God's Love: The Case for "Working" from Work

Photo from: http://foodiewanderings.blogspot.com/2010/09/coffee-art-or-heart.html

The unfortunate thing about the location of the office where I work is that it's not close to any good coffee shops. Since Jen and I only have one car, one of the things I spend a lot of time doing is driving around looking for places where I can work. I could just go home, but once you factor in drive time, I often lose an hour of potentially productive work time, so I'll often try to stay close to the office.
     Now, when I say I'm looking for places to "work," I mean I'm looking for places where I can read things that will make me feel smarter and write things that will make me seem dumber (like this sentence). Here's a bit of free advice for you. If you have dreams of one day being respected for doing something that is, in all reality, completely frivolous and technically unnecessary for human survival, you can practice that dream during your free time and call it "work." You don't even have to use air quotes when you talk about it. People will think you're hot shit. And if you're wondering where the reading part fits into the whole, "work" myth, then you've obviously never taken a writing class. Spending four years in college being told by professors that, in order to hone your craft, you not only have to write every day, but you also have to read every day is worth the price of admission, especially at today's historically low interest rates.
     It only took me two months of driving around for an hour at a time (that same hour I would have lost by just going home) before finally giving up and settling for places I know about that are nowhere near the office before I finally got wise and remembered that I carry the world around with me at all times. A phone is only as smart as the person whose pocket it lives in. I have three different apps that can figure out where my phone is (as in globally, not just in my pocket) and point me toward the closest coffee shops.
     When my phone told me that there is a place called Heavenly Cup right down the street from the office, I thought nothing of it. People call things "heavenly" all the time. It's secular euphemism at this point. "Please, try some of this corned beef sandwich; it's heavenly." "The full-release massage I got on vacation in Thailand was absolutely heavenly." You get what I'm saying.
     After I payed for my chai and grabbed a window seat from which to work, I opened up my laptop and looked for Heavenly Cup's wireless network. There were several password protected networks listed, but I was expecting to see something like, "Heavenly Cup (Free)." There was nothing like that in my list of available networks though. In fact, the only free and open network that was listed was one called "God's Love." I am, at times, not bright. My first thought, I swear to God, was, huh, is there a church around here or something? To say that I have an aversion to The Lord (do you capitalize "The" when referencing The Lord? I can never remember. Is it like The Godfather? The Sting? The Terminator?) would be going too far. I have an aversion to cancer, and carrots, and people with the nickname "Cooter," but it's not actually possible to have an aversion to something you don't believe in. The reality of the situation is that, unless I'm directly confronted with Him, I don't give Him much thought at all. Hence the fact that, despite the name of the wireless network I'd just connected to, despite the fact that every customer who walked into the coffee shop while I was there somehow managed to work talk of the previous Sunday's church service into their conversation, despite the name of the goddamn coffee shop, I didn't notice the fucking halo hovering over the "u" in "cup" until I'd been sitting there staring at the sign hanging below the register for an hour.
     It's cool. It's not like I stood up and left as soon as I realized that I was in Christ's Coffee House. The woman who owns the place was very friendly (that's how they get you), and the men who kept coming downstairs from the church offices upstairs (the talk of Sunday's service finally made sense when I noticed that all the customers coming from upstairs were wearing matching polo shirts complete with embroidered crosses) seemed to know everyone and even offered to help some guy with his algebra homework. From what I could tell, everyone who walked into the place knew everyone else who was there. Folks came in and left a couple minutes later with their preferred drinks without ever having to order. The proprietor would sit at a table with her regulars and chat with them between customers. That sort of atmosphere is nice. It's also the sort of thing that will put you out of business, which is what I assume is happening with this shop since every patron who crossed the Heavenly Cup threshold asked the owner, "Have you found a buyer yet?"
     "Maybe if I won the lottery, I could afford to take one of the offers I've gotten. Of course, if I won the lottery, I wouldn't have to sell it in the first place." At this point, I imagine someone suggested that she pray on the situation, but I was too busy packing up my shit to notice. It wasn't that I wanted to leave. It was a nice enough place to work. It wasn't dirtier than any other coffee shop; after all, I bet even the cleanliest baristas find spent coffee grounds in the strangest places after an 8 hour shift. Sure, it was small. There were only 4 small tables, but I had found a seat right away. Yeah, it seemed to be a heavenly, I mean heavily Christian establishment, but the owner was very friendly.  No, I had to leave because, in spite of its values driven charm, Heaven's Cup was missing one vital ingredient. Power outlets within reach of the tables. As a wireless network, God's Love is nearly as omniscient and omnipotent as its namesake. God's Love can give you the latest world news, resurrect our fallen heroes, and grant access to porn. What God's Love can't do is power my laptop for more than 90 minutes. Off to greener pastures I went.
     I still had more than an hour before I had to be at work. All out of ideas, I gave up and headed to the office to do a bit more "work" before work. It turns out that's where I'm most productive anyway.

