Category: overwhelmed

Is That What I Think It Is?

A few weeks ago I was walking out to my car after another real long day at work, when I smelled something a little sweet, a little nice, and a little out of place for a corporate parking lot.

My head whipped around and I saw a rather large burly man sitting on a parking berm next to his motorcycle and he was smoking.

Yes, I live in the Bay Area, but no, you cheeky monkeys, it wasn’t skunk weed that I was smelling…

The man was smoking a clove cigarette.

My first thought was “What, is he in High School?” and my second thought was “What, is he a girl?” and then the smell of sweet clove smoke wafted over me and I was shoved into the Wayback Machine and transported back in time.

So there I am, a sophomore at Del Norte High School and it’s after a football game and my friends and I have found our way to the McDonald’s at the corner of Academy and San Mateo in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That McDonald’s belonged to our high school. Every high school had their “home” McDonald’s and going to the other school’s home territory, especially on a Friday night, was a whole scary and political thing.

So I’d already supped on French fries (all that I could afford) and was standing out in the parking lot doing what sixteen year olds do: I was slouching and skulking and just being a lump of teenager.

I was kibitzing with my friend Stacy who was sort of a wild girl. She didn’t start out that way, but she turned that way pretty quick. She was small, dark haired, pretty and did this squinty eyed thing when she laughed which was terribly endearing.

Later, when we both tried out for the high school drill team and she made it and I did not (we had practiced together) and some distance came to our friendship. That and her affinity for drinking a lot of Everclear. I just couldn’t go there.

But on this night we were friends and hanging out and she pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it up. It smelled funny.

She explained to me that it was a clove cigarette. This particular item was very, very illicit because clove smokes were (and are) illegal in the State of New Mexico. She explained this was due to the fact that clove cigarettes will make your lungs bleed.

She told me this tidbit in that urban legend sort of way that made me wonder if what she said was really true, all the while I believing it 100%. I was (and still am) fairly gullible if told a good story.

So Stacy encouraged me to take a drag. I hesitated, thoughts of bleeding lungs in my head and firmly believing that the second something illegal touched my lips my parents would immediately show up and all hell would break loose.

After waffling, in a rare bit of rebellion I went for it (yes, taking a drag from a cigarette was, at the time, MAJOR rebellion) and she told me to lick my lips after, tasting how sweet it was. And it was.

I’d been so naughty! So *bad*! It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once!

Fast forward just over a decade later and I found myself living in California and oh my! Clove cigarettes are perfectly legal here! So I did some cool slouch thing into the corner store and bought a pack and felt very sophisticated and rebellious and adult and on-my-own and Mary Tyler Moore hat in the air “you’re gonna make it after all!”

That pack lasted me several months until they dried out, and then I bought another just because I could. Every now and again on a lonely evening I’d pour an amber liquid over ice and sit on my front porch and smoke a clove and think about things.

Then, of course, a few years later my dad died from pulmonary fibrosis and smoking something that might make my lungs bleed seemed like a really bad idea.

Ok, meandering along the Wayback trail and getting to that train of thought quickly brought me right back to the here and now.

I sort of smiled at the big dude smoking a clove and inhaled deeply. It smelled so nice.

Such an unexpected scent to end my day.








With all thanks to a Random Word Generator for giving me a wayback prompt, in the form of the word clove, on this sunny Monday.


Image by Kriss Szkurlatowski and used royalty free from stock.xchng.




It’s Just One Of Those Things

Being a grownup is weird. Sure, in some ways it has its advantages, cookies for dinner, disposable income, no term papers. But mostly I find it’s weird. In theory I’ve been an adult for a really long time, but I don’t seem to be getting any better at it. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any less uncomfortable.

Take for example, having a job. Every day I come to an office building full of fabric-covered six foot high partial walls. I’m actually lucky to have the six foot high walls. New companies are doing away with walls all together in favor of a collaborative environment. But here are these gray fabric walls and I sit at a pressboard desk and I do tasks that matter very much inside these fabric walls but to the rest of the world are mostly meaningless.

