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a post in three parts
Mar. 6th, 2003 11:26 pmi:
No one calls me at work. Correction: No one I know or would want to speak to calls me at work. A lot of obnoxious people call me at work, trying to reach attorneys who will never take their calls, but I get almost no personal calls. This is because I'm a loser.
Anyway! Today the phone rings, the other secretary grabs it, and says, "It's your mother." I turned to said secretary and said, "I bet you she's calling to tell me not to walk to lunch because it's snowy out and I'll fall and kill myself in these shoes." And, sure enough, it was. I felt so cool.
ii:
Because of said snowy weather and the mom phone call (see, the phone call ruined everything because even if I did disregard what she said, if I ever *did* fall and hurt myself after she told me not to go? I'd never hear the end of it. And I was not willing to risk it.), I ended up eating lunch at this coffee place in my building. Lesson of the Day: Do not get lunch from coffee place that only lists its lunch options on an off-to-the-side piece of chalkboard the size of a legal pad. The lack of interest in the menu options will be reflected in the quality of food.
Anyway! Got soup and half a sandwich and ate my little lunch, la di dah. I finished eating a while before my lunch break was over, and was faced with the Dishes Dilemma: Was this an informal, bring the plates up yourself establishment? Or was it a bit tonier, one where you merely left them to be looked after by employees? Quandary!
Because the cashier lady had knocked a dollar off the cost of my lunch because she thought it unfair that the pea soup cost a dollar more than all other soups, I decided to save her some labor and bring the dishes up myself. Got up, went to the flappy-mouthed garbage can, began scraping out my soup bowl, which was complicated work what with maneuvering to keep the flap door open while scraping, etc. Complicated work I am not capable of carrying out because! Of course! The bowl slipped right out of my hands into bowels the garbage can!
I stared after it in horror and looked around to see if anyone had seen my tardalicious move. No apparent witnesses and I decided to just take off without telling people, even though my mind immediately called up elaborate, dramatic confrontations at the end of the day when the Mean, Domineering Manager counted the bowls and started ripping into the Kindhearted Cashier who had given me a discount. So The Guilt was already warming up when it was kicked into high gear by the guy at the counter looking at me warmly and saying, "Oh, thank you *so much* for bringing these up yourself."
I looked at him, the door mere feet to my left. I could taste freedom! But I gave in because The Guilt always wins.
"I lost your bowl," I said. "I was trying to clean it and the napkins got stuck and so I was trying to scrape them into the garbage can and. It fell. The bowl is in the garbage can. That one," I said, pointing.
The guy looked like he would have rather had me stay quiet so he wouldn't be obligated to do what he ended up doing, which was walking over to the garbage can immediately, me hot on his heels, and sticking his hand into the bowels of the can.
"I'm so sorry," I said, multiple times. "Do you want me to reach in there? I can do it! As long as you have a sink I could use after? I'm so sorry! It's a little to the left, I think. Towards the front."
He ended up having to take off the protective shiny black casing of the can and reach in up to the shoulder to get the bowl. And then he did, and I apologized again and ran out of there even though I still had like fifteen minutes on my lunch break. Even after going down to the basement and buying a Diet Pepsi, I still had ten minutes left but nothing to do so I went back to work. I suppose the shortened lunch break was my penance for making Coffee Place Guy rifle through the garbage.
iii.
Tonight I got home and noticed that my car was parked in an odd spot -- we have a two-car garage and my parents' cars stay in the garage, mine at the end of the driveway so they can pull out of the garage and around my car if they have to leave before me. Tonight it looked like my car was almost in the street, and I just chalked it up to That Ole Ditzy Jess Behavior, and didn't think twice about it.
And then! Then my father calls from work and announces that, oh yeah, it wasn't my fault because he FORGOT that my mother and I carpooled into work this morning and, therefore, when leaving, hadn't looked behind him and PLOWED RIGHT INTO MY CAR! Put a huge dent in the front bumper! I swear, my car grows more ghetto by the second.
Anyway. Supposedly, it should run fine. We'll find out tomorrow when I either make it to work or end up being one of those annoying roadside disabled vehicles I mutter obscenities about every morning for slowing down my commute. Ah, I am such a sunshiny person early in the morning.