 
     
       
   
   
   
   
   
       

I'm an Urbanite Snob

This post was supposed to be about something else. Then it turned into what it is. Which is not very good. Oh well. Blogs are supposed to be off the cuff, fast and dirty. They can't all be winners.  I'm saving the really good stuff for The Paris Review  or my neighborhood newspaper. Same diff.

I recently started a new job. It's great. I love it. I couldn't be happier. But.
     Jen and I now work in the same building, for the same company, at the same job. No, literally Jen and I have the exact same job. She does the job full-time during standard business hours. I do the job part-time, typically starting at 1 in the afternoon. It's wonderful to have my mornings free. But
     I now take Jen to work every morning. Then I typically drive back home before driving back up to the office at 1:00. I don't mind it, but it's maybe not totally practical.  See, Jen and I only have one car. I know that's un-American. We are commie-urbanite-snobs. Why don't we just move to New York (City, not Buffalo) with all the other commie-urbanite-snobs? Well, judgmental reader, because, Life is expensive. Until recently, we couldn't afford to. If we could've afforded to do that, we could certainly have afforded to have 2 Pontiac Grand Ams with 128k miles on them in our fleet, instead of just the one. Also we didn't need two cars when I had my old job. Also we like it in Columbus. Also, did I mention we both have jobs here? Try to keep up.
     Now, back to my point (which I'm painfully aware I never established in the first place).
     When I worked at my previous job, I was within walking distance of my office. Having just one car was perfectly perfect. Jen drove the car 15 miles north everyday on a highway she hates to work at the cool job that I coveted, and I walked 1.7 miles through a neighborhood that I love to a job that I hated. Well now everything is right in the world. It's been 2 months since Jen has almost died trying to merge onto the highway and it's been almost 2 months since I've nearly been run over by some d-bag from the suburbs who doesn't know what a crosswalk is. (Wow, I'm starting to understand why you might think I'm a commie-urbanite-snob. For the record, I'm actually a socialist-urbanite-snob.) Anyway, this way everyone wins. Everyone except the aforementioned Pontiac. But.
     Let's be honest. We live in a place where a two adult family needs to be a two car family. Let's also be honest that the real reason Jen and I haven't yet bought a second car is not because we're so principled in our snobbery. Sure, we're conscious (but not concerned) of our carbon footprint. And, we do like to leave the car at home and walk to local restaurants for dinner (except when we drive 20 miles into suburbia for Turkis/Mexican/Chinese). No, the real reason Jen and I haven't bought a second car is that I'm a child. I would rather spend the money we should be saving for a down payment on a vacation, or great seats at a Notre Dame football game (insert laughter here), or 40 really good dinners out. Ongoing debt makes me twitchy. Paying someone interest makes me irate. It's why I don't buy a house, or a car, or a master's degree. The thought that someone else should make money off of me just because they happen to have it to lend and I don't have enough of it afford things that, at least in this country, are considered necessities--well that just pisses me off. Did I mention that that job I just recently left was at a bank? You could say it was a bad fit for me.
     I realize that according to my ideals, most people would never be able to own houses (hello, Mother  Russia.), or new cars (I'll sell you the Grand Am for $1500.), or educations (We don't need no...).  I'm not asking anyone else to live by my ideals though. I'm not even expecting to live by them, myself. Someday we'll buy a house (I'm not spending my Saturdays mowing the lawn, sweetheart.). We'll have a second car by Christmas (Sorry, none of you will be getting gifts this year). And I already have a degree (that I'm still paying for and will be until I'm forty, and I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in Communist China). But.
       
