While I was in the breakroom this morning, The Red Phone started ringing!
Gah!
I almost jumped out of my shoes. I stared at it in confusion and disbelief, much like how people respond to a ringing payphone. I wavered over whether or not to answer it. After about seven rings, it stopped.
Was this a matter of national importance? Or simply one of those “the warranty on your car has expired…” call ‘bots? We may never know.
I guess the phone works now.
One of my all time favorite series of posts on this little blog has been the “Office Archeology” series of scenes from my former employer.
From the first week I worked at the new employer, I’ve kept my eye out for potential Office Archeology items to continue the series. So far, no luck. This place is kept spotless. There are no weird wrappers on the stairs, no lockless keys on the hallway cabinets, and no abandoned staplers laying about. Nope.
I mean, that’s good, right? But almost a little weird too. Every office seems to have that bit of junk that everyone ignores. But not this place.
That said, I have managed to fine one item that, while not junk, absolutely confounds me. Here’s a poor quality iPhone photo:
This piece of historic telephony is located in the break room, right above the trash/recycling/compost bins. In fact, off to the left is the chart that provides helpful suggestions about where to toss your trash.
At first I sort of noticed it, but ignored it. My company has occupied this building for over twenty years, and I figured it was a remnant of the past. A leftover.
But over time, I became more and more fascinated by the red telephone.
Why red? Why in the breakroom? Is there a conspiracy happening?
If I pick up the red phone, do I talk directly to Gorbachev?
Look, for a child of the Cold War era, the red telephone means something!
Remember the days when Ronald Reagan sat in the Oval Office with his finger on the button and the red phone at his side? It was a staring contest to see who would blink first. Gah! THE RED PHONE!
Soon enough, my obsessive compulsiveness kicked in. I couldn’t ignore the red phone any longer. It wasn’t just something in the background but this THING that was there in my environment taunting me!
My need to be “the good girl’ and follow the rules (meaning, if it’s not yours, leave it alone) and my intense curiosity began to collide.
I must pick it up! I can’t pick it up! I must pick it up! I can’t pick it up!
I asked someone who’s worked here a while about the red phone. I hoped that answers would help ease my OCD.
“Um, I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” she replied, when asked.
This is what normal people do. They don’t obsess about a red phone.
Finally, when the days and nights of curiosity and agony were too much too take, and I found myself alone in the break room, I quickly looked left, I looked right, then lifted the red receiver from the red base, and held it to my ear.
I could hear nothing. “Hello,” I said in sotto voce, eyebrows knit together waiting for all to be revealed.
“Hello?” I said again to the silence.
Then I tap-tap-tapped at the hanging up lever.
Nothing. The phone is dead. I was right, it’s a leftover.
Not satisfied, a week later I sat in a meeting with a few members of our IT team, including the voice engineer guy. At the end of the meeting, I cornered him and asked about the red phone.
“Oh, that’s for disaster recovery. Since we all use VOIP lines on our desks and cell phones, we have to keep one wired line on every floor in case of emergency.”
Ah ha. Well that makes sense.
“Did you know that the phone doesn’t work?” I asked.
He shrugged and said, “Oh well!” and walked away.
Fabulous. The emergency backup phone doesn’t work. Now I have a whole new thing to obsess about.
Through the course of my life, I look back and with the clarity of hindsight and find those moments that formed my foundation. Lessons with impact that linger in my memory and shape my days.
Today, when I navigated over to my once a week Theme Thursday site, I saw that the word this week is: Face.
Well, this left me stumped. I tucked the word into one of the creases in my brain and thought about it for a while. This is when some of the best ideas hit me, when I’ve planted a seed then forget about it. Something worthwhile often blooms.
What happened is that I had a memory. Just a flash, but enough to remind me.
I was eight, maybe? Perhaps actually younger. I was wearing a black leotard and pink tights. I had ballet class to attend in an hour or two, and so I was ready to go.
While waiting, I was doing what kids do…fiddling around with stuff. I’d somehow acquired a rubber band and that had captured my interest. *sproing, sproing*
I played it like a guitar, stretching and loosening it to get better notes.
I used it like a slingshot to send balls of paper zipping through the sky.
I wrapped it around my thumb, took it off, wrapped it around again.
Then, for some reason I can’t quite explain, I wrapped the rubber band around the end of my nose. Unwrapped it. Wrapped it again, tighter this time. It didn’t hurt and felt sort of weird so I went and looked in the mirror. Laughed, then left it on my nose and walked around.
After a while, I heard my mom calling, it was time to get in the car. I took the rubber band off my nose, left it on my desk, got my stuff and headed out to the car and climbed in.
My mom, with an eagle eye for such things, asked “what happened to your nose?”
I was like, “what?” and touched my nose. All seemed well.
Mom made me look in the visor mirror. Seems that rubber band had left a bruise on the end of my nose. A dark blue bruise in a perfect circle.
Yay!
So needless to say, the gig was up. I had to explain what I’d done. (confession is good for the soul….or so the parish priest used to tell me.)
My mom gave me one of those looks a parent gives a child when they confess to something like wrapping a rubber band around their nose. Then she gave me a stern lecture. She wasn’t mad. But she had something very firm to impress upon me.
