All posts by Becca

Wherin Google connects me to humanity

Things that confuse me

I have the top ten Google hot trends listed on my iGoogle website – I am all about all things Google. I think any internet browser who spell checks everything for you totally rocks (I love you chrome!). But I am constantly amazed at the random menagerie of searches people perform. This morning when I got to work the #1 search in the United States was “what time is it” and I have to ask myself – if you have the ability to connect to Google than you must, by default, be using a devise that has the capability to give you the time, right? Why would you Google this in the first place,? And why would so many people be googling it that it made it not only to the top ten list, but all the way to number 1?

Also on my iGoogle home page is the “How of the Day” – sometimes this is really really helpful, like the day it taught me how you calculate your GPA (yes, I have three degrees… there are clearly holes in the educational system). Today, however it is teaching people out there (I assume the same people who have no idea what time it is) how not to be afraid of cattle. Is this really a problem? Is there a large portion of our population unable to sleep at night for fear that a rouge Holstein is going to find its way into their bedroom and… what? Lick them to death? Now, there are a lot of things in this world that I am afraid of – guns and squirrels being top of the list (stupid rats with big fluffy tails, able to roam freely throughout the city…) but honestly, I have never ever thought that cows presented a problem, am I wrong?

A flashback to the single life

good intentions, Life Lessons

I celebrated Mother’s Day all weekend long and part of the celebration was a girl’s night out with my lovely sister on Saturday night. We had a great dinner at our favorite small BYO bistro and then bar hopped our way around Rittenhouse square just like we were ten years younger, childless and able to stumble two blocks home.

While we were having dinner a young good looking guy walked into the restaurant, sat down with his bottle of wine and nervously stared at the door for the rest of our meal… the last of our Chianti… and our round of cappuccinos. I felt so bad for him; all dressed up and so obviously hopeful.

It made me think about the time I was on a date in the restaurant just next to the one we were at. This of course was way before I met my husband and realized I would be a fool to ever let him go, knowing there are only a few good looking,  rational men in this world willing to put up with someone like me.

I had become a serial internet dater, mostly because I’m lazy and I just wanted to date people in slippers from the comfort of my own home. I had been chatting with a guy named Jay… Somethingorother. He seemed nice enough and so we had agreed to meet at a restaurant just around the corner from where I was living at the time. I got there early and Jay arrived shortly after – clearly 15 years older, 6 inches shorter and a good 20 pounds heavier than his profile and picture marketed him as. Now, I try not to be shallow but I truly believe that if you’re a 40 year old single man you are just setting yourself up for failure by using your high school graduation picture as your current photo.

But I had already had a cocktail or two so I was willing to ‘give it a go’ so to speak… It didn’t take long before I realized that it just wasn’t going to work out, we clearly had nothing in common, and I think he even made a comment about how much I was drinking… eh hem…

About 45 minutes into our date, I legitimately got something in my contact lens – you know when you are tearing up and your nose is running and the makeup is half sliding down your face – it was obviously not a problem I could fix with a cocktail napkin. I decided that since I lived around the corner the smart thing would be for me to run home, remove my lens and come back – it would take less than 10 minutes.

So – I went home and swapped my lenses for my glasses. I had my hand on my front door knob just ready to hurry back to this unbearable date when I thought “Hm… do I really have to go back?” Jay Somethingorother knew I lived close but not exactly where, I mean wouldn’t I be doing us both a favor if I didn’t encourage it?

So – I stayed home and put on my slippers, poured a glass of wine and sat in the dark, you know just in case.  I felt bad, I really did – I mean I do have feelings.

The next morning I was barely awake, still lying in bed when the phone rang and guess who? Jay, bright eyed and cheerful asking if I wanted to meet him for brunch. “Huh?” I groaned into the phone, “But I left you at the bar last night…” Apparently he didn’t care, he wanted to buy me brunch and have me meet his dog.

It took three days of unwanted phone calls before I convinced Jay that it was never going to work out – I had never seen anyone try so hard and it just made me feel like maybe I was being unreasonable, why shouldn’t I date someone I don’t like, I mean if he’s really into me?

Fortunately for my husband, my daughter and my current lifestyle – I’m not that lazy -I decided not to settle. I am hoping that whoever that guy was at our restaurant Saturday wasn’t waiting for someone who changed their mind at the last minute, and if he was he moves on and finds someone awesome, did I mention he was really cute?

Newsletter: Month 9

Newsletter

Tomorrow Lucy turns 9 months, I have decided to take a page from other Mommy blogs, most notably Heather Armstrong and  start a monthly newsletter to Lucy, because I’m not sure that I am exploiting her enough already… here goes.

