Monday, September 27, 2010

An ordinary meal


The other night on my way home from dinner, on a dark, windy, unpopulated stretch of road not too far from my house, I came around a hairpin turn and right there in front of me was a woman standing next to a motorcycle.  I was practically up to her before I could see her; she had no lights at all.  She waved me around, so I pulled in front of the bike, got out of the car, and asked her if she needed anything.

“No, I’m fine.  My boyfriend walked home to get help.  We’re out of gas.”

“Well, I’ll just keep my car here with the flashers on.  It’s really hard to see you.”

“Oh, that’s so nice!  Thank you.”  She dropped her cigarette on the road and ground it out with her boot.
I was still thinking about the dinner at a restaurant that I just had with the kids.  We had gone to a nice place on the waterfront, which we do about once a year.

“Do you know why we’re here?” I had asked.

“Um, I guess it’s what we do?”

“Yeah, see, even though the food isn’t that interesting, and it’s expensive, it’s just a thing that normal families do.  They go out to nice ordinary restaurants with predictable, costly food.  We’re doing that too.  It’s just a really nice, ordinary thing to do.”

I was a little distracted from my speech, though, by the couple at the next table, the only other party in the outdoor dining area.  They were probably 60ish, but had that early romance energy going on.  What I mean by that is that there was a lot of kissing at the table.  There was definitely something that felt date 6-ish about it, but a little bit off.  He was stroking her shoulder in the way that someone who’s never had a dog before might pet a dog.  Flat hand, repetitive motion. A little creepy, but at the same time, it was oddly compelling to watch.

I tune back in to M.’s story.  “So, there was this horse that had been struck by lightning, in the middle of the hiking trail.  The team that went in from the Forest Service to investigate said the horse had mostly been incinerated, which was good.”

“Why is that good?” asks R.

“Because otherwise, they have to use dynamite to blow it up.”

“Why?”

“Because.  No one wants a rotting horse next to a hiking trail; it attracts predators and smells.”

“But seriously, those are the only two choices?  Blow it up or leave it to rot?  Wouldn’t it be terrible to have horse guts dyanamited all about?”

I interrupt for a second, and whisper.  “Hey, are those two hugging, or is he giving her the Heimlich Maneuver?”
They both turn to look, and it’s definitely the Heimlich.  She’s gasping, and he’s standing behind her, his fists punching her sternum.  I’m not sure if I should respond, but pretty quickly, it seems that she’s okay.  In fact, it seems like maybe he was hasty on doing the Heimlich, but what do I know.

She excuses herself, and presumably leaves to go to the rest room.  When she gets back, she says that she just threw up.  He starts kissing her again, and she’s at the table for a few more minutes before excusing herself.  She looks unsteady on her feet, and if I were to guess, I’d think she’s leaving the room vomit again because she’s in a pretty big hurry.

“Well, a horse is too heavy to pack out, and there’s not enough soil on top of a mountain to bury it.”

The waitress comes by and asks if we’re finished.  R. decides that if he doesn’t clean his plate, we’ll need to blow it up – these are the only two choices, anymore.  Either do the right thing, or blow something up.  

The man at the next table asks the waitress for a dessert menu.  I hear him joking with her, asking if the restaurant offers cremation services.  I know.  His date has thrown up at least once, and is possibly on round two.  Dessert seems like a bad idea.

“Young people,” I whisper, “if you ever find yourself in the situation where your date is vomiting, the right thing to do is say, 'Honey, can I take you home?'  And no kissing!”

“Mom, why do you think the waitress said that thing at the beginning?”

“You mean, when you ordered fish and chips, and she said ‘I had a feeling you’d order that?’”

“Yeah.  Do you think it’s because I’m slightly dressed up for a guy like me, wearing khaki’s, so she thinks I’ve never eaten anything that’s not serious kid-food before?”

“Maybe.”

I’m thinking about this as I’m talking to the woman with the motorcycle.

“So, your bike ran out of gas?”

