I don’t like your new boyfriend, and he looks older than 39, too

“Uhh, where did you meet?”

She bit her lip. “Here. But you cannot say a word. To anyone.”

“Work? Are you insane?”, and mentally Rolodexed my brain of the employees that had come in for the photo shoot already. ”It’s Jeremy, right?”

“How… how did you know?”

Jeremy was the one person who gave me hell, unhappy when I explained a new brochure was being designed and they wanted photos on all the people in leadership. (’What I look like has nothing to do with my job’, he said, and Amy piped back to say, ‘Eileen is just trying to do her job; she’s just the messenger’.) After that I sensed he was hovering, but couldn’t figure out if it was because his boss was in the room, or if he had the hots for the photography assistant who was barely 18 and could easily fulfill the physical requirement to work at Hooters.

“Just a sense,” I lied. ”Does he know we’re friends?”

“Well, he does now. I told him he was rude to you earlier, and explained we are friends and he was shocked and said ‘you and her are friends? -’”

“Shocked?”

“- but see, him coming back here and apologizing, that was so sweet. And I hope you really, really like each other… because he’s my date to the baseball game next Friday.”

So, maybe it’s the fact that I am still ill. Maybe it’s because my hairdryer broke and so did my deodorant stick and I spent the entire day wondering if my hair was flat or if I stank.

Either way, Amy is as short as my thigh and the size of it, and never in my life more than today have I ever felt so insecure that this supermodel gorgeous chick would ever be friends with me.

Cocks. Roosters. Chickens.

First thing this morning I received a memo from the little old lady in the payroll department with the subject, “cock in/cock out changes”.

I was kind of scared she’s the one with information about cocks and how they go in and out, but hey, I’m just glad she thought enough to include me in the memo about this new system they are offering.

I think I’m going to jump on it, too.

They thought I was an alcoholic when I just said I couldn’t drink

I’ve lost my voice and have a raging case of tonsillitis.

Lost voice and all, I went to work and good thing because I did receive my spiffy job promotion, even though my new title is bizarre and innocuous. And because I can’t talk, I had to make exaggerated “YAY” movements like a starving gorilla happy to see a banana to express my appreciation.

I celebrated my promotion at a new-job/farewell party for Tom. He’s leaving the company so we were at Jay’s last night for a party, and I was thinking I could always have miming as a back-up career option.

Jay’s wife is standing in the kitchen and making cocktails.

“Eileen? Do you want a drink?

I shake my head no. I point to my neck, pretend to talk, make a face with my eyes, do the swirl with my fingers like I’m crazy and fan my face. Translation: “No thanks, my neck hurts and I’ve lost my voice and it’s driving me absolutely crazy. This is the first time in days I haven’t had a fever.”

She leans over and whispers. “Oh. Sorry! I didn’t know you were an alcoholic.”

It hurts to talk… but not to type.

I’m coming down with tonsillitis and it hurts to talk, and because I’m tired and reduced to spitting into a thick, plush towel, I’ll just share this little ditty of work-related news I heard:

There’s going to be a meeting about me on Friday; I don’t know whether it’s a good meeting (”let’s FIRE her! She closes her office door and requires too much damn concentration to work”) or maybe, holy crap, they are actually considering my request for a promotion and - considering it’s a multi-million dollar company - months after my request, may actually grant me an extra dollar an hour wage increase!

OMG OMG OMG!

Of course, if I am going to start making an extra forty bucks a week, I’m going to have really evaluate my lifestyle. I may not be able to fit in this petty blogging shit when I rake in the big buckaoos.

But while I’m still destitute, stay tuned, because in tomorrow’s petty blogging shit, I’ll tell you how I was yelled at by a school principal for not saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

Sects or sex

I dragged Carrie into Barnes and Noble, and after we saw a baby and his mum on the way out the door, I told Carrie about this toddler at work yesterday, with two long strands of hair over each ear. ”Surely the parents weren’t that oblivious their baby’s hair was… looking, kind of… annoying.”

“Was it Bob Costas ‘Lego hair’ annoying?” she asked.

