Broken Dreams, Broken Glasses

I'm home sick from work today for two reasons. For one, I'm sick. Fever, sniffles, yuckiness, ookiness, all that. Whatever, who cares?

The OTHER reason I'm sick is because I broke my fucking glasses last night! I don't even know what happened! I reached up to adjust them, and the delicate touch of my supple hands caused the "ear attachy stick thingy" to snap right off! I would have been better if I sat on them or stepped on them or something real, but they broke in such a pitiful way that it makes me feel more pathetic.

For any of you who have experienced broken glasses, you know it's the worst feeling in all the world. Worse than being dumped. Worse than losing your job. Worse than accidentally killing your pet. (Hi, Kitty!) To quote my favorite movie, "I felt like my stomach was gonna fall out my butt!"

So I had to sit through all of Grease, the musical, with my hand to my face. Now I'm home sick, feverish, achy, sweating, and legally blind. The only positive thing about this is that it just put "Legally Blonde" (from the musical) in my head, but after about an hour of repeated refrains, that won't be so positive anymore.

So that's my shitty day. Tell me about yours. I bet I win.

Good morning, Internet!

It's a miserable day today because I'm starving, hung over, and I can't think of a thing to do with myself. I have to run to SoHo to pick up some clothes--oh crap, and I've had dry cleaning ready since Tuesday. God dammit.

Man, and I can't find my cell phone now... ok, y'know what, screw the blog entry. I gotta get going.

Here, look, the Pipettes released a video for one of my favorite songs of theirs. Watch it.

Nyup nyup...

My morning:

So you'll very kindly let me have my way today. Alright, I'm going to work.

To My Underpants

Alright, Underpants, I'm warning you! You tricked me into thinking your luck had kicked in by causing there to be two delicious chocolate cupcakes waiting at the lunch place for Deb and me, but when we went to eat them, they were overbaked! And then I bit my lip and was bleeding.

I shouldn't get so angry. Perhaps you are doing your best, Underpants. When I put you on this morning, I noticed there was a slight tear in the seam of the elastic band because I am such a cow. I know that must be really difficult to cope with, so I'm not mad. And I still have faith that you'll come through eventually. You have 10 good hours left before I strip you off, crawl into bed, and evaluate my day. Hopefully we can put this all behind us.

I meant this to be whimsical, but I started bitching again, sorry...

C'mon, Lucky Spiderman Underpants! Do your stuff!

Today I am wearing my Lucky Spiderman Underpants, my favorite article of clothing upon which I have just bestowed the honor of capital letters. When I wear my Lucky Spiderman Underpants (not to be confused with Lousiana State University) everything goes well all day! Today, they are failing me.

First, I had trouble getting out of bed, which, to be fair, is not the fault of the LSU because I was not wearing them at the time. Then I stepped on my cat's tail, which I suppose we will also not blame on the shortcomings of the LSU because neither my cat nor I were wearing them then either.

But since dressing: 1) I ripped a page in my book because I turned it too strongly (I don't know my own power) and 2) we had another morale-boosting impromptu meeting with my boss, this time about how "certain people" have been telling him some of us "abuse" our break and lunch privileges. First of all, certain people is so obviously this one guy, and you could tell because 1) he looked awkward when this was being said and 2) he has no social skills and he knows it.

Ok, maybe it's not that one guy, that's not really fair to assume. (Lots of unfairness and misappropriation of blame today, have you noticed?)

The point is, we all hate our jobs. We all hate the way things are handled around here. Morale is at an all-time low, and now we're being hounded about a problem that isn't real. Fine, maybe I take 30-minute breaks instead of 20 sometimes. Maybe one day I'll go to lunch at 1 and the next day at 1:15. Am I the fucking Productivity Anti-Christ? Am I missing crucial 2:15 impromptu meetings where other pressing matters like this are discussed? I submit that I am not.

I also submit that the biggest hit to my productivity in the past 6 months has been due to me hating my job. When I'm in a good mood, I'll put on a podcast and WHOOSH I just cataloged the entire library. Today, I am in a shitty mood, as I usually am at work these days. Today, it is more like WHOOSH I just cataloged another negative emotion for my psychological archive, drew an inspirational post-it, wrote in my blog, called my mom to bitch about things to her, wrote an e-mail to my librarian friend to share the frustration, and maybe got around to some work by accident.

Why is it so difficult for management to realize their employees are people, and people work best when they're allowed to do things their way and not treated like naughty children?

Now if you'll excuse me, my Lucky Spiderman Underpants and I are 3 minutes late for lunch, and I would hate to be one of the reasons this library system is falling apart at the seams.

Get down! Get funky!

I have nothing to write about because I'm in a funk of laziness and non-inspiration and stress at not having done anything useful this week, and on top of that, today is one of those days where things keep going wrong. So for today's blog entry, I'm going to make a list of all the shitty things that have happened to me today. Then, when I have your sympathies, I will provide a link to my Amazon.com wishlist for your perusal.