   
   
        

This is a Story about Love

This is a story about how amazing I am. This is a story about how tolerant Jen can be when it comes to my desire to exploit her personal pain for my personal gain. This is a story about carrying a semitransparent bag of vomit across a busy parking lot. Like the title says, this is a story about love. 

     One thing I've learned over the course of my time as a woman who forms romantic attachments to other women is, people in same-sex relationships can get away with things that people in opposite-sex relationships can't. Like believably impersonating your partner to get drugs.
     I can't tell you how many times I've pretended to be Jen and filled the prescription for her migraine medication. On some truly unfortunate nights when Jen wakes up feeling like William Howard Taft is sitting on her head (scary, because he's dead; painful, because he's fat) and we realize that, stupidly, we've forgotten to fill her prescription at the non-24-hour pharmacy 3 blocks from our house, I jump in the Grand Am and crank the radio, thankful that no company wants to waste money on advertising at 4:00 in the morning and drive 20 minutes to the closest pharmacy that can help us out. The poor, disheveled pharmacist who's been relegated (for what crime, I don't know) to working the overnight shift doesn't need to know who I really am. "Wow, your headache must be pretty bad if you've had to drive out at this hour."
     "Yeah, hopefully this will help," I say while trying to smile my appreciation for his concern. It's harder than you might think to smile in a way that appropriately conveys a pain that you've never experienced. I'm not Meryl Streep.

     I'm Carrie, and I've never had anything worse than a sinus headache, but as soon the pharmacy opened this morning, I called and asked whether or not there were any refills left on the prescription for my migraine medication.

     "Name?"

     "Jennifer ____."

     "Date of birth?" 

     "xx-xx-19xx."

     "Nope, looks like you don't have any refills." Fuck.     

