Sunday, August 29, 2010

Thin section

I was at the Farmer’s Market the other day and happened upon a mammogram trailer.   I know. I mentioned to someone, how you’re just walking along, looking at the peaches to see if they’re ripe, and you think, huh, when was my last mammogram? And lo and behold, you look up, and there’s a mammogram trailer. She said, no, it’s more like you notice a peach smashed on the concrete under the leg of a table loaded with heavy stuff.  That's what reminds you of the mammogram.

So anyway, I did purchase tomatoes and peaches before I noticed the trailer. It’s kind of like the bookmobile or a taco truck, but with vice grips where the books and salsa should be. No appointment needed.

I was overdue for a mammogram, because it takes so long between when you make the appointment and when it occurs that I never have the same calendar around, and forget to go. For a while, I had the reminder card on the bulletin board, but R. asked me to take it down when some people were coming over because it was decorated with a giant picture of breasts, not in an artistic way.

So I walk into the trailer, and I’m the only one there (imagine that), and the two women working are really welcoming and excited to have a customer. I fill out some paperwork, and then sit down for a second, but she comes over and asks, “Um, so what religion are you?”

“Unitarian.”

“No, I mean what religion are you?”

“That is a religion. That’s what religion I am. Why?"

“Well, we like to have that on record in case we need to provide comfort. We want to know what would be comforting for you in a difficult time.”

I wasn’t sure what sort of comfort would be good for when your boob is smashed between two pieces of plexiglass, and I’m pretty sure that the Unitarians don’t have much comfort to offer anyway -- just a whole lot of questions.   But I spelled it for her, and she wrote it down. I got a weird feeling, though, like, do they expect me to die in here?

She directed me into a tiny closet, told me to put the little smock on, and gave me a tote bag to keep that I carefully packed my tomatoes, peaches, and clothes into.

When I came out, the technician appeared and told me where to sit, and did the mammogram thing. For you people who haven’t experienced it, it goes like this:

The technician takes her gentle, but freakishly cold hands, approaches the breast by sliding one hand from the top of the chest and one from the bottom such that she can spread the boob onto a large piece of plexiglass. At this point, it seems reasonably gentle, but then she twists some sort of a screw mechanism so that another piece of Plexiglass comes down from the top, and she tightens it with all her might. She seems pretty strong.

The sharp edge of the plexiglass presses into the skin in rib area, and the vice clamps down, pinching something that formerly was three dimensions into just two.  If it weren’t so excruciating, it would be amazing to see how much volume things take up when spread out and squished to the width of one cell.   It’s similar to how, when you see a cup of water, it looks like one size, but when you spill it, it implausibly covers the entire counter-top.  It’s just like that. The entire counter top.

“Oh, the girls are very photogenic,” the technician comments.

Does it seem odd to you to have a random stranger at the market calling your intimate body parts, “the girls”? Yeah, me too, but she kept at it, “the girls this” and “the girls that” for a while, until she was done. “We got some great pictures of the girls today. The radiologist is going to be delighted.” I wasn’t sure if that was creepy or not, so I decided to go for “not”.

I was feeling mingle-y, the way I do when I don’t die doing something I didn’t really want to do in the first place. “I wish I had brought my friends along, and we could walk across the street and have a margarita together now.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea!” she said. “You should come back on the 9th!” I don't think I'll come back to do it again in two weeks, but I would recommend it if you’re in the area buying peaches.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Soup stories

It seems like I’ve had nothing to write about this week because the annoying people were just annoying, not charmingly so, and I realized that, unbeknownst to me, this blog has become about those people, the ones who aren't just difficult, they're difficult in a complicated way that isn't so black and white, in a way that makes me wish I had a little more patience, because we all need it sometimes, and I think that maybe if I write about them, I can try a little harder, if that makes any sense.

Yesterday when I got to the office after being out the previous afternoon, I had 14 increasingly angry messages from one guy. I wish I were exaggerating.