Dear Lucy,

This month you learned so many new things, you cut your first three teeth and I am amazed at the amount you have grown both physically and mentally in the past nine months. The beginning of this month you were flying back from Florida on your first airplane trip – you were so good on the plane, taking everything in stride and being so cute that even when you became really cranky those around you still wondered at how adorable you are.

Once we were back from Florida you perfected your ability to crawl and it wasn’t two weeks later that one Thursday night you grabbed on to your Dad’s belt and pulled yourself right up onto your feet. You didn’t even realized what you were doing, but pretty soon you were doing it all the time.  When you see me, or your father, and raise your arms to be picked up it just about breaks my heart.

You say “Mama” all the time, but  you say it to me and your Dad and the cat, it’s clear you don’t understand who that is. You have gotten really good at feeding yourself, cheerios and puffs all manage to eventually make it into your mouth, you have also developed a serious fondness for banana yogurt.

You spent a weekend with your cousin Sean and marveled at how big and fast he is, I can’t wait until you are older and able to play with him and all your other cousins you haven’t had a chance to meet yet.

You and your friend Grace rule daycare, you are the two who can stand and get around wherever you want. I can see the younger, smaller kids look at you the way that you look at Sean and that’s pretty cool.

Sure there are some things we are still trying to change, like when you lick the trashcan because you can see your reflection in it- but for the most part you are absolutely perfect just the way you are… you are becoming less of an infant and more and more a toddler everyday.

Your favorite things right now are the 6:58 drawing of the Pennsylvania lottery, “petting” the cat, splashing in the bathtub and eating my car keys.

I love you so much – Mama

Another reason why it’s good I can’t write prescriptions

addiction

Every spring I come down with a head cold, runny nose and general stuffiness that seems to last for months, it’s been going on for oh about ten years now… Ten years, the exact amount of time that I’ve been back living on the east coast. I didn’t put this together until a couple years ago. Actually I didn’t put this together at all until I finally decided after almost two decades of avoiding all manner of doctors, to finally find one and get a yearly physical (sixteen year physical?). And my doctor (who isn’t a doctor at all, she’s a nurse practitioner – because I simply couldn’t go all the way) looked at me and said “You know, you have allergies?” And I said “Really? Is that why I’ve been sick for four months?” (I’d like to remind you right now, that I am smart in other ways…)

I never really minded this four month head cold before because it meant Nyquil and Nyquil is one of my most favoritist things of all time. A glass of wine and a big shot of Nyquil is like a warm blanket that bludgeons you over the head and envelopes you in deep uninterrupted sleep for 8-10 hours. And who cares if you wake up slightly hung over, for someone who rarely sleeps straight through any given night, it’s like a little shot of heaven.

So for the past ten years spring has become Nyquil season and I’ve been perfectly content with that. Last spring was super difficult for me because being pregnant I had to skip Nyquil season, and I missed it… I missed it a lot, so much in fact that this year I seem to be subconsciously making up for it. I tried hard to resist, knowing that breastfeeding and Nyquil are probably not the best of friends, but then I thought “how bad could it be? I mean I feed her in the beginning when I was taking 12 percocets a day after the c-section.” And Lucy doesn’t seem to care, she might be a little less active in the morning, but honestly, that just works out in everyone’s favor.

I noticed on my last Target trip that they now sell it alcohol free, um… what the? It’s the alcohol that does the bludgeoning and that, quite frankly, is the best part. So I grabbed the good stuff and as I was having the cashier swipe my drivers license for something like the 8th time this season, I wondered how many more bottles could I buy before someone official looking shows up at my house looking for evidence (more evidence) of a meth lab?

It might be time to start buying it online…

Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Uncategorized

I was born on a Wednesday and whether or not that is the catalyst for it I have always been very quick to cry. And I mean quick, I don’t just cry when events turn happy or sad or emotional I cry when I know they are headed in that direction. I cry at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games because of all the amazing potential gathered together and the idea that soon dreams will be realized or crushed, my point is it doesn’t even have to have happened yet. I was once at a business event taking place at a  hockey game where a small crippled boy with a terminal disease sung the national anthem, I cried so hard that I had to excuse myself… I cried right now just typing that line.

Thursday night when Michael left the office for good and got on that plane to Boulder Colorado I cried, my husband looked at me and said “Seriously? You’re crying for the office?” sometimes, it’s like he doesn’t know me at all. I’m just glad that he was at work this morning when I watched William & Kate get married, it got a little embarrassing even for me. My wedding was certainly no exception – I couldn’t talk to, or look anyone in the eye until about 30 minutes and several glasses of wine after the ceremony was over.

It already makes me embarrassed for my daughter because if I can cry like that for Kate & William two people I’ve never even met what’s going to happen when she gets married? Or goes to school? Or has her first recital? Or whatever?

