like a duck reading about breast care...

Today at work, we were all asked to come to a mandatory company meeting at 8:15 am to review the quarter's profit and loss sheets, discuss department issues, and have a general company update. In Halloween costumes.

One such costume came with a very large stuffed duck, who spent his afternoon sitting in a red armchair in the office that I share with Vicki, perusing a Better Breastfeeding printed guide** with an expression that can only be defined as Shakespearean.

Such was my day.

**(Suddenly, it dawns on me how appropriate it is that this booklet is forcefully referred to in our marketing material as a web-enhanced guide. Web. Hmm. And much of the content refers to blocked ducts. What a twisted web we weave when we stick the carnival duck in the corner...)

I digress.

I was sick and snuffly, yearning for my bed and the empty wasteland of my refrigerator, but trapped in my office due to the fact that the property manager removed the sole staircase that leads to my second-floor apartment.
It's an interesting feeling to know that your apartment has inexplicably become an unreachable oasis while sitting at one's desk, pushing folders around just to see them move, wondering... if I had to, could I shimmy up the drainpipe to rescue my pink sneakers?

Now, 9 hours later, I lie in my bed contemplating the very drunk photos that I uploaded from Justin's wedding last weekend, and question life.

At various points in a young bachelorette's lifetime, she will turn to her friends, her shrink, or the great vast expanse of the universe with tears in her eyes, and shaking her clutch at the heavens, she will yell, "why?? Why am I not desirable enough? What have I done wrong? Why doesn't he/they/mankind want me??" to which she expects her friends, or shrink, or vast universe to push her highlighted, layered hair from her Lancome-powdered face and say, "there, there. It's not you. It's the universe."

Yes, every bachelorette has this moment, and often, and I have certainly had my share of this very moment.
But not tonight.
Tonight, lying in my bed, I know exactly why and to what horrific extent I'm undesirable* in the prime of my youth. (*At this very moment, mind you. Not all the time. Do you think I'd have a good sense of humor about this if I was a freaky looking lady all the time? Do you think I'd have time to WRITE about it? Hardly.)

Reasons why I am a candidate for dismissal, exasperation, and mild agitation:

1. Sickness. Is anything less sexy than sick? "Hello, my name id Jade" is all I'd be able to get out as an opening line right now, and that wouldnt sell hay to a cow.

2. Extremely painful and embarrassing skinned knees. Hardcore skinned knees. From drunken fall taken immediately after Justin's wedding, at which I was a) wearing high heels b) embarrassed to have partaken of the open bar so freely in my complete flop sweat over the video I made that was shown to about 150 people c) bummed city, resulting in even an additional trip to the open bar, which did not yield in a cherry in my drink as requested, which meant less food in my stomach, which meant even more drunkenness.

3. Yes. I think that even two cherries could've saved my knees that night. It was a party full of engineers... I'm sure they could outline the physics and probability of the cherries-to-knee-injury situation of that night, but please just take my word on it.

4. No? You don't believe me that I can still barely bend my legs, even though it's been a whole week and I practically went through a whole tube of Neosporin? I wouldn't believe me either. Please see figures A and B

Figure A: Two knees. That hurt. A lot. From lack of cherries in my whiskey.




















Figure B: Am I not the most grotesque thing you've ever seen?!? Seriously! This is what I'm talking about! No wonder I'm alone in this big chilly apartment. I'm hideous! Shield your eyes!!





















In the words of Eddie Izzard... "Even *I* wouldn't shag me".

Gross. Moving on.

5. Posting photos of my own injuries, which screams egomaniac, or at least, "how could you be such an idiot to get those disgusting injuries? And why are you forcing me to look at them?"

6. Contents of my stomach: cherry/white grape juice (1). Vegan "chicken patty" (1). Macaroni salad (1). Gold tortilla chips (7.3) NyQuil (2)

7. Random inuries, aside from disgusing knees: mysterious and hidous scratch that appeared on my chin between 7:45am (can't be late to the all-company meeting! Even with a fever, pillow lines on my face, and no stairs!) and now. How does one cut their face with out realizing it? Shouldn't there have been a distinct moment in my day when I winced, flinched, and/or yelped in pain as something sharp dove into my lily-white skin? No. Instead, I discovered it as I was washing my face, trying to rub the grime off until I realized that the searing pain was self-inflicted, and I stopped.
Um. Yeah.
Also: random black and blue bruise that emerged on my upper, goose-pimpled arm. Very, very attractive.

8. Hair- scattered everywhere from being wound into a tight bun while wet and left to dry for 14 hrs (can't be late for the meeting! It's fine that I have the black death! Surely, I won't even notice as I'm propped up against a wall listening to our marketing strategies for 2009!)

9. High Fashion: pajamas pants- over time, have shrunk in wash until a minimum of 2" too short. Also, too lightweight for winter. Also, sort of generally boring pajamas-colored.

10. Hands. And Feet. Freezing like hell. Oh, very, very attractive. Yes, maybe I should go touch someone with my appendages of doom and see if they ask for my number, or perhaps a defibulator.

11. Makeup. None, except for a thin smear of mascara. No, not on the eyelashes... down both ridges of my cheekbones, where I accidentally cried a few alligator tears explaining the pitfalls of my week to my friend Thaddeus. Still smudged into my cheeks because I got disctracted during face washing routine, when I tried to wash away a huge scratch under my chin where-- unbeknownst to me-- I have a massive scar from a shiv fight I had with my parole officer.