Long boring story, but when I finally called him back, he was furious, as you might expect, but not in an interesting way. If you’re just gonna be a straight-up a-hole, no one’s gonna write about you. Okay, maybe just a little. Seriously, your permit expired a year ago, and you’ve had the house on the market for 6 months, never got final occupancy, never did all the stuff you were supposed to do, and now, closing is in two days and it’s my fault because I was out for an afternoon? Your tone is too firm for the occasion, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

The week was like that -- run of the mill angry people.  But I did hear one great thing this week. The lovely B. came for a swim one evening, and the moon happened to be rising in a giant way while we were swimming out to the stump, which was gorgeous, and for some reason I found myself confessing an embarrassing story of tailgating.

The story is this: I was on my way to yoga one morning, which you’d think would make me all mellow and full of peaceful thoughts, but I found myself driving behind someone who literally was going about half the speed limit, and I was just irritated. We have an annoyed little spirit on this hill, that goes something like, “I didn’t get up well before the sun rose to follow you at half the speed limit for 10 miles.”

It thought I was going to be late to yoga, which bugged me because I have a weird OCD thing about getting my spot, or at least not getting one of the spots in front of the mirror.  It was a clear sunny morning, there was really no reason to be going so slowly, so I was doing that thing that I despise, which is driving a little too close, as if that’s gonna make the person drive faster, but I’d catch myself doing it, and slow down, and then unconsciously find myself right on her tail again, which is almost worse. This went on for like, 7 miles, until I finally turned off to take a short cut. I parked, got out of the car, and lo and behold, the offending car pulled up, and it’s a young woman, also going to yoga.

I know. So random irritating slow driver is in my class. She didn’t seem to notice, and I wasn’t exactly sure if I should apologize or what, so I said nothing, and neither did she, but I still feel sort of bad about it, all these months later.

I told this story, and B. told me that when she’s in that circumstance she tries to imagine elaborate scenarios for why the person is driving so slowly. Like, they’re on their way to visit a sick friend with a giant pot of hot soup, but the baby is in the car; if the soup splashes, the baby might get burned. Or they have a prosthetic leg and needed to take it off because there’s a terrible irritated inflamed area where it meets the body, and they have to do the gas and the brake with the wrong foot, and need to go slowly just in case a toddler runs out into the road. Stuff like that.

That’s why she teaches the class, and I take it.

I’m currently working on scenarios that would cause a person to call 14 times in one afternoon, but it hasn’t come to me yet.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

tapping the vein

So I went to the doctor’s office today for a blood draw, and the nurse said, as they always do when they see my veins, “wow, you have great veins!”

I replied, “hmm, maybe I should have been a drug addict?” 

And she said, “don’t even say that.”  But while she was saying what I shouldn’t say, she started looking around at the veins on my arms, and said, “seriously, you really do have great veins.  Do you work out?”

“Um, yeah, I work out in the vein area, mostly. Guess it shows. Pretty buff veins.”

“Oh, sorry, was that awkward?”

Which struck me as odd, because usually things are way awkward, but no one mentions it, and on this day, it was the third awkward thing, this one hardly awkward at all, and the second ask. That seems good, right?  Good because of all the asking?  Or not good, because of all the awkwardness? I couldn’t’ tell.

The first awkward thing was when an old man came into the permit center, sat down across from me, and then just took my hand and said, “oh, don’t you have a lovely face.”

“Um, thanks,” I said.

“Most of the people here look so hunched over and angry. You really don’t seem very angry at all.”

I was staring off into space, wondering about that, feeling a little sad that it takes about one minute for a visitor to pick up on how angry everyone is. “Well, maybe everyone’s just tired today. I don’t think anyone’s angry at all,” I lied. 

His wrinkly, wedding-ringed hand was still holding mine, which made me uncomfortable, but also it seemed a little sweet, so I didn’t know quite what to do. I started staring at the hands. I’m calling them “the hands” because my hand was having it’s own little life without me; I wasn’t really part of it anymore.  My hand and I seemed to be having a trial separation.

“Oh, is this awkward?” the man asked.