In the meantime – I’m sorry Lucy, just tell everyone your Mother has a ‘condition.’

Drunk Steak guy

Poetry

Last night some drunk guy came to our door trying to sell me stakes out of the back of his van, it was a notably bizarre encounter and to honor that I have composed a haiku about him:

Dirty drunk steak guy
you should put on some clean pants
no one wants your meat

strangers have the best…sushi

gay men rule

I have one of those faces that invite strangers (quite often really crazy ones) to talk and share things with me. I repeatedly  find myself in conversations that I shouldn’t be in while riding the subway. I’m always the one on the plane that ends up next to the chatty business man from Kansas city. I know way more information about random strangers than anyone should have to know.

When I lived downtown this started to become a serious problem, and in order to combat it I decided to become crazier than my public. I would frequently walk around Rittenhouse square having random conversations, some times quite heated ones with no one in particular. I found that, not only did people stop sharing stuff but they also stopped asking me for change – it was a win win. At one point I bought a pair of cheap ear buds ( I was much too poor to get the accompanying iPod) and I would walk around town pretending to listen to music but really just singing whatever popped into my head.

But, it’s been five years since we bought our house and moved to a neighborhood. I try hard to curb my crazy here and I have stopped talking out loud to myself – well for the most part. The point is I’m out of practice because this past Friday my  husband and I had a rare opportunity to go out on date night, it doesn’t happen often so we decided to head downtown and make a night out of it. In an effort to spice things we decided to go somewhere new and different, you know instead of for wings at Moriartie’s.

We ended up at a great new sushi place, well I assume it was new, it wasn’t there five years ago. Sitting at the sushi bar trying to decipher the menu the guy next to me leans over and says, “you look confused is this your first time?”Shoot I thought, here we go again… and thus ensued a conversation with John and his partner Mark who insisted we skip the soup, have a salad and get exactly what they had for dinner. Five years ago I would have done something to deter their unwanted suggestions – you know like meowing like a cat or yelling “honey badger don’t give a shit!” but I didn’t. I listened to how much they loved this restaurant and let them place our entire dinner order for us.

After the best freaking sushi we’ve had in a long long time – Jason looks over at me and says, “I’m so glad you still got it.”

Duh.

Lyrical misunderstandings

Things that confuse me

I’ve never been particularly adept at deciphering song lyrics. Either I completely misunderstand the words that are being used or I miss the point of the song altogether. Perhaps my best known song faux pas is John Fogerty’s “Put me in coach” which until I met my husband I believed was about flying in an airplane and my entire life I could not figure out why you would want to be put in coach, I mean wouldn’t first class be better? There’s more room up there.  It made no sense to me.

Regardless of what is says on my resume, attention to detail is not my forte.

My husband also informed me that Dio’s “Holy Diver” is not in fact, “Holy Tiger” like I think it so clearly says in the song. And B-52’s “Roam” is not “Roll” (Roll around the world… right?)

This brings me to this afternoon when I am driving home from work . Since I get exactly 15 minutes to myself all day (in the car traveling from the office to daycare) I like to blow off steam by opening all the windows, turning on the heat (cause it’s not quite warm enough yet) and blasting music (usually hip hop)  disproportionately loud. Let’s just say I often feel like Michael Bolton in the opening credits of “Office Space.” But, today, I was listening to Justin Timberlake (don’t judge me) bringing Sexy back. This is a classic example of a song where I just cant figure out the words he’s using. There is a point in the song where I’m pretty sure he’s saying “Whose your sexy Ho? Whose your sexy ho? Whose your sexy ho?” and this is what I was singing really REALLY loud, when I looked over and saw the head of the mommy group that I tried ever so hard to get into but who ultimately rejected me when I went back to work. Ugh.

Hey, Sarah – who’s your sexy Ho?

Spoiler alert: this post has no point whatsoever

Random stuff

I feel that my two most recent posts have been very maudlin and I need to lighten things up – that being the case I’d like to talk about the Daughter’s of the American Revolution, because nothing says light and funny quite like the DAR.

Several years ago my sister tricked me into joining the DAR, she did this through bribes of tiaras and costumes. I’m a sucker for any kind of head piece and since she promised to pay my yearly dues (for my lifetime) I reluctantly signed up.

I’m no stranger to societal organizations. I was once (also reluctantly) a Rainbow girl – which I was also talked into through  bribes of tiaras and hoop skirts (do you see a pattern here?).

The problem is my love of dressing up like a princess really conflicts with my deep seeded hatred of forced social gatherings. I have officially been in the DAR for six years now and not once have I gotten to dress up in period costumes – I have, however, been stuck in Many Many awkward forced social situations.