     Today it wouldn't have mattered if she'd said there was a refill left. The headache was too far gone for the pills to do any good. The only solution at this point was to head to urgent care where some unfortunate doctor who didn't have the good sense or the skill to go into plastic surgery where the real money is made is, therefore, now stuck diagnosing 5-year-olds with strep throat 8 hours a week to supplement his/her general practitioner salary in order to pay off the $200,000 in student loan debt that he/she incurred in med school when he/she still dreamed of having some never-before-discovered disease named after him/her. (Don't worry, I can't make any sense of that last sentence either.) The point is, the doctors who work at urgent care clinics are sad, and Jen needed one of them to give her an injection of the high test stuff if she wanted to get rid of her headache. The only question at this point was do we go now when Jen's only had the headache for 3 hours, or do we wait a couple days (yes, these migraines can last for days) so that the dead-on-the-inside physician won't think that Jen is a drug seeker? Since Jen had already run to the bathroom to throw up on 3 different occasions, and I had dreams of salvaging our weekend I made an executive decision. These drugs she had to get for herself. "Get dressed. We're going."
     The last time we made this trip, 3 months ago, we learned the hard way that discarded fast-food bags that you might find in a pinch in the backseat of your car are not water proof, especially if that water is being projected at 62 feet per second. before we left this time, Jen grabbed a couple plastic grocery bags that we normally hang onto for when we scoop that cats' litter box. As she grabbed the bags, we looked at each other the way two people in love do when they're sharing an inside joke that doesn't even need to be spoken to be understood. In this instance, the joke was, let's don't throw up all over the floor mats again. Hilarious.
     The worst time to drive to an urgent care north of The Ohio State University's campus when you're coming from south of The Ohio State University's campus is 1 hour before kickoff of a home game. We had to take a less than direct route. Lots of turns. Lots of jostling. Lots of me thinking, she's gonna throw up. She's gonna throw up. Don't take that corner too fast, Carrie. She's gonna throw up.
     We were so close. If I had been driving an all terrain vehicle, a tank or one of those four-wheelers that I see daddies proudly driving their 3-year-olds around on when we're driving along back roads, we'd have made it. Since I was in a Grand Am, though, I couldn't just drive over the median and down the grassy hill that stood between us and the miracle cure. Instead, I had to stop at a red light and patiently wait to turn onto the street in front of the urgent care. "I'm so sorry," Jen cried as she pulled the plastic grocery bag up to her face.
     "That's okay, baby," I replied, though I doubt she heard me.
     They should really put trash cans outside big office buildings. They should especially do this if within the office building is some sort of clinic where people who are too sick to wait for their regular doctor's office hours to be treated for ailments or injuries more severe than a cold and less severe than a bullet to the hip. What I'm saying is, I bet Jen isn't the first person to show up outside this building with a bag of vomit.
     She got out of the car and looked around. "I don't know what to do with this," she admitted as she limply moved the bag forward in case I wasn't sure which, "this" she was referring to. We walked around to the side of the building. Nothing. Jen just stopped, not sure how to proceed. It was at this moment that I did the thing that makes me amazing. I stepped up to her, and I grabbed the bag.
     Resolute and determined, I marched the length of a football field through the parking lot that the urgent care shares with a very busy grocery store. Fittingly, the bag that Jen had grabbed before we left the house had been one from this chain. What I had in my hand was not only a semitransparent bag of vomit, but also a sign of customer loyalty. Thank you for your plentiful selection of cheeses and your conveniently located trash cans, Giant Chain Grocery Store.
     By the time I got back to the urgent care building, Jen was checked in and seated in the waiting room. Now, if the worst time to drive to an urgent care north of The Ohio State University's campus is 1 hour before kickoff of a home game, then the best time to arrive at an urgent care north of the The Ohio State University's campus is 30 minutes before kickoff. Since the rest of the city was either at the game or in the Giant Chain Grocery Store across the parking lot picking up last minute game day necessities, Jen was the only person in the waiting room. As far as I could tell, we were the only people in the office other than the staff. Within half an hour Jen had been injected with an anti-pain/anti-nausea cocktail that could have made us a lot of money on the black market. We headed home with most of a weekend yet to look forward to.


      

     A few days ago I asked Jen, "If something happened, and I was paralyzed, would you take care of me?" 

     "Of course." 

     "I mean, like if I couldn't even go to the bathroom myself?"

     "Of course." 

     "Really?" 

     "Well I wouldn't be happy about it, but..." The truth is, I wouldn't even go to the bathroom in the middle of the woods if I could somehow be guaranteed that there was no other human or woodland creature within 100 miles of me, so if I ever found myself in the position where I needed help going to the bathroom, I'd have no other choice than to will myself to die, but that wasn't the point of our conversation, and I didn't want to hurt Jen's feelings by seeming ungrateful. 
     One of the more immature, yet understandable reasons that some young people give for not wanting to have children is that the thought of cleaning up piss, poop, and puke multiple times daily for 3 or 4 or 8 or however many years it takes to potty train kids is repulsive. Knowing parents always say the same thing, "It's different if it's your child." I don't know from experience, but I imagine that's true. Or maybe it truly is really fucking disgusting, but you do it anyway, because a) you love the kid, and b) you don't have a choice. In any event, I hate to be the one to break this news, but whether you have kids or not, someday you're going to end up responsible for the cleanup and disposal of someone else's piss, poop, and puke, and, if you're lucky, someone else, someone who you're lucky enough to be loved by, will be responsible for the cleanup and disposal of yours.   
     Stuff happens. We get drunk. We get sick. We get old. We get paralyzed from the waist down. Whatever it is, it ain't pretty. I just hope when the time comes, you have someone as amazing as me there to carry your semitransparent bag of vomit wherever it needs to go, and that, if that person asks permission, you're as amazing as Jen for letting them tell the story. 