Which it totally was, and then it was even more so after he said it, and on the one hand, it was sweet, but on the other hand (which was my actual hand, the hand that was having it’s own life without me), it was all those other things that I don't have to spell out for you smart people, but for starters, what makes you think you can just go up to a random woman and start holding hands? Where have you been for the past 50 years since that went out of vogue?

The third awkward thing is just too awkward to even recount, but it involves how really unfortunate it is that I'm so obedient, and when a farmer tells me to get on the tractor, um, I just do it.  I know.

So anyway, I feel like I’ve been neglecting the blog and then suddenly I had these three awkward things and two great complements, so there you have it.  Let’s everyone keep in mind that I don't even seem very angry,  and I have great veins on top of it. I know!

Who even needs a cat with all that going on?

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Throwing in the towel*

Lately B. and I have been arguing about this stupid thing, which is why someone who runs a mitigation bank would be reluctant to sell credits.

“Well, they don’t want to run out. It’s like a Target; if you go there once and they don’t have what you need, you might switch over to Walmart and never go back to Target,” B. says.

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s more like a lemonade stand, and once you sell all the lemonade you can get on with your life. You don’t want repeat customers because then you’d have to sit at the end of the driveway for the rest of your life. It’s a good thing to run out,” I reply.

This goes on for a bit, over the wall, until he comes around to my side to make a point, but he’s rubbing his elbow, and I ask what’s wrong.

“Tendonitis.”

“Me too! I have tendonitis in my elbow too. I think it’s from using a mouse.”

He makes a crude gesture to indicate the source of his repetitive motion injury, which makes me feel like I’m in junior high school. Fortunately, the pager goes off, summoning me to the Permit Center.

“If I had to do that every day like you do, I would definitely drink in the morning,” he comments.

I go downstairs, and there’s a woman with two kids in tow, maybe 9 and 11. She’s pretty friendly, and remarks that she appreciates these two hours where you can drop in and get questions answered. I ask if the time is a good one for people like her, meaning people who I would assume might be putting kids on the bus in the morning.

“Oh, no, that’s not an issue, because we home school.”

She’s thinking of buying property, and she has a sketch of it showing the wetland and it’s buffers, and it looks pretty constrained. I go into my spiel about that, and how since she doesn’t own it yet, she might want to really think about the restrictions, blah di blah blah.

“All I really need to know from you is what this measurement is.” She indicates the distance between the wetland edge and the road.

“Well, this is a sketch, and it shows approximately that distance. You could scale it off of this sketch, or, if you need it to be more accurate, you could get it surveyed.”

“I think you must already know the measurement. I was told you would.”

“Hmm, maybe there’s a surveyed map in the file. I’ll go see if I can find something.” So I run upstairs, and I find the file, and blah di blah blah, same sketch, no survey, but there is a report that I photocopy and bring back to her.

“Well, it doesn’t look like we have a survey, but here’s a report about the wetland.”

“So, how would I found out what that measurement is?”

“Well, you might call this consultant who prepared the report, to see if it’s been surveyed.”

“You keep talking about a survey, but I just want to know the measurement.”

It takes us a few go-arounds for me to understand that she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “survey”, so I explain it to her.

“A survey is when someone takes the measurements and then puts it down on a map.”

“OH! That’s awesome! This is so great that you guys do this. So, how would I get one of those?”

I suggest that she call the consultant to see if they have one, and she asks how they’ll know what she’s talking about, and I say she should give them the project number on the front of the report, and she asks how she could find their phone number, and I circle the spot where it’s printed on the front of the report, and she asks if they’ll know what “survey” means, and I say yes.

I’m trying not to imagine the homeschooling that’s going down in this household, because it starts to make me really sad, because she’s sweet like Phoebe. but not as smart.

“So, am I all set, then?”

“Well, I really want to caution you that given this map that you show me, the whole site is wetland and buffer, so it will be difficult to develop.”

“I don’t know exactly what you mean?”

So we go down that road for a while, and I explain that our code requires that 75-foot undisturbed buffers be protected around the wetland, which leaves barely any room for a house.

“But I think I’ll just use the 25 foot buffer. That would be much better.”

