SugarplumSilhouettes - AKA My Mother's Etsy Store

To all those who have mothers who have stepped out of their bubble to try something new, I'm sure you understand when I say, please click on this link.  A lot.

Please?

SugarplumSilhouettes by SugarplumSilhouettes on Etsy


And thank you!
She thanks you too.

So I tried to cheat tonight and re-post something from a different blog, but while reading I got so irritated with the subject or grammerical issues that I started browsing the web instead.


That's it!  Bedtime!  Boo!

Its official, I will soon be laid-off.  Please insert the sounds of angels (aliens) and other angelic creatures singing and the immortal sounds of Imogen Heap setting up in the background.  Just thinking about it gives me both terror and the pinging tenterhooks that only sweet anticipation wrapped in the unknown can give. 

This, of course would be the only reason I would be up at this ungodly hour, writing my waxed poetry and thinking myself powdered with creativity.  What should I do with my soon, new freedom? 

Truth be told, I will most likely wallow in fear until I can make a real plan, which at the moment is becoming a paranormal investigator and inventing a loud enough petticoat that will cover up the sounds of the adult diaper I'll have to wear from the fright-peeing.  Oh the possiblities. 

Here is a picture of my cat.

Good night!

Mantra of the Non-Breeder

I don't like kids.  This isn't something that I'm quiet about.  Although I haven't quite come to the place where I shake a hand and announce fervent disgust, but I'm close.  First dates usually hit a rocky spot where I pin the guy with a spear-like glare to point out that the sexiest thing a man has ever said to me was, "I had a vasectomy".  Thus, people usually have the good sense to keep their kids away from me. 

Now that being said, I do like teenagers.  I know this is strange, but I like how they can come up with reasoned arguments and are trying not to be little clones of their parents tyranny and lack of judgment.  If you want to see what someone is really made of, look what they gave birth to.  Someone who shall remain nameless that I will affectionately refer to as The Feather Dancer, for her amazing ability to live up everyone's nose, pushed out two such heinous beings that literally spew forth her worst habits for all of us to witness. 

Example:  On one fateful day, a large group of unsuspecting bipeds including myself ended up at her house where her little blond demons made two full rounds around the room belching in each guest's face.  She let this continue until they began trying to move air out their other orifice.  Because we all know that expelling gas from your face hole is much more acceptable then out your anus in polite company. The latest antic was to find an adult, tell him loudly that he had donkey teeth and then kick him in the shins repeatedly.  Where is The Feather Dancer?  She's busy watching the whole event with rapt disinterest. The only time that I've seen The Feather Dancer actually curb her children is when they enter my personal space.  Why?  Because I told her that I hate children and remind her of that as often as I can. 

The question is, how does this happen?  Is it simply that mean people breed smaller mean people, or do they learn from watching mom/dad be an asshole and decide that they want to do that too(!!).  Although I don't agree with strong forms of capital punishment, there comes a point where you have to stop watching that little shit you gave birth to reign terror on others and do something about it.  Having kids shouldn't be viewed with the same kind of intensity as buying a new Wii game.  You can't just hope that you can be great buddies and figure that your job is done.  Please, curb your kid and make sure it doesn't shit in my yard, run into me at the store, or perform other bodily functions for the sole glory of being the center of attention for that one beautiful minute. 

For a year or two I worked in a pediatric ward for a long term care facility.  Everyone had advanced cerebral palsy or some other extreme degenerative disability that basically equaled to no walking, talking or movement in general.  I loved them.  I thought they were wonderful, and let me tell you, when I tell people how they didn't walk or talk and I loved it, they always say, thats terrible!!  Why?  I still love them.  Does it matter why as long as I show them affection and administer to their every need?  Not really.  Since half of them were there because of a neglectful parent either bashing them in the head, leaving a fever for too long, pregnancy drug use or getting into a car wreck, I don't think its really an issue for comment.  

But its when I see little hellions running frantically with little to no parental control that I want to remind their folks: you are wonderful for continuing the species, that thing that I don't want to do for a myriad of reasons.  But make sure that you mentor them to greater heights rather than to limit them with your own personal crap-fest.  This is why I don't want to breed.  I don't need it, nor do I have the burning desire to watch my personal genetic stamp march its way to the bus every morning. 