“Well, actually, it’s the starter.  We just got it fixed, but now it’s broken again, and here I am in the dark protecting a $50,000 bike.  We were just about to ship it to Arizona for the summer.  No, that would be winter, right?  Yeah, winter is what’s coming up, right?”

She seems pretty drunk, or maybe just like someone who’s been drunk enough in her life that she just seems that way all the time.

“You’re so nice.  Seriously, I would have been too scared to stop.  How old are you?”

“Fifty.”

“Oh, wow.  Yeah, see, I’m 43, but I was an addict until 10 years ago.  I have cellulite all over.  I’m serious.  I used to be skinny when I was using, but now, cellulite everywhere.  It’s happening.  I’m serious.  Where do you live?”

“Lake M.”

“Oh my god!  I know someone else who lives there!”  Which would be remarkable if we were in Borneo or something, but we’re only about a mile away, so it doesn’t seem so surprising to me.  She tells me that she went to a dirty dancing competition at the lake, and her boyfriend was really good at it.  “Did you go to that party?”  

We stand there for about 45 minutes, and she’s very sweet in a drunken sort of way, and acts like she’s a reporter interviewing someone who's just done an amazing feat, like crossing the ocean in a hot air balloon, but all I’ve done is stop my car so that the lights will make it a little easier to see her.

“Seriously, what made you decide to do this?  It’s just incredible.”

And so on.  Eventually, her boyfriend returns with another guy and a big truck.  She gives me a big hug, and I turn to walk back to my car.  Her boyfriend calls me back.  “Hey, get back here.”  I turn back, and he gives me a hug.


“Thanks for keeping my lady safe,” he says.

We did end up, by the way, having two pieces of chocolate lava cake; no dynamite was required.


Sunday, September 26, 2010

Layoff Day


I stopped wearing stuff from my dumpster bag for Layoff Day, and chose to wear a sort of pink slip type outfit.   It wasn’t an actual slip, but it was pink, with some slip-like qualities.  

The weird thing about layoffs when you work for a unionized bureaucracy is that the layoff decisions have no bearing on keeping the agency effective; it’s all about seniority.  

And, it’s not like a list is posted, but rather, the information leaks out slowly, like a toxic gas.  Ms Click Click finds each person, escorts them to the Great S’s office one at a time, where he gives a small speech and then hands them the notice.  It took hours.  Since our cubes are outside of the Great One’s office, we got to see the sad march that everyone was required to do, and felt sorry that Ms. Click Click had been tasked to be the grim reaper.  She looked like she might cry.

B. and I went out for coffee early to miss a little bit of it, because it was pretty depressing.  “Why are you ordering decaf?” B. asked.

“Oh, I’m just trying to cut back a little.  I was thinking of doing a juice fast some time this month.”

"Why?"

“I dunno.  I’ve never done one.  I’m trying to do this 30 days of inviting yoga into my life, and I think a fast is part of it.”

“Yeah, but why quit coffee?”

“So I don’t get a headache if I fast.”

“I’ve done fasts before too, but I still chew tobacco and drink coffee and alcohol.  You can only take this stuff so far.”

“That sounds pretty purifying…”

There’s a bit of game theory involved in figuring out who gets laid off, even right during the middle of it.  I heard something about game theory lately that I can’t quite remember, but it involved soccer.  When a player gets a penalty kick, the opposing goalie has three choices:  stay at center, lean left, or lean right.  

Because most players kick right-footed, it makes most sense to lean left to prevent the goal, but because most kickers expect the goalie to lean left, they kick straight.  To win most often, a goalie should protect the center, but they typically lean left even though they know better.  They don’t want to be that guy that just stands there and lets a goal get scored.  It looks worse, in their mind, to be standing still and lose than to be doing an action and lose, even if the action they take increases the odds of losing.  It looks like our office is involved in a big penalty kick fest.

There are about a dozen seniority lists on our internal website, one for each job title, and as each person gets escorted into the execution room by Ms. Click Click, we call up the list, and try to figure out what else we can infer, based on knowing exactly where everyone is on the list.  Like, if person A got laid off, that definitely means Person B is gone, because they’re beneath them on the list.  