I explain that she doesn’t really get to decide, but she’s pretty convinced that she can use 25 foot buffer. So I finally look it up on the computer, and voila, it turns out that the parcel has been incorporated into one of the cities since the study was done, meaning I should have looked it up half an hour ago, but I didn't.

So I explain that maybe the 25 foot buffers are what the city requires, but she should definitely go talk to the city, because the county won't be involved with it any more.

“How would I find out where the city is?”

The thought bubble above my head is saying, “have you heard of the internet?” But I keep my mouth shut and google that particular city, and print out the page that gives the address and phone number. I put a star by the address. “Here’s the address of where you’ll need to go to get your questions answered.”

“But how would I find the phone number?”

So I put two stars by the phone number, and she is super grateful, but asks again how she could get the measurement. We go around about that for a while longer, and I start thinking that maybe drinking in the morning isn’t such a bad idea.

I finally return to my cubicle, and Ms. Pasta and B. are talking about a trip that Ms. Pasta is taking. She happens to have a summer house guest who is also named Ms. Pasta, which, well, you can see how strange that is, given that I bet none of you even know anyone named Ms. Pasta, and there are now two in one house.

“So, Ms. Pasta and I are going to the ocean,” says Ms. Pasta.

“I don’t believe there really is another Ms. Pasta. I think she’s just your imaginary friend. I’ve got an imaginary friend too, named B,” says B.

I chime in. “B., speaking of imaginary friends, is that life sized plush doll of yourself that you had commissioned finished yet?”

“No. She never made it. I think I gave her $50, too. Speaking of things that are a mess, what about those squirrels in your attic?”

At this point, J. arrives, the way he does. “Well, what’s this about squirrels in the attic? Oh, I have a live trap. I’ll loan it to you.”

We discuss that for a while, and I just imagine the whole scenario, not in a good way. Moving one squirrel at a time to some far away location, separating the family of rodents from one another, possibly getting bitten, and undoubtedly listening to the whimpering of a trapped animal during the night.

So I return to my private little investigative research on a topic of interest, which I can’t describe here, but the results leave me rather discouraged about the way things are being done in our office.

The Great Sandini arrives, and we bring it up. “Hey, GS, things seem to be a giant mess. Like, look at this example.”

He looks at it, and give one of his answers that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I say, “hey, GS, I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty hard to care about things around here right now.“

“Why do you say that?”

B. and I both bust out laughing, but he acts like he seriously doesn't have a clue why we'd be completely discouraged. 

“Okay, Great One, you know those experiments where they take the baby chimp away and replace it with a towel, and the mother chimp, who used to love the baby, transfers all that devotion to a towel? Yeah, well that’s what it’s like around here, but I’m having trouble summoning the devotion for a towel.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Betsy.”

“Um, I mean it’s hard to care about stuff here right now.”

“Oh, that’s so not true! There’s plenty to care about.”

“Give me three things that you care about.  Today.”

“Um….” He does that thing where he takes the palm of his left hand to his right jaw and cracks his neck, which I think means he wants a cigarette badly. “Well, I care about the new fee ordinance. And the process improvement plan.”

B. interrupts, “That’s a freakin’ towel, GS! You actually do care about the towel!”

I still have the squirrels and possibly other rodents nesting in the attic.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A dog named Blue

We humans love our dogs in the most uncomplicated pure way, because that's the way the dogs love us, and if we're paying attention, we can probably learn something.  It's the saddest thing ever when a dog dies.

My neighbor's dog, Blue died about 3 years ago. He was old and well loved, the king of the neighborhood in a stately way, and we miss him still.  But it was his time.  He died quietly in his sleep after going on a last walk around the lake and swim the evening before.   He was the only dog I've ever known who would take himself on a walk, just a calm stroll around the lake, not deviating off to sniff things, but walking as if he were with a person, greeting neighbors, but not getting too distracted, and stopping in the designated area for a brief swim.

Blue died in the middle of the night, and my neighbor arose very early, the way we do at Lake M., and tried to bury him. First, she went out in the woods to dig a hole, but there were so many trees in the path leftover from The Big Windstorm of '06 that she couldn't get the wheelbarrow with the dog back there. It probably didn't help that this was back when she was still drinking, and the difference between late night and early morning was pretty negligible as far as sobriety went.