“Worse. It reminded me of this movie I saw in the 90s about sects. I mean, sects. Dagnammit. How do you say sects, as in, a group of people who dress in weird attire and have exceptionally bizarre hairstyles very similar to Princess Leia but less conceptual?”

“The sect is less conceptual, or are you talking about their hair?”

“The hair. Long and stringy, and shaped oddly. Like a one-year-old who badly needs a haircut but the mother isn’t at the point where she can let go and admit her child just may look better without looking like it belongs in a 1990s sect. Will you follow me here?”

“No, I’m following you. I just love that of all the things you have going on today, the thing that bothers you most right now is if you are pronouncing sects like sex.”

Two Target Weekend

I play this little game called Two Target Weekend.

Because I have no life, I come up with these little ditties to amuse myself, and because you read this blog and subsequently also have no life, I’ll share the rules so you can join me in future TTW fun: 

Rules:

1. Shop at Target on both Saturday and Sunday
2. Spend a minimum of $50. You should have no more than a three item list. Note: the three items combined cannot cost more than twenty dollars. (I prefer - and no, this isn’t mandated but I will give you bonus points - one item on your Sunday list preferably should be an item you forgot to buy from your Saturday list.)
3. Shop with your child. You must buy something at the snack counter for the child with Red-40 in it. Alternate rule: if you do not have DNA-spawn, borrow a child - and the term ‘borrow’ has some loose connotations in most of the world with the exception of Thailand and Utah, where I heard they like ‘em young and lost (JOKE! JOKE!). So, when you hear the overhead page of guest services personnel announcing they are looking for a lost child, the official rules dictate you can only return the child after you have paid for your merchandise and then you lie and say, “I think this is the child that was reported missing. She was by the shoes.”

Welcome to the Insensitive Olympics

Welcome to the Insensitive Olympics.

I’d like to give myself a gold medal for thinking Larsen Jensen of the US Olympic swimming team would make a great drag queen. Seriously.

He has the face, doesn’t he?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The silver medal goes toward me, for restraining the urge to throw send nasty hate mail to Bob Costas of NBC, each and every time he mispronounces Beijing.

And the bronze medal also goes to me for thinking that Michael Phelps has one HOT body, but his face is kind of… monkey-ish.

Expiration dates

I have two things to admit; the first is I am a week late to Bone’s ummm… Post Things You Have In Draft Partayyyyyy. Go read it. It’s seriously funny. (Actually, if you don’t already read Bone’s blog, you should, and I’m not just saying that. Really.)

The second is Bone said he had 76 things in draft, and um… look at this.

 

 

I now know how rock stars feel; going into a recording studio and recording 50 songs only to release 10, and then, after they’ve died from drug overdoses or alcoholism, the record companies make mega bucks releasing the tracks.

So, I hope you take comfort that in the event of my death, there’s a WHOLE LOT MORE crappy blog posts I’ve written for your enjoyment! It will be like … like, well, I’ll still die, but it will be like my death is just postponed for another eight months. Brilliant, eh?

Sit back. Enjoy this G-list material from earlier this year. I decided it was entirely too depressing, and replaced it with this.

***

Suz finally called, right at the height of my crying bout where I had the huh-huh-huh sound as I tried to make the ’oh yeah, of course I’m normal despite the fact I cried all day and night so I’m kind of embarrassed you are listening …huh-huh-huh…’ sound.

“I got your text. Are you okay?”

“Yep. Just cleaning the fridge. I feel the need to purge. I found red curry paste. How long is this stuff good? This may have been used last when I cooked for ‘Let’s have one-and-a-half nights of lousy sex before I move to South America Jacob’ last year. Yes. I’m bitter. Shut up. Did you know that dinner included asparagus? It shouldn’t have. Really, really shouldn’t have.”

“I think there’s a code in the book of women that you aren’t allowed to keep food for men you’ve cooked for and slept with.”

“It’s just food, and the use-by date is only… oh, okay, I’ll throw it out.”

