The Changeover

I’ve been kind of absent from this blog lately for lots of reasons, with the holidays actually being among the least of them, if you can possibly imagine. My apologies for that; this, too, shall pass. But as you know (since I told you myself), I’m going back to school –- not in the Rodney-Dangerfield-film sense, but in the “holy-crap-I-am-actually-going-through-with-this-and-becoming-a-broke-ass-graduate-student-just-like-I-always-threatened-to-do” sort of way.

I made the decision in mid-November, when a whole bunch of Stuff That Shall Not Be Named happened (nothing of consequence to anyone but me, don’t worry; I just can’t talk about it in any detail), and since then I’ve been buried under a mountain of all sorts of paperwork: applications, drafts of essays, letters of recommendation, financial aid forms, calendars, textbook order sheets, standardized test prep workbooks, lists of supplies and materials and equipment and paperwork and forms and clearances I will need.

Two weeks from today -- January 18, 2012 -- mark the date on your calendars, people, because it may be important someday, or at least be a day that may live in infamy forever -- I start my first college class in 16 years.

DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

The timing of these Voldemortian matters (because they Shall Not Be Named, get it? Haha, I crack myself up with my own genius sometimes) was such that, when everything went down, I quickly made a plan -- “I’m going to get my sorry ass back to school” -- and then I just went ahead and executed. It was around Thanksgiving when I hatched this scheme, and I had deadlines to meet, very tight deadlines that did not allow me a chance to second-guess myself. Applications were due by the first week of December, so I had to get right on it. Go go go! -- shoot first, apologize later.

This is somewhat unlike me -- I am not really the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and says to herself, “Self, let’s DO THIS THANG.” But in truth, looking at it now, I wanted to meet those December deadlines because I did not want to give myself a chance to chicken out. I've been thinking about going back to school to become a teacher for the last 16 years. But the stuff that happened? It scared me. And I dealt with that fear the way I often do: by coming up with an “exit strategy" on the fly, by the seat of my pants.

And what I found myself saying was, “I can change my mind later if I want to, but right now I really need to get this paperwork to Admissions or nothing will happen.”

Which is totally the truth, of course. I often get “analysis paralysis” -- when I stop to think about what I am doing, to consider all the possibilities and all the potential outcomes, come up with a list of pros and cons and maybes, I tend to get myself caught in this internal feedback loop where I keep “and another thing!”-ing myself into being unable to commit. I used to think I was being rational, reasonable, and thorough when I did this, but really, it’s more like playing devil’s advocate with myself over and over again endlessly, until all of the sudden it’s ten minutes before a major project is due and I haven’t started it yet because I haven’t been able to settle on a font.

You think I am exaggerating here, but I assure you: not really.

So this is kind of a HUGE step for me, getting myself involved in something from which I did not allow myself an “out.” I mean, yes, there is always an “out” -- I can just stop taking classes -- but it’s possible that this might be the first time in my adult life that I have turned a Plan-B situation into a Should-Have-Been-Plan-A-All-Along situation. It’s not like I don’t want to get my Master’s in Education and become a high school English teacher; it’s what I’ve wanted to do for basically my whole life. When I picture myself 25 or 30 years down the road, when it’s time to retire and spend my dottering old age doing whatever it is that dottering old retirees to, I picture myself playing bridge and mahjongg and watching “The Price is Right” with other former schoolteachers.

And if I expect to be hanging out with “other former schoolteachers,” then I guess I better get on the stick and become a teacher in the first place, right? So here we are.

DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I’ve starting making my own dreams come true, is what I’ve done.

Workin' At The Car Wash

I can't explain what possessed my kid to wash a car in a tutu and a craft foam pilgrim hat.

I can't explain about 99.8% of the stuff she does, really, because it's been a really long time since I was four years old.

And in any case, I'm 100% certain that when I was her age, I was not even in the same universe of awesome as this kid.