So, I have a cat.  I'm the single cat lady with only one feline friend, and its perfectly fine by me.  Because when she decides she's pissed at me and pukes in my shoes, its only my shoes and not that of my neighbor or friend.  I can keep my crappy parenting ability to myself, where it should be.

Mantra of the Non-Breeder: No Flesh-Loaves, Please.

As I sit in my cubicle and stare at the moving trees and gray clouds, I have to wonder what made me decide to riding my bike. Each time I roll out of bed at 5:00 am so that I can pack my huge shell of a bag and foist myself on a tiny metal frame so I can speed unprotected amongst the streets of blind drivers, I think: are you crazy? Yes. But there is something rather great about it.

1.) I'm actually riding my bike the 3 miles to work, all of which is uphill on the way there.

2.) I can check out other people's houses easier and with more time then when I drive because I petal like a 70 year-old. My neighborhood is rad, by the way.

3.) The ride home is all downhill, so I make it much less time and really only take an additional 5 - 10 minutes than it takes me to drive.

4.) I spent $50 on gas last month. That's crazy for me, since I was spending $150 - 250 a month, which I know it could be higher if I was in Europe and all that jazz, but hey. I'm proud.

5.) I can sing little songs to myself like, "this is the way I walk my bike" and "bicycle" and other such things that I usually loath but think I'm being clever. Its 6:00 in the morning. Its a miracle that I can find my face, let alone do anything else.

In theory, this will help me get in a better shape.  I don't know why people are so insistent on what shape they're in, though. You always have a shape of some sort. Just because the rectangular shape is in style, or the ever so coveted hour-glass shape doesn’t mean I need to conform. I am of the oblong shape. Because, lets face it, I'm not quite round, and if I was, I wouldn't need a damn bicycle to ride to work.

One of the last times I took this little journey, I was walking my bike up a hill next to work and being passed very quickly by a 65 year-old man on his bike. Giving him the usual, "good morning", and he was not only not out of breath, but hadn't broken a sweat. My face, on the other hand, was about to burst into its own super nova. Think of the mess.

Don't get me wrong.  Part of me loves that and there is a flip-side to it as well.  I'm a fickle gym junky, meaning that sometimes I will go everyday for months, get irritated by the lack of change and stop going for a couple more months.  Just now, I came back from where I was trying to watch the silly TV, but was taking side long glances at the resistance chosen by the innocent bystander next to me.  She was young, slender and had good skin.  I wouldn't say that totally I loathed her for this, but I did get a mild feeling of elation when I realized that she was madly pumping a resistance of 2 to my 9. 

Then again, she isn't of the lovely oblong shape. 

Eh.

Popcorn?

Yes please!

First of all, I almost feel  like I should apologize for the last post.  I was wallowing, and I'm sorry.  But the good part of public pity (provided people don't participate in the fail) is that I find it a great way to own my personal filth and decide if something needs to change and what could be done about it.  

The light bulb went off whilst sweating my life away on the elliptical machine at my favorite gym.  This was the great enlightenment that can usually only be obtained either in sleep or the loo, I needed a new drive (funny that this should come up when I'm actively in motion towards the cyclical attempts to stave off diabetes).  Something new to work towards. 

Now, I usually don't like television much.  Its dull, and commercials are a pain, and when you tell the stupid doctor that he doesn't know what he's doing, you have the pleasure of seeing him get angry at you.  But at the gym, that's a different story.  I love it.  I'll even watch the news, something I especially loath, but particularly like building shows or fashion make-overs (*shame*).  On this fateful day, it was an international real estate show in Iceland.  Beautiful.  

It was crazy.  I was instantly jealous of the participants, so hungry for travel that I wanted to gobble up all the information as hastily as the huge fast-food take out order I would feast on later.  Not just because it was Iceland, although that place looked beautiful, but the act of moving drastically to another country, something I hadn't done in years.  I'm sure taco grease was sizzling out of the pores of my fevered brow. 

So for now, I'll just think on it, see if its just a passing fancy.  But its always good to dream.  And right now, packing up two suitcases and my cat is mine.  