I'm Always Tired, and You Should Be Too

I haven't consistently slept well since autumn 1980. I was a fetus, and for two blessed months, life was good.
     According to Science Daily and, you know, scientists, after about 7 months in the womb, fetuses spend most of their time sleeping. For me, this is easy enough to understand for two reasons. One, if I don't have something mentally (say an intense political debate with a libertarian) or physically (say running away from a cicada) stimulating happening to me for 45 consecutive seconds, I get bored. As a fetus, once you've counted all the ceiling tiles 1000 or so times and mastered every yoga position that the space your stuck in allows, you're bound to want to escape to dreamland. Two, it would take me 7 months to adapt to and block out the ceaseless cacophony of my mother's beating heart, growling stomach, and echoing external conversations ringing in my ears. (Yes, I know fetuses can't hear right off the bat, but this is not a science article.) If you think about it, the stream of noise that fetuses are subjected to for weeks on end probably violate some of the anti-torture regulations of the Geneva Conventions. Boredom or no, it would take me 7 months to get to a place where I could sleep, but once I could fall asleep, I think I'd want to go ahead and ride it out.
     After birth (not to be confused with afterbirth) I found no shortage of reasons not to fall asleep, not to stay asleep, and to wake up 15 minutes before the alarm went off every single time. The same explanation can be given for all three scenarios. Unlike so many of my fellow humans, my sleeping brain never evolved beyond the Pleistocene. As far as I'm concerned, a saber-toothed cat could come barging into my den at any moment, and I'd damn-well better be prepared. As far as my prehistoric brain knows, every sound, the flushing of a toilet, a 3:00 a.m. clap of thunder, an alarm clock sounding, could mean death. Constant vigilance is required.
     In addition to these perfectly logical, completely involuntary reasons not to sleep well, other more far-fetched yet doubly terrifying reasons were given to me by sadistic film makers and trusted teachers. My 8th grade science teacher, Mr. Bruns (who always had chalk on his crotch) showed us the 1983 made-for-tv classic, The Day After. I've mentioned this before. The film is about life in Kansas City, Missouri in the days and weeks following a nuclear holocaust. If the image of Steve Guttenberg's face rotting off due to radiation exposure hadn't been enough to keep me up nights, Mr. Bruns soothing words, "The crazy thing about this movie is that this could really happen," were. Forget the fact that I'd seen the Berlin Wall come down with my own eyes five years earlier, and the USSR had dissolved 3 years prior. The Cold War raged on and Russia still had nukes pointed right at my bedroom, and I knew it.  To make matters worse, I grew up a few miles south of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and every time a cargo plane flew over, which was several times nightly, the words that ran through my head were, "Oh my God. This is it."
     If fear of prehistoric feline attack or the end of the world aren't enough to keep you up nights, how about the possible death of a loved one? I don't know how old I was when I figured out that "everyone you know, someday, will die," but once I grasped this concept, it stuck with me.
     

For several years before I was born, my parents owned an Australian Terrier named Barney. By the time I was born, he was in his prime. By the time I was 4, I realized he, my best friend, would die. By the time I was 9, I would stay awake nights just to watch him breathe. I'm not sure what I would have done had the poor deaf, blind, and hairless 15-year-old mass of perfection stopped breathing, but, at the very least, I was more than prepared to collapse into heap of sobbing hysterics when the inevitable happened. I do this with humans too. I was lying in bed, trying to get a couple hours of sleep before returning to Hospice when I got the call that my grandfather had died. I hadn't actually been asleep, of course, because of the nagging fear that an unexpected and jarring predator in the form of my phone's ringtone could sound at any minute. Still, when the sound came, I was startled. My heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest. Then, when my mother's words finally made sense, I wished it would.