Now, I’m not saying the DAR isn’t a great organization dedicated to many worthwhile projects, but they lack one very important aspect – alcohol. When I watch the Gilmore girls, most of their DAR meetings take place with afternoon wine sprtizers on Emily’s patio, but not our chapter – oh no we drink mixers only – you know like soda and water… I’m not saying I need to be drunk to enjoy myself but seriously when you are hanging out with the DAR crowd listening to a Paul Revere reenactor speak for half an afternoon it certainly doesn’t hurt.  The DAR crowd, with a few exceptions, is almost entirely a group of women you wouldn’t be surprised to see on an episode of confessions of animal hoarding – you know because of all the cats… They are odd ducks to be sure.

Three years ago I was talked into attending the Pennsylvania state convention, being held in Scranton PA – you know somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. And not only did I go but I paged. As a page you have to dress entirely in white – you have to wear gloves and fetch things for all of the older cat hoarders who are too lazy or enfeebled to get things themselves. As a page you are not allowed to sit down or eat anything (except during designated times). It was 48 hours of tortuous forced social gatherings where my feet hurt and I was hungry. You are also required to stay in a small hotel room with three other people (fortunately I got to share a bed with my sister) but most pages weren’t so lucky. I tried to put on a brave face I really did but the flask I had brought with me was too small for funnel I brought and my dream of secretly tying one on the entire weekend were hopelessly dashed.

At one point one of the more obnoxious, chipper pages says to my sister “I don’t think Becca is having any fun.” Um… duh. No one says DAR women aren’t observant.

I’m not sure what my point was to all this – I lost focus on the message I was trying to convey several paragraphs ago when my brain diverted itself to trying to locate the flask I haven’t seen since that fateful weekend. I guess what I’m trying to say is that last weekend when I learned the valuable lesson of not having multiple children my lovely sister and her husband where in Gettysburg to attend this year’s Pennsylvania State DAR convention – because that’s the difference between me and my husband and the two of them, you couldn’t get us to go without the use of a court order…

(If you are interested in joining or learning more about the DAR please visit National Society DAR or The Independence Hall Chpater  (thats my site – I made it – isnt it pretty?)  This has been a public service announcement)

What a difference a day (or two) makes

Life Lessons

There’s been a hot  debate in our houshold ever since Lucy came into our lives… siblings? See, I think kids should have brothers and sisters around – you know to put them in their place and fight with and learn to share with and to occassionally pin to the ground and drool in the face – I believe its what makes ‘normal’ people normal. So even though I’m getting older and we live in a house the size of a small shoe I have been presenting the arguement that we really need to have more kids.

My husband on the other hand, who is, as you know much more pracical than I am takes the other side of the arguement and believes that we can raise an only child and she can still end up ‘normal’. He grew up with two cousins who were only children and they turned out  surprisingly well – I , on the other hand am not related to any only children and therefore think his cousins are total anomalies.

He also has developed this theory than since we were blessed the first time with an amazingly good, cute child who can sleep on demand and stay that way for 14 hours if need be – it’s  like we won the baby lottery.  And no one wins that lottery twice ergo our second child would end up being Satan him/herself. I have to admit that this part of his arguement is the only part that makes the least bit of sense to me.

But still we argue because we both believed we were right… and then this weekend happened.

It all began innocently enough when my sister emailed me that she and her husband were going to Gettyburg this weekend and would we mind watching her 4 year old son Sean? Sure, I said – I mean at the time of the email it was way into the future and I figured anything could happen to prevent this from occuring – besides you never know when you, yourself has to take off to Gettyburg and drop your child off for a weekend with her aunt.

But nothing happened – no rampant Philadelphia wildfires or alien invasions and late Friday afternoon Sean was dropped off at our house. Let me pause here and say that Sean is a great kid, a fantastic one actually, he is quiet and respectful and able to entertain himself and put on his own shoes, he’s wonderful but he’s still 4.

He was here exactly 48 hours  and I’m ready stick an ice pick in my eye, I really am not sure why anyone would do this to themselves. My theory is that everyone out there with more than one child never had the opportunity to babysit more than one kid while they were trying to decide to have more.

After everyone was tucked into bed last night Jason & I sat in the livingroom, looked at each other and said “So – thats it then.” A huge wave of both relief and despondency flew through me. We toasted our decision with a 2/3 of a bottle of single malt scotch and I decided our daughter will also be an anomaly, and this way I’ll now have room for lots more shoes…

Hero Worship

good intentions

Yesterday I attended a University symposium on the problems facing urban populations they covered everything from childhood hunger, comprehensive healthcare, sustainability, urban violence and AIDS. And as I sat there listening to these speakers who have dedicated their lives and careers to helping others, I than had this conversation in my head:

I really need to do something more meaningful with my life

you probably don’t make a lot of money handing out free healthcare services to the indigent population of our city

I really like the lifestyle that I have created for myself

Some people don’t have any kind of lifestyle – they deal everyday with housing and food uncertainty

Yeah but if I start handing out food to the poor how will I ever get my house in the suburbs so Lucy can attend a good school?