I bet there is some sort of cosmic message being sent to me through my refrigerator, possibly from aliens living in a galaxy far far far away. I’m trying to decipher the message, and so far I just have something about making space in your life for things you know that fit, and even though it sucks, getting rid of the ones you don’t.

Well, that’s the first message.

It could also be ”clean out your fridge more often, because you won’t ever come across a recipe using that nasty jar of picked cherry peppers nor will you ever find anyone who would actually want to eat them.”

Because, yes, toilet time equals private time

He points to a table in the sun and asks if its okay. My tummy grumbles and that’s when I realise my body woefully misses Golly.

[Take a look through memory lane, but hey, I'm warning you, don't click on the last one if you just ate: wanting to die and hunky EMTs, Dr J and the official naming of Golly, what I recall from my First Surgery Ever and GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY!] 

Even a year after surgery, and a half-step later I have a trembling thought the half blueberry bagel from breakfast wasn’t bready enough to soak up enough acidity that one consumes in half a cup of calcium-fortified orange juice.

He was oblivious and checking out the menu and talking about knee replacement surgeries and I was thanking G-d for long arms. I stretched my right arm into my bag to feel for Em’s mobile phone, then straightened my posture and held the menu with my left hand while pretending to decide between cheese or Greek pizza.

Phone in hand, hand under seat, I flipped it open and fumbled the buttons and HOPED TO FRIGGING HELL my phone was the last called — not Radio Disney.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

I jumped.

It’s not an act.

“I’m sorry,” I say, flipping shut Em’s phone, dropping it into the bag and deftly picking up mine in one smooth move.

I pretend to look to see who is calling.

“Ugh, I am so sorry,” I say. “This is my boss. Do you mind?” and without letting him answer, I slide my chair back to excuse myself for a private conversation.

And toddle off to the loo.

Baking 101 for the Type A parent who doesn’t want their kid to make a mess in the kitchen

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Deb from Smitten Kitchen may want to put a warrant out for my imitation arrest.

Eileen’s Cupcakes

Ingredients: One package of Slice’n'Bake Cupcake Kit

If you shop at Kroger you’ll notice this is the STORE BRAND.

(If you are a soon-to-be parent, never buy name-brand items the first time for your kids, because you’re only going to set them up for disappointment if you decide to ever ‘drop’ them down to store brand. Yep, trust me. Think of cereal. Start them down the bottom of the ranks with Bran & Raisins, and they will surely know you love and adore them when you finally purchase Raisin Bran and they no longer have to fight for the sole raisin in the cereal box. RAISIN PRIZES FOR EVERYONE!)

Inside the box you’ll find a tube of yellow cake batter, tube of frosting, and an odd number of baking cups. And yes, even though it isn’t shown in the picture because CJ hid them in his shoes, there are sprinkles. (Please send hate mail to eileenblogs/gmail/com, in care of CJ. He needs this. He starts preschool next week and needs reading material as he attempts to learn to read.)

Preheat the oven, and really, um, follow the directions on the box. When you slice open the cake batter tube it will ooze out and look like poo, much to the delight of your child.

To further add to the illusion of poo, swirl in the baking cups in the shape of poo. Your choice: cat or dog. 

Bake and cool.

Let your kid ice, decorate, and eat cupcakes. (You can eat one too. They aren’t half bad.)

Oh, and no, I’m not really Type A. If I was, I wouldn’t dare let her decorate those things.

In four months he’ll have body hair sprouting in more places

I found Ken on Facebook last November and added him as a friend, because… err, I knew who he was in high school. He was in my tech drawing class - two rows over, one seat up -  and he was Mr. Popular and invited to all the SUPER COOL parties. Surely now we were thirty, his cool status still remained, and if he was popular then, then he would be popular now, and I would be popular by association!

“I can’t remember your face or name,” he said.

I bit my lip, still rejected from the cool crowd, reminding myself I did only go to his school for two years.

“I was friends with Heather,” I pleaded desperately. “I think you were in the English class where we watched Mr. Bean and Psycho. We were in science with Mr Harrison who liked to eat pig eyeballs. I also think - and this is embarrasing - my dad was your bus driver.”

