Caterwauling

Today I went to the office for 45 minutes until the smell of over-varnished floors at the taco place downstairs destroyed me.

Then I worked at home for a couple hours.

Then the Internet went down there for four hours. It came back when I drove my happy ass back to that stinky place and rebooted with my friend in IT on the phone and with him on the phone with the cable company.

It only took seven router reboots!

So I picked up dinner and drove my happy ass back home and resumed editing one of the worst submissions I ever received.

My kid said it was a great article. The “Before.”

Think about that for a moment. When you finish weeping, come back to me.

Well wait till you see the “After,” kid, because this was more than lipstick on a pig.

This was slaughtering that motherfucker and serving up some burnt ends and bacon and pulled pork sliders with the best barbecue sauce in the world. (From 4 Rivers just north of Orlando, natch.)

And now I would LOVE to be packing since I AM MOVING but alas, I have another editorial wonder to cap off this lovely evening. OH and I lose my Internet WHAT WITH THE MOVE this weekend.

So, if shit ain’t done before Good Friday, the bunny will come and go and won’t be able to poop out lovely editorial eggs every day.

Oh and Mom is the only reason I will be able to pull off this move. And she’s so sick and in pain, she may not make it much past the move. So yeah. Thank God I have competent help at home. I just wish I could give the healthcare and salary to her.

I had a lovely drive along the A1A to work today — one of my last before I move inland.

An hour later, I had a lovely drive home.

Apparently the new restaurant under construction downstairs — the one that was due to open last September, just varnished its floors. And the whole place stinks like acrylic nails.

I lasted maybe an hour with tears streaming out of my eyes and my voice half-gone just in time for the morning status call.

When I could finally run free, I stopped at Starbucks and ran up the stairs in the parking garage to fetch Stewie.

Unfortunately I was running so fast, I fell flat on my face on the stairs.

I spilled exactly four drops of coffee. Banged my knee and blew out the toes in my pantyhose. But I’m so physically destroyed from moving that I was none the worse for wear.

The thing is, I dusted myself off, whispered “Thank you God” a few times, and was on my way.

A woman watching me thought I was nuts. But the way I figure, I lived. I’m intact. Nothing is broken and hey, I get to spend my evening commuting time packing instead of sitting in beach traffic.

So, while I wouldn’t say I won this day, I definitely didn’t lose anything other than my balance. And maybe a piece of lung. 🙂

So the guy who worked on my broken toof last week is probably one of those people who would gas you and molest you in the dentist chair.

It isn’t the dentist himself. Rather a guy who always jokes with me and hugs me and kisses me on the cheek and in general needs to check himself and remember his baby mama in Miami.

In any event, I was sitting here staring at my empty performance review and trying to wonder WTF I achieved in the last year. I’d say it was 80 pounds of poop in a 50- to 80-hour-a-week bag. But I cannot find a single corn kernel in that poop to write about.

I mean, I kept body count below 1.

I didn’t throw things at anyone.

I didn’t call anybody names.

I assessed very real threats to the business and did something about them.

I networked my little butt off and was able to call in some very big favors when we needed intel and no one else had a way in.

I volunteered to be in the dunk tank and not only am I in it, there are leeches in it and people throw pies at me when I’m up in the air on the seat before they hurl cannonballs at the lever that will send me into the water.

I mean, how do you write that in such a way that HR will happily check off “meets expectations” and move on with their lives for another year?

That moment when you send the new girl’s photo to all your friends who told you to stay away from him in the first place. And the subsequent series of “Bless Her Hearts” because you and your friends have lots of thoughts — and most of them are about the man who unknowingly put you into each other’s realities.

I always have to quote “Birdee” in “Hope Floats” at times like this.

“You deserve each other. You were lucky to have me.”

The nice thing about moving out of this dump — aside from moving out of this dump — is that I’ve met everybody who is left in the building. And reconnected with people I forgot were still here.

We’re all moving out. We’re all scared that the assholes in the rental office will come after us for big fees. And we’re all horrified that this place might have paid off the fire department to not do anything to them for bolting shut our windows.

That’s a big accusation to make and I don’t make it lightly. But I haven’t been given one reason to disbelieve it could happen.

I have been hanging around with realtors lately and every single one says it is illegal what they are doing to us here. And the fact that these fools are coming after us for recognizing our rights to a SAFE, LIVABLE environment and asserting them? Is mind-boggling.

Evil Landlady forgot I was moving out, apparently, and told me yesterday I could get my rent prorated by $288.74 a month going forward.

What the actual fuck.

Odd dollar amount aside, I don’t even want to tell you what I pay but I can assure you that doesn’t take it down to a level where I would be happy living in dust and chaos and darkness till October, thank you.

Meanwhile I have a sunny, bright and lovely place waiting for me. It’s clean and the appliances work and oh yeah, MY WINDOWS OPEN.

Funny how you can’t take that for granted.

You’ve heard of Trump Tower right? This is Dump Tower.

And now it can suck it …

I heard a story on NPR yesterday morning about those of us without kids.

That, even though we don’t have them — for whatever reason — that doesn’t mean we don’t grieve the experience of not having them.

I found that oddly comforting.

