For those of you who have been wondering how my new job is going, I am posting this snippet from an email I sent to my boss (who is on vacation) today:
Subject: Good news!
The bank statement came in today and the good news is I really suck at bookkeeping. We have $6000 more than I thought in the checking account.
J
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Tom and Tim Show -- Episode 2
Note for the guys: This one is 100% true (at least, as I remember it).
It was Tom and Tim who showed me that I wasn’t cut out to be a motivational speaker.
Poindexter (not his real name), our Systems Analyst, had an odd gait; rolling onto the ball of his leading foot with each step, so that his body bobbed up and down like a merry-go-round pony when he walked. His glasses looked like they'd been ground from the bottom of a pair of highball glasses, and behind them his eyes were always in motion, not just roaming, but flickering. His eyesight was so poor that he practically had to be on top of things to see them.
Our boss thought Poindexter was brilliant, but among the staff he was less popular. He had a reputation for being a little too touchy with the department females, which we, at least in part, excused because of his bad vision, but Tim and Tom flat-out hated him. To his face they were barely courteous. Behind his back they made endless mockery – of his walk, of his eyesight, of his habit of trailing his finger along his computer screen and leaving marks that they insisted were nose-prints.
I wasn’t wild about Poindexter, either – he once lifted a necklace I was wearing right off my chest, all but burying his face in my bosom to look at the pendant --but one day he told me a story that made me view him differently. We were talking about our eyesight – mine was poor, too – and he said his was caused by something that happened before he was born. His mother had tried to have him aborted.
I was in my twenties, sappy enough to fall for a hard luck yarn and naive enough to think that a sad story could change people’s hearts and minds. So I related the tale to Tom and Tim, figuring that compassion would make them ease up on the poor guy.
And it actually seemed to work. Over the next couple of weeks, they stopped giving him grief. I felt pretty good about my powers of persuasion, right up until I walked into Tom’s cube and saw a cartoon that looked a lot like this hanging on his wall:
Poindexter (not his real name), our Systems Analyst, had an odd gait; rolling onto the ball of his leading foot with each step, so that his body bobbed up and down like a merry-go-round pony when he walked. His glasses looked like they'd been ground from the bottom of a pair of highball glasses, and behind them his eyes were always in motion, not just roaming, but flickering. His eyesight was so poor that he practically had to be on top of things to see them.
Our boss thought Poindexter was brilliant, but among the staff he was less popular. He had a reputation for being a little too touchy with the department females, which we, at least in part, excused because of his bad vision, but Tim and Tom flat-out hated him. To his face they were barely courteous. Behind his back they made endless mockery – of his walk, of his eyesight, of his habit of trailing his finger along his computer screen and leaving marks that they insisted were nose-prints.
I wasn’t wild about Poindexter, either – he once lifted a necklace I was wearing right off my chest, all but burying his face in my bosom to look at the pendant --but one day he told me a story that made me view him differently. We were talking about our eyesight – mine was poor, too – and he said his was caused by something that happened before he was born. His mother had tried to have him aborted.
I was in my twenties, sappy enough to fall for a hard luck yarn and naive enough to think that a sad story could change people’s hearts and minds. So I related the tale to Tom and Tim, figuring that compassion would make them ease up on the poor guy.
And it actually seemed to work. Over the next couple of weeks, they stopped giving him grief. I felt pretty good about my powers of persuasion, right up until I walked into Tom’s cube and saw a cartoon that looked a lot like this hanging on his wall:
Zig Ziglar, I think your job is safe….
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The BB Story
Marinka’s post a couple of weeks ago, on mammograms, made me remember this – so blame her.
I have a BB in my left breast, courtesy of a car load of teenaged boys who shot me one evening when I was out jogging.
It was about eight o’clock on a September evening, and I’d been running for a while, so my pulse was up. I was heading up a hill near my house when a pale green sedan pulled to the curb. There was a catcall and what felt like the snap of a rubber band hit the side of my breast. Then maniacal laughter and the screech of tires as I stood there under the streetlight, watching my shirt change colors.
My first thought was that they’d thrown a cigarette at me and it was burning my tee shirt away. Since I wasn’t wearing a bra, this meant I’d get to run home essentially topless. But then I touched the dark spot and my fingers came away wet and I realized it was blood. I turned around and headed home.
When I got there, my husband wanted to take me to the ER, but I refused to go. I had this weird, rape-type reaction going on. I felt I’d brought it on myself by a) running after dark and b) not wearing a bra.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I kept insisting. “No one can know.”
Finally, hubby agreed to let me talk to the doctor the next morning, when I took our daughter in for her scheduled allergy shot.
