Life Listed - Chronologically

I am a temp. I temp. Temping says more about society than any academic waxing on in a wood paneled office about the state of working America. It's not that bad currently since I am working in a small family-owned business. It's better that way than being a faceless temp in some corporation on a corporate campus off a major highway, near no actualy town.

I noticed the other morning that what I thought was an apple tree by the windows near the entry hall is not an apple tree at all. The little fruits on the ground that I assumed were apples looked entirely too orange the other day. I walked over the tree and noticed, no they were not apples, they were apricots.

I love apricots. I can eat apricots by the pound. I can eat apricots for 3 meals a day. Apricots are only just ripe for about 2 months a year, at most. They are not like apples that you can get just a tasty in every season. I could not have been more overjoyed, even though they are spotty from not being doused with pesticides like the store bought variety.

When I bit into the only ripe one I could find, it tasted like the most apricot that apricots ever tasted. Finding a small worm at the top, where I was going to eat because of the moldy spots, didn't bother me at all. I think I'll stop now.*

I found a dead cicada along the rubber rim of my car's truck. Not the brownish shell cicadas shed all over the place, but an whole cicada with its feet drawn tight to its body as it died trapped under the pressure of the rubber rim. Given that I have this obsession with summer insects and the things that they mean, I realize that finding this means I can attribute any particular meaning I want. In this heat, I am not frantically clicking like a cicada looking for a job, but working in an office, filing and doing the other mundane tasks of a temp.

In other nature news, when I got into my car this morning, it sounded like me walking into velcro. I threw my coffee mug on the passengers seat and jumped out of the car faster than I've done anything else in my life. The velcro sound was my arm breaking threw a tight spider web that went from my dash to the center console. The spider was running up towards the visor, pissed that the only bug it caught all night was a girl. I killed the spider. If I just let it alone in my car as I would do with a spider in my house, I would probably have to sit down into spiders webs every morning. Maybe we could have learned to live together. I didn't really think about that as I took a napkin out of my lunch bag a killed the sucker. *(If I were Bess, every summer I spent doing nothing of particular substance, with much time spent by myself, figuring out myself, would be call the Summer of Apricots.)
Wednesday, July 20, 2005

I turned on the television to watch "The View" since I have nearly become a suburban housewife in my time of unemployment. Instead, George Bush was on television. This is a rare thing since this guy is never on television, interrupting shows, as far as presidents go, and as far as presidents go when the countryis in a non-war war. He was announcing that O'Connor is leaving the Supreme Court. My heart skipped a beat, I felt my stomach drop several inches, and I began the process of bracing myself that will be needed in the next months while the president does not come on television to announce new prospects to replace O'Connor, but it is simply announced.

O'Connor dissented in the recent eminent domain case. O'Connor gave me hope as a child that girls can do real things in this world, not just hold positions that are subservient to males. I can't imagine what will happen in the future without her, without another person on the Court who processes law without being a slave to the political party that was responsible for their appointment.

And like a singal, something literary, something with meaning that I can make fit as a desire, I hear the first cicada clicking a way as they finally returned to "The View", already in progress.
Saturday, July 2, 2005

I’ve squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still the man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

Every answer is in the lyrics of The Boxer. It's like opening a page to the bible and then reading what is there. I did that recently in a hotel room in Atlantic City. Not surprisingly, nothing sounded prfound. But that's because I think one only has to read the first page of the bible. The Boxer is an entirely different story.

I have become the clumsiest person ever. More clumsy, or clumsier, than ever. I had a 12 hour period last week in which I broke a glass, a bowl, and a vase. Two days later, I was handing my grandmother a bowl of ice cream, and I dumped the entire thing on her white cotton cardigan.

The first cricket, the first firefly, are the signs of summer. I heard a cricket and fireflies are old news at this point. I have seen them for at least a week now. The sign of sweaty hot oppressive summer is that whirring clicking of cicadas. Luckily, I haven't heard any of those yet. Once the cicadas come out, there is no choice to but to lie on the flooor and watch your skin slide off from the heat.

If I don't get a job soon, I may have to resort to begging. Reminding my parents of just how self-sufficient I have been throughout my adulthood and beg for loans and loans and loans. I would liek to work. The days pass too fast, too meaninglessly, when they are spent searching and searching for jobs with a good amount of distraction to play stupid computer games that involve frantic clicking, clicking, clicking. Like cicadas.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005

"By the way, did you really say that you got a hamster on Sunday?"
"Yes. Why?"
"What are you? 6?"

Even though I have no job, no current interviews lined up and only some hourly work later in the week, I still went a lost money in Atlantic City. I actually won a little money at first, for a change, playing roulette. And then I thought I could continue to win, as if winning is a guaranteed thing. Like either being cool or uncool. I was a winner. Until I lost $70. Or maybe more. I could do the specific math, but I think $70 sounds just fine to me.