     Who could sleep knowing that you're likely to wake up to feline attack, nuclear holocaust, or the death of a loved one? Doesn't 90 or so years of complete and utter exhaustion seem like a small price to pay to prevent so much pain? Pour yourself a cup of coffe and quit your whining.  

      

They Don't Make Panhandlers Like They Used To.

Jen and I approach Columbus' homeless population very differently which is to say--I approach them and she walks the other way. I've seen homeless people scream obscenities at passersby. I've seen them chase after pedestrians with the jagged necks of broken beer bottles. Scariest of all, I've seen the homeless sneeze on people who are fishing in their pockets for spare change without even attempting to cover their noses. Given all this, Jen's method for dealing with panhandlers is, at worst reasonable, at best, wise beyond calculation.

It's a wonder Jen will even leave the house with me. I'd like to say that the reason I'll gladly stop and listen to the story of any panhandler I encounter is a sign of altruism. This is nonsense of the, politicians really love babies, and, therefore, kiss them at every opportunity vein. I fear being disliked to such an extent that I put myself in foolish, even dangerous, situations. I'll take a drink out of someone else's beer when they offer me a sip, for fear of offending them if they should think my refusal is an indication that I think they may have a dormant case of mouth herpes. I'll run off to Canada and marry a drug addict out of concern that one more rejection in her life could be the thing to finally convince her to inject a lethal dose of class 3 narcotics. I'll stand on a street corner and listen to a man who may very well have an Alien-style alien growing inside his stomach, because the thought of being labeled an uppity bitch would put a serious damper on my day.

A few weeks ago, Jen and I were leaving our hair salon in The Short North (Columbus' gallery district). Having just successfully finished an hour and a half long flirting session with our Kuwaiti hair stylist (exotic looking, laughs at all your jokes, touches you when she's talking to you--you get the idea), I was feeling pretty full of myself. If I'd been wearing a hat, I would have doffed it at everyone I passed--including the charming homeless fellow who approached us about a block from the salon. As you should have assumed from my earlier commentary, when this gentleman called for our attention, Jen smartly kept walking. I, on the other hand, didn't want this guy to think I thought myself too good to stop and talk to someone down on his luck. After all, aren't we all just one or two missed paychecks away from the streets?

There are a few types of beggars. There are the guys who stand on the side of the road at the end of exit ramps who let their "Hungry veteran. Anything will help. God bless you," cardboard signs do the talking for them. There are the honest, friendly drunks standing outside the gas stations who'll tell you straight, "Look buddy, can you spare a few cents? I really need a drink," and there are the story tellers who seem to exist everywhere else. I was able to take one look at this fast talker with the bouquet of red, white, and blue cloth flowers and know which type of he was. The conversation went thusly:

"Pardon me ma'am. I just need a minute of your time. Ma'am I don't mean to bother you, but I am homeless, and, praise Jesus ma'am, I do have cancer . . ." At this point my new friend crossed himself and lifted up the front of his t-shirt to show me what could only have been one of three things. Three very distinct tumors, three very painful hernias, or the head and two fisted alien claws of the otherworldly being gestating in this man's stomach waiting to achieve full maturity at which point it will A) burst through this man's stomach and wreak havoc on the city I love or B) high kick down the street in a straw hat singing "Hello My Baby" at the top of its little alien lungs. Obviously, I prefer the Mel Brooks version, but either scenario would be unsettling at best.

There are times in life when it's inconvenient to have an expressionless face. "Honey, we're having a baby," isn't one of them. "Ma'am please take a look at my cancerous baby alien stomach and give me some money," is. It would have felt rude to show outward disgust or fear or the sort of curiosity that could only be accompanied by the phrase, "Can I touch it."