• I couldn't find my lucky Spiderman underpants, which is probably why all these bad things are happening in the first place.
• It's negative a thousand degrees outside for no good reason.
• Getting off the subway, I was following a guy with a bike, and he stopped suddenly and I tripped on his bike and fell in the gap! It was so embarassing, and I was only saved because some tiny blonde woman caught my arm. She was really strong, but she didn't even have the courtesy to brighten up my day by being Buffy. She was just some chick. Dont worry, I thanked her anyway.
• My ankle still hurts from that.
• I broke my pencil coloring in a doodle of a witch and said "Crap!" thereby drawing attention to myself vehemently doodling just as my boss was walking by.

That's it so far, but I promise to update as the day progresses. On the plus side, the witch came out nice.

As promised: my Amazon.com wishlist. Go crazy and try to remember: My well-being is more important than any amount of your money.

A Chorus of Tiny Violins

Part I : Introduction

Oy! Have you ever had one of those mornings where you're thinking about how to blog it and the phrase that keeps coming up is "as if that weren't enough"? I have experienced a string of crappy things so long I could knit a sweater for every impoverished child on earth and still have enough left to hang myself.

It started out lovely, I got up at 7:00 no problem, no grogginess. (I was having a dream about being in a movie with Laurence Fishburne called Laurence Wishburne, in which the man played himself as a bumbling genie who always granted the opposite of what you wished for. Yes, even my dreams are filled with stupid puns, which is why I was so happy to wake up and escape the lameness.) I showered. Oh right then my house keys were gone, my milk was spoiled, I spilled tea on my couch, I stubbed my little toe, and I couldn't find the Blacula DVD anywhere to return to Netflix. So now I was in a crappy mood, but the cheerful song in my head and the discovery of my house keys (under the fridge, I blame the cat) kept me optimistic. I got out of the house with time to spare.

Oh, but then. I stepped in a slush puddle, I had an unsavory run-in with a man on the street (more on that later), Idiot Boy was working the machine at Starbucks and forgot me and screwed up my order as usual, and then the 6 train wasn't even running and it took the girl on the loudspeaker 25 minutes to inform us of such, so we all had to take the smelly ol' bus that stops every 2 blocks and was crowded full of disgruntled people. The only saving grace of the morning is that I got to read about 50 pages of my novel while I waited for MTA to get its act together.

Part II : The Run-In

So let me tell you about this run-in. A year ago before I lived here, I visited New York over Christmas and New Year's. I was walking by myself down Christopher St. on a pleasant afternoon when this skinny hoodlum guy told me I had a sexy walk, to which I replied awkwardly "Oh... yeah ok... thanks." He then said he lived nearby, implying that he wanted me to come up so we could have what would probably be the worst sex ever. I declined, obviously, and he was kind enough to just leave, but what really stuck in my mind was that bizarre "sexy walk" comment, which I never thought I'd hear again because who says that?

Well, apparently more people than I think because it happened again this morning. I'm walking along, and this guy passes me and then calls back to me, and I thought I had dropped something. He looked decent enough, clean, but he had a quality similar to that hoodlum of Christmas past. He held an ice scraper. And the way he spoke to me: "I like the way you walk" didn't immediately remind me of the other time because I didn't think he was coming on to me. I thought he was making fun of me, but he looked sincere enough, so I said "Oh... yeah ok... thanks." He asked why I was in such a hurry (I walk fast) so I lied and said I was late for work. (It was 8:30, I was totally on time.) He asked if lived in the neighborhood, and I was thinking "No, idiot, I just like to walk around the Upper East Side before work to catch the sites and did you not just hear me tell you I was late?" but I said yeah and figured ok that's it. I walked on.

But then, ick, he's all "Wait, one quick question!" so I took a breath to control the roundhouse kick to the face I felt stirring and he said "So when do I get to see you again?" and that's when it all dawned on me. Sexy walk! Shit! First of all, see me again? We haven't seen each other in the first place. This is not a date. This is a creepy encounter on the sidewalk. I was afraid if I opened my mouth I'd say "As if, you're gross and skeezy and have a disquieting goatee" and then he'd bludgeon me with his ice scraper, so I went with "Oh... um....uh... what?" instead.

"Not gonna happen?" he Nancy Drewed.
"No," I confirmed and started to walk away.
"Wait, one more question." Jesus Christ.
I turned around. "What???" He tried to take my arm, I backed away, and he said "Don't be afraid of me. You dating anyone?"
Now I'm backing away. "I'm not afraid of you, and yeah, I'm seeing someone. Goodbye." But he wasn't done.
"You ever been with a black man before?" At this point I could have rushed him and knocked his teeth out. We were about 10 feet apart at this point, and he's shouting this at me with people walking by. It was probably the trashiest exchange my UES neighbors had heard in their charmed lives.
"No!" It was as much an answer to his question as a command to shut his face and not follow me.
"Wanna try it?" Are you deficient??? What about my demeanor and body language suggests that I might want to give you a shot? So I turned and walked away and said with my back to him "I really don't!"

I would say that ruined my morning, but my morning sucked to begin with. In conclusion, if this ever happens again, I'm paralyzing myself and getting a wheelchair. Sexy walk my ass, what the hell is wrong with people?