Resignation Anxiety

I don’t know if there is an official name for this, but there should be. The feeling of dread that comes with knowing that you’re about to hand your completely unsuspecting boss your resignation. At a bad time of year. I really am dreading this, and when I dread things, I tend to avoid them.

But I have already accepted another job. And I dread losing that more than I dread handing in the resignation. So I will do it tomorrow. I will!

The new job is exciting. I’m going to be a copywriter. I’m going to be employed in a profession that uses “writer” in the title! I’ll be making more money, and working with actual people, including a good friend, who is responsible for most of this. At least for telling me about it, and making sure my non-writer resume didn’t get ignored. And he’s going to be my supervisor, which is funny and awesome.

It’s all very surreal, still. I hadn’t been thinking about leaving my job until this new opportunity popped up, and all along I’ve been telling myself I wasn’t going to get it. So I haven’t gone through any kind of closure. Haven’t even been imagining a last day, or what I’ll need to do before I go.

That will start tomorrow.

And, I’m back from Las Vegas.


Bellagio and Caesar's Palace

Gambled very little, and as a result, lost very little. I did accept my job by cell phone at Caesar's Palace. And I learned how to play Pai Gow poker, which makes me feel that I know at least a little. I’m disappointed that I didn’t learn craps, just because I want to roll the dice down the table and get high fives from everyone, but that shit is complicated. I understand more than I did, at least.

The main reason that I went to Vegas, and the reason my family was there (other than to gamble, which most of them love), was because my sister-in-law was singing with this band at the Bellagio hotel. She sang with the band on Saturday night, and it was totally awesome. She rocks. And she got invited back anytime, and to possibly sit in when the lead singer (who she met while doing hurricane relief in Mississippi) goes on vacation.


Katie rocks it out with Isis

Anyway, good times. Some more pics on Flickr.

I’m totally screwed up, timewise. I felt relieved coming home today. I’m such an east coast girl. And I realized that one of the things I love is the time zone. I just don’t like that there are people in the US, family and friends, who are awake and experiencing the day before I am. I want to be first! First, I say! I hate being the last to know anything. Even if it’s just a day of the week. I want to be first to experience Sunday!

And, yes, I am a bit nuts.

Exhaustion

I'm so tired. I'm going to fall asleep standing up. And it's only "11:20."

Trips like these, short ones, all full of activity, make me wonder how long I could go at this pace before I actually had a break down. Before being deprived of quiet and alone time would send me over the edge.

Before I had to seek out an empty library, curl up in a corner, and not talk. To anyone. For days.

Hey, Baby, Let's go to Vegas

This post was written on some People magazine reply cards while on an airplane. I couldn't find any blank pieces of paper.

I'm on the aisle, next to a girl reading Jughead comics, watching Biggie music videos, and surreptitiously turning on her cell phone. Across the aisle from me are two guys, obnoxious ones, the kind of guys who make audible comments about the physical assets of women and would, I imagine, rather be flying Hooters Air. They find themselves hysterically funny.

This is a game flight, which means that the flight attendants come around with a trash bag to collect dollar bills, onto which we have written our seat numbers. The bills go into the bag, and then the flight attendants draw one of the bills, like a lottery.

One of the guys across the aisle grins at me. "You look excited about this game," he says.

"I am. My first time in Vegas. Maybe this will be the beginning of my lucky streak." I answer. We exchange some brief small talk about why I'm going, and where I'm from. When he asks, I say "Pennsylvania," because I'm afraid that Lancaster sounds too amish-y. But the woman behind me wants to know WHERE in PA, so I answer.

"My advice to you, young lady, is to keep your hand under your chin when you get to Vegas, and that way when your jaw drops and your eyes pop out, you can push your chin back up." The guy demonstrates. "It's a pretty liberal city."

Do I look that naive? I wish I could lean back in my seat, take a long draw on a cigarette and expel smoke rings expertly. "You don't have to tell ME," I would say, "I've been around the block a few times." Like I really know what I'm talking about. But how does he know anything about my experiences? Just because I've never been to Vegas? I'm wearing black pants and a sweater . . . nothing too unsophisticated. Perhaps it was the fact that I did Sudoku and crossword puzzles the whole flight, like an old woman.