In history, he sat up the back of the class next to the weird eclectic girl who had the hot 25-year-old boyfriend. (In retrospect, the boyfriend was really lame to date a high school girl.) Ken probably didn’t know we were in the same history class because I forced myself to sit up front. No, not to be a teacher’s pet, but because I needed desperate help which I realised quickly into the school term when the teacher asked about the significance of Pompeii I thought Pompeii was some dude who died quickly.

“Oh, yeah,” he finally said. “I remember your dad.”

And months have passed since that conversation, and I think he actually might now …genuinely… think of me as a friend.

Really.

Because he said today, “Hey, guess what? In four months I’ll turn 31, and have body hour sprouting in more places than ever before.”

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

I think because he shared that, it means I’m popular by association, so I shared something equally secretive. ep. Yep - my blog! Don’t worry, I swore him to secrecy.

Who feels like we’re back in high school?

How to make Comcast customer service representatives want to quit their jobs

Explaining why I only have 28 television channels is easy, but trying to explain how I had more is not.

“Lookie here, Ryan. It’s not my fault you inept Comcast people screwed up two years ago. But I’ve had a taste of the good television life! You can’t just take that away from me now and condemn me to a life of TWENTY-EIGHT CHANNELS that consist of public access and home shopping and… and… Telemundo.“

“Ma’am - ma’am -  it will cost seventeen dollars and one cents extra for those channels.”

“Cents? Was that plural or singular?”

“I’m sorry. One cent. Singular.”

“Yes. I’d like that. Thank you. Sign me up.”

I’m a right idiot

I have about fifteen Wacker Drive pictures from my trip to Chicago, because every time I saw a Wacker sign, I broke into a Beavis and Butthead laugh and said, “Hehe, heheh. That says WACKER!”

Immature, much?

It was a month ago at an education symposium where the presenter said the word ‘prophylactic’ and I whispered to my seatmate and brand new BFF Lindsay, ”Hehe, he said prophylactic,” and in case she didn’t pass fifth grade sex ed, I added, “That’s a fancy word for CON-DOM” but with my accent the word condom doesn’t come out all nice how Americans say it, it is pronounced how I’m about to spell it for you here and now: CON-DOM.

(While I have your attention about CON-DOMS, I always thought if there was a cuckoo clock inventor who wanted a niche market, he should create a cuckoo clock where the bird would come out and say CON-DOM with an Australian accent. And if you are stupider than me and still not following this whole CON-DOM pronunciation, say it like two separate words: Con. Dom.)

Lindsay wrinkled her brow, opened her mouth to whisper something… and safely decided not to.

“Hey” I said to Carrie later. “Guess what the guy said during the conference? He said prophylactic!” I thought for a second, and added, “I think he meant something else.”

“Yeah. It actually means something is a barrier.”

“You mean he wasn’t talking about a CON-DOM?”

“Don’t think so.”

***

And…

Bruce, a bloke from my local expat group ’Put Another Snag On The Barbie’ was listening to me complain about how I’m getting old and can’t drink half a beer without feeling shit-faced drunk, or concerned someone slipped GHB into my drink and wants to have their way with me later. (And yeah, I’m a little sensitive, given it’s been over a year since I last had sex, and having a blog where I chronicled that little nugget of information makes me secretly hope someone slips a mickey in my drink.)

(Okay, not-so-secretly…)

So, ignore the fact I was drinking Jamaican beer which has - I think - one of the highest concentrations of alcoholic content, because Bruce goes, “Love? You know you’re a right idiot? When they say ‘light beahh’ back home, it’s made with hahhf the grog. American light beahh is made with hahhf the cahhbs.”

Why candles stink

We drove to Target today because Lydia needs help keeping her room clean and taking responsibility for organising her underpants. 

I swear, her undies are either eaten by a washing machine hungry for the taste of little girls underpants (I’m now scared who will find my blog using that web search) or they vanish into a black hole and one day scientists will think they have discovered a new bright pink and purple planet but no, upon closer inspection and a Mars Rover, they’ll discover it’s millions of wadded pairs of Little Miss Happy underpants. 

