Ding

This whole thing would have been okay if it had all worked out neatly like a television plot:

The getting of the design job with me leaving the waitressing job meant that all the time I spent in school, all the time I had been sleep deprived (and all the added, unnecessary drama I'd welcomed into my life at the time) had paid off.



Ding, Character A Makes Good:



The getting of the better apartment was, then, symbolic of moving forward, even if it was literally only steps away from where I had been. The losing of the design job and moving here would then be okay, too. If I then (despite it being office work that I never wanted to do) grown (surrounded by designers doing what I wanted to do) and had left this house and gotten a well deserved raise and learned, at least, that I was quite flexible, here in this most unforgivingly inflexible world.



It would have been even more neat and tidy if, while here (the last place I ever wanted to be) I had finally quit smoking forever. Had finally lost the weight I gained while attempting to quit smoking forever. And had learned how to be a human being.



In all, I've broken even. I'm am exactly where I was last summer. I did finally learn how to make an omelet in less than three minutes, though. And a chicken stock that actually tastes like chicken. And I acquired quite a few computer skills. Right now, the house smells like something is cooking. Tom is in the kitchen and the smell of onions and peppers is distracting. Yes, something is cooking. But what?



In the next episode I want a tidy change that allows for the fact that I want to work, that I work hard, and that I adjust to adversity--not right away, not without a fight, not without making a fool out of myself--but ultimately.



I want a good job. One where I make a salary that reflects the work I've actually done. In real time. Not anymore jobs that say things like,"We can't pay you properly right now, but we love you, and a pay increase is definitely on the table". Followed by, "We have to let go of 60% of the employees this morning, but we love you. We'll definitely write you a nice letter of recommendation."



Because, I am in my forties. I really am. It wasn't just a dream. And, more than that, I'm somewhat educated. And, when you look at all of it it on paper, I've already paid my dues.

So, if life is at all like tv is, then things must change at this juncture, here on this my silly little tv show. 



It could go one of two ways, of course. I'm aware of this. And, as formula-schtick, it's far more entertaining to see me wind up on the street. Who doesn't want to see Character A lose her mind and maybe all of her teeth? Who doesn't want to see her turn into a monster, maybe even a swamp monster--for added effect?



It sure is more fun to hate Character A than to identify with her. I cite Gossip Girl.

Just watch all the head-bands finally go flying. They fall one by one. Just as crowns fall one by one. But then the fallen pull themselves back up, mostly behind the scenes. And, look out, here she comes. Again. And, just like that, she's back. Even though she died two seasons ago. Even though she got life in jail. She's back. And she's, she's ...much nicer this time.

Resume

I waitressed at the same night club for eleven years, once.

It was just the once. But it was long enough to notice a definite time-warp that seemed to occur within the boundaries of that job - be they the physical boundaries of building itself, or involving something less tangible.

No one who worked there ever left the night club. Even the few that tried to leave came right back. Sometimes days later. Sometimes years later. After a disappointing stint at an accounting firm, or low-security prison, say.

It didn't matter. Such employees were always brought right back into the fold like nothing had happened. And really, nothing had.

There were weird things. Like how no one got any older or changed.

And there was a ghost. Specifically, a ghost that hung around the northeast corner of the room, better known as Section 6 & 7.

People spoke quite a lot of this ghost when I first started working there. It was always in one of those phony, louder than normal conversations - the ones where you know without a doubt that what is being shouted a mite too pointedly in your direction is actually for your ears.

My even louder, mock response being:

A ghost? Oh my, maybe I should QUIT?

Of course, I wasn't worried. This ghost was pretty great.

For one thing, he was industrious. He might do things for you like clear your tables or put money around for you to find accidentally. This especially when a customer had failed to leave you a tip.

Or, he might straighten out your chairs and leave chocolates kisses hidden here and there, just to be playful. One time it was a Monte Christo sandwich. I had really wanted a Reuben, but being that that would have been too messy, the ghost came up with an alternative.

A Monte Christo? That's genius!