I was feeling a little sick for about 3 days straight. The problem really didn't solve itself, and was making me weak and cranky. Finally, my mother scolded me for not simply taking some pretty basic over the counter medicine to deal with my problem. Which just shows I am a complete idiot.

I think my hamster might be pregnant as her belly feels puffier than it did when I got her a week and a half ago. Either that or she's gaining weight. I would really rather not have to deal with hamster babies have the trauma of seeing one of the hamsters I had as a child eat its babies. I would be terrified every minute that she'd eat her babies and then she wouldn't be a sweet little thing but a disgusting baby eater.
Wednesday, June 8, 2005

I felt a change last night, something that probably only matters to me, the significance that I attach to it is greater that what anyone else would ever see or probably agree with. I became very aware of the fact that I have becoem a more outgoing person. I am not the person who slinks to the side, hoping that no one willl really notice me while everyone else takes the lead. Maybe it was out of desparation that I acted in the manner in which I did, but maybe it's because I always have it in me. One split second decision, one interaction with a stranger, made me realize I don't worry or care like I used to.

I did not have a way to get a hold of Bess, I did not know where I was supposed to go standing covered in a layer of salty sweat as the sun was setting over the East Village. My cell phone had no battery, and then phone number I needed was trapped in it. Rounding a corner in hopes of finding the palce where we were to meet, I was a man on a cell phone just like mine. Without hesitation, I approached the man and asked if he would mind if I borrowed his battery so that I could turn on my phone and call Bess. He laughed a little, but gave me the battery while he busied himself by taking money out of an ATM.

I have always been the person who is approached. The person people ask for directions and other random help. I am the stranger people turn to for help. I never thought I would be the person asking strangers for strange requests and assistance. But I was, because I have come to realize it really doesn't matter. The worst thing that can happen is that people simply say no, or look at you like you have no brain. I realized that no one will ever find out the nice, funny, smart person I am unless I just speak up. And approach strangers on the street.
Sunday, June 5, 2005

My favorite things:
Sudafed: allergy season is not as fun without it.
Binders, in pretty colors with little places for you to label: I condensed 2 years of graduate education into binders that fill the botton shelf of the modest bookcare in my bedroom.
Twine, and the recyclability of paper: I have 6 stacks of twined reports, notes, and other papers I collected over two years waiting to be literally set to the curb (I refuse to kick paper).
Almonds and lemon water: By lemon water I do not mean some frou-frou $2.50 bottle of water I insist is worth it but I mean water with a big ole wedge of lemon in it. Pairs well with almonds. Nearly as good of a match as red wine and anything edible.
Naps: In the morning, afternoon, early evening or whenever else the urge hits me since I have no job and punching holes in paper is truly tiring.
Soap Operas: Days of Our Lives can be watched at any time in ones life time with the ability to follow to story line, regardless of how long it's been since the last time it was viewed.
Self-tanning lotion: I can now look at my once pale and veiny legs and not puke. I did this for only me as it is 50 degrees out and I have no one to get nekked for.
Home computer networks: I now sit across the room from a printer and can print out whatever I desire.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

For all the times, the system got me, used me, and made me a slave to it, I found a loop hole in the system. It's probably the most obvious one, but I had never before thought of how to use it for my advantage. Until now.

I am a procrastinator, a slacker, a shrugger of responsibility. I would rather spend a day digging holes, playing in the dirt until I am sweaty and dirt has worked its way through sneakers and socks on my feet than actually doing work that I was suppoed to have been doing for weeks. And then I realized something horrible, it would be obvious that all this work was done in two days because I was editing something using track changes in Word, and date and time is included in each tracked change.

The horror of this caused me to spend at least 2 hours searching the internet for the loop hole I needed. I even made a stab at writing a macro in Visual Basic which I am certain has made irreparable, but barely noticeable damage to my computer. Then my sister said just change the time and date on the computer!

Eureka! Clouds parted and sun appeared. There was a shift in the cosmos. The world will never be the same again.

Why can't I just change the time on my computer? I can change it to when ever I was supposed to be doing things. I can make it appear as if two days of work were stetched across days and days. I have control over the time, time no longer has control over me.

The implications are earth-shattering. Instead of worry that it would be obvious that a day "working from home" was actually a day basking in the sun and then catching up in the evening hours, just change the time to make it look like 8 pm is really 8 am. To make it look like you worked hours and hours after the close of business, rather than just minutes, make the last save appear to be at 10 pm, not 5:45 pm. The only problem with this would be with networked computers, where the time is set by the all powerful "administrator". Which just makes it more important to push to work on your own computer, claiming its more simple to keep all you files in one place, until someone suggests you keep all your files on a little memory stick, and then you kick them in the balls.

I had never considered doing this before, making the time mine rather than something that passed by, and it has changed the world. I already have done two weeks of work, there are time and date stamps to prove so. But it only took me 8 hours. Every inch of the system I reclaim is an inch I never had at the starting line.
Thursday, May 12, 2005