For example, on the very top of my to do list today is the urgent need to call a counterpart at another company and ask her how they structured a contract. Do you care if I make that call or not? Will it impact your life in any way?

Nope. Yet it’s of the utmost and highest importance for me to accomplish today.

That seems so odd.

I sit in my little cubicle farm moo’ing alongside people who are, for the most part, strangers. Oh sure, I have great relationships with my coworkers, we all get along really well, but do I really call them my friends? Not really. I care about their well-being (sort of) for about eight to ten (or twelve) hours a day and then I go home and give them nary a thought.

We eat alongside each other, use the facilities alongside each other, spend a third or more of our days together but these people don’t really factor into my life.

Today I’m in kind of a weird place. The person (I’m intentionally leaving this vague) who occupied the barn stall directly across from me was politely asked to leave the company early this morning. They were not on my team and I didn’t have to be the one to have “the conversation.”

I’m just a by stander.

I didn’t know the person all that well, personally I mean, but we got along great. They got my sense of humor and they always kept a drawer full of snacks and when I started on my first day, they helped me get up and running.

I liked the person in that “hey you are my office pal” kind of way.

Despite knowing that there was trouble brewing, I’m still sort of boggled by the empty desk that now is across the aisle. When I stand up and leave my cube, I look right into that cube and where once there was life and a laugh and some awesome cookies, there is an empty chair.

Not knowing all of the circumstances I can’t say whether this was deserved or not, but knowing the manager and knowing that manager is rock solid, I have to believe it was for the right reasons.

These are weird days. The media might say that the recession is over but I don’t think it is. It’s a tenacious little beast. In the first ninety days of this year, five of my dear friends were laid off from their jobs. And all five are struggling to find new employment.

The person across the hall wasn’t laid off, but still I think about what they will be going through over the next weeks and months to land a new gig. It makes me a bit sad.

But honestly, can I dwell on it? Should I even dwell on it? The answer is no. I cannot get too bogged down in the whys and the hows and the what ifs. I can only sit in my barn stall and look at my screens and make damn sure I call that lady at that other company today because in about an hour someone is going to ask me what they said, and I should have an answer.

Because being a grown up is pretty weird that way.









Image from here.




Oh. It’s You Again.

I see, well, as much as I asked you not to come, Mr. Monday, you have invited yourself into my life anyway. Fine. Harrumph. I know you feel you need to arrive here promptly every seven days, but rest assured no one here looks fondly upon your visits.

Why oh why can’t you be more like that beautiful boy Mr. Saturday? He’s always kind, generous and quite well behaved. I enjoy being in his company and revel in the smiles he brings. It’s so difficult after living in the sun and light that is Mr. Saturday to have to endure your sour puss face, Mr. Monday. I mean really. Can’t you arrive here with a little more class and grace?

You are all clanging alarms and car horns and rush rush rush after long glorious Saturdays of lazy fingers trailing in the lake and dandelion seeds on the breeze.

Ok, maybe if you can’t find it in your heart to emulate Mr. Saturday, might you perhaps try to be a bit more like Ms. Thursday? She’s still a work day but she comes with softer edges and kinder words. She still starts the day with a clanging alarm but her traffic is a little calmer and she doesn’t fill my email inbox with nonsense before 8:00am. She waits a little. Comes on a little less strong. Understands the needs and wants of the average corporate drone.

Shoot, at this point I’d take it if you would act a bit more like Ms. Wednesday with all her midpoint optimism.

But no, you Mr. Monday insist upon being a creep. A grump. A crufty ol’ toad and I, for one, don’t think that’s very nice.

Oh, you say you were quite kind to me on that last President’s Day three day weekend? Yes, that was true. Quite civil you were that day. You are nice exactly four times a year. Four nice government approved holidays that bring me you, Mr. Monday, wearing madras shorts, sunscreen, a big floppy hat and a rakish look in your eye.