We were friends, the ghost and me. Not that the ghost didn't have his drawbacks. He did make it a bit cooler in Section 6 & 7. And there was a constant blowing wind because of the ghost that never could be resolved (as it's source could never be located). Which was bad for ones carefully placed cocktail napkins. The hard and fast rules pertaining to cocktail napkins having been clearly outlined in the waitressing handbook.

Yes. I had signed the paper stating that I understood the cocktail napkin policy. And, yes, they whisked that document away before I could ask any of my many follow up questions. So the loss of controll over the cocktail napkins in my section did present a bit of a problem.

Yet, there was no doubt in my mind that it was in spite of himself that the ghost created this kind of havok. I simply asked the customers to hold down their cocktail napkins at all times in exactly the place where I had originally positioned them. And wouldn't you know it, nobody minded!

The ghost more than made up for all of this with money and candy, of course.

Obviously, I took the job.

It was like an agreement had been made, that, for whatever reason, I could only remember bits and pieces of the negotiations.

It was something about how - as long as you worked there you would make lots of money, never age and enjoy the benefits of a helpful ghost but, you could never, ever, leave. Not under any circumstances.

They said,

It's up to you. Go ahead and think it through for a few moments.

Then, seeing the look on my face,

Would you like something - a crab salad served in half an avocado, perhaps? Because we could simply bring you a vodka? It's no problem.

And, finally, as I sat there chewing on my pencil,

Okay. We'll be right over here. You take your time.

So, my rent being due, I signed the contract:

I will hereby spend the rest of my extended adolescence here (bla, bla, bla)

Great! Here is your name badge, your five-inch-platform heels, your waitress handbook, your complimentary box of altoids--!

But that happy moment of knowing I was again employed, that is to say, safe money-wise, was immediately (upon punching-in, that first day) replaced with a relentless, never ending dread of losing that job.

And it never let up. Even as years passed, even as they promoted me to head waitress and put me in charge of the VIP room, I worried.

Even as they told me I was the only person in the world whom they trusted and handed me the keys, I worried.

So, the fact that I walked away from that position (as opposed to being torn away, screaming) astounded quite a few. All those forever-young faces looking at me incredulously as I left.

You can't leave!

The above issued plainly, as a statement of fact.

And it was true. No one could leave.

[reprise]

I got a design job.

I was overjoyed. All I really wanted in the whole world was to work during the day. And have a weekend at the end of my work week, each and every week. I imagined sweater sets and lunches all packed up in Tupperware.

The normality of such a job meant as much to me as the design element did. And, apparently, much more than even the money element did. I did not get right away, that, with a salary there would be no more incredible, life altering tips that could change everything, just like that.

I got thrown into the job. Literally thrown into a still sticky douglas fir, a few birds nests still intact. It was very heady, very fragrant, very prickly time.

My arms, cut to shreds, were not bleeding only for the sap that had dried over all of the wounds. And I learned that skin covered in sap mixed with blood held things like lint and debris. Even pairs of scissors.

And such sap did not wash off.

I smelled of pine trees. All the time. Understandably, this was mistaken for gin & tonic more than once. And, it's true that when people have decided that you have been drinking, almost everything you do or say in protest will support the notion that you are drunk.

Within a week, however, I found my way out of the maze of branches and, having added pale colors and candles and soft glitter, I created both a tree and mantle in a set that whispered, Christmastime:

A few bells rang barely audibly in the distance, their clarity undeterred by time. No, there would be a goose that year. And all the trimmings. Even if we had to spend our birthday-dollars...

Yeah.

I was all in.

But then it was spring.

Then fall, again.

Then it was the next year. Then the year after that. Then it was the election. Then, one night, out of nowhere, Tom made beef stroganoff.

Then, the following weekend, I went on and on about how much I loved my job.

And I think that that might have been my undoing.

Because the very next day, a Monday, the lay-offs began.

Despite the economy, I didn't see it coming. Maybe I felt safe because I was at the bottom, salary-wise. Maybe it was that this simply couldn't be happening to me.

Whatever it was, I learned I was wrong about the inner workings of life. And that my little eleven years as a trusted, valued waitress did not translate into the real world.

I cried into my sleeve for thirty-five minutes during the entire lay-off meeting (even as every part of me did not want to cry) and, of course, there was not a kleenex to be found anywhere.

