You're Not The Boss Of Me, Now...

ReaderFriends, I have something shocking to tell you.

Every once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet, and bristle up pretty easily.**1

Sometimes it's because my hair doesn't work quite right. It's being limp, or crunchy, or too exciting, and living underneath it is more than I can handle. So everything else that day goes wrong, based solely on my folicular conundrum.

Sometimes it's because I was having a fantastic morning at home, getting lots of stuff done (or maybe getting nothing at all done...) and didn't want to leave home and come in to the office. So I pitch a hissy fit, and stomp my feet and knit my brow and fuss about in a general direction.

And sometimes it's just because people suck.

Today, I'm picking Door Number Three.

Which means I've spent an inordinate amount of time imagining how much simpler adult life would be if there were still On Duty Individuals around to put the stoopidheads in timeout. There wouldn't be an empty corner to be found.

**1 You're astounded. I can tell.

Working Hard...

Why is it that, within an office, one of the most popular greetings is "Working hard, or hardly working?"

It's said typically by a nonchalant coworker who meanders by your cubicle, coffee mug in hand, and interrupts something important to ask you their inane question. It's said with aloofness, as though you're being caught red-handed in a fit of nonproductive glee.**1

Typically, when I'm approached with this question, I'm in one of two states:

1.) I'm typing frantically, trying to cobble together intelligent thoughts for an e-mail before they escape me,

or

2.) I'm up to my elbows in paperwork.

In either of these situations, the derailment that comes from that question will cost me at least half an hour of productivity: ten minutes of conversation with my assailant, and an additional twenty to get myself back into the swing of whatever-I-was-doing-before.

Let's consider that:

Say I get paid $16 an hour. (I don't. But it's a nice thought.)

Losing half an hour of productive time is $8.

Out of that $8, obviously the government needs their cut. We'll say $3 out of that is claimed by taxes.

That leaves $5... Which will be the new fee I impose on any wayward peanut galleries that darken my doorway.

I'm gonna be rich.

Nothing If Not Trendy...

This blog is nothing if not In Keeping With The Times.

To that end, I present you:

My First Meme!




Except I totally did this today.


**1 Photo Credit: http://www.grmdocumentmanagement.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/messy-records1.jpg

Be Careful What You Wish For

Public Service Announcement 

to Fellow Human With Self-Imposed Dietary Restrictions

I cut nutritional items out of my diet because I can't process them. I don't get to eat copious amounts of cheese or ice cream because it throws me into a gastric fit. I'm not allowed artificially sweetened foods because they rattle me even more deeply. Those are rules for myself I have to follow because it makes me very, very sick (and stinky) if I break them.

So for you to impose restrictions on yourself - specifically, cutting out all dairy and all gluten and all red meat on a whim - and then to complain about how hard it is to find cheap, tasty food that doesn't send you into fits of "IBS"**1 is a little shortsighted of you. It's also shortsighted to complain about being so hungry all the time. I understand not eating what makes you feel icky. But if you choose a diet for yourself, follow it. Or break it. But don't mope and groan about it to someone whose restrictions are medically based.

Secondly, it's not "luck" that I'm the shape that I am. It's running around the office all day. It's sharing housework with my hardworking Boyfriend of Amazingness. It's supporting my Mum by stepping into the role of Man of the House if it's needed. It's dancing and walking and playing and moving as often as I can and more. It's eating vegetables and drinking water and having a positive attitude**2 and not being generally geriatric.

So for you to sit and complain that you can't move to take care of whatever-needs-taking-care-of really pushes my buttons. You can't get up because you don't want to get up. And you're stiff and sore because you don't make yourself move. NOTE: I've seen you book it when you thought you were going to miss your ride. I know you can move if you want to. You're not fooling anyone.

Thirdly... If you *do* break your self-imposed restrictions because you're Just That Hungry, do it with quality food. You're not doing yourself - or anyone around you, if that IBS kicks in... - any favors by hitting up Mickey D's to "tide you through this hungry bit."