I mean, I saw two sonograms today — one from a friend at two months and the other from a friend at seven months — and showed them to my mom. She was instantly thrilled and sad.

Perhaps I was too. More thrilled than sad. But still.

I had dreams of having no kids so I could travel the world.

I didn’t count on working all the time and having nothing to show for it.

I didn’t think I’d have a dependent. I assumed I’d cohabitate with someone who had an equally great or even better job.

I didn’t realize that life is so expensive and who can save money when the phone, cable and electric companies destroy your take-home pay. Who knew Internet would arrive, let alone become a commodity and a utility that would COST SO DAMN MUCH?

By all means, not having kids has not exacerbated my expenses. But my rationale that I wanted to be “free” hasn’t quite panned out as expected.

I joke that I do quite enough caregiving to need to do it on someone who needs regular diaper changes. But I’m not investing in anyone who will be here in a year or certainly not a lifetime from now.

I mean, there’s no guarantee a child will outlive us, let alone make it out of the womb.

But if I don’t reduce my stress and increase the stamps on my sad little passport, will it all have been for nothing to have missed out?

I’ve moved at least a dozen times in my life. At least.

I can’t remember how I used to stay up all night packing, go to work, come home and pack, and somehow have my shit together by the almighty deadline.

I never took off any days. And half my crap was unboxed when the movers got there. But somehow I taped up the last box before they started the drive to our new destination.

Now I have about four times as much shit, between mom’s and mine. And lord knows I throw away a quarter lifetime’s worth of crap with each move.

I need my sleep. And I’m old and things hurt a lot sooner. And back then I couldn’t financially afford to take a day off. Now I can’t afford to take a day off because things will be published in pseudo-Swahili without the Rosetta Stone job I try to do on incoming copy.

I’m very nervous because not only did the construction workers double-bolt my doors shut today, but they started lugging plywood onto the balcony. I asked Evil Landlady 6 if they are going to start boarding us up a week early. She said I will get a memo when it is time for me to know.

That is something I won’t miss. A snotty memo on a Friday night — shoved in your door probably long after you’ve left for a long weekend — to tell you shit is gonna happen bright and early Monday.

In fact, I still have furniture on the balcony that I didn’t get a chance to remove. Oh well. Doors are bolted. They can drop it into the Intracoastal or shove it wherever it pleases them.

Pray for me, if you’re so inclined, that if it comes down to losing my view for these final days or else losing my mind, that the view stays intact longer …

The hiring hell has begun again. This time, here’s to people actually being talented in the things they assure you they are talented in.

Here’s to me not calling someone’s alma mater out of sheer curiosity of, “No, really, you conferred them a degree? In THAT? And you were of sound mind?”

I’m planning for more vacancies than I currently have. Not that I enjoy hiring and training and seeing what happens when you’ve invested all your time and it just isn’t successful.

But at some point you have to weigh the risk-vs.reward strategy. And just like any investment, it changes from the very moment you buy the stock. No one says you have to own it till you die.

You can sell call options against it your whole life but at some point, don’t you want to take a damn break and quit having to manage it so actively?

I’ve been feeling defeated because I feel like I bet on some bad stocks. But I was just looking back at their, ah, stock certificates shall we say. The original information that came my way and persuaded me to consider investing.

And you know what? Without knowing what I know today, I would still have taken the chance.

I mean we all make promises in the hiring song-and-dance. We all think we are bright and capable and easygoing and bursting with uniqueness that will dazzle the people in charge.

At least, I think that. After I get past my paralyzing fear of, “Oh shit, I don’t know if I know enough right now. But I am sure going to bust my ass to learn what they want and learn it FAST.”

You know, if just ONE of them said to me, “Goddess, what could I do better to make your life easier / make my writing better / help your workload / learn so you don’t have to / earn my keep / get taken seriously,” I would weep tears of joy.

Instead people wander in and out, do their thing, do their thing even AFTER you tell them their thing sucks, resign themselves to flying under the radar so I don’t notice/correct them, or basically antagonize me till I forget what the fuck I even wanted from them in the first place and I’ll just do it my goddamned self to shut them the hell up.

And while I am 100% invested in sticking around to see success, it’s people like me who will just wake up one day and say, “Guess what. I am gonna take my happy, awesome, compliant, enthusiastic and pleasant ass elsewhere.”

Today is not that day.

But I can’t say I haven’t had that thought more often than not throughout my life.

So yeah. I hate hiring but I am so excited to think that this time, it will turn out right.

Today: Hanging around with impossibly cute, tiny human beings.

Right now: Enjoying a rare but powerful hope for humanity.

Tomorrow: Wondering why we waste so much time with impossible, full-sized human beings when there are cute little people who appreciate being adored.

As soon as this Sunday, I’m getting rid of the Evil Landlady Coalition and the apartment whose doors are now suddenly nailed shut and my beautiful balcony is no longer accessible. (Sigh.)

So, soon that will be two problems down.

And there’s a growing possibility that my greatest antagonists will evaporate.

Five problems down.

And without said antagonists, that opens up the potential to eliminate another problem I haven’t been able to fix.

Six problems down.

What if, by June 23 — just 90 days from today — I could have a completely wiped-clean slate?

Fuck yeah.