Category Archives: The Present

Not So Daily Grind

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So far today:

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From a colleague who I have not seen in over a year:

“Oh, you changed you hair! I liked it better the other way.”

My response:

“Oh, you lost your manners! I liked you better the other way.”

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Prima Donna I: disrupts my training session in progress to ask about a personal training session. Had the nerve to be annoyed when called-out on it and asked to leave.

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Student would not take polite “no”s for an answer until bluntly told “Ask once you’re being curious, ask twice with a smile you’re being cute, ask a third time -regardless of smile- you’re being annoying, ask a fourth time you’re being disruptive, ask a fifth time when specifically instructed not to, you’re being petty, ask again and you’re being put out. Drop it, now.”

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Had to insist Student leave class, now.

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Go to my desk during break–

Prima Donna II: Leaves a voice mail and an email request that I move a pre-scheduled training class to another date because they want to use the room.  Leaves another voice mail about an hour after the fact as I had not responded to the earlier queries.

If Prima Donna II knows I had the training room next week, they should have also noticed that I had the training room today and perhaps the reason I had not responded to requests in a prompt manner was because I  – oh I don’t know – in the flipping training room conducting class.

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And this was all before noon peeps. Grrr

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After training —

Stepped into an elevator that smelled. No seriously it smelled. It smelled the smell of a thousand unwashed masses smelled, of a thousand locker rooms minutes after a thousand games smelled.

It smelled an instant reaction of What the fuck IS that? smelled.

A man who boarded with me and I exchanged glances, not wanting to speak as we simultaneously held our breaths. My eyes watered; I could barely breathe covering my mouth and nose with my coat collar, in dire fear of my lungs giving out before I disembark and silently praying to the deities that this please not be the last smell I’ll ever smell for all smellternity. We stumbled out of the elevator at my floor gasping  for air as a colleague walked past us to get in. We tried to give warning, but still gasping, it was too late.  I turned in time to hear “What the fuck is that STENCH?!” just as the doors closed. The guy who rode with me simply shrugged as he pressed the call button for a different and hopefully better smelling elevator.

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Prima Donna II  tried pulling rank by emailing Higher Authority and CCing me on it.

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Received email from ejected Student’s Boss wanting to know what happened. Suffice it to say the account Student gave was vastly different from what really happened.

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On the plus side 1-

Higher Authority realized the who, what and why of the situation and not only diplomatically told the Prima Donna II to grow the hell up and schedule a different day, but also CCed me on the exchange so I would know about it.

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On the plus side 2-

As I calmed down and attempted to compose a more EEO friendly, than what was in my head, email to Student’s Boss, a new email arrived from the same boss. with an apology. It turned out another  student in the class is a colleague of said boss from another unit, wanting to know “what assholes are being hired over there” and gave a harsh, but accurate account of the ejected student’s actions.

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Just saw Prima Donna I has sent an email. It’s almost 6:30pm (I should have left at 5pm) not even looking at it. I’m going home now.

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Hopefully my fellow Slicers are having a better daily grind on the 19th day of the challenge – come read what they’re up to…

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in my ears and in my eyes

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A little over a week ago I learned an online friend Elaine Banno, passed away. A post from her sister on Lainey’s Facebook page is how the news was broken to us. Actually, that is not quite accurate. Those who got the news first could not believe it, thus a couple of hours of has anyone heard from Lainey? type posts happened on her page before the inevitable truth was accepted.  Through our various groups we had a general sense of where we stood physically, emotionally etc, still she and I had not “conversed” one-on-one in a long while. I had come to her page that day to message her, to say “hi” ask about the blog she had not posted in a long while. That is how I learned the news of her passing.  I read through over forty-eight hours of posts (from her last post to the time I came in) on her wall in disbelief.

Lainey was not the first death I’ve gone through on social media. However, she is/was the first of someone I cared for, yet had never met in person.  This odd global village that is the internet indeed makes strange bedfellows and friends. Having “met” in an online forum and being mutual members of various online groups since, our quick wit, combined with rapier tongues made us fast buddies. Hers is a voice and a beauty uniquely her own. That’s not to say we did not have our disagreements – oh we did and the private messaging that went on behind the scenes between us were doozies at times – still whether we came to agree to disagree or have a mutual understanding after considering one or the other’s viewpoint, unlike most tenuous online relationships we always came away still speaking.