So she started digging in the yard. Digging was a challenge, because the topsoil had all been removed when they built the house, and it's glacial till at about four inches, impossible to dig through. Our other neighbor got up when he noticed the digging and suggested that she bury the dog in the vegetable garden. She found digging there slightly easier, and dug for a while, but eventually woke her teen daughter to help, because it was such slow going. After exhausting themselves digging this little hole, they decided she should take the dog to the vet to be cremated.

But by this point, the dog was, well, not to be too graphic, but let's just say you wouldn't want him in your car. So they dug and dug, and by now it was maybe 5:30 am, and S. the newspaper man, who has a decorative tire-turned-into-planter at the end of his driveway with a poster of Obama and a statue of a small dog urinating on the sign,  droves by in his little pickup truck waving, and they decided that they need to just get this job done before everyone cames to help or watch, because it's all too sad.

They gently placed the dog into this very small grave, a hole that's only 12 inches deep and not wide enough either.  Of course, the 60 pound black lab doesn't fit, so they just gather soil from nearby and mound it up over the dog.

That's what that bump in the yard is.  For a while, every morning I would fear that wild animals would exhume poor old Blue during the night, but that never happened.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Weak Ahead

Aries (3/21 – 4/19): What's the deal on adult adoption? Zsa Zsa's husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, was adopted at age 37. Not only that, but Zsa Zsa and Freddy have adopted "several men". Does that sound like cheating, (to get the kid after the heavy lifting is all done), or is it just plain creepy? Speaking of creepy, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt also claimed to be father of Anna Nicole Smith's babe, but he wasn't. Um, right. "Hey, you know that that sex symbol, high school dropout, former Walmart employee, yup, I'm the dad of her baby. Oh, wait, nope, guess it wasn't me, because I'm the devoted husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, and we have all of these adult children together."  Oh, but back to you, Aries. It is unlikely that you'll get adopted this week, but you can keep hoping.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20): Why is it that people get together to watch movies, but not to listen to podcasts? I don't get it. Must we always keep our eyes open during recreation? This week, swing by for a bit of This American Life or even some Wiretap, if you don't find him too whine-y.

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21):  Here's the scoop: the planets are awfully busy out there, spinning wildly. Bring a blanket, lay down, and watch it all go around you. Have a piece of cake. 

Cancer (6/22 – 7/21):  How do you feel about that computer, Watson, that's going to play Jeopardy?  I think it's kind of exciting, myself.  Most of the answers we seek are not so clear cut, thought, and it's weird and creepy to do that, "who is Alex Trebek?" thing in real life.  But, if the answer were, "a new room for him and all his stuff," what might the question be?

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  Have you ever had that thing where you can't take a deep breath, and it's either that your belly has gotten so large that it's an impediment, or you might have lung cancer?  Yeah, me neither.  Your week will be all about that kind of stuff.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  I'm talking to the confidential secretary the other day and she starts actually whispering, saying, "I've got lots of secrets, but I'm confidential."  She says that, but I don't believe any of it.  This week, contact your lame astrologist and have lunch or something.  Oh, and if you guys have fill, I have people.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):  Seriously, another nap?  What's up with that?  This week, update your blog more often. 

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21): In the 1970's, Mario Vargos Llosa discovered humor.  I know!  Before that, it was just blank where a joke should end, and people would mill about, confused at the end of a story, not knowing what to do, or more importantly, what to wear.  Blogs back then were serious, just recaps of tv shows like Wild Kingdom and Flipper.  Enjoy his little discovery.  Come by for your hat, which sounds like code, but it's really just about the hat.

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  Oh, my dear Sagittarii.  What a mixed week you people are having, I'm so sorry.  So I got a text from a Sagittarius yesterday asking if we had "vasaleen"; when I asked what he needed it for, Sag replied, "to lube my rubick's cube".  These are the sorts of problems you Sagittarii have, which makes the rest of us fond. 