And, there’s another aspect, bumping.  People who get laid off can bump other people from their job under certain complicated circumstances that we all know, and sometimes the bumped person can also bump.  

I was explaining it all to R., who had many questions.  “It’s not like that board game, Sorry, R.  It’s way more complicated.”

“Mom, does it seem sad that you had to bring up a board game to not explain this?  Couldn’t you just say, ‘it’s not like a regular job?” 

He has a point.

It will take a few weeks to see how it all shakes out, but the gist is that some lovely talented young people will soon be gone, as are some people who have worked at this very same job for over 20 years, and don’t really have many useful tricks out in the world. 

When you work with people for a long time, they become like family.  Sometimes it’s a weird, dysfunctional family, but family none-the-less, and it’s sad to see people leaving.  It will probably end up being a great opportunity for some, but I suspect some might never work in their field again.

Our section was strangely spared from the cuts.  A bunch of us went out for a beer after work; it felt like a cross between the way you feel at a family holiday when you sit down with people you know in a really long-term way but don't socialize with much, and the relieved chatty behavior that people exhibit after a plane has landed, when everyone is especially friendly because for one, there’s a collective relief that the plane didn’t completely crash, and for two, they know that any conversation they strike up won’t have to last for the whole 6 hour flight, but just the last few minutes during the struggling with the overhead luggage and waiting part.

You realize you care a lot about these people, even though they can be super annoying.  It’s relaxing to sit down with people when you don’t really have to begin in the polite, “Oh, how are your kids?” sort of way.  

The waitress rattles off a list of beers, and one of them is “dry hump ale.”  B. turns to me and says, “oh, that’s what you should get!”  I know.  Who would even name a beer that?  I tried to google it to verify the name, but the hits were so numerous, and looked so sketchy.  You see what I mean about not having to begin the conversation in normal ways.

We have the chance to tease each other about our quirks, and especially tease Da Boss about how any time we go ask him for a decision, he starts reminiscing about his grandfather’s pickle farm, completely avoiding any decision-making.  We give awkward man-hugs to one another upon departing, and go our separate ways, thinking how oddly rich life really is.



Friday, September 24, 2010

Holy shirt, Batman!


Right at the very end of the work day earlier this week, I noticed that the shirt I was wearing was riddled with small holes throughout the chest area; tiny borings the size of mini-chocolate chips, revealing my bra.  It sort of looked like it had been washed on the jagged rocks for years, which could be possible, because it came from my dumpster bag of clothing.

It’s a bag that The Author gave me a few weeks ago when I did my “stop in on the way home from work and she might feed me” routine.  She handed me the bag, and told me to keep what I wanted.  The Author had found the clothes in a dumpster, laundered them, given them to me, and I believe she also fed me dinner.  I know.   I AM lucky.
In my own private little homage to the dumpster, I wore a shirt from the bag every day this week.  I hadn’t really looked very carefully at this one, I guess.  

Ms. Pasta commented, “Maybe you should just wear that around the house.”  I think that was a pretty charitable thing to say, don’t you?

At any rate, we were all anxious on the day that I wore the holy shirt, due to the fact that the layoff notices were being assembled, ready to hand out the next morning.   Our office has been filled with a collective dread since about June, when we were told there would be significant layoffs, but given no other information.

For some reason I just flashed on this thing that's been on my mind lately, which is that just a bit down the hill from my house, there's a large tarped scaffolding concealing something.  I think a giant art project is going on behind the tarps, but I'm not really sure, and I have mixed feelings every time I drive by, wondering if it's going to be something really amazing, or just kind of creepy, obscene, or ugly.  Given who lives there, it could totally go either way.  Right now, I think it might be an enormous chainsaw art bear, but that's just a guess.   Each time I drive by, I start thinking about the layoffs, maybe because it's another thing shrouded in mystery where you don't quite trust the people to not be completely freaky and off base.  I'll take a picture of it soon.