Another mutual friend created a Remembering memorial type page for those of us who want to honor, remember and grieve for her away from the family nonsense that tends to flare up during such times. I’ve barely been able to browse through it, only popping in once of twice to peruse the posts. I have perused posts on her blog and in other places to read her words. I also done so with this blog where I remembered she responded the posts, just to read her words and “hear” her voice again. I feel her loss, I really do. Yet not enough to try to make arrangements to attend her funeral. I thought about it. I considered who I could ask to get to and from the various points it would take to do so. It would not have been easy for me to arrange, but not impossible. Yet I chose not to and feel just a small sense of guilt because of it.

In this techy age we have never Skyed or Facetimed. To my semi-defense, I don’t Skype or Facetime with anyone else either, but I could – perhaps should, yet I haven’t so far.  All of the interactions between Lainey and I have solely been online, either through direct emails or the various groups we both where we were both members. We have exchanged gifts and cards. We have laughed and cried. We have checked each other. We have encouraged each other. We have shared secrets and gossip.  Aren’t these the basic things that most friends do? Yet we have never hugged. We have never shook hands. We have never broke bread together. Then again, we have never truly tied to always thinking on that someday. Perhaps it is those missing links in our connection that is the invisible barometer of where I was not comfortable/willing to make the extra effort to give her my personal good-bye, I do not know. As I tried to explain to a good friend who, like I, is also taken aback by Elaine’s passing in her own way,  it’s an odd sense of limbo.

The Beatles Penny Lane popped up on my iPod this morning.  It is listed among the classics of  “misheard lyrics” of its time and now.  Even though I know the correct lyrics, I still thought “And Elaine is in my ears and in my eyes…” which for the past few days very much holds true because I do miss you Lainey. It’s been over a week and I’m still having a hard time accepting you won’t be regaling us with tales of your cats, later on today.  That we won’t have your always perfectly timed scathing snark or cracking wise or soothing encouragements. It still won’t compute.

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Let’s see how others or crossing the limbo of this halfway point of the challenge: 

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What You Won’t Do – Do For Art…

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I was attempting to take a picture of a dew-sparkled spider web in the sunlight. Please note, I, being more of a kill it with fire type person when it comes to spiders, am hardly an arachnid’s BFF.  Still I admire the delicate, intricate complexity of a well spun spider web – go figure.  I took several pictures from different angles  around it, but they were all from above. The problem, soon I realized, is that the picture I knew it could be, the picture I wanted would never be captured standing from above. I tried crouching and bending down, but it wasn’t giving me what I wanted – the clean lines of the web itself. It was becoming clear, I was going to have to get below it. Below it, as in get on the ground. The ground was still damp from the morning shower.

I was so not doing that.

Not to mention, I am in a public park. Though no one was around at the moment, I had no way of knowing how long I was going to be down there trying to get the right shot. Friends were one thing, but did I really want strangers seeing me potentially sprawled out in damp grass out trying to take pictures of – what?  Unless they came close they would not see the web. It was pure luck the sunlight played off the diamond dew drops capturing my attention that kept me from walking right through it.  From a distance, it would look more like I was taking pictures of the space between the bushes. That would surely raise an eyebrow.  As it was, it seemed even the spider was looking at me kind of dubiously as I changed angles from a still standing position.

It became one of those odd times where the artist screamed against the practical. As I heard voices approaching it was also one of those odd times where the artist lost. Personal vanity won this round as I walked away.

I mean, what’s a I take pictures even if the only person who likes them is me going to do?  I’m no Ansel Addams (no relation to Gomez by the way), it’s not as though with my little camera I was going to have an image of such high quality as to be posted on gallery walls, or at a museum or even the zoo. The only person who would know or even care that I didn’t get the picture is me. And I could live with that.

Right?

Right!

Yeah, not right.

As I continued walking around the park taking pictures, enjoying the company of my friend I was visiting, spidey and that darn web kept popping into my mind. I really wanted that picture.  We had to pass through the same area to exit the park, thus I made up my mind that I was taking the picture.  The sun had shifted and I again almost walked right through not seeing it as I had forgotten the one very important thing – dew drops dry in sunlight.  I had let vanity win and the opportunity to photograph the dew sparkled web had passed. The artist in me enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude (nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah, nyaaaah nyah!), even as I lamented the loss (boo-hoo).