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19):  Do you ever have that thing where the person in the next cubicle yells over to help them, because they just commented on a blog and didn't mean to, so you go over to help, but it's not a blog at all, more like a site that gives ratings for businesses, and your cube neighbor has gone off on a weird rant about a business in Chicago where his friend Mike works, and now Mike is calling saying he's gonna get in trouble because the comments look like maybe Mike could have made them?  I hate when that happens.  So I comment on his comment on this site, and say, "I think you have the wrong business.  This one's in Chicago."  And cube neighbor says, "add, 'don't be such a dumbass' to your comment."  So I do.  Yep, that's what your week will be like.

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):  I have a feeling that this guy is going to be a cult hero, at least with me.  He was a flight attendant, and a passenger got up when he shouldn't, and flight attendant asked him to sit down, and the guy got abusive, and after a little altercation, flight attendant activated the inflatable ramp, grabbed a beer from the beverage cart, and left the plane.  Oh, if only there were beverage carts and inflatable ramps at my job.  I'd be all over that.  This week?  Be. That. Guy.  

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20):  I saw the coolest fish yesterday, it was totally puffed up to like, 6 times its normal size, and then it did the little fish lips thing and sucked itself down to normal.  My point being, Pisces, that you reminded me of that, because, we can stretch and do amazing things.  Do more of that.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Things that make me laugh

Things that make me laugh.

I was going to create a post with a list, the kind you see all over the blogosphere, because it seems like a harmless topic that won’t be used against me in court or anything. So I started:

Using PowerPoint recreationally. It cracks me up to use the most business-y, joyless software of all the whole Office Suite for pure recreation. I know, I'm alone in this, but sometimes I start thinking about it and can't stop laughing.

The word “pants. It’s such a funny word that you can’t really hear it and not laugh. That was confirmed when a coworker responded to a report that someone was clearing large trees in a wetland. He knocked at the door, no one answered, he slipped his business card in the door, and walked back towards his car. But a guy started yelling at him from a second story window, and then came to the door, naked, holding a shotgun, aiming it at County Guy, swearing. I know, this sounds like Deliverance, but it happened in Redmond, in the fancy part with huge houses built in the 90’s. Pantsless guy with gun was in a Lexington custom home.

So County Guy left, reported it to his supervisor, blah di blah blah. Eventually, Naked Guy was arraigned, and he got off, but was pissed and called his Council-person, who’s my council person too, and, not to mention any names, but you know who we’re talking about. ‘Nuf said, as they say.

Said council person calls our boss and says, “Yeah, your people need to be more sensitive to the rural culture. People move out to the country because they don’t always want to wear pants. And, if they’ve been cleaning their gun when the doorbell rings, they might still be carrying it when they answer the door.” The part that’s not funny is the irritating whipping-post fatigue that I have, like, wait, some naked guy who’s devastated his wetland, threatens County Guy with a deadly weapon and an angry tirade is in the right, and County Guy, who was just doing his stupid job, is the one who needs sensitivity training?

But the part that remains funny, even all these years later, is just the word, “pants”. For a while, I tried to suggest that I don’t need to wear pants to work because they should be sensitive to my unique rural needs, but I decided not to push that one. In the category of “be careful what you wish for.”

The phrase, “That’s the way I roll.” I don’t think I have to explain that.  If that phrase were wearing sunglasses, they’d be Vuarnets. Yeah, like that.

Anyway, all I could think of were those three things, which wasn't the long list I had in mind, so I asked R.

“What makes me laugh again? I forgot.”

“Um, you usually laugh when I make fun of you.” He says this as he tosses me a York peppermint patty. “Like that. I toss a candy at you, it hits your hand, you flinch but don’t catch it, I make fun of you, and you laugh.”

“Hmmm. What else?”

“What’s this for, anyway, Mom?”

“My blog. I thought it would be a good post.”

“What’ve you got so far?”

“Using Powerpoint recreationally, the word ‘pants’, and the phrase, ‘that’s the way I roll’.“

“Wow. That’s the lamest post ever. Those things aren’t even funny. Seriously, that’s all you’ve got?”

“Yep.”

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...