I am just glad that she does what she does and lets me take pictures of it for the Internets.

Aren't you glad, too, Internets?

Oh and by the way, she managed to do such an excellent job washing her Pop-pop's car that she also got asked to wash Aunt Shelley's car.

But everybody knows that this kind of awesome is a one-time deal.

Yard Work

Before the weather turned -- it's been cold and wet the last two days, and yesterday we even had a little snow (on Thanksgiving!) -- we put the kids to work in my grandmother's yard. Lots of leaves to clean up, you know, and we have to get everything done before the snow comes for real.

Of course, we don't all have the same idea about what constitutes yard "work."

Fortunately Joey has an excellent work ethic, unlike his degenerate slack-ass cousin, and he kept Shae in line and made her clean up her mess.

It sounds like I am picking on Joey because he likes to clean, but the fact is, I respect a kid who loves the vacuum almost as much as he loves mashed potatoes.

The Sweetest Place on Earth

So. We went to Hersheypark yesterday. And it was great.

Shae didn't get to go on the "Hoolahooper," or any roller coasters, but we had lunch in a dining area where we could watch a bunch of coasters. Shae loved the noise and the screaming.

We managed to stay cool and calm by getting on rides with no lines and checking out one of the free shows -- a tap dance spectacular. Shae didn't want to sit in her seat and I was afraid she was going to go join the cast.

We really, really didn't want to leave. Not even me, and I hate heat, people, roller coasters, and amusement parks in general. It's the best time I've personally had at an amusement park since G and I went to Disney World on our honeymoon.

We took the video camera instead of the regular camera, and I took 62 (!!!) movies. They're all only a few seconds long, and I hope to edit them down into one long movie soon. I did manage to get some screen captures, and you'll be seeing them soon. I apologize in advance for the image quality for the next few days, but I was busy having a good time for a change.

Asleep at the Meal

January is one of the worst months at work because we have a metric ass-load of year-end stuff to finish before we can start all over again, so I end up working a bunch of 60-hour, 6-day weeks in a row. It sucks, and I am not going to bother sugar-coating it. I like my job just fine, sometimes I even love it, but January is probably the month when I daydream most frequently about winning the lottery and leaving town for warmer climes and boat drinks and sand in my toes and trashy paperbacks.

Lately I've been getting to work around or even before first light, about 7:00 AM, and I haven't been leaving until 6:00 PM or so, well after dark, which means that basically I only get about an hour to spend with Shae before bedtime. I hate it. Usually I am home in time to help with her bath and wrangle into her pajamas for prayers, but yesterday she didn't take a nap at school and she gave G a hell of a time at dinner before she fell asleep at the table:

I feel absolutely terrible about it. I already feel like I spend so little time with her, and I didn't get to see her at all yesterday. I mean, it happens, and when G was working he would have days when the same thing would happen, but ... I'm not used to it. It's weird, and it makes me feel guilty. Even guiltier than my poor liberal Catholic heart usually feels. Especially because when I went in to check on her:

I of course took her picture with the flash because I am the worst parent in the world.

It was weirdly quiet last night, especially so early, and we couldn't quite figure out what to do -- she was in bed by 6:20 or so, and we're normally trying to get through the nighttime routine for another hour and a half or so. There was no laughing, no screaming for potty, no streaking up and down the hall. Eventually I got bored and tried to cause trouble by taking pictures of the cats (conveniently captioned below, because some people don't believe me when I say we have three cats).

So there you go. A very exciting night in my house, which is code for "Sorry, I am so busy working that I don't even know if I still have a life."

Visitation Rights

Today was an absolutely gross and putrid day, more rain and cold and dampness, so my company celebrated by throwing a BBQ Friday. OK, well, technically, the picnic was planned months ago, but the crack(head) event planning team never made rain date arrangements, so it was full steam ahead.