But on that particular day, we had a big meeting about our new “over the counter” process.  What that means is that permits that used to take 4 - 6 months of review to issue will now take one hour!  This might make you wonder what took four to six months in the past, if it really only takes an hour.  

We’re all wondering that too.  There was actually stuff that we did, like visiting the sites to look for stuff, like, is there safe access to this property, are there wetlands or streams, how are they planning to build it, does it comply with all of the vast codes that are required.  With no reduction in the quality of review, though, we’re going to do it super fast, from the office!  Just to be clear, I’m not a fan of slow, clunky permit processes, but this does seem a little extreme.

The meeting where this plan was trotted out was one of those hilarious events that made me wonder if we’re all secretly auditioning to be in the Dilbert cartoon.  One of my favorite parts was this exchange:

Staff:  Wow, that starts in three weeks!  It could be a madhouse in here.  Are we going to get organized and figure out a way to make it work, or are we just going to be running around like chickens?
Management:  Chickens.

Sadly, that’s a direct quote.

Some of us were a little concerned that we’d have an angry, restless, mob in our office and we wouldn’t really be able to deliver. 

“What if we have people drop off their application, and let them pick it up later in the day, or the next day?”

“No, that’s not over the counter.”  There seemed to be a strange fixation on the actual counter being part of the transaction, rather than just speeding things up and making them more efficient. 

The main message of the meeting is that we need All Hands On Deck the day this starts.  The hands don’t really know yet what to do, which, for some reason, reminded me of this photoshop fail site I saw recently, where there were extra hands showing up in strange places.  Lots of creepy, useless hands.  Oh, wait, did I say that aloud?

The whole layoff thing deserves its own post, so that will be coming along soon.




Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Flowers


Yesterday our boss told us he wishes B. and I weren’t speaking, because he thinks if we weren’t talking to each other, maybe we wouldn’t notice all of the problems in our work place.

“Betsy, stop sharing your music. Just put headphones on, and don’t talk to him any more.”

“So, like, kind of an angry, hostile silence?  Is that what we should go for?”

“YES!  That’s exactly what I want.  And, by the way, I’m coming in on Thursday especially to have a beer with you guys."
 
We’re having a beer after work on Pink Slip Day, the day when some number of us will be laid off -- the rumor is 20 percent.  As people on the bottom of the pile, seniority-wise, B. and I have both been trying to figure out whether it would be good or bad to get the slip, but we’ve both been reassured that we’re not getting one by people who also claim not to know what's going on. 

They've been saying, “No, you’re fine, no need to worry,”  and winking.

“What’s with all the winking lately,” I ask B.  “Does that mean they’re kidding when they say we’re not getting laid off, or is the winking more like crossing your fingers behind your back, meaning you don’t really have to tell the truth?”

“I know!  I just think it’s creepy to get winked at.”

Our boss walks away and B. starts describing his latest disappointing blind date, when my phone rang.  It was the person at the front desk who’s super loud, kind of screechy.

“COME DOWNSTAIRS.  SOMEONE IS HERE TO SEE YOU.”

I always try to do that thing of talking quieter, to see if it will work. 

“Um, who is it?”  Because outside of our drop-in hours, we tend to see people by appointment only.

"JUST COME DOWN HERE," she yells.  "IT’S YOUR FRIEND!"

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any friends who would just drop in at my office, so I ask for a name.

"NO NAME, BUT SHE HAS SOMETHING PRETTY.  JUST GET DOWN HERE."

B. is listening in, because her voice carries well outside the earpiece of the phone.  “Let’s go!  I wanna see what this is about.  Something pretty!”

So we walk downstairs together, and there’s a young woman I had helped previously, holding a vase of flowers.  She hands me the flowers, and I start to say what I’m required to say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t accept these!” But she gives me a big hug, and when I lean in towards her, she whispers, “I know.  I told them you were my friend and it was your birthday coming up.”  

It seems wrong ethically to accept gifts, but it also seems mean-spirited to turn away a bouquet of flowers from a grateful person, so I accept them.  They're gorgeous, and made my day. 

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Super powers


The question was, as always, “flying or invisibility?” 