And yes, I lie to my children for their health and my sanity. ”I need to set up an order with Amazon.com to send us an order of diapers every month. Or… we could go shopping and buy containers so you can be better organised. Do you want your school mates to know you wear diapers?”

“Umm…”, she said with pondered with the fate of an inmate facing the death penalty, “…let’s go shopping.”

While driving to Target I added, ”I liked the candle Nancy had at her place yesterday.”

“I liked it, too. Let’s go to the store where she got it and buy it.”

“Nah. Let’s look at Target for something similar.”

After spending zero-point-two seconds in the candle aisle at Target, I have to say SHAME ON YOU if you have a candle from Target, because the candles STINK WORSE THAN BONGWATER and yes, I admit I don’t honestly know what bongwater smells like so I Googled ‘does bongwater smell bad‘ and yes it does! and I’ll put five bucks down to say Target’s candles smell comparitively worse than bongwater just as long as I don’t have to, actually, you know, smell bongwater.

We stood in the candle aisle, offering candles to each other to sniff, and I restrained myself from jokingly asking Lyd if she thought Target candle wholesale purchasers smoked crack during the purchasing process, because Lydia is eight and literal and shitty parenting aside, I am sure ‘All You Need To Know About Crack’ wasn’t part of her second-grade curriculum. I mean, Lydia was horrified when she asked if it was true what her dad’s fiancée said: when Lydia starts her period, she’ll have to wear tampons when she swims… and I assured her she’s ONLY EIGHT FLIPPING YEARS OLD and I think it will be a few more months before I announce to Teh Intarweb my baby girl is using tampons. 

I’ll spare her the pain a little longer.

And while I was standing there and thinking about tampons and crack and bongwater and how to get the scent of tobacco and sewer out of my nose, I realised what I wanted was a nostalgia-scented candle. (And no, vanilla-scented wasn’t doing it, and by nostalgia, I don’t mean mothballs, or the scent that lingers after Dad lights a match in the bathroom after breakfast.)

I want candles scented like sunscreen and laundry detergent, cups of earl gray tea and non-fruity shampoo. Chlorine - yes, chlorine! - and the briny scent of the ocean; salt and vinegar chips and boiled plum pudding. Not incense or sandalwood or jasmine.  I want a candle that smells like a warm musky evening air with a hint of honey blossoms. Vicks VapoRub. Hot buttered toast in the morning; eucalyptus and lavender. My grandmother’s favourite perfume - 4711. Not too fruity summertime strawberries and cream, bubble gum; and the scent of a library filled with old books.

I want a sad penis plate

I spent the morning taking photos of children… and I have to admit, there are days where I’d rather be with someone else’s kids than my own.

For instance, I saw this plate in the kitchen at Nancy’s, and commented on how cute it was to Erin’s mum, Nancy.

Nancy said, “Yeah, but don’t you think it looks like Erin drew a sad penis?”

And I said, “Yeah, well I have seen a few of those in my time”, but I kept it secret that I thought the plate was really cute and wanted a sad penis plate of my very own.

The biggest secret you will hear all year. Just between us. Seriously.

I even googled deviated septum so I could prepare myself for Suz’s Ugly Face after surgery. She doesn’t know I blog, so let’s just keep teeny secret this between the two of us - because Suz and I work together and the last girl who betrayed Suz ended up quitting her job. Do you understand me? My sort-of ex-boyfriend may have moved to Guatemala to escape me, but I CANNOT QUIT MY JOB and Suz will not move to another country to get away from me. 

Got it? What I’m going to say is a Big Secret.

But, hey, I will tell you tell you the procedure was not cosmetic and absolutely medically necessary. Suz has been a vile and loathing bitch all year, and granted, it’s been because she’s been unable to breathe and I think it’s because the bones in her nose were, like… wonky. Cute exterior; wonky interior.