Yippee: a party tent in the parking lot! [/sarcasm] But hey, at least the lunchables were free. Even if most of them were pretty much uncountable on my current mutant space diet and therefore uneatable. (Meaning I couldn't find the necessary nutrition information to convert into points, and I can't cheat on my diet when I'm only a week in, so I ended up with a plate full of grilled chicken, cantaloupe, and tomato slices.)

Remind me to tell you later about how I hate diets, math, and diets that involve math.

I invited G and Shae to come visit me at work -- I thought it would be nice for both of them to get out of the house for a little while, even if it was just to run through the cube maze in my department for five minutes. A change of scenery. Shae liked it, because I have a lot of tchotchkes and feathers and weird things all over my desk.

These pictures are terrible, and I'm sorry, but on the other hand: you got pictures at all. And you have you a small glimpse of the inhumane conditions under which I have to work. Have you ever seen so much beige in your entire life?

Phenomenal Cosmic Powers

So, I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately, which explains why I haven't been blogging much: I've been too busy dying a multitude of horrid miserable deaths in far-off imaginary lands at the hands of a host of assorted gruesome creatures, including giant hairy spiders, tunnel rat vermin, these things called "troggs" that look awfully like some of the salespeople I support, and squirrels. (Well, OK, technically the squirrels haven't killed me, but I know they want to. Squirrels are evil and I hate them. They have too damn much power.)

Even though I heckled G for years about his on-line gaming, I've found it very easy to get sucked into WoW. This is probably primarily because of the character I've created, who is -- let's just face it -- so many kinds of awesome. She's a gnome mage, which means she's about 3' tall with purple pigtail puffs and she's totally action-packed with magical superpowers. No leprechaun, this chick: she could completely kick your ass while you were telling her how cute she is and patting her on the head.

Of course, one of the reasons I like playing with this character so much is because I envy and admire her. She is still a "baby" in relative game terms (Level 16, out of 70, and with hardly anything fully learned yet, although I am becoming quite the virtual bassmistress, thankyouverymuch), but she has skills and abilities that I really wish I could have in real life. I mean, it's hard enough to be fighting against the forces of evil, asshattery, and stupidity every day -- and not necessarily in that order, either -- and while it would not automatically be any easier to fight the good fight with magic, it would certainly be more interesting. To wit:

Flamestrike. A spell my mage has that does damage to all enemies within a certain radius. I would love to use this on those days when everything converges on me at once -- emails, phone calls, retarded questions that I have already answered 847,000 times, lame jokes from my cube neighbor, etc. When I hit my breaking point, I could just channel the spell, scorch the earth around me, lay waste to everything in my path, and then go have a cigarette and some Spiced Wolf Meat and regenerate.

Frostbolt. Another spell, which causes enemies to slow down, giving you time to cast additional damaging spells before the bad guys can hit you. I like to think of it as a sort of forced "stop and think" -- like, when I have people arguing with me about why they think something is wrong even when I know it isn't, I could stun them with this spell and then use the slowdown period to hit them with a massive logic bomb and explain why they're giant flaming moron assholes and I am right and they should shut the hell up already.

Polymorph. Oh my ears and whiskers, one of my very favorite spells, even though I don't use it quite as much any more, now that I am levelling up and getting more health and magic powers. This spell is kind of ... ultra-extreme evasive maneuvers for total chickenshits, which lets you turn enemies into sheep for a short time so you can run away (screaming optional). I already know on whom I would use this spell most frequently: my "favorite" salesperson who insists on referring to me by my initials and never by my name oh my heavens such HAAAAATE. (And I can make a very cozy home in the janitor's closet.)

Of course, knowing these fantastic powers exist in WoW and not IRL certainly makes it more difficult for me to get through most days. I have replaced my sincere desire to stab people in the head with a mechanical pencil and make off with their wallets with the sincere desire to Fireball the hell out of them and then loot them for copper and quest items, which is progress of a sort, I guess, but it still suggests that I need to wait a little longer for the mood stabilizers to take full effect.