Kick the Can

Life always has ups and downs.  Everyone knows this, or quickly finds out.  Perhaps another way to phrase a down-time would be to call it a fight or internal/external battle.  Maybe it’s the lack of struggle, for some people find that they need the external upheaval and discord to make life interesting and not fall into a rut.  Many people seem to suffer from boredom and tedium, something I’m not familiar with, but have craved for most of my life. 

Finally, after many years of struggle with one situation or another, I feel free from most stressors.  Sure they’re laying off people at work and some day I’ll be one of them, but I don’t go to a job were I clean up human feces straight from the source (anymore), and no one tries to punch or kill me (anymore).  Outside of work, I have my hobbies and things that keep me occupied.  Going to the gym, rolling my oblong form around on the ground with the other limber (slender) participants.  I read and write (sometimes).  And for years, I made art.  Huge emotionally dark things bespeaking to a time as a cripple and horribly depressed, financially ruined person.  Giving up art meant giving up a lot of that anger. 

Or perhaps it was how I’ve changed my outlook in  general.  In times of strife I like to rely upon family.  In this case, my favorite aunties: auntie-depressant and auntie-anxiety.  Mixed with large doses of a shrink, and equilibrium has been made.  After twelve years of dedication and love, I left my long time lover, Cigarettes.  God, I miss her.  But with her out of my life I have a great deal more time.  Which could lead to the precipice of tedium.  Along with smoking, I gave up a favorite hobby: dating. 

If pressed, I’m fairly certain that my long history of inappropriate dating would instigate a line of men that would wrap around the block and meet back at my door to ask for dinner and a ride to their friend’s house.  Would you lend a $20 for the bar?  Needless to say, it’s a lot more relaxed in my head and my home.  That being said, now there is more time for the dreaded life review and goal setting. 

When I turned thirty, I looked back and said, thank God I never made any goals in my life.  I did graduate from collage, a BS (and yes it is) in art, have a job (but not a career), and a couple of very lovely housemates.  This, I’m afraid, is the part I have the most difficult time with.  The job and living like a teenager.  Granted, I adore my housemates and would hate to move out, not to mention that I can’t afford to and as for the job… welcome to the economic boom.  As in crash. 

My troubles are now so white middle-low-class (is that real?) that it makes me want to vomit.  Is this what it means to not have the constant battle?  To have the glory of just being happy to not be in pain or to be able to smile and mean it?  No one to avoid or be chased by, to break in or try, no one to cheat you or on you.   Is this really enough?  Just to be happy that nothing bad is happening?

The answer:  Yes.  What do you think?  Sometimes its not easy to make it through the day, wonder what cosmic joke you rode in on, or galactic asshole is pressing down on you for fun.   But those horrible things, those terrible nasty days that make you never want to wake up again have the ability to make the days that aren’t like that seem just that much brighter.  I’ve been waiting for so long to not be terrified, or hurt, or angry that I almost feel all those things just out of the normalcy they bring.  In a way, its as addictive as smoking was.

Its easy to get used to misery.  To having nothing to rely on but yourself and a broken reality.  Getting bogged down in the garbage of work.  People who get paid two to three times more for doing much, much less but hold you responsible for any errors just to make themselves look better.  It seems like a fake trouble.  Like something not real.  But it still is.  And its valid. 

I suppose the point I’m trying to make (to myself), is that even when life slows down, or things seem insurmountable, its important to own your feelings, but not be carried away with them or by them.  The other day I was sitting in my cubicle and actually lost my complete luster for what I do everyday.  Hard not to.  And the difficulty to engage in my own purpose has been smothering.  I forgot to forward an issue to be reprocessed on time.  It wouldn’t have been a problem if the payment run was still operating twice a week, but that change recently to once a week.  My first though: shit.  Now I’m going to miss my deadline, get written up, get my lead (whom I adore) written up and possibly fired.  And then the gloom rolled in.  Not even fear.  Just gloom. 

With a better written statement, I could find a way to end this with an upbeat, or with some moral, but I can’t right now.  Later, maybe?  Perhaps that’s the part of life that I’ve been missing for so many years.  It just goes on. 

The end.