You’re so incredibly selfish 

Shut up

I would like to say that this is the first time that the voices in my head have argued this same point, but who among us hasn’t wanted to do something more heroic with their life? But if it were possible for us all to be heroes than who would we even be helping?  I’m going to write a check to Philabundance to clear my conscience and try and keep my own family healthy and safe – sometimes thats all we can do.

Non sequitur babbling

Random stuff

I realize that I am getting old and out of touch because when I flip through the People magazines in our breakroom at work I only recognize about a quarter of the people in it. I’m also pretty sure that there are several commercials on TV featuring celebrities trying to sell you things, but I’m never sure if they are celebrities or just TV commercial actors, I’ll look at my husband and say “Is that someone we should know who that is?”, and my husband who is even more out of touch with this stuff than I am will stare blankly in response, give me about 5 seconds of eye contact before he buries his head back into his laptop and (I imagine) wonders for the umpteenth time how I tricked him into marrying me.

~

Another realization I have come to recently is that no matter what I do – my hair will never be shiny and bouncy like the women on TV that use the same shampoo I do, I buy a lot of products, sometimes really expensive products and at one point in my life worked at a hair salon where we sold ubber expensive products and even then I was not bouncy or shiny…  I have finally come to the conclusion that unless I can go back in time and somehow add some Hawaiian ancestry into my gene pool this is never going to happen so I’m going to start saving my money.

~

This morning I was getting ready for work and I decided to dress up – you know in a dress and everything and searched through the bottom of my closet for a pair of black heels, I had them on for about 10 minutes and remembered why they were buried in the bottom of my closet in the first place.

 When I was getting ready to leave for work I took a minute and fished my worn and tired ballet flats out of the shoe pile near our front door, my husband and I had this conversation:

Him: Are you looking for shoes?

Me: Yup

Him: But you have shoes, right here, you just had them on.

Me: Yup

And as I pulled on my ballet flats and stuck the heels in a bag to bring to the office I thought about explaining to him that the heels had a 30 minute window and I would take them to work and keep them under my desk and if I’m called into the Dean’s office, or if say Ed McMahon shows up with a crazy big check for me and a TV crew I will quickly step into them and hurry from my office. I wanted to tell him how there is no point in being in pain unless someone you care about sees you and think it makes your legs look longer, and since I never run into anyone I care about in the parking garage why would I do that to myself. But then I thought, he’s a man who wears doc martins to work he’s probably not really going to understand anyway.

A love note in binary

Stuff only I think is funny

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Spring has Sprung

Uncategorized

It is currently 78 degrees in downtown west Philadelphia, and in an effort to take a break from email I decided to go for a walk around campus – I headed straight to Starbucks thinking wistfully about a vanilla latte but as I was standing in line it hit me, its smoothie season, SMOOTHIES, so I immediately left the coffee haven and leisurely strolled to the closest smoothie bar. Soon we’ll be in sandals with toenails painted, eating lunch outside.

I love this time of year when everything is in a state of rebirth and renewal and the dogwood trees are blooming and the daffodils are up, it reminds of being a kid and the physical rush of unbridled excitement when you realize you can go play outside, outside, without a coat, or snow pants or mittens – just you, your bare feet and new shoots of grass.

I can’t wait until Lucy understand how cool spring is, until we can stay up late and catch fireflies and tuck her into bed with her window open.

OCD update

Random stuff

I thought it was weird when I started only being able to walk on the dark squares on the diamond patterned rug at work, and then last night I realized I couldn’t go to sleep without turning over three times to the left… I would be worried about these things but who has the time for that? I really need to go wash my hands again…

on traveling…

Life Lessons, Vacations

Just a few years ago – when I was 19 – I packed up everything I owned into one suitcase and one backpack, I bought a carton of Marlboro lights and a 12 pack of mountain dew and I moved myself from Pennsylvania to California – by train… Three days on the Amtrak Sunset limited with less than $20 in cash and for 72 hours I sat in a seat (no sleeper car for me) and dreamed of my new life in San Diego. I survived seven years with what I brought with me…

And then last week I went to Florida for a week – I took a suitcase of equal size, a diaper bag much bigger than my backpack and a small umbrella stroller. Lucy & I flew on a plane for 2.5 hours, and it was just about all I could take and you know what? I still had to go shopping because 3/4 of that suitcase was her stuff & and one point I really needed another pair of pants…

Before I became a mother I thought parents where crazy for buying so much stuff for their kids – I mean babies are small they should only need small things and not that many of them, right? I was sure everyone was crazy and since I live in a small house I figured I would seriously limit what we needed.