To this day I wonder how my boss could sit there and not run out to grab me a paper towel or something.

I made no noise as I cried, mind you. It was tears running out of one's eyes independent of one's intentions. And without the slightest grimace.

I said my goodbyes.

I was sad not only for the job loss, but the people-loss. We were friends. We had gotten each other out of jams and had, on a daily basis, made useless, ugly merchandise look good employing every trick imaginable.

We laughed. We played jokes on each other. We came to each other's family funerals and Easter parties.

And now some of us were suddenly being scattered into a cold January world.

A place without design! A place without paychecks!

Three of us that were laid off that day.

Other, totally non-layed off people cried as we three came back to the design office, stunned and sort of automatically emptying our desks into boxes - boxes kept on hand just for such situations. Like so many terrible things, these boxes stood by, stoically, awaiting duty:

The worst will happen. Be ready. Buy boxes.

One of the other designers who had been layed-off insisted I take with me one of her faux-abstract paintings she'd mocked up for the studio. I had used this painting in nearly every one of my shots. It had that quality of never looking the same twice yet expressing something authentically modern with as little effort as possible. And it never struck me as a mock-up. It looked real.

So I left. With all of the contents of my desk (really just many cans of soup) and this huge painting. Not that it was hers to give me, exactly (even if she had painted it) but, just that no one was going to argue about the things we were now taking out of the building with us, seeing as our lives were going down in flames right there, right then - before their very eyes.

Actually, I have two such items from that job. The painting and a very long, beautiful pink scarf. I got the scarf when were were giving away part of our prop clothes to charity. Even though it was understood that the employees could take whatever they wanted, I never felt good about taking that scarf.

It was because I had been in charge of preparing the clothes for charity that I had first access to the give-away clothes. And, seeing that this was a scarf, I knew very well that I wasn't making any real room by removing it. So, it's reasonable to assume that this scarf wasn't what my boss was had in mind when he asked me to make room in our clothes storage.

Maybe as an item, it was too small and too nice to give away, let alone let employees take home.

Maybe it was bad karma that I then simply kept it for myself.

So, it isn't strange, I guess, that I never got around to wearing it.

Until now, that is. I wore the pink scarf last week for the first time ever. I have no idea why.

I wore it to my job. The job I found after nearly a year of being unemployed. The job I've had for the past ten months.

The job where, not ten minutes after I walked in the door on Friday, I was complimented on this, my wonderful, long pink scarf. And then (in practically the very same breath) layed-off.

Layed-off.

In the nicest possible way.

A Million Shinning Microcosm Worlds

I was thrilled.

I had been hand chosen by my supervisor to purchase an emergency travel pass for someone at work.

The address they gave me was a far away, albeit official location for such transactions. Never mind that such things can be bought anywhere. Certainly anywhere within fifty feet of the building where I work. Not to mention, online.

They had handed me the Big, Official location.

All due to googling, no doubt.

I thought to say something. In fact, I started to say the very thing I thought to say (even as I grabbed my coat, my scarf, my bag, my umbrella) the words still sort of spilling out of my mouth even as I got onto the elevator.

I don't think they caught any of this, though.

And so I proceeded to the far away location. Not in a cab but on foot.

This might take hours!

Did I mention how much I love to walk around semi-aimlessly and get paid for it? Even if it was cold out today, and I was dressed not for winter so much as for whatever it was last week, which was pretty great weather-wise, I was okay. Except at the bridge.
It was pretty bad at the bridge.

No matter.

I made my way to the Headquarters. Of this Particular Place. And great things happened along the way.

For one thing, the sky was just right today.

And I was alarmed by the way neighborhood of my destination had changed. How different it looked at ground level than, say, from the windows of the west bound train.

How brand-new it all appeared. Re-paved. Spotless. As though that entire ward had been put through a dish-washing cycle.

I mean, wasn't I here just a few weeks ago when the combination stench of arson and shrimp baskets was the stuff of local poetry? Where the entirety of it's cracked windows provided a weirdly pleasing multi-faceted, diamond-y effect?

As one skated by, seamlessly via bullet proof train.

Was it the ghetto?

