Caterwauling

I owe something to everybody.

I mean it. Inboxes are overflowing. To-do lists are bursting with fruit flavor. I’ve overpromised and yet, at the same time, almost totally unplugged.

While it doesn’t do much to assuage the chronic guilt, I’m kind of more OK than I have been in a while.

I think something let go in my head last week when I heard someone at work is going on vacation. And it’s like the seventh vacation since I started there 2.5 years ago.

Seven … to my one.

And this person unplugs too. The office doesn’t stop running. In fact, I wouldn’t have even noticed had I not received the “Hey, don’t look for me for the next week” e-mail.

Of course, in this day and age, if a company can live without you for a day or a week, they generally figure they can live without you forever. If someone else “can” do your job, at many companies you can generally expect that they will absorb your functions and free up that salary money.

I often dream of taking off without looking back, enjoying my time with someone special and metaphorically throwing the phone into the ocean. A friend mentioned to me that the whole idea of the two-week vacation was to let someone go recharge while everyone else audited their projects to see what was going well and where they could use some more help and training.

Amazing, how times have changed so much.

I think my fear — other than apocalypse and doom — of walking away from my inbox for more than an overnight is that I wouldn’t want to go back. Like, I would enjoy relaxation too much. I wouldn’t be able to come back from it. I’d want to party till the money ran out (and boy am I frugal and could make it last!) and then I’d have been gone so long, no one would want me back.

I had to come to terms with a new reality when I was out of the workforce for 11 months. IT WENT ON WITHOUT ME. “Kids” were promoted over me. It was like dropping off the planet for a year and then trying to re-integrate. The world didn’t spin off its axis, but it certainly had tilted in a way I hadn’t expected.

And while a week isn’t a year, still. Even when I get the chance to fully unplug, in this day and age where everything changes so fast, will it be just like losing a whole year all over again?

I heard that the biggest cunt in all the lands (I figure that’s vague enough since there are SO MANY OF THEM) is up to no good again.

I also hear that great things are happening for her.

I’m getting a little sick of karma getting lost on the way to her doorstep. Why must evil be rewarded so richly and so instantly?

One day she’s going to go up in flames. And I’m going to be toasting s’mores over her crispy carcass. I’d just like that day to come sooner rather than later.

I thought having a new sidekick would mean I’d get more done.

Yeah, I’ve never been more behind in my life.

This is why I can’t have a kid. Once the new-and-shiny wears off and I have to figure out what to do with it, I’d probably be leaving it at the fire station down the block.

Since that isn’t an option, it’s time to start breaking spirits … and breaking INTO spirits … and all will be well in my little fiefdom again.

I try to avoid talking about work (because, repercussions). But I have to say, I just got an all-staff memo that reminds us to be mindful about cussing too loudly and I wanted to ask why they didn’t just tell me directly about it.

I assume it’s about me. I assume everything is about me. Because, who the hell else is anything about?

I remember when a friend and I got in trouble in high school, and our parents got accosted on parent-teacher day by the foulest-mouthed pipsqueak of a “teacher” (and boy do I use air quotes for her) who complained about our language.

Let me say, I learned some new words from her!

The good news was, our families basically said fuck off to her.

In any event, I don’t have that strong of a reaction now. But I do want to helpfully say that if there weren’t so many REASONS to swear, I could perhaps curb it a bit.

Oh well. Cuss less, drink more. I am a problem-solver like that.

One of my boys once advised me that when I can’t get anything done on my own, to just borrow someone’s penis. Since, I guess they don’t take things that come out of my little girl-brain seriously.

And nothing makes me more nuts than people asking about things that aren’t done that I requested 16 months ago. Things that I asked about again as recently as last month.

Do I bother producing the old requests or do I still look like a moron that I make so many requests, I can’t keep up with them?

Or do I try to find a big enough penis that I can just beat people unconscious with it?

Recommended: Why PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi Can’t Have it All

I always thought “having it all” would mean being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. What I don’t understand is how I’ve worked so hard my whole life just to be some middle-management nobody.

I gave up having kids. I walked away from any man who took me seriously. I figured, just have a sports car, an apartment in the city/on the beach and own a cat, and you won’t have any strings and you CAN put in the hours and effort needed to rule the world.

*insert Vinny Barbarino “Hah” laugh*

Be ready to travel. Check. For trips that don’t come anymore. Check, check.

Be available at all times. Check.

Glue your fat ass to your chair and don’t even get up to pee just in case somebody needs you and/or because there’s always something else to do and someone else to please. Check.

You know, I’m not saying I regret anything I did in the name of trying to be successful. I just have to agree with Indra Nooyi when she said our biological clocks and career clocks are working against each other.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with taking care of my mom. And I realized something today in one of my passive-aggressive rage moments to which I inflict her far too often. Which is that she’s like having a kid. Maybe I just commit to 18 years (seven down so far) and like most parents, I can have my “me” time.

I get loopy because when all the grandparents/great-grandparents/other assorted relatives died, she was finally free. Then we moved to Amityville, she fell in the stairwell and her health went straight into the toilet.

What if when I’m on my own again, I can’t get to all the things I missed out on because of being tied so tightly to the cross that I couldn’t move my feet?

In any event, if I”m not going to be the CEO of a company and being goddess of all I survey is all I’ve got, is it going to be enough?

In other words, can I live with “giving up everything to have it all” and only ending up with about half of what I expected?

Or is that a lot better than most will ever experience?

July 3: Would have been my great-grandmother’s 106th birthday

July 4: Gram has been gone 15 years

July 5: Uncle Stan (my great-grandmother’s brother) would have had a birthday. I think he was younger. Sad to say I can’t recall and there’s no one left to ask.

I have so much love and pride and sadness and regret around each. This is a hard week. And it never really gets easier.

So does the usual “Let Your People Go!” directive so the office can close early.

You know, I was born to be extraordinary. That’s meant superhuman challenges (and, sometimes, triumphs). There ain’t nothing normal about me, in any way/shape/form.

I would love to knock off early — or, hell, enjoy a day off — but it’s just not possible. Even if I did, it just means I have to make up for it over the weekend.

And Winger is in town tonight. Which, I had 100% planned to go see. If you don’t want to know how frustrated I am right now, chained to my desk, don’t ask.

However, there’s still time to FedEx some scandalous gutchies to the venue and ask a roadie to pelt Kip with them …

Everybody’s working for the weekend.

I”m working on the weekend.

The holiday weekend.

Again.

Funny thing is, I used to have some help and I can’t say I’ve been any less inundated since I stopped having it.

Good thing is, help arrives Monday.

So the body count can remain at zero for yet another “holiday” weekend where the rest of the company cheerfully e-mails that we can either A) leave early if our work is done (hah) or B) hold our breath waiting for people to come back from vacation to take care of things I needed them to take care of while they were off enjoying a week off.

Of course, I’d rather hear folks were on vacation than just siting in their office, refusing to do what I ask without my boss’ permission. Ain’t nobody got time for that, least of all me.

In case that wasn’t obvious.