So what do I do now? Lemonade time. With the shifting sun I could now get, what I could not get a couple of hours previously, good clean lines.  Knowing I was likely going to rise with slightly muddy knees, passers-by maybe watching – maybe not – I didn’t care, and practical be damned! I  didn’t think twice about it this time as I immediately dropped to take the shot.

Yes!

spider

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I was looking through my digital photos in search of one in particular to show someone and came across spidey here. While it is the best of the dozen or so shots I took, it is not the greatest – as I knew it would be, but I like it and as one of my favorite bands would say, Nothing Else Matters.

Let’s see how others are facing things on this Friday the 13th – the 13th day of the challenge:

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Unrequited

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Can’t call a soul to my defense
The blame is mine, this wound immense
Don’t fall! Don’t fall! – sworn to uphold
The secrets of new spring leaves hold
The heart, the soul, can’t be controlled
You paint the sky with stars so bold
My vow too gone to be consoled
The secrets learned too late are cold
This love for you never is told
For to another yours is doled
Love found, yet lost, is the penance
To ache in this profound silence

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Because I have not done a poetic form in a while – today’s form: Duo-Rhyme (12 line)

The Duo-rhyme, is a 10 or 12-line poem, with the first two and last two lines having the same rhyme scheme, and the center of the poem (lines #3 through #8 or #10) having their own separate mono-rhyme scheme.

Meter: 8 beats per line, written in iambic tetrameter (4 linear feet of iambic)

Rhyme Scheme: 10-line: a,a,b,b,b,b,b,b,a,a  or 12-line: a,a,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,a,a

 dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Open Link Night – 144

I’m Done!

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The last vestiges of cabin fever or seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or the winter doldrums or whatever one wants to call it have exerted themselves in my psyche. My soul is clearly done with this tiny bit that is left of Winter 2014 and has officially balked.  I’m done.

I should have known this was coming – last week it was  snowing, still I bought iced drinks from Starbucks – twice.  I’m done.

I decided I am done with anything and everything down. My oh god it’s freezing long down coat, my shorter heavy wool coat, my heavier hats, all sent to the cleaners or the laundry. That final step before being put away for the season.  I’m done.

Yesterday, I went without a hat. I did not even have one stuffed in my pocket just in case. I’m done.

Today has an expected high of 50 degrees and I am planning on doing something that has not happened in months – wear a dress. Do you hear me? I’m done.

I have five living plants on my desk at work – that is not enough. I am buying a bouquet of flowers because I need the sight of flora near me, I need it now.  I’m done.

I normally do not get into such a tizzy like this until mid-April and if it snows again, which is still quite possible, I am going to be mightily ticked-off, mightily, but right now I don’t care. I feel the longer I keep holding on to my winter gear the longer Ol’ Man Winter keeps his grips in my mental space and he just needs to GO! I’m done.

So you hear me Persephone? We’re sick of your mama Demeter taking her yearly seasonal affective disorder out on us poor mortals. Dionysus must have had her seriously lapping up the vino this season. Have you seen what she did to Boston?!  Girlfriend, I know Hades is your boo and all, but it’s just time honey. Time for you to get off the man’s hot pocket and bring your hot seat back surface side so your mama can can start warming some stuff up around here, like now. We’re done.

Oh yeah, when I start kvetching with the Olympians you know what’s up? Yeah, you guessed it – I’m done!

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Come see how others are facing this 11th day of the challenge:

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Hello Sunshine

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It comes with the territory of winters in New York City. From early December until late February I have few chances to walk in the sun during the work week. The way my work hours run, I head to the train station in the mornings in the dark, and same thing when I head to the train in the evenings for home. Depending upon the weather I may bask in a piece of sunshine from the train to the office in the am, or perhaps a moment or so during lunch. But for the most part, once the holidays are over I am plunged into a dark gray, dank world for several weeks. I get a little tiny bit happy each year come late January when my trains ascends from the bowels of the earth and I spy a few minutes of sun before it sets. It is my first harbinger of the days getting longer, even if only for a few minutes and I’ll take it.

It’s only in late February that I start to get the same treat again in the mornings as I head to work. Last Friday, I caught myself squinting on the elevated platform as the sun rose was just over the roof line of the platform on the opposite track to blind me. I was so happy, I did something I had not done since November. I pulled out my sunglasses, put them on and simply basked in the glow for the scant minutes until the train arrived.

Then daylight savings time kicked in. I did not notice it on Sunday as it was the weekend and by the time I arose the sun was already out, but I sure noticed going to work in the morning.