Last year, Suz and I met this guy Todd. (If you’re bored or suffering from insomnia, I even blogged about it here.) Todd and I met another time later last year and had a completely insignificant three-minute conversation at a charity event where I wore a dress and spun a wheel - like Wheel of Fortune, but not so fortuneish - and he donated a lot of $$BUCKS$$ and we talked about cancer and kids and sometime during that conversation he noticed the incredibly large bruise on my neck and commented either I had a thyroid biopsy or had been in a bar fight. Because of his job in an operating room, I asked for his recommendation on the best thyroid surgeon and he said Dr. Mulligan, and that was basically the end of the conversation because I had more people to bloodge money off and more wheel-spinning to… er… spin.

Suz had her nose job done. Todd was in the operating room and came out - looking h-o-t in scrubs, and updated Suz’s sister and me on the procedure and said that we could see her in the patient room after she was done and all happy and chipper (or… umm, stable, I think was the word) after she was released from recovery.

Suz’s sister sat down to send a text message to her father and Todd grabbed my arm for a second.  “Hey. Did you get that thing taken care of?” He looked at my neck.

“Huh? What? Oh. No. Not yet. I keep putting it off. Is that surgeon still the best surgeon?”

“Yep. He even has a new technique; it’s less invasive.”

***

Four days later I let myself into Suz’s house to bring lunch, and no more than three feet in the door I was viciously assaulted by the scent of rotten blood and mouldy water, unsure where the smell was coming from because the entire lower floor was pitch-black and blinds and curtains were closed.

A scream comes from the darkness: ”Whad bib Bodd Bowden bay do do bader my burdery!!?”

I blink to adjust to the light, and yell to the darkness. “Hi! How’s the pain? Uh. What… did Todd say to me… after… your… surgery?”

“Bes!!”

“Yes? Um. He asked… er… if I had my thyroid out yet?” I didn’t speak ‘nose job’ and wasn’t sure if my interpretation was correct. I also sensed pain management wasn’t going well, and wondered if she needed to double up on Vicodin or how easy it would be to convince a pharmacist at Walgreens to give me some morphine for a friend. ”And… and, I said no, and - and… I asked if Dr. Mulligan was still the best surgeon. That’s all. How are you? How’s the pain?”

“By bisdter daid Bodd basked byou oud.”

“Your sister said Todd asked me out? Uhh, no. He gave me a brochure on the procedure and I went to your patient room and sat for awhile and you woke and I talked to you. You don’t remember that? I was there until early afternoon you slept some more and your dad arrived and you said I could go.”

“Doh. Becaud dad id readdy iddaproddiad if he would do dad.”

“Oh. Yeah. Incredibly inappropriate. How are you? How’s the pain?”

***

So… it wasn’t technically a lie. He asked me out two days after her surgery.

No butt; all gut.

Single Guy: I just have a hard time talking to attractive women. My approach at weddings is to drink a lot the first hour, and that takes the edge off.

Married Guy: So, then, you’re just a drunk arsehole?

Single Guy: No. Well, yes. I mean, I figure if I get their phone numbers and we go on a date and it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.

Married Guy: Isn’t that how … it’s supposed to work? You get a number and ask her out?

Single Guy: Yes. Yes. I just… see, I have standards. I refuse to date a girl who weighs more than 150 pounds [68kg].

Married Guy: Dude, do you even know how much that is? My dog weighs 110 pounds. I bet if you had one of them… them… biggie-size models come up to you, you’d hit that.

Single Guy: Probably.

***

They settled their bill, walked past our table to leave, and I pointed to Carrie which one was Single Guy.

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “You know what I call that body shape? No butt; all gut. Or Dunlap.”

“Dunlap? As in, tyres?”

“Yeah. You don’t get it? His stomach dun’lapped over his belt.”

 

NEXT DAY EDIT:

See how much I know tyres? I don’t even fricking know how to spell Dunlop. Thanks, Bone!

I just didn’t want him to get herpes. Really.

Stop the presses!

He’s brave and bashful; handsome and hilarious, and wow, I’m loving me some alliteration today. He harps on me because I pronounce the letter ‘h’ as haich and I claim our country is called Strayya, but he pronounces projects as prow-jects so I say we’re even how we pronounce words.