Time Surved in Military Purgatory

During Army Basic Combat Training (BTC) located within Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, I ran, marched, and poured sweat with two-hundred and fifty of my fellow soldiers.  By being unfortunate enough to be small and a few other standard complications involving a pelvic fracture, I never saw much of my military future that didn’t include typing behind a computer screen, much as I am now with typing my life for an unseen public.  Injuries in the military are almost inevitable to some degree, and this kind of affliction happens to roughly forty percent of all short white females in training.  As a student, the military was required to send me back home for school so my drill sergeants had no choice but to send me to a place to wait until my mandatory return home date. This place was the Orderly Room.

It would be more accurate to say that the Orderly Room was part of a much larger building, each sectioned off for the different companies so that no company interacted with another.  It housed the main supplies, the linens and the equipment that the low ranking soldiers used for training purposes. Also there were the offices for the highest-ranking sergeant and captain, mostly un-used as they were usually overseeing the company’s training.  Inside, there are linen bins, forgotten clothes that were sent for cleaning and never retrieved, and broken supplies.  Like the soldiers there, each broken fan or scale would wait to be fixed, moved or sent away completely. 

Calling this place “orderly” was irony in itself being more of a hang out spot for wounded soldiers (the Broken) and soldiers waiting for their training to start (the Waiting) and could never be organized.  We spent every single day in camouflaged purgatory  Understandably, there was a lot of general confusion about where to be and what to do.  While there, even I found it difficult to complete even the simplest task without a direct command.  Later and with additional experience it unfolded that this was almost as common as military injuries.  The hive-mindset is infectious. 

The building was set up as follows: the main office was blocked off with a ceiling high chain-link fence earning its name as the cage. Crammed into the opposite wall was the concrete block of a room that held all the weapons and then a corridor connected the two.  This corridor was where soldiers would come and sit on plastic milk crates and more often, the floor, and would be given little jobs such as cleaning the offices or moving objects from place to place.  Sometimes we just existed quietly in this place where all we did was hurry to wait.  Every day we would go back to the gray cement walls, floors, atmosphere; this place could be oppressive because no one wanted to stay in BTC any longer than originally planned.  But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention so we got really good at entertaining ourselves.

Although the general feeling of the place was as gray and moldy as the walls, we had a great time there more often than not.  We would frequently watch drill sergeants joke and talk like people rather than domineering hate machines.  Not all of them were rotten but some we liked more than others.  It was from the back of a cattle truck that I had the great pleasure of watching the company’s meanest drill sergeant crutch his way to the Orderly Room with his foot in a cast.  I would love to say that I pitied him but what ever made him break his foot was now saving the rest of us from his tyranny because he was taken the rest of the rotation off to heal.  Only the Broken got to watch this great moment in our basic training history and I would have sold my soul for a video camera right then, but as this was a lot better than hearsay, I was very happy to be privy to this glorious sight.  It was him that led the march so hard and fast that many of us, myself included, sustained grievance injuries and were taken out of training.

Along with this there was a sense of almost pure harmony.  The dimly lit rooms with its grungy windows and cobwebs hanging like garlands from the ceiling, we had laughter, which was rare in Basic Training.  We had close associations with the employees and amongst ourselves.  As soldiers we came together like a small company of our own.  We would meet up every morning, from our different platoons, and would shed the animosity and rivalry the training soldiers felt like a moth-eaten coat.  Together we stood up for one another and would spin yarns about our situation and ourselves.  Although the Orderly Room was anything but, it still managed to give the Broken and Waiting a place to call our own.  I would have given anything not to have been injured, but I wouldn’t give up the memories I got from being in our makeshift clubhouse for the world. 

Eulogies for Life

 

High school can be a troubling time.  Perhaps it was more so for my parents then for me, made evident after my father cracked open his retirement piggy-bank and threw seven thousand dollars at an American Field Service (AFS) exchange company.  Admittedly, I was difficult in that my closet's color palet was a dark in general and my friends, attitude and music matched.  That I was quiet, withdrawn, and lost in my own thoughts and actions was to be expected.  Right?  Apparently having a black clad and permanently pale child moping around the house was not considered a good time for anyone.  Honestly, I could have been a lot worse considering that I did not smoke, drink, or break curfew.  My grades were just immaculate enough to hint at a social life, while still giving the impression of being hard working.  It was not that my parents expected too much, it was that I was void of personality and never considered others before myself.  They felt that they had to expand my horizons if I was going to be a productive member of society.  Thus, Mom and Dad grimly signed on the dotted line in their checkbooks and AFS’ permission slips, praying that their darkling would come back human.  