Thermos of reassuring peppermint tea in hand.

Or was it diamonds?

Neither.

But none of that mattered anymore.

And that's the thing. Now it smelled not like burning buildings and lack of hope so much as crisp one hundred dollar bills. And a little bit like Mrs. Meyers laundry detergent.

True.

I don't have a dish-washer anymore.

That the break from all other activity that washing the dishes currently imposes upon my life, despite the colossal waste of water and feeling that I could just as well be painting and re-painting the same wall over and over again, is one that I've come to terms with. That is to say, utilize in the name of "me-time."

You know, for thinking, worrying, plotting - it could be anything.

I should further mention that the wind at the bridge was not simply bad, today, but flash-freezing bad. As well as veritable hair-do assassination bad (not to be confused with character assassination bad, though there was some of that in there, too).

But did I care?

I mean, some of the Christmas lights that were going up were actually lit. Which created a subtle air of anticipation. A sparkly pre-Halloween, yet, not-exactly-Christmas feeling that I can't quite put my finger on.

Is it raining?

Is it snowing?

Is it day?

Is it night?

Is it raindrops on the windshield?

Raindrops on the windshield reflecting a million shinning, up-side-down microcosm worlds? As seen from in here, the snug interior of this cashmere colored car?

As we oh-so quietly wait for what's next?

And what did those raindrops reflect? Was it something better? Because it seemed like it was something better.

Or is it just another slow, dark day at the photo studio with Miles Davis and oh-so many unruly bath towels to style?

Or is it pumpkins and detectives, again?

All dried blood and alleyways?

All mangled fingers and ubiquitous gifts of money?

Because, as gray as it was today, such lights were better for the contrast.

it's morning. It's dusk.

It's dissonant! It's mildly confusing!

Furthermore, after all of my epic online searches, it was without fanfare that I simply happened upon a mom-and-pop grocery store, here, in the Loop.

Such was the nature of my travels, today.

Just thirty blocks away from work, Bernstein's couldn't be more convenient. And this grocery store had not just a salad bar, but a sandwich bar, as well.

I dropped everything.

This was unprecedented and required all of my focus. I needed to decide.

It was tough, but in the end it was (simply) two thick slices of toasted, whole wheat Italian garlic bread prepared with an herb-infused, homemade mayonnaise, two different kinds of mustard, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and cold, rare sliced roast beef --with a mere finial of imported Greek olives placed stylishly on top.

And then, out of sheer panic, some smoked turkey.

And it was spectacular.

Of course, I could have gone any number of ways. But the above seemed rational if not just as a sandwich. And, seeing as I was a new-comer at Bernstein's, and rightly sensed that I was being eyed as an interloper (that reckless, last minute smoked turkey being the culprit) I thought it best to play down my sandwich choices for the time being.

It was then that I quite casually, in keeping with my guise of blending in at the grocery store, took a bottle of Joy off the shelf and placed it in my basket. You know, for later. For figuring things out.

Goodnight, Loop

It was late. I couldn't leave work until I'd finished something so that my boss could travel this week. And the big important meeting, which had gone on all day, was still in progress.

This all-day meeting had gone, as one might imagine, through several phases:

At 8 am it was coffee. With people all-business-like and just bathed. Smelling of focus, determination and something pleasantly synthetic -- was it dryer sheets? Listerine?

At noon it was sandwiches, with people folding up their sleeves, tossing off their shoes and earrings and getting comfortably serious.

But, by 2 pm, people began running in and out of the room with panic on their faces (needing things, PDFs, better pens, for me to text them at certain junctures just so they could leave the room).

At 4 pm there was a lull. Which was punctuated by yelling about twenty minutes later. Where the mood of the meeting pretty much remained until about
7 pm (when, finally, someone laughed, and, then, everybody laughed). At which point drinks and Chinese take-out arrived immediately to the conference room, literally, out of thin air.

And, just like that, the whole place became littered by a million boxes and bottles.

Then, finally, at 8 pm, some people filed out.

Personal calls were made.

And, I guess everything was going to be okay.

Except for me.