He’s one of my best mates and because I believe he can do no wrong, I was ready to hoist him on a cross and place a crown of thorns on his head and whip his mostly naked body… but then there was a report on 60 Minutes that someone already did that a few thousand years ago, they lost the body, and people are still fighting over it today. 

“I have something to admit,” he says a few months ago. “There’s a chick who has a blog. She’s awesome. She’s going to come and visit me.”

“To have sex?”

“Uhh, yes? That’s the point.”

I was happy he had someone, but because I know women - especially blogging chicks - I know as soon as we get that penis inside us, invisible tenterhooks shoot out and we leech on to men and our brains flip a switch that force us to become manipulative psychotic bitches. (Err, yes, personal experience speaking.)

“No. No! You need to visit her. That way if you don’t like her, you can leave. Otherwise she’ll be in your town and in your space. You need control.”

“It’s too late. She already booked her flight. I’m looking forward to it, though. Trust me. This way she’s on my turf.”

I try to be helpful. Really. Truly. It’s just that I didn’t want some freaky chick from the internet - with a blog no less! - corrupting him.

So I did what I do best, which was be incredibly nosy and ask a lot of questions, like, what her blog was so I could snoop.  He refused to tell, so I had to do my own investigation with what I knew, so I created a hit list of female blogs that pertained to dating and sex and relationships and men, and drove myself insane trying to determine which female blogger was The One sexually corrupting my friend. (He finally gave me the blog name yesterday. Not a blog on the short list.)

Time dwindled down to the blogger’s visit, and I still had no idea who she was. I promised I would limit my guessing to three questions per conversation, which was a promise I immediately regretted because three questions are simply too limiting.

“Did she send enough recent photos for you to ascertain she is attractive and does she think you’re a big spunk rat and pay no mind to the conjunctions because this is only one question and how long has it been since you got laid and does she expect you to pay for everything and is she going to crash at your place and do you have the last two years of her dental records because dental hygiene is incredibly important and do you know if she has all her teeth?”

So… maybe I put a few dark thoughts in his head.

He started to not look forward to her visit.

All I wanted was for him to be cautious and not have sex with some floozy from the blog world and then have to go to the doctor’s and have a physician say, ”I’m not able to drain enough of this BLISTER FROM YOUR PENIS to determine if YOU HAVE HERPES”, and walk out and see a hot and obviously brilliant girl sitting in the waiting room that, under any other circumstance, he would strike up a conversation with and six months later they would become man and wife. But now that Hot Girl (mistakenly) overheard the doctor announce he has herpes, she shoots him a look of disdain for being a male whore and decides at that very moment to get a malaria vaccination and dedicate her life to starving children in Africa.

[Back to reality.]

He met the blogging chick, wasn’t attracted to her, and my vision of him being all holy and pure and perfect was gone.

“What can I say? She could easily be ten years older than what she said, and because she smokes, she sounds ten years older than that. She wears a bright orange Donald Trump toupee on her thinning hair –”

” –I told you!” I said a little too gleefully. “You needed to get recent proof of what she looked like! You should have asked photos of her teeth, too.”

“Well, see, doesn’t have her real teeth…”

“…”

“…and she wears dentures…”

“…”

“…and she was a little inebriated the other night at dinner…”

“…”

“and lost her dentures.”

Why I don’t want to know if you made out with someone in your office

I need to bitch about work for a minute.

I have three minutes from the onset of watery eyes and tinged nose-hairs to mentally prepare myself for his arrival. I decided last time he cannot possibly spray, delay and walk away his cologne application; thus me he must bathe in Bond No. 9. This time I surrepticiously stuck wadded tissues up each nostril and practiced calmly breathing through the mouth.