The doctor was frustrated with my inability to identify my attackers.
“If this has been a foot higher,” he said, “you would have lost your eye. Six inches, it would have hit your carotid and you would have bled to death before you reach help.”
He also said it couldn’t be removed – a BB is so small, and breast tissue is so soft – “We could destroy the whole breast and still not get it out.”
Fast-forward to Monday morning, at work with Stan and Tom and a new character we’ll call Tim.
Stan, of course, was nowhere to be found while this discussion was underway. The Tim and Tom show, however, was in full swing.
“Got a BB in your booby?” said Tom.
“They can’t treat you like that,” said Tim. “You’re my bosom buddy!”
“I think you’ve gained a full cup size.” Tom again, squinting at my chest.
I’m starting to realize why my first thought was that no one could know.
It was a long time ago, though, and I don’t think about it very often, except when the weather changes and my breast aches a little.
Or when I get a mammogram and forget to say anything, and they call afterwards, asking, “Were you wearing a…necklace…today?”
Yeah, right. It matches my shell casing earrings.
I have a BB in my left breast, courtesy of a car load of teenaged boys who shot me one evening when I was out jogging.
It was about eight o’clock on a September evening, and I’d been running for a while, so my pulse was up. I was heading up a hill near my house when a pale green sedan pulled to the curb. There was a catcall and what felt like the snap of a rubber band hit the side of my breast. Then maniacal laughter and the screech of tires as I stood there under the streetlight, watching my shirt change colors.
My first thought was that they’d thrown a cigarette at me and it was burning my tee shirt away. Since I wasn’t wearing a bra, this meant I’d get to run home essentially topless. But then I touched the dark spot and my fingers came away wet and I realized it was blood. I turned around and headed home.
When I got there, my husband wanted to take me to the ER, but I refused to go. I had this weird, rape-type reaction going on. I felt I’d brought it on myself by a) running after dark and b) not wearing a bra.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I kept insisting. “No one can know.”
Finally, hubby agreed to let me talk to the doctor the next morning, when I took our daughter in for her scheduled allergy shot.
The doctor was frustrated with my inability to identify my attackers.
“If this has been a foot higher,” he said, “you would have lost your eye. Six inches, it would have hit your carotid and you would have bled to death before you reach help.”
He also said it couldn’t be removed – a BB is so small, and breast tissue is so soft – “We could destroy the whole breast and still not get it out.”
Fast-forward to Monday morning, at work with Stan and Tom and a new character we’ll call Tim.
Stan, of course, was nowhere to be found while this discussion was underway. The Tim and Tom show, however, was in full swing.
“Got a BB in your booby?” said Tom.
“They can’t treat you like that,” said Tim. “You’re my bosom buddy!”
“I think you’ve gained a full cup size.” Tom again, squinting at my chest.
I’m starting to realize why my first thought was that no one could know.
It was a long time ago, though, and I don’t think about it very often, except when the weather changes and my breast aches a little.
Or when I get a mammogram and forget to say anything, and they call afterwards, asking, “Were you wearing a…necklace…today?”
Yeah, right. It matches my shell casing earrings.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Picture This
Curiosity killed the cat, and it's not doing me any favors, either.
Last week, as I was doing a little blog-cruising, I came across a post over at Fingers and Paws where CDB mentioned, as a throw-away line in a tag list, that she'd once been on the Ricki Lake Show and had pictures. Via the comments, people asked to hear the story. She seemed a little reluctant, so to sweeten the deal I offered to post the pictures from my 41st birthday party if she'd tell the Ricki Lake story and provide photographic evidence.
In the spirit of "never let it be said that I'm a welsher" (or have a lick of sense about when to keep things to myself) I am, forthwith, posting said party pix. These were taken during my Bone Chute days, before I settled down with Old Dog and became grandmother to southwest and central Ohio.
Here I am at a cowboy bar, picking up one of the 13 drinks all the nice folks from work bought me for my birthday.
And here I am, a short time later, riding the bull:
Last week, as I was doing a little blog-cruising, I came across a post over at Fingers and Paws where CDB mentioned, as a throw-away line in a tag list, that she'd once been on the Ricki Lake Show and had pictures. Via the comments, people asked to hear the story. She seemed a little reluctant, so to sweeten the deal I offered to post the pictures from my 41st birthday party if she'd tell the Ricki Lake story and provide photographic evidence.
In the spirit of "never let it be said that I'm a welsher" (or have a lick of sense about when to keep things to myself) I am, forthwith, posting said party pix. These were taken during my Bone Chute days, before I settled down with Old Dog and became grandmother to southwest and central Ohio.