Me, at my desk the entire time. Going through the well documented stages of crisis. Imagining, at times, simply abandoning my job and being so happy not to worry about these flight itineraries anymore (a convoluted, headache-inducing travel plan that took several people to three cities in two days, then briefly back here, then off, again, to two other cities).

When I finished my work and left the building (the meeting still going on, though by then securely in it's "wrapping-up" phase), it was late. I was exhausted. But I was happily surprised to walk out into balmy weather. It was warmer than it had been that morning. And this was October.

And, the Loop, as busy as it normally was, was weirdly empty after business hours.

It was nighttime.

I looked up and noticed something spooky quietly unfolding above the University situated at Jackson and State. At eye level, looking east, this intersection is a bookstore, a bus stop, the mouth of the subway, a man with a microphone talking about Our Inevitable Damnation, cars, and people -- with some el tracks tucked behind everything else.

But, by now, it was deserted. And the eerie cloud-thing going on in the upper right corner of my field of vision couldn't be ignored.

Weirdly unfolding clouds, lit by some yet unidentified light, were doing arabesques in an otherwise ink-black night sky.

I thought these clouds might be lit by a spot light or an up-light, but it turned out to be moonlight. The moon in the Loop, normally being an afterthought of a pale speck in the sky (if one notices it), was currently the biggest moon I'd ever seen.

I mean terrifyingly big. The way the moon is idealized in travel photographs of places along the equator.

And then, if this could be any more dramatic, there, a-top the eighteen or twenty stories of the university, amid the moon and the continually disappearing and reappearing veils of clouds, I saw a turret.

How did I ever miss such a detail on this building, before?

It was the northwestern-most facing turret of the building, that, in all it's century old green-copper-conical architectural relentless-ness, stood against this, most creepiest of scenes.
So, an unsettling spectacle of absinthe colored clouds was gathering and re-gathering under a huge October moon, with an old batty turret in the foreground. And, here, I hadn't smoked anything.

I half expected Sherlock Holmes to sweep in
all a-sparkle, brimming with literary magic, merely to inquire if wouldn't join him on an adventure that could only be embarked upon through the Wonders of Reading.

(with him only ever looking at me through that big, psychologically distancing magnifying glass of his).

No. I went home.

At long last. On the west-bound train. Watching as this particular scene shrank away while the moon, itself, remained constant.

And life was, once again, just so.

I Never Promised You Cookies or a Rose Garden or Anything

Imagine that you want to make cookies for someone. You bake them and wait for them to cool on a special cooling rack. Yes, you've thought that far ahead. Things like cooling racks are now a part of your paltry kitchen vernacular.

You're not a baker. And waiting for the cookies to cool falls somewhere between okay-boring and a full on crisis of your super-ego.

But then the fun part finally starts, and it's better than you could have ever imagined. And was probably the whole reason you made the cookies in the first place.

And it turns out that you really like decorating cookies.

Preparing the icing does require every bowl in the house. But that's okay. Mixing up hundreds of gooey-paints to frost one's cookies with just might be the best thing in the whole world.

Besides, you want the colors to be just so. It's a whole cookie-situation that you see so clearly in your mind. And, if you're honest, it's a whole cookie-situation that got you out of bed this morning. Perhaps every morning.

No. It's going so be so very funny. These cookies. And delicious. Of course, that, too.

So you do this in the spirit of: Fun and Happy Cookie Project. Like something out of Martha Stewart minus the perfection or like something your friend Beatrice would do, minus the expertise.

Beatrice, who bakes the kind of cookies that bring tears to peoples's eyes, that reviews are writen about, that are really tables of cookie at big events and weddings.

This will be more fun and less an operation than that. Because Bea, she's got a chef's hat, yes -- but rather than being puffy or cloud-like, it's one of those starched-high numbers (forbidding like an ivory tower or a religious principle that one must adopt for reasons that we won't go into here).

These aren't those cookies. These are lay-man's cookies.

Still, no matter how forgiving a stance you take, about twenty-four hours later, after the icing has set and you've slept and let your mind wander onto other things (and have paid some bills) you decide with fresh eyes that your cookies smack of outsider art.

They're insane.

How did this happen?