What I’ve learned since then… its not just toys, it’s things to keep them safe, things to keep them clean, things to help them eat… kids need stuff – lots of stuff and sure Lucy probably has twice as many toys as she probably really needs but I blame that on her overzealous grandmothers.

Kids need stuff – they need it at home and they need it away from home… I guess my days of 3 day train trips with nothing but the clothes on my back are just as long gone as my days of smoking… Once I thought that prospect would make me sad, but I wouldn’t give any of it up for anything – who cares if there’s no where to walk in my house and traveling  now requires a pack mule and extra handlers – at least I get to pre-board…

Real Life Updates or Out of office for my blog

Vacations

Tomorrow Lucy & I are flying down to Florida to spend 5 fun filled days in the sun – I expect to spend most of the time in the pool or laying next to in a half damp bathing suit with a half drunk bottle of white wine and a good buzz on while my Mom dutifully watches Lucy (heads up Nana). I am super excited about this vacation, and not just because it gets me out of work for nearly a week – something that is DESPERATE to happen, but because Lucy loves water – I mean she LOVES water, here is a picture of her doing one of her favorite things:

And Florida is FULL of water – or at least surrounded by it… I hope to update you often from the sunshine states – either with cute sandy pictures or random ravings of a complete lunatic (it could go either way). But just in case that doesn’t happen I will defiantly be back the end of next week.

Digression

Uncategorized

Barney Stinson has a theory about releasing anger called the pyramid of screaming, for those of you who watch how I met your Mother you know exactly what I’m talking about, for those of you living under a large heavy rock, here is an excerpt from his blog explain the pyramid of screaming:

THE CHAIN CIRCLE PYRAMID OF SCREAMING

(4/14/08)

HEY STUPID BLOG READERS!!! WHY DON’T YOU READ MY BLOG MORE?!?! Sorry. My boss screamed at me over a few missing schematics and I had to release some steam. Why didn’t I yell at my boss and not at you? Because that would be dumb, idiot.

You see, we all learn as children that screaming leads to results, and it’s no different in the workplace. America was built on the backs of men and women who were yelled at to work harder, and the tradition has been screamed from generation to generation. But you can’t just scream at anybody… that would be counter-productive. That’s why it’s imperative you understand where you stand on the Pyramid of ScreamingTM.

What exactly is the Pyramid of ScreamingTM?

The Pyramid of ScreamingTM is a societal rubric that dismisses the parlor tricks of the Chain of Screaming, Scream Ladder, South Beach Screaming, and other methodologies and focuses on the golden rule of scream etiquette: You can only scream beneath you.

To illustrate how it works, here’s the scream pyramid for a professional football team:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/community/barney_blog/index.php

I bring this up because I’m not a huge fan of screaming but I am a proponent of this whole circle chain pyramid idea… I believe that it’s healthy to pass on the annoyance you get from one party onto another party – that way you don’t let all that angst get pent up inside of you…

Let me illustrate with my own example:

When I was in my early twenties (just a couple years ago) and lived in California I belonged to 24 hour fitness, perhaps the most annoying gym on the planet. I had the cheapest membership they offered and could only get into the gym on something like Tuesday and Thursday afternoons (perfect for me – built in excuse not to work out). But, the people that worked there were most exceptionally annoying. Every time I checked in I was bombarded with requests to upgrade my membership, or to buy their shirts, or to sign up for their towel service or some way give them more money.

And it wasn’t just the front desk – trainers would walk around and interrupt me on the Stairmaster and give me great advise about how more effective my work outs could be if I signed up for personal training sessions… Personal training sessions at $99 an hour (clearly these people didn’t understand I was bringing in $9.00 an hour and riding my bike to work because I couldn’t afford to put gas in my car).  I was constantly annoyed the entire time I was in that place and since I didn’t want to be full of angst all up inside me I would call them… I would call and have conversations like this:

Me: “What time are you open?

Them” This is 24 hour fitness”

Me: “So… you’ll be open when I get out of work?”

Them: “24 hours ma’am”

Me: “But I don’t think I’ll be able to leave until late tonight – like probably around 6:15, and then I might want to eat dinner, do you think I should eat dinner before I work out because I might be pretty hungry by then”

Them: “I don’t really know”

Me: “So, if I decide to eat dinner I probably won’t get there until 7:30, will you be open then?”

Them: “Yes”

Me: “Is Doug working today?

Them: “He’s out on the floor in a personal training session”

Me: “I really need to talk to him”

Them: “Are you just going to ask him how late me are open?