And also: all the Gnomeregan engineering in the world cannot gerryrig my company's systems into working correctly.

This blog post is titled "My Life, In Words and Pictures Misappropriated from Teh Intartubes."

Two days ago, it was a great day because



Caturdays are full of win and awesome. I love Caturdays. Everybody loves Caturdays.

The next day it was Sunday -- not Caturday, but is OK -- and Sunday was also a great day because



But today it is Monday, and Mondays are full of lose and pleh and also I had an interview and I feel like I am



And also it is month end and so



Please send money for an escape, OK? And booze. Lots and lots of booze.

When I die, I would like my obituary to read as follows:

rockle is dead. She was unruly and ornery and absolutely monkeyshit crazy, but at least she never dressed like a crack whore for work, except for that one time, which was a complete accident, and she ran out and got a replacement outfit to cover up for the wardrobe malfunction and anyway, it was her husband’s fault.

That “one time” was today, unfortunately. Well, it wasn’t unfortunate that it was today; mostly, it’s unfortunate that it happened at all. I might not always behave professionally, but I like to pride myself on the fact that at least I look like a responsible grown-up when I walk out the door in the morning. And now all of that has gone up in smoke because of a warm day, bad lighting, and one seriously ill-advised top.

I had my reservations from the beginning. The top I wanted to wear to work today – a cute new yellow empire-waist number with a bow in the back – was lightweight cotton, and I was afraid that there might be some peek-a-boo action going on. This is may be my biggest style issue in life: I have been gifted with, as they say, quite a rack. Where others have cleavage, I have Cleveland. The Girls come in handy at bars and Christmas parties, but they kind of get in the way when you’re trying to be taken seriously as a professional outside of the sex trade.

How do I normally handle a questionable sartorial choice? I ask the cats, every time. But they are almost never of any real help; I mean, come on, they’re colorblind, so I can’t reasonably expect them to know whether this shirt goes better with these pants or that skirt. So then I ask G how something looks. And being a good husband, he always says, “Fine.” Which is exactly how I trained him, so I know going into it that I can’t trust his words – but this time I did anyway.

We were running late this morning, so I assumed (fool!) that the pre-selected and pre-screened outfit was still OK, even though I was wearing a different bra that I was wearing last night, when we did the walkthrough. Like I do every morning, I got dressed by the light from the reading lamp. Went down the stairs, kissed my husband goodbye, ask him sign off again on the boobage, heckled “Mike & Mike” in spectacular high definition on ESPN, got in the car, rocked the iPod, went to work.

My hands were full when I got to work – of what, I don’t remember – so I put something down on my hood and you can imagine my horror when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. There, right in front of one of the VP’s and God and everybody, was my bra. Showing through my shirt. And not just “oh-hi!-rockle’s-wearing-a-bra-today” kind of showing, either, but “Christ-on-a-cracker-rockle’s-wearing-a-yellow-lacy-number-today-and-she-fills-it-all-the-way-out” showing. Like, I have nightgowns for intimate purposes that cover more than this blouse did.

I stuck it out for two hours before I was so mortified that I had to go shopping a buy a new shirt. When your friends can’t tell you with a straight face that you’re decent, you know you’re in trouble. Thank heavens for TJ Maxx. I changed in their dressing room before I went back to work. I still got comments, almost all of them good-natured, because I am still showing some skin, but definitely not so much that I feel uncomfortable about it. A certain amount of exhibitionism is fine by me.

Let it be known: I am a woman of principles, gosh darn it, and one of those principles is that I don’t care if people can see my boobs, but they are not going to see my underwear.

Having a bad week at work is the surest way to find out what you're really made of, and I feel like I am made of marshmallow and depression, fear and loathing, anxiety and angst and crippling self-doubt, all wrapped up in the skin of a woman who is suddenly so frail and tired.