When I looked unphased by this man's stomach. He continued. "I'm trying to save up some money for treatment. Now, I am selling these flowers today." (Thank God. I was really hoping there was going to be an opportunity to buy these flowers in this for me.) "Now I'm asking five dollars for them, but I would be grateful for anything you could afford."

I had about $40 in my pocket. "Aw buddy, I'm really sorry. I don't have much cash on me, but I can give you a dollar, just to have. You don't have to give me any flowers."

At this point Jen was ten paces south of us, looking at me like why are you giving this crazy person our grocery money, and this is where things turn ugly. While I'm digging in my pocket, Baby Alien Head Man looks up at Jen and says, "Hey what about you?" Now, Jen and I have been together for a couple years, and we're so together that I assume it's obvious to anyone who happens upon us that we're together, and, therefore, when one of us acts, we're acting on behalf of the whole unit. Even if one half of the unit is 30 feet away. Because of this, there are some things that still take me a bit aback (at least when we're in Columbus, where you can't swing a dead cat around without smacking at least one half of a lesbian couple upside the head). For example, there's a moment of confusion if we're at a restaurant and our server asks us if we want the checks separately? Really? Similarly, I find it a little jarring when I'm getting ready to hand a panhandler cash and he calls up to my girlfriend, "Hey, what about you?" At this, Jen, similarly surprised, ignored him. "What's a matter? You don't talk to black people?" And this is why someone should start a nonprofit that teaches successful selling techniques to the homeless.

"Whoa man, that's not cool."

"Well look at her. She looks scared."

"I'm sorry. I'm not going to be able to help you out today."

"Oh come on."

"Look I'm standing here trying to do you a favor and you call my girlfriend a racist."

"I wasn't calling her a racist."

"You said, 'What's a matter? You don't talk to black people?' you don't think that's the same as calling her a racist?"

"I'm sorry. Look, here, have some flowers."

"Sorry man. Have a good afternoon," and I walked away from the host of what could be the scariest thing ever to descend on Columbus and toward one pissed off girlfriend who was more displeased that I'd stopped to talk to this guy in the first place than she was charmed that I'd tried to defend her honor.

I'm fully aware that I'm the one who comes out of this story looking like the asshole, and part of me still feels bad about not giving him money. Not just the one dollar I promised him, but all of it. It's not like we wouldn't have bought groceries anyway. I just hope that he survives the tumors or the hernias or the explosive abdominal alien syndrome long enough to have the last laugh. Something tells me he will.

The Bitch Is Back

A lot has happened in the world since my last post.

With Glenn Beck as their fearless leader, thousands of lunatic, gun toting men and the women who love them held rallies is major cities all over the country. In the beginning they proudly proclaimed themselves to be Teabaggers until someone got wise to exactly what that means and they casually decided to start referring to themselves as Tea Party-ers. I assume they hoped that the rest of us wouldn't notice the switch. Sadly, since a clan of angry white men running around state capitals proudly telling the world just where they'd like to stick their balls is the greatest thing to happen to me since Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face, I promise never to forget.

According to this ABC Affiliate, 92 famous people died in 2009. Among them are Gordon's wife from Sesame Street (you know, the lady from 227--no, not Jackee, and not the lady from The Jeffersons. The other one), Brittany Murphy (who I saw swear to Ellen Degeneres that she was speaking in full sentences at 6-months-old), and University of Georgia's bulldog mascot. I know there were plenty of other famous people (and possibly animals) who died in 2009, but these folks at ABC have defined "famous" so loosely that I couldn't make it further than example 20 without falling asleep, so I can't list them all for you.