12. Ambiance. Besides the freezing cold appendages, hmm let's see... copies of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in trade paperback (1) , one loudly whirring laptop (1), crumpled kleenex shrine that I'm making to myself (4), childhood teddy bear that I shamefully dragged from the closet to cheer me up as I lay in bed, cold-footed, sick and miserable (1), ridiculously skinned knees (2).
Mmmmm. Mood setting!

So, let it be known that although there will be days that I beat my puny fists against the cosmos and look down at my fabulous, put-together self, wondering how long the quarter life crisis is supposed to last, anyway, sonofabitch...oops, ladies don't swear under their breath... certainly that's not attractive... today, well, today I look down at my skinned knees, chapped lips, raggedy hair, shrunken pajamas, chapped nose from too many kleenex-ings, tissues strewn about, freezing feet, goose-pimply upper-arm bruise, and NyQuilled, vegan-chicken filled belly (*which is interesting, seeing as how chicken isn't supposed to vegan; nor am I)... and I write an absurdly long run-on sentence...and I say: universe, you rejected me this week. You rejected me, you ran me into the curb on my knees and then threw my heart under a bus, and then gave me the plague, made me question my potential as a competent and productive member of society, made me anxious for the next 10 years of my career and personal life... and universe, looking down at myself at this very moment, I don't blame you.

Some days, I am fabulous.
Today, I ain't nothing but a carnival duck reading about breastfeeding in a red armchair.
And I'm going to own that.

'Night,
She Who Art Delirious from Life Overload and Too Much Sinus Medicine

skinned knees and whiskey

Wow. It's been a long, long time.

It's also been a long, busy summer, followed by a cold snap into reality that warm weather is gone, the smoke is fading from a variety of pipe dreams, much of the chaos from the past few months is over, and the times, they are a-changing.

It's my lunch break, and I'm wearing arm warmers, a hat, and my reading glasses... pausing every so often to cross my arms in an unsuccessful attempt to warm my fingers in the armpits of my bright green jacket and my bright purple shirt.

The weekend started off with Justin and Dani's wedding, which was beautiful, and I'm so happy for them. A combination of extreme jitters and low food intake resulted in a higher than expected solicitation of the open bar. Which later led to my high heel meeting a root (I got through the bush just fine, ironically), and my knees meeting the sidewalk at about 100 miles per hour.

Spent Saturday with a hangover, trashed knees, and a brain that was overdosed on work and chaos. It's the first time since I can remember... June? April? ... that I just stayed home all day and didn't rally to do anything. Curled up in a big blanket and watched Psycho and The Bourne Supremacy as my apartment got dark... didn't turn on the lights, didn't make dinner. Just sat and zoned out, letting all the things I've been repressing and chasing out of my mind rise to the surface. It was a little more intense than I would've expected. I've been too busy with projects and work to think about the important, scarier things, but I realized that I'm partially making myself too busy, which is a cop-out. I got hit with 3 months of overdue mental post-its like a linebacker. I let all my calls go to voicemail-- three messages from phone robots demanding that I vote for their candidate. Twice, my doorbell rang... an Obama canvasser who did a double-take at my dark apartment and messy hair, and 20 minutes later, a McCain canvasser with a headlamp who actually accused me of lying when I said that no, "I wasn't Catherine Smith, and yes, you do have the right address".

Sunday was a day for sad news. Sunny, cold, and clear... the kind of day that most of my life's bad news has been received on, which I find sort of comforting and poetic, regardless of how cheesy that might be. Three really heavy conversations. Ironically, each of them related in some way to changes to my future that I wouldn't choose for myself. Finances. Careers. Heartache. The hope of taking what you have and trying to make it flourish can be replaced so quickly... it takes a fleeting instant to go from wild, joyful momentum to the drawing board.
One drawing board, I can handle pretty cheerfully.
Three is a lot.
I will push up my sleeves and do what I can to meet the challenge of three new drawing boards with cheer, vim, and vigor.

But in the meantime, I need a few days to go on standby. To feel sad for the things that I will miss. To get my coffee pot ready for the chemically-induced spark I'll need to get rolling. To take vitamins and get over whatever kind of plague I may be coming down with today. To sleep and unbraid my mind from the nightmares that it loves so much, like last night's melodrama that I was being attacked by my pet brown bear next to an insane asylum where many of my childhood friends were wearing white nightgowns and reaching their hands through the bars.

Maybe laying off the crack is a great way to start over!

Until then, I just want to spend time with my family before dad goes to the Mayo clinic next week... apply Neosporin to my knees every 6 hours... watch a lot of Sopranos episodes, where calculated violence and soul-selling takes the place of uncalculated life changes and stagnant momentum.

I'm very interested that spring tends to be my launching point for energy, lifestyle changes, philosophical discoveries, and fall is always the time for heartache, job seeking, and cutting ties with a heavy heart, knowing that they're only pulling me down, headed for a crash landing into the cold, October-frost on the sidewalk below.

I wonder if there's a job where I could just be paid to read literature all day?
I could really disappear into about six months' worth of reading right about now.

Next time: more lucid thoughts. Fewer knocked-on-my-ass-exhausted thoughts. Photos from Chicago. Selections from David Sedaris.

Back to the drone.