Soon after arriving in Slovakia, the furthest place my parents could kick me, I discovered that I had desires rather than the commands of others to be fulfilled.  Would the road less traveled be straight and sinful, or narrow and curving?  It would seem that for a time it would curve.  Curve to the bar and all the glories that alcohol could provide.  So much for the decree of parents and their silly rules.  Instead, the wonder of intoxication would replace the need for school and its strict regulations, until, after only three months, I was a very happy alcoholic.  Alas, my parent’s plan did not backfire completely.  Visions of their depressing teen returning from home clad in pastels and fluent in faraway languages never did come to fruition, but slowly something did change.  Instead of bursting from a chrysalis due to simple immersion in a new culture or life, it was from withdrawing further into anything written in English.  Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men were thrown hastily in the corner, however, for an overly thumbed paperback written by Orson Scott Card called Speaker for the Dead.

It is not uncommon for exchange students to group together rather than spread out amongst the population, which strangely lead to the lending of books.  While sitting in a smoke-filled bar in Kosice, the second largest city in Slovakia, my friends and I lounged in plush horseshoe booths awaiting our blissfully inexpensive drinks.  The group of Australians that were scheduled to leave was having their final hurrah, and because of a distinct lack of baggage space, one of them unloaded many books on me to share with the others after I had burned through them.  These were the small, nice things we would do for one another.  Usually we would wait silently while the money for the bill was going around so that the attention would not be on the fact that the person next to us was paying for our drinks.  Who cares?  It’s only two dollars American anyway.  We, the young Gods who sat while the other students stood when the teachers arrived in the classrooms, refused our seats on the bus to the old lady with a work-hunched back, and laughed as we handed out cigarettes to children.  We were too good to respect our elders or the young.  Our little group was what Emile Chartier, the French philosopher, feared when he said, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”  We only had one thought, and it revolved around the self.  

It took me some time to work my way through my pile of books.  Most of this was spent during that brief few hours that I was home watching my host family clean their small flat while I sat on what used to be my host sister’s bed and read.  When I first started reading Speaker for the Dead, I was mostly just interested in its futuristic setting, and how a person could live for generations, playing the ultimate avoidance dance of spending large portions of time moving at light speed.  However, this was only a small portion of the book.  To give a brief synopsis, it was about a man who traveled the universe speaking at people’s funerals.  Not just the flowery, untrue garbage people spew out of political correctness and guilt, but about the person: what they did, why they did what they did, and what happened in their lives to make them act in such a way.  For the first time, I began to realize that everyone has a different set of cause and effect reactions that make them behave in the manner they do.  I realize how simple that sounds.  That one person has some kind of reason or experience that shapes who they are.  Having someone tell the truth about your life as you lived it was also enticing.  I dreamt of that kind of understanding.  Being a teenager is to feel isolated from understanding and for me this was amplified by being sent on foreign exchange.  It wasn’t until later that I really opened my eyes to the rest of the world, but that to proved to be quite an adventure.  

A few weeks later, I found myself awakening from my self-indulgent haze while sitting in a café.  I should have been in class, but as per usual, I had skipped to smoke and drink coffee and write letters to my dark friends from home.  At a table not too far from me was a small group of men all nicely tailored in suits so obviously Italian, and shoes so nicely polished, with another group of men who were so obviously their body guards.  This was a small group of the Slovakian Mafia, quite prevalent in this café.  It was owned and operated by their organization and was always frequented by the BMW’s and Mercedes that would otherwise never be seen in such a poor country.  Nice clothes were one thing, but cars were expensive to the point that it would be cheaper to buy a car from America and ship it, than to purchase in country.  No joke.  

One of them, a swarthy balding man, gave me a wink.  I started writing with a vengeance.  Didn’t he know how important I was that I shouldn’t have to be bothered by the advances of the ancient?  Apparently not.  Soon, he was smoothing his few strands of hair in a mirror by his table, and moved to sit pompously across from me.   With a flurry of Slovak, he began his flirtatious chess game with me, the eighteen-year-old infant.  I tried to slow his progress by bluntly telling him in English that I didn’t speak Slovak.  This did nothing but fuel the fire.  He could speak English better than I could.  He was German and spoke several languages better than I spoke the one.  I hastily reached for my parachute of smokes.  Could they save my nerves this time?  Fat chance, but a nice try. 