R. contends, and I believe he heard it on This American Life, that if you select “flying”, you stick with your answer, but those who select invisibility can easily be talked out of it.

I didn’t answer, because R. and I have been through this enough that it’s one of those conversations that happens without anyone saying anything.  I pick invisibility because flying sounds tiring, and he says it’s not like I’d have to flap my wings, and I say I’m afraid of heights, and he says that wouldn’t be an issue because I can fly, duh, and I say I get vertigo easily, and he says that’s lame, and I stick with invisibility, and he says that’s creepy, and I clarify that I wouldn’t use the power to be creepy, but rather, just to be lazy sometimes, like to lay down and take a nap when its not appropriate, or to not talk to people because I’m out of things to say but I don’t want to be rude.  I explain that I’m not sure where would I go if I fly anyway, which he says is as lame as anything about me, not knowing where to go if I could fly.   

I like this conversation, because it’s familiar.  Conversationally, it is the equivalent of chicken and dumplings.

This time, though, M. is around, and asks for clarification:

“Could I fly really fast, or would I just go at walking speed?” I know.  That’s the way M. thinks.  Who else would even consider that flying would happen at walking speed?

“Um, that would just be weird.  Hovering slowly above ground.  That’s not really flying,” R. clarified.

“If I can go really fast, I’ll pick flying.”

But I’ve been thinking about super powers lately, and really, neither invisibility or flying appeals to me much.  I’d really just like to have the power to write a good post now and then, which feels daunting lately.


Friday, September 17, 2010

Homeopathy

I once had homeopathy explained to me in a way that I got it.  Suddenly, and unexpectedly, because I tend to be pretty skeptical about Things That Can’t Be Proved.  I get frustrated when affects are attributed to something without proof, and I get frustrated when purveyors of health promote ideas that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

I’m also impatient with the minor health woes. Who cares if you get a mild headache and fatigue when you eat potatoes?  Either skip the potatoes, or cope. That's not a real problem.

But here’s the explanation of homeopathy that I loved. What people need in life in order for personal growth to occur, is empathy. We all need an empathetic presence, the feeling of being understood and accepted for exactly who we are, to be able to move forward.

Someone saying, and truly meaning, “Oh! That must hurt.  I am so sorry. Acknowledging the pain, without exaggerating it in a gentle way that allows us to let go, and move on.  That, according to my friend, is what homeopathy does on a cellular level.  Take an extremely diluted form of the insult (poison, allergen, whatever), and give it to the cells, as if to say, “Is this what’s bothering you, little cells?  I understand.  I hope you feel better, little ones."

It is such a sweet explanation. I don’t really buy it, but still...

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Friend's Birthday

Dear Qourt-knee,

A friend of ours has a milestone birthday coming up - 50 - and as far as we can tell she has no big plans. We want to celebrate it with her, but we're not sure how. Do you think a surprise party would be appropriate? We're not really sure how into surprises she is, and we don't know all the people she might want to be at such a party. What's your advice? Should we plan something big behind her back? Something small in front of her front? Or just let her come up with her own plans, even if that is just spending her big day at home with whatever cats she may or may not have?

- Party boy

Dear Party Boy,

The strangest thing is, I actually know a cat named Friend.  I know! 

But anyway, she's certainly lucky to have friends like you guys, and I'm sure if she's worth it, she'll be delighted to celebrate with you in any way, large or small, especially if it involves cake.  She's old enough that she's probably just feeling grateful to get another trip around in good health, accompanied by the fine friends and relations she's lucky enough to have, and isn't feeling too particular about what happens on that actual day. 