Be careful what you do to your innards, Crazy Person. You just might find that you're the next Skinny Little Someone who can't eat cheese even if you really want to.

And cheese is awesome. So that sucks.

RaYD,

Sunny

**1 I appreciate your creativity in generating these maladies to get yourself out of doing unpleasant tasks. However... I don't need to hear about them. Maybe a doctor does, if it's affecting your ability to perform so seriously.

**2 Seriously, ReaderFriends. It helps. Not to change your shape, but to love it as it is.

Icky Gross

Sunny's List Of Really Gross Things That Skeeze Her Out In The Office

(And Sometimes Other Places Too):

• Toilet Seats
• They should not be warm. When I rush into the bathroom in a fit of emergency, it really wigs me out to be greeted by anything other than a seat so cold that it makes me go "Eek!" and breathe in really fast. Anything warmer than that means someone else's posterior has been close by in the not-distant-enough past, and I'm all but rubbing my rump against theirs.**1
• They should not be wet. Whether from sprinkling tinkles or from over-exuberant flushes that spring up out of the bowl and onto the seat... it's just icky. There isn't enough TP to get the germy feeling off.
• Drains
• There should not be hairs in them. Outside of my own shower (which is gross enough with my ever-shedding mane, thank-you-so-much...), I don't want to see hairs. Which means get them out of restroom sinks, kitchens as a whole and especially the drinking fountain.
• Bugs
• There are some places I expect to see beetles and spiders and house flies. For instance:
• A garden
• My lawn
• My bedroom**2
• There are some places where bugs should not under any circumstances, make themselves comfortable. For instance:
• My snack
• My cleavage
• My office chair
• Keyboards/Calculators/Phones
• They should not be sticky. Food happens... Sneezes happen... Exploding glue sticks happen... But clean off your damned keyes.Especially if someone has to share your workspace and your sticky buttons.
• Coffee Cups
• They should make an attempt at being the color they were when they were made. Now, I'm not saying that a well-loved coffee cup with a stain inside should be tossed out like yesterday's newspaper. But don't dump fresh coffee into something that still has scum in it from your last cuppa. And if you're going to resist the urge to use a scrubbie, at least get a black mug.

With that done... I now return you to your regularly scheduled day.

**1 The same goes for regular chairs, too.

**2 Only when Boyfriend of Amazingness is home to save me, though.

Gotta Catch 'Em All...

Dear Sunny,

 

Yup, cookies are totally delicious. Especially after a vacation where you didn't eat a lot of cookies because they would have brought ants into the tent.

 

However... there will be lots of cookies in your future. No one is going to take away the one you just started to eat.

 

Please don't feel the need to snarf it all immediately as though you've been possessed by a rabid Cookie Eating Puppet.

 

Please don't feel the need to cram extra cookie into your mouth as you're trying to chew more than you could ever possibly chew with any level of success.

 

And under no circumstances should you ever go fishing for the piece of cookie that you lost down the front of your bra while you are sitting at the reception desk.

 

Love and Hugs,

 

Sunny

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider

When I was very young, I grew up in an AdventureHouse.

(No, not like the kind with a Jungle Room complete with wildcats. Nice try, but your grand illusions cannot make me feel inadequate. My childhood was awesome.)

By AdventureHouse, I mean that it was under construction from when I was born right up through when I moved out.**1 And when I say under construction, I mean I vividly remember using an Army blanket as a door for the bathroom (the one with actual plumbing and a potty - not the outhouse. That had a real door). And stubbing my toe on the hardwood flooring because I couldn't (wouldn't) "pick my damned feet up and stop scuffing around."**2 And when we finally got ceiling tiles, instead of just rigid sheathing insulation.

It was always an adventure.

Because of the state of constant construction under which my childhood home interminably was, there were certain rules we had to follow that other children just didn't have to deal with.