And that is all for now.
No one calls me at work. Correction: No one I know or would want to speak to calls me at work. A lot of obnoxious people call me at work, trying to reach attorneys who will never take their calls, but I get almost no personal calls. This is because I'm a loser.
Anyway! Today the phone rings, the other secretary grabs it, and says, "It's your mother." I turned to said secretary and said, "I bet you she's calling to tell me not to walk to lunch because it's snowy out and I'll fall and kill myself in these shoes." And, sure enough, it was. I felt so cool.
ii:
Because of said snowy weather and the mom phone call (see, the phone call ruined everything because even if I did disregard what she said, if I ever *did* fall and hurt myself after she told me not to go? I'd never hear the end of it. And I was not willing to risk it.), I ended up eating lunch at this coffee place in my building. Lesson of the Day: Do not get lunch from coffee place that only lists its lunch options on an off-to-the-side piece of chalkboard the size of a legal pad. The lack of interest in the menu options will be reflected in the quality of food.
Anyway! Got soup and half a sandwich and ate my little lunch, la di dah. I finished eating a while before my lunch break was over, and was faced with the Dishes Dilemma: Was this an informal, bring the plates up yourself establishment? Or was it a bit tonier, one where you merely left them to be looked after by employees? Quandary!
Because the cashier lady had knocked a dollar off the cost of my lunch because she thought it unfair that the pea soup cost a dollar more than all other soups, I decided to save her some labor and bring the dishes up myself. Got up, went to the flappy-mouthed garbage can, began scraping out my soup bowl, which was complicated work what with maneuvering to keep the flap door open while scraping, etc. Complicated work I am not capable of carrying out because! Of course! The bowl slipped right out of my hands into bowels the garbage can!
I stared after it in horror and looked around to see if anyone had seen my tardalicious move. No apparent witnesses and I decided to just take off without telling people, even though my mind immediately called up elaborate, dramatic confrontations at the end of the day when the Mean, Domineering Manager counted the bowls and started ripping into the Kindhearted Cashier who had given me a discount. So The Guilt was already warming up when it was kicked into high gear by the guy at the counter looking at me warmly and saying, "Oh, thank you *so much* for bringing these up yourself."
I looked at him, the door mere feet to my left. I could taste freedom! But I gave in because The Guilt always wins.
"I lost your bowl," I said. "I was trying to clean it and the napkins got stuck and so I was trying to scrape them into the garbage can and. It fell. The bowl is in the garbage can. That one," I said, pointing.
The guy looked like he would have rather had me stay quiet so he wouldn't be obligated to do what he ended up doing, which was walking over to the garbage can immediately, me hot on his heels, and sticking his hand into the bowels of the can.
"I'm so sorry," I said, multiple times. "Do you want me to reach in there? I can do it! As long as you have a sink I could use after? I'm so sorry! It's a little to the left, I think. Towards the front."
He ended up having to take off the protective shiny black casing of the can and reach in up to the shoulder to get the bowl. And then he did, and I apologized again and ran out of there even though I still had like fifteen minutes on my lunch break. Even after going down to the basement and buying a Diet Pepsi, I still had ten minutes left but nothing to do so I went back to work. I suppose the shortened lunch break was my penance for making Coffee Place Guy rifle through the garbage.
iii.
Tonight I got home and noticed that my car was parked in an odd spot -- we have a two-car garage and my parents' cars stay in the garage, mine at the end of the driveway so they can pull out of the garage and around my car if they have to leave before me. Tonight it looked like my car was almost in the street, and I just chalked it up to That Ole Ditzy Jess Behavior, and didn't think twice about it.
And then! Then my father calls from work and announces that, oh yeah, it wasn't my fault because he FORGOT that my mother and I carpooled into work this morning and, therefore, when leaving, hadn't looked behind him and PLOWED RIGHT INTO MY CAR! Put a huge dent in the front bumper! I swear, my car grows more ghetto by the second.
Anyway. Supposedly, it should run fine. We'll find out tomorrow when I either make it to work or end up being one of those annoying roadside disabled vehicles I mutter obscenities about every morning for slowing down my commute. Ah, I am such a sunshiny person early in the morning.
And that is all for now.