Me: “No”

(repeat above conversation)

I would do this over and over again – calling back to get different receptionist. My theory is they annoy me, I should return the favor – and I didn’t feel like I should pass this annoyance onto my friends and since I was making $9.00/hour there was clearly no one ‘under’ me which I could do this through work.

Which brings me to yesterday.

Yesterday I had an exceptionally bad day at work and left the office with angst building up like a pressure cooker inside of me. On my way home I thought & thought of people who deserve to be annoyed in return and immediately I decided upon the local 7-11 that I often go to while at the office.

You see this 7-11 is staffed by people bordering on hostile. I have had several altercations with them – once resulting in them chasing me through their parking lot… that’s a whole different post. But let me assure you they deserve to be in my pyramid.

So – I called and asked them to look and see how many hot dogs they had on their grill. It turns out they only had one lonely one leftover from lunch – so I politely asked if them would please put 3 dozen more on to cook because my son’s peewee hockey team just finished their last game and I was going to surprise them all with 7-11 hot dogs (their favorite!). I would be there in 20 minutes. I assured them I was for real and that I would see them soon…

See? Don’t you feel better? I do.

Those were the days… random email #1

Random stuff

While I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my daughter last summer, there was a small period of time where southern California was rocked with earthquake after earthquake – since many of my friends hail from there I was worried, but clearly not that worried – here is an email sent to my very good friend, lets call him Jeff (cause that’s his name) on July 8th:

I wanted to write and make sure that you are okay from your umpteenth earthquake from last night – and I know you are worried that this weird pattern of earth shaking might signal the beginning of the apocalypse or something but I have a much better explanation…
 
I am going to be a Mother, and yes it is all about me, but seriously me – a Mom, Hell clearly hasn’t frozen over yet so something else needs to happen ergo earthquakes.. Its all going to be fine. I promise.
 
I threw up on the sidewalk walking into work this morning… how much fun is that? I don’t understand I wasn’t sick at all for the last 9 months – it’s a great time to start I guess.
 
On that note – I have to leave, please try and have a good evening – I am going home to deal with an exterminator who is coming to handle our roach problem (I’m telling you – all sunshine & happiness on my end!)

Haha – fun stuff, apocalypses, vomit & roaches oh my…

You’re so pretty

Holidays

I’ll be the first to admit that I use my daughter as a shield. Part of her job is to deflect attention from me to her. This means that the cuter she is the less I have to worry about me, most of the time people don’t even notice that I’m out in public in my pajamas – I just hold her in front of me so that no one bothers to look and see whose got her.

I’m not sure that I even recognized that I was doing this until Christmas came. Christmas eve we had plans to go over to my sister’s to spend the evening with her family, knowing it was a prime picture taking event, I went out shopping specifically for really cute christmas outfits for my little girl. In no time I had found a super cute, one piece knitted ensemble – but I am no fool, one outfit wasn’t going to cut it. So, I also bought a back up – you know just in case…

Christmas eve morning we got up and put on our super cute Christmas outfit and low and behold before lunchtime it was downstairs in the washtub, pooped scrubbed out of it so she could wear it again (she never did).

I waited until she was up from her afternoon nap to put her into her back up outfit – I played with her hair until it had just the right curl and we were packing up the diaper bag when she threw up all down the front of her. i tried wiping it off but it was no use, back into her room to get changed again. This time I just stuck her in the first thing I could find. I figured at this point, the less special the outfit the less likely she would be to ruin it. And it worked – we got all the way to my sisters house while remaining clean and dry.

Inside, everyone ohhs and ahhs over her, snapping pictures in front of the Christmas tree, until at one point my sister looks up at me, realizes I’m in my sweatpants and says “Oh my god – have you even brushed your hair?”

I just know if she had been in her first outfit – no one would have looked at my hair…

on becoming a morning person

addiction

As far as I can remember I’ve never been a morning person. My Mother has told me that when I was really little it wasn’t always this way, that I would wake up early in a good mood and be happy to greet the day, but I can’t recall that time. I’m not a terrible person in the morning (not surly like a certain unnamed sister I have) but certainly not chipper and bright eyed.

I decided when Lucy came along that I would change my attitude. I had heard that babies like to get up early and I had read several baby books stating that the manner you wake them up in will mold their future attitudes. The ‘baby whisperer’ went so far as to suggest that you greet them every day with a ‘happy morning’ song – like something out of Mary Poppins (Personally, I think the baby whisperer is nothing but an evil enigma designed to make other people feel bad about their own inadequacies.)

And low and behold, they were right – Lucy was born and she would wake up very early every morning. When I was still on maternity leave and she was very little I would get her up and bring her into bed with me where I would feed her and convince her a two hour nap was just what we needed – most of the time it worked very well, for both of us.