The formalities of names came and went, and all that remained was his voice, chuntering on about the weather and good places to go shopping.  He moved next to him spending time with me, and how we should do so more often.  I’m sure I turned a slightly paler shade of green, because he changed the subject to how everyone hates Germans.  To emphasize this, he told me a little story, prompted by my choice in poison.

“What is that?  Davidoff?  That is a great brand of cigarettes.  Did you hear about what happened to that family?  Their children were kidnapped and held for ransom by some terrorists.  I think they were killed, but I am unsure whether or not the money was paid.”  His story felt like the foretelling of my possible future and rang inside my head.  Get out!  Get me out of here!  It seemed like his chipper little anecdote was intended to not only frighten and intimidate, but also remind me of my place as a (infant) woman.  Roughly an hour later, I managed to point out to him that I was expected elsewhere, but was not quick enough to escape without his phone number and a, “you should call me soon.  We can have dinner.”  

The bizarre aspect of this meeting was that I was suddenly aware that there was a definite issue with the role that the Mafia played in Slovakian life.  They were everywhere.  Not just, “I really don’t want to see this person today” so you run into them, everywhere, but ants everywhere.  The men with their bodyguards would stop to talk to me, so noticeably American (?!) while waiting to cross the street, winking at me on the bus, or sitting under the yellow umbrellas of the Mafia café.  One time I saw one of them with his girlfriend-for-hire in matching Adidas track suits, so drunk that he did a somersault on the dance floor before coming over to me for a chat.  His woman laughed at him and even his bodyguard was embarrassed to the point of shading his eyes.  He was too drunk to notice.  Lucky for them.  

This reminded me of the Speaker for the Dead in another way.  The other component to the story was that there was an alien race that was randomly killing the scientists who were supposedly their friends.  What wasn’t understood by the humans was that in the alien race breeding was impossible without dying first.  These creatures germinated like plants after they died and it was considered a great honor to be killed in this fashion.  I, like the humans in the story, had closed myself off to the possibility that there could be experiences outside my own understanding that shaped a chain reaction of actions.  To explain, I was under the impression in my “overly experienced” youth that if I hadn’t heard or seen it before, “it” just didn’t happen.  Changing this self-inflated opinion wasn’t as difficult as it could have been.  The Mafia really helped me open my eyes.  Thanks.

The truth of the matter was that they ran the country.  Literally.  The country’s leader had just left, shipping himself and his family to America for political asylum.  The man who took over was as crooked as an Englishman’s teeth.  He spent the entire country’s money on shutting down organizations that he thought were against him until, not long after I left, the hospitals, schools, and military were all out of commission.  The skinheads seemed to be in on the havoc, as well.  There was a skinhead convention the day I got flashed in the park.  While this strange blond man beat off to me on the bus/chariot-of-escape, another man had the shit kicked out of him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I apparently didn’t have good timing either.  

It was like the world had opened up and sucked me in.  I was no longer a God, but a tiny speck in a turbulent sea.   Things were going on around me that I had no control over.  People were different from me in more than a, “don’t wear those shoes with that belt”, kind of way.  Until I had read Speaker for the Dead, I had no idea that anything could happen in my bubble that didn’t have something to do with me personally.  It was a sobering moment in a year of absolute drunkenness.  My liver was pleased, but I wasn’t.               

Don’t get me wrong.  I still had fun, still drank and smoked my days away.  I skipped three months of school in a row, only making an appearance to check my email and have lunch, and was forced to forge a note proving that I would, in fact, deserve the diploma I would soon receive.  Doesn’t life experience count for something?  I should graduate just for that alone!  But something had changed.  I couldn’t blindly walk around pretending that I was above the political hot-potato that the government was feverishly trying to pass.  One night, I forgot, and found myself randomly in another lip-lock with a strange guy who turned out to be a skinhead.  He didn’t speak English, but his buddy did.  He told me not to be afraid because they were good skinheads who were “only fascist.”  I, in my infinite and intoxicated wisdom, decided to have an argument with them about that topic and was forced to leave in a hurry.  While hustling to my favorite cab company, it occurred to me that that may have been a poor choice.  Luckily, those "only" fascist skinheads didn’t like beating-up (white) women.  I think they were trying to frighten me more than anything.  It worked.