16F is the lucky winner of 99 one-dollar bills. That's not me. Or the obnoxious guys. They try to get everyone around them to ring call buttons in protest. "Dude, it'll be anarchy."

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Well, I arrived. Slot machines all through the airport, as you'd imagine, and more chauffeurs with signs than I've ever seen. Otherwise, it's looks just like the movies. I saw a guy from the new UPN TV show Pepper Dennis. He was riding the little airport tram with me. I didn't know he was on TV (I've never watched the show), but another woman stopped to talk to him and did know who he was. Maybe I'll see someone even MORE famous before I leave! (see, I really am horribly unsophisticated).

And if I don't think about what time it is back home (12:55 AM), I'm OK. 'Cause really, it's only 10 PM and there's a long night ahead. My brother and sis-in-law arrive at 12:00 PDT, and then we're going to the casinos.

Maybe I should take a nap.

Wedding Mania

My best friend is getting married in six weeks.

She just got engaged on April 15, so this is a hurriedly planned wedding. It’s going to be small, and informal, but still. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into planning a wedding, and when you only have seven weeks altogether, all that planning’s got to be crammed into a very short amount of time. So, phone calls have been flying back and forth between me, the bride, and the groom's sister and mother, all of whom have an intense interest in the planning of this wedding, and get no end of fun out of talking about it.

Last night the bride and I went and looked at wedding dresses. She’d found two that she liked, and I wanted to see them. I spent an hour and forty-five minutes at a work meeting last night, all the while impatiently thinking “When can I leave? Do we have to discuss this? Can we come to some kind of conclusion RIGHT NOW? You people drive me nuts. I have wedding dresses to look at!”

Fortunately, after a mad dash through the wind and the rain, we got to the shop before it closed. I liked one of the two dresses she tried on very much, and I told her she should buy it. It’s her size, and there’s no time to order a dress and have it altered. That takes months. She wasn’t planning to spend that much money, but really, it’s not too expensive. For a wedding dress. And the dress has a name. It’s called Kate. So now we refer to it that way. Kate is very beautiful. It’s time to take Kate home with you. The only problem is that Kate is kind of long, with a small train, and that’s just too much for her. Kate should be floor-length. But that’s an easy alteration to make.

I think I’m considered the bridesmaid in this affair, which means I have to find a dress of my own. The bride is very flexible . . . she doesn’t care what I wear, or what color it is, since I’m the only person in the wedding party other than the groom and his best man. This leaves me with a zillion options, but I don’t think it’ll be that easy. Finding a dress that I like and that looks good is always a problem.

In other news, I bought a digital camera. That I’ll take with me to Las Vegas tomorrow! My new plan is to win $10 million on nickel slots.

And I might be getting a new job (if the whole winning $10 million doesn't work out). Interviews have taken place. References have been called. More about that if it actually happens.

A Post About Nothing

After being asked this weekend by several people who read my blog if I've updated recently, I decided I should. Several ideas for a post have floated through my head at various times this weekend. None really struck me. But since I've come up with nothing better . . . .

Chickens. They're definitely my favorite animals. They find their own food (at least if they're outside), they run around and are cute, provide food in the form of eggs and meat, eat things like potato skins, vegetable scraps, and eggshells, and put themselves away at night (they have a roosting instinct and will go into a coop or up a tree automatically to roost). What better pet could you have? I don't think they provide much in the way of love or affection, but hey, they sure don't demand much, either.

Serenading. Back in the day, certain single young men of my dad's generation took great pleasure in "serenading" newly married couples upon their return from their honeymoon or on their wedding night. This involved shooting off double-barreled shotguns, running chainsaws, revving motorcycle engines, and just being as generally annoying and loud as possible. No one does this anymore; everyone I know thinks its immature and stupid, and I agree. However, I kind of like the idea of a bunch of young people getting together to actually plan some shenanigans. Some of these events took some coordination. Now, I think the idea could come up, but everybody would just sigh and call it too much work. Let's just stay home and play video games.