The weather said sunny and 40 degrees. After the freezing temperatures and snow of last week, this was almost sultry. I walked out of my front door this morning prepared to don sunglasses again only to find myself plunged back into darkness. I mentally grated my teeth in frustration. I had momentarily forgotten about this nasty little side effect of the time change for the next couple of weeks. Boooooo!

Yes, I know by the end of the month the early morning sun will be cresting over the jagged horizon of the cityscape in time for me to catch it in the mornings once more, but for right now the sudden darkness again is jarring. As I do twice each year when the time changes, I wished we were like Arizona where most of the state does not observe daylight savings time and is not bothered by such trite annoyances. But as my buddy Elaine was nice enough to point out to me, this means more sun in my afternoons now and that’s a huge plus.

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Let’s see how this Day 10 is shining on the rest of the slicers:

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A Moment

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Can we just chill for a moment please?

Let go of our burdens big, our troubles tall
Close our eyes for a moment
Before the moment’s gone.

Just chill for a moment please.

Take the load off our shoulders
Take a deep breath to breathe
Feel the good air slide in
And your worries exhale out

Chill for a moment please.

To put our worries down
And our feet up

For a moment please.

And remember that
Life is less about what we have to lift
And more about what we find uplifting

A moment.

Please.

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It’ was one interesting day that started nor ended as expected. A moment was needed.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | OpenLinkNight : Week 146

 

Elevate Your Shenenigans

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A few months ago in the early fall, I get on the elevator at my office one morning and press the button for my floor. A colleague who works on a different floor presses the button for his floor and we nod at each other in greeting. Others enter the elevator and press the buttons for their respective floors. I noticed a pattern emerging on the panel as buttons were pushed and smiled to myself at the coincidence. At this point it needed only one more button pushed to complete the array. The doors were slowly closing and I had mentally brushed off the disappointment of the pattern being left undone, when a hand thrusts in to bounce the doors open. One more person gets in the elevator.  Silly bird that I am, my thoughts quickly race.

Is it going to happen? Is it going to happen?!

My eyes widen in anticipation as his finger reaches towards the panel.

Yes, he’s really going to do it!

I start to smile as the finger draws nearer to the goal only to suddenly shift and press a different button than hoped for.

Noooooooooooooo!

“Aw man! You messed it all up!” Yes, I said that out loud.

“What?” The gentleman quickly withdrew his finger nervously laughing, and totally confused.

“Look! Look at what you’ve done! You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined it all! Even you can see the tragedy of this now! Even you! Even!” I mock cry dramatically, putting heavy emphasis on the word even while gesturing to the button panel where numbers 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 were lit in an orderly line waiting for 12 to join them.  Had he pressed the button for the twelfth floor it would have worked out that all the of even floors and only the even floors would have been lit by pure chance, but noooooooooo! What could have been a moment of pure serendipitous perfection is now trashed by the glaring light of 11.  There are tiny titters of laughter as the other riders start to get it.  Two of them know me well and quickly become a Greek chorus bemoaning the poor man’s fate.

“Oh no, not the odd floor!”
“Oh, you done done it now man.”
“It was nice knowing you.”

“Oh, no! Oh my! Egads! Such an undignified transgression! I shall remove myself from here immediately!” He played right into the scene.

“Oh why bother, the damage is done, you unthinking cad!” I wailed, while quickly fanning my eyes with my fingers to deter the tears that would never fall. “You sir are a scoundrel! A scoundrel I say!”

All of this to the bemusement of the captive audience of the other riders forced to endure this elevated melodrama. The lucky worker on the second floor already escaping before the bloodshed.

“Oh dear lady, however can one so lowly as I make this right!”

The next floor is mine and as the doors begin to open there was only one thing that could be said in the face of such an onslaught.

“How you ask?! By having a nice day, sir! That is what I wholly wish for the likes of you! A nice day!” I say this with all the teeming passion of a Fake-sperian actor casting a pox upon one’s house. Turning with a dramatic huff, I fling my non-existent fur stole over my shoulder as I exit all Norma Desmond style to full-out laughter as the doors close behind me.

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Now let’s fast-forward to today as I get on the elevator this morning  and a gentlemen follows immediately after. I press the button for my floor and step aside so he can press the button for his. He reaches out an extended finger almost about to push the button, but withdraws it quickly.

“Is it okay if I push it this time?” He inquires of me.