I don’t remember the exact text of what she said, but the gist was….don’t mess with your face. If you are going to monkey around like that with a rubber band, use your elbow or your toe , but not your face. Your face is the first thing people see when they meet you. That’s where people form their first impression. And do you really want the first impression to be a big dark blotch on the end of your nose?
She also warned me that the girls at dance class would likely tease me. I thought “no way, they won’t care.” Well, they cared. They cared a lot. Those snotty girls made comments. And pointed and laughed. And made fun of me mercilessly.
They made fun of me a lot anyway because they were all thin and lithe and had visions of ballet careers in their minds. I was the opposite of thin and lithe and had visions of grilled cheese sandwiches in my mind.
You picking up what I’m putting down?
So I thought about what my mom had said. I initially resisted what she said when the “talking to” came down, but later on, I knew she was right.
Damnit.
The advice stuck with me, and I’ve stuck with it.
So don’t monkey around with your face. For me, that extends to lip tucks and eye brow lifts and injections of all kinds. My face is my calling card, and as it ages, it tells my story.
Look away, boys, I’m headed down a girly road today.
While The Good Man is watching James Bond (The Man with the Golden Gun), I am on the other end of the couch doing up my finger nails.
I don’t usually mind painting my own nails with regular polish. It can be messy, but I’m fairly good at it.
Last month while at the hair salon, I got caught up on the latest trashy mags like People, US and Star. In one of them I saw an ad for Sally Hansen Salon Effects and it piqued my curiosity.
This new product is nail polish strips that are applied like stickers to the nail. I was VERY suspicious that I’d be able to apply this product without totally messing it up, but I went to a local CVS to check ’em out.
While there, another woman was looking at the selection and I asked if she’d tried them. She said she had, and what’s more, she told me that after a week (she’s a hairdresser), the nail polish looked as good as ever. She held out her hands to show me.
She also noted that these bad boys were pretty easy to apply, and recommended putting on a top coat just to seal ’em in.
I was convinced, so I dove in and bought a couple boxes. They aren’t cheap, $9 at your local Walgreens or CVS, but that’s still cheaper than a professional manicure.
Last week I tried the “Raise A Glass” champagne color and got many compliments. Through eight days they had nary a chip and stayed on very well. The only reason I took off the color (with regular nail polish remover) was that I was ready to try a new color.
Today I’ve applied “Bling It On” and am quite happy with the glittery pink color. I use a product called Out The Door for a quick dry topcoat (I get it at Target) and all is wonderful.
I gotta say, this is a quick and easy no muss way to apply professional looking nail polish.
Just had to share my new find!
And just to meet the rules of the blogging road, I was not paid for this post, I’m simply very happy with this new product. See my crappy iPhone photo below.
Happy Sunday!
(Note to self, get some lotion on those cuticles!)
It’s a hot summer afternoon and the late day sun is baking the concrete and the asphalt and the children in the backyard.
Even the grass is hot under bare feet as the mercury climbs over one hundred degrees and the town swelters.
From somewhere over the Sandias, a mass of clouds, not there ten minutes ago, begins to move and swirl and pick up momentum.
Blackening like a fresh bruise, the clouds grow darker and more imposing right in front of your eyes.
Before moisture is wrung loose, the clouds must announce their presence with all the showmanship of a meteorological Liberace.
Gaudy lightening forks across the sky, splitting into tongues, lapping out for opposite minded currents.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four….
An Earth shattering crack shakes the house on its frame and the thunder sounds like the hand of God is ripping the sky asunder.
The cloud’s fireworks rage on, putting on a dry show while pent up demand for the rain grows stronger.
We’re all waiting in anticipation for what Mother Nature has to offer. In the desert, her moisture offerings don’t always make it all the way to the ground before evaporating.
The maddening effect of 7% humidity.
The wailing wind rushes through the streets lifting corners of shingles and twirling tree tops like green haired Troll dolls and rattling every window.
Howling in its intensity, the wind takes patio tables and trash cans and everything not nailed down and turns it on end. Over end. Over end.
Dogs stop howling and begin whimpering, begging to come in.
Children who were brave enough to face the lightening and thunder now race inside as pea sized hailstones on the force of the wind are pile driven into sun burnt skin.
“Ow!” they shout and race for cover.
After the showy display of hard frozen pebbles, the storm is ready to give up its cargo.
Rain, big heavy drops begin falling. No, not lightly first and then harder. Nuance won’t do.
The skies open up and the angels pour buckets out of the clouds and oh holy sh*t is the rain pouring down.
For ten minutes the world is coming apart and you hope the roof holds the walls hold the windows hold and “oh please don’t let that be a tornado.”
And then as quickly as it started, it’s done. The boiling clouds move on, intent on playing out their performance in another town another state another day.
The skies turn blue and the sun picks up where it left off, blazing down on the world below. Quickly, the wet ground starts to warm up.
Ozone lingers in the air and the drying rain gives off a smell of wet, hot concrete and moist earth.
The odor is fresh, clean, pure, natural.
Once frightened children begin to creep outside to play in the last hours of the daylight savings time white hot summer sun that soon enough gives over to pinks and oranges. Stars begin to peek through the sky….
And all of this is meant to answer the one simple question:
“For me, the smell of childhood is…”
Image found over at kirstenkoza.com. Visit her site, she’s got some amazing storm photographs. Apologies to defenders of good grammar. After spending all day writing under someone else’s rules and word count restrictions, a rule breaking stream of consciousness felt *really* good.