I always thought I was a strong, powerful woman, but there's only so much I can take. I'm smart and funny, capable and quick, but the one thing I really need to be to get through this is of course the one thing that I have never been, not really: confident.

My career has been built on the bricks of hard work, fast learning, interpersonal relationships, and Microsoft Office, but everything is collapsing around my ears like a house of cards on a rickety table in a stiff wind. I love what I do – or at least I think I do – but I don't know how much I enjoy it any more.

I feel like my department is being run by an old-boys' network of accountants and thieves, jokers who keep trying to trump policy and procedure with fake made-up rules and strawman logic. Bullies are terrible leaders, always obsessed with the bottom line but with only misappropriated ideas about how to get there.

Except: I'm not Tiger Woods, and I don't live my life in a Nike commercial. “Just do it” doesn't cut it when the Prime Directive makes no sense, and no amount of managerial gerrymandering can polish a turd. And anyway, clichés are for the uninspired, and threats are for the weak.

And yet, I am in a position where no matter what I do, no matter how I move my pieces, the endgame is the same. I can't win, and I can't resign, either. The White Queen is trapped in the corner with nowhere to go and no one to protect her.

There are only so many times you can be told how “valuable” you are, how much of your “contribution” to the team is “net-positive,” before you feel you have no choice but to stand up in the middle of a meeting and punch a couple of Directors and Vice Presidents square in the mouth.

But you can't, because you have that Other Opportunity hanging over your head, and it you know it would look bad when they're doing your background check and they find out that you are an H.R. nightmare because you knocked your boss's teeth down his throat. No matter how much he deserved it, the snivelling little shitweasel.

So there's nothing else you can do but cry, and feel weak, and call people names that don't mean anything anyway, and after three consecutive days of people reminding you how small and wrong and dispensable and replaceable you are, you begin to believe them, even when you know you're not. You're none of these things, but they'll have none of it.

After three days of being told of precedent being set in conversations that never happened, of manufactured memories, you begin to feel the piss and vinegar pouring away in tears that will not stop. All the spit and sand are gone in racks of sobs that sound so small and insignificant.

Then, when you finally discover, after more than two months of waiting and wishing and hoping and actually praying – praying! something you haven't done voluntarily in so long you can't even begin to guess how long it's been – that you didn't get that other job ... then there's nothing left.

I'm numb, cold, so shell-shocked and disappointed that I don't even know if I remember how to feel anything any more. Except worthlessness. Fatigue. Apathy. Fear. Instead of a Pawn becoming a Queen, the Queen has become a pawn, and ... there's nothing left but marshmallow mush.

Question: Am I too old, at my advanced age, to still be picturing myself in Wonder Woman Underoos?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, I should mention that I am speaking metaphysically here, and not literally. The question is not "Can I still squeeze my big fat ass into a pair of Wonder Woman Underoos?" Because I already know the answer is no. Not even on Halloween, or for really awesome kinky sex. Hell no. Unless and until Lane Bryant starts selling novelty comic-book-based underpants, they're just not meant for me these days.

What I really mean is, at what point in your life do you become too damn old to need a costume and a secret identity so that you can vanquish your foes and just make it to the end of the goddamned day without crying and pulling out all your hair and threatening to quit 75,000 times?

Because apparently I haven't grown out of the phase where I see myself as a superhero, one of the good guys, and everyone who dares to oppose me is my sworn arch-enemy. While I'm busying fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, or whatever, everybody else is trying to oppress me, to bend me to their will, and I don't wanna.

I know I'm prone to melodrama, but it sucks going through life without superpowers. I mean, sure, I have the Amazing Brain, but in the comics the smart guy is either the Sidekick or the Evil Genius, and I'm not really cut out for either role. When is it my turn to be the hero? When do I get to fly around in my Invisible Jet and brandish my Magic Lasso of Truth and force the world to do my bidding? What if I promise to use my powers only for good? I don't want to take over the world; I just want to keep the Forces of Evil at bay for a little while so I can get some work done for a change without wondering who is trying to rat me out and take me down.