I felt like I was trapped in my book where people would walk up grassy hills in search of their family members only to find them vivisected in the grass.  Just reading it left me cold and so did my experience with the skinheads.  My home town was as diverse as oatmeal but it never occurred to me that people could hate you for your skin color.  I heard about it on the news, but actually being around the people that fought for white power was horrifying.  This issue of race seemed so small and unimportant, but then again, I felt small and unimportant.  Is this how the alien race felt when the humans cried over their family’s corpses without understanding that it was done because of a higher reason, small and helpless to stop the humans from hating them for a cultural ritual they couldn’t articulate the rationale for?  And why was I spared?  Because I was a small white girl?

I wish I could say that this was one of the few times when my color and gender had gotten me out of a bad situation.  Actually, it usually caused the situation.  But I was still fairly pasty when I took my turn at leaving my year-long vacation.  My parents came to retrieve me from the airport and seemed grayer than before, prematurely aged by my letters of drinking and fun, and were shocked to see me roll into the terminal with blond hair rather than brown, a new facial piercing and a screaming teal Australian surf-board tee-shirt.  Perhaps their efforts hadn’t been in vain?  Or was their nightmare realized?

My coming home party wasn’t supposed to include most of my darker friends, but did anyway.  I decided that the details of the attendants were unimportant.  While Mother set up my Slovakian purchased items showcase style, I snuck them in.  I sat huddled and smoking in a circle with them, regaling the startled masses with stories of the Mafia, running from skinheads, and booze booze booze.  I spoke!  A lot!  I used bad language, and spat!  Mother was most displeased.  Father was trying to be diplomatic about the whole affair, and my friends were frozen in fascination.  Most importantly and strangely, I was more likely to ask about others and be understanding about their stories of the daily grind.  See.  I have a soul after all.  Who knew?  I think that in a way, I was worried that if I had died in any one of those strange experiences, what would people have said about me?  What kind of review would I have gotten?  What could I say for other people?  Why did they act out in the ways they did and how did it effect others?  What would the Speaker for the Dead say at my funeral?  I did however, take more than a bad liver back with me.  Deep in my bags were a few books that I couldn’t do without.  It seems ironic that the reason for my great enlightenment was because of a story about a different kind of eulogy. 

           

Something Not Included In The Rowers' Code

Like many corporations before us, our sparkling establishment met yet another merger.  This is not something that is either new or different from our usual happenings, and even just a few years prior had done something similar with a different corporate monster.  Sadly, this time we would have to endure such atrocities as the Go-Get-er, that precious individual who has taken it upon him or herself to encourage others to greater heights of business understanding.  This is all well and good except after the seventh or eighth lay-off where everyone is waiting with bated breath for the Angel-of-Death from Human Resources to tap you on the shoulder and transport you to the unemployment line.  The Go-Get-er, in our case, is the Captain of our ship who frequently has Freudian Slips during full company meetings.  My personal favorite was the one where he intended to advise that we were down 50% of our costs but instead pointed out that we were down by 50% of our staff and we should all keep our heads down.  Ummmmmm.

To keep us abreast of changes and inspire how to handle them, the latest purchase was of a nice, hardbound book on how to move ahead in the corporate environment effectively and succeed.  The Captain has succeeded.  He's one of the investors for the book we just bought several thousand copies of.  Had this been my choice, I would have suggested that he give us copies of the following:

*

Due to the number of lay-offs and issues we'd all been having around the office, there has been much irritation and fussing that not even a well placed prank could melt away.  We had all noted the price of this book, and even at the group rate couldn't have been much less than one or two executive yearly salaries, never mind the small army of underlings it would have covered.  Mutiny is abound.

The current office feeling looks more like this:

**

Subtract that this is actually from the Burning Man festival and just use the basics of the words.  Burning.  Man.  

Myself, I will read this new book with interest.  Right around the same time that I sprout wings and go to work with flying monkeys for the Wicked Witch of the West.  *or maybe I already do*

*http://www.badbossology.com/i1077-c47

**http://danceparadenewyork.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/burning-man-groups-heat-up-dance-parade-2011/