In October, the Dow closed above 10,000 for the first time since October 3rd, 2008 even though I'm told that Obama is running this country into complete financial ruin. Al Franken was finally sworn in as the freshman senator from Minnesota, health insurance reform passed, 25 coal minors died in West Virginia due to lax regulation, 11 oil drillers died off the coast of Louisiana due to lax regulation, an ecosystem was destroyed. I could go on. My point is--there's a lot of shit I could have written about in the last 15 months. Instead, I have sat on my ass feeling uninspired and sorry for myself.

Well, I'm back. No gimmicks, just getting back to basics and typing whatever pops into my head (that won't get me fired). This is my 60th post to DISCONNECT, but it won't be my last. There are fascinating topics on the horizon. Jen and I are driving on a cross country adventure next week; it's festival season here in Columbus, and that means lots of suburbanites to make fun of; the midterm elections are right around the corner; did I mention my brother-in-law is living with us; and, oh yeah, there are still a million gallons of oil spewing into the ocean every day. I want to talk about all of it.

In the meantime, I've started a new site where I'm uploading some posts from my old blogging days at myspace. Just a little something to remind myself of where I came from and what it felt like not to give a shit what human resources or anyone else thought about what I had to say. Unlike in banking, there are no confidentiality laws in cookie sales.

Now, like Tina Fey says, "Bitches get shit done." So let's get to work.

The Curious Case of Thanks, Now I Wish I was Dead

There are a lot of things that serve to remind us that there is never enough time. New Year's Eve; birthdays; the death of a pet, grandparent, fictional character in a movie based on a short story written by someone who is also dead, etc.

"Carrie, did your mother tell you that Polly died?" Polly was the cat that my mother and I rescued from the clutches of an obese, smokey smelling woman at the local pet store. The 6-week-old kitten kept scurrying away from the woman and the woman kept picking her back up and placing her on the side of the cage, apparently amused at Polly's iron grip, the direct result of what must have been Polly's desire not to plummet 5 feet to what surely seemed like certain death. My mother and I bought the kitten and took it home to my grandparents' house, explaining that it would be good for them to have a pet, which it was, for eleven years, right up until the moment the vet on the other end of the phone explained to my grandmother and her sister (who lives with her) that Polly's red and white blood cells were low and that it might be something treatable or it might be cancer, but that they would need to wait for test results to be sure. "Kill it." I don't know if these were my grandmother's exact words, but, as they didn't even wait for the test results, they may as well have been. I don't blame my grandmother. She's been rather touchy about the C word ever since my grandfather died of prostate cancer three years ago. People fill your head with the idea that, once you get to a certain age, you sort of come to terms with mortality. Bullshit. My grandfather lived to be 83. He traveled the world, had a successful business, raised three children, saw those children get married and have children, he met two great-grandchildren. I never heard the man talk about regret or start a sentence with, "I wish I'd . . . " but that man was afraid to die right up until the end. "Yeah, grandma. Mom told me."

The cat dying, finishing out 2008, having a birthday, and seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is too much of a reminder that the clock is ticking for one week. As a friend recently pointed out, "you grow up with your parents telling you that you're going to grow up to achieve great things. Then one day you realize that you're just like everyone else." I think Benjamin Button is supposed to teach us something about the way we experience life, but that's not what sticks with me. What sticks with me is, when Brad Pitt's character's daughter turns 1, he skips out on her and his partner and travels all over the world, supposedly it's what's best for everyone. That's the thing our parents don't tell us when they're filling our heads with the notion that, if we want, we can be doctors or astronauts or presidents. They don't tell us that getting what you really want out of life requires sacrificing the other things that you're supposed to really want out of life like family and paying the mortgage. I could write 10 hours a day if I didn't mind the idea of getting kicked out of my apartment and having to move back in with my mother. I could travel all over the world if I was okay with getting kicked out of my apartment and having to move back in with my mother upon my return. I can't actually think of any way to realize a life-long dream that doesn't involve having to move back in with my mother. That is except for the childhood dream of independence from my mother.  All I have to do to achieve that is keep working ten hours a day at a job I don't like, the job that I'm off to now. Take that, Brad Pitt.