2006-01-09

Monday Monday

Dateline: 8:11 am, the stress my team-lead is exhibiting is comparable to the stress that a headless chicken might have before it tries to cross a road.
She's FREAKING OUT.
And there's really nothing to freak out about, you know?
Like...
I freak out a lot, so I feel like I have a little expertise in the area of what's freak-show worthy and what's not.
Normally, if I send an *URGENT* email to my boss and don't get a response, I can be pretty much assured that the matter isn't actually *URGENT*.
In fact, and I'm out on a limb here, so bear with me, but perhaps if my team lead used that little red exclamation point a little more sparingly, like maybe for every OTHER email, instead on every SINGLE email, she might get the response which she's seeking.
How does this apply to me?
I've developed this 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' thing and I don't necessarily read those *URGENT* emails... uhhhh.... urgently. In other words, I ignore them until I am ready for them and that's probably playing with fire. When the whole Cubicle Castle goes up in flames, call me because I bet I'll have 'valuable feedback' regarding the origination of the explosion.

I'm also itchy. My whole left arm is hiving up, just for fun, I guess.
That's not a problem though, considering what�s going on downtown. My pants might totally split open at any point in the day and I won't be surprised when they do. The zipper was all busted this morning but I spent too long ironing the shirt I wanted to wear and I really had my heart set on this corporate combo so I decided to suck it all in and pray for my pants to last though the day.
Sadly, things are not looking good. They truly might bust open and for once, not because my ass has outgrown them, but because the zipper is broken.
Of course whenever I see someone with busted out pants, it never occurs to me that the zipper is broken, only that she's decided to push the limits of jersey-knit to places where the knit just didn't want to go.
___

The list of whines continues as I bring up relationship woes.
Like any girl, what do I do when things start heading into the unpleasantly familiar territory of a bad relationship?
I call my ex.
In this case, myself.
Remember how I was dating myself for awhile? I mean, it was basically great except that we were so similar, I didn't really feel like I was learning anything or moving toward a future with someone?
Well, I called myself and we hung out all day yesterday and we really had a great day.
We went to the grocery store and spent 2 hours at the dog park, watching the doglet pay with real dogs and chatting with our dog park buddies.
We watched a really sad Lifetime movie, starring Laura Dern as a Louisiana trailer lady with 4 kids already. They answered an ad that Stockard Channing placed, seeking to adopt a child and once all of the rich-poor, California/deep-South issues were sorted out and the action moved to the birthing room, the birth didn't go so well. The child lost oxygen for awhile and might be brain-damaged. Note that I said "might".
Because suddenly the movie ENDED.

Who knows if the kid was brain-damaged? Who knows if Channing really wanted to pass on the adoption? Who knows if Dern never signed the papers? NOBODY KNOWS because the movie ended with this shot of the baby girl in the nursery, her little plastic bassinet had the announcement index card, "It's a Girl!" but there was no name on the index card.
Why not?
Shoddy Showtime editing, that's why not. After all that footage of the trailer park and the side-story of Dern's husband being a really talented Cajun musician, the fucking movie couldn't even name the kid, let alone tell me if she was actually brain damaged.
I'm not sure if the story made me cry, if the Lucinda Williams song at the end made me cry, or if it was the truly shit ending but hey... tears were shed.
While the credits began to roll and Lucinda began to wail, I was really starting to cry and I was talking to myself about how maybe I missed something when I got up to get another macaroon.
But then I noticed that the credits showed it to be a Showtime movie, not a Lifetime movie.

Obviously!

Why am I not surprised that those demented Showtime freaks would leave us hanging out on the couch, tired from the dog park, unhappy with our boyfriend, and confused about the fate of this poor, possibly but not confirmed to be, retarded baby girl with no name.

Now.
This is super-important.
!IMPORTANT!
There�s a documentary that I want everyone to watch tonight on PBS.

It�s called Country Boys and it�s about the part of the country where I grew up. A lot of people don�t realize how poor and rural Southern Illinois, Indiana, and Western Kentucky are.
A lot of people don�t realize how rural my life was and how much I appreciate my small-town experiences and expectations.

Most people definitely don�t realize that Illinois isn�t Chicago, and nobody who hasn�t been there understands who serious the poverty, the hopelessness, and the simplicity is when you live in a rural, depressed part of the country is.

But there�s a certain, implicit sweetness to that simplicity. While to people looking in, through the eyes of a documentary or a visiting expat, it might be sad and depressing there, I really, really hope that in the documentary, the simplicity of life is translated as something that these kids are lucky to have.
Simplicity is something that I got to have and I not only treasure it, but when I feel that it is being disrespected or even threatened, I run back my mind�s eye and ride my bike in my swimsuit for awhile, stand quietly while my mom traps a garter snake under the crab-apple tree, or ride the bus with Vicky Selkowe out to her house in the country so we can play with her dog, Scamper, and try to throw snowballs at passing cars.
Try to throw snowballs?
Yeah � there wasn�t ever enough snow to make a real snowball.

I want people to see that part of the country and to try to understand about the wonderfully simple things that made way for me to grow up and have some eccentricities in terms of a stunning lack of sophistication and finesse, just under the surface of a great education.

Sigh.
I hope I love this documentary.
I hope you do, too.

arizonasarah at 8:04 a.m.

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