summer panic

I recently interviewed for a job and got a few rounds in before they said, "No thanks" Which was fine because, even if offered it, no way I could take it. Would be a pay cut what with upending my whole schedule and childcare. 

This then made me realize I'm stuck in my current gig for what will effectively be forever. Coupled with the start of the summer time busy season and this whole long weekend has just been one of gnawing dread. 

I'll flutter with housework doing four giant loads of laundry and then folding it in a late night marathon session. Or pickup the endless sticks the basswood tree spits out in the back yard. No dirty dish sits for too long. All this so I can work at work and be content that "at least the house work is done!"

Or I'll go in early to the office or an a weekend to knock out some of the endless building stuff it takes to transition. Peel stickers off the floor and scour away the chiaroscuro halo from the floor with Goo Gone. Move boxes from one office to another. Vacuum the spot the custodian ignored. All so when the work week begins I be prepared for the middle management curveball. We need this budget re done. Fuck around in all these spreadsheets. Fix my phone, my computer, my anything.

Or I'll day dream hard. Imaginary conversations with everyone from high school teachers to my kid's dentist about how this is how it will be. I'll narrate being a long haul trucker (when I'm really just driving to fix to someone's phone) and debate the best truck stop boiled peanuts in rhe northern Florida panhandle. Daydream adventures with everyday people. These sometimes slip into blunter fantasies. If you've read the blog then, trademark, the hottest thing on earth is women with swords and I spin up scenarios for people right out of the pulp pages. This is often people from work who I hype into scintillating heroes capable of hacking a main frame while being shot at, looking great in the whole process by the way, even though we all know each other as flawed.

I'll read or play video games. Go for silly little walks but the only thing that effectively blunts that summer panic are the above.  I may not make it another ten years.

Rain Musing

May 28th made itself a summer day that felt more like a late March afternoon. Just this soaking sheets of biting drops that fell along every axis. A co worker told me about the benefits of keeping a pair of rubber boots in your office. For days like these where the office requires me to stand idle outside in all weather. And in our cookie crumb cracked parking lots the boots are fun to step with in the deep collected pools of rain water. Where a sewer drain moves slowly and the water gathers all above the grate. The rain makes the pool deeper and dip the boots below the growing surface.

The day also had a persistent wind that constantly hummed but sometimes gather all its strength into a rigorous and humbling blast. I am screaming at people two feet away getting blasted and soaked to the cellular level. This is the kind of wet that ruins tools left out in the elements. Not the every day wear of sweat or idle dew. The moisture in the thick weeds my hoe cuts through? No problem. The ten minutes of rain? Disastrous.

And it's cold in a nagging way like a low grade fever. It's OK you think when really it is wrong and totally out of place. A sign of a washed out weekend to come. Ever rising sweels that deny the ferry boats and part time sailors hopefully for a new summer on the water.

Taping My Shows

 As a teen, every Sunday, my mother would order me to tape the broadcast of Sex and the City on the Spanish HBO channel. This was during the show's original run and I was fortunate enough to have the cable box in my room. She had a VCR but not that cable box so every Sunday I would tape these episodes with Carrie and Big and the gang dubbed over by a mish mosh of Mexican voice actors. 

Mami felt her life was like "Sex and the City." I am just like Carrie!

But, I don't recall her ever watching the tapes. Sitting down in front of the TV in her room in the bright blonde wooden hobby cabinet and commiserating with the girl gang. The only person who ever did watch it was the Chilean neighbor, a macho car salesman guy who adored Samantha. "She is a woman who is like a man and that is funny," he would say as he grabbed the fresh tape each Monday afternoon. I think he watched it for the brief nudity which always felt to me like drinking Coke Zeros for the sake of sugar. That is working very hard for a fantasy. 

Mami had a girl gang. 

Las Cuatro A's or The Four A's

Angela (that's Mami), Amanda, Adel and. honestly I forget the fourth one. She may not have existed. Maybe it was a floating person who swapped in depending on when they are available. "Hey its Thursday and Albertina can't come so its going to be Alicia. She can get us into Egipto!" Egipto being a club right on the business side of the Condado lagoon modeled after pop ancient Egypt right out of Stargate. It was better than Shanahan's, a faux Irish bar closer to our home and much more popular with younger people, including folks form my highschool who would run into Mami. 

