkeys might fly out of my butt."

But anyway, so here's hot temp's resume in brief.
Dark hair, dark eyes, killer nose....

Oh and he went to Georgetown too. Good times.

I liked hot temp immediately because he seemed at one with himself. In fact, despite the usual nerves of being on an interview, he seemed like a really calm guy. And the best part is he might even have a sense of humor. He didn't whip it out during the interview, but afterward seemed pretty cool.

And all the ladies swooned....hot and a sense of humor, where can I get me one of those?

Bosslady of course loved him immediately because he's a he....she's got a thing for the gentlemen and is sort of a dirty old lady in her own right. Who am I to judge? (Who am I trying to kid, that won't stop me.) She's 70+ years old, her libido should have gone extinct when the dinosaurs did....but it did not. It is up and running and I think hot temp made her a little hot and bothered under the collar, which is why....

he got a big cube.

Oh yes he did. The guy isnt even here yet and he gets a spanky corner cube with a big ass window and a killer view.

Meanwhile, I am stuck here in Glade scented plug-in's hell (cubemate LOVES them) listening to the slow jams and Backstreet Boys marathons she tortures my ears with all the live long day.

Oh the humanity.

As of tomorrow, I will be delegating all of my responsibilities to the hot temp in the big cube. I'll smell fresh as a pine tree and my ears will be bleeding from listening to Montel Jordan's "This is How We Do It" for the 4 thousandth time.

Friday 5pm can't come soon enough.

The San Francisco Treat

"Francisco, that's a funny word."....Love that movie.

So I just returned from a 4 day jaunt to San Francisco to visit a great friend and her husband and kiddo. Kudos to the kid for being about as cute as any kid can be.

But this post is not about cute kids. Oh no my friends, it is not.

In fact, if there are any cute kids in close proximity to the computer while you're reading this and they too can read, you might shoo them away. Scandalous tales of San Fran are about to be told.

On Friday night, friend and I decided to BART our way to downtown SF to have dinner and do some window shopping. After hauling ass up Powell street - I could have used rock climbing gear to get up that bad boy,- we find the restaurant, have a lovely meal....and then, attempt to walk back to the BART station to make our way home.

I know this is boring, but I swear, I'm getting to the good part.

Anyhow, we wanted to avoid the ass-kicking hill of Powell street, so we cut down and over on a few others and found ourselves in some rather questionable territory.

Foxy ladies that we are, we were careful not to attract unwanted attention....or so we thought.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to spell it out for you in brief.

Ahem.

We were propositioned by a woman who asked us to engage in a threesome in exchange for crack.

I kid you not. NO REALLY, I kid you not.

A threesome people! For crack! CRACK COCAINE!

Now, Im not as square as I used to be and I'd like to think Im even a little adventurous, but MY GOODNESS, never in my life has some woman asked me to engage in relations with my dear friend in order to obtain an illegal substance.

I think it goes without saying that the woman doing the propositioning was not, as we say, "all there", but still....who does that?

I grant you, the two of us walking down the street are quite the image. We were the very definition of bootylicious. And we were decked out for a nice dinner (bonus) as opposed to our usual jeans and sweater fare, but nothing about us said "we like crack". In fact, nothing about us even said "we like to party like MaryKate and Ashley".

And we certainly didn't give off the aura of being girlfriends. But hey, its SF, so live and let live in that department.

Anyhoo....when she made the offer, I didnt quite know what to say. I think I laughed actually, but then did I say "No thank you" or "That's quite a lovely offer, but I'll have to decline as we've got a previous engagement"?

Y'know, I didnt. I frankly don't remember what I said. I was a little taken aback as anyone might be when they're offered such an opportunity.

To be clear though, we did decline.

Wait, why even write that? OF COURSE we declined. A strange woman offered us drugs for sex.

And that my friends, is how my night in SF went. Brilliant meal, awesome company, excellent weather, and to top it all off....I got hit on by a crack head who thought my friend and I would be delightful company.

At least I still got it.

Speaking of kilts....

So last night the man and I went over to our friend's house to hang with her and her muffinhead kids. They dont have heads like muffins....I just call little things I like muffinheads.

Enough about me.

So anyway, all the sudden...for no reason really, friend busts out with telling us about men who wear kilts...like all the time. Not the Scotsmen playing their bagpipes... (At this point, allow me to interject my thoughts on bagpipes which go a little something like this. A bagpipe is an instrument that basically looks like a penis with teets. A man blows on it and out come weird noises. Hmmmm. Who decided this sounded like a good way to solidify Scotland's place in the world?) ...but like, office workers and other folk.

Apparently, they're called "Utilikilts" and here is their illustrious website. http://www.utilikilts.com/

Ta-da. Utilikilts, for all your kilting needs.

The men featured in those kilt modeling shots have some nice calves. Very shapely.

My friend, in discussing the utilikilt phenomenon mentioned that apparently some construction workers wear them on the job. She then said, "yknow, to hold their nail guns and stuff."

Mmmm, hmmm. And stuff.

No actually, to back up, the joke is in the nail gun comment. My husband and I look at eachother and with the glee of 13-year old boys in a locker room commenced making all manner of kilt -nail gun jokes including.....

....wearing a kilt gives me easy access to my nail gun.
....my nail gun would have gone off inside my kilt if I hadnt had the safety on

and
At work today I shot someone with my nail gun while wearing my kilt. It was surprisingly easy.

Oh yes, we are children.

Of course, it gave me something to blog about....something besides this.

Warning, potentially culturally insensitive story to follow.

So apparently in Tehran they've decided to stop calling Danishes (as in the pastry) "Danishes". Henceforth they will be referred to as "Roses of Mohammed". This is obviously a move to remove the Danes completely from the lives of Iranians. (Who knew they were so intricately connected?) the sad thing is, Roses of Mohammed takes alot longer to say, and no more can you walk into the Dunkin Donuts in Tehran and order a Coffee and a Danish to go.

It's a sad world we live in. Even sadder when people consider a pastry to be at the root of the world's cultural disputes. What'd a little pastry ever do to you except caress your lips with glaze and line your thighs with an extra layer of body warmth?

Unclean, unclean....

So I have conjunctivitis (better known as "pink eye") in both eyes.

I am SO freakin sexy I cant even look at myself in the mirror without getting turned on. It's awesome.

Waking up with your eyes crusted over, priceless.

What the heck man? I feel like I have had every abnormal malady a person can have over the last year. It's so odd. I dont think of myself as "sickly" either, but according to my co-worker, I am "cootie-rific" and my other co-worker said I need to wear a hazmat suit because they're all afraid of me.

Psycho bosslady told me I must have a little virus working its way through all the parts of my body.

Thank you, Dr. Nutcase for that spot-on diagnosis.

And here's the best part. I havent left the house without eye makeup in ages. I am VA-AAAIN when it comes to my eyes. (Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.) And now, in addition to no eye makeup, I also get to wear my very Velma from Scooby-Do inspired glasses everywhere I go for like a week.

As Paris would say, "That's hot."

So, since I look like Swamp Thing in nerd glasses, here's a little Pink Eye Haiku, just for you on a Tuesday.

Conjunctivitis

That's hot I think as
I wear my nerd glasses oh
wowza, what a babe.

Crusty eyes, ew gross
I think I look like something
from Scary Movie.

Bright pink eye balls so
glamorous. Thank goodness new
job starts in two weeks.

By then, I'll be free
Free from ooze and puss and gross
eyes. Free from glasses.

Antibiotics
Are my friend. Eye drops keep me
sane. Pink eyes are hot.

How the flock did I
get pink eye? I have no clue
Just lucky I guess.