My God, A Day Off

I've been locked in the soap room for a solid six weeks now. Except for the days I'm locked in the wrapping room. So I was really thrilled to take an actual entire day off.

Jesse and I are still exploring the area, so we decided on a drive. Bad dog-parents that we are, we took Bander to doggie day care for a bath and some baby sitting. Then we took off to take a look at one of the resort areas, Perdido Key.

Perdido Key looks mighty fine from the air, and not so shabby from the ground. It was a little surprising that the beaches were dead empty - even on a Wednesday in February, in California you'd never get an empty beach.

We were driving east (toward the top of the pic) along the water, noticing how we seemed to have the place all to ourselves. We'd gone out with some notion of getting lunch or something, but a lot of the restaurants were still closed, so we kept heading east until we crossed over into Alabama. (This includes driving through, I am not making this up, Floribama.) We finally paused in Orange Beach, Alabama, for coffee and beginets.

Beginets are one of my favorite things about living in this area so far. It's like a donut lived a saintly life and then came back as something better. And then that something better got deep fried and sprinkled with several pounds of powdered sugar. Jesse had never eaten a beginet, and kept arguing that we could get mayonnaise at home. I swear he goes deaf sometimes just to spite me.

So, I knew that beginets were delicious. What I didn't know is that it's not advisable to eat them in a moving car, and certainly not while wearing dark clothes. Because the minute that you hit a bump, this hot fresh delicious confection turns into Satan's Fritter of Doom and bounces out of your hand and leaves powdered sugar donut prints down the front incline of your clothes, so that if you go out in public for the rest of the day everyone will be able to look at your shirt and secretly condemn you for being a sloppy eater while simultaneously being jealous of the beginet that you obviously had earlier. Plus you attract ants.

We tried to get past the problem by eating faster. Bigger bites, simultaneously. Jesse found that his sugary bite glued itself to the roof of his mouth, rendering him unable to speak and warn me not to take a big bite. Which is too bad, because I took a giant bite and then inhaled or something and accidentally sent about six pounds of sugar rocketing up into my sinuses from the inside. If I had only had a blowhole I would have looked like Old Faithful.

We pulled the car over and got out, hoping to stop wheezing and finish our breakfast but the wind whipped the box top out of Jesse's hands and then plastered me with a drift of sugar from head to foot. We threw the damn things away.

We were stopped at a perfectly lovely state park but I was pretty bitchy about being lightly glazed so we didn't stay for too long. Approximately a nanosecond. But Jesse did take a photo to prove that we were there.

Anyway, we drove home, had a late lunch at a decent (but not wonderful) Mexican restaurant, and picked up the dog. He had been bathed and perfumed and smells like a big green apple with horrible breath. Plus we smelled like donuts but didn't bring him any so there's a sort of cloud of resentment and Jolly Rancher dog farts in the house now.

I think it's time to go back to work.

Sound & Fury, Signifying Nothing

Sometimes I amaze, even myself.

Srsly.

I have been running around like a freakin’ lunatic for a month now, waving my arms wildly and complaining about how insanely busy I am. Don’t see any products yet, but whooooo! Look at me go!

And with all this activity, this frenzied strenuous run-around, what do I have to show for it?

Nothing, that’s what.

I’m exhausted, and I know I was in high gear, but … I got nuthin’. I’m kind of hoping it’s another senior moment, like the drivers license fiasco, and that I’ll find loads and loads of nicely wrapped soap, freshly folded laundry, and tasty nutritious lunches, neatly packaged and pre-frozen.

But if that’s what I’ve got, it’s behind piles of soap that still isn’t cured and needs to be wrapped and labeled, laundry that is festering and so close to being a life form in its own right that it has a rudimentary written language, and … okay, I have some frozen lunches, but Jesse made them for me and I’m so worn out from running around that I can’t possibly remember to bring them to work with me.

Luckily, several people have had birthdays recently and I’ve been able to survive off plates of day-old cupcakes from the tops of file cabinets outside the office of the birthday girl. I’m hoping for a birthday boy soon because they usually have some cheese and crackers instead of just sugar and I’m on a week-long frosting high that isn’t helping things.

I’m hopeless.

I think I may have run out of Zen.

I was being all calm and stress-free and stuff, when things took a sudden turn and I started having to hack my way through a briar patch of stupidity.

So that I don’t give too much detail, here are a few notes to the guilty parties.

And if you decide that the shuttle is going to start waiting an extra ten minutes for late trains, I should find out some way OTHER than hearing two drivers gossip. I wouldn’t have noticed that, had I not been wondering why we were so effin’ late.

Of course, you don’t want it to impact you in any way except for the warm fuzzy feeling. However, I am taking public transportation, which is run by morons (see above), and glaring at me as I rush in the door from the bus stop will not make it any earlier. It’s only a two block walk; I promise I’m not stopping off to go shopping or anything on the way in. And since I ran part of the way, I am only three minutes late, so you should GET A GRIP.

And I warn you now, if you increase my interest rates on my credit card, I’m going to stop using it. I’m also going to move my money market account, wee though it may be, to elsewhere. Now you don’t have my interest income AND your cash reserves have gone down. I wonder if anyone there can do math? I suspect that the answer is NO, and therein lies your problem. I look forward to your demise.

However, I must mention your cupcakes. They are hella cute, I have to admit. I know you got a big book all about cupcake decorating, and you put a lot of effort into them. It really shows. You have them decorated like flowers, with little red M&M’s that you’ve drawn on with frosting so they look like ladybugs. They are adorable, and it must have taken hours.

I wish you’d stop bringing them into the office and hovering to make sure that everyone is eating one, though. Or, alternatively, that you would put even one quarter the effort into learning how to bake, because your damn cupcakes taste like Spackle with frosting on top. If I have to choke down one more of these vile lumps I’m going to lose it. I am all out of polite, so back off and take your adorable crapcakes with you.

It’s not even lunch time.

This is going to be a long day.