And since you wrote, and I'm in that rare state that we call "awake", I'll tell you this:  On a recent trip, as I went through airport security, a security guy selected my carry-on bag for extra screening.  I was still putting my shoes on and stuff so I couldn't really see the whole thing, but the young people I was with said he just put a piece of litmus paper or something in the luggage.  Could that be true?  Then looked at me and said, "Hey, if you're ever back here, give a holler to a player."  But it sounded more like, "... give a hollah to a playah".   And then he made a mark with a pen on his latex glove.  My question for you, Party Boy, is what does it all mean?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Zucchini Apocalypse

I was reading Laurie’s nice post about the fair, and lazy writer that I am, I thought I’d re-post this old piece. But let it be known that I actually did sit here for a long time, writing something new, but it was a bit tedious, and then this weird thing happened, which is that I noticed that I was bleeding from the leg – there was a dime-sized bit of blood on my mid-quadricep that was growing, and, strangely enough, shaped like a fish. It caused me to wonder if I’d been shot or just what the deal was. At any rate, the bleeding seems to have slowed down, but sadly, so has the writing.

***

I love the fair because of the produce. I like the displays that the granges put together, using vegetables to form a collage. And the giant zucchini, that remind me of one of my most embarrassing moments of the last century, that maybe, if I don't get too distracted in the next few minutes, I'll write about shortly.

But back to the topic at hand: most of all, I love the jars of string beans. There are only a few to a jar, maybe four, or even three; some have blue ribbons, and some have a tag that says honorable mention. I get choked up every single time I see the beans, because it just seems so unbelievably quaint and sweet that someone bothered to actually bring those particular beans to the fair. Someone grew that bean, picked it, canned it, and brought it to the fair for all the world to see because they were proud of it, and because they knew that there was time and room in the world for everyone to stop and marvel at that particular bean. "The world is that great, the pace is that slow, the appreciation of beauty, and especially beans, is so well-developed on the planet that everyone will absolutely love my bean, so I'm bringing it to the fair. Could someone else milk the cows for a day, please? I've got to share this bean." That's the thought process that I imagine happening. It kills me.

But about the zucchini. When my kids were very young, like one and four, I grew some enormous zucchini, the way you do when your kids are really little and your attention span is about 4 seconds long. Not unlike that time when C. kept seeing her own dead cat out the window each time she brushed her teeth, but, out of sight, out of mind, it took several days to remember about the possibly dead cat when she wasn't brushing her teeth, and go outside to check on it. Turns out it wasn't the cat after all. But it's that sort of distracted gardening that leads to gigantic Matanuska-ish zucchini. Nothing to be proud of.

But I read something in the little free paper, no I misread something in the free paper about a zucchini contest. It was a show-off-your-zucchini event at a local garden store, the giant yuppy one that begins with M. But I thought, (I know, this is where the story goes always goes bad, that sentence that begins with "I thought..."), anyway I thought we were supposed to make outfits for the zucchini. So M. and I used scissors and glue stick, and made these very, very hokey little twin zucchini costumes, and dressed these enormous, ridiculous, zucchinis as children.

These were not professional costumes. The clothes were mixed media (paper, fabric, found items from around the house) creations created with blunt scissors, fastened together with scotch tape and glue stick. The kind of thing a 4-year old would do, with a tiny bit of half-assed assistance. So we drove these twin zucchini children to this upscale store, me with my raggedy children, and got assembled (R in backpack, carrying snacks and diapers, the way you do when your kids can barely make it across the parking lot without needing to nurse or go to the bathroom.) AND, carrying these two huge, 15 pound, zucchinis, dressed as disadvantaged children.  It was rather a struggle, to carry everything, but we eventually made it in to the store, and some well-put together employee accosted me, asking if she could help.

"Where╒s the zucchini contest?"

"Contest?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, the produce display! In there."  She waves in a general direction, and we make our way to the table, only to find that all of the zucchinis are petite, well-formed specimens.  And none of them are wearing clothes. Some sort of clothing-optional zucchini beach.   I ask the employee standing near the table where the contest for the dressed up zucchini is.

She just gives me that look, the, 'Hmm, I wonder if medication could help her' look, and says, "No, we don't have any such contest. I really don't know what you're talking about."

At any rate, last day of the fair is today, and I'm feeling a tiny bit sad that I missed it.

Does it seem wrong, by the way, that the little 4-H-ers raise pigs, and make a display poster with bacon recipes?

Would a spider bite cause all of this bleeding, by the way?

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...