Fruity drinks. Why can't straight men drink fruity drinks without feeling gay? Who decided that a drink is somehow definitive of one's masculinity or sexuality? Drink fruity drinks, hetero men! If it feels good, do it! Whatever works for you! I'm not a hater!

And, a serious question that I've asked a couple of times today: is it possible for a church/denomination to be involved in politics without the church being corrupted? I'd like to think that the church could change the system, but somehow I think that it would just get sucked in.

Randomness II

This is the kind of post that's just made up of a bunch of junk.

1) I switched gyms today. My old gym got rid of classes and is closing their pool, two of the main reasons I chose that gym. Sadly, the new gym does not have individual TVs at every machine, which sucks. I love having my own TV, right in front of my face. Now I have to buy a radio, and tune it to the proper frequency so I can watch a show that I don't really want to watch. But good things about the new gym: awesome pool, cherrywood lockers, classes at better times, it's cheaper. And it's open until midnight!

Also of note: if you go to a gym and they tell you that the registration fee is $149, look at it and shake your head sadly. "Wow, that seems a little high." Then wait to see what they'll do. I got the fee down to $75. And then I was sorry I didn't push it further.

2) Every month for the past four months, I've gotten a call from a kindly woman from the census bureau. My address has gotten on their list somehow, so Emily calls me to check in, to ask me where I work and how many hours, and if I'm sheltering any Hurricane Katrina evacuees. It's gotten to the point that when the phone rang a little after 8 PM tonight, I knew it was Emily, calling to check up on me. We've developed a little rapport, and I'm always glad when she gets through the canned questions and we have a little spontaneous conversation about weather or my job. And I feel like a virtuous person, because I'm nice to her and not verbally abusive, which is apparently the case with other people.

3) I deleted my Yahoo personals profile today. I've been sick of it for awhile, but never got around to deleting it. Maybe, when I'm feeling ready, I will rewrite and repost.

4) Last Monday I volunteered to upgrade our very sad church website. I know so little about html, but I thought it might be good practice. Anything is better than the way it looks now. I have no time or energy for this at the moment. But I really do want to try it. There are some talented html people at church already, and I'm afraid someone's going to ask them to do it, and then my opportunity will be lost.

5) Have you seen the new Volkswagen Jetta commercials? They're very jarring and startling. Kind of like a car accident. Which is why I think they work.

6) Las Vegas in two weeks. I feel like I don't have clothing that's appropriate (read: slutty). I need a spangly gold halter top or something.

Enough. I feel like there's another something I wanted to add to this list. But now I've forgotten.

Easter Bling

Yeah, today was Easter.

Such a weird holiday in the Christian year. No real build-up to the day itself, other than what takes place in churches, and no long trips or huge family meals. Small family meals, but people who live out of town don't make a big effort to come in. Good Friday is solemn if you go to church, but I worked Friday and then went out for sushi. Saturday I went shopping and did laundry.

But Easter Sunday is always fun. When we were little, my brother and I hunted Easter baskets that my dad took great delight in hiding. Last Sunday, when the big family gathering happened, he hid chocolate eggs in the condo for us to find.

And now, after the somberness of Lent, I really appreciate church on Easter. The only Sunday in the year where we have brass instruments playing during the service. A choir. Flowers all over the front of the church. And ridiculous amounts of unabashed joy.

Today I was sort of in charge of arranging our flowers into some kind of order. Sue had come in with a giant vase of forsythia, yellow and overflowing. We needed some balance on one side of the stage, so, when she asked where she should put it, I told her to place it there.

"Is it too much?" she asked. "Is that why you want to put it there? Is it bling? Is it too bling?"

Sue is about fifty, with three young adult children. She saw me laughing at her use of the word bling, and laughed too.

"Psshh," I said (and I really did make a sound like that). "It's Easter. It's all about the bling. You can't have too much bling."

I wonder if I said this too loudly. The church was filling up, and the service was going to start. It's quite possible that more people heard me than I'd intended. Oh well. It's true.

Later, after some unabashedly joyful singing and a lot of "Christ is risen"s, we went to the front of the church for communion. Our pastor, Ron, was ripping pieces of bread off his chunk and handing them to the congregants.