Here I am at a cowboy bar, picking up one of the 13 drinks all the nice folks from work bought me for my birthday.
And here I am, a short time later, riding the bull:
Some postscripts:
1) I went home alone. (Just saying.)
2) I did not have a hangover the next day (God knows why -- I drank whatever people put in front of me, including something called a "Purple Nightmare." I should have needed a stomach pump.)
3) When I went shopping the next day with a girlfriend, I complained about my arm being sore. It took both of us a couple of hours to make the connection back to the bull-riding.
4) The hair. When I moved Up North, I had waist-length, permed hair. I returned home over Christmas and scheduled an appointment with the girl who had done my original perm, because I knew she was skilled with long hair. When I got to the shop, she had quit, but the remaining girl said she had my card and would be able to replicate the results. She burned my hair so badly I had to chop it off and live through two years of letting it grow out. That was my last perm. Ever.
Monday, February 2, 2009
A Little Clarification
It's been interesting to read the comments on yesterday's post, but I want to clarify something: although this is based on an actual event, it is fiction, not memoir.
Some of it happened in objective reality (as you can tell by the photo of the painting), but some of it happened only in artistic reality (that is, although the events/conversations did not happen, the emotions are real).
And that is where we're going to leave it, because I believe that art loses its magic if you understand how the trick is done.
This story, by the way, won the Dayton Daily News Short Story Contest and was published in a Sunday edition of the paper in June, 2005 with some very cool artwork. Even so, I've always wanted to give it a wider audience, so thanks for your patience. Tomorrow we'll return to our regularly scheduled blogging.
Okay, it appears an apology is due. Until I started reading the comments Sunday evening, I thought it was undestood that this was fiction based on an actual event. The guys, in particular, seem to feel like they were led down the garden path -- sorry, guys! I thought the language I used in describing it in the meme last week ("story," "protagonist") marked it as fiction. I will be more careful to differentiate in the future -- in the actual post.
Some of it happened in objective reality (as you can tell by the photo of the painting), but some of it happened only in artistic reality (that is, although the events/conversations did not happen, the emotions are real).
And that is where we're going to leave it, because I believe that art loses its magic if you understand how the trick is done.
This story, by the way, won the Dayton Daily News Short Story Contest and was published in a Sunday edition of the paper in June, 2005 with some very cool artwork. Even so, I've always wanted to give it a wider audience, so thanks for your patience. Tomorrow we'll return to our regularly scheduled blogging.
Okay, it appears an apology is due. Until I started reading the comments Sunday evening, I thought it was undestood that this was fiction based on an actual event. The guys, in particular, seem to feel like they were led down the garden path -- sorry, guys! I thought the language I used in describing it in the meme last week ("story," "protagonist") marked it as fiction. I will be more careful to differentiate in the future -- in the actual post.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Kim in Satin
Black SatinArtist - Amanda Cook
Jim said it wasn't that he minded going to see naked pictures of his own daughter; he just didn't like driving all over the country to do it.
I reached across the console to pick some lint off his pants. "Westfield isn’t the other side of the world,” I said. “Anyway, they're not pictures. They're paintings."
He pushed my hand away. “I don’t care if they’re the Sistine Chapel ceiling,” he said. “Why is everything in Westfield?”
We drove the sixty-odd miles to the town where our daughter, Kim, had settled after college and found our way to the hole-in-the wall storefront that housed the gallery. I pushed open the beveled-glass door and caught my breath. The invitation to the show had come on a 4” by 6” postcard that featured a back view of Kim, the crenellations of her spine descending from delicate neck to narrow hips. It had provided a glimpse of one breast; the show offered so much more. I spotted a table nearby, loaded down with hors d’oeuvres and red wine in little plastic glasses. I rarely drink, but suddenly a glass of wine sounded like a good idea.
To read the entire story, please click here.
I reached across the console to pick some lint off his pants. "Westfield isn’t the other side of the world,” I said. “Anyway, they're not pictures. They're paintings."
He pushed my hand away. “I don’t care if they’re the Sistine Chapel ceiling,” he said. “Why is everything in Westfield?”
We drove the sixty-odd miles to the town where our daughter, Kim, had settled after college and found our way to the hole-in-the wall storefront that housed the gallery. I pushed open the beveled-glass door and caught my breath. The invitation to the show had come on a 4” by 6” postcard that featured a back view of Kim, the crenellations of her spine descending from delicate neck to narrow hips. It had provided a glimpse of one breast; the show offered so much more. I spotted a table nearby, loaded down with hors d’oeuvres and red wine in little plastic glasses. I rarely drink, but suddenly a glass of wine sounded like a good idea.
To read the entire story, please click here.
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