How could you have not noticed this before? Was it all the other things going on in your head? Was it the stress? The wine? That fistful of barbiturates rinsed down with a tumbler of vodka?

Actually, unfit. That's the word: The whole batch, all smiling sadly up at you from their stupid plate, are unfit as cookies.

But you need to send them out in the mail. Where, you imagine they will inevitably arrive as cookie-rubble, anyway. Do you have time to start all over again?

Wait --can't we walk away and think about this for a bit?

And on and on late into the night. Then, it's finally decided: you will make the cookies all over again this weekend. Applying all of the principles recently learned during the original (unfit) cookie making. Because we learned quite a lot during in the interim, didn't we?

And because, damn it, we care. About things like cookies. And so everything is better again. Just like that. Except for one thing: This is not the first time one has made and re-made such cookies. Let's be brutally honest, right now.

And it's not just cookies. It's everything.

So, now you might imagine one's whole life going like this. With nothing ever okay or ever simply passable. To the point that even (and perhaps especially) one's handwriting, which, yes, was bad to begin with, but became, later (unfairly) worse - after a few fingers were finally broken (in the most hateful of ways).

So that, ultimately, one only email others. Even when others are situated less than three feet away. Even when speaking to them is clearly an option, because even that might betray your bad handwriting.

So that swirly practice pages of:

aaaaabbbbbbccccccdddddeeeeffffgggghhhhiiiii

might be found one day by one's boyfriend (quite by accident) while one's boyfriend goes looking for a scrap of paper. And then, predictably, all hell breaks loose:

Why do I keep finding these alphabets all over the house?!

as well as:

What the hell is up with you?

Meanwhile, numbers?

I have no problem with numbers.

I have no idea why.

phone numbers

What happens when you realize that you can't remember a phone number that you had for thirteen years?

You remember the prefix and those first three numbers and even the next two - and possibly the third. It's that last digit. It's either 1 or 2, but something nags at you that it might be 3. Really, it's probably just 1 or 2. But you aren't sure.

And that's the thing.

Then you remember how at some point the phone company did something strange. And how you started getting messages from people saying, "um, thanks for telling me your new number, asshole.."

And how that was ten years ago. Somewhat mid-way in the overall history of that phone number. That phone number that had suddenly changed without your knowledge. Back then.

I mean, when exactly was it that your number changed by just one digit? Because there is no record of this.

Was it a Thursday? A Tuesday? Had you on a skirt? Was it pants? Was it overcast? Because I think it was. I recall, for some reason, (in the very reaches of my mind) a leaf. This one leaf. Just one leaf fallen on the ground.

So, I ask (almost forensically), was it Autumn?

Because everything in my being says it was. Of course, no one really knows for sure. And all the court documents suggest that no one knows for sure. And I'm all out of ideas.

But, no matter what, one thing was for sure: the very last digit of your phone number was, without provocation, without any prior notice, changed by the phone company. For no reason whatsoever.

But, still, you got on with your life (as evidenced by many things, not the least of which is this blog post). Fact: The last digit of your phone number was (at some point) changed by the phone company. About ten years ago. For no reason whatsoever. And you never found out why. But you are, at this juncture, more concerned with what you might have been doing or wearing at the time more than anything else.

Which is not only okay, but completley predictable.

Do carry on.

No, really, do - do carry on.

No matter what.

Pay-Cuts, Paper-Cuts & The Tiniest of Violins

We get inspired.

We take out some paper and scissors and sit at the big glass table with all of our supplies and rip fabric into pieces and paint a piece of paper blue. We start downloading funny things to cut up into a tiny, secret, joke-related confetti to sprinkle onto this, our multi-media thing.

And it's working.

But then we walk away. We work for a while. We become all business like. We wear the other clothes. We say the other things. Those things we say only in business. And then, at four o-clock, at the big important meeting, they tell us about our 15% pay cut. And we had expected cupcakes.

Hours pass.

I come back home. On the train: And everyone, I mean everyone is wearing braids. We get home. We drink. We listen to the old music of yore. And, finally, we add the black grease crayon.

Finally.