This is the time where Mami invented the Madras drink. A Cosmopolitan with a dollop of frozen orange juice concentrate swizzled into the glass. Sex and City meets the Floribama Shore type drink. I say invented because she introduced me to it when she asked me to make her one. It could have been something she overheard or some bartender at Egipto told her but here is the recipe

1 ounce vodka (Mami's favorite brand, actually Puerto Rico's favorite brand is Finlandia)

1 ounce Cointreau (needs to be Cointreau. I had no clue there were other brands of triple sec until an adult and then holy smokes is Cointreau expensive)

2 ounce cranberry juice cocktail

0.5 of lime juice

dollop of frozen orange juice concentrate. Dip a butter nice into the cardboard can and just prick the surface. Maybe size of a red bean.

Mix the first four with ice in a shaker and pour into a glass. Then swirl in the orange juice concentrate

Validation

 At some point my main motivation for the day to day became a pointed and petty need to be validated. This has to be the start of some mid life crisis. The time where I start writing blog posts about how the pretty young new hire wants to date me, the overweight pushing 40 guy with anxiety and a high blood sugar level. I mean, why wouldn't she, amiright. Or my hobbies become obnoxious, supported by an ability to know spend disposable income on the periphery of them. 

I once worked with someone, we will call him Steve, that, at this age, got really into dieting and working out. But not for muscle mass or tone. Just slimness. I could pick up Steve. A pair of 5th grade girls could pick up Steve. So, Steve, looked like a solitary carnation tossed into a novelty coffee cup. Just tall and skinny and there. But, Steve, he never shut up about his diet. "I lost 20 lbs this summer. I don't know if you noticed. Just by cutting out sweets and breads. Lots of veggies and fiber."

"Hey, did I show you my fitness tracker app on my phone. I just use it for calorie counting"

I once was asking Steve about some receipt he missed and he was stretching on the floor the whole time. "Yeah I will get that to you," while he comes up from a cobra pose.

That is how that manifested for Steve. For me, its the little like or heart emojis in the work chat Slack. "You are always saving me," said someone in a Zoom chat and I just about melted.

Professionally, I don't need the "attaboy"s. But personally, oh yeah, please because if not then I know y'all hate me and we will for sure have to fight. 

Influencer

Yo know, I am somewhat of an influencer myself.

My job is one of those mile wide inch deep type things. I juggle disparate responsibilities usually only reserved for start up businesses or some wacky sitcoms where somone is trying to do two jobs at once to save money for a sweet first car.

"Hey, I clean the toilets and balance the books! I can have it all!"

One responsibilities is writing many things to be ignored.

Email on how to submit your time off requests? Oh yeah that will get deleted.

A little quick card to keep on your desk with rhe number to the tech line? Yeah, that will become a coaster.

Explaining how to handle the visit from the landlord or that by end of the year I'm moving the copier to the third floor? Yeah, I'm going to get a "no one told us."

But I've realized that my voice had a certain fondness for words. Almost like verbal tics (the "ummms" and "likes") save its key words that others then slip into communication back. Or even, in a true win, their own language.

For example, wonky.

Which is use to succinctly express that something is fucked up. 

Another is zaniness. Which I use to denote just general inefficiency and levels of eye rolling pain. "Oh, I'm here on anti zaniness duty" meaning I'm here to be the adult.

Another is yoink. To denote stealing something. I know somone is stealing disinfectant wipes from the supply room but yoink sounds so whimsical. Its me turning the Patagonian Toothfish onto Chilean Sea Bass. Except with office petty theft. Note that if you say "yoink" while yoinking something then it is OK! But somone has to hear you (hence affirming you are ok with stealing so maybe don't do it, ok).

One I am trying to do is ZOMG. Which one pronounces zohmygod with a strong listing style z.

ZOMG there is cake in the break room!

Things like that.