Now, I know this isn’t fair because I’ve written about him before, but I can’t refer to him by name with what I’m going to reveal. He was on the fast-track to mentorhood which I hear in corporate life is close to wearing a little white outfit and getting to chose a name and doing blessings and all the other stuff that is known as popehood, so (let’s just get all ghetto, shall we?) he ain’t getting no r-e-s-p-e-c-t now.  *finger snap in the shape of a z*

“Are you getting a cold?” he asked as he charged through my office door last week for our meeting, catching me with the tissue box. ”Don’t give it to me. You need to take vitamins. I don’t need to be sick.”

He looked at me quizzically as if I might have a coke - cocaine, not cola - addiction, perhaps because there was white stuff sticking out of my nose. I ignored the look. 

You see, I’ve been sitting on content for our new intranet for seven months and have asked him every week for the last four months for a social media strategic communication plan, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know what one is. His talent in marketing is strictly in the schmooze arena; the more cute gays, the better. At a luncheon last week, he tried to pick up the catering attendant, undeterred even when he learned the kid just graduated high school and this was his summer job until he left for college.

I asked again. “Any luck on that strategic plan? I’m really getting pressure from the boss.”

“I have a breakfast meeting with one of the writers in a few days,” he said. “We’ll just use his. Hey, changing lanes… ” and he rubbed his hands together excitedly and leaned forward in the seat, “Guess who I just made out with in my office? And he came to my house last week, too!”

After he left, I stood in the doorway, fanning the air to rid my office of Stench Du Cologne. Cathy sits in the office to my left. She’s a grandma, and the height of her style is hitting Kirkland’s for sales or - on special occasions - buying clothes at TJ Maxx. Her office smells like apples and cinnamon pot pourri, and her husband is recovering from both a heart attack and gall bladder surgery. She brings a sandwich for lunch to work every day, and if she wants to be wild and crazy, she’ll bring in a Lean Cuisine. If there’s All-American woman, she’s it.

“This is none of my business, but was he talking about…?”

I nodded. The director of marketing shared - in quite explicit detail with liberal use of the word cock! and fuck! and lick! and suck! - about his sordid interaction with one of our clients.

How to have more patience in your life

I don’t think I needed to justify why - after a only few hours sleep and being awake all day -  I didn’t want to scare amaze everyone in the bar with my rendition of ‘Eye of the Tiger’. It is particularly fantastic, I know. I would have been up there if it was ’Small Town Girl’ by Journey, but no, Survivor wasn’t doing it for me. But it bugged me that she kept saying, ‘do it, do it’.

When walking down the street, I prefer people walk on my ‘good side’. You see, either I am going deaf or they talk with marbles in their mouth.

Under a bridge with two lanes of traffic above, I saw a large gaping hole with a bright beam of light shinging to the water below. I’m sure the lovely city of Chicago with it’s affection for caution tape was planning on busting out super glue and two-by-four planks of wood to mend the hole to the bridge. Either way, I wanted time to take pictures of the light bouncing off the water; the contrast of dark and light, and generally just admire how the water looked emerald green, even though it was probably just heavily polluted. I don’t like moving on when I’m having a moment.

On flights, I don’t like being sandwiched between two men, both behemoth types who hog arm rests and have outrageously long upper-arm hair that rub against my arms. I don’t require much personal space, but as One Who Is Ticklish, my patience drains quickly when my boobs are smooshed to a uni-pancake all while holding a book in the air, just to avoid contact with ticklish curly-wurlies of strangers. 

***

So, while the boobs were smooshed and hands drained of blood supply, I came up with a basic formula to help myself by assessing a personal patience percentage.

How tired or hungry I am plus whether my shoes are uncomfortable plus whether I’m unhappy with the amount of money in my bank account plus whether I am in a unfamiliar area and lost running late plus if I think you are talking too much or talking too loud or too quietly multiplied by if I’m PMSing, generally hormonal, having a bad hair day, bad face day, bad clothes day.

Convert to a percentage.

Now I can say to friends, family and colleagues, ‘Sorry, this is not a good time. I’m functioning at twenty-percent patience. If you rather I not snap or roll my eyes, please come back after I’ve had lunch or - better yet - in three weeks it will be a better time for my cycle. Just make sure I’m not wearing my tight black shoes and it’s a Thursday.”