"Mel, this is the Body of Christ," he said to me. He pulled hard at the chunk to free a piece for me. "Gah. This is a really gummy loaf of bread."

First of all, I like that he called me Mel. Secondly, I like that he felt relaxed enough to make this comment to me. I took my bread on to the cup of juice, which Sue happened to be holding, and dipped the bread into it (as a bit of trivia, this way of taking communion is called "intinction"). "The blood of the new covenant," Sue said to me as I dipped my bread. I popped it into my mouth. "Have a bling day!" she continued. I grinned at her, my mouth full of gummy, doughy bread, and moved on.

Ron was right. That loaf of bread was not cooked through. I had to chew it like gum. And earlier that morning, I had seen him carrying the Giant brand grape juice into the church in its plastic jug.

I used to think that if you saw the mechanisms behind the rituals, if they weren't holy and solemn and mysterious, that they somehow seemed less meaningful. And I still feel that way, a little bit. But today was probably the least reverent communion experience I have ever had. And possibly the most meaningful.

Step by Step, Heart to Heart . . .

While posting about the Heart Family yesterday, I went on a google search to find a picture. I turned up nothing. Well, some text. Some baby dolls and grandparents and clothes still in the box. But not the plain old whitebread family. So, I decided to remedy that situation and finally give the internet an image of this not-so-popular 80s toy. I went home, went to my basement and found the Rubbermaid container that holds the childhood toys that I'm saving, dug out the Heart family, and posed them in my backyard for a picture. It's my little contribution to the vast world wide web. I'm so proud!



Now, granted, this is only three-fourths of the Heart Family. They haven't been the same since their little blond-haired cherub, Brooklynn MiKaylah, fraternal twin to their son Jaden Dakota, went missing. You'll also notice, if you look closely at her left hand, that Mrs. Heart is wearing a wedding ring (or at least a piece of gold leaf glued to the outside of her hand). She's respectably married, unlike that slut, Barbie. But her husband does not have a ring. It always annoys me when men don't wear their rings, unless they do the kind of work that could result in a ring getting caught and a finger being torn off. But look at the way this guy's dressed (he's got a tie on, you can't see it). There's no reason why he shouldn't wear a ring. He's probably cheating on her with his secretary, sick of feeling trapped in suburbia, she's been nagging him to trade in the cabriolet for a minivan. Ugh. He looks like that type.

I posed the family under my bleeding heart in the backyard, because I liked the "heart" connection (although the term bleeding heart is most commonly associated with liberals, and I have a feeling that the Heart Family are red-staters all the way). You can't see the bleeding heart in my best Heart Family pic, though, so I'm just posting the bleeding heart pictures separately because I can. I'm proud of this plant. It does so well in my backyard.





And this just goes to prove that even if you're the only kid in fifth grade whose terrarium dies within five days of its creation, you're not destined to botanical failure for the rest of your days.

Oh, the Humanity!

I have always been a Red Sox fan, because I was raised that way. My dad listened to Red Sox games as farm boy in Pennsylvania, back in the days of super-powerful radio stations . . . I don’t really understand how this worked, but I know that you could get Boston and NYC radio in PA regularly, especially at night. (Somehow it seems like radio technology has gone backward, not forward in intervening years).

My mom went to Red Sox games. She was in the stands for one of the 1967 World Series games, and scored them and knew all kinds of stats. Her parents were fans, her siblings are fans, and my little cousins now wear all kinds of Red Sox gear and will be the next generation of diehards.

So, I know about the Sox, and I’ve been to Fenway, and I stayed up late for most of the Yankees-Red Sox playoffs in 2004, and, of course, the big World Series win.

But I have no memory of the 1986 World Series. I don’t know why. I was eight years old, and this must have been a big deal. Perhaps I’ve just blotted it out. More likely I was shut away in my bedroom, creating a Fisher Price People saga or driving the Heart Family around in their car, a jaunty cabriolet. (Am I the only one who remembers the Heart Family? I think they were meant to be a wholesome "family values" alternative to Barbie and Ken, but I just mixed them all together).

