2005-06-14
Candy Jones, Alter-Ego, Liberator of ID
I like to work out at lunch, at least to get the cardio in that I am so in need of and yet so resistant to doing.
It's funny - I go to the gym and I've got my cheap disk man jamming Bhagavan Das and I'm sweating away on the elliptical machine and looking around the gym. I always get these urges to be the way I used to be about the gym.
A couple of years ago, I would not have missed a workout if my life depended on it. My entire schedule was determined by the workout that I had planned for the week. I even had hardcore gym buddies and my friend Jason and I would challenge each other, like, 10 pounds down for me and 10 pounds up for him in 10 days and we killed those challenges like they were a buck in the fall in Wisconsin.
I get on the machines now and I think to myself, I am going to this every. single. day. In fact, I'm going vegan and doing this every. single. day. In fact, I am going write a workout plan for the month of June and become a Vegan and I'll be in the best damn shape of my life and I will RULE.
Then I remember about Candy Jones and her influential role in my life. My mind turns to mush under Candy's spell. Orange twizzlers? Check.
Pop-tarts? Check.
Paydays for breakfast? Double-check.
Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls? Double-check and a check-mate.
Candy Jones isn't going anywhere.
The gym will be for me what it is right now - most importantly, NOT the church of a fitness zealot. Like in any matter of organized religion, I just can't commit.
What if I plan a work-out and there's a special episode of Britney and Kevin: Chaotic?
Sitting on the edge of Executive Town is weird. I am the closest peon to two Vice Presidents and the Director of my department for both Phoenix and Tucson. I am a huge fan of eavesdropping. I can't really turn that off, although I haven't really tried, either. Chances are slim that any type of "effort" will be made to stop eavesdropping.
I love the dirt, no doubt about that.
The trouble is that I am old enough to know that I'm not hearing everything. I hear a few buzz words like �Employee Name" and then "hushy shush hush loud laugh" and then "changes are a-coming when the cheese is moved from that mouse!"
Damn, if there is one thing that I want more than anything in the whole wide world, it is Spy Equipment. I'd like a little sound magnifier to be discreetly installed under my desk, pointing in the direction of the offices where all the decisions get made and all the dirt gets aired. I'm not so narcissistic as to believe that conversations behind closed doors have a damn thing to do with me but I would DIE to know about the conversations that are about me.
I wonder if the right tools exist.
It drives me crazy.
You know how some animals can't have their food left out for them all day because they will smell it and want to eat it all the time?
Same principal.
I hear the names of potential rad clients and I hear little snips about my colleagues and I drive myself crazy trying to listen in. Then I learn like, 1/10 of the details and I get all panicky and I end up huddled in the fetal position under my desk, waiting for the tears to start flowing and fervently praying that I can keep my sobbing silent so as not to be discovered and have to confess to my obsession with work-place gossip.
Can you imagine?
"Sarah?"
"Ummmm."
"What are you doing under your desk?"
My tear-stained, red face rising to meet the eyes of a VP and I shrug my shoulders as if to say, "Just a moment... some earlier trauma... pre-natal memories of 'Nam... uhhhhh...
I guess I don't know?"
"Well, maybe... is there something PHYSICALLY wrong with you? Are you in pain?"
"No."
Finally, I unfold from my impossibly small and cramped position under the desk and wipe my eyes, trying to crack a smile at how silly this must look.
"VP, I'm sorry. I'm on gossip over-load and I can't stand only knowing 1/10th of the story. Maybe I should be relocated to another cubicle?"
Which is exactly the moment that it clicks in any of the Authority Figures' heads with whom I am having this uncomfortable exchange that there is no fucking way they are going to move me unless they load me into one of their fancy German SUVs and drop me off in the psych ward at the nearest hospital.
Little do they know how happy that would make me.
A quiet room with relaxed-fitting clothes and clean sheets every day?
Where do I sign?
I have imagined, with rose colored glasses, how refreshing a break in a home might be. I would wake up to my breakfast and eat it with my hands and a spoon, since I am 99% sure that forks and knives aren't allowed in the hands of the patients.
No, scratch that... the wards.
Then I'd put on a fresh outfit that is modern and simple, with its ties and it's roomy, relaxed fit and I'd go to my rec time. I think I'd do crayons during rec time.
Or clay.
I wonder if they'd let me do clay during rec time.
Then it would be time for Morning Group which, yay! I can share, no sweat. I had my worst nervous break-down to date and I had it at work. The group would totally listen to me sympathetically because the drugs they give you make you sympathetic, except for that one bitch who always yells at me about not really being crazy and cussing at me and stuff until the shrink politely excuses her from Group. I would look down and allow my hair to cover my face when I smile, happy that I can go on with my list of White Girl Whinings.
The rest of the day - lunch, rec time again, one-on-one with the shrink and then a lovely dinner of starchy peas, Salisbury steak, and vanilla pudding (with a heaping side of valium) and I'd be ready to end a perfectly lovely day so that I can wake up and do it all again.
And again.
And again.
I wonder if they�d let me come back to work without having some special modifications made to my desk so that in the future, I'd be unable to use it for unsolicited fetal position break-downs.
That's cool. I would understand if they wouldn't want that to happen again. It would be pretty scary.
Man, I will be so pissed if someone has a nervous break-down before I do and gets carted off before I do.
Competitive little one, aren't I?
Yes, yes I am.
I have this nasty salad that is supposedly my lunch. Spinach doesn't hold up all that well. I opened the mini-fridge this morning to put some fruit in there and I got a whiff of something and I knew it was my fucking salad.
I can be a real hypocrite. I am kind of hardcore about picking up at work. It pisses me off when there is moldy shit in with my non-moldy food, or when people leave their unclaimed print jobs all over the printing room. I have no problem clearing out the fridge when it smells like rot and today?
Guess what?
That bitch, Karma pulled a fast one on me and it was my food, uneaten from yesterday that smelled like a compost pile of putrid dead shit.
So much for that vegan plan... it's a good thing I have Candy Jones around or I would feel extremely guilty eating this pop-tart for lunch.
arizonasarah at 1:10 p.m.