For instance... we weren't supposed to scuff our feet, because we would a) pick up splinters in our tender tootsies**3, b) ruin whatever slippers we might have gotten for Christmas, and then get splinters through them, or c) stub our damned toes on the hardwood flooring because we didn't pick them up to step over the threshold from room to room.

And it wasn't just the interior of the house that was under construction. The outside got lovin's too.

Which meant that we also had rules about How To Enter the Domicile, How To Exit the Domicile, and How To Proceed About The Dooryard. All of the rules were pretty much the same for these three activities.

Thou Shalt, upon crossing the dooryard, approaching the building or disembarking from the building, Abide by the Following Guidelines:

a) Wear a blaze orange hat for optimized visibility.

b) Cover thine head with thine arms, as arms are more replacable than heads.

c) Sing loudly to announce thine presence to yonder working Daddy. 

i) Do not sing "If All The Raindrops Were Lemon Drops And Gum Drops." That song implies a tiny face thrust skyward, which simply begs to be bashed in by any object that may have just made an unplanned departure from the roof. 

d) Do not dawdle in your traversing. Make haste. 

i) Do not make so much haste that you topple over. With your arms wrapped about your head thusly, such a misstep would guarantee a face driven most thoroughly into the gravel.

I told you that story... to tell you this story.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the smoking area outside of my office. (Making a phone call. I do not smoke. I dated one smoker when I was young, and it made me physically ill to encounter his icky-tasting tongue. Not that the rest of him was any less icky for that disgusting habit... just that his tongue was super gross with its smokiness and propensity for being in my mouth.) It's immediately adjacent to the building (the smoking area, that is... not the ex-boyfriend's tongue...), and relatively sheltered from the wind so it's optimized for telephone conversations.

At least... I thought it was.

Until the building started eminating a noise that sounded as though a cordless drill was boring through the sheet metal and attempting to throw itself to its death eight stories down.

I hastened from the area into the adjacent parking lot and completed my phone call there.

But it was upon my reembarkation towards the building that I realized how deeply ingrained my childhood training was.

I had, unknowingly, pulled my arms over my head and begun singing - more loudly than a grown woman should - "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

**1 As a note: Construction completion did not occur just because I moved out. The house is, in fact, still under construction. And probably will be until we sell it or all die and leave it to the animals.

**2 Dad loved when I scuffed my feet.

**3 Or bunsies. Ask my mother's beloved cat, whom I dragged around by the tail as a toddler. Nothing like a prickly posterior to make you want to move out of the house with the Tiny Schizoid and back down the road to Grandmom's.

Triumphant Return!

This is my triumphant return from The Land Of The Vacationing!

(I know I was technically back last week... but then I had another long weekend again this past weekend**1 so I wanted to report that I'm really back now. For real and for true.)

I am ashamed to report that, while I had something witty and clever to share this morning**2, I don't remember what it was now. So I have nothing to share now... But perhaps it's better that way. We don't want to wear you out with my wittiness prematurely.

So, for now... Does anyone want to share a tale of their own adventures while I was away?

Please?

**1 Not a vacation, mind you. I was working my sheboop-shebangbang right off.

**2 I remember that it wasn't work related. It had something to do with coming back to The Real World, though. Probably something to do with wearing pants.

Nothing Tastes Like Vacation...

Dear Sunny,

Of course your coffee tastes different this morning. Please let me point out the reasons:

1.) You're drinking office swill. Nothing delightful EVER burbled, oozed or dripped out of an office coffee pot... except maybe some rare radioactive office-coffee-pot-dwelling beetle that made you a scone to go with your drink.

2.) Offices are disgustingly anti-good-times. Therefore, the Irish creme to which you grew so accustomed in your morning cuppa is nowhere to be found. And that's probably for the best... One must have all of ones wits about them in order to handle coworkers in a frenzied state of OHMYGODSHE'SBACK.

3.) Vacation coffee isn't just anti-office and pro-booze. It's also flavored with freedom.

Welcome back, love.

Sunny