Alas, though, stupidity is my kryptonite, and the faces of the Rogues' Gallery are peopled with the narcissistic, entitled, and self-interested. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for morons and laziness and interpersonal politics. I don't like the way the world works, and mere mortal that I am, I so often feel powerless to change anything. Spend enough time on a cubicle farm and you begin to understand why the Dark Knight is so conflicted and misunderstood. Having Indestructible Gauntlets will only get you so far if you're not allowed to arm the Invisible Jet with nuclear missiles, you know?

But man ... if I still had Wonder Woman Underoos? Watch the hell out, world. Plus, I'd look killer in those boots.

(Picture credits here - sorry that I'm lame and haven't learned how to embed yet.)

So, it's come to this: today I took a sick day.

Don't get me wrong -- I was actually not feeling well today, as evidenced by the fact that I slept pretty much through until 1:00 this afternoon. I needed the rest, because it was a Very Bad Weekend. I hurt my ankle (and I'm still a bit gimpy), and I didn't have fun at my cousin's birthday party, and the weather was crappy, and I had a headache. When I woke up I knew I was in no shape at all to face the world, so I decided early on that I was going to call out.

And I don't regret it, either. I only get 10 sick days a year, and this was one of mine. I haven't called out yet this year, so I'm pretty far ahead of the curve relative to the rest of my department anyway. But I have to be honest: I didn't just call out sick because I was, you know, sick. I desperately needed a Mental Health Day.

Everybody needs a Mental Health Day once in a while; I wish more companies were like the County of Northampton, where my Dad works. They actually give their employees Mental Health Days -- I think they get three a year, or something like that. Of course, they pay their people absolute shit, so I guess I don't actually wish more companies were like the County, but I think you see what I'm getting at: Mental Health Days are Very Good Things, and more companies should offer them as benefits.

Then again, there is the argument that is made where I work, that there is such a thing as "vacation time," and that when employees need a little R&R, they should feel free to use their vacation allotment for that. Which I don't disagree with, in principle, but I also sort of do take issue with that. My mental health is just as important to me as my physical health; why shouldn't I treat all illnesses the same way?

What all of this is coming down to is that I have come to the realization that I need a vacation. Or, as the one, the only, the Samuel L. Jackson might say: "I need a mutherfuckin' break on a mutherfuckin' plane." The signs have all been there for some time -- the difficulty sleeping, the irritability, the dire desperate need for some goddamned photosynthesis. But what really drove me over the edge? Was last week, when I came so unglued that I was speaking, thinking, and writing in poetry. Oh, yes ... my nervous breakdowns are performed in iambic pentameter. (Don't try this at home. I am a trained professional nutjob.)

So, when I finally woke up today, I had a Hot Pocket and a shower, and then I got on the horn to my travel agent, and sonofabitch, I booked a trip. I'll have to use my "real" vacation time for it, but it will be well worth it, believe me. The countdown has already started, and I'm practically already packed. I'm just waiting for the Lands End shipment to come with my new bathing suit in it. Because that, and clean underpants, and a toothbrush, are all I am planning to take with me.

I don't to give away to much about where we're going, but I will give a few hints. But before I do, here is what I will do on my vacation: Lie in the sun. Drink mojitos. Read. Sleep late. Take pictures of palm trees. Drink mai tais. Chase lizards. Swim in the ocean. Speak another language. Drink daiquiris. Dance. Laugh. Listen to my iPod. Drink Cuba libres. Like myself again.

And what I won't do? Think about work. Use my cellphone. Speak in rhymes. Regret a single second.

Want some clues on where we're going? I already gave you some, and I'm not allowed to go to Havana (boo, sanctions!), but here are three more, as promised: Island in the sun. Béisbol. David Ortiz.

Hasta la vista, baby!