The other 48 visits during the year you come on with a bad attitude wearing severe gray suits with sharp shoulders. Your unkind spectacles giving me clear insight into the horror of the week that lies ahead.

Why must this be so? Why can’t we capture the beauty and harmony of those four holiday Mondays more often? Loosen your tie a little!

But no, you feel you must be severe. And so I say…

Harrumph, dear Monday. Harrumph on you.








Image by user ltz and used royalty free from stock.xchng.




What a World

I had a really good day yesterday. An exceptionally good day. Really top notch, if I do say so myself.

I belong to a group of professionals who do the same kind of work that I do. Internet modesty causes me to decline to state. Suffice to say, it’s not like I’m a part of the Action Hero Institute or Society of Scientists Doing Cool Stuff. For the sake of ease of this post, let’s call what I do paper shuffling.

This group has some meetings and they fund their cause by offering training courses in the various aspects and disciplines within the paper shuffling profession.

A few years ago they put out a call for instructors and I threw my hat in the ring. Back in 2010 I conducted my first training class, a four hour session. This was my first time teaching a course and 80+ slides and four hours of talking seemed daunting. I was as nervous as I’d been in a long time (pit stains reminiscent of passing my boards for my MBA) but I ended up having a really good experience.

Recently, the Paper Shuffling Professionals of America asked me to come back and teach again. I agreed and that queasy nervousness set in right away. I pulled up the PowerPoint deck I had used back in 2010 and said aloud, “hey…this is pretty good.”

I had a class of fifteen souls yesterday who actually paid money to listen to me yammer on for four hours about the art and science of paper shuffling.

It was such a great group, though. They were fun and interactive and even seemed to laugh at a good portion of my humor. Teaching the class didn’t give me pit stains this time, the hours seemed to fly. I ended the class energized as all get out and walking about half a foot off the ground.

I felt, dare I say it, very proud of myself.

As you’ll recall from this blog, I’m the girl who once, as a child, had to have a doctor extract a piñon nut I had shoved up my nose.

I once got a dime up there too. My big sister was able to get that out before the folks caught wind of the situation.

I’m the girl who was following my big brother on a hike in the mountains of Cuba, New Mexico and was trying so hard to keep up that I ran smack into a tree branch and scratched my face.

I’m the girl who wrapped a rubber band around the end of my nose. In the hour before I was to attend a ballet class. How was I to know it would badly bruise and I would be mocked mercilessly by those prissy ballet girls?

In college I once got so lost on the Border Highway I had to go to someone’s home and knock on their door to ask for directions back to Las Cruces (pre-mobile phone days). This was at night. I am still amazed I didn’t get shot.

I cannot add a column of numbers in my head. I cannot tell you which direction is north (I could do it when I had the Sandias as my guide). I often drool when I sleep. I am prone to cursing like a sailor.

And most recently, I am the girl who, just before leaving the house to go to teach a training class, used the rest room and as I flushed I also manged to drop my keys in the toilet. Big important teacher woman leapt into the bowl and held on to them for dear life as the waters rushed by (thankfully it was only a #1 bowlful).

And yet, the Paper Shuffling Professionals of America wanted me to teach a class, and worse yet people paid good money to listen to what I had to say.

What a world, what a world. Who would have thought all my years of hard work would erase my beautiful dorkiness. If only for a moment.






Photo found on The History Bluff.




The State Of The Heart Address

This was shared yesterday on my Facebook, but all day yesterday and today I keep coming back to it.

It makes me smile and a little weepy and as I shared on FB, I sent it to The Good Man and thanked him for bringing the scotch tape and band aids. I used to hate Valentine’s Day but now I kind of like it.

Happy Valentine’s Day. May you have someone’s hand to hold when the wind gets a little gusty.








Image found on icanhazcheeseburger but is actually credited to zenpencils.com