But now she is in daycare and I have to wake her up about 30 minutes before she would really prefer to get up, so I decided to channel my internal child – the child who enjoyed waking early. Now, I get up super early so by the time I walk into her room the shock of sleep deprivation is not still upon me. I’m not Mary Poppins but I make myself chipper and convince her it’s exciting to be awake before the sun comes up.

And you know what I have learned the secret to be?

CAFFEINE and LOTS of it.

By the time 10:00 rolls around I have usually consumed half of my body weight in coffee, my feet start tapping uncontrollably and I begin to talk faster than any normal person can understand me. It’s hard to get any work done (just ask my boss). I usually waste about two hours between complete coffee overload and lunchtime where I just run around my office asking people “whatareyouupto?!?” they often stare in blank confusion, but by that time I’ve spotted something shiny and skipped off to investigate.

I guess my problem is I don’t know when to say when to the k-cup machine…  It’s a little slice of heaven brewing cup after cup of fresh hot beverages.

So yes – I have learned how to be a morning person although it has come at the expense of addiction… ah Motherhood.

Captain Lucy?

space travel

I often worry about the end of the world. In fact I obsess over it. It used to be bad before I became a parent but now it is eleventy thousand times worse. Every time I see a motorist fling a cigarette butt out of their windows another warning light goes off in my head (the inside of my head is beginning to resemble an out of control K-Mart where everything is on special).  I recently watched a show called ‘Garbage City’ on CNN or MSNBC or somewhere which literally kept me up for three nights straight.  

In order to counteract all this anxiety I do two things, I recycle a lot – I recycle things that I’m not even sure are recyclable, hoping that the person sorting through it will see it and think – hey we can use that… And I read science fiction; I read a lot of science fiction, because it’s comforting to know that soon we will be terraforming Mars and developing warp engines that allow us to meet sexy aliens that help us to overcome our differences and grow in ways we never thought possible.

The problem is, there are two categories of science fiction, the kind where the future is better and cleaner – think Star Trek the next generation, and the kind where everything is dark & dirty – think Blade Runner. I try to stay away from the later and focus on the good clean future, but then I watch Wall-E and I get all choked up.

I’m not sure what else I can do, short of quitting my job and working for green peace or moving to some tropical island where I can live off the land and reduce my carbon footprint. But green peace people can be so pushy and my husband refuses to live anywhere without a stable internet connection. So, in the meantime I will continue to read science fiction and pray that Lucy ends up on the bridge of the Enterprise.

$706 later…

Life Lessons

Last summer, I was pregnant and not just pregnant, REALLY pregnant – I had managed to pack on 33 pounds and looked like a dwarf planet walking around sweating like a human dwarf planet would sweat in 90+ degrees in Philadelphia in the summer. My feet were sore and I couldn’t consume enough Gatorade to get rid of the invariable dehydrated cotton mouth feeling that was my constant companion.

One super hot Saturday in the middle of July I decided to head off to Target to get one last thing (there would be many one last things) for the nursery and bask in the glow of full powered central air conditioning.  I backed out of the parking spot behind my house (which, I would like to add leads into a very narrow city-like alleyway) and I immediately heard the crunch of metal on metal. My natural instincts kicked in and screamed “FLEE!!!” and without hesitation I checked to make sure none of my neighbors were out back witnessing my adolescent flight response… and I gunned my car out of the alleyway and on the road to Target.

I tried to forget all about it and concentrate on my raging heartburn instead but I started feeling really guilty, and the constant stream of “no one saw you do it – no one saw you do it” running through my head wasn’t making that guilt lessen. I thought of the time I side swiped a small red coupe in the parking lot of my high school and how I was able to drive off without a second thought. I thought of that time while living in California when I forgot to engage my emergency break and my car rolled back into a Terminex truck and I was able to re-park it and go take part in whatever illicit activity I was engaged in where they might need termite control.

But I still felt bad, even after getting to the store and checking the back of my car and discovering there was barely a scratch on it…. I did my shopping and went home. I did an inspection of my neighbor’s car and discovered a big gash is the front quarter panel of his ridiculously delicate mid-life crisis class of car.

It took me three hours of searching what my best friend would call my feelers to discover that my guilt ridden conscience was not going to wipe itself clean. I thought maybe it was because I couldn’t drink my guilt away… But eventually from the back of my head, somewhere deep inside my cerebellum came an obnoxious screamy voice shouting “YOU ARE GOING TO BE A MOM – IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT TO TEACH YOUR KID. What would your Mom have done?”

Duh.

I immediately came clean to my husband, who gave me a very stern  ”I’m so disappointed in you” glare but who agreed to walk over to the neighbors house and ‘get my back’ in case anyone tried to hit his pregnant wife.

This was the first time I fully realized everything was going to change.