To, this, the old blue and fabric thing. And It means something. No, we don't stop. Not until it's finished. And, at one point, we do get all righteous about it. We recall it like it was yesterday: The holding things up to mirrors just so that we could see them again. All the swearing. All the tears. All the money. All the vodka. All the cheetos. All the heavy scarves worn during summer months.

So, we started acting like this other person.

Add more black-grease wrought iron swirlything.

And more ink! Add more soap! Just simply breathe on it. It's what we do. We think of sky writing. Of people we've known. Of screens and faces and email and actual conversations: I told her a story this morning that made her keel over in painful laughter = I win.

(thinks)

You know, this dress is a clown's dress if you think about it.

I went home. Really home, that day.

I made a multi-media collage. And ate a wrap sandwich that did not stay wrapped and learned a couple of things: It's the ingredients that must, no matter what, be flat and skinny. It will not roll up otherwise.

Also: toothpicks. Toothpicks hold things together.

Seriously.

And make them the kind with the colorful flourish of plastic fantastic-ness on the decorative end.

Always.

a roasted chicken with a side of acorn squash

It was 36 hours that I ate like a modern-day Paleolithic human being before it began to mess with me.

The problem is that, unlike my hunter-gatherer counterparts, I already know about things like legumes, dairy, grain, and nightshade.

About things like bread and cheese.

About things like staying put and going nowhere and the magic of microwave pop-corn.

And I mean it literally when I say that I love bread.

I will admit that I didn't know how much bread meant to me until these one and a half days.

I knew where grain, dairy and legumes fit in my life, yes. But I had no idea what such meant to me in the scheme of things.

Then, quite innocently, Tom made a pizza.

This while I made myself some broccoli with steak.
I used crushed white, black and red pepper as an impromptu dry rub and there were herbs involved. And lemon. And love.

And I had zero problems.

But then twenty minutes past, and the whole world began to smell like cheese. Several kinds of cheese melting as though from high atop a fiery mountain, then sliding down some crazy, food related volcano somewhere right beneath my nose.

All of these cheeses melting at different rates per their wildly varying (yet genius as a mixture) types. Such variables as (for instance) how long the cheese had been aged, its softness, its dryness, or its mildness vs. its sharpness - all now coming into play.

I just kept getting up and walking into the kitchen then wondering why I was there.

And then the baking of the crust made itself known. And smelled as though I had been removed to that ancient bakery that exists (no matter what) in my heart of hearts. That ancestral oven. You know the one. Brick. Rock. Clay. It doesn't matter. Bread was baking. Alongside the stew. Alongside the meat. Alongside the mash.

And, as a wholesome entity, that every-thing's-going-to-be-okay aroma, it can't be broken down. Not, at least, for this Post-Paleolithic person.

No, I was home.

The home situated deep in the snow-drifted Steppes of my mind. Bread (pizza) was baking in the oven. Right here. Right now.

Bread.

BREAD!

Bread being the staff of life. Bread being the very reason we are so weak and fat. Bread being everything good and bad all rolled into one (the history of it being first a wonderful story about feeding the starving masses, then, not an hour later, about epidemic obesity in America).

It's the hearth. The kitchen. Where the old stories were told. It's the little stone villa with wine and song and the music of a stringed instrument going late into the night somewhere deep in a snow hushed hamlet, where, somehow, a light still burns (where, somehow, a loaf of bread still bakes) despite these cold, unforgiving centuries.

Yes, the harsh weather came blowing in. Yes, they worried about so many things. But was there not laughter? Was there not a sense of the ridiculous? Was there not love?

And, even if there was no money left, and all the crops had died, was there not still a little bit of bread?

This baking bread was, after all, what people who held down the home force were surrounded by all day long.

And it smelled so good.

It was a sign to those who ventured out that they were again, back home.

I cite the modern-day Pilsbury commercial: Everyone has their eyes on the oven. Something magical is occurring. It's hearts, home, full tummies.

No bread was the bosom of existence. The thing that kept people sane and returning. The goal was to venture out, yes, but to then get back home. Not to be sheltered, not to be safe, not to procreate, but to eat bread.

(if not a nest of angel hair pasta, a side of basmati rice or one perfectly roasted ear of corn)

Even, and perhaps especially, when those that had ventured out had been away at sea for years.