I presume my expression spoke volumes along the fortunately un-uttered lines of why the fuck are you asking me?  for he quickly added “The last time we rode an elevator together you called me unthinking cad so I’m just checking first.” His smile makes me actually look at him this time and I take a moment to scan through the various elevator shenanigans of which I’ve always only been a mere bystander to – as you can tell by the encounter above – until recognition dawns and I press the button for the eleventh floor for him.

“Thanks! You remember!” He laughs.

“Why yes I do, you scoundrel!” and then proceed to press every button between his floor and mine, finishing just as the doors to my floor open.

“No, you did not just do that!” If he was even mildly irked, it is totally swallowed by his hoot of laughter at my antics as I exit.

“Have a nice day!” I grin and wave my fingers as the doors close on his continued laughter.

Yes, I have many issues, and clearly no damn sense, and still no idea who he is.

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Come see how others are elevating their slices this month:

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Don’t Fill In The Blank

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Someone referred to me as African-American. I corrected her by saying no, I’m American, no modifier. She didn’t get it. Her expression clearly wanted to ask questions she was not sure how to phrase. So I asked if she referred to herself as British-American, which of course I knew she did not. Her response was to patiently explain, as though speaking to a young child, how her family has been here for a few generations now, they do not claim their roots from long ago, they are simply American. It was as she reached the last few words that I saw the light bulb go on for her. I then asked, so why does everyone else in a similar vein get a modifier? To her credit she had the grace to be embarrassed as it sank in.

When I was a child, oh SO long ago, we were Black, White, Spanish and Chinese. The only time a modifier came up was to differentiate between American Indians and Indians from across the ocean or a specific Asian culture. Regardless, if you were born here you were automatically American. Naturalization information did not take family background or culture into consideration. On US passports you are not African-American, Irish-American or Spanish-American etc. If you chose to become an American citizen, you didn’t abandon your culture, you mixed it in. People came here on purpose to be American, not _____-American.

American.

Then something happened in the late 70s – early 80’s. People wanted their familial cultures, individuality recognized and thus _____-American became a thing. The flavors in this melting pot of the USA no longer wanted to blend in, but to stand out. Individual cultural pride not-so-slowly began to override national pride. At what cost?  Sometimes it feels as though, instead of a melting pot, America has become this barrel of crabs in which each race, ethnicity, culture etc. is simultaneously pulling the other down while clamoring to the top.

It took 9/11 to make us one nation indivisible again. Like most families, we may pick on each other, but don’t you dare pick on us. All prefixes dropped as we clutched our flag, like pearls, to our collective bosoms; “America The Beautiful”, “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America” in our ears and on our reverent tongues. Still, it was a short-lived patriotism as the strands of solidarity popped when the finger-pointing began.  Because like most families, once the immediate threat to the overall clan seems over we are right back to ripping each other’s guts out.  We had a slight, and I do mean slight, resurgence of national pride last year as some stood up in proverbial arms when North Korea made threats against America for the release of the movie “The Interview”. After the movie was re-edited, to be slightly less offensive to the North Korean government and finally released, we learned the film was not worth the brouhaha being made over it and national fervor melted faster than an ice-cube in the desert in summer.

Why do we need something to hate collectively in order to not hate each other individually? In the past century we’ve in turns have had beefs with Japan, Germany, Russia, and the Middle East. Now we have “tensions” on multiple fronts. I am not advocating another tragedy. There’s enough in our history books as it is. We should not need a common threat to find common ground, but what will it take for us to be just American again?

Diversity is not supposed to be divisive.

Train Pain

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Took the uptown #2 Local one stop uptown to catch the express because nothing was stopping on the downtown local stations due to signal malfunction.

Get put off the express #2 after a couple of stops because the train itself was malfunctioning.

Get on the #5 Express into lower Manhattan to transfer to the A train that places me less than a block from my job site.

Get to the A train platform only to learn there are no A or C trains running downtown because of a problem at Canal Street.

Play Human Triplanner.MTA.info Guide to about five different lost and clueless commuters in the interim.

Go back to the 4/5 Express train to get into Brooklyn and walk the five blocks I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Mama Mary gets her and her temporary Lost Little Lambs into Brooklyn and part ways.

Finally reach work and what is the very first email I see? “MTA Unlimited Ride MetroCard Fare Increase…”

Dear Universe, apparently, you got jokes this morning!
HA HA very funny muthafugga!