Anyway, I got to relive (or perhaps live for the first time) the bottom of the tenth inning, Game 6, the 1986 World Series via this. For anyone who has any interest in a) baseball, b) Nintendo 64 RBI Baseball, or c) doing cool things with old technology, I highly recommend it. It’s awesome. And it also makes me understand even more why 2004 was the big deal that it was.

It’s also very depressing. Because I didn’t realize exactly HOW close the Red Sox were to winning that game and the World Series. I got this awful feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when this thing started, because I knew what was coming. And I knew it wasn’t going to be good.

Help Me if You Can

Ever since my computer at work got invaded by insidious spyware, I have been having a conversation with Dahli . . . aka Steve.

I “met” him on one of those computer forums, where you can post your problems and someone who knows a lot more than you do will give you instructions. “Download this, extract this, run this and this, and post a HijackThis log.” No matter what else is involved, they always tell you to “post a HijackThis log.” Top thing to do if you have an insidious spyware invasion: download HijackThis.

Anyway, since March 20 Dahli/Steve has been my guide through this "rare and wonderful new world"* of spyware/virus removal. He sends me to download cleaner programs, and I do it. He tells me to post the results, and I do. He tells me to delete C:\windows\system32\stuffyoullnevergetridofwithoutme.exe and I do. I trust him explicitly, and yet for all I know he could be advising me to remove Microsoft Office Suite in its entirety and set the innards of my computer tower on fire.

Well, maybe not. I’d like to think I’m computer savvy enough to catch that.

So, I think I have a little crush on Dahli/Steve. He posts replies to me at odd times . . . so he might be in a different time zone. I wonder about him. He’s probably Indian. Or maybe he’s just an acne-ridden American college freshman who spends most of his time alone in his room, posting on computer help forums.

These computer help forums are great, but I want a Dahli/Steve in other areas of my life, too. So I can post symptoms of any problem on a forum, he’ll tell me what to do, and then the problems, after weeks of posting the results of my errands, will result in a new, clean, and happy situation for all.

*anyone who can tell me the source of this quote will be my new BFF and win a prize. Promise!

Body and Soles

This week was church cleaning. We have regular employed cleaners who vacuum and dust and wipe down the bathroom sinks, but once a year in the spring everyone gets an assignment.

My assignment this year was the same as last year: to wipe down baseboards and walls, to clean one of the women’s bathrooms, and to vacuum a specific section of carpet. By the time I’d arrived, one of the other people assigned to my task had already done most of the work. But there was still enough that I had to get on my knees and scrub some baseboards behind the water heater.

Next week our church will have footwashing. I’ll kneel on the carpet again, and wash someone’s feet. (A woman, because our church doesn’t mix genders for this). Getting down to scrub baseboards reminded me that footwashing is coming. The posture. And the scrubbing.

Mennonites don’t put a lot of stock in the whole church building thing. The building is a shelter for the actual church members. The Body. “Church” is much more than just the building in which it’s (we’re?) housed. And I’d be missing the obvious connection if I didn’t point out that we also believe that human beings are “more than the building in which they’re housed.”

I’ve been conscious of my feet lately. I blame yoga, and Mountain pose, and how we’re always supposed to be grounding the four corners of our feet into the floor. I’ve been thinking about how my how the ground feels under my feet, or how the soles of my shoes rub against them.

Church cleaning and footwashing and yoga remind me again of physical world in which we live, and the physical bodies we inhabit.

For what that’s worth. You'd think that it wouldn't be hard to remember to be conscious of this. The physical world surrounds me all the time. My body is still an essential part of me. And yet I take it for granted all the time. I think sometimes I need a reminder.

The Difference

When you're a teenager going through horrible times, you don't think they're ever going to end, and you certainly never think about what good could possibly come out of them.

When you're twenty-something, while you're in the middle of the crap, you know you are going to learn something. And it pisses you off. Because you don't want to have to go through this to "become a better person" or "learn a valuable lesson."

And then you come out, and you have learned a valuable lesson and become a better person.

And although you're not sure it's worth it, you still wouldn't go back to where you were before.