Why else would a loaf of bread and a fish (cooked simply in a pan with lemon and butter and a few sprigs of dill) be ubiquitous as a coming together? One that, though elementary (just add wine), can take on near religious properties for the bread and fish eater?

loaves and fish

This the part of my Lutheran schooling that always sounded so delectably savory.

So, was it a pizza (of all things) in all of its bread-y, cheese-y, nightshade-y goodness, that turned my world upside down last night?

Oh, yes. It was.

my inbox is empty

So, I got to the bottom of my inbox.

I had been working on this for weeks. Even though my job is designed so that a person will never get to the bottom of their inbox, I just had to do it.

You understand. I wanted to to show them. I mean really show them. I was going to do what no other person in my current position had ever done: I was going to get to the bottom of my inbox.

I even put together a folder for my supervisor:

Things Ignored for Three Months by Victoria

This folder contained what other assistants might have hid or secretly shred. I even said, I don't want to become the crazy secretary that starts hiding files!

This to the uproarious laughter of my supervisor. She laughed a little too hard at that, actually.

So, I handed her the file which contained those things which kept sifting to the bottom of my inbox over the last three months.

I said: help.

And, though no one ever did help me, I believe it was this act alone that began to turn things around for me. Because, at 3:00 pm on Wednesday I got to the bottom of my inbox.

That's when I saw a stray staple in the upper left corner of my now empty inbox. Mangled, with one of its tines broken off, it was clear that it couldn't be saved.

I placed it quietly into the recycling bin, and said a few words:

You know, you'll probably come back as a another staple. But maybe as a steel girder! There's no telling what's in store for you.

Really. Just no telling.

It was then that I took the paper weight that had always been there (atop the precarious stack) and polished it on my sleeve as though it were an apple or a diamond or something.

I then (as I'm sure you can imagine) put the paper weight back into the in box. Right there, in the very center. It made a glass-on-wood clunking sound that I don't think anyone in the office had ever heard before, because a few curious heads did pop up over their screens and look in my direction when I did this:

Just what is she trying to imply with all of that clunking over there?

And, then, just like that, everything improved.

I became more professional in my bearing.

I sat up straight and heard every bone in my vertebrae click audibly back into place as though a finger had gone skating across a keyboard.

pliiink!

I was a cog.

A hard metal cog with a hairdo that could now not only stand the test of time but maybe even humidity.

The very next day I wore red.

Then, the day after that, I completely ignored the doughnuts. Not as an exercise in discipline, mind you, but because I simply didn't register things like doughnuts anymore.

No, now I went for little cut up vegetables and fresh fruit. I mean all the way down six flights of spider-y stairs and out the crumbling entrance of this ancient building (pieces of chandeliers and plaster falling on me every step of the way) past security (by then, fast asleep) down the street, into a cab and directly to the farmer's market three towns over.

Waving my fist full of petty cash like a money pom-pom the entire way (because, as you may have heard, my inbox was finally empty).

I'll take one peck of apples for the office, please!

Yes. I was immune to all distractions, now.

Because I had gotten to the bottom of my inbox.

And at a juncture when others in my position (we'll call them Person X) had either given up or gotten fired. This usually preceded by weeks of nonsensical office chitter-chatter on the part of Person X, that then gives way to Person X's utter, sullen silence (nobody wants to talk to Person X) that leaves Person X with no recourse but to constantly surf for shoes on Zappos (the resultant spike in shoe deliveries for Person X a well known red flag signaling the end of employment for Person X).

But that wasn't going to be me.

Me? I ran the place.

Forget that. I was the place. I was the whole place.

I turned around (during what I sensed was a lull in the big important meeting) put down my watering can, and (without so much as thinking about it) presented a forty-five minute dissertation on curtain walls and steel case windows that, though it was shocking and uncalled for, brought down the house.
And when I say that there wasn't a dry eye in the conference room that morning, I mean that they were all crying.

For joy, people, sheer joy.

It wasn't ten minutes later that everyone gathered around my desk (some still nibbling on their organic, locally grown apples) to watch amazed as I clicked on the buy now button and